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I remember my mum a bit. In bits, really. A few things stand out more than others, as though they strive for relevance in my mind and fight and strangle each other in order to take first chair.

A pale cheek.

A bright forelock falling.

A scarred brow.

Bony arms holding me tight and protecting against a wave of curses and vicious blows.

That was, of course, before my father robbed her blind and left her to the whim of fate and God. Before the calloused hands of strange men. Before the rocking and keening and undulating cries raised to a far-off vision of Heaven. Before the leap, and the fall, and finally the crushing impact.

She told me a lot of stories. Tales from before the bad times, from when men lived at peace and neighbors helped each other, and nobody who heard the sounds of warm family celebration emanating from a home scratched their head and wondered just what was going on in there.

Funny, isn't it? How far we've come from the happiness of years past.

Once I asked her how we all were made. I inquired in my young, simple way why, if someone had gone to all the trouble to put something so wonderful as this world together, why was there so much hurt? Why did the wrinkled hag who huddled outside our threshold groan and moan and grimace like a death's head in memory of her past life? Why did the old leathery fisherman two hovels down speak of loving his trade, but always appear as though the very hooks that aided in his livelihood were embedded in his back? And why, mum, oh why, did the staggering, belligerent drunk who passed by every night on his way to another binge kick out and snarl at us, the little ones, who happened across his path?

That pale hair fell over her eyes as she knelt down before me.

Those chapped, dry lips parted.

"Oh Sabian," she said, eyes beset by darkness. "Do you really think it was always this way?"

One hand clenched at her stomach, a reminder of how much caring for me cost her.

"I know it wasn't, mum."

"Fine, then." Her ten-penny arms reached out to pull me in. I had flashes in my head of her body being fuller, more pliable, nothing like the scarecrow shape that loomed in my vision now. Still, she was mum. She was home. I buried my head in her life.

"Now, Sabian," she said, chin resting in the close-cropped platinum thicket of my hair. "Listen to me. When the Great Artist's stroke passed over our land, and the trees and the meadows and the golden wheat all were made reality through His craft, He saw that what He had made was good. And when He plucked hair from His brush and crafted our forebears, He said that truly Hs work had reached its pinnacle. And He said that it was good as well. Then He made a promise to His newly formed masterpiece. He promised that, in all His infinite wisdom, He would never force them into being good themselves. That, although their form was beautiful and their countenance bespoke His touch, they could make choices and decisions and promises of their own that would progress them on their life's path.