My mom raised me as a single parent and has been my best friend for as long I can remember. She wasn’t strict, or serious, she had always been fun, supportive and caring. She wasn’t a psychopath but… she just never laughed.
I didn’t notice my mom’s inability to express or react to humor until one fourth of July when I was about six. Everyone went to Grandma’s place to celebrate. My uncle was like any other typical barbeque uncle, talking to everyone and cracking jokes as he cracked some eggs and grilled some steak.
He took one of the eggs in his hand and tried his luck with a “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke. He hit gold, everyone standing near the grill burst out with laughter, all except my mom. I realized then that I hadn’t ever seen her laugh. She would crack a grin but there was never a “haha”. Maybe humor just wasn’t her thing.
Being the curious six year old I was, later that night I asked her, “Mom why don’t you laugh?” She did not even attempt to react to my question, she just kept staring blankly at the book she was reading. This was the first time in my life being ignored by her. She clearly didn’t want to answer so I stopped asking her.
Instead, I made it one of my life goals as a kid to somehow make my mother laugh. Every morning before going to school, I’d attempt to get at least a chuckle out of her. I’ve tried everything, knock knock jokes, dad jokes, dark humor, you name it. Nothing worked. It’s like the part of her brain that processes humor wasn’t even there.
She was always off on Saturdays so we made it a movie night. Every Saturday we would sit on the couch together and watch whatever I agreed on. I had probably bought out the whole aisle of DVDs of the comedy genre at blockbuster as one of my attempts. Just like my thoughtfully constructed jokes that went out her other ear, the movies did not work.
One Christmas I bought her a paperback book titled “How to make anyone laugh” and waited to see her reaction as she unwrapped the gift. She teared up as she stared at it. I didn’t understand why she was so sad over a book that I gave her as a joke. I swear I could hear her faint whimpering as she attempted to cry. My obsession over my mom’s apathy towards humor had gone overboard and I was breaking her. I felt an absolute scum of a daughter and stopped all my attempts at humoring her.
I had accepted it. I locked the fact in the back of my head and never gave it a second thought. My mom just doesn’t laugh.
The years passed in a haze as I grew older. Soon, I moved out to attend university and found my soulmate at a stand-up comedy bar, and we got married as soon as we graduated.
After we settled down and started doing well at our jobs, we tried and I gave birth to the most beautiful baby girl. Her laugh always melted my heart, I would laugh with her, something my mother was never able to give me.
My daughter was almost four months old, barely even able to crawl when it happened. I woke up at 3 A.M to the sound of her laughing her little lungs out. It was unusual because she usually woke me up by crying, not by laughing.
I wish I had let her laugh herself to sleep instead of checking up on her that night. I opened the door to her room which was slightly ajar, and looked inside.
I saw it holding my daughter up from her crib.
It wasn’t human.
It was all black like a silhouette.
It had a face, arms and legs but they were all black.
It had a head but no face, just an arc with sharp teeth the size of pineapples pointed out and protruding in a freak smile from the void where the mouth of a human should be.
My maternal instinct was in overdrive, yet I was still frozen in place. Its torso was swaying as if it was laughing. I took one more look at my daughter in its hands, she was asleep, it wasn’t her that was laughing.
It was laughing in my daughter’s voice.
I have heard her laugh almost every night since, yet even as her mother I don’t have the courage to go to her room again. I get reminded of it again.
My husband has been putting her back to sleep daily and is already fed up with the responsibility that I’ve been ignoring, he didn’t see what I saw.
I can not laugh anymore, my husband seems really distant lately, he might leave me, leave us, like my father left my mother when I was still an infant.
I’m scared for my daughter, and for her children if she ever has any. I hope not, I hope she doesn’t notice that I don’t laugh. I won’t have the courage to tell her.
My mother has never laughed, and now I know why.