For the same reason that I was born a Scorpio, deemed a member of the Slytherin house, and have a history of being an arrogant, authority defying menace; my favorite ninja turtle was always Raphael.

 

At eight years old I can remember sitting inches away from my mother’s box television, marveling at how badass he was.

Defying Leonardo (the turtle my year-younger brother identified with), asserting himself in every possible situation no matter the dangers, and occasionally fucking up, but always managing to resolve the situation with saitachi and a swift Shredder-ass kicking.

 

My mother used to peek in from the kitchen and watch me dance around the living room; mirroring the moves and embodying the spirit of my hero.

She could see the fire in my eyes and the ice in my veins and when she would ask ‘Beena, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ I would hastily reply with ‘Raphael!’

Smiling she would tell me that I was already her red masked bandit.

 

But one day everything I thought I knew was disrupted when she informed me that there was in fact a fifth ninja turtle; a pink ninja turtle. Obviously this was not true for the simple fact that this pink ninja turtle had never appeared in a single episode or movie that I had seen. This pink ninja turtle had no name, no weapon, and what kind of badass ninja would wrap themselves in a pink bandana?

 

I expressed these doubts to her and she simply replied that not all heroes can be seen; some are just believed in.

Needless to say, I didn’t believe.

This was the first and, sadly, not the last time I wouldn’t believe my mother and as I got older ‘not believing her’ quickly transformed into ‘not believing in her’.

 

 

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At the age of nine the cold vinyl of a school bus seat froze my ass as my mother and I waited for the engine to warm.

She would sing along to the radio and greet every kid that got on the bus with a jubilant

‘Good Morning!’

She would shut the doors and drive what seemed like ten more feet and do it over… and over… and over again.

Snacking on a cosmic brownie, a consistent breakfast of mine for many years, I sat and watched her face in the rear view mirror. I could see the trenches that navigated her young forehead, seemingly carved by none other than Shredder himself.

I absolutely dreaded showing up to school in the hunking vehicle, but she would tell me that it was perfectly ok that I got to be dropped off by my very own bus; that my brother and I had to be

‘the coolest cats around’.

I didn’t believe her.

 

Once when I was eleven my mother picked me up from school in her Plymouth Breeze. She inquired about how my day had gone and what I had for lunch as she worryingly glanced between my eyes and the fuel gauge.

Shredder hung from the needle dragging it ever so quickly towards ‘E’.

‘We’re going to have to pull over and go for a walk Beena’,

she said gently from the driver’s seat with a smile upon her face.

With my sister in a stroller, one brother on her back, and the other one holding her hand.

My feet ached from my own weight so I walked beside them with my hands pinched in my armpits.

‘We are almost there Beena, just a couple more minutes’.

There was no way I could believe her.

 

When I was twelve my mother gracefully danced around the kitchen on a Friday night, preparing her special; a Tombstone pizza.

Three hungry mouths, including mine, sat in the living room without the slightest thought of offering any assistance.

Her head appeared in the doorway and her soft voice traversed the hostile environment.

‘Honey…’

she said, addressing my step father who put down his glass of Shredder’s most toxic elixir upon the coffee table,

‘I burnt the pizza’.

As he polished off the last slice, my mother sat down next to me with fresh makeup poorly applied to her left eye and said

‘It’s alright Beena, he works so he needs it more than us’.

I couldn’t believe her.

 

In my eighth grade year right before school pictures she sat me down in the kitchen of a women’s shelter we lived at and pulled out a pair of scissors.

‘Come on Beena, we’ve got to cut this mane’,

she said, clipping at the air with the scissors that resembled Shredder’s cuffs; each blade sharpening each other and preparing to destroy my self-image.

‘Don’t call me that’, I retorted.

‘Come on sweety, these pictures are going to look great!’

I still didn’t believe her.

 

Ten years after the first time I didn’t believe her I received a call.

‘I’m going to get better...'

The phone cracked as if it were the cackling culprit behind her desperation.

'I-I promise, just please put some money on my kiddie so I can get some chapstick’.

I just didn’t believe in her.

 

A week later Shredder hid in a syringe and crawled through her veins, coursing through her beautiful heart and reaching the bounds of her gentle fingertips.

The lips that once kissed me goodnight, the hands that lit everyone of my birthday candles, and the heart that had stayed true to me no matter what,

just no longer believed in her.

The depths of her green eyes succumbed to the wounds that Shredder left in her mind and on her wrists and rolled back, never to return a reassuring smile to my cool gaze again.

 

 

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I sat in the parking lot of a shitty motel trying to muster up the courage, the courage that my mother had so often provided for me, to pick up her belongings.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss. Sara was a great woman’.

The metallic stairs echoed like thunder through the pouring April rain as my boots systematically navigated each one.

‘This is the room in which we found Sara. Once again, I’m sorry’.

Lightning struck my body stiff as the housekeeper slid the key under the ‘9’ label and the door gently swung open.

 

With a 90’s like attire, two beds laid a few feet apart, each one made to a tee, with a nightstand acting as a bridge between both worlds. A small lamp dimly lit the room and under it sat a travel brochure with the word ‘Jackson’ placed across the top in a fancy script. The vicious smell of chlorine and pinesol now attacked my nose, ripped at the hairs upon my neck, and drained the water from my eyes.

 

‘And over there is Sara’s stu-’

‘God dammit!’ the woman’s eyes grew the size of grapefruits as I lashed out, ‘I’m sorry… just please… just-just please don’t call her that’.

 

In the opposite corner of the room sat the sum of my mother’s life in two loosely organized piles.

All of her clothes looked like pink bandanas.

An old hairbrush, her weapon of choice, had visibly untied more knots than a boy scout and experienced shades even more beautiful than a mid-summer dusk.

Half drawn pages in an adult coloring book and manila envelopes bursting at the seams, labeled ‘Beena’ and crammed with the history of me that not even I knew of, sat in a laundry basket of her most precious belongings; indicative of the unconditional love and a mother’s bond that inspired her in battle.

 

The heavens fell from the sky as I carried two trash bags containing everything that was left of my mother and at that moment I had the realization.

 

The arrogance and ignorance that Raphael wore like medallions and boasted like trophies was nothing more than a plea for attention; cries for love and acceptance.

 

An epiphany that Raphael didn’t see his pink counterpart not because she didn’t exist, but because he failed to look hard enough.

The wise words of master splinter delivered in salmon boxes, the bridge of trust constructed with April O’neil covered in a coral coat, and the Turtles themselves laced together with a brotherly bond sewn by none other than a seamstress with rosé colored thread.

None of which can be seen, but simply believed.

 

They tell me that she’s in a better place, but I find no hero in my heroine’s heroin.

She just needed to be believed in.