Phyllis switched to only Pinot when she found out that she was pregnant with me. Lord knows she needed something to deal with the news, something liquid to ease the shock of mutating from a single body to a double. She couldn’t have dealt with that kind of duplication on her own.

She took her Pinot in shot glasses, because it was more exciting that way. When she finally felt a buzz–it would take a while–she would go outside for a clove cigarette. I still have a taste for dessert cigs.

My mother was ecstatic that her husband Jeff worked the night-shift. Their opposite schedules allowed for a premium amount of secrecy. His job permitted her to have a double life.”Why live once when you can live twice?” she’d said to me when I was old enough to have things explained.

For the nine months I spent in the womb I was her main worry. She thought I’d emerge looking more Jose than Jeff. She was relieved when Jeff christened me Junior.

Maybe it’s important to add here she had a cruel upbringing as well; this kind of shit is cyclical, you know. Her mother once told her that “Phyllis” was short for “Syphilis.”

What else should you know about my mother? Surely she had a rotten childhood, but that’s the half of us, isn’t it?

Illegal things she has done: in high school, she got into a knife fight. No flesh was cut, but a girl did lose her pony tail.

After she quit school, she worked at a bank. Slowly the manager began to notice changes in her behavior. He fired her after a stack of twenties went missing. Cameras didn’t exist then the way they do now; only I know that it was in fact my mother who took the cash. The bundle of bills created a bulge in her pants, she told me. She said she felt like a man. Later that night she went on a spending spree at the Liquor Lot. For the first time in her life she had good whiskey.

My mother leaves me with questions. Is cheating worse than stealing? Are they morally the same? She has never killed a human, but one time I did see her stomp on a struggling baby mouse. I don’t think she’s ever gone beyond that.

-Jason Zabel still goes home for dinner