Fiction | July 09, 2026

The Mother-F-Word 

“My mother has a mouth on her,” Charlie says. “She never held back, not even when we were little.” There’s a muffled response: laughter, then a few short words. “Her favorite,” Charlie says, “is the mother-f-word.” 

Felicia leans away from the guest-room door, hitching the laundry basket higher on her hip. She knows she shouldn’t listen—these are her son’s private therapy sessions—but when will she get a chance like this again? She has never been sure what her son thinks of her, and now here he is, in her own house, telling all to a gentle-voiced woman on a computer screen. 

With her grandkids plugged into YouTube downstairs, Felicia has listened to at least ten minutes of every session. She can’t help it, or doesn’t want to. It’s her house and her Wi-Fi and her electricity. Half the time, it’s her story, too. Charlie can’t seem to bring himself to talk about Jessica, so he talks about work and feelings of inadequacy and somehow, this always brings him back to Felicia. 

My mother. That’s what he calls her. It bothers her a little. She’s never once, in any of these sessions, heard him call her my mom. Charlie speaks to his therapist so freely, so confident his words will be confidential, as if there were more than a hollow-core door between him and curious ears, and yet this small bit of language is so formal. As if perhaps it’s the lead-up to what he has dubbed “the mother-f-word.” 

The therapist wants to know why that’s her favorite. Charlie hesitates. He exhales heavily before saying, “It’s like a nickname for me and my sister, I think. Like we’re the mother-effers. Like we effed her up.” 

Felicia grips the laundry basket. She wants to protest or defend herself. She wants her son to stop saying “effed” as if he were a little boy. 

She wants him to clarify. While, yes, motherhood can warp and twist a person’s life into something unrecognizable, she wants it made perfectly clear that she is not and never was the kind of mother who would look her kids in the face and say, “You fucked me up.” 

The therapist’s voice rattles out of the speakers: “Did she say that, or are you saying that?” 

Charlie is quiet a long time. So long that the laundry basket starts to bite into Felicia’s fingers, as if telling her it’s time to go. 

And then he says, “I guess I’m saying it. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”