“‘This is why?’ What does that mean, Momma?” I ask, taking my baby girl into my arms and then smartly reaching for the bottle to continue feeding her. The instant Grace is no longer occupying her hands, Momma begins to wring them, watching them as though she can’t work out why they’re suddenly empty.
I feel a stab of guilt over hurting my mom, but it’s short-lived. I’m protecting my daughter. No woman should feel guilty about defending the well-being of her child. So I won’t. I refuse.
Momma doesn’t answer my question for several minutes. Everyone in the room—Nissa, Nate, me, even little Grace— seems to be holding their breath, waiting quietly for her to calm herself and reply. As the silence drags on, I can’t help wondering if everybody else is as tense as me.
“This is why I didn’t want you anymore,” my mother finally explains. “I knew I’d lose you, too. And I just couldn’t lose anybody else. Can’t you see?” She begins to whimper, a pitiful sound that tugs at my heartstrings, despite the trouble we’ve had in the past. “I couldn’t lose anybody else.”
A streak of resentment runs through me, the aftershock of an earthquake that happened long, long ago. My mother had only been concerned with what she would lose, how she would feel. She obviously never took a minute to think about how her only remaining child might feel. She didn’t bother to think about how it would affect me.
There is a noticeably frigid edge to my voice when I respond. Even I hear it.
“Oh, I can see, Momma. You forget that I was in the exact same boat. I’d lost my family, too. First Janet, then Daddy. But I lost even more because then I lost you. They didn’t have a choice when they left, but you did. You did, didn’t you, Momma? I lost you because you gave up on me. You were all I had left, and you just…gave up. You might as well have left me, too.”
I can taste the bitterness on my tongue like a mouthful of bile.
“I didn’t leave you!” Momma defends.
“You didn’t leave me physically, but you left in all the ways that mattered. You just checked out and left me to raise myself, to take care of myself. And to take care of you. I was a child! I’d lost everything and I couldn’t even grieve. I didn’t have time to. I had to go to school and cook and grocery shop and clean and take care of you. I didn’t have the luxury of giving up.”
I can see my mother’s chest rising and falling rapidly. The room is silent but for the muted pant of her breathing, no one else daring enough to interrupt our emotional face-off. Mother and daughter, we simply stare at one another until she breaks the taut stillness.
“And now you’ve brought me here to get back at me. Is that it?”
My mouth drops open. “Is that what you think of me? That I would subject you to this horror just to get revenge? After all these years?”
“Then whyyy?” she wails pitifully, rocking faster, bouncing off the cushion like she’s propelled, only to slam back against it, over and over and over.
Suddenly, as though someone has opened up an invisible cavern beneath my feet to sap it silently from my body, my small store of energy dissipates, leaving me to waver on legs made of warm rubber. Before I can fold, however, my sturdier half, my better half materializes behind me.
Nate.
He is never far.
Long fingers wrap gently around my upper arms, providing me with much-needed support. I feel the hot solidity of my husband’s broad, muscular chest at my back and, for just a moment, I lean into him. As always, he’s my rock, my ever-present rock in my time of need.
When he starts to bend, I know to sweep me off my feet and carry me to calmer waters, I stop him by turning to place our daughter into his strong, capable arms. I meet his eyes, my determined brown colliding with his worried green, and nod before I pivot.
When I face my mother, I see the woman who gave up on life when I needed her most. I see the woman who let me care for her when my world had fallen apart. I see the woman who couldn’t find the strength to pick herself up for the daughter who begged her to. She’s still that woman. She’ll always be that woman.
Although the anger is still there, the resentment, the hurt as well, I feel more of something else today. Today I feel pity. For the first time in my life, I look at Patricia Holmes, and I see the broken woman that she is. I see someone who simply wasn’t strong enough to weather the horrific agony that comes with having lost not one, but two loved ones to cancer. I see a woman who was knocked to her knees and couldn’t find it in herself to get back up.
She’s made bad choices, she’s been weak when she needed to be strong, she gave up when she should’ve fought back—yes, she did all of those things. But this woman is my mother. For better or for worse, she’s my mother and although she’s not asking for it, I have the opportunity to forgive her.