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It is nearly midnight when I park my car behind the Life House, and I am tired and sore in every joint of my body. My hips ache from sitting, my throat stings from screaming, and my soul aches with knowing. Lola is right. They all are right. I am not mother material. I would fail at it as badly as I have failed at being a child, as badly as I have failed at being a teenager, as badly as I will fail at being an adult. I am no better than my mother; I am just a different shade of the same putrid cloth she was cut from. I may not be burrowing into a bottle, but maybe that’s coming.
I buzz the intercom on the door, and Janice comes to meet me, dressed in her nightclothes, looking like a little pixie. Without her heels, she seems so much smaller than usual. “You okay?” she asks, touching me with kid gloves.
“No,” I say, shocked that my honesty is showing.
“Let’s talk.” She closes the door and leads me into her office.
“I don’t want to talk,” I say, realizing that I’ve followed her and now I have to say something.
“Where have you been?” she asks without accusation or heat.
“I just had to go somewhere. I had to talk to someone.” I don't look at her. I feel so hot and cold at the same time.
“The father?” she asks gently, as if she knows and understands.
I let out a small laugh. I can’t even be a pregnant teenager right. “No. Not him. Someone I thought was my friend.”
“Now you think they are not.” She steeples her hands, and I turn to look out the window into the night, feeling restless. I have to move.
“No,” I say. “Not my friend.” I pace her small office, picking things up and putting them down.
“It’s hard.”
I snort. As if she would know. “Yep.” I turn to leave, tired of being given advice from people who have always made the right decision, people who have had family, people who went to college and got a degree and now have “careers.”
“I was twelve,” she says. Her voice is quiet, and I have the door halfway opened before I look at her. “When my daughter was born.” Her eyes have a faraway, glassy look without her makeup, without her glasses. I close the door and stand, looking at her out of the corner of my eyes. “You remind me of myself sometimes, when I was young.” I snort a laugh again because there is no way this proper, sophisticated woman was ever anything like me. “She was born in January, actually twenty-eight years ago next Friday.” She smiles and lets out a small hum. I don’t realize that I have moved until I sit down in the chair across the desk. I am worn to the point of exhaustion, to the point of no longer being able to stand. “I don’t tell many people about her.”
“So why did you tell me?” I ask, feeling strange and numb after all the anger has drained away.
“I think maybe we had the same kind of family. Growing up. Not much of a family at all really.” She smiles, still looking off into the distance. She is different than I’ve ever seen her, softer, more breakable. “Sound about right?”
“She tried,” I say. I know it’s true. I know she did. I ruined it because I was so mean to her. I hated her so much there for a while, and she just needed me to love her and accept her for who she was. I destroyed her by trying to make her fit into my idea of what a mother should be. Would she have loved me more if I had just let her be? Would I have been enough then? My mind wobbles because even as I’m trying to say I should have accepted her, I’m negotiating to make her fit the mold of what I wanted her to be.
“Mine did too,” Janice says, and her eyes meet mine. “I still hated her for not being able to be normal.” She leans forward, her hand taking mine. “You know what I realize now, looking back?”
“No. What?”
“She didn’t know what she was doing either. Life is not easy, and nobody tells you how to do it. Raising kids isn’t easy, and she didn’t know she wouldn’t be good at it until she wasn’t. I was angry for years, at her and at everybody else, but after a while that anger just burned me up. I had to forgive her and myself for all of our mistakes.”
I roll my eyes. This is just more of the same, and I’m done. I don’t think I can listen to anybody else’s sob story tonight. I stand up and go to the door. I say, “I get that you’re trying to help me. I do. Really. But I don’t think I can forgive her, and honestly, I don’t have anything I did that needs forgiving.” I push out the door and make my way up the stairs, two by two, feeling mean, feeling cold, feeling ugly.
Cici is asleep in her bed when I come in, and for the first time since I came here, I resent her for being there. I close the door and stand in the silence. My anger bubbles up again, at her, because if she hadn’t been so stubborn and refused to move to the single room then she wouldn’t have made me feel like I had to leave. I never even take my hand off the doorknob. I open the door back up and head down the hall to the now vacant room that should have been Cici’s. Beth hasn't taken it over yet, so I pull off my pants and sweater and crawl into bed in my t-shirt, stewing in my own juices, letting my anger wax and wane. Anger at my mother for dying instead of getting well. Anger at Dylan for treating me like his charity case, for not loving me the way I needed him to love me. Anger at Jake and Vaude for having my number long before I did. Anger, anger, anger bubbling on toward hate. Anger at Warren for leaving me pregnant and alone. Anger at Lola for not telling me the truth when she really wanted me to give Little Miss up because of what happened to her sister. She doesn’t want me to keep my baby because she thinks I can’t take care of her and somebody else can do it better. Well, nobody is ever going to love her more than I do.
Finally, there is anger at Cici for coming back with empty eyes and a broken soul. Anger everywhere and for everyone. I have been so wronged. It’s not fair that I never got a fair shake. Why couldn’t we have stayed in town and she stayed the way she wasn’t? Why couldn’t Ed have been better, different, not interested in little girls the way he was? Why couldn’t our water have been clean? Why couldn’t we have had money? Why didn’t anybody ever love her enough to stay? Why did Mitch leave us for Theresa? Why did my mother hook up with Cal Robinson? Why did she start using? The alcohol was bad, but at least she was mostly still a person then. A vision of her jaws ratcheting together as they did sometimes when she was using, chewing on what was not there. The vision of her hand holding mine, passing a Milk Dud to me. I hear the sob and didn’t even know it is coming. Why can’t anything ever go right? Why can’t everything just be okay? I let the tears come, punching the pillow in front of my face until I am empty, until the baby finally stops moving and the tears stop flowing and sleep takes me.