Chapter Three: Remember the Past
No matter how I approached the
memory, I couldn’t understand what had happened. Why had I lost control? What
had squeezed me into the corners of my own body and then left? What may have
been scarier than either of those was I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know
how to prevent it from happening again.
I decided, since everything was
unraveling anyway, to seek the truth of my parentage. What more could've made
the day worse? The truth might have been an improvement.
My mother was mixing cake batter in
the kitchen when I found her. What exactly she was doing mixing a cake, I had
no idea. She never cooked. Ever. She had never been a Martha Stewart type of
homemaker. As far back as I could remember, she had never really been a
homemaker of any kind. I mean, she was home, she sewed on the occasion, and she
didn’t really have a job; she organized parties and such, but she didn’t go
around cleaning the house or ordering new draperies every month. I couldn’t
even remember a time when she had been in the kitchen to cook; I always seemed
to remember her criticizing the cooking, though.
“Hello, darling,” she greeted,
smiling brightly at me, her thin arm still flailing painfully as she tried to
whisk the batter. Her dark hair was piled messily atop her head in an attempt
to keep it out of her way.
“Mother, what are you doing?” I questioned,
sitting on one of the cherry stools at the breakfast bar.
“Baking,” she said. Then she smiled
up at me, adding, “I felt inspired.”
“Tell me the truth,” I requested
calmly, not wanting to yell or lose my temper, but needing her to understand
this was necessary.
Her lime eyes gazed at me blankly. The
fact she still wanted to play this asinine game infuriated me; did she think
after 17 years I didn’t know what was abnormal for her?
“Stop lying to me. It’s not protecting
me from anything.” My gaze was stony and unmoving, and I sensed a fear of it. “It’s
only hurting me.”
She stared at me a moment, her face
stoic but her whisking hand shaking slightly at it stood poised over the
batter. “Okay,” she conceded, looking down. “I’m baking because I’m unnerved.”
“At what?” I prompted, softening a
touch. Maybe she had noticed I was different and wanted to explain. Wanted to
tell me she was like me and regretted not explaining things sooner.
“Your friends hardly come over
anymore.” No. She had to be kidding me. “You’re always off to one thing or
another all day long.” I should have known it would be something like this. She
didn’t care about telling me the truth; she had worked on keeping it secret. “You’re
asking questions about ridiculous things. And today—today I get a call from the
school saying you were fighting with Sara. Since when are you fighting with
Sara?” she demanded, her voice steadily growing more hysterical. I couldn’t
stand it anymore; I couldn’t stand her. “You two were always so close…I-I just
don’t know who you are anymore—and I want to know—”
I stood up abruptly, the stool
scraping loudly against the tiled floor. The kitchen, in all its modern
grandeur, felt tiny and suffocating. As though the longer I stayed there, the
more the walls pushed us together until I became just like her. Until I made
sense to her. I couldn’t begin to understand how her whole baking deal was her
way of dealing with my inadequacies. Rather than talking with me, like a normal
person, she was going to lie and pretend I wouldn’t know any better. Because
she’s just so perfect.
“I want my daughter back,” she cried
to me, not one real emotion oozing from her voice.
“You don’t deserve her,” I shouted as I stormed from the kitchen.
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