Bell agreed, finally, that I was her mother. When asked by strangers how old she was, she would say, “I'm five, and Aubrey is my mommy.”
Strangers thought it was adorable she called me by my first name. I finally got her to call me Mom around people, but only about half the time.
One day, I would tell her everything about our past, but that day was years away. Would she hate me? My grandmother thought I did the right thing, and only chided me about not coming to them sooner. Of course I would have, if I hadn't been lied to my whole life, and knew they wanted us. My grandmother and I were united by our anger for the woman between us.
We sat there drinking our tea, not having to say what we were feeling for the other to know.
“I forgive her,” my grandmother said, everything about her softening in that moment, from her salt-and-pepper hair to the lines around her mouth.
I tilted my head from side to side, my back suddenly sore. She wanted me to say I forgave my mother. Looking into her gray-blue eyes, I found a wealth of love, but I didn't feel as generous.
I reached out and placed my hand on hers. “She doesn't deserve it.” The words sounded more cruel out loud than they had in my head.
“You're young, and you hang on to your pain. When you get old like me, and your body doesn't work like it used to, you decide you have enough pain, and you let those old wounds go. You don't want to become a sinking boat, throwing stuff over the side just so you can stay afloat.”
“She took my childhood. I had to take care of her, you know? When it was just the two of us, I'd have to beg her to buy groceries. I can't remember a time I felt safe and content.”
Those gray-blue eyes didn't stray from my face. “Do you feel safe and content now?” She turned over her hand beneath mine, squeezed my fingers, and offered a smile.
“I'm scared. I'm scared all the time, and I don't know how to be normal.”
“Open you eyes and look around. Do what other people do. It's not so hard.”
I looked down at my tea in the stained cup. Do what other people do. I really appreciated the fact she hadn't tried to argue with me, to insist there was no such thing as normal. Of course there's such a thing, or we wouldn't have a word for it.
Plenty of people know damn well they're normal; it's only the most messed-up people who insist there's no such thing. They figure if they can't be normal, nobody can.
I woke up Sunday morning with a song in my heart—a song I hummed as I brushed my teeth and got Bell ready for her big day with Taylor's family. This made Bell suspicious, and she kept asking why I wasn't going to the zoo.
Her hair had thickened recently, and when I swept the golden waves back into a braid, even the wispy bits from the front locked into the plait.
“When did you get so big?” I searched through her closet for something dark enough to wear around the animals. I'd learned how to get stains out of her clothes by scrubbing the fibers with a nail brush, but it weakened the fabric, so it was better to send her outside in darker colors.
“You're the big one,” she said. “Mommy. Mommy-Aubrey. Mombrey.” She squealed with laughter.
“Is that my new name?”
“Yup.” She pointed to her pale pink dress, the prettiest thing she had. “This one, Mombrey.”
“How about jeans, Princess Belly Button? There's a giraffe at the zoo, and I hear they eat girls in pink dresses.”
“But I want to wear my pretty dress. I'm going to see the other Mommy.”
I froze, my back to her as I stared at her little clothes, all organized on hangers.
My throat tight, I asked, “What other Mommy?”
She laughed and climbed up onto the bed to look out the window, ignoring me.
I pulled some jeans from the closet and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “Bell, I asked you a question. What other Mommy?”
She turned and looked at me with eyes more mature and worldly than the day before.
“Taylor's,” she said.
The other Mommy was Taylor's mother.
I started breathing normally again, aware of my muscles gradually loosening. My eyes stung, and the song that had been in my heart was long gone. I couldn't cry in front of her, though, so I pulled my fear back into myself and held it in a fist.
We finished getting her ready, finding a compromise in the form of purple leggings under a long shirt, with a belt over top so it looked like a mini-dress.
I sent her off with a minimum of fuss, and then faced another wardrobe dilemma.
Sawyer hadn't sent me another text message since the one late the night before, inviting me to come over to his house in the morning. He was probably still sleeping, and I smiled to myself at the thought of waking him up and seeing him groggy, with morning bedhead.
What outfit would he be most excited to see me in?
Not my tired, old jeans that have been washed a zillion times. The weather was sunny, so I put on a jersey-knit dress, leggings, and a belt. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror that had come with the apartment, attached to the back of my bedroom door. Oh, f**k. I looked exactly like Bell, like a second-grader. I pulled off the leggings and tried to see my bare legs through Sawyer's eyes. Would he like to see a little skin? Didn't all guys?
As I turned from side to side, admiring my freshly-shaved legs, I pulled up the hem of the dress and imagined Sawyer putting his hot hands on my legs. Yanking down my panties. Taking me. Making me his, forever or for now, I didn't care. I just wanted to wrap myself around him.
I couldn't wait another minute, so I grabbed my purse and ran out the door.
When I got to his house, I stopped to stare for a moment. The dilapidated old building looked downright cheerful in the bright summer sunshine, even with weeds sprouting up from the eaves.
The porch was empty, save for the tattered sofa and coffee tins full of murky water and cigarette butts. I knocked on the front door, but judging by the bass thrumming on the other side, nobody heard me. I twisted the handle and found it unlocked.
As I stepped over the threshold, I called out, “Hello?”
Over the stereo, a girl's voice met mine with an echoing, “Hello?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I followed the scent of bacon and coffee into the kitchen, where I found a dark-haired girl, wearing an oversized man's T-shirt and nothing else, fixing breakfast.
“Sorry. I knocked, but nobody came. Are you one of Sawyer's roommates?”
He'd not mentioned a female roommate, but I'd seen the guy he lived with, and couldn't imagine a girl wanted to spend the night with that guy, even though here she was right in front of me.
She stood there with her ni**les sticking out of her shirt and said, “Uh, not really.”