I thought I had tasted it enough times, in blood, in the crack of a belt, in the moments when Father’s eyes sharpened with disappointment, that nothing could surprise me anymore.
But tonight, my hands are sweating, my pulse is a hammer. My ribs feel too tight, as though my own body is trying to cage my heart before it can beat its way out.
I stand in the doorway of my mother’s greenhouse, watching the two women who built me meet for the first time. The one that raised me, taught me how to be a man, and the one who taught me softness and love.
The night presses against the glass walls, outside, everything is shadow, inside, everything is green and silver and glimmering with moonlight.
My mother tends her plants like she’s tending secrets, her fingers trail along the leaves with instinct and reverence, as though each stem listens, as though each blossom understandswhat it means to survive in soil that was never meant for softness.
And she looks up as I guide my Pair forward.
My love.
My feral-heart, my tragedy-made-flesh, my salvation and my undoing.
Nellie moves carefully, hesitantly, as though afraid to disturb the quiet.
Afraid to disturb my mother.
Hermother.
Her hand is cold in mine, and I squeeze it once before letting go.
“Mother,” I manage, though my throat hurts, rejecting the use of her name, calling her Helena feels wrong somehow, because despite the fact we’re not related by DNA, she is still, for all intents and purposes, my mother. I swallow, razorblades cutting my throat, because this is important, this moment is something that can’t ever be taken back, “This is her.”
Justher.
The only name that matters.
The only future that matters.
My mother’s face softens. Not with warmth, she has not been afforded warmth for decades. But with recognition. As though she has seen this moment in her dreams. As though she has been waiting for it longer than either of us have been alive.
She reaches for Penelope first.
Her hand rises slowly, trembling, and brushes her long lost daughter’s cheek.
And my Nellie, my brave, scarred, cautious girl, she leans into that touch as though she has been starved for it.
Mother’s eyes glisten, “Oh,” she whispers, voice breaking like something fragile hit with a hammer. “You’re even lovelier than Billy described.”
I want to laugh.
Or cry.
Or fall to my knees and thank every god I’ve spent my life refusing to believe in.
Instead, I step back.
Because this moment isn’t mine.
It’s theirs.
I place myself near the wall of glass, letting the cold air leak through the cracks and hit the back of my neck. Letting the darkness seep into my bones. Letting the fear settle.
I watch them talk, and I force myself to stay silent.
My mother asks if she is well. If the baby is well. If I have treated her gently.
