I licked crumbs from my lips as another memory of my mother resurfaced. “She loved to bake.” She taught me to knead dough and how to proof it. We made everything from scratch, and she played music on the radio while we worked. “We danced in the kitchen,” I whispered, only partially sure that was true.
“She cherished those memories,” Ilona said, “even while complaining about your visits and calling you a stuck-up bitch.”
“She never called me a stuck-up bitch,” I said.
Ilona cringed. “Maybe not to your face.”
A snort of shock turned to laughter, and I let it linger instead of cutting it off.
“There were two of us she couldn’t push away,” Ilona said.
I nodded. “I guess there were.”
Chapter Eight
I missed Ilona when she left to run errands, but she promised to come back for lunch, and I’d offered to pay. Being here with her felt a little like having Mom back, specifically the kinder parts of Mom I’d temporarily forgotten.
The house was a time machine. Bits and pieces remained exactly as they were in my childhood, and with them came more memories. The way Mom fussed over my hair, dress, and shoes on prom night. Birthday parties with all my friends and a personalized cake. The hours she spent baking, only for a bunch of kids to demolish the work in minutes.
A treasure trove of my grandma’s thimbles hidden inside a tea tin took me back to elementary school. I hadn’t thought about my mom’s mom in so long I barely recalled her features. We lost her when I was eight. Still, vague images of her at the kitchen table formed. She watched Mom cook and clean or brush my hair. And she critiqued.
I winced. I hadn’t thought much of her commentary at the time, but as an adult woman today, I hated the memory for Mom’s sake. Grandma adored me, but I wondered about her relationship with Mom. Did she know how poorly Dad treated her?
Did she know he wasn’t my father?
I ran the back of one arm across my forehead and put the thimbles away.
Grandma was curt and expected everything to be done a certain way. The proper way. Her way. Would Mom have gone to her for adviceabout her pregnancy? Did Mom make the decision to pretend I was my dad’s child on her own, or did Grandma help her hide the indiscretion, because it simply wasn’t acceptable? Had she known and hated me for what I was in her eyes? An accident. Proof of her daughter’s unwed exploits? The reason she married an abuser.
My heart ached at all the awful possibilities.
Mom said Dad didn’t know I wasn’t his daughter, but was it possible he guessed? She said he didn’t hit her again for a year after she came home from France. Was that long enough for him to question why I looked nothing like him? Or why an allegedly premature baby weighed six and a half pounds? Did he hate us both because he knew the truth?
I’d spent my childhood counting the days until I could leave this house and get away from him, only to marry a man who treated me with the same simmering disdain. I hadn’t really gone anywhere, and now I was back where I’d started.
I ordered delivery from a local sandwich shop. Then I closed the windows and pumped up the air-conditioning before the southern Virginia summer sun baked me into jerky.
I swept the floor again while I waited for the food, then carried a glass of iced water and stack of unopened bills into the dining room. I sat on the floor and sorted the bills into piles according to sender. Months of unpaid utilities made my stomach ache. The final notice regarding her property taxes didn’t help.
Thirty days to pay or the home went up for a sheriff’s auction.
I checked the date at the top of the letter and felt my heart seize. I had four days.
Fatigue, desperation, and hunger squeezed the air from my lungs. Why did I think I could do this? I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have time to bake and sell enough pastries to cover even half of Mom’s debts. I had access to my marital accounts during the divorce, but there’s no way I could get my hands on the amount it would take to set things in order. In all the years of our marriage, I’d stuck to a tightly constructed budget, spending only on necessities like groceries and gas. Robert paidthe lease on my BMW, because everything was in his name, and all our utilities were autodrafted. With attached fees and penalties, Mom owed nearly ten thousand dollars. Robert would never let that much go without a fight. I needed a miracle.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the outdated pendant light. Unlike the kitchen, this room filled me with tension and dread. Long evenings waiting for Dad to come home. Wondering what to expect. A chocolate bar from the gas station, because he was happy? Or long laments over Mom’s cooking until the meal went cold? Their arguments morphed into garbled screams in my head. The crash of thrown plates and clatter of overturned roast. Then Mama’s tears.
My jaw locked, and I rolled onto my side, curling my knees to my chest, arms caged around them. I’d hated her for staying.
And yet I had stayed with Robert. Like my mother before me, I waited for my husband to come home too. I held my breath when the garage door went up. Braced for his mood. Endured his unkind words. All so my husband could treat me with the same hostility and neglect as my dad.
How would my biological father have treated me? Certainly not any worse.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t have done exactly what Mom did, had I been in her place. She lived in a different time. In a different world. She didn’t finish college. There weren’t many job opportunities for single moms.Divorcewas a dirty word to many, and if she left Dad, I wasn’t sure what society would’ve made of her.
She’d needed so much help, but access to help didn’t exist back then like it does now, especially not in the way of financial assistance and female advocacy. The awareness of marital abuse didn’t exist, and women couldn’t seek out the handful of available programs without fear of judgment or worse. Not to mention Dad never would’ve agreed to let her walk away.
I sat upright and scanned the clean room, now filled with my boxed belongings. I had six more rooms to empty before I could begin tounpack my new life. Three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a living room and laundry room on this floor. I couldn’t begin to think about all the closets, or what awaited me in the basement and attic. I’d save those projects for after I moved in.
