“What are you doing in town?” Sage asks. “Why are you even here to begin with?”
Mama shrugs casually even though her face is still contorted as though she’s crying. Spoiler: no actual tears are happening right now. “Work. Things have been so difficult. I need to make rent, and since the recession, it’s been hard finding a place to show my art. I know I’m always welcome here.” She lifts her arms, indicating the gallery. “Unlike, apparently, withyouthree.”
Sage’s voice is so cutting, I’m surprised we all aren’t covered in blood as she speaks, each word a shard of glass. “Did you really think you could leave me to raise them, leave Teal with half of her gift, and leave Sky in diapers, and that we’d what—throwyou a party? Worship you at your feet? That’s we’d fall over ourselves in gratitude when we finally fucking found you again?”
“I left you with Nadia,” Mama hisses. “Don’t act like I dropped you off on the streets.”
“Nadia housed us and did little else,” I tell her. “Sage potty-trained Sky. If you want to know how far Nadia’s parenting went.”
Mama blinks, then shakes her head. “Nadia wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Nadia thinks you’re shit. Whatever camaraderie you think you had with her doesn’t exist,” Sky snaps. “Now give Teal’s soul piece back, so I can go home and eat s’mores and drink champagne and finish season four ofGilmore Girls.”
It’s theGilmore Girlsthat does it. The fact that her own daughter would rather be watching a fictional mother and daughter rather than interact with her actual mother bruises Mama’s ego enough that she drops the woe-is-me act. She legit snarls as she spits out, “I’m not givinganythingback. For what? My own daughters don’t care about me. My own mother never cared about me.”
“Amá Sonya cares about you,” Sage says. “She almost cries every time we can manage to get her to talk about you, and then she blames pepper for it.”
“She tricked you!” Mama’s voice is loud now, and screeching. It triggers some faded memories from when I was small—her yelling at us, at Nadia, at boyfriends on the phone. Somehow I had forgotten how angry and volatile she was. I had romanticized her in my mind, thinking of how she hugged me, of how she hummed to me when I was in her arms, but the truth is…she often did these things after she’d hurt me. Sheonlydid those things after she hurt me.
Mama opens her mouth, continuing on. “Mom is a spoiled bitch—”
“We all know Amá Sonya is a bitch,” I say, and she furrows her brow. “You think we’re that dumb that we haven’t figured that out yet? Nowgive it back.”
Mama crosses her arms and lifts her chin. It’s amazing, seeing this grown, almost fifty-year-old woman act like a teenager. Nothing is her fault. Everyone is being mean to her. I don’t know what shaped her to be this way, but I can’t say it doesn’t hurt. I wasn’t lying when I told Sage I wasn’t expecting a Hallmark reunion with her, but that little girl inside me still, the one who ran after her in the storm, who showed up in nothing but lightning in front of me a few nights ago—that girl hoped impossible hopes. And each one is currently being shattered before her eyes.
“I can’t,” Mama says, allowing her eyes to sheen once more. “It’s my only income. I’ll be destitute. Would you three really leave me on the streets with nothing to my name but the clothes on my back?”
“Why don’t you find a sugar daddy?” Sky asks wryly, her tone bored. “You’re very good at that.”
Mama rolls her eyes. “I won’t stand here and be disrespected by the onesIbirthed. You owe yourlivesto me. As for you—” She points at me with a sharp deep purple nail. “If she wanted to return to you, she would have by now.” She dusts off her shoulders. “Before I leave for good—which you know how well I can do, since I’m sure you’re aware of my gift—I have a few things I need to make clear.” She looks at each of us. “If you all were better-behaved children, I might have stayed. But, Sage,you—”
And as she proceeds to insult us, I’m stuck on something she just said.If she wanted to return to you, she would have by now.
I’ve never heard Nadia refer to a soul piece by a pronoun before, but…it feels right to say it like that.She.
It’s not just a fragment of my soul that went to Mama. It’s that tiny child, so small the heavy wind of a storm could lift her up…shewent with Mama. She was so scared, she volunteered to leave me with the hopes that her mama would stay, or someday return.
I stare at Mama and in my mind’s eye, I see four-year-old me, drawn on the beach in lightning. I can feel her, right now, so close to me. Mama stops midsentence and looks at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Tears stream down my face. I have no idea what I’m doing, actually. I don’t even know if Sky, who’s the only one who’s read this damn spell, knows what comes next. But I do know this—that little girl is me. She’s mine and I’m hers.
I see her step out of Mama and toward me, with equal parts caution and curiosity. Her hair, long and braided. Her eyes, so tired from all the crying. Her skin, as brown as a golden acorn, the one feature I’ve always loved because it matches the tone of each of my sisters’ so perfectly.
She is made of lightning, but she’s also made ofme. I lower myself to my knees. And now I’m at eye level with her. She wants to come back to me, but she’s so scared, her whole body trembles. So I open my mouth and tell her—little Teal—this. “You belong to me,” I whisper. “You belong to me and I’ll take care of you in the ways she never could. You never had a real mother, but I can be that mother for you.”
I don’t know the first thing about being a mother, but I know that’s what I need to be for that child my mother left in the rain.
Mama legit growls like some kind of damn bear, and little Teal gasps and instantly disappears. To add insult to injury, Mama’svisage begins to…shatter. She goes in and out, in and out, like a figure in a video game glitching.
She’s trying to superimpose her power over mine. She’s trying to disappear before I can become whole.
I’m not going to let that happen.
“I don’t know shit about the old gods,” I say, “but I am begging them to keep you here till I’m done with you.”
And just like that, she stops flickering like a flame. She’s firmly in this room, on this polished floor, lit up in fading sunlight from the window and bright fluorescents above.
“Stop it,” Mama demands, but it’s too late. She lifts her arms, like she’s going to push me, maybe—and instead, yellow lightning bursts from her hand. “Make it stop!” she screams.
