“Tell me, Mama. Tell me. Why are you here?”
“I saw your show,” she blurts, her eyes meeting mine once more.
Despite my surprise, I feign indifference. “Okay. So?”
Mama shakes her head. “Missy, I thought I was doing the right thing all those years ago.”
I shake my head, mirroring Mama’s movement. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry. I just …” Mama stops and shoves a hand in the pocket of her fraying jean skirt. Eventually, she pulls out a crumpled napkin with scribbled pen across it in her handwriting. I watch the napkin shake in her trembling fingers as she reads the contents written over a soda stain. “That night. Do you remember that night?”
I nod, knowing what night she means. The night her boyfriend came. The night when everything went dark.
Mama’s shaking intensifies. She clenches her fists, and her napkin gets wadded into a ball as she tries to contain whatever it is that’s taken hold of her. Tremors travel from her hands to her arms to her mouth.
I briefly wonder if she’s drunk. My lips press into a flat line. It would be so like Mama to drink away her feelings, something I naively overlooked as a child. But now, I see it for what it is: weakness. But even as the thought hits, I instantly feel rebuked as I watch a tear travel down her cheek. Then another. And another. The scrunched-up napkin turns into a hankie as Mama breaks down in a way that I’ve never seen before. She may have weaknesses, but she’s always been tough as bricks.
“Mama.” I step toward her, worry and fear winding through me like determined weeds, ready to take over anything and everything in their path. “Mama?”
Her watery eyes connect with mine, and a desire to stop the pain pouring out of her tugs me down until I’m on my knees in front of her, holding her trembling hands between mine. “Mama. You’re scaring me. Please, tell me what’s wrong.”
“He threatened you, Missy.” Mama’s lips quiver. “I tried to break things off with him, and he threatened to hurt you.”
In a moment, I see his face. The boyfriend with his blue hair and hungry eyes—hurting Mama. Always hurting Mama.
“I wanted to keep you safe. I knew I couldn’t keep you around. I thought I was doing the right thing by sending you to live withyour aunt.” Mama’s voice hitches, and her eyes find the carpet at her feet again. “I was so disgusted with myself, I couldn’t look you in the eye to say goodbye. All my years of bad choices had cost me the one person I’ve ever truly loved—my Missy Girl.”
My breaths come in short waves. Mama. She—she didn’t want me to go?
One of her tears lands on my arm, and I clutch her hands tighter, begging her words to be true.
“When you left, Missy, I fell apart. I couldn’t stop the pain, and I couldn’t stop the drinking.”
My brows scrunch together. “But I came back, Mama. I came back to Tennessee just to be with you. And you turned me away again and again. Why?”
“I couldn’t bear you seeing what I’d become. I didn’t want you to see that your mother was trash. I’ve always been trash, and I am so ashamed.”
“You are not trash, Mama.”
She gives me a watery smile, but her gaze quickly darts away. “Of course you wouldn’t think that. Because you’ve always been my sweet, caring Missy. But the truth is, I can barely look at you because when I do, I see all my mistakes. I see the years of your life that I missed because of my terrible decisions.” She dabs her eyes with her napkin, but her tears just keep flowing. “It breaks me inside every time I see you. I thought it’d be easier to ignore you, to not feel that pain, to believe that you were living a better life without me, but then I watchedSunsets and Sabotagenight and day, and Missy, when I saw you on screen yelling my name in the dark like you had all those years ago, I knew I’d got it all wrong. Sending you away didn’t just hurt me; it hurt you, too. And I’m so, so sorry for that.”
For the briefest moment, I pull away from Mama, slipping my fingers from her grasp. Her words feel too perfect, too good tobe true. I wonder when the drone will appear, alerting me to the fact that, once more, this is all for show. That she’s lying.
A chill runs the length of my exposed arms, and I hug myself tight, keeping myself from falling apart like I’ve grown accustomed to. But in the next moment, Mama’s off the couch and kneeling next to me. Hugging me. Her arms are a blanket, comforting me from the outside in, just as they used to do when life got too dark.
Tears fall from my eyes.
“Missy, I came here to tell you one thing: even though I’m full of mistakes, and I’ve made so many wrong choices, I never wanted to let you go.”
My tears turn into sobs as I hear the words I’ve longed for since I was fourteen. “Mama. I didn’t want to leave you.” My voice catches. “It hurt. It hurt so badly.” The words I’ve kept buried for years are finally out of my mind, and it feels like my chest is ripping open and healing in the same moment.
“I love you, Missy Girl. I love you, always.” Mama cradles me in her arms. This time, I’m not the one keeping myself together. This time, it’s Mama. My mama—come back for me.
Tears stream down both our cheeks, seeming to drown my doubts and cleansing a wound that’s been open for far too long. Soon enough, I crumple into her lap, and her arm drapes over me. We hold onto one another. All we can say to each other is, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” until the crevices of my broken heart fill with something warm and promising.
By the time our tears subside, and my back aches from our long-held position, I bring myself upright and find Mama’s black mascara smudged across her cheeks like she’s a football player ready for game day. A watery chuckle escapes her lips as I run a hand across her cheek, and she does the same to me.
“Well, we look like two debutants ready for the season, don’t we?” she says.
