Me too, baby. Me too.
Despite the sickfeeling in my stomach, I managed to make tacos for dinner. Robbie didn’t come out of his room until I knocked and told him dinner was ready. During our meal, Madison chattered about school, about how three more kids had signed her cast and her teacher had drawn a pink heart with a permanent marker. Robbie answered when spoken to but volunteered nothing. Trevor sat at our feet, tail thumping against the floor, hopeful someone would drop a bit of ground turkey.
After dinner, Robbie cleared and rinsed his plate and then headed to his room, closing that darn door behind him once again. Trying to hold myself together, I ran a bath for Madison. She needed help getting undressed since the cast made everything harder, so I knelt on the bathroom floor, unbuttoning her shirt, sliding it over the cast while she winced.
“I can do it, Mommy,” she said, the same thing she’d been saying since September when she’d announced she was a big girl now and didn’t need help anymore. She’d been dressing and undressing herself for weeks—picking her own outfits, tying herown shoes, insisting on privacy in the bathroom. I’d been so proud of her independence that I hadn’t questioned it.
Now, with one arm in a cast, she couldn’t manage alone. When I knelt down to carefully peel off her socks, I saw what her independence had been hiding.
The nail was split near the tip, a shadow of dried blood trapped beneath it. The skin at the corner was swollen and raw, like it had been pressed there day after day.
“Madison, what happened to your foot?”
She pulled it back, tucking it under her other leg. “Nothing.”
“That’s not nothing. Let me see.”
Reluctantly, she extended her foot. I took it gently, examining the damage. The nail was cracked, like it had been pressed against something too hard for too long.
Her shoes.
“Baby, are your shoes too small?”
She didn’t answer.
“Madison. Answer me. Are your shoes hurting your feet?”
“A little bit,” she whispered.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Weeks? Months?”
“Does the other one hurt too?”
Madison hesitated.
That was answer enough.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
She shrugged, eyes filling with tears. “Because money makes you sad.” Her bottom lip quivered. “And I didn’t want you to be more sad.”
Tiny pricks of guilt stabbed at me. “Oh, baby girl.” I pulled her into my arms, careful of her cast, her wet hair soaking into my shirt. “You should have told me.”
“I didn’t want to make everything worse by needing shoes.”
My baby girl hiding pain because she didn’t want to burden me. How had I not noticed? My God, what kind of mother was I? I held Madison tighter, throat burning. “I’m so sorry,” I said through tears. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mommy. I’ll just wear my flip-flops tomorrow to school.”
“You need shoes this time of year.” Thinking of her headed into elementary school wearing flip flops in October made me want to scream, then hide under the covers for the rest of my life.
After I got Madison dried off, bandaged her toe, and tucked into bed, I sat in the living room with the lights off. Trevor rested his head on my lap, sensing something was wrong. I stroked his soft ears, staring at nothing. I was utterly failing my babies. I couldn’t give the two people I loved most in the world what they needed.
Robbie, brilliant and kind and deserving, should be able to take advantage of opportunities that could make him shine. But he couldn’t. Because of his mother’s failures. Madison, sweet and soft-hearted and walking around with bleeding feet rather than ask for new shoes. Again, because of me.
