It takes a moment, but she gasps and stares into my eyes. “No!”
“I’m the product of rape.”
Reaching up to the top cabinet, her shirt rides up to expose a strip of skin on her belly. I focus on it, hoping it’ll numb the pain just a fraction, but it does nothing.
She sets a bottle of whiskey on the counter. “Fuck food. Let’s get drunk.”
“Why’d she lie?”
Leaning on the counter, she frowns. “Because you would’ve felt like you do now back then. She wanted to protect you.”
“How is she protecting me? Shouldn’t I deserve to know how I got here?”
“Baby, that’s like asking my parents what position I was conceived in. Only a million times worse.”
“Do you lie to Bernie?”
“All the time.”
“Really?”
Pouring two glasses, she sighs. “I lie about Bernie’s dad. At the end of the day, if lying to my daughter keeps her from being hurt, I’ll do it.”
“You don’t think she deserves to know the truth?”
She hands me one while twisting the other. “No, I don’t. What good will it do to tell my daughter that her father didn’t want us and walked away when I was pregnant because I refused to abort her after getting her diagnosis?”
The glass freezes midair as I digest what she just said. “What?”
Her eyes stare at the counter. “Ben was all in to raise her with me until we got her diagnosis at one of the prenatal appointments. We were given the option to abort, and he wanted to. I refused, and he disappeared. Washed his hands of us and hasn’t even met her. As far as I’m aware, anyway.”
I wanted to hurt him before because of his choices, but I want to kill him now. “Misty, I’m sorry.”
“Look, they don’t give you a handbook on the way out of the hospital to help you figure out how to handle the tough situations. You figure it out as you go and pray you’re not making a terrible mistake.”
“You wouldn’t have told me if you were Mama?”
She reaches out and takes my free hand, interlocking our fingers. “No, I wouldn’t. For the same reason I never plan to tell Bernie the truth about Ben. You’re questioning your entire life right now, and who wants to put that on a kid? Especially your own?”
Why didn’t Butch ever say anything? He would love to break me, and this would have broken more than just about anything else in this world. To know I’m only here because of something horrifically violent and traumatizing happening to Mama kills me.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be here. What good—”
“Stop that right now.”
“Stop what?”
Misty waits for me to look at her, and she levels me with a glare. Standard look of mothers, I’m finding. “You’re here for a reason, and the way you were conceived doesn’t change that. You are important, and you are amazing.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Bernie adores you, which should tell you something. I honestly don’t know if she’d be nearly as well-adjusted as she is here if it wasn’t for you. You’re her friend, and you matter. To her and to me.”
It’s hard to disagree when she wears the Mom-face. The stern,don’t mess with me, boyface. “I still think she should have told me.”
“Look, it’s not black and white when it comes to parenting. It’s fucking hard sometimes. And sometimes, like the situation you’re in right now, it’s fucking impossible. Your mom did what she thought was right for you.”
“Yeah,” I say, tossing back the whiskey. “I suppose.”
