“Why didn’tyou?” Mom counters.
I send her a sharp glance. “Seriously? You thinkIwanted to be the nail that gets hammered down? No way. I wasn’t going to speak up.”
“I guess I deserve that.” Mom sighs, shaking her head.
“Did you ever think about talking to Nami?”
“To Nami?” Mom looks at me, dark eyes wide in disbelief. “She’d explode. You know she doesn’t do well with criticism. That temper…”
“Dad’s.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mom agrees. “Nobody in this family does well with conflict.”
“Tell me about it. Anytime there was a fight, Dad would just start yelling to get everyone else to stop yelling.” I remember Dad’s explosive bursts of temper at the dinner table. In the car. On family vacations. Everywhere we were, pretty much.
Mom laughs a little at the memory. She sighs again. “That’s why I always said ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.’” She covers her hand with mine. “I was just trying to protect you. From Dad’s temper. He was always overworked and under-slept, and he had a short fuse to begin with. I thought if we all just sat still and quiet, then it would pass, and we’d all be okay.” Mom glances at me.
“Isthatwhy you always warned us about being hammered down?” I blink, astonished. “Because of Dad?”
“Yes. Why else would I say it?”
“I don’t know…” I rub my neck. “I thought you just didn’t want us to take risks in general or share what we really thought about anything. I mean, that’s why I never spoke up about Mitch.”
Mom blinks, shocked. “Why would you think I didn’t care what you thought!Of courseI wanted to know what you thought!”
This is news to me. “Yeah, but when we’d talk back to Dad, you told us ‘don’t be the nail.’ So I thought it was just bad to speak up.”
Mom sighs and pinches her nose. “I was just trying to protect you from Dad. The more you talked back, the angrier he’d get, and I just… I just didn’t think it was worth it. But maybe I made a mistake there. Maybe we all should’ve just shouted and screamed and gotten all our anger out. I never meant that you should censor yourself like you do, Sora. I never meant for you to feel like your feelings weren’t as important as everybody else’s. And for that, I’m sorry.”
It hits me then all at once: an epiphany. Nami handled Dad’s temper by fueling her own. I handled Dad’s temper by staying inert, quiet, and not making any sudden moves. It explains a lot about me. Like how I get stuck. Like howbeing stucksometimes feels safe and warm and comfortable, even when I know it’s not. Like after the miscarriage.
“I am sorry he was so short-tempered,” she says, sounding a little sad. “He didn’t mean to take it out on you kids. It wasn’t your fault, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” I say, even though right up until this moment, I’m not sure I did.
She puts her head on my shoulder. “I love you, Sora. So very much. You know, you always were the wise one.”
“Me? Pffft.” Still, I beam at the compliment. “So,I’myour favorite. Not Nami?”
“I don’t play favorites!” Mom protests, but I know she means me.
I glance at Mom. “Did you hear the news about Marley?”
“Is he moving to Siberia?” Mom asks, hopeful. Mom is no fan of Marley.
“No. He knocked up his girlfriend.” Saying this out loud makes this stupidly real. “They’re getting married.”
“Lord! Has that man ever heard of a condom?” Mom clucks her tongue in disapproval. Then she reaches out to grab my hand.
“When I told Marley that I was pregnant, he yelled and shouted at me that I’d tricked him and then stormed out of our apartment.” I hate that memory. “It wasn’t an Instagram moment.” I show her the photo of Marley and Lululemon. They were considerate enough to make it public so a quick search brings it up every time. She frowns.
“You don’t know that this is, either,” Mom says, handing my phone back to me. “You don’t really know he’s changed. Who knows what happened a day before this photo?”
“True.” Two months after I peed on that stick, we got married. Nearly three months after that, I lived through that horrible day at the doctor’s office. The damn worried look on the ultrasound tech’s face.Something’s wrong, isn’t it?I’d asked her.
“You’re better off without him. You know that.”
“I know. I just want him to be miserable without me.”
