"Mom, I understand that sometimes we do things we don't want to for lots of reasons, because we think it's what we are supposed to do, or what we are expected to do, or think we need to do"
Mom was on the verge of tears. I could see that the shame and the guilt of years of living a lie had taken a toll on her. I wanted to tell her what I knew, and I had come very close to blurting it out, but that would have meant throwing the sacrifices she had made back in her face and I couldn't do that to her.
"Mom... I want you to do something for me. I want you to promise me something."
She blinked back the tears and looked at me. She was so seriously messed up that I did not know if there was anything that could be done that would not just make things worse. "What's that, dear?" she said.
"I want you to think about what you want to do for a change. I want you to do something because it's what YOU want, without consideration for anyone or anything else, OK? Don't feel you have to work that overtime on our account. We'll get by without it. While I'm at Mrs. Reynolds', go do something for yourself. Please?"
She did not trust her voice. She just nodded at me. She was losing it. I could see the tears coming. She was going to have herself a cry. She was entitled. She got up and bent over me to kiss my cheek, something she had not done in a long time. I indulged in one of my bad habits. I pushed my luck. I turned my head so that it wasn't my cheek she kissed, but my lips.
Before she could pull away, I threw my arm around her neck and held her mouth to mine. I kissed her as good as I could. After a second, she kissed back. She kissed me so intensely that I knew in that moment, it wasn't me she was kissing, it was a girl named Bambi that she had never stopped loving. The kiss ended too quickly. She moved away and I let go of her. She backed away from me and smacked into the kitchen counter so hard I thought she would fall, but she caught herself and stood there looking like I had stripped her naked. In a way, I suppose I had. I regretted pushing her buttons, but I could not have lived with myself if I had not tried to undo some of what she had done to herself for 18 years. Much of it was on my account after all.
I wanted her to know what I could not tell her. I wanted her to hear the words I could not say. I wanted her to understand that I forgave her for not wanting me, for accepting me as the consequence of a mistake made years earlier. I knew all about the consequences of mistakes. I tried to think of something I could say to her that would ease her pain, but anything that would not make it worse would only be like bailing the ocean with a teaspoon. So before she bolted, I said the only thing I could think of, as lame as it was.
"Thank you." I said. Her face was so screwed up that I could not read anything in it, so I could not tell if it helped any or not. She ran off to her room and shut herself in. I could hear the sobs even through the closed door. I never thought that I would be sitting in the kitchen, listening to my mother crying her eyes out and think of it as a good thing. Sometimes bad things are really good things. Sometimes our worst enemies are our friends. Sometimes our lovers are our worst enemies. Sometimes the world is just a really fucked-up place and if you find any joy at all in it, you should consider yourself damn lucky. I told myself I was too young to be this cynical. I got an image of a raised middle finger back for my trouble. I laughed. "Just do what you can," I told myself. "Don't focus on the pain and the futility. Focus on the good, however small it may be."
I cleaned up the kitchen and sat down to watch some TV until bedtime. My bra was itching and starting to feel hot and tight. I already looked forward to getting the darn thing off.
I went to bed at the usual time, but I had a hard time getting to sleep. I usually sleep on my back, so the bra wasn't really in the way. I felt like my whole system had gone into overdrive. My heart was beating really fast and I could hear it pounding in my ears. I was sweating and I kept having the creepiest feeling in my breasts. I can't even begin to describe what it felt like. After I had lay there for an hour, trying to sleep, I started to feel hungry again. I got up and dug the sandwiches out of my bag. I ate them all, one after the other. When finished I was still hungry, but I climbed back into bed and waited for sleep. Sometime during the night, I finally drifted off.
When I woke up I was starving again. I felt dizzy, too. I had trouble with my balance and I kept falling forward. The bra was digging into me, like it had shrunk up in the night. The shoulder straps bothered me. I kept tugging on them. I did remember to take my sponge-bath. I tried to find some clothes to wear, but none of my tops fit over the bra. I gave up and just pulled my cheerleading sweater on with just the bra underneath. Even then, the sweater hung away from my stomach, making me look pregnant. I was beginning to really want this bra off, bad.
Mom had already left for work, so I made my own breakfast. I had cereal, eggs, toast, juice, an apple, a banana, some more cereal, and I was gulping milk from the carton when time came for me to leave for school. I crammed a couple more apples into my bookbag and started for the bus stop. I would have stayed home and eaten myself into a stupor if I hadn't had a math test that morning.