The Honey Bus - Meredith May Page 0,102

her, too.”

I asked Mom how she could ever forgive Granny.

“She’s my mother. She’s all I have.”

Her answer was profound, yet simplistic at the same time. Yes, we only get one mother. But are we required to forgive her? Where does a mother’s needs stop and her child’s begin? I told Mom I wasn’t sure what I would have done in her shoes.

Times were different then, Mom explained, there was no such a thing as child protective services. Once, when her father hit her with a spatula and sliced open her thumb, Granny took her to the doctor’s office and told the doctor exactly what had happened. He nodded knowingly and simply stitched Mom’s thumb and sent them back home.

In a perverse way, the violence brought Mom and Granny closer later in life. They are survivors of the same war, Mom said, and eventually forgave each other for not thinking clearly when they were in the thick of it.

“Granny was trying to manage in her own way,” Mom said. “She’s certainly making up for it now. You should be thankful. If it weren’t for her, we’d be living on the streets.”

I could see why Granny took Mom in again and pampered her, trying to erase her guilt with a second chance at motherhood. They each overcompensated to fill a deep hole in the other, as if they were two broken humans who fused together into one whole person. Today they were emotionally inseparable. I always thought it was Mom who lacked the stamina to leave her mother’s side, but now I could see how much Granny needed her to stay.

“Still, I wish Granny had protected you.”

“Mom was in the house, but she just wasn’t there,” Mom said.

The echo of my own voice ricocheted around the room, mocking me. I had said the exact same words, countless times. Suddenly, my mother and I had something in common, and I felt a fleeting connection with her. We shared a similar suffering, one that maybe could be a starting place for us to try to understand one another.

I hoped that living apart would be good for Mom and me. We wouldn’t be able to disappoint each other anymore. Maybe she could turn into the person she always felt Matthew and I prevented her from becoming. Maybe we still had a chance.

If there ever was a better moment for us to admit we wished things had been different, it was now. I longed to tell her that I still hoped we could love each other one day. But after all the years of girding myself against her, the words felt like naive platitudes. I was too afraid to say them and have them not become true.

Instead I put my arm around Mom’s shoulders and squeezed.

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“You did the best that you could.”

Mom sniffed, and dabbed at her eyes with the dish towel.

“Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Go to college and get a job. Make sure you don’t need a man before you marry one.”

I gave her my word.

“Oh, and I almost forgot,” she said, putting another pastry in the microwave. “I packed up some of your things you don’t use anymore. You should go through the box and see what you want to take with you to Mills. What you don’t want, I’ll take to Goodwill.”

Inside the box, I found my high school letterman’s jacket, decorated with patches from the diving, field hockey and softball teams. I ran my fingers over the red brushed felt where my name was embroidered in cursive. My high school yearbooks were in the box, as well as my favorite quilt, my baseball mitt and cleats. Of course they were things I wouldn’t use in college, but they were sentimental things I didn’t want to give away to strangers, either.

Then, at the bottom of the box, my hand touched a book with a padded cloth cover. I recoiled, instantly recognizing my pink baby book. I had pored over the photos inside it as a little girl, trying to remember my forgotten family. By the time I was in second grade, I had memorized every page.

My skin went cold. Mom was not just clearing out my things; she was deleting all trace of me. A baby book was not something that went into the giveaway pile like an old coat. It was the one thing people grabbed when their house was burning down, the irreplaceable record of precious family history. The photos and memories written on these pages contained