The Summer I Learned to Dive - By Shannon McCrimmon Page 0,4

at the large, very tall formidable man and petite woman. The small woman with delicate features had smiled at me, telling me happy birthday. I thought she had a friendly face and I was excited that she knew it was my birthday. My mother became hostile and shouted at them, throwing her fist in the air. They handed her an envelope and said goodbye to me. She slammed the door before I could say anything. Our trip to the zoo was cancelled. We spent most of the day searching for a new place to live. I never got to see Chow Mang.

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I looked at the card again. I didn’t understand at the time why we couldn’t go to the zoo that day and why were moving. I now realized who the visitors were that day and what they had wanted. Lillian and Charlie Hemmings, my grandparents, were trying to see me on my fifth birthday and my mother had shut them out of my life—literally. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach, as if all of the air had been knocked out of me. Now I knew how someone felt when their heart had been broken. It is the most painful feeling in the world –to discover that someone you love has betrayed you. I sat there for several minutes, trying to gain composure, but the more I sat, the more the anger festered. How could she lie to me and what good reason was there to do so?

I immediately took the graduation card and check out to the living room seeking an answer. My mother was looking at her reflection in a mirror, putting on pink lipstick. “Mom, what is this?” I asked her, my hand shook as I held the check and card in my hand.

She looked away from the mirror and stared at me. Her face was instantly crestfallen. “Finn, why were you searching through my things?”

“Why did you hide this from me?” I asked angrily, my arms folded, my face becoming a light shade of red.

“I did it for your own good. It was for the best,” she said nonchalantly, trying to brush it off, like it was no big deal.

“What?” I asked belligerently. “How could it have been for the best? All this time, I thought that they wanted nothing to do with me! Do you know how that affected me?” My eyes started to water.

She moved closer to me, her hand reached out to stroke my arm. “I love you. I didn’t want you associated with them. I didn’t want them interfering with you. I wanted to protect you,” she said, her tone softening.

I shrugged her arm off of me with more force than necessary. “Protect me from what?” I glared at her.

“Finn, if you’ll just calm down, you’ll see why I did this.” She tried to coax me.

“I don’t think so,” I yelled, staring at her with contempt.

“You don’t need anything from them,” she said.

“I can’t believe you,” I stared at her and for the first time in my life I didn’t know who she was. She had lied to me about them my entire life.

She moved closer to me, careful, as if she were approaching a rabid animal. “Finn, you’ll forgive me in time. It was for your own good. I know what is best for you.”

I covered my ears and shook my head. “I can’t listen to your lies anymore!” I screamed.

“Finn,” she said trying to sooth me only angering me more instead.

I turned away from her and went to my bedroom and slammed the door. I locked it and lay down on my bed sobbing hysterically. She knocked on my door.

“Finn. Let me in,” she said shaking the door handle.

“Leave me alone,” I replied tersely, my voice hoarse from shouting. Tears streamed down from my eyes. I didn’t bother wiping them.

“If you’ll just listen to me,” she started.

I turned my stereo on and turned the volume up, loud enough so her voice was muffled. She said something else, but I couldn’t hear her. I lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, so angry and confused. The longer I lay there, the more I had time to think about what had transpired. I could not trust her anymore. I didn’t understand why she had lied to me my entire life. Keeping my grandparents from me and out of my life didn’t make any sense. They were my only link to my father and she had taken