Three Little Words

by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

  “What did she expect?” I shrieked. “I wasn’t going to stay seven forever!”

  Gay just listened as I vented. “What’s wrong with trying to do well in school and sports? What’s wrong with having a nice lifestyle? I can’t believe that she sounded”—I hunted for the right word—“jealous of her own daughter!”

  A few weeks later my mother asked Gay what I wanted for my fourteenth birthday. Gay mentioned that I had treasured all the gifts she had ever given me and that I still had the music box. When Gay told her that Mrs. Moss had kept my dolls and Easy-Bake oven, my mother said, “I never liked that woman!” Then my mother dropped the bombshell: She was expecting another baby—a girl—the day before my birthday.

  Gay broke the news as gently as she could.

  “She knew she was pregnant when she wrote that bull about how her husband wanted a baby, didn’t she?” I exploded. Gay nodded. “They should take this one away from her in the hospital.”

  Autumn was born a few days earlier than expected, and I was relieved that we would not have the same birth date. My mother sent me another Easy-Bake oven for my birthday along with some other gifts. I was way too old for the toy but baked one cake to show Gay how it worked. Using my allowance, I bought my mother and the baby some Christmas gifts. Late in January my mother sent me a gift certificate and some pictures of the baby. “My mother is going to ruin her life.” I told Gay I did not want to keep the pictures.

  I looked over at Gay, who was grooming one of the cats. Her hair covered half her face, and the lamplight made her hair glow. She looked like she had been painted by Rembrandt. I blurted, “Do you realize I’ve lived with you almost as long as I ever lived with her?” I groaned. “Or anyone,” I added. “I haven’t seen my mother in six years.”

  “Let me know when you want to,” she replied.

  My reddening face revealed both my exhilaration and my embarrassment. “Won’t you feel weird?”

  Gay sighed. “When a man’s beloved wife dies, he mourns her forever—even if he marries again for companionship. Your mother is a hard act to follow. She will always be the love of your life.”

  I could not believe Gay was admitting that she knew she would always come second.

  There was a long silence between us. “Look, Ashley, you need to make peace with what happened with your mother before you can feel secure with anyone else. I have read the records. Like most people, she has good and bad points.”

  “So why didn’t you offer this before?” My voice wavered.

  “We’ve talked about it in a general way, but I hoped you wouldn’t push it too soon because …” Gay measured her words. “She holds the power to hurt you, and I haven’t figured out how to protect my daughter—well, our daughter—from any more pain.”

  In June, I prepared to attend the arts camp in South Carolina for the second time. As I was packing to leave my adoptive parents and return once more to the state where I was born and where my relatives still lived, the curiosity about my mother that I had kept at bay for the past several months was renewed. I still didn’t feel ready to see her, but I knew that I wanted something to happen. When Gay was helping me with a suitcase, I suggested as nonchalantly as possible, “Hey, why don’t you visit my mother while I’m at camp? Use your Guardian ad Litem vibes and tell me what you think.” I studied her expression to see if she approved. “And give her some parenting tips while you’re at it.”

  I did not say anything else about it, although I was fairly certain Gay would do it. When the Courters arrived for my showcase performances, I showed them around the theater. During a lull Gay said, “I visited your mother.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s doing well, Ash,” Gay replied in a reassuring voice. “She’s living with Art, who’s a few years younger.”

  “What kind of place is it?”

  “A simple apartment. Not much furniture, but nice and clean.” Gay laughed. “When I arrived, Lorraine said, ‘I thought you would look like either Princess Diana or Janice Joplin.’”

  “Definitely not Princess Di!” I said. “What did you wear?”

  “My batik-print skirt, so I guess I was closer to Janice Joplin, without the voice or the Mercedes-Benz.” Gay chuckled again. “I wasn’t sure if I liked being compared to two dead female icons!” She waited for me to ask the B question. When I didn’t, she paused a moment and then took the plunge. “Autumn is now eight months old.”

  I skipped over my half sister and asked, “What did my mother want to know about me?”

  “What you looked like. I brought your recent albums, and she showed me one she had kept, including pictures from when you lived with your grandfather in South Carolina. We don’t have most of those pictures, so Phil made copies.”

  “Does Autumn look like me?”

  “Maybe your eyes, but there isn’t much more of a resemblance. You do have many of your mother’s facial expressions, though.”

  “What did she say about me?”

  “We talked a lot about what you were like as a baby. She said you were very precocious, especially in toilet training and speech.”

  “Does she want to see me?” I asked.

  “Very much so. She asked when she could.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “That you were waiting to hear how our visit went.” Gay’s eyes darted—a signal that meant she was holding something back.

  “Tell me everything.” I sucked in my breath.

  “Well, she became a little belligerent and asked me what I was going to tell you about getting together with her. I said that as far as I was concerned, you could see her whenever you wanted. Then she said that would be immediately.” Gay sighed. “I said that I wasn’t sure about that. Then she became even more defiant and asked, ‘When is Ashley going to get over it?’”

  “What? How can I just get over it?” I bristled as Gay continued.

  “I said, ‘Ashley will never get over it.’ I explained to her that you were terribly hurt when she couldn’t get her act together, that you had believed all of her promises.” Gay took another long breath. “Your mother went on: ‘I know all about hurt. My own mother abandoned me in a park, and I also grew up in an orphanage.’ So I told her that she should have known how much you wanted—and needed—her.”

  I could hear the echo of my mother’s whine when trying to explain herself to Mary Miller the last time I had seen her. She had not changed her tune after all these years.

  “Anyway, she moaned about how she tried to get you back, but ‘they’ made it impossible. Just as I was tempted to ask her about the dirty drug tests, Art interjected. He said, ‘I understand what the kid is going through,’ and then he told me about some difficulties in his own family. That stifled your mother’s pity party. She ended by saying that she signed the papers because her attorney believed that would give you and Luke a better life. She claimed she did everything out of love.”

  “She really doesn’t know what she did to me, does she?”

  “Her guilt makes her blind to your feelings.”

  “What feelings?” I said sarcastically. “I have no feelings.”

  That night I thought a lot about what Gay had told me. I remembered aching for my mother when I was in foster care, desperate to climb on her lap, smell her musky perfume, have her stroke my hair and call me “Sunshine.” I did not want to hear her jabber on about Autumn. Just thinking my half sister’s name made me grit my teeth. I was torn between resenting that she had taken my place and worrying that my mother might neglect her. I tried to imagine what it would be like to sit across from my mother, and I decided that is all I wanted. I needed her to see me—how great I had turned out without her help. I wanted her to know about how well I was doing in school and all my accomplishments. I was even secretly proud of my adoptive parents, who were far superior to her in education and status. Then I remembered her Valley girl put-down.

  We heard little from my mother for six months, and just like the ye
ar before, she did not acknowledge my Christmas gifts until late in January. It seemed as though gaps in time were a tradition with her. I wondered if she routinely thought about me and my welfare, or if she just randomly remembered that she had other children and then had a little woe-is-me moment for herself.

  Her next letter to Gay said that she and Art had separated. I guess I need a mom, she wrote. Would you like to adopt me?

  That really felt creepy to hear. I said, “We’d be sisters!” Then I worried whether Autumn was safe alone with my mother. “If my mother ever calls, tell her I’m willing to meet her,” I said.

  But the arrangements weren’t made until my sophomore year in high school. By that time, I was almost sixteen. We met at a restaurant north of Tampa, which was about half-way between our homes. I had asked both Phil and Gay to come for support. My mother arrived with Autumn, who was almost two, and a friend named Brenda. As I crossed the parking lot, my mother rushed over with outstretched arms. We hugged. I breathed in a familiar smokiness that mingled with a soapy sweetness.

  Phil delivered our sandwiches to a corner table. He smiled at Autumn when she looked in his direction; other than that, he said nothing. Gay made small talk with my mother and Brenda. I kept glancing from my mother to Autumn. The three of us have the same almond-shaped eyes with coffee centers, I realized. My mother and I share muscular shoulders, and our lower center teeth cross at the same point. Her skin—and Autumn’s—is more sallow; mine is bisque white. We all have round cheeks, although Autumn’s face is oblong, while my mother’s and mine are heart-shaped.

  “How was school this year?” my mother asked me.

  “I did okay,” I said modestly, to avoid another insult.

  “Honor roll,” Gay crowed. “She’s in all the highest classes.”

  “I finished high school before you were born,” my mother retorted. “Not a GED—a real diploma.”

  I felt as if I were walking on broken glass. “That’s great.” I glanced from my mother to Gay to Phil. My mother was trying to act polite and sophisticated. Gay was artificially cheerful. Phil’s face was blotchy, a sure sign that he was upset. I wondered what the other diners would think if they knew why we were all meeting. Here we were—my adopted parents, my birth mother, my half sister, and a stranger my mother needed for support—courteously sitting across from one another. Beneath my calm, my emotions were stewing. I felt resentful … abandoned … alone … sad … scared … and furious.

  Autumn reached for the potato chips on my plate. I handed her one, and then she started to climb on my lap. I lifted her into my arms and was surprised at how chunky she was. She pulled my loose hair and wound it around her sticky fingers. I realized that when I was her age, I had lived with my mother. A year later they had taken me away.

  Almost as if she were reading my mind, my mother said, “Everything’s different now—I go to church, have a good job, and I’m sober.”

  I glanced at Phil. Disapproval wafted from him when my mother said, “I tried to get you back.” I could almost hear him thinking, Yeah, right.

  I sipped my soda to quiet my churning stomach. “What was I like as a baby?”

  “You spoke early, and, my, what came out of your mouth!” When Phil heard about the time my car seat fell out of the moving car, his face paled. He excused himself to go to the restroom. I felt sorrier for him than I did for my mother. She seemed like a former neighbor or babysitter who just happened to know about my childhood.

  Autumn wiggled down from my lap and reached toward my mother. “Mama!” Her flailing arm knocked over my mother’s drink. Brenda mopped the spill. Autumn said, “Ash-wee, carry me.”

  I walked her around while my mother refilled her beverage. Autumn stroked my face with her gummy hands, and unexpectedly, she poked her finger in my mouth, which was slightly open. I nibbled her finger playfully. Autumn started screaming.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I said just as my mother reappeared. I handed over her crying child. Gay saw my distress and came over. “I didn’t think I bit her that hard,” I whispered to Gay.

  My mother kissed the boo-boo as if it were a big deal, even though there was no mark. Autumn gulped and sniffled in my mother’s arms.

  “How about some pictures?” Gay asked. She handed Phil the camera.

  My mother and I posed with and without Autumn until Phil said it was time to go.

  When we left, Phil asked how I felt. “I’m glad I did it, though I have no desire to see them again.”

  By the second half of eighth grade, I had started spending more and more time with Brooke. She was a year older than me and had exotic looks that made her a guy magnet. Her parents would not let her date yet, so she would ask me to go to the movies with her and sit a few rows in front of her and her boyfriend, Seth. One time she did not want to leave Seth after the movie was over, and they continued to make out in the back of the theater until the usher threw them out. When I dragged Brooke outside, Gay—who had been waiting for more than a half hour—was seething.

  “What took so long?”

  “The movie ran later than we thought,” I replied.

  “No, it didn’t. I went in and checked.”

  “I thought you would be at the Kmart entrance.” Admitting a mistake in foster care had just brought further punishment, so I never backed down.

  “Whatever,” Gay snarled between gritted teeth. “No movies for a week.”

  Brooke begged me to get Gay to change her mind. “I have to see Seth!” A few days later she asked, “Could you arrange an overnight at your house on Friday?”

  “Probably.”

  She explained her plan. “Your parents sleep upstairs and go to bed early. Mine are in the next room and stay up late.” The idea was for us to wait until Phil and Gay went to bed, sneak out onto the pool patio, leave through the screen door, get on our bikes, and ride to the intersection, where Seth would be waiting with his car. “We can go down to the beach and hang out for a while.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “And he’s bringing Rudy Mason,” she said, “for you!”

  I had never met Rudy, but I knew he was a senior and one of the stars of the basketball team. I was both excited and terrified.

  Gay and Phil agreed to the sleepover. I hurried through dinner and clearing the table. “Why don’t I finish up the kitchen myself tonight while you watch the news?” I suggested in my sweetest voice. “Gay, shall I make you a cup of tea?”

  She seemed surprised. “That would be lovely,” she said, and sat on the couch.

  Phil had had a glass of white wine with dinner. There was enough in the bottle for one more. I carried the tea and the wine into the bathroom. I shook out the pills that Brooke had suggested I use to get them to fall asleep early. I crushed them with the bottom of the pill bottle and then pounded them into finer particles with a scissors handle. Next, I stirred the powdery remains into the beverages. The grains dissolved easily in the hot tea, but they clouded the wine.

  The front door opened and closed. “Hi,” Phil called. “I think she’s in the kitchen.”

  Assuming Brooke had arrived early, I cracked the bathroom door. “I’m in here,” I called in a loud whisper.

  “What’s up?” The voice was not Brooke’s. Tabitha had stopped by to return a CD she had borrowed.

  She saw the tea and wine on the bathroom counter. “What’s going on?”

  I closed the bathroom door behind us and told her as little as possible.

  “That’s not cool at all,” she said. “I’m out of here!”

  “Bye!” she called to my parents in the living room.

  I handed Gay the tea. Very casually, I said to Phil, “Thought you might like another glass of wine.”

  “Thanks, cutie-pie,” he said. “What’s with Tabitha? I don’t think she was here more than thirty seconds.”

  “Oh, she’s jealous that Brooke is coming over. Those two don’t get along.”

  “Three’s a crowd,” Gay added, and tu
rned back to the news.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I mumbled.

  Just as I soaped up my hair, I heard banging on the bathroom door. Phil shouted, “Ashley, open this door at once!” I pretended I did not hear him.

  Gay yelled, “What did you put in our drinks?”

  How had they known so quickly? Had Tabitha called them? Phil’s pounding increased. “Either you open the damn door or I’ll break it down!”

  I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around me. I turned the lock and jumped back in time to avoid the door slamming into me.

  Phil pinned me against the linen cabinet. “What did you put in our drinks?”

  “N-nothing,” I insisted. “Maybe the water was bad.”

  “What about my glass of wine?” His neck flamed scarlet.

  Gay said, “We both tasted something bitter. I chased down Tabitha, and she admitted that you put”—she choked—“pills in our drinks.”

  “Did not!” I tried to wriggle away. Phil held my shoulders firmly while I clung to the towel to keep it from slipping. The shower was still running. Gay pushed past us and turned it off.

  “He’s hurting me!” I protested to Gay.

  Phil allowed me to squirm so the cabinet’s handle did not press into my back. “What was in the drinks?”

  “Nothing!” I insisted.

  “We have a lot of medicines in this house,” Gay said in a raspy voice, “and chemicals and poisons. How long do we have? Do we need to call an ambulance?”

  “No.” I felt as if my limbs were melting. Phil’s grip kept me from falling.

  “Then we’ll have to call the police,” Gay continued in a slow, deep voice.

  I dropped my head. “It was just Advil.”

  “How many?”

  “Only a few,” I whispered.

  “Why?” Phil asked in panting breaths.

  “Just to make you tired sooner.” Tears flowed as if a faucet had been twisted on full blast. “Now I’ve ruined everything!”