My mother is watching me, her smile fading, her arms slightly outstretched, like she wants to reach for me but won’t.
She clears her throat, and out comes her deep, raspy voice again.
“Maria, it’s me.” She hesitates and then adds, “Your mom.”
She takes a step closer to me, and then another, until I’m in her arms, the force of her pull knocking the breath out of me, the smell of her—a combination of stale cigarettes and vanilla, like Grandma’s shampoo—filling my nostrils.
I stare at her, this woman I’ve imagined, hoped for, cried for. In the flesh. I’ve dreamed about this moment for years, prayed for it, and now it’s here and I don’t know what to do.
She stares at me, her eyes drinking in my face in like I might disappear. We’re quiet again for a moment, until she breaks the silence. “I remembered you loved the beach as a baby, this beach.” She holds an arm out in front of us to the sand at our feet. “You probably don’t know this, but I love this beach too. I came here all the time when I was pregnant with you.”
I look away from her, feeling a strong emotion I can’t place as my chest tingles. The sea ripples in the wind, calm and steady. I swallow and steal a glance back at my . . . mom.
A tear falls down her face as she smiles weakly at me. “I know. I know.”
She gestures for me to sit with her on the sand. I look around. The beach is empty and quiet, the only noise around us the waves lapping the shore rhythmically and a band of seagulls flying overhead.
I sink into the ground, kicking my feet out in front of me. My fingers dig into the sand and pull, releasing fistfuls, and then again slower, grain by grain.
“Tell me about yourself—tell me about everything,” she says, her eyes alight.
I don’t ask her why she blew me off the other day. Not yet. I want my mom to want to be here, with me. I want her to want me.
“I . . . uh . . . well, I was on the cross-country team, but I quit this year,” I start.
My mom smiles at me, encouraging.
I take a deep breath. “I hang out with Brittany. My best friend; she came with me to your place when we met John. She and I do everything together. She’s not a huge fan of some of my new friends, but—”
“Oh?” Mom lifts her eyebrows. “Why not?”
I sigh. Why did I have to go there right away? I choose my words carefully. “I don’t know if that’s true exactly. It just seems like . . . there’s this guy—”
“Aah,” Mom says.
I hurriedly add, “And he’s great and I think he likes me, but Brittany, I don’t know, I think she would rather keep the status quo.”
“And what’s the status quo?”
“Just us two, I guess. I mean, I dated another guy, Eric, a while back. He hangs out with some of the girls we used to be on the cross-country team with. He was . . .” I don’t say white. “Expected. Like the kind of guy Brittany and I would normally hang out with.”
My mom furrows her eyebrows.
“But this other guy is special,” I continue. “He’s funny and charming and really, really good-looking. I get along with his friends pretty well too, which Brittany doesn’t seem too thrilled about either. I met them in Spanish class.” I bite my lip.
Mom cocks her head. “You’re taking Spanish?”
“I started just recently,” I say quickly. “I’m learning so I really know how to speak it and not just understand bits and pieces.”
Mom’s quiet for a while, and my chest tightens. Her face is scrunched up, her brows furrowed. Maybe she’s disappointed in me, that I waited this long to learn.
“What is it?” My voice is high. I shouldn’t have told her. “Did I say something?”
Mom shakes her head. “No, it’s not you. I wish I would have started speaking it to you when you were learning to talk. Your grandparents were so dead set on you being just like everyone else. They thought you would be better off, the more you looked and acted like, like . . .” She shakes her head.
“Like I was white?” I ask, looking right at her. “Is that what you mean?”
Mom’s jaw sets. She nods. “They thought, your grandfather especially, that since you have a light complexion, you’d be better off than they were. People wouldn’t be racist sons of bitches to you because you look like them. I remember when they first started telling me those kinds of things when I was a kid. It confused me . . . made me feel ashamed of who we were. I didn’t want that for you. But, that’s just how your grandfather was.” She sighs.
“Well, he was a crazy old man, wasn’t he? And he’s gone now, so what does it matter?”
I bite my lip and look away. She has no idea how Grandma is just as bad as Grandpa now, how she and I argue about this all the time. She hardly knows anything about me.
And I don’t know anything about her.
“You said you were going to tell me why you didn’t come before,” I begin. “And I want to know that, but you’ve lived so close by. And it’s been two years . . .” I let the rest of the sentence hang in the air unsaid. I can’t bear to look at her, so I stare down at my hands.
I hear Mom inhale deeply. “I didn’t come because I was afraid. I was afraid of my mother.”
My mouth drops open and I jerk my head to look at her. That I wasn’t expecting.
My mom reaches out as though she wants to touch my face but I tense, and she drops her hand.
“It’s why I didn’t come over the years, and even why I didn’t come after I called. I was afraid of what my mother would do if she found out.” Mom’s lower lip quivers as my thoughts whirl at what she’s saying.
“Years ago, after I’d moved out, I tried. Oh, baby, I tried over and over to reach you. Calling and dropping by uninvited, but she never let me in,” Mom says. “She threatened that she would pick up and move away if I came and saw you against her will. I thought not being in your life was unbearable, but not nearly as bad as having you gone entirely. At least this way, I knew where you were.”
I stutter. “That doesn’t make . . . Grandma said . . .” I can’t form a sentence. None of this makes sense.
Mom pushes her flip-flops into the sand, and then she turns to face me. “They sent me away, your grandpa and grandma. Both of my parents didn’t want me around you.” She pulls her eyes from me to stare out at the waves. “I didn’t want to leave, but”—her voice breaks—“they made me.”
I gasp. “No. No, Grandma said . . .” I sputter the same thing I said before. Mom’s eyes narrow, and she shakes her head fast.
I swallow, hard. Clench my teeth. “She said you left me. That you weren’t ready or able to be a mom.”
“Not true,” she whispers before closing her eyes, as if she’s in pain.
I keep my mouth shut because I don’t trust the words that could come out. Grandma has always said that Mom left because she couldn’t take care of me, not that she forced her to go.
I release the last bit of sand I’d been clutching and stare at my mother’s weathered hand, so close, close enough for me to grab and hold. The tension in my chest hardens and drops, like a rock in my gut.
A couple of tears fall down my mom’s cheeks. “I couldn’t come, I couldn’t. Papá”—she pauses—“your grandpa would never allow it, not after he forced me to sign my parental rights away to them. My father tricked me. He told me it would only be for a little while and then once I got back on my feet, once I paid off the money I owed from being in jail—” She stops suddenly. And I can tell by the way she’s looking at me that I haven’t covered up my shock very well.
My mom flushes, embarrassed. “I was young and in love. I got in trouble with a boyfriend and got caught up in a barfight. It seems so stupid now.”
Mom takes a deep breath. “Your grandparents acted like I was such a horrible person, like I had a drinking problem, but I was just a rebellious kid. I was having fun, being reckless, but nothing that other kids didn’t do. You have to understand, my parents were so strict.” Her voice streng
thens. “And even though I knew I wasn’t an alcoholic, I stopped drinking altogether. I promised your grandfather and he lied to me, he said I could have you back, once I had a job and a safe place to live. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since I signed those papers. But it was never enough.”
I pull my knees up to my chest. Grandma hinted that Mom got into trouble, that she wasn’t a good girl, whatever the hell that means. But that’s not what really matters.
I want to believe my mom wanted me. But part of me still can’t help but feel abandoned, even if it was my grandparents’ fault.
“I haven’t been far,” she says, mirroring me by pulling her knees closer to her body and sitting up straighter. “I lived in Las Vegas for a couple of years, and then in Los Angeles for a while, but mostly, I’ve been staying in Oxnard. She meets my eyes. “So many times, Maria, so many times over the last few years, I found myself on the highway driving here, driving to Santa Barbara. Sometimes I even made it as near as a few streets away. But I always turned around.” She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a moment.
I clutch my phone in my hand. “You could have called.”
Mom looks at me. “I did, baby. I called so many times. First, your grandpa said I couldn’t talk to you yet. I needed to save money, find a better place. Then he said he didn’t want to disrupt your schooling, and I couldn’t call or come visit yet because you were starting to get used to your routine.” My mom takes my hand, and I let her. It’s cold and clammy, smaller than mine, and bony, like Grandma’s. I force the thought of her away.
Mom runs a finger over my palm. “He said that it was so important for you, and he didn’t want to disrupt the good changes in your behavior. As if you were some troubled child before I left.”
“So, you just stopped trying then?” My hand falls to the ground.
Mom watches my hand as a tear trickles down to her lips. “Your grandfather told me I had to stop calling or he wouldn’t let me see you. It was like he was holding you over my head.”
My mother lowers her voice. “That was the original deal, when I first signed my rights away. If I wanted them to help me with you, I couldn’t be around until I got better. I wasn’t right to do it, baby.” She pauses to look at me seriously, as if she can convince me with her eyes. “I shouldn’t have agreed, but I was in a bad way. I was young and I couldn’t take care of you myself. Your father wasn’t in the picture and—”
My head snaps up at that. My father. I know nothing about him, except that he’s white.
My mother inhales sharply and looks away. “To be honest, I’m ashamed to say I’m not even sure who he is.”
My shoulders slump. So much for finding out about him. Mom looks back at me and in her eyes, I can see that she senses my disappointment. “But it doesn’t matter, because whoever he was, he gave me the greatest gift, he gave me the best thing I’ve ever had in my life. You.”
Her voice is filled with emotion. Pleading. “I just needed to get my life together, and I didn’t think it would be forever. But when I didn’t act perfectly for them, fit their timeline for my progress, they started to use you against me to control me. When your grandpa died, I thought things would be different. But they weren’t,” The wind picks up, blowing my mom’s wiry curls into her face, and she brushes them off, along with a few more tears. “She wouldn’t let me come to my own father’s funeral.”
My mother doesn’t say who she is, but I know right away. How could Grandma do that to her own daughter? How could she be so cruel?
I turn away, unable to look at the pain on my mother’s face, unable to imagine how it must have felt to be her. I barely remember Grandpa’s funeral—just snippets come to mind. Grandma dressing me in a long-sleeved velvet dress. People hugging her and then me, saying how sorry they were. Looking up through tears in my eyes at Grandma’s strong, stoic face from the front row at the church. Mom wasn’t there. I could have had her there with me, holding me.
She moves her hand closer to mine. I could take it. I could reach out and take it, like she took mine. But my hand lies flat on the sand, as if a magnet holds it down.
She’s stopped crying, but her voice is low and guttural. “I’m so, so sorry. For everything. For not sending that letter sooner, for giving up—I should have kept trying. It just hurt so badly to be turned away by my own family. And, truly, baby, I was afraid that if I kept fighting your grandmother, she’d move you away, somewhere I’d never be able to find you. I shouldn’t have left in the first place. I missed so much.”
She raises her chin and looks at me. “That’s why I was afraid to come after I told you I would, but ultimately I couldn’t lose the chance to see you. So, I’m here. I’m sorry it took me so long, but I’m here.” Her voice breaks. “Now.”
My mother is here, and she’s sorry. I don’t want to see Mom sad like this, not when I can fix it. Not when I can try to, at least.
So I grab my mother and hold her in my arms. She lets out a huge exhale, like she’d been holding her breath until I finally let my walls down, and she cries into my shoulder, shaking softly.
Or maybe that’s me. I’m the one shaking.
This is real. I’m with my mom. She’s real.
I pull away slowly. “Did John tell you that Grandma doesn’t know I found the letter?”
She nods.
“Grandma wouldn’t want me to come. I knew before, and I really know now, after everything you’ve said.” Because everything Grandma kept me from knowing wasn’t to protect me; it was to protect herself.
“You can’t tell her that I came here and saw you,” my mom pleads. “She can’t stop you if she doesn’t know.”
I swallow. Like I’m telling that woman anything. I don’t even know how I’ll be able to look at Grandma at home, much less talk to her. “Of course, Mom.” I stutter over the word, so foreign on my lips. And my mom beams. I softly touch her hair, move it out from in between us. “She won’t know.”
After a moment, Mom pulls away from me. She straightens her shirt and composes herself.
I look at my phone again. “It’s getting late,” I say without thinking.
Her face falls. “You have to get going, don’t you?”
“I have to study for Spanish later. I don’t want to leave you—”
Mom puts a hand on each of my shoulders. “I’ll tell you what, you get going and study and we can meet back here, same time next week or whenever works better for you. And you know what else? Bring your Spanish book.” Her eyes twinkle with delight. “I can help you study next time.”
Mom’s face swims before mine as I blink my watery eyes. I hug her. She’s my mom and I can see her again. This isn’t the end.
I don’t see the waves or the sand as I walk away. I don’t even see the bicyclist heading in my direction—I’m on the wrong side of the path—until I feel the air whoosh by me.
It’s her face, the love in her eyes, that I see in my mind. The pain, when she talks about what Grandma and Grandpa took from her.
What they took from me.
That was real. That was all real. Mom is real.
And Grandma is a liar.
Next thing I know, I’m waking up from a nap to the sound of Grandma coming home from work. I hear her rustling around, before something clatters in the kitchen.
I passed out after seeing Mom, exhausted from all the emotions. I look at my phone, noting the time. It’s late.
Everything Mom said about Grandma comes back in a rush. I call from my bedroom. “Don’t worry about cooking anything for me.”
The sounds of dishes clanging continue, so I walk out there. Do my best to keep my searing anger in check to protect my and Mom’s secret. I sit in the dining room and nod at the pile of Grandma’s sewing stuff on it. I lift a black shawl off the table. “What’s this?”
Grandma, standing in front of the open fridge, looks to see what I’m talking about. “Oh, my boss needs that shawl mended before a party tomorrow. She said it was very impor
tant, but it’s hard to find the time when I’m doing all my normal work at the house.”
I look at the shawl rather than at my grandma. Focus on the conversation we’re in rather than all that I know now and risk screaming at her. My brow furrows as I slide my fingers down the soft fabric, noticing a small tear. “Cashmere?”
“Mmm-hmmm,” Grandma confirms as she pulls some meat out of the fridge and sets it on the counter.
“She couldn’t take this to a tailor or dry cleaner or something? Pay someone to do it?”
Grandma cuts a lemon in half. “She does pay someone to fix that,” Grandma says. “Me. And anyway, she just decided she wanted it mended today, so there wouldn’t have been time.”
I grunt because despite how furious I am with Grandma, I’m annoyed that this woman takes up all my grandma’s time not only when she’s at work, but even when she’s at home with me.
Grandma covers a yawn with her hand, her eyes drooping. “Don’t worry about it, mija. I’ll finish it after dinner.”
“Mija?” I repeat.
“Lo siento, I mean sorry, baby.” She answers quickly and then starts humming to herself a song from church. She begins warming some tortillas on the stove and pulls some shredded cheese out of the fridge. Hearing her revert to Spanish when she’s tired, it just makes it more apparent how natural it is for her. I wonder if she thinks in Spanish and still has to translate everything in her head. Why does she force her language, her past, away like that? Questions bubble up in my throat.
“I remember, you know. When you and Mom use to talk in Spanish when Grandpa wasn’t around, even though he didn’t want anyone to speak it.”
That’s not how I thought I’d broach the subject of Mom with Grandma, but here we are: Grandma speaking in Spanish, me having so many questions that only lead to more.
Grandma sighs. “I loved your grandfather so much. I still do,” she adds. “I knew it was important to obey my husband.”
Everything Within and In Between Page 10