“I don’t want to pit my daughter-in-law against my daughter, but when I visited Brother, his wife was so gracious. We felt so wanted.”
“She is a lovely person, Mother, and you are trying to pit us against each other with that statement. Leave her out of it,” Girl said.
They rarely talked on the phone, only calling each other a few times a year. Their exchanges were now made via text or email. “I feel like I’m intruding,” Mother explained.
“I feel like you are too wrapped up in your own life to have time for me,” Girl wrote back.
“If that’s how you feel, then I have failed as a mother,” Mother replied.
Girl tried to explain how she felt about Stepmother, why she didn’t want to spend time with her. “I love her, but I don’t like her much,” she wrote.
“I don’t like you much either,” Stepmother wrote back from Mother’s email account. Girl didn’t know why she was surprised that Mother had let her read their correspondence.
Girl was frustrated. Her whole life, Mother and Stepmother acted like Girl was creating drama where none existed. She knew that many people found Stepmother intolerable.
“I don’t know why men have such a problem with Stepmother,” Mother said.
“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a problem with Stepmother. I just think women are socialized not to say anything rude,” Girl answered. Apparently they should have socialized Girl better, because she couldn’t bring herself to be polite anymore. But as always, she struggled to explain what it was exactly that was so outrageous. It was myriad paper cuts, and she could not make them add up to a justifiable wound to show to Mother.
“Mother,” she wrote, exhausted with the constant tense, useless rage living in her body, “Stepmother called your friend her ‘slave,’ and she said it in front of my children. She has no regard for anyone else’s feelings.” Mother was not swayed. Girl decided to pull out her biggest guns.
“She’s completely inappropriate. Remember when she asked me what semen tasted like?”
“You chose to remain in that conversation. You could have walked away.” Click, click, their fingers dashed off arguments across the Internet.
“Did I ever tell you that she showed me your vibrator back in high school and wanted to show me how to use it?” This was the one thing she had always held back, the secret she thought would destroy Mother if she knew. The only time Mother made Stepmother shut up about anything was when she talked about Mother’s sex life. Mother might not care that Stepmother creeped Girl out, but she’d sure as shit care that Stepmother was talking about what Mother liked in bed. And Mother didn’t know the half of what Stepmother had confided in Girl over the years on that very subject.
“I really don’t see why that upset you so much,” Mother typed. “Really, Girl, you are forty years old. It’s time to get over your childhood.”
Girl had been wrong. Mother didn’t care about the vibrator story. She had held it as her trump card for years, and it turned out to hold no value—the joker in the deck of cards. Nothing Stepmother had ever done to Girl was enough to make Mother defend her child.
“I don’t know why you are surprised,” her boyfriend said. “Your mother has always chosen her over you. Your stepmother might not know how abusive she was, but your mother knew, and she let it happen. She’s guiltier in my eyes. She was your mother, it was her job to protect you, and she didn’t.”
The next time they spoke, Mother told Girl that she had had a series of mini-strokes that no one noticed. Girl rarely visited, and Stepmother didn’t pay close attention. They only discovered the brain damage after she got an MRI for a suspected heart problem. She was okay, she reassured Girl, and it was unlikely to happen again.
“I went to the library the other day,” Mother said. “I rode my scooter because Stepmother had a sculpture class.”
“Mother, isn’t that like three miles?”
“It took me forty-five minutes, but I did it! I love my scooter. It’s so much fun.”
Girl pictured Mother riding her motorized scooter to the library in the hot Key West sun. The scooter went even slower than Girl’s six-year-old did when he rode his bike. Girl closed her eyes, imagining her mother wipe sweat off her face as she rode for an hour with the sun baking down on her shoulders. Maybe she wore a hat. Girl shook her head. Mother chose the life she led willingly—she had gotten out from under Stepmother once, but ran back to her embrace as fast as her legs could carry her. Mother wasn’t a victim—she was a volunteer. But Girl didn’t have to play happy family anymore.
Girl realized it was time to stop acting out the same role. This was the life that made her mother happy—it was no longer Girl’s place to criticize or convince her mother that she deserved better. Mother seemed completely fine with letting her relationship with Girl float away, as long as Stepmother was happy. Girl had her own family now, a life filled with art and writing, and a few close friends. She no longer had a mother-shaped hole in her chest. Girl wrote her stories, played with her children, and stopped expecting
