“It feels like I haven’t seen you in weeks. What’s been going on?” Mya asks as the waitress sits our breadsticks down before departing. We’re at Tracey’s Pizzeria, a local pizza shop that is walking distance from Mya’s daycare center.
A few months after leaving the pageant world, Mya came up with the blueprint for a place where kids and teenagers of all ages to come and learn different extracurricular activities. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but a little over a year ago, I attended the grand opening ceremony. It’s been going strong ever since.
Between running the daycare center and her commitments as a former beauty pageant winner, she’s always busy.
“Nothing much, I’m working on edits for my next book.”
“Ah, I can’t wait to read it,” she says clapping excitedly. Mya has always been a huge supporter of my writing career. Just then the waitress sets a steaming pizza in front of us.
“Enjoy,” she says before walking off to deal with another customer. My stomach grumbles as the smell of cheese and garlic waft up to my nose. Mya and I dig in, talking as we eat. Once I’m stuffed, I lean back in my chair. Mya clears her throat as she wipes her mouth with a napkin.
“Now that I’ve fed you I, uh, have something to tell you.”
My eyes narrow on her. “What it is?” I ask cautiously.
She fidgets with a napkin in her hands, avoiding eye contact, something she only does when she’s nervous.
“Um…well I may have let it slip to mom how well your books are doing and that you hit several different bestselling lists,” she blurts out.
“Mya!” I say, my stomach sinking.
She holds up her hands in surrender “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! It just kind of slipped out when we were talking the other day.”
My mother has never understood my career choice to be an author. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t even see it as a career. She just thinks it’s a hobby. She doesn’t see the countless hours of work I put into my writing. She doesn’t see all the time and energy I put into trying to perfect my craft and deliver the best books possible to readers that seem to love them. It doesn’t make sense to her.
But then again, my mother has never really seen anything I’ve done as an accomplishment. Old hurt and resentment stir to life inside of me like an old festering wound that won’t go away.
“What did she say?” I ask.
Mya’s eyes bore beseechingly into mine and she grabs my hand across the table.
“That’s the thing. She seemed really happy and she decided to throw you a little get together as a way to celebrate. I was supposed to bring you out to eat and then we’ll go over to mom and dad’s house to celebrate.”
Mya has never gotten my mother and I’s relationship. She thinks it can be fixed. She’s optimistic like that. But then again, her relationship has never been nearly as fractured or broken as ours have.
I on the other hand gave up on the idea of a normal relationship with my mother a long time ago.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve never felt like we connected. That familial bond that most mothers and daughters are supposed to have never clicked with us. It clicked between her and Mya, though.
That’s what I had my dad for. Growing up, he was always extremely busy with work. He always made time for Mya and I equally. He would go to Mya’s pageants and watch TV and read books with me. He even went to Levi’s football games throughout middle school and high school with me when he could. To this day we watch Sunday football games together whenever he doesn’t have to work.
I’ve never had any sort of connection like that with my mother. I made peace with how things were between us a long time ago. Kind of. A little.
But now, new hope begins to rise inside of me.
“She really planned an entire party to celebrate my book being a bestseller?” I ask.
Mya’s eyes are filled with a hope that I’m trying to contain. “Yes, she planned it all herself. Actually,” she says glancing down at her watch. “We should get going now.”
“O-Okay.” What could it hurt to give this a chance? Maybe we’ll finally have something to bond over.
Mya grabs my hand as we walk out of the pizzeria together.
“It’ll be great I promise.”
***
Famous last words.
It’ll be great, she said.
I should have known something was off the moment we pulled up to my parent’s large three-story brick home in the northern suburbs of Chicago. At least a dozen or more cars are parked in the circular driveway.
I’m pretty sure there are more cars here than actual people I know.
Once Mya and I moved out they moved into an even bigger home on the north side.
They are more rooms in this house than they know what to do with. With my father’s job as a surgeon and my mother’s boutique that she started after Mya stopped competing in pageants, they can more than afford it.
Mya uses her key to get in, just as our mother is coming around the corner.
“Darlings,” she says a big smile gracing her face as she comes towards us.
She’s dressed impeccably as always in a fitted black skirt, black high heels, a red blouse and a black blazer. Mya and I got our hazel eyes from our father, but we get our bronze skin complexion and our long dark hair from our mother, which she wears in a bun at the nape of her neck.
