“Less than human?”
She looks up at me, like she’s surprised I’m still here in the kitchen with her. Her eyes have begun to water. She stares at me and then nods.
“Yes, like we were less than human. It’s not an easy thing to live through, especially as a little girl. And though the years passed and people supposedly forgave and forgot, I could still see it in their eyes. Not every person, mind you, but walking down the street, or standing on line at the grocery store, there would be this flicker behind some people’s eyes, like they … they didn’t trust me. Like they thought I was still the enemy. I know your father felt the same way, even though he hadn’t been alive then.”
My father had been eleven years younger than my mother. Tina and I had always speculated the reason why but had never learned the truth.
“You still miss him, don’t you?”
“Of course,” my mother says. “Every day. Don’t you?”
I think of him shooting Zane, the darkness in his eyes when he pulled the trigger. I think about shooting him and then him staring up at me, waiting for me to finish him off.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I miss him too.”
“I always felt my life had no meaning, that it was … purposeless, until your father. He … he somehow made me forget the distrust in other people. He made me … happy.”
“Why did you and Dad get married so late in life?”
My mother looks at me again, her face at first blank, then filling with a mischievous sort of grin. “If I tell you this, you must swear to never tell your sister. Do I have your word?”
“Yes.”
“I was previously married before your father. To a white man. He was half-Irish, half-German. He worked as a mechanic. I was a senior in high school. It was such a foolish thing for me to do, but I started seeing him behind my parents’ back. They wanted me to only date and eventually marry a man from Japan. But then I got pregnant and, well, we had no choice but to get married. I had just turned eighteen three months before. We went away for a while, found an apartment in Chicago. We lived there for seven weeks before we were forced to come back home, face the music as they say, and as you can imagine my parents wanted nothing to do with me. Even when I told them I was pregnant with their grandchild, they turned their backs.”
“Do I have another sibling?”
My mother shakes her head slowly, her eyes brimming now with tears. “No, dear, I had a miscarriage. And, well, that pregnancy was the only thing keeping us together. After the miscarriage, our marriage crumbled. We didn’t even last six months. I had no choice but to return to my parents.”
“And they took you back?”
“My father didn’t want to, but my mother persuaded him. He … he called me a few names I’m sure you can imagine. But as the years passed he seemed to welcome me back as his daughter. Other men, however, other suitors, would not come near me. They had heard what happened. They knew I was … tainted.”
The tears have finally sprung free; a few race down her cheeks. She wipes them away, shakes her head even more slowly.
“I tried killing myself once. I took an entire bottle of pills. My mother found me in time and I was rushed to the hospital. I spent two weeks there. And after I came out I needed a job, something to fill my time. But it was difficult finding a respectable job without a high school diploma. First I had to return to high school and finish my classes. Even then many places told me they weren’t hiring. But apparently the Army would hire almost anyone. I didn’t enlist, of course, but was hired as a civilian. It was there that I met your father, who was a soldier. Yes, he was eleven years younger than me, and he was Chinese, which obviously would not go over well with my parents, but … well, he asked me out and I accepted and here you and I are today.”
She wipes a few more tears away, grabs a new napkin to blow her nose.
“Your father, he was just so sweet. He brought me a rose every time he came to see me. He wanted to marry me, but then the Vietnam War broke out and he had to go fight in that … it was hard waiting, you know? Thinking that every day that passed was the day he would die. It tore me up inside. But he would write letters, sometimes even poems. He served three tours of duty, and after the last one we got married.”
From what I know of my father it’s hard to picture him as a man who brought roses and wrote poetry. From what I know of my father I see him slitting throats and breaking necks.
“Did he know about your first husband?”
“Yes, he did. I confessed it to him the week before our wedding. I wanted him to know the truth and to understand I had been irresponsible then, almost reckless.”
I say, “When Tina started dating Ryan, did you …”
“Have reservations? No. I’d decided long ago that I wasn’t going to become my parents.”
A silence falls between us. My mother picks up another slice, eats two bites, sets it back down. I have a couple bites of my own slice and then glance at the clock. In less than two hours I’ll be taking off in a cargo jet headed across the Atlantic.
My mother clears her throat. “Holly, I apologize if you think I expect too much from you. It’s just … I
