Chapter 9 #3
“Must be the wine.” I slid the glass away from me.
“Next topic is childhood,” Margie announced.
I threw up in my mouth a little. This game was a gigantic mistake. I cut a glance at Louise and Bernice. The roommates were in a deep discussion; their heads were bent together.
Okay, maybe not a gigantic mistake.
“Where did you grow up?” I asked Joan.
“New England. I grew tired of the winters and moved to Florida in 1900. You?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“I was abandoned by my mother and father,” Joan volunteered. “I think that’s why my picker was off.”
“Your picker?”
“I chose men who I believed would take care of me, the way I would’ve liked my parents to take care of me.”
“They gave you up for adoption?”
“Adoption wasn’t really a thing back then, not the way it is now. I never knew my father. My mother refused to tell me his name. I assumed she either wasn’t sure who he was or didn’t want to acknowledge him. At some point, she didn’t want to acknowledge me either.”
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”
Joan shrugged. “We all have baggage somewhere in our history. What about you?”
My stomach churned with unpleasant memories. “My mother abandoned me too, after my father died.” Sold. Abandoned. Different terms. Same outcome.
“Do you think she couldn’t cope?” Joan asked.
“I’m sure that’s it,” I lied. In truth, I believed my mother had worn a mask for my father, and as soon as he was gone, she had no reason to pretend anymore.
Joan squeezed my hand. “Well, that’s shitty common ground to have, but it’s nice to know we’re not alone.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“If it’s any consolation, you turned out well for someone without a good mom.”
“Same to you,” I told her. Joan and I both had thick skin and resilience in our favor. We were fortunate to have developed coping devices that helped us rather than hurt us. Not everyone in our position could say the same.
“Hey,” Joan called. “So Maya and I were both abandoned by our mothers. How cool is that?”
A silence descended upon the room.
“Okay, maybe ‘cool’ was a poor choice of words,” Joan amended.
“That’s awful,” Catherine said.
“We’re not asking for a pity party,” I said. “We’re playing the game.”
“It isn’t pity, Maya,” Bernice said. “It’s empathy. How old were you?”
“Maybe six,” Joan said. “I don’t remember her well, which I think is somehow better, you know?”
Everybody looked at me expectantly. Outside of faking a seizure or vomiting on the rug, there was no way around the question. “I was a child too.”
“It was after her father died,” Joan added. “Her mother couldn’t cope.”
I lowered my gaze, unable to offer more. Let them believe my mother suffered severe heartbreak from which she never recovered. It was the more palatable option. The kind of story that reverberates with a deep, abiding love that everyone wants to believe in.
A fairy tale.
“We get bonus points, right?” Joan asked. “The more pathetic your common traits, the more points you get.”
“If pathetic is in play, then you’ve both got competition,” Louise said. “Bernice and I are both incontinent.”
“We are,” Bernice said, nodding. “I’m wearing an adult diaper right now.”
“I’ve been hiding a box in my closet,” Louise said, “but we’ve agreed to store them in the bathroom for both of us.”
“What a discovery,” Meemaw said, suppressing a smile.
“And we never would’ve known if it wasn’t for this game,” Bernice said, “so thank you for that.”
Meemaw struggled to keep a straight face. “You’re welcome. Should we tally our points?”
“I think we’re all winners tonight,” I said, eager to move along. “Who needs points?”
Bernice glanced around the living room. “Thank you so much for inviting me tonight. I know you like to keep a closed circle.”
“We don’t have a circle,” Margie said, her defensiveness on full display.
“Of course we do,” Louise said. “It’s called a coven, but there’s no reason we can’t expand our circle to include non-witches.”
Bernice beamed with gratitude. “As much fun as this has been, my social battery is on empty for the day.” Bernice glanced at Louise. “I guess I’ll see you at home.”
“I’m tired too. Why don’t we go together?”
We said good night and watched them leave.
“Mission accomplished?” I whispered to Meemaw.
The elderly witch nodded, wearing the hint of a smile.
“I think I like Bernice,” Catherine announced, then paused, uncertain. “Is that allowed?”
“You’re free to like anybody and everybody,” Meemaw said. “It shouldn’t matter what our opinion is. That being said, I like Bernice too. She’s a little fidgety, but that might change once she gets more comfortable with us.”
Margie glanced at the closed door. “Did you hear some of her answers? Who would’ve guessed she was such a force to be reckoned with in her youth? And we thought Louise had the market cornered on badass bitches.”
They never would’ve guessed it about me either, nor did I want them to.
Meemaw caught my eye. “How do you feel about the game, Maya?”
“It was fun. Joan was a good teammate.”
“Maya was homeschooled,” Joan said. “We should’ve figured that one out, right?”
Murmurs of assent followed her announcement. I was insulted, but not insulted enough to defend myself with actual facts.
“I should get home too,” I said. “Jinx has an appointment with Dr. Adam in the morning.”
“Jinx?” Margie asked. “You have an appointment for the cat you swear isn’t your cat?”
“Correct.”
Meemaw cleared off the table. “Have you ever taken a cat to the doctor’s before?”
“No.”
The witches exchanged amused looks. “I see,” Meemaw said. “Good luck with that.”
I didn’t see what the big deal was. Jinx attended the birthday party without a struggle. She was a cat. How would she know the difference?
As I drove home from Meemaw’s, my thoughts turned from Jinx to my parents.
A part of me found it difficult to believe that a man as intelligent and insightful as my father could fall for a woman like my mother.
Surely, he’d seen who she was at her core, but then that would mean my father was as responsible as she was for my adolescence.
For years of servitude. For fashioning me into a weapon to be wielded by those who didn’t want to dirty their own pristine hands.
As much as I loved my father, I still wrestled with that. I’d accepted my mother’s failures a long time ago. If I had to accept that my father had failed me too…Maybe if he hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have been granted the luxury of sainthood.
But he had died, and I would never know for certain. I had to find a way to make peace with that.
I parked my golf cart outside the cottage and stepped onto the porch. Two shiny green eyes stared at me from the rocking chair.
“Were you worried I wouldn’t come home?” I asked, opening the door for both of us.
Jinx shot past me and went straight to the bowls. Now that she had expectations, I knew I should consider adding a pet entry to the back door. I’d have to watch a YouTube video and see if I could do it myself. If I wanted the handyman to take care of it, it would be a long wait.
I added more food to the bowl and watched her devour every piece. “I won’t abandon you, Jinx. I promise.”
The cat stopped eating long enough to meet my gaze. I know, her eyes seemed to say. Then she resumed her meal as though nothing had passed between us. She was a special cat, or maybe I only thought she was special because she seemed to think I was.
Or maybe she sensed a weakness for helpless creatures, although to be fair, Jinx was far from helpless. She’d managed to carve out a pretty good life for herself on the island before I started offering her salmon and tuna.
Jinx trotted behind me as I walked to the bedroom to change into pajamas.
I thought about my answer to the relationship question.
Once upon a time, I’d wanted it all—a husband, kids, a dog or cat.
Maybe even both. But that had been before my father died, when I still lived a “normal” life.
When I didn’t know about the Fates or the fae or the old gods.
When ignorance was bliss.
When I was about eight years old, I’d begged my parents for a pet.
One evening, my father appeared in the living room holding a striped kitten.
My mother threw a fit and ordered him to take the “creature” back where he found it.
I didn’t even get the chance to hold her, let alone name her.
My mother’s mask slipped that day, and she spent the remainder of the evening cursing my father’s name and telling me all the ways I was a terrible child.
That I was ungrateful for wanting more than what I’d been given.
I’d run to my bedroom, sobbing, and slammed the door shut, but that hadn’t deterred my mother.
She’d followed me anyway, still ranting and berating me.
It was the first time I remembered her hitting me, not for my ingratitude but for my weakness.
Because I’d cried. She seemed to believe that she could toughen me up by inflicting pain.
It was a theme that would continue throughout my life.
I didn’t see my father that night. I fell asleep underneath my bed, where I knew there were no monsters—because the only monster I knew had chased me there.
I climbed into bed, Jinx purring contentedly beside me, and stared at the ceiling.
Not every parent deserved to be one. Over the years, I’d sometimes wonder why she’d chosen to have me at all.
My father’s death had been the final straw for her.
After that, she saw no reason to maintain a connection with me.
The only way I could enhance her life was by leaving it.
From what I later learned, she’d received a handsome sum of money for me.
Enough to live a comfortable life without a job and without another mouth to feed.
For many years, I’d hated her, until I came to realize that she had been broken, and that she’d been caught in a cycle she felt powerless to break.
I’d been spinning in that cycle, too, but unlike my mother, I’d unearthed strength I didn’t know I possessed in order to change.
“Change yourself and you change the world,” my father used to tell me.
So wise and yet so blind. It took me a long time to understand what he’d meant.
I got there eventually, but the price I had to pay for that change was exponentially high.
It cost me everything.