23. Trina
TRINA
“Hi, Mama.” I hate how shaky my voice sounds as I talk into the receiver.
Aunt Donna answered the call like she always does, and instead of letting me take it on the cordless phone upstairs, she insisted on making me come down to the kitchen.
I always ask if I can go upstairs when Mom calls, and the answer is always no.
Now, Aunt Donna is standing at the sink, chopping vegetables.
But we’ve already eaten dinner, so I know she’s there to eavesdrop.
“Hi, hun. How are you? How’s school?”
Mom’s voice sounds far away, and there are other muffled sounds in the background. She’s not alone either.
“School is good,” I say. “I got an A on my book report today.” I cringe as soon as I say it. I haven’t talked to her in months. There’s no way she cares about a grade on a book report. She doesn’t even know I had a book report due.
“Of course you did. You’re my smart little girl.”
“I’m fifteen, Mama. I’m not little anymore.” I laugh it off, but it sounds forced even to me.
“Fifteen? No… Don’t be silly. You’re twelve,” she insists, but it’s not in the way that I’ve heard some parents of the kids at school joke about how fast time passes.
She says it like she truly believes I’m only twelve.
Like it’s only been three years since they took me away, not six.
Like she’s still on her first prison sentence, not her second.
Tears prick at the outsides of my eyes. I sniffle, and Aunt Donna’s mouth tightens into a straight, white line.
She pauses her chopping to shoot me a warning look.
It’s pretty normal for her to be annoyed when I cry, but she hates it when I cry on the phone with my mom.
She treats it as some kind of personal affront, as if my mom will find out how unhappy I am.
As if it’s a crime to want better than a place that has never felt like home.
I wish Aunt Donna would go somewhere else. Just for a minute.
“Things here are… Well…” Mom trails off as she clearly struggles for words.
“It’s okay, Mama,” I tell her. I don’t want to hear it anyway.
“I can’t wait to get out of here so I can see you, Cat. Soon.”
That’s what she said the last time too, and it never happened. But her voice is filled with such hope that I don’t bother telling her that I don’t share her enthusiasm. I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t correct her use of my old nickname either. I haven’t gone by Cat in a long time.
A tone sounds through the phone. It’s not that loud, but I cringe all the same.
“I’m so sorry, hun. I have to go. It was good to hear your voice.”
“You too,” I say, though it doesn’t match the conviction she has.
I wait for a second, hoping maybe she’ll tell me something else. Something I could cling to over the next few months, or however long it is until she remembers to call me again.
But the call disconnects before she can say anything more.
“Love you too, Mom,” I say to the air, just before the dial tone starts again.
Aunt Donna—who hasn’t taken her eyes off me since I sniffled—arches an eyebrow.
I know she’s about to ask me what Mom said, which will turn into a lecture on Mom’s bad choices.
It’ll end with a warning about following in her footsteps, as if I came from the wrong side of the family gene pool.
Not wanting to hear it, I hang up the phone and quickly excuse myself to the room I share with Evelyn.
Thank god she’s at some practice or another tonight.
At least I don’t have an audience when I throw myself face first on my bed and cry.
I’m jolted awake, sputtering and gasping and sweating just like I always do after these dreams. My hair is plastered to my forehead, and my tank top is stuck to my chest. When I bring my hands up to touch my cheeks, I find that they’re wet.
And with the way I’m gulping in air, I’m not sure if it’s sweat or tears.
That was the last time I heard from my mom. I graduated high school, went to college, told everyone I met never to use my full name or any feline derivative, and never looked back. Like a baptism, I suppose—I wanted to wash my past away. Forward momentum only.
Until now. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the stress of waiting to see when—or whether—my mom decides to call me is forcing me to remember the last time she did.
I don’t bother looking at the time. The early-morning sunlight streams through the space between my curtains, catching small particles of dust floating through the air. I drag myself out of bed, throw my sweat-soiled pajamas in the hamper, and run the coldest shower I can.
But even the water can’t cleanse me of the nagging feeling that I wish my mom would make up her mind already.
Aunt Donna’s urgency about giving her my number suggested that Mom was waiting by her phone, ready to call me as soon as she could.
What’s more likely is that Aunt Donna probably heard from Mom one time, decided the most likely way to get her never to call again was to give her my number, and asked my permission because it seemed like the morally right thing to do.
She was always big on morality. Or, rather, my mom’s lack of it.
She and my mom never got along, especially after Aunt Donna had to take me in.
Shivering and unable to handle the freezing cold water any longer, I turn the faucet near scalding.
I lather soap on my washcloth, but before I can see if the soap will help wash away what the water couldn’t, I’m overcome with a bone-deep exhaustion.
I rest my forehead against the tile, trying to focus on the contrast of the cool porcelain and hot water.
It calms me a little, but not enough. My heart is still pounding in my ears.
After a while, I bolster myself enough to wash off as best as I can.
I dry off with my fluffiest towel, then dress in sweatpants and an old T-shirt.
A tap on the screen of my phone tells me Mom hasn’t called yet either.
The screen is blank—just a shot I snapped of the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan from the Lakefront Trail.
I’m sick of checking my phone, sick of being afraid of it, sick of waking up in a cold sweat after dreams about a time in my life I’d rather keep buried. But because I have no way of contacting my mother and asking her what the hell she’s waiting for, I have to settle for Aunt Donna.
Before I can think too hard about it, I pull up her contact information and press her name. She answers on the third ring.
“Hello?” She sounds groggy, her voice heavily laced with sleep.
Shit. She’s two hours behind me. I finally glance at the clock. 8:03 a.m.
Okay. That’s not as bad as I thought.
“Hi, Aunt Donna.”
“Catrina? What’s going on? It’s early.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I…” Fuck, how do I explain to someone who has never really cared about my emotional wellbeing that I need to know why my mother hasn’t called me yet so I can stop having nightmares? “I had a dream—”
“You’re a grown woman and you’re calling about a bad dream?” A rustling sound comes through the phone as if she’s rolling over and going back to sleep.
“No, I’m calling because I want to know why Mom hasn’t called yet.” I spit it out quickly, like ripping off a bandage. “You were so insistent on giving her my number, I thought the call was imminent, but that was weeks ago. So…where is she? Have you heard from her again?”
Aunt Donna sighs. “She’s probably just worried you won’t answer.”
“Why would she be worried I won’t answer? I haven’t had the opportunity to answer for seventeen years.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, still groggy. “She called you all the time.”
“The last time she called, I was fifteen. I remember it vividly.” And so you do you because you were standing there the whole time, I think but don’t dare say.
“Mm-mm. She called on your birthday every year. And your high school graduation. A few times in between.”
That can’t possibly be true. If she had called, I would have talked to her. I lived for those phone calls, however brief. “No, I’d have remembered that.”
The line goes silent. I look at my screen to be sure Aunt Donna is still there. When I put the phone back to my ear, I speak again, more firmly this time. “Aunt Donna? Did you not tell me when my mom called?”
Finally, she lets out a frustrated huff. “Talking to her wasn’t good for you.” She sounds perfectly awake and alert now. I suppose that’s what happens when you realize you inadvertently admitted to lying to your niece for seventeen years.
My free hand shakes, and my entire body buzzes with rage. “That wasn’t for you to decide.”
“You were in my care. I had to look after you, even though I never asked for it. And I did a damn good job. Some foster kids aren’t so lucky.”
She’s probably being defensive, but that sounds vaguely like a threat—like she could still take away the bare minimum of kindness she showed me when I lived with her.
“I should have been allowed to talk to my mother if she called.”
“What good would it have done? She wasn’t coming to get you, and even if she did, you’d have been right back with me the minute she fell back into her old ways.
” Aunt Donna isn’t even a little apologetic.
She’s slipped into her holier-than-thou tone she always used for her lectures, especially ones that were inspired by my mother’s behavior.
She might not have. If I were with her, maybe she’d have turned things around faster. It’s impossible to know, of course, but logic be damned. My heart wants to believe that we would have been good for each other. That we could have helped each other. That I could have saved her.
My knees suddenly give out, and I sink to the floor. I rub the side of my foot against the cool laminate flooring, trying to let it ground me. It’s no use. I feel like I’m floating away.
“You told her not to come get me.” It’s a statement, not a question. A realization that has forced its way into my brain, uninvited, and taken root there.