Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Word about the promise ring spreads like an infectious disease. People are texting me and tagging me on socials before I get home.
Amber and Mo send several texts, demanding details.
By the time I’m home, I’m exhausted even though I haven’t really seen anyone but Jason.
Marcus and I are texting about used bookstores.
Mom calls me into her room as soon as I get upstairs.
“Do I go purple pantsuit or chiffon dress?” she asks, holding up each outfit even though she is in her pajamas. The city is honoring the end of Mom’s first and only term as mayor tomorrow.
“They’re very different,” I say. “A power suit is good for a last impression.”
Mom smiles. “A girl after my own heart,” she says, setting down the dress. My mother has been saying things like this ever since I woke up from the coma. She’s been warm and funny and tender, available, things I never thought my mother could even be.
It’s making me doubt if I imagined the last eighteen years of my life, if the loving but distant mom I had only existed in my mind.
“Mom,” I say, sitting on the edge of her bed as she tries to select a matching handbag and shoes to pair with the suit. “I feel like…”
I genuinely have no clue how I’m supposed to make sense of the different versions of my mother. The last time I saw her—the coma her, at least—she was about to lose everything. Now she’s getting some incredible honor by the very city council that wanted her out.
“Is something going on? Is the city really honoring you for a successful first term?”
Mom looks at me, sighs, then puts down the suit. “I should have known you wouldn’t be fooled.”
“Fooled by what?” I ask.
Mom sits on the other side of the bed. “No,” she says. “Honey, I’m actually being forced out by the city council. Because of some…bad choices on my part.”
“Was it an affair?”
Mom’s eyes widen. “How did you…”
The only person who knew, who could have told me this in my sleep, was my mother. And she clearly did not.
But I just frown, ignoring her question. “Right, and nothing says forced out like a giant party?”
Mom plays with a loose string on her comforter. “It was a deal I struck. If I agreed to resign, give up my reelection bid, and concede on some of our political gains and wins over the past three years, they’d let me resign and leave with my head held high.”
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I say.
“It hurt like hell,” Mom says, “but I think it’s for the best. A stronger person might have refused to bend and chosen to bear the consequences of what they’d done, but I just…
I worked so hard for their respect, you know?
And for the sake of every other Black politician that enters local politics after me, I didn’t want to leave such an ugly stain. ”
I feel a sudden hot rage rise in my chest. “Maybe you shouldn’t have done it, then.”
Mom’s look of surprise takes up her whole face. “Excuse me?”
I should back down. I know I should, but I am just as furious as before.
Furious that she made such a big, careless mistake that could have cost us everything.
Furious that she wanted me believing she really was being honored by the city.
Furious that in the coma version of reality, I had to comfort her, despite the fact that she had screwed up.
But most of all, I’m furious that something happened in the coma that was real and she wasn’t going to tell me.
I’d have gone on thinking everything from the coma was wrong, when it turns out some things were spot-on.
“You’re a hypocrite and a liar,” I say, ignoring the alarm bells going off in my head, warning me that I’m going too far. “For years, you’ve pretended to be perfect. Judged everyone who wasn’t. Accepted only the highest standards.
“If I brought home a report card with an A minus, you’d fixate on the minus. When I came second in track, your whole thing was how I could come first. Be the first Black girl to be district champion. If I talked too loud during one of your events, you said it reflected on all of us.”
“Of course, I always want you to be your best,” she says, defensive.
“If you wanted me to be my best, why were you only ever concerned about what other people thought? If I tripped, you’d probably ask who saw me.”
I’m surprised by how spiteful I sound.
“Nothing Dad did was ever good enough for you. From how clean his closet was to his friends to how he took care of me, there was always, always something wrong.”
Mom blinks. “I was just trying…I wanted the best for all of us.”
“That’s what you say, but you mean you wanted everyone else to be the best and you just wanted to look good, look like the best.”
My mother flinches like she’s been slapped. “That is not true. Where is all this coming from?”
“Did you even think when you were sleeping with stupid Brian of how it would affect us? How it would affect me?” I ask. Something has turned Mom’s expression from hurt to shock, but I don’t stop to find out what. “Or does that only count where other people are concerned?”
“Zadie, I have no idea what has gotten into you, but I’m not going to listen to any more of this.”
“Well, then I’m not coming to your party tomorrow.”
That catches her attention. Mom hates to miss an opportunity to show me off, me with my great grades and my Jason and my everything. Her voice is quiet. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because it’s unfair!” I yell. “Because Dad is gone, and all he ever felt the whole time he was here was that he wasn’t good enough.”
Mom shakes her head. “That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is! You hated everything about him. He was too messy, too impractical.”
“I knew your father was a mess when I married him,” Mom insists. “I loved him in spite of it.”
Bullshit, I think.
“And yes, I may have demanded the highest standards for you and him, but I demand that of myself too. Absolutely,” she says.
“I just thought you’d care that you had come so close to destroying everything we built.”
“And what would that look like if I cared? Self-flagellating? Cursing myself? What exactly would be good enough to you?” she asks. “I made a mistake. Sometimes people make mistakes.”
“Dad’s mistakes were never okay.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“He died alone!” I shout. “He died alone because of you. Because he didn’t fit into this image you had of who he should be.”
Mom blinks like she’s stunned. “What do you think caused my and your father’s divorce?”
“You weren’t happy,” I say with a shrug.
She is quiet a moment and then she says, “Your father ended it. He thought we just didn’t fit together anymore like we once did, and at first, I didn’t agree. But over time, I saw it.”
My turn to look shell-shocked. “He ended it?” I repeat. “But he…he couldn’t write and that frustrated you.”
“Because it frustrated him.”
“He was disorganized.”
“Oh, Zadie,” Mom says. “He was the most disorganized man I’ve ever met, but if I didn’t leave him when he made us miss the flight to our honeymoon, then no amount of disorganization would have done it.”
“So he…wanted to be alone?”
“I don’t know if he wanted to be alone, but he liked the life he had. He was happy. Happier than he’d been with us,” Mom says. “And don’t take that to mean he loved you any less than he did, but being free was important to him. And he was free.”
A giant lump sits directly in the base of my throat, making it impossible to speak.
“About the…other things you’ve said, I know I haven’t always been the best mother, that sometimes I’ve let you down, but you have to know that your opinion of me has always mattered the most to me.
Not some stranger or acquaintance, yours.
And if you don’t know that, I must have failed you in a big way, because it’s always been true. ”
Her eyes get fierce. “Everything in me wants to fight back against the council, to point out that, despite my mistake, I’ve served this town well and don’t deserve to be shunned. But I don’t want to make things worse than they have to be for you. That’s another reason why I took the deal.”
Mom leans over to me and extends her arms. “I love you, Zadie.”
I swat a tear from under my bottom eyelashes and close the distance between us. “I love you too.”
I’m still hugging her when I speak into her shoulder. “Mom? I really am taking a gap year.”
I hear Mom take a big breath before she gently lets me out of her hold. “Okay,” she says cautiously.
It is not an agreement; she is simply open to the discussion. So, we discuss. We talk about Princeton and majors and the future, and I tell her about wanting to have things I love. Choosing things because I love them and not because I should.
“I hear you,” Mom says, “but a job doesn’t always feel like falling in love, Zadie. It’s hard work. Your father loved to write but it was hard for him. Things you love can still be difficult.”
“I know,” I say.
A few minutes later, right before I leave her room, Mom says, “By the way, how did you know that it was Brian, at work, who I…?”
“Just a hunch,” I say.
She gives me a weird look.
The fact that some things in the coma world were real changes everything. I’m not crazy.
For the first time in days, there is a glimmer of hope.