5. Delia
Five
Delia
M y head throbs when I wake. This happens whenever I have a good crying jag. Not even a steaming hot shower can wrangle my body’s response to sobbing. My sinuses join the party and wreak havoc on my face. I’m puffy and swollen and I haven’t even opened my eyes yet to look at myself.
“There’s cereal on the table for you.” I don’t respond to my mom but my stomach does. I’m hungry. Pushing the covers off me I crawl out of bed and stretch. The morning air is already humid. The kind of humidity where you don’t want to touch yourself let alone anyone else lest you might stick together and never be able to separate. I step out into the sun-dolloped shade and droplets of dew and inhale. I love to smell the morning air.
At our folding table, I grab my bowl of cereal and bring it with me to my chair .
“Are you going to talk to me today?” Mom asks, cocking her head.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and squint my eyes before shooting her a dagger-filled look, tilting my chin higher.
“Not likely.” I shove a spoonful of breakfast into my mouth and decimate it angrily.
Mom pouts. “Babe, come on. I know it was a big surprise but you can’t ice me out indefinitely.”
“A big surprise?” I spit out. “That’s what you call that? A big surprise?” My voice squeaks higher in rage.
Mom sighs and looks up. Her throat tightens as she swallows and when she looks at me again there are tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry Delia. For a lot of things, but not for keeping you from him.”
My jaw hangs open as slack as my spoon in my bowl. “Are you kidding me?”
She throws her hands in the air, frustrated. “You don’t understand. You don’t know the whole story.”
Snorting, I scoop another mouthful of cereal into my mouth. “How could I? It’s not like you told me ,” I say around my breakfast.
“Fair, but I had my reasons.”
“Oh, okay Mom. Great. And magically these reasons are all, what? Poof! Disappeared and now here we are ready to make nice and air out all the dirty family secrets?”
Mom blinks back tears and rolls her shoulders. “My mother died. Last year. I came to pay my respects.”
I stare blankly at her. “What? As far as I knew your parents didn’t exist and you never paid any respects over the years under that ruse so what the actual eff Mom?”
She gives me a seething look. “I don’t expect you to understand. But I’m telling you why we’re here.”
“A year ago? It’s taken you a year to come and grieve? How the hell did you even know she died?” I squawk.
“A couple years ago, I started reading the town’s local paper online. I saw the obituary. And yes babe, it’s taken me a year to work up the courage to come back here. It doesn’t exactly harbor any good memories.”
I put my bowl in my lap and cross my arms over my chest. “When did you leave home?”
Mom draws in a deep breath, the kind she does when she’s listening and focusing on her guided meditation tracks. “May, two thousand and five.”
I gasp mentally doing math. “But you were six months pregnant by then.”
She nods as a tear slips down her cheek. “I was. And I was terrified.”
“And young,” I add.
“And young. Barely older than you are now honestly.”
“Why’d you leave? What was so bad?”
She glances over her shoulder in the direction of the house, then back to me. “They were, honey. The tighter they tried to hold on to me the harder I worked to break away. My parents…” she sighs, “they’re big church people.” She laughs but it’s not a real laugh. “The whole damn town are big church people.” I cringe.
Mom and I are a lot of things, but church people are not one of them. That’s not to say I don’t know a lot about Christianity. Mom and I studied all the religions we could when I was little. We talked about them all. Sometimes we even spent a Sunday in various churches to experience them. Explored their core beliefs and eventually came to the conclusion that, at their foundation, they’re all the same; don’t be a dick. Be kind. Don’t cheat, beat or steal. Just…be a good human being. And that’s how we’ve lived. We made our own religion and followed it together.
Genuinely curious, “You were a church person?” I ask.
She grins and nods her head. “Yup. A bonafide believer in my youth. Even went to some rad Christian rock youth concert events.”
“Mom,” I breathe, a smile curling my lips slightly, “did you have God antennas?”
She holds her hands up as if she’s an old-school antenna. “Tuning in to God was all the rage.”
It was a Sunday, and we were sitting in the back row of one of those Church Of Life mega church services just to check it out. I was probably six, and during the sermon some people had begun to close their eyes and hold their hands out and I had tugged mom’s sleeve and whisper asked her if they trying to receive God, to tune in because they looked like old tv antennas the way they held their arms outstretched and twisted and moved. Like they were trying to fine-tune the reception of something. We’d had an apartment with a crappy old tv that we had to adjust the antenna arms just the same way for a single station to come in, and even then it was blurry.
I chuckle. I can’t even picture it honestly. My mom, the free spirit. The wild child. A church antenna person. “I’m sorry. I just…” I snort.
She laughs too, her eyes softening. “It was a long time ago and by your age, I had an entirely different opinion on what it meant to be Christian. I will tell you this, after being on either side of the fence, I know now that both my opinions were wrong. Neither was the right choice for me and I’m quite content with my spirituality these days.”
“Why didn’t you tell me we had family? Why all this time did you keep it from me?”
Mom comes to me and drops to her knees at my chair. She moves the bowl from my lap to the ground before cradling my face between her hands. “I never expected to come back here. I never thought I’d want to. I didn’t miss my parents, babe. Not a single day since you were born have I thought about my parents. When I saw her name in the paper. Her obituary, I don’t know. Something snapped. A dam opened and no matter how hard I tried to plug it, it persisted and won. It’s been a long time, seventeen years. And when we got on the road I simply followed my gut. For the first time in almost two decades, my instinct was to come home.” She releases my face and falls back on her rear end in the grass. “Now I’m not sure it was the right thing to do.”
“Why?” I ask.
“It’s messed with you. You really scared me last night when you took off. You’ve never left me before. We’re always able to talk about things. And Dad seems beside himself. I can’t tell if he’s happy I’m here, or if he’s sad. Maybe he’s happy to see you and still angry at me. I honestly can’t read him. Never could really.”
I suck in a deep breath. “Well, all we have is time. Maybe you should try a little harder with your dad before you find a job and see if things work out. I mean, he must have missed you a little right? And your mom too?”
Mom instantly begins crying. “I will never get to tell her how amazing you are. If there was one thing I’d wish for, it’s that she got to meet you. We destroyed our relationship—my parents and I, but I know that she would have loved you.”
I hop out of my chair and wrap my arms around her. “Mom, up until you knew she died, you didn’t even care if she knew me. Stop this nonsense.” I pull away and use my thumbs to wipe away her tears, the way she does for me.
“Delia, baby, just know this…I thought with all my heart and soul that I was doing what was best for me and you.”
“Shut up Mom, you’re being dramatic. We’re here now. I have a grandfather and maybe I’ll even like him.”
“Love you baby girl.” She strokes my hair.
“I’m not a baby. Love you too,” I say smiling at her. I stand up and dust myself off. “We’re not done. I have loads more questions for you, but this crap is emotionally draining. Take me into town and buy me ice cream.”
“Delia, it’s not even eleven yet.” she chides.
I shrug. “It’s hotter than balls out Mom. Ice cream was made for days like today. Come on…. You owe me.”
Mom rolls her eyes and swats at my shin from the ground. “Fine. Let me freshen up.”