Chapter Nineteen #2
“I’m happy to see you,” Lane said, making Jeanette’s breath catch. “And you look good, Jeanette. You look really good sober.”
“Thank you,” Jeanette managed to get out as tears cascaded down her face.
Lane held the folder in her lap, allowing her fingers to rest on Jeanette’s name.
“I came because of this,” Lane said while Jeanette’s gaze dropped to the folder in confusion.
“I was going through applications today,” Lane continued, “Employment and volunteer applications.”
Jeanette blinked. “Applications?”
“The Full Plate Project.”
Jeanette’s face shifted with more confusion, then nervousness. “I don’t understand. Why would you be going through applications for that? You work there or something?” Her mother questioned.
Lane opened the folder and turned the application toward her. “You applied there.”
Jeanette stared at the paper with her face flushed. “Oh. Yes. I did, but wh—” Jeanette was still talking when Lane asked her why with a bitterness in her tone that made her flinch before she answered.
“Because they helped me,” she said. “The Full Plate Project helped me a lot of times when I was using. When I didn’t have any food and was too ashamed to go anywhere else.
Sometimes I went inside, and sometimes I sent somebody else because I didn’t want people seeing me looking like that.
” Her voice cracked, “They never made me feel dirty, even when I was.”
Lane’s fingers tightened around the edge of the folder. Jeanette looked down at the application, eyes soft with embarrassment.
“I saw they were hiring and I know I probably won’t get the job because I don’t have much work history that looks good on paper and I know my record isn’t clean. But I thought maybe I could volunteer after discharge. Give back to the same place that never turned me away.”
Lane stared at her mother as she realized how full circle this moment was.
Jeanette had eaten because of The Full Plate Project.
Jeanette had survived some of her hungriest days because of the place Lane built out of hunger and abandonment.
Jeanette had been fed by the daughter she had once failed to feed.
Jeanette looked up slowly. “Lane?”
Lane’s voice came out barely above a whisper. “I founded it, The Full Plate Project,” Lane said, “I own and operate it.”
Jeanette only stared as what Lane said finally registered.
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Lane confirmed, nodding as tears blurred her vision.
Jeanette covered her face with both hands as tears of shame ran free. Her mother’s cries pulled from a place that had gone too long without light, and Lane’s tears joined her.
“Oh God,” Jeanette cried, “Oh my God, Lane, you fed me after I let you go hungry. I didn’t know,” her voice drenched in shame, “I swear I didn’t know.
I knew you were doing good because I saw things online after I got here.
I saw your name with Nova and that famous rapper’s wife.
I didn’t know it was yours; I’ll look for work elsewhere. ”
Lane remained quiet, not because she wanted to but because words had escaped her.
“I understand if you never forgive me. I know I don’t deserve it.
I need to say that before I tell you my story.
Not as an excuse for the type of shitty mother I was to you.
I was raised without love. My mama treated me like being born was something I did to spite her, and my father was no better.
Men in my family always seemed to think girls were born owing them something.
I didn’t know how to be safe for you because nobody ever made me safe,” she spoke as Lane’s stomach clenched at her mother’s revelation, but she didn’t interrupt.
“I was abused my whole life, by people who should’ve protected me.
Then I was called fast for surviving it.
Lane, I learned cruelty where I should’ve learned love before anything else.
When I got pregnant with you—I didn’t know if your father was my high school boyfriend or my own father.
I didn’t know until you were born and you looked like my high school sweetheart.
You had his eyes, nose, and those damn freckles.
I was so happy you were his and not a product of incest. By the time you came into this world, I was already broken.
Still, your daddy loved me, and his family even took me in.
When he was killed during a store robbery going to get you diapers, his family resented me and you for his death and put us out,” she finished as Lane’s tears came faster now.
Jeanette looked up at her with eyes so red it nearly broke Lane in half. Her mother was dealt a tragic hand, and instead of breaking those chains of abuse, she kept the cycle going. Lane covered her mouth in an attempt to keep from bawling, but it was useless.
“I was so dead inside that I couldn't give you something I never had. Instead of learning from you, I was jealous of you. You refused to let your circumstances snatch away your potential. I was looking at you working for the life I almost had while becoming the girl I might’ve been if somebody had loved me, and instead of protecting you, I resented you for thriving,” she admitted.
Lane sobbed at the truth because she finally had insight into why Jeanette gave her the ugliest parts of her.
The tears came from the girl who had to seek safety behind the library’s walls and hide her scholastic aptitude so as not to seem better than her surroundings.
Lane cried for the little girl that wanted a mother so badly she refused to accept the truth until she finally left and never looked back.