Chapter 38 Come to Mama
Come to Mama
Eve
A couple of days later, Eve was sitting at her parents’ dining table for the first time since Christmas, studying them both as she waited for the correct set of words to find her.
Ones that wouldn’t put them on the defense, or start another argument with no resolution.
It was the reason she hadn’t done her therapy assignment the week before, and why she was so reluctant to do it now—she didn’t have those words.
But it was imperative to take her therapy seriously, and after the session she’d just had, Eve wanted to keep up her progress.
So she finally asked to talk, and, to her parents’ credit, they were quick to accommodate.
“So…are you going to say anything?” Joan asked after taking a long sip of her Earl Grey, her narrow brown eyes studying her daughter.
Eve shook her head, unconfident about where to even start. “I’d like to have an open discussion about what happened when I was in high school, Ma.”
“I knew that’s what this was about,” Joan scoffed dismissively. “I do not have time to re-litigate this with you, Eve.”
“Mom.” Eve reached out to hold her mother’s hand before she could get up, her eyes big and pleading. “Please don’t make me beg you.”
“Say what you want to say.” Joan waved her off.
With a heavy and cautious breath, Eve began.
“I say this knowing that me getting pregnant at seventeen was a shock to your system, and not something you could’ve prepared for.
But I need you to know…I need you to listen when I tell you, how much it hurt that you and Daddy, without ever once considering what I wanted to do, forced me into a situation where I could neither get an abortion nor keep my baby. ”
“We’re Catholic, Eve. Abortion was never going to be an option in this household,” Roger finally spoke, his deep voice stern.
“I know that was the line you held, but can I just ask why you think children should have to abide by rules they never agreed to in the first place? Who gets to decide that I’m Catholic?”
“Your lineage decides,” Joan said, a scowl hardening her soft features. “Our religion is a part of this family just as much as your last name and your complexion.”
“The religion of our oppressors means that much to you?”
“It’s the religion of our ancestors .”
“And that meant I had no choice in the matter? I find it hard to believe you had a child just to take away her agency.”
“You’ve made your choice, obviously,” Joan said. “But at seventeen, your choices belonged to us.”
“So if I’d gotten pregnant at eighteen, I would’ve been able to make my own? Because of that arbitrary line that makes eighteen-year-olds adults, a few months would’ve made the difference in me getting to keep my baby?”
“Please stop calling it your baby.”
“He was mine.”
“It is someone else’s. You carried it, and then it was someone else’s.”
“Because you didn’t give me a choice,” Eve said.
“And I don’t know if it was a difficult decision for you and Daddy, but those nine months were unbearable for me.
And having to watch my son taken away by strangers is the worst thing you could’ve done to me.
” Eve watched her father rise from the table, and she wondered whether this was the part where they kicked her out of their home again.
Defiance was a cardinal sin in their household, and it was clear that asking for honesty fell under the umbrella of dissent.
But her father only walked away.
“Daddy?” Eve called after him.
Even her mother appeared perplexed. “Roger, where are you going?”
“I’m not doing this. You want to listen to her whine, you go ahead.”
“Roger…”
“It’s okay,” Eve said. She was only surprised that it was her father and not her mother spurning her.
Her relationship with Joan had always been fraught with tension, as Eve believed it was her staunch Catholicism that influenced her father.
Over the years, he’d try to come to her defense, or at least be kinder about the topic when her mother was so unforgiving.
She never imagined him being the problem when she finally gained the tools to approach this like an adult.
Tears fell down her face before she even knew she wanted to cry; then she wanted to scream, exhausted of those tears. Another reason she hated therapy.
“Eve,” Joan whispered, her gaze and her tone suddenly softened. When Eve looked up at her, she nodded. “Say what you want to say.”
She exhaled, having forgotten what they’d spoken of at this point. “I don’t even know.”
“Well, can I ask, what did you think you were going to do with a baby at your age?”
“Plenty of women have children young, and they go on to do great things.”
“With great struggle.”
“I’ve struggled anyway, Ma. I’ve been angry and sad.” Her voice quivered, but she told herself to keep going. “I’ve been impenetrable to any man who’s ever tried to get close to me. I’ve resented you and Daddy for half my life. All you did was make me not want to be honest with you or anyone else.”
“Eve…”
“Leo and I had two miscarriages last year. And I fell apart because of it.”
Joan paused. “You what?”
“I didn’t want to tell you, because I didn’t want lectures about premarital sex and all the things I was doing wrong to cause them—”
“Eve, I would never say anything like that,” Joan cut in, her tone morphing into concern now. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry about that.
Anyone with an ounce of decency would be.
I need you to recognize the damage you caused by making that decision for me.
” She wiped angrily at her face as she spoke.
She still wasn’t saying the right thing.
Dr.Garvey told her that her healing couldn’t rely on her parents’ affirmation. But God, she needed it.
“You guys barely talked to me about it,” Eve said.
“You sent me to that dank, lonely house with Grandma…away from my friends, from you, for eight and a half months, with only a handful of dour phone calls and one visit to show for it. You wanted me to know you were disappointed? Mission accomplished. But you made me feel unloved.”
“Oh, sweetheart. We wouldn’t have been so worried for your future if we didn’t love you.”
“Being more concerned about a degree than my well-being isn’t love, though, Ma.”
Joan frowned again but nodded, seemingly accepting Eve’s version of events.
“But isn’t there any solace in the fact that you’ve had a good life since then?
You met a man who loves you dearly. If you cannot conceive naturally, then perhaps it’s time someone return the favor you once bestowed upon another family.
Adoption is such a beautiful thing, honey. ”
“Ma, stop it,” Eve said. “This isn’t a conversation about grandchildren. Or Leo. I left him because I didn’t like him. He wasn’t what I wanted. This isn’t what I wanted.”
“Well, what do you want, Eve? For me to change the past? I can’t do that.”
“I know you can’t.” She spoke quieter now. “I just want you to take responsibility for it. God forbid you admit you were wrong and just fucking apologize for it.”
“Eve!”
“I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes to compose herself. “I am. But so many times throughout my life, you’ve made me feel inadequate for not wanting the things you wanted for me. And if I could just have an acknowledgment—”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Joan took her daughter’s hand this time, wrapping it in her own. “No. Nothing about you is inadequate.”
“Then why do I feel like this?”
“We did put a lot of expectation on you,” she said. “And the pregnancy did shock us. We didn’t know what to do. A baby having a baby. I just wanted you to have your life back. I didn’t want to take away your potential.”
“I wish you’d been willing to see it some other way,” Eve said, sniffling back her tears.
“I do, too,” Joan said. “Because I see this sorrow that I’ve caused. I heard it that night you called from Gatlinburg. I’ve seen my daughter only twice in eight months because of it. And I am sorry.”
Eve looked at her mother—peered at her—trying to dissect her expression, her words, her touch, desperate to find sincerity there.
“I wish I had known better. I wish I’d known I’d be hurting you far more this way,” Joan said. “Because that was never my intent, Eve. Your father and I, we were just trying to figure out what was best for you. And…and maybe we got it wrong.”
As Eve melted into another fit of sobs, her mother released her grip and rushed to Eve’s side of the table.
Eve tried to wipe her face in preparation, but the tears only fell harder.
And when Joan wrapped her arms around her, Eve let go.
She fell into her mother’s arms, the helpless child who’d been waiting for this embrace for nearly two decades finally fulfilled. And she wept.
It was two months past Christmas, but it was the best gift she could’ve gotten from her mother. She lamented that her father was unwilling to do the same.
But she would take this. She’d needed this.
—
Eve left her parents’ not long after her productive heart-to-heart with her mom, as one of the other assignments from her therapist was weekly get-togethers with her friends.
But before she could take off, Joan informed her of a package she had waiting in the coat closet.
Eve couldn’t imagine what would have been there—she’d stopped sending packages to their address at some point during the Obama administration.
But when she retrieved the small rectangular box from the closet floor, it all came crashing back to her.
Jamie’s Christmas gift. Her name and his return address were written by Jack, and that ache she’d mostly gotten rid of had lodged itself right back in the center of her heart.
“What is it?” Joan had asked, noticing her smile.
“Just a Christmas gift,” she’d said. They’d had a good talk, but she didn’t have time to open up the can of emotional worms that was Jamie. “Thanks, Ma.”