Page 110 of If Not for My Baby
My mom puts down the knife. “How on earth do you figure that?”
My chest has never felt so tight. “Forget it.”
“Clementine B—”
“Because you had me,” I blurt. “Because I came along and ruined your life. You and Dad might still be together if I’d never been born.” I look down to pick at my nail. “Youwould have never had to raise me…You might have been happier, healthier…”
It’s like shaking out a rock that’d been in my shoe my entire life. How long had I needed to be useful—to take care of her and everyone else’s needs before my own because of some kind of universal debt I owed for being born?
When I look up, my mom has tears in her eyes. “You are my entire world, Clementine. You make me happier than anything else in it, and I wouldn’t trade you or when I had you for anything. Not even to have your father back. It is the gift of a lifetime to be your mom. That’s why I wish I’d done a better job of it.”
“Hey.” I round the kitchen counter to pull her into a hug. “You’ve done the best job. You still do.”
When she releases me, she says, “I never should have let what happened with your father affect what I taught you about love…We were just kids.”
“That’s not what—”
“I never meant to put so much pressure on you to settle down. I just looked at you and saw all I could have been, all I could have had…I’m sure you looked back at me and saw a cautionary tale.”
“Mom, no—I never felt that way.”
And maybe I’m lying—I did fear her pain and her loneliness—but it’s the truth, too. I also assumed if my dad could leave someone as extraordinary as my mom, there was no hope at all for me.
But she’s like Willow when she knows I have treats on me. “Then tell me what happened. Why you’ve been walkingthrough the last two weeks like there isn’t a light on inside of you anymore. You tell me he didn’t break your heart, so I’m trying to figure out why you broke your own.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I told you—”
“No, you didn’t really—”
“I can’t leave everything behind, change my entirelife—”
“What life?!”
My jaw goes slack. And strangely, my cheeks heat with shame.
My mom’s eyes are still wet, and she raises them up to the kitchen ceiling with a sigh. “You’re a waitress at the Happy Tortilla, honey. You spend your days taking care of me when it should have been the opposite. Meanwhile you’re allowing what you love to do—this unbelievable skill you have, something you aregreatat—to pass you by. I’ve been a crummy mom allowing you to use me and my sickness as an excuse to avoid putting yourself out there. To avoid reallyliving.” She wipes a tear from her eye as if it’s offended her. “I don’t care if you go after this musician or not. Fuck him. He’s just a man, Clementine. I just want you to go aftersomethingfor yourself.”
She’s right and it hurts like an axe wound. I chew at my lip until I taste blood.
“You are such a good kid. You’ve given so much up to be there for me all these years, and I’m not doubting for one second that that was done with anything but compassion. I love that about you. Do you hear me?”
When I nod, I knock a few loose tears down my cheeks.
“But you’ve been scared, too. And I haven’t helped withthat. Falling in love does not mean you will end up like me. Trying does not mean you will fail. Pain is not inevitable.”
“Mom—”
“I’m serious. And if you go after your dreams, whatever they are, I will be just fine. Clinical trial or not. I’m your mom. Let me be a good one, okay?”
This time when we hug, we don’t let go for a long, long time.
—
I don’t sleep that night.
I watchOnceon my laptop and zone out through the entire thing but still cry during the reprise of “Falling Slowly.” I think about Tom and where he might be in the world right now. Why he hasn’t called or texted. I try not to tell myself I blew our entire relationship out of proportion and he’s already writing a tragic love song about some other woman. Or that Jen was right and he’s lying in Cara’s bed with a cigarette while I watch a movie about a vacuum repairman and fold my laundry.
I think about my mom and how long she might have been burying those fears about being a good mother. Part of me is angry it took her so long to say something—that she wanted to keep me in this house, guard herself against being abandoned yet again more than she wanted me to find happiness outside of Cherry Grove. I don’t know what to do with that anger, so whenOnceends I look up a bootleg YouTube recording ofHadestown.
