Page 28 of More Than A Game

We’ve had the same nanny living with our family now since Penny was six, and my mother refuses to call her by her name, Margaret. She insists on referring to her as Nanny. Margaret is a seventy-year-old sweetheart. She’s kind and comforting. She likes to bake cookies and sneaks them to us when my parents aren’t around to harass us about watching what we’re eating.

She hugged me the first time I laid in bed crying over a boy, gave me my first sex talk, and took me to buy a box of condoms when she realized I was having sex with my first boyfriend. I can still hear her. “Now, Sabrina, if you think you’re mature enough to be having sex, you have to be mature enough to be responsible.”

I was mortified. Scared to death someone would see me buying condoms. At my very next doctor’s appointment, I got the birth control shot.

My mother claps her hands together gently and smiles. “Never forget, girls. Your father would not win his elections if it weren’t for us.”

Yup. Because that’s what I want to hear right now.

Perfect thing to lay on your daughters’ shoulders.

She stands and motions for my sister. “Come along, Penelope. We have to leave now if I am to make my next appointment.” She turns to me and air kisses each cheek. “Goodbye Sabrina. Please do something with your hair before the next time I see you.”

With that parting comment, she’s gone, and I’m left wondering if my relationship with my mother might have played a part in my freak-out this morning. Am I ever going to feel like I’m enough? I’ve never seen an especially healthy relationship in my life. The few boys I dated in high school were just that—boys. They weren’t anything special and definitely weren’t serious. There was no fear of trusting them with my heart.

If the people who are supposed to love you can hurt you continuously, what can the people you choose to let in do to your heart?

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