Page 21 of Pieces Of You

“Getting dressed! I’ll be out in a second.”

“Nudist family?” Jamie quips, and I openly gag at the thought.

“Shut up.” I don’t tell her that what she could’ve walked into is the new normal: Mom sitting at the table, working on a puzzle in the same robe she’s in almost twenty-four seven. She barely leaves the house, not even to look for a job. And I don’t push her. I can’t. Because I understand that it isn’t forever. Right now, she’s just… stuck on being broken.

“Who does puzzles?” Jamie asks, motioning to the table.

“Mom,” I answer, walking over to it. “And me, sometimes. It’s like, our thing.”

“That’s… cute.”

I don’t respond, too focused on the single piece missing from a completed area. I flick my finger through the piled-up pieces and find the right one, putting it in its place.

“I hate when you do that,” Mom says, and I look up at her standing in the kitchen doorway, now dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, hair brushed to one side.

I can’t help but smile at the sight of her. “Mom, this is Jamie. Jamie, my mom, Tammy,” I say, pointing between them.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Jamie says, sounding almost shy.

“Tammy is fine,” Mom responds, stepping toward us. “What are you guys doing here?”

Grasping Jamie’s shoulders, I push her toward Mom. “She needs clothes.”

“What’s wrong with the ones she has on?”

“Besides the obvious?” I state. “Grandma’s clothes are covered in mothballs.”

Mom sighs before scolding, “Don’t be a dick, Holden.”

Jamie snorts. “I just assumed it was his default setting.”

10

Jamie

They saythat social awareness kicks in between the ages of eight and ten. For me, it was two days after my eighth birthday. I only remember this because two days prior, my mother had managed to sneak in a whispered “Happy Birthday, baby” along with a kiss on my forehead. There was no cake, no party, nothing to celebrate the fact that I’d somehow made it that far.

That was the day it was confirmed, though I’d sensed earlier than that something was…differentabout me. If it wasn’t the heated whispers from behind open palms from adults, then it was the constant teasing and isolation from other kids.

Looking back, I wished I’d askedwhy. What was it about me that had them doing those things? But I knew, deep down, why I never asked—for the same reasons I never asked Mom about my birth dad. I knew the truth would hurt me, and it did.

* * *

I wasin second grade when I found myself in a random room at my school. The principal was there. So was the school nurse and my teacher, Miss Holland. They were huddled in one corner while a woman I’d never seen before sat in the chair next to mine. There was a single sheet of paper on the table in front of me, plain white, with an outline of a cartoon character I’d seen on the TV the few Saturday mornings I was permitted to watch.

I remember looking down at the paper, fearful of why I was there. Why everyone was there, and I could only come up with one reason.

Earlier that day, I’d been doing the same thing: looking down at a sheet of paper. Only that one was a math worksheet. The worksheet was stained, smudged with dirt, and it took me a moment to realize that the dirt was coming from me. My hands, specifically. Grime coated almost every inch. Darkness pooled on my fingers, especially around and under my fingernails.

I’d looked up and around me, seeing my classmates all busy doing the same work. They sat together on tables made for four, and I sat on my own.

I always sat on my own.

I’d raised my hand, waited for Miss Holland to look up from helping another student. I remember clearing my throat, using my voice for the first time that day. “Miss Holland,” I’d said, and I waited for her to make her way to me. I didn’t say anything more, I just showed her my hands and then my worksheet.

She’d looked down at me; her lips pulled down in a frown. The same way the strange lady—who I later worked out was a social worker—looked at me. “What color do you think you want to go with, Jameson?” the social worker, who introduced herself as Sophia, asked.

I looked down at the cartoon character, then the plastic cup filled with colored pencils. I didn’t have colored pencils at home. When Mom locked me in the closet under the stairs, she only gave me blank pages and black pens—pens with so little ink the lines I’d create would end up fading before I could even finish the drawings.

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