My Mother and the List
After breakfast Albert started removing my things from the room I had slept in since I was four. I was 13. He'd known my mother 11 months, and known me for about half that time. My mother, Sabrina, stayed downstairs, cleaning up the kitchen. I stood in the hallway watching him, wondering how all of this had been decided without me knowing, yet knowing this was going to happen. That I knew Doris would take my room is the first thing on my list when I talk about Sabrina, who was my mother.
Doris was Albert's daughter's name, and she was 9 years old. She had blonde hair with natural curls, and a voice that became shrill when she wanted something. Albert had divorced her mother for reasons I was never told, and she stayed with Albert all but two weekends a month. Doris wanted the bedroom I had slept in since I was four because it had a window seat and a view of the Front Range. I had dirty brown hair that looked that way no matter how often I washed it. My mother came upstairs where I was still standing, after all of my stuff had been taken away and Doris was arranging her stuff in the bedroom. My mother told me, "Doris needs a proper place in the house." I continued to watch Doris arrange her stuff in the bedroom. "You're older. You're more adaptable." I looked at her. She must not have liked the face I made because then she said, "You've always been dramatic."
My stuff ended up in my mother's home office, which had been the smallest of the three bedrooms. It had a window with a view of the windowless side of neighbor's garage. After a week the old couch I used to sit on and watch my mother work was replaced with a narrow mattress and a frame without a headboard. Her desk remained in the room, I was told, because it had important documents in it, and there was nowhere else to put it. I had to share my closet with my mother because she had to make space in their closet for Albert's clothes.
Before my mother met Albert, she was a single mother. I remember her laughter when I was young, how it used to be like sunlight. Despite having to work too many hours, she coached my soccer team for two seasons. In the kitchen she kept a photo of us in a black frame. It was from a camping trip when I was seven. It showed me smiling, holding a fish I had caught, and my smile showed a gap in my teeth where a front tooth had been. After Albert moved in, the framed photo went into a drawer somewhere. My mother said it clashed with the new paint they had selected for the kitchen.
Albert was not a cruel man, maybe it would have been better if he had been. He had blonde hair which he kept cut short. He was big, maybe not more than six feet tall, but I always thought he was taller, so I was always a little scared of him. Before they married, he invited me to go shopping with me a few times, but I always said no. I never told him I said no because I was a little scared of him, but maybe it would not have made a difference. He also had a tattoo on his left shoulder. Sometimes, when they sat close together on the couch and thought they were alone, I watched my mother roll up his t shirt then trace the lines of the tattoo with her finger.
I lost my seat at the head of the dinner table by the time I lost my room. I had stopped talking at meals by that time too. The conversations at mealtime never included me about anything. For the most part Albert acted as if I didn't exist, and he often forgot I did exist. Doris started calling my mother "Mom". She corrected Doris at first, but stopped after a while.
The next thing on my list I need to tell you happened when I was 14. It was a Thursday in early March, and Mom sat me down at the dinner table. I remember how she folded her hands on the table in front of her. She told me Albert had been offered a job in Portland, a good job; she described it as the kind of job you say yes to. So the house would be put up for sale, and everything would need to be packed and ready for moving by the end of the school year. She said all of this as if she had been rehearsing the words.
I knew all of this long before she told me this, but I didn't want to know this. Albert had been talking about Portland for a couple of weeks, and I told myself this was because he'd been watching this tv show that was set in Portland. The motivational posts in my mother's old office had vanished about the same time, and I told myself that this meant I would finally be able to decorate the room how I wanted. So I adapted to this move and asked when we were leaving.
That was when she looked down at her hands.
The school in Portland was very selective, she told me. Doris was lucky to be accepted, and both her and Albert were happy she had been accepted. Then she repeated that it was important that everything was packed and ready for moving by the end of the school year.
"Mom!" I said. She looked up. "Am I moving with you?"
She looked back down at her hands. She told me Aunt Abby had offered to let me live with her. She said it made a lot of sense, since if Doris had trouble getting into this school, I would have more trouble. And finding a house that all four of us could live in and that they could afford, would be difficult there. Anyway, Portland was only a two hour flight away, and I could visit on holidays if I wanted. She said all of this as if she had been rehearsing the words. Since Albert and Doris had come to live with us, I had learned crying in front of my mother no longer resulted with hugs and comforting words. It would only result with her telling me, "You've always been dramatic." However, I did not cry then. I did not cry when I sat on my bed in Sabrina's old office room, watching the wall of the neighbor's garage become engulfed in darkness.
Aunt Abby was my mother's older sister. I never knew my father, let alone if he had any brothers or sisters. I still don't know if they were ever married. Aunt Abby lived on the other side of Denver, in a two-bedroom house that smelled of the lavender candles she burned on the stovetop. She had two cats, and shelves of ceramic mugs she bought at every National Park she visited, and she had visited all of them. She taught 8th grade English, and graded papers Sunday nights at her kitchen table with a can of soda within reach. Three Sundays had passed since Sabrina told me they were moving when Aunt Abby arrived at our house. For once Albert remembered I existed, and helped carry my stuff to Aunt Abby's Subaru. My mother gave me a hug at the door that was too short. Albert shook my hand. Doris watched from the stairs, then gave a wave. As Aunt Abby drove away, I watched the house through the back window of her car, until the car turned a corner and the house was lost to sight.
I want you to understand something. I am 28 now. I have had good years. I have a good therapist, and good friends. And I am okay now, for real. So I can tell you all of this without crying. But when I was 14, sitting on that car next to my aunt, who had put on a Melissa Etheridge CD without asking, I was not okay. I had learned tears did not help, so I did not cry as we drove to her house. Aunt Abby did not say that things would be okay, or that one day I would understand. All she said was "I put clean sheets on the bed. The closet ought to be large enough for all of your clothes." She paused a moment before adding, "We can figure out the rest as we go along."
The room she gave me had a window that looked over her backyard. She had a garden that she had worked the previous weekend, and small tomato plants sat in a row on one side of the garden. I looked out that window, and I cried quietly.
Sabrina called me from time to time, sometimes once a week, sometimes three weeks passed without hearing from her. The calls never ran longer than 12 minutes, which I knew because I started keeping a log of her calls just before school started. I don't know why I started this log, but looking back I'm glad I had. People get memories wrong, feelings also muddle them, other people claim your memory is wrong, but when facts are recorded on paper they don't change. Aunt Abby had bought me stuff I needed for school, the first new school supplies anyone had bought me in a couple years, and I took one of the notebooks and after the call with Sabrina had ended I wrote down the date, the length of the call, and a few words about what had been said.
> 17 August: 12 minutes. She talked again how she was surprised there was no sales tax in Oregon when she bought stuff, & how hot the weather was. I told her Summer here had not been bad. > > 25 August: 8 minutes. She said they had rented a hotel room down on the beach for a week, how they looked forward to it. I asked if I could fly there & join them. She said it would be too difficult to manage the logistics, and apologized. > > 7 September: 10 minutes. Asked about school, which classes I had. She talked most of the call about Doris's school life. I asked about visiting her, but she said they were too busy for guests. > > 28 October: 5 minutes. She was in line at a store when she called. She complained about the rain, asked about weather here. I told her about it, but before I say more she reached the register, had to hang up, promised to call back in an hour. (She never did.) > > 14 November: 9 minutes. She asked me about my grades, & described in detail Doris's music recital. Some of the fancy restaurants the 3 of them ate at. > > 2 December: 11 minutes. She called to say they would not be available for me to visit because Albert's family was gathering in Bend for the week of Xmas & New Year's. Said we'd do something after New Years'. (We didn't do something in the new year.) > > 20 February: She forgot my birthday. Called 3 days later. Said she meant to call but the month got away from her. Said she would send me a present. Said she was proud of me. (Later that week I received a $10 gift card for Starbucks in the mail, which had a sticky note attached stating Doris considered Starbucks was her favorite place.)
I logged 17 months of calls before I stopped recording, 11 promises that either I could come visit or she would come visit. Neither happened 11 out of 11 times.
Keeping the log did not make me angry, because it was simply a list of facts. But having those facts validated the feelings I had. It's one thing to feel you don't matter to someone, it's another when the facts prove that you don't. You can think about your memories one way, and you can think that it's clear that you don't matter to someone; you can think about these memories another way, and you can think you're just being dramatic. Aunt Abby noticed I was keeping a log of the calls I got from Sabrina, and later asked if I was okay; I said I was. She asked about the notebook. I told her it was to help my memory, so I did not rely only on my feelings. She nodded and that was the end of the conversation. She had a peculiar skill to know when to ask questions, and when to not say anything.
I joined the school debate team in my Sophomore year. Aunt Abby drove me to every tournament in her Subaru with Melissa Etheridge playing. Once she drove four hours with nothing but a podcast about a court case between someone named Obergefell and another person named Hodges, which she listened to with the same focused attention she gave everything. I spent the four hours watching the arid landscape pass by and wondered what it was like to spend a week at the beach. I came to be good at debate because I learned to rely on facts, not on feelings. My style was to state facts and let the other person reach the conclusion, and my style won debates.
The next thing on my list I need to tell you was the time my mother did visit me. She visited me once. She came alone: she said Albert had to work, and Doris was busy with something. She took me to a restaurant she picked from an app on her phone to save time. She looked different. Last time I saw her, when I had to leave before they moved away, she was wearing yoga pants, a cotton sweater, white tennis shoes. These were the clothes she used to wear all the time. When I saw her standing on Aunt Abby's doorstep, she was wearing a dark blazer and matching skirt, a shiny cream blouse, and black pumps. Her hair was shorter. At the restaurant she asked me about school and I told her about debate. She answered, "That's wonderful. I always knew you were sharp." She said that as if she had rehearsed the words.
I asked her why she hadn't visited in two years. She looked down at her hands. She said her job made it difficult. Albert's custody schedule with Doris made things difficult. And the weekends always seemed too busy. She added, "But I think about you all the time."
I thought about the log I kept. About 17 months of calls averaging 10 minutes. 11 promised visits that somehow never happened. I wondered where the photo that clashed with the kitchen colors had gone. Whether she sill had it. "Mom, I've been keeping a record."
She looked up. "What do you mean?"
I told her about the notebook. I told her about the facts: the dates, the times, the promises, the outcome. She was quiet. Then she said, "You've always been dramatic."
I knew our conversation was over at that moment. I finished eating, did not say much more. Sabrina hugged me at the curb before the Uber took her away.
I told Aunt Abby about my conversation at lunch with Sabrina later that evening. It was that evening, after dinner. We were washing dishes. Most of our important conversations were at the sink when we washed dishes. When we wash dishes together our shoulders would rub, and I felt connected to her. I was at ease talking to her about important matters. I told her everything about the lunch; I held nothing back. Aunt Abby listened to me without interrupting.
When I finished, Aunt Abby stopped scrubbing at the pan she was holding, pulled her hands from the water and dried them and said, "You handed this just right." Then her hands grasped the edge of the drainboard as if to keep it from slipping away. She told me she had something she said I needed to know. She emphasized this was information, not an opinion about Sabrina. "When she called me, and asked me if you could stay here, it was not a temporary thing. She asked me to take permanent guardianship. She had already spoken to a lawyer before she asked me, maybe a month before. And I said yes without waiting for her to finish asking."
That was how I knew the full story of how I came to live with Aunt Abby. I have thought many times since then about both conversations I had that day. My thoughts usually concern one of two things. One is that my mother removed me from her life, and the story about logistics and the Portland school was to hide a decision she had already made. The other thing is that the woman who stood next to me, who allowed me to touch her shoulder with mine, had agreed to take me before my mother could finish asking.
I did not call Sabrina that night. I had to think first. I called her after three weeks had passed. When I called her, I was not angry. I told her I knew. She said Abby should not have told me. I replied that I had the right to know the truth. She said the truth was complicated. I had thought much before that phone call about what I wanted to say, and I have thought much after that phone about what I should have said. I didn't want her to call me "dramatic" but every possible response I could think of then, or could think of now, would end with her calling me "dramatic". She waited for me to answer. I don't know why she waited; she hadn't waited for me to talk for years. When she could not wait any longer for me to answer she said, "I love you." I then said goodbye and hung up.
I stopped logging her calls after that, and it wasn't because she stopped calling. I would have stopped logging in any case. After that phone call I didn't see the point of it.
Aunt Abby drove me to each of the rest of my debate tournaments. She let me cry in the car when I lost a debate. She wrote my college recommendation letters, and she stayed up late many nights writing the one for my law school. She wanted to get that letter right, just like the rest of them. She came to each of my graduation ceremonies, my high school and college graduations, while Sabrina only sent cards in which she wrote "I'm proud of you" and signed the card as "Mom". The same kind of cards she sent on my birthdays, only without a check. Aunt Abby stood in the same spot at each graduation -- front left of the audience -- so I could see her standing there waving and cheering. She keeps a photo of the two of us on her refrigerator. It's from my high school graduation. We're standing in the parking lot, me in cap and gown holding a sunflower she brought me without asking. Both of us are squinting at the sun.
As I said before, I'm 28 now. I work as a paralegal while I'm in law school. I have an apartment in Seattle that has a full-sized window: if I try, I can see Mt. Rainier between the other buildings, but every cloudless night I can see the moon with no trouble as it fattens into a full moon then wastes away until it is the skinniest of crescents. Aunt Abby calls me every week unless I call her first. I have a best friend named Dana who asks the right questions. I have a therapist, a man almost as old as Aunt Abby, and now I only check in with him once a month.
The last thing on my list I need to tell you is that Sabrina emailed me last spring, early March. It was the same date she told me she was going to move away with the others; I doubt she was even aware that the two events shared the same date. And it's the first time since I graduated she has tried to contact me. She and Albert separated. Doris is attending a private college. Sabrina wrote that Portland is very large and quiet. She has started therapy. She write she has started therapy. She has been thinking much about me, about what she has done, and I think she's being honest and unrehearsed because she used the word "regret". I never heard her use that word before. She signed the email "Mom". I read her email twice, then printed off a copy to keep. I thought about what to write for weeks before I wrote back. I did not want to punish her. I did not want to forgive her. I wrote: "I received your email. I'm glad you are in therapy. I'm okay. I'm in law school now. I have people in my life who will always be there, and I have learned to do the same."
She wrote back, four days later. She wrote that she's glad I had Abby. She knew that Abby was not enough. She wrote that she hoped I'd let her try to be a mother again someday. She also signed that email "Mom".
I haven't replied. I haven't decided if I will. Sometimes I wonder if she still has that photo she kept in the kitchen until the room was repainted, but I'm afraid to ask her about it because she might tell me the truth.