About two hours into my work shift, at nine o’clock, I get a phone call from my mom. She never calls this late, and a knot of worry starts tangling itself in my stomach.
“Hey, Mom. Everything okay? Is Dad okay?”
“Your dad is fine. Everyone is okay.” Her words are reassuring, but her voice is tight. I didn’t get in trouble a lot as a kid, but when I did Mom was the discipliner. And this is the voice she used.
Am I in trouble? But for what?
“Uhh, okay. What’s going on?” I ask.
“What’s this email I got about cosigning a loan for you?”
The knot tightens.
“I meant to tell you about that. I’ve just been so busy.” Not a lie, but also not totally the truth. I’ve thought about calling and telling her every day. I’m more of a coward than anything. “I just thought a loan would make everything easier. I’ve applied for the scholarships, but I don’t want to take any chances. I AM going to graduate from college.” I consciously lower my voice, realizing I was steadily raising it while speaking. No one is here, but I grit my teeth and continue. “It’s MY future. It’s me that will have to make the payments. I should get to decide if I do this.”
“You’re right. You should be able to do that. Which is exactly what I said to my dad,” my mom says.
“But you didn’t end up going to college, and I—”
“I lied,” my mother says so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
“What?” My heart races, thudding in my chest, my ears. I try to swallow, but my throat feels like sandpaper.
“I did go to college for two years. I went to a very expensive art school for two years and took out loans for both years. It was a hundred thousand dollars in loans, and it has been over twenty years, chicken, and I am still paying on them. I’ll tell you how much, if you really want to know.” Her voice shakes, and I know she’s probably crying. My mom is one of those people to whom tears are very accessible.
Maybe I’m a bad person, but right now I don’t care that she’s crying. She’s been lying to me my whole life.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I was ashamed. Ashamed of my loans and the debt, and I’ve always tried to protect you from our…financial situation. But part of the reason we are where we are is because of choices I made when I was eighteen. I know you’re twenty-one, and I know this isn’t as much money as I took out, but had I gone on to be an art teacher like I meant to, maybe things would be different.”
But she didn’t go on to be an art teacher because she had me. The way I always heard the story was that Mom couldn’t afford college, her daddy refused to let her get loans, and so she started working right out of high school to save up. But she met my dad and they got pregnant with me when Mom was nineteen, she had me when she was twenty, and they got married shortly thereafter. She always said being a mom and going to school would have been too much, and she was already working, so why not continue?
I used to watch my mom paint when I was younger and she and my dad both had jobs. She had more free time then, and Dad had less joint pain. As I got older, Mom had less time, Dad had more pain, and Mom didn’t paint anymore. I knew she dreamed of being an art teacher. I had no idea she actually tried to go to school for it.
I had no idea we had more than just medical debt.
A small part of my brain understands everything. Why she wouldn’t tell me. Why she wouldn’t want to burden her daughter with this. And another, less reasonable, much larger part of me wants to rage.
I swear when I blink I see red behind my eyes. I squeeze my fist so tight my forearm muscles ache, and it does nothing to relieve the searing fury inside of me. I cannot believe she kept this from me. I don’t even know what to say to her. Actually, I know exactly what I want to say, but I won’t kick her while she’s down.
“Jessie?”
“I…I gotta go, Mom.”
It’s not true. I don’t have to be anywhere, but I don’t want to be on the phone anymore.
“I want you to remember that you cannot predict everything that will happen in your life, and having a loan makes some of those unpredictable things more difficult. I will cosign the loan if that’s what you really need, but I wanted you to have the whole story first. The whole picture. I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you. I love you, sweetie.”
“Love you, Mom.” I slam my phone down on the desk and cover my face with my hands.
Fuck.
It never occurred to me that we struggled financially because of anything other than my dad’s medical situation. And maybe if my mom didn’t have the student loan debt, it wouldn’t be much better, but every month she’s putting money toward a loan that could have gone toward something else. I don’t want to let myself think about all the things that extra money could have been spent on.
Worst of all, she’s right. Loan money is easy right now, when I’m not staring at the balance due every month on top of whatever other bills I’ll be paying as interest accrues, keeping me from ever truly getting out of debt. My mom is forty-one, but her hair is already so gray and she always looks tired. It’s aged her. I’ve watched firsthand what the stress of debt and staying afloat looks like. Of course I don’t want that.
But what do I do if these scholarships don’t come through?
