“I was abandoned by my mother and father,” Joan volunteered. “I think that’s why my picker was off.”
“Your picker?”
“I chose men who I believed would take care of me, the way I would’ve liked my parents to take care of me.”
“They gave you up for adoption?”
“Adoption wasn’t really a thing back then, not the way it is now. I never knew my father. My mother refused to tell me his name. I assumed she either wasn’t sure who he was or didn’t want to acknowledge him. At some point, she didn’t want to acknowledge me either.”
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”
Joan shrugged. “We all have baggage somewhere in our history. What about you?”
My stomach churned with unpleasant memories. “My mother abandoned me too, after my father died.” Sold. Abandoned. Different terms. Same outcome.
“Do you think she couldn’t cope?” Joan asked.
“I’m sure that’s it,” I lied. In truth, I believed my mother had worn a mask for my father, and as soon as he was gone, she had no reason to pretend anymore.
Joan squeezed my hand. “Well, that’s shitty common ground to have, but it’s nice to know we’re not alone.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“If it’s any consolation, you turned out well for someone without a good mom.”
“Same to you,” I told her. Joan and I both had thick skin and resilience in our favor. We were fortunate to have developedcoping devices that helped us rather than hurt us. Not everyone in our position could say the same.
“Hey,” Joan called. “So Maya and I were both abandoned by our mothers. How cool is that?”
A silence descended upon the room.
“Okay, maybe ‘cool’ was a poor choice of words,” Joan amended.
“That’s awful,” Catherine said.
“We’re not asking for a pity party,” I said. “We’re playing the game.”
“It isn’t pity, Maya,” Bernice said. “It’s empathy. How old were you?”
“Maybe six,” Joan said. “I don’t remember her well, which I think is somehow better, you know?”
Everybody looked at me expectantly. Outside of faking a seizure or vomiting on the rug, there was no way around the question. “I was a child too.”
“It was after her father died,” Joan added. “Her mother couldn’t cope.”
I lowered my gaze, unable to offer more. Let them believe my mother suffered severe heartbreak from which she never recovered. It was the more palatable option. The kind of story that reverberates with a deep, abiding love that everyone wants to believe in.
A fairy tale.
“We get bonus points, right?” Joan asked. “The more pathetic your common traits, the more points you get.”
“If pathetic is in play, then you’ve both got competition,” Louise said. “Bernice and I are both incontinent.”
“We are,” Bernice said, nodding. “I’m wearing an adult diaper right now.”
“I’ve been hiding a box in my closet,” Louise said, “but we’ve agreed to store them in the bathroom for both of us.”
“What a discovery,” Meemaw said, suppressing a smile.
