“Not my basement.”
“He’s paying us nine hundred dollars a month.”
There was a pause. My dad said, “His butt better stay in the basement. I don’t wanna see him upstairs.”
My mom kept stealing sidelong glances at me on the ride home. When the house came into view, she cut the wheel, sending us down a side street. Putting all her weight on the brakes, she stopped abruptly. “We never taught you to be like this. Running off in the night, breaking into buildings, winding up injail. I don’t even know anybody who’s been tojail.” This was a complete lie. Two of her cousins were in jail and my grandfather had gone to jail, but it seemed like a bad time to bring this up.
She dropped her forehead onto the steering wheel and let out a long sigh. “This is my fault. I’m a bad mother. You hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“I should’ve been here. I didn’t even…” She lifted her head, clamping her eyes. “What a mess I’ve made of us.”
I found her cool, pruned hand.
“Excuse me.” She reached into the glove compartment for a napkin to dab her eyes. “I shouldn’t be saying this to my child.”
“I’m an adult.”
She looked at me like I’d slapped her, then broke into a sob. I’d seen her cry like this only once before, after my grandmother died. Through the cracked bathroom door, her shuddering frame folded on the toilet seat.
“Do you think your dad and I confused you?”
“Confused me how?”
“Do you think our relationship made you afraid of being with one person?”
I felt nauseated. I saw it didn’t matter how many times I explained myself. “I’m not afraid of being with one person.”
She studied me. “Just because I ended my marriage doesn’t mean you can’t have your own. There’s nothing wrong with committing to one person. Sharing your life is a very intimate, important thing. Don’t take that for granted.”
“I’m not. That’s why I’m gonna share my life with seven people.”
She turned to stare at the license plate on the car in front of us. Forthe first time, I truly noticed the “No Taxation Without Representation” on it. I could see my comment had hurt her, that she wanted something for me that I was incapable of wanting. There was no way to convince her the stubbornness I was displaying was actually one of the gifts she’d given me.
Tristan’s words came back to me, about love and understanding. I was never going to understand why my mom had stayed with my father for as long as she had, or why she fled at the worst possible moment. She was probably never going to understand this part of me either. But it seemed to me then that parents and children weren’t placed in this ancient arrangement to attain perfect understanding but to test it, that most people didn’t understand their parents until they were gone, and even then it was a desperate understanding, too thin, too late. There were limits to this kind of love, but it was still a love that I wanted.
I lowered my head onto her shoulder, turning to look up at her. Up close, the side of her face was sweet, almost innocent. “You know I could never hate you.”
“I know, baby.”
Her phone lit up with an email. She reached for it, staring at the screen.
“What is it?”
“Just another work email.” She’d gotten about three dozen of them, increasingly threatening in tone.Tell us what you did this week. Tell us who isn’t complying. “It’s like they’re tormenting us,” she said, turning her phone face down.
We looked at each other for a while until I said, “I’m proud of you for going after your own happiness. If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s you.”
This made her cry again.
My room was how I’d left it: a fucking mess. But it was my mess. I called Jay.
“Are you okay!? I couldn’t sleep. I—I’m not even kidding—I saw you being arrested on CNN. I called you but I’m guessing they took your phone? Please don’t be mad I told your parents. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Of course I’m not mad, I’m—” All the scrambled feelings I entered jail with returned with painful clarity, like life was restarting where it’d left off. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re the one who got arrested.” He laughed. “Why are you sorry?”
