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She glances up, a weak smile playing on her lips.
We trudge slowly back to the house. When we walk through the back door, we find them seated at the kitchen table. Moma has a puzzle out, and Mama B is reading, her feet propped on an empty chair.
“Hi girls,” Moma says, barely looking up.
I stare at them, surprised. They’re acting completely normal, like stowing prison escapees is a normal event.
“Anyone want tea?” Mama B asks, standing up and moving for the kettle.
Gwen clears her throat. “I’d like some.”
We stand there stiffly for a minute before I sit down at the table. Gwen and Tahira follow. When the tea is on the table and Mama B is back in her seat, she looks across the three of us and says: “So...what have you girls been up to?”
Tahira’s face breaks into a grin, and I feel like I’m taking my first breath of the night. It’s good for me to see Mama B this way. To know the extent of her compassion.
I can’t stop wishing Jackal were here to see all of this, to be part of the healing that takes place the longer we talk things out. I’ve been fearful until now. What if Jackal and I are not able to hash out the plan again before we’re in the Red? What if everything goes wrong? There are so many what-ifs...but they all fade as we sit by the candlelight around my grandparents’ old kitchen table.
Moma is ten years older than Mama B and has been a journalist for thirty years. She’s one of three who still travels between the Regions. She can cross the lines easily, while Mama B requires new papers with each crossover. It only takes three to five days for her to get them with Moma’s license, so they travel frequently. Moma writes about the changing landscape, and Mama B navigates the way. I’m embarrassed that we haven’t talked about these things much. I’ve never trusted them with my thoughts and they haven’t really opened up to share theirs. We’ve always stayed at a surface level. It’s been much easier to open up with Gwen and Tahira, and even Jackal. Sometimes with family, we aren’t allowed out of the boxes we were placed in when we were small. My mothers wanted me to be the best ballerina in the Regions and our lives revolved around making sure that happened. Once I was old enough to move out, we shifted into a more bearable relationship. It’s worked for us, but this feeling of camaraderie with them tonight...I can’t help but feel the loss of all the time we’ve missed being like this—open.
The final blow-my-mind moment comes when they begin speaking openly about what has happened with Gwen—and not with any judgment against her but fully supportive and on her side.
It’s going to take time for it to sink in that my mothers have cool qualities that they’ve kept buried around me my whole life.
“We’ve been following the Revolution. You’ve stirred the hearts of people everywhere. I’m not sure you realize your reach,” Moma tells Gwen. “Your speech about humanity...that is more in line with what we have always believed.” She pushes her hair back and leans in, her voice quiet but strong. “I avoid writing pieces that incite conflict, mostly because I’ve wanted to continue our lifestyle, but I can’t pretend that what’s happening is okay. We want to help. We’ve traveled almost nonstop in the last five years and have made friends in each Region, people we trust. They will help. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need, and we will help you when you’re ready to leave. Just tell us what we can do.”
“Do you have any friends in the Red?” Gwen asks.
TWENTY-FOUR
JACKAL
Snow leopards have sex twelve to thirty-six times a day during mating season.
It only takes one time—one jarring punch—to know fear. Love is a much more complicated emotion to recognize. It takes many gestures of kindness for it to sink into a person’s psyche that they are loved; one shove down the stairs to undo it. By the time I was four years old, I knew my mother hated me. Maybe not in those words:my mother hates mebut in her consistent lack.
My mother was a diligent representative of the Red Region, she still is, and she has always taken her job seriously, in an if-you-embarrass-me-I-will-kill-you kind of way. She was a different person around her colleagues; consequently, I wanted them around all the time. I learned to adapt to what they craved, which was humor and sexual innuendo. It shaped me. I guess I should thank all of those women for turning me into the End Man I am today.
When I exit the jet and get into the car to drive me down the winding path to the house I grew up in, I get my first case of nerves in four years...the last time I saw her. We happened to cross paths at the same party and only did the perfunctory hug and kiss that you do for the camera. She likes to claim we are close in all of the Silverbook stories on my life—I’m not sure why someone hasn’t called her out on it yet. The records are there...at least a few...of what she did to me. Others knew. But instead of confirming it, I kept waiting for one of those signs—the gesture—that she cared.
I’m not waiting anymore. I’m coming to collect.She owes me this.I repeat this out loud and it calms me. I lied to the girls; I’m not collecting on a debt, I’m blackmailing her.
Nordice has been breathing down my neck since she arrived at the compound, but she didn’t get clearance to make this trip. Justice prevails for once. I’d rest a lot easier if I could speak with Phoenix again, to make sure everything is still in place, but I have to trust that we’re still moving forward as planned.
We pull up to the house and I see all the ways my mother has benefited from my status. She gets money just for being my blood. I see the blood money in the new addition, the greenhouse out back, and the car that’s worth more than most make in a year. It scrapes the inside of my gut like a chisel to see her wealth; my nose physically curls up. I consciously force myself to clear my features. She cannot affect me. Right before I knock on the door, I inhale, exhale, and settle into my trademark smirk.
The door opens and a woman in a simple red dress stands there. She opens the door wide and I step inside.
“You are?” I ask.
“I’m Rachel,” she says with a deep Red accent. “I take care of your mama. She’s really happy about your visit.”
“Am I in the right house?” I laugh and Rachel joins me, the polite laughter of someone who doesn’t get the joke.
“She’s having a good day,” Rachel says. And then I feel like I’m the one who doesn’t get the joke. “She’s waiting in the sunroom.”
I follow her since there was never a sunroom in my childhood home. It’s off of the kitchen, where I had to sit with my face taped for six hours without eating while my mom ate all of my favorite foods in front of me. I can’t remember what I’d done. It could be a look that set her off. A tone I didn’t realize I had. ABon a test instead of anA. We pass the kitchen table and I breathe easier.
The sunroom is light and airy, full of greenery, and sitting in a floral chair sits an old woman with short grey hair. She lifts her head when she hears us enter the room and my mouth gapes. My mother smiles and waves, a childlike giggle bursting out of her.
