That could have been you, she would say.
Whereas most families might let the tragedy of strangers pass them by like waves, she would catch them, collect them, marking down their names and ages in her notebooks and checking whether they had been found in six months, a year, five years, until I felt like I was drowning in unseen violence.
“I don’
t want to watch the news. I want to see things for myself. Ordinary things. I want to be ordinary. I want to live.”
She scowled. “Don’t be dramatic. You’re living here. You’re safe.”
I firmed. “No, Mama. I know you need to stay inside, but just as much, I need to go out into the world. Experience things for myself. And I’m going to. You can’t stop me this time.”
Her face seemed to crack. Plump tears slipped down her cheeks. “I don’t understand why you’re talking this way. What have I ever done but protect you?”
Guilt swelled my chest, but I forced it down. I would be strong.
“I can’t stay here. I love you, but I just can’t stay.”
“Evie, Evie, my baby.” She clasped her hands together, begging.
I knelt at her feet, taking her hands in mine. I could feel each bone, each tendon beneath the paper-dry skin.
“Please. Give me your blessing to leave. I’ll come back to visit. Maybe even move back to town after a while. I need to see something of the world first.”
“How are you going to afford it?”
I’d been lucky enough to get a job doing touchups for a small photography studio up the road when I was sixteen. I could do the work from home, and the paychecks were deposited directly in our account—well, technically my mother’s account. I wouldn’t take that money even if I could, knowing she didn’t have another source of income.
I did get a small weekly allowance, though, and had saved up a hundred and sixty dollars. Not enough to get me all the way to New York, not with paying for gas, food and motels along the way.
“I talked to someone through the college’s job placement system. There’s an opening at a photography studio up in Dallas.”
I’d work there for a while, saving up money and looking for another stop closer to Niagara Falls. That was the plan anyway.
She sniffed. “If you leave, you won’t ever come back.”
It was a pronouncement, bitter and unyielding.
“I will, I promise—”
“No.” She hardened, her tears drying as quickly as they’d come. “I mean it, Evie. You wouldn’t be welcome here anymore. You’d be one of them.”
The paranoia. I knew it was a sickness, but labeling it didn’t help me.
“I’m your daughter. Always.”
She shoved back from me. “If that were true, you wouldn’t leave me. If you leave, you wouldn’t be my daughter anymore.”
Her words sank into my stomach like a lead weight. No shock, only resignation. Maybe I had always known it would come to this.
“I love you, Mama,” I whispered, and it panged with permanence.
As if finally realizing I was serious, her eyes widened, filling with rage.
“You won’t last a second out there. Not one goddamn second, you hear me? You have no idea what kinds of things happen out there—”
“I do, Mama. Because you’ve told me every day that I can remember. Well, do you think nothing bad ever happens here? That I’m safe just because I’m trapped here? What about Allen?”
Her head jerked back as if I’d slapped her, and in a way, I had. We never talked about that, not even to the counselor.