“When you are older and someone favors one of you more, perhaps falls in love with you, it will be a deep cut that will mend only when the other one finds the same affection,” she predicted.
I wondered if I would be afraid to fall in love first. I didn’t think Haylee would fear it. Actually, I didn’t think Haylee believed half the things Mother told us.
Although Daddy was obviously unhappy with how Mother was raising us and what she was teaching us about ourselves and how others viewed us, I couldn’t help thinking she was only trying to make us stronger so we could deal with the things that were going to happen to us simply because of who and what we were. If we didn’t listen to her and obey her
, our lives would be full of pain and disappointment, just as she predicted.
Maybe that was why Mother was so careful about where she took us and whom we would meet. We didn’t have any real friends until we were in our private grade school. If other mothers suggested having us to their homes to play with their children or bringing their children over to play with us, Mother would simply say, “Thank you, but they’re not ready yet.”
Daddy overheard Mother say that on the phone one night to Laura Demarco, who lived about a half mile away on our street. Her daughter, Candace, was our age. We had met her and her mother a few times at the mall. Both Haylee and I would have loved to go to her house. We were very curious about other children. There was so much about the “outside world,” as Mother called it, that we longed to know.
“What do you mean, ‘they’re not ready’?” Daddy asked Mother as soon as she had hung up. “It would be good for them to mix with other kids before they enter school, don’t you think, Keri?”
“There’ll be time for them to pick up other kids’ bad habits,” she replied dryly.
“What bad habits? They’re too little to have bad habits.”
“Oh, you’re so ignorant when it comes to children, Mason. I know what I’m doing. These are the formative years for any child, especially ours. It’s best not to confuse them.”
“Confuse them? With what?” he asked more emphatically. He glanced at us. By now, I could see he didn’t like to be reprimanded or disrespected in front of us. We were old enough to understand, and I thought it embarrassed him.
We both sat entranced, waiting for Mother’s response. How could playing with another girl our age ruin us?
“With their identity, for one,” she said. “And all the good habits I’m inculcating.”
Daddy grimaced. “Their identity?”
“Their special identity,” she corrected. “Other children won’t understand how important it is to keep them balanced.”
“Balanced,” he repeated, shaking his head. “So when will they be ready?”
“I’ll let you know,” she said. There was that judge’s gavel coming down again, case closed.
Daddy left the topic for another day, which was pushed further and further into the future. Haylee and I were disappointed that Daddy didn’t try harder for us. We were hoping he would win this argument. But he never won any.
Yet I never believed that Daddy was not as interested in our upbringing and care as Mother was. She convinced him that she had made the greater personal sacrifice once we were born. She had decided not to pursue her legal career and often reminded him of that. She said that if there had been only one of us, she would have eventually hired a nanny and continued with her education and her part-time work as a paralegal.
“I would have agreed to that anyway,” Daddy said, “twins or no twins.”
Mother would have nothing to do with such a thought.
We’d often sit on the floor listening to them discuss us as if we weren’t right there. Or at least I did; Haylee was bored with their arguments about us.
“I thought by now you understood, Mason. Identical twins are a true phenomenon,” Mother declared. “They require very special care and nurturing, especially ours, because they are extra special. Besides, it was a blessing to have two of the same. It’s a double joy, and if God is going to be so good to me, I have to live up to the gift and be doubly attentive and twice as unselfish.”
How could Daddy argue with that, even though he was still trying to get her to be less intense about how we were to be raised? “I understand, but we all have to be a little selfish in order to survive, to keep our marriage healthy, don’t we, Keri?”
My ears perked up at the word selfish. It was a word Mother treated as profanity. Neither Haylee nor I could ever be selfish. We were to always think of each other first. Why was it all right for Daddy to say they should be selfish?
“Of course, we should think of each other, but the children and their needs come first. Don’t you believe that?” Mother tossed back at him.
“Yeah, sure,” Daddy said.
“Sometimes I wonder if you do,” she said.
He threw up his hands in surrender and retreated to his little corner of peace and quiet, as he did most of the time. I was disappointed because I still didn’t understand what he meant by selfish and wished they had argued more. How could it ever be good to be selfish? I wondered for the first time if Daddy really was happy we’d been born.
There was no doubt that Mother did more for us and sacrificed more. She was far from selfish. When she had given up college and her intention of becoming a lawyer for a while, if not for good, she had dismissed the housekeeper and taken on the housework herself. She relented while she was nursing us and permitted a maid, Mrs. Jakes, to come in once a week. She was a woman in her early sixties who had lost her husband and whose own children lived far away. At least, that was what we were told. I remember she had curly white hair and bright cerulean eyes that looked too young for her face and made her smile soft and warmer than those of most women her age. She was fascinated with us, but Mother had her doing mostly housework and very little with us.