“I’m surprised,” Claire says, and I can see the shock on her face. She isn’t lying.
“My mother said she was sorry she stopped speaking to you a long time ago. She regretted it, Aunt Claire.” I force the Aunt in, hoping it might help. Shoot…she looks skeptical.
“She did? I mean, no disrespect to your mom. She was my sister, after all, but in all the years I spent with her, I never saw her show any regret. I thought it was something that her…” She stops abruptly, looking as if she’s said something wrong. Is she afraid to mention Mom’s illness, or does she think I don’t know Mom was mentally ill? I lived with her for seventeen years. How could she think I didn’t know?
“I know all about my mom’s illness. She needed me to know so I could help her. Plus, it wasn’t exactly an easy thing to hide, if you know what I mean.”
A combination of relief and dread wash over her pale pretty face. It’s something I’m used to. Nobody wants to talk to a kid about mental illness. People would feel more comfortable telling a child her mother has cancer than that she has a psychiatric disease. Mental illness is taboo in society. I don’t get it. I never have. But I’ve learned to deal with it. Everyone was so comfortable talking about Mom’s diabetes— a condition she was born with and one she needed to take insulin for her entire life. But when the conversation turned to the illness in Mom’s head, everyone got afraid.
“It’s a difficult subject to talk about, isn’t it?” Claire’s thoughts seem far away. “She was my sister and I still have a tough time with it. I guess it’s because, as kids, our mom never talked about it. All the focus was on your mother’s diabetes and her medications for that. Everything else was treated as a secret until we were teenagers. And by then, the things my parents didn’t speak of, the things I didn’t understand, had driven a real wedge between your mom and me.”
Intimate conversations like this with a stranger make me nervous. I try to hide it, but Claire sees right through it, “We don’t need to talk about this now. It’s too much too fast. I’m sorry.”
I always get a cold feeling in my body when I feel like someone knows what I’m thinking. I rub my hands together to try and make it disappear.
“I live in California, Nikki. Do you know that? It’s where your mother and I were born and raised.”
We’ve moved a dozen times, but never outside of Texas. I just assumed Mom was from here. I didn’t know she was raised in California but I’m not sure I should admit it. “Do you have children?” I ask instead.
Claire’s face turns sad. “No, I don’t. It wasn’t meant to be for me. I lost my husband before we ever had any.”
“How much older than Mom are you?” I ask, immediately hoping that I didn’t just stick my foot in my mouth. Why do I assume she’s the older sister?
“Three years. I was three when your mom was born. Just turned twenty-five when you were born.”
I always knew Mom was young when I was born, but it’s weird to think she was only a few years older than I am now when she gave birth to me…and to my sister. I can’t even imagine having one baby, let alone two, now, and with all of her medical problems.
Mom’s age is really the only detail I’ve ever known about my birth. And that her diabetes got much worse after the pregnancy— another pregnancy would probably have ended her life. I remember a doctor telling her that when I was seven or eight. I don’t know why, but the conversation stuck with me all these years.
After that, Mom had to have an insulin pump placed in her body. It sat on the outside of her waist in a little pouch; insulin was sent through a plastic tube into her body to help her pancreas work. Mom treated so many things in our life like a paranoid secret, that I’ve always hung on tightly to the facts.
Claire eases the conversation into less intrusive topics— school, travel, hobbies. We even find we have a few things in common: we both like to read, neither of us can swim and math isn’t our strongpoint.
Ms. Evans checks in with us a few times, but doesn’t stick around to talk. Eventually, there’s a lull in our conversation. After a long, deafening moment of silence, Claire locks eyes with me and softly asks, “What do you want to happen here, Nikki?”
The point-blank question catches me off guard, freezing me. I can’t just blurt out, “I want to find my sister.” Claire hasn’t mentioned her, and Mom warned in her letter that Claire wouldn’t help me find her and probably wouldn’t even admit I was a twin.
“I don’t know what I want, Aunt Claire.” I pause, choosing my words carefully. “I want my mom back, but I know that isn’t something anyone can give me. I don’t want to go to a foster home. That’s what I know I don’t want.”
“I’d like to help you, Nikki. You’re my niece. I want what’s best for you but I don’t know if I’m it. I don’t want to be selfish. Maybe we can go day by day and see what each day brings? Do you think you could leave your friends and your life in Texas and start over in California? It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it?”
There’s nothing I need to think about. My mind is already made up. But if she thinks it’s a big decision, I’ll pretend I have to think about it. Although nothing could stop me from going.
***
After lunch, Aunt Claire talks to Ms. Evans. They decide it would be best to try to arrange for me to stay a few months with Ashley’s family so I can finish school here. It’s already March and Aunt Claire can’t enroll me in school in California until a judge grants her temporary custody, which might take a while.