Reminders of Him

I don’t like how she seems to want to laugh at my concern. “Am I worried you aren’t in a good headspace?” I ask, reframing her question. “Yeah. I am. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Her head tilts slightly to the right as she turns her whole body so that she’s facing me in her seat. Her shoulder-length strands of straight hair lean with her. “That’s not it,” she says. “You’re worried if I end my life, you’ll be left feeling guilty that you’ve been so unbearably cruel to me. That’s why you came back. You don’t care if I actually kill myself—you just don’t want to be the impetus for my decision.” She shakes her head with a shallow laugh. “You did it. You checked on me. Your conscience is clear now, goodbye.”

Kenna goes to open her door, and the girl she was lighting sparklers for suddenly appears at her passenger window. Her nose is pressed against the glass.

“Roll down this window,” Kenna says to me.

I turn my key so that I can roll down her window. The girl leans in, smiling at us. “Are you Kenna’s dad?”

Her question is so out of left field, I can’t help but laugh. Kenna laughs too.

Diem has Scotty’s laugh and smile. Kenna’s laugh is her own. One I haven’t heard before this second. One I want to hear again.

“He’s definitely not my dad,” Kenna says. She cuts her eyes to mine. “He’s the guy I told you about earlier. The one keeping me from my little girl.” Kenna opens her door and hops out.

She slams my truck door, and then the teenage girl leans in the passenger window and says, “Jerk.”

Kenna grabs the girl’s hand and pulls her away from the truck. “Come on, Lady Diana. He’s not on our side.” Kenna walks away with the girl and she doesn’t look back, no matter how much I want her to and don’t want her to, and fuck, my brain is a pretzel.

I’m not sure I could be on her side even if I wanted to be. This whole situation contains so many nooks and crannies and corners I get the feeling choosing sides is going to be the downfall of all of us.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

KENNA

Here’s the thing.

It shouldn’t matter if a mother isn’t perfect. It shouldn’t matter if she’s made one big, horrible mistake in the past, or a lot of little ones. If she wants to see her child, she should be allowed to see her, even if it’s just once.

I know from experience that if you’re going to grow up with an imperfect mother, it’s better to grow up knowing your imperfect mother is fighting for you than to grow up knowing she doesn’t give a shit about you.

There were two years of my life—not consecutive—that were spent in foster care. My mother wasn’t an addict or an alcoholic. She just wasn’t a very good mother.

Her neglect was validated when I was seven and she left me alone for a week when some guy she met at the dealership where she worked offered to fly her to Hawaii.

A neighbor noticed I was home alone, and even though my mother told me to lie if anyone asked, I was too scared to lie when the social worker showed up at our door.

I was placed into a foster family for nine months while my mother worked to get her rights back. There were a lot of kids and a lot of rules and it felt more like a strict summer camp, so when my mother finally regained custody of me, I was relieved.

The second time I was placed in foster care, I was ten. I was the only foster child, placed with a woman in her sixties named Mona, and I stayed with her for almost a year.

Mona wasn’t anything spectacular, but the simple fact that she watched movies with me every now and then, cooked dinner every night, and did laundry was more than my own mother ever did. Mona was average. She was quiet, she wasn’t very funny, she wasn’t even all that fun, but she was present. She made me feel taken care of.

I realized during the year that I was with Mona that I didn’t need my mother to be spectacular, or even great. I just wanted my mother to be adequate enough to not have the state intervene in her parenting. That isn’t too much for a child to ask of the parent who gave them life. “Just be adequate. Keep me alive. Don’t leave me alone.”

When my mother regained custody of me for the second time and I had to leave Mona, it was different than the first time I was returned to her. I wasn’t excited to see her. I had turned eleven while living with Mona, and I came home with all the appropriate emotions an eleven-year-old would develop with a mother like mine.