by Leanne Davis
Wesley starts pacing as I speak. He keeps shaking his head. “What her mom wants? What do you know about her mom?”
“Well, obviously she isn’t like Tara or Chloe. Dropping in and out of rehab, she was caught in the vicious cycle of addiction and making bad choices and all that.”
Wesley stops dead. “She didn’t tell you much then.” He mutters at himself more than me as he lifts his head up. “Her mother is like kryptonite to Superman.”
My worry starts to escalate. Wesley isn’t prone to reacting, let alone, overreacting like this. Where did Jacey go? When I walked in from my classes, she had her backpack filled with some of her clothes and a strained expression on her face. She said her mom was just a few hours away and she wanted to meet up with her. She had to find out what she wanted. It never occurred to me that I could demand she not go. And besides, the championship game is today, which Jacey also knew. She said she’d go alone and call me later.
“Explain that?”
“Her mother ruined her more than once, Wyatt. You think the neck bruises were bad? Well, Jacey’s mother did much worse than that. She was never a positive factor in Jacey’s life, and she failed to nurture her sense of well-being pretty miserably.”
Wesley wasn’t being fair. Getting strangled wasn’t the same as this. Her mother wanted to see her, and she has the right to. “What do you mean? That’s a shitty thing to say to me.”
“I mean, her mother pimped her fourteen-year-old daughter out for drugs and cash. Her mom isn’t just a mixed-up addict, she’s a manipulative narcissist who doesn’t love Jacey. Jacey knows that on an intellectual level, but her heart refuses to accept it. The minute her mom shows up acting sorry, which is just more manipulation, Jacey starts to hope again, although she knows it isn’t true. When she goes back to her mom, she invariably ends up destroyed. I mean, annihilated. Jacey doesn’t see the pattern. Or her mom’s sociopathic tendencies. Her mother never loved her. She uses her. And then discards her as trash. Jacey is the equivalent of a casualty of war. How many decent homes did her mother take her out of only to treat her worse than before? That endless cycle wasn’t because of all the substance abuse or mental illness. No, there’s something diabolically wrong with Jacey’s mom. But not Jacey. Her kindness and her generous heart keep her from believing it. And her mom always leaves Jacey feeling lost like this.”
Something makes me shudder. Dread? Regret? Fear? “I didn’t know.”
Wesley nods. “You couldn’t know about it since she doesn’t talk about her mom, not like this. I’ve just seen it too many times, and I hoped she realized what was happening the last time. She swore she did but here we are. I’m afraid for her.”
A jolt ripples through me. “For Jacey? What are you afraid of? An emotional breakdown? A regression of some kind?”
“Yes, all of those. Lots of tears and sadness. I can’t watch the undoing of all the good she’s acquired in the last few years after escaping this shit and building up her own self-esteem and all that. But shit. Her selfish mom wouldn’t care about hurting her if she managed to benefit from it. The fourteen-year-old she could so easily convince to do whatever she told her to is no longer Jacey. Jacey knows the difference between right and wrong now, and she tries to live a just life. She’ll probably resist the same old corrupt manipulations and scams her mother uses. But I worry—”
I shake off the lethargy and grab my keys. “Let’s go.” There is no other choice.
Wesley nods. “I’m coming with you.”
Dani’s on her feet, too. “So am I. She has to see she no longer needs this woman. She has a new family… us. I don’t think she realizes that yet, or more importantly, what that actually means.”
“I agree.” I nod my thanks, my lips tight. I can’t smile. I feel nothing but a crippling fear. A knot in my gut. Helpless. Unsure. Unsafe. It makes me feel as trapped and mocked as I was last year.
No, this feels worse. Worse because it’s someone I truly care about.
JACEY
Mom. My mom needs me. I hate how my heart beats harder and faster with warmth and longing and almost excitement. Mom needs me. But I know deep down in my gut that I must be cautious. The little voice in my head is already warning me, but all I can think about with unbridled joy is that Mom reached out to me. It’s been years. So very long since I last saw her. The last time was not good. Rachel explained why it was so bad, worse than I realized. I don’t evaluate my mom with the right criteria. I am immersed in my love for her. It dulls the severity of what she is and does as well as her motives. It blinds me.
I remember one of my arguments with Rachel that highlighted the things I should know intellectually despite my heart’s refusal to accept criticism about my mom.
“She has a disease. She’s an addict. You don’t understand.” I argued to Rachel in one of our sessions.
“I do understand. She’s going to die of her addiction and there is nothing you can do about it. Calling her ‘mother’ doesn’t excuse the bad things she does to you. You don’t owe her anything. A toxic personality remains so whether or not she’s your blood relation or your mother. It doesn’t change anything. She’s not concerned with your best interest.”
“But she’s my mother.”
“Do you want to kill her?”
“How could you ask me that?”
“Because you’re supporting her destructive behavior and making excuses for the substances she drowns herself in. You are only enabling her to do it more. No, you’re not doing what’s best for her. When you were younger, she was the adult, and she told you it was okay. You’re now old enough to understand what she was doing was wrong. You must evaluate your decisions on how you react to her based on yourself. You’re too old now to claim ‘she’s my mother.’ You’ll never break free from her. She’ll hurt you over and over again and undercut any positive steps you may accomplish in your life.”
“But she’s my mom…” Even when I was that young, I could hear the whiny, repetitive, and completely unfounded reality in our argument.
My mother sold me for drugs. Not even a lot of drugs. Just a small amount to last her for the week. She also sold me for some cash. I was just a kid. A little, innocent kid she refused to allow to remain innocent or little.
So Rachel and I went around in circles. It grew heated. I stood up and paced and sat back down while Rachel spoke with her quiet, blunt authority. All the while, I knew she was right, but I didn’t want to hear it so I pretended I couldn’t.
Those words swirl in my thoughts as I walk across the parking lot. I am staring at the small, decrepit roadside motel where my mom is currently staying. It’s sad and ugly as the cold rain splatters down, soaking my shoes. The dark gray clouds look so heavy above the earth, and I can only compare them to my dark heart. God, I forgot how depressing life can get.
I have to face this.
I take a deep breath and quickly go to the door and knock. After all this time, and all the progress I made, here I am again, returning to my past and the source of my inner destruction. And yet, my heart twists and leaps because there she is. My mother.
My eyes don’t care how ragged and worn and messy she looks. My heart doesn’t care that she smells. Her shirt is drooping and her bra shows and her hair is messy and her pants are dirty. My feelings overwhelm me. Sad. Joy. Hopeful. Maybe this time my mom will want me.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Jacey! Get in here. I’ve been missin’ you.” She takes me in her arms and pulls me inside. She’s just as tall as me. A big woman who has always out-muscled me. I stand for a moment in her embrace and let my shoulders drop. My muscles start to relax, and I shut my eyes as my feelings overtake my logic. Mom. She feels like Mom. Smells like Mom. Sounds like Mom. Her essence is imprinted on my heart.
Despite all her reasons for screwing up in the past and all the hurts and bad things she did to me, sometimes she came through for me. Just once in a while. Whatever. I have a memory of her that nothing else can diminish or re
place. No matter what anyone else tells me or tries to convince me I should feel. I struggled with my confusing feelings. I loved her. I hated her. I didn’t trust her. I needed her. I hoped she’d love me. I always wished she’d change and want me long term, as I did her.
She lets me go. I try to swallow the emotional lump in my throat. Am I overwhelmed by love or hatred? Joy or fear? All of it swirls inside me. I don’t know. But it’s not hatred or cold disdain that I feel toward Jenika Walker.
“You messaged me. Are you okay?”
She is never okay. I can tell by the messy motel room. The rumpled bed has remnants of meals and crumbs and old wrappers. Paper cups cover the night stand. Her belongings are strewn all over the floor and dresser. It smells of mold, and I have to stifle the strong desire to push my nose into my sleeve. I cannot do what I would naturally. I’ve become so used to the Kincaids’ way of life. Yeah, maybe I even like it. I never knew a better way to live until I met them, so all of it was overwhelming until I grew accustomed to it.
I never let Tara or Chloe get close to me, although both tried. Very hard. Their sympathy shone in their eyes. They wanted to mother me. The thing was, although I did need help, which was how I ended up in Silver Springs, I mainly needed shelter, money, and a retreat where I could get my life together and find a way to support myself. I did not need mothering. No. I already had a mother. Right or wrong. Perfect or not. I had a mother. So I never surrendered that to the maternal women in Wesley’s new home.
My mother is still alive.
Rachel says I put on the blinders when I’m with my mom. I might see her and the circumstances around her but I don’t ever process it like it’s real. My brain ignores whatever I don’t like or find suspicious in her behavior, her words, her surroundings, and her requests of me.
Rachel isn’t here now. She left me. She can’t tell me how to handle my mother anymore.
“How are you, Mom?”
Her gaze travels around. “Good. Fine. Tell me, where are you living now?”
“Do you remember my friend Wesley?”
She shrugs and moves to sweep off the wrappers and clothes on the bed so I can sit down. She pulls a leg up under her other one. “Big kid? Kind of strange?”
Wesley was so smart, he saw right through my mom, so maybe she took that as strange. “Yes. He found a wonderful family to stay with. I ended up there after, well, after my boyfriend strangled me and—”
She doesn’t flinch or even glance at my neck. Almost every person who hears that story has to examine my neck.
“Who are they? Who are you staying with? A group house?”
I shove down the crushing disappointment and give her a little smile. “I’m nineteen now, remember? Been out of the system for eighteen months. They kicked me out. I had to leave there and go somewhere else and the place where I went, the guy ended up—”
“Do they have any money?”
Interrupted in my explanation, I tilt my head at her. “Who?”
“The place where you’re at now.”
Something tells me to not be truthful. I don’t answer at first. I step back as if to protect the Kincaids with my physical act. “No. No, they don’t have any money. Dirt poor farmers. They can’t afford me either. I work my hands to the bone at a café trying to feed myself and help them pay their stupid rent.”
She nods and scratches her neck. Then again.
“Where have you been? I haven’t heard from you in three years.” I ask her softly.
She shrugs. Twitches. Scratches again. “I had a run of bad luck. Got busted and had to go to jail for a little while. Needed money when I got out. Keeps a person busy. Sorry. You know I’d have come for you if I could. Right? I always did in the past.”
“Right.” I nod, but my voice is weak. I tilt my head. Did she? She often came back for me, but did she ever once do what was best for me? Not as a child… or a young teen… or a young adult. Rachel says no. She didn’t care about my life. She only cared for herself and sought what was best for her. She used me and abused me according to her own desires. I just didn’t believe it because of the magical word “mother” and what I associated with it.
Rachel was kind of cruel sometimes.
But she was always right.
I shake my head. No. Rachel isn’t in my life anymore. Not now. She’s gone.
“Do you want to go out to dinner? And talk? We have so many years… and…” And I always wanted her to care about me. I wanted her to ask me what’s happened to me. Does she care how much I suffered?
Over the years she sometimes expressed interest in me. I could calculate her interest by her level of addiction at the moment. In brief moments of sobriety, she occasionally showed interest in me. Maybe not like a normal mother does, but she’d ask me questions and at least give me some of her time. I soaked up the attention like a dry sponge in a pan of water. Rachel says that was her way to manipulate me and keep me coming back to her no matter how bad it got.
“Sure, Jace. We can do that. I don’t have any cash but—”
I force a smile, and my heart dips. The noncommittal tone tells me otherwise. “Mom? Did you reach out because you wanted to see me or did you need something in particular?”
Rachel would be proud of me. She told me to be direct. Find out what Jenika wants and deal with it. Stop hoping and wishing and stare the reality down and face it.
“Well, I’m a little tight now. I thought we could… maybe… you know, do some things… like in the old days.”
My head falls forward. I kick the pile of crumpled clothes at my feet. I had counseling for this. What my mother did to me as a kid should have made me hate her or want to put her in jail. Rachel was adamant that I admit how she criminally used me. She was a predator, a child abuser, and addict. She never intended to stop. Never. Rachel told that to me near the end of our time together, and the thing was: I didn’t have any chance to face my mother then. After spending two years in therapy, near the end it started to stick. It changed me and the woman I was and how I saw things. I have not dealt with my mother since my healing or whatever one prefers to call it.
Now I’m seeing her through the lens of Rachel’s truthful words and my own adulthood. I’m not a little girl anymore. Staring up at my mom while hoping maybe this time she’ll be different, I know what she is now. I think of all the substances that created her problems, but they were not the core problem. She was. Her lifestyle and how she treated me was her choice, and it never changed. She might play nice from time to time, but it never lasted. She always wanted something from me. Sometimes it was a man, or drugs, or money, or a place to stay, or even a shirt that I shoplifted for her. There was always something my mom needed. She was a leech that sucked me dry (Rachel’s words again).
I stare at my mom and sadness wells up inside me. I can’t quite put on the blinders again or try to rekindle the burnt embers of hope. Rainbows and rose-colored lenses can’t change the truth. She needs a fix, and she is broke. She hooked up in this room. It smells of sex and stale body odor. She wants me to steal for her or help her steal or run a scam on someone. That would only damage me at a minimum.
I want to fall to my knees at her feet and wrap my arms around her waist and bury my face against her. I wish she would run her hands through my hair, and rub my scalp, or smooth my hair down my back. I want her to pat my shoulders and let me cry. I want to tell her how lonely I was for the last several years and how much I missed her and couldn’t understand why she never returned. I want her heart to break when she learns that I was hit and strangled and tortured and neglected and she wasn’t there to protect me. Even alcoholics and drug addicts care about their children. But my mom didn’t. She never held me like a mother does. Or love me like that. She didn’t protect me or worry or care what happened to me. She was a predator that put me in the dangerous paths of other predators.
If I could only see half the care, concern, empathy, and shock that strangers showed me when they learned what happened to
me, from my mother, I would have been satisfied. Like Wesley did. Like Tara and Ryder and Dani, and most of all Wyatt, did. They were shocked and they only wanted to help me get through it.
My tone is hollow, and my expression is bland as I ask, “You want money?”
“I could use a few bucks. Then we could go to a movie or something.”
We never once saw a movie together. We never bonded or did anything special. I nod and slip my hand into my bag at my side, pulling out some folded bills. Not much. Just over a hundred dollars. I don’t have anything extra after trying to support myself at the Kincaids’. They still won’t charge me rent or let me pay for my food. They give me so much more than I deserve. So much more than this woman ever gave me.
I set the cash on the bed beside her. “You just want this from me.”
She licks her lips, and her hand darts out. She takes it and tucks it into her shirt. “Sure. If you want to share with me.”
I tilt my head and close my eyes, taking in a deep, long, breath of stale air. The temperature is suffocating inside the small, stifling room. She can’t give anything back to me. She’s incapable of it. Always has been. It’s always been about her, first and foremost, always. As a child, I never did anything wrong to her. She still came first. She never loved me.
The realization slashes through my heart. Like a whisper of the thought that plagued me all during my childhood. I used any distraction to force that thought out of my head and keep that knowledge from settling into my heart. I’d hang out with the first person I could find, no matter who it was or what they were doing. I would also act naughty to hide how bad I felt.
Now, enough time has passed with Rachel and the Kincaids and myself. I’ve seen how others respond to me. It’s different now because I am different, and I can truly say that it’s her, not me. My mother has a narcissistic personality disorder, or at least, that’s what Rachel believed was the problem. I have no explanation for it. Until I received outside help, I always thought her abandonment was my fault. I kept trying to fix things with my mom. I never believed it wasn’t because of me. I didn’t know that before. Not entirely. Not until now. Today.
