Mothered (46)

Grace tried not to roll her eyes. This was already hard enough, and her mother’s complete ignorance of the modern world was making it worse.

“It’s okay if you are,” Jackie quickly interjected. “I just didn’t—”

“I’m not trans. I just use a male persona because . . . I understand the young women and the kinds of mistakes they make. I want to help them. In fact, I want them to not use dating apps to find a partner.”

“Wait, they’re interested in you? They think they have some kind of relationship with you? And they don’t know . . . ?”

“Right.” Grace watched as Jackie tried to piece it all together.

“But how . . . ? They don’t know what you look like?”

Grace shook her head. “I use pictures I find online.”

“You pretend to be someone else?”

“Yes.”

“And you actually talk to people, like you’re a man?”

“I kind of have to. No one will settle for just messaging anymore.”

Jackie’s confusion took a turn toward disgust. “Why?”

“As I said, I try to help them. They want to believe that some fantasy man is the solution to their problems, and it’s not true, of course. So I try to help them be more confident, more realistic about their options.”

The gruesome abortion dream flashed in her mind. Bethany and her mangled baby.

“Them, they,” said Jackie. “Anymore. So you’ve been doing this for a while? How many women have you done this to?”

Grace felt like she’d explained enough. She’d told her mother the truth, and the interrogation was starting to make her skin feel like it was rippling and contracting. “As I said—”

“And you never tell them who you really are? Or why you’re playing this game with them?” Jackie sounded combative now, and Grace didn’t like it.

“It’s personal. I don’t think I have to tell you—”

“You lie? You just lie to people?” Jackie’s lip contorted at such a sickening idea.

Grace had already admitted as much, though not in such specific terms. Once again, she didn’t know how to get away from her mother’s scrutiny. “There’s a term for it, if you really want to know. Things are different—”

“The term is liar.” Jackie shook her head, her message crystal clear: No daughter of mine would do such a wicked thing. Grace’s blood was boiling, a combination of mortification and rage. She hated being under the spotlight of her mother’s judgmental glare—all the more so for it happening so soon after ShyShaina’s breakthrough.

“You don’t understand.” She sounded like a teenager—and felt like the teenager she had once been, full of omnidirectional frustration.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Grace.” Jackie’s ire morphed into something more forlorn. “I didn’t think you could be so . . . intentional. So deliberately cruel.”

“I’m not!” Grace protested. But before she could find the words to defend herself, she remembered thinking about that long ago summer, the collective savagery of her playmates.

“Maybe you’re not who I thought you were.” As if she couldn’t bear to be in the same room with her any longer, Jackie headed upstairs.

All of Grace’s fight melted away. Her circulatory system was on the fritz, and everything that had been too hot a moment ago was now turning to ice. Her whole body stiffened as she replayed her mother’s words, overwhelmed by the probability that her mother was right. Grace had always found ways of justifying things, uncharitable thoughts, greedy actions. But what if she really wasn’t the person she thought she was? What if the thing she called helping was actually hurting? Hadn’t she suspected that very possibility? Otherwise, why keep hidden for so long the only hobby she was any good at?



Grace sat there in the doldrums of her conscience, unsure if she was a reasonably good person or a marginally bad one. She tried to summon a list of the good things she had done, so she could weigh them against the bad ones, but she was less sure than ever what constituted a Good Thing. Had she ever done anything out of pure kindness? Pure generosity? Weren’t there, if she was being honest, tendrils of selfishness intertwined with every act?

But was that true or simply the flotsam of doubt left behind by her mother?

Another bit she’d nearly forgotten: how her mother could leave her questioning the value of her deeds or even aspects of her personality. It stung now, recalling how Jackie had never thought of her as “college material”—a verdict she would never have made about Hope. Grace came to believe in her own subpar intelligence, even while she was embittered by the lack of time she had for schoolwork. When she eventually did have more time, after Hope’s death, she didn’t care about her grades anymore. She’d found a comfortable place in being mediocre, where people didn’t expect too much from her.

The longer Grace sat there and ruminated, the madder she became. She wasn’t entirely sure of the source of all her anger, but she resented her mother for the effortless way she screwed with her emotions.

But as quickly as the fury came, the doubt was on its heels.

Should she have shown Jackie her vulnerable side—would that have elicited more sympathy? Grace wasn’t blind to the reality that in spite of her plethora of cyberrelationships, she’d never been in love in real life. Catfishing wasn’t simply her being deliberately cruel; it was her finding a way to feel good about herself. And if it was an inappropriate way, shouldn’t a mother be a little more concerned about her daughter’s self-esteem?