The Names They Gave Us(31)
I blink at her, breaking my trance of anger. What am I doing? She’s battling a serious illness and I can’t keep my temper in check? “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mom. You’re right.”
As I settle back into my chair, she marvels at herself. “Wow, the cancer guilt packs a punch. Huh! Hadn’t used it yet. Nasty weapon, that.”
I meet her eyes with a grim smile. “I deserved it.”
She sips her tea, pleased and calm as the Queen of England. “Okay, tell me something you actually do like about Daybreak. There’s got to be something.”
“Well, it’s different than here at Holyoke, where I’m just leading activities. Being with the girls all the time, I get to see how they take everything in. They’re fiery and honest, sometimes such quiet little thinkers. They’re . . .”
“Totally exhausting?”
“Yes.” I laugh a little, but stop short: Was I totally exhausting as a third grader? I wish I could remember my entire relationship with my mom—every day together, instead of just the biggest moments of childhood. “Um. What else . . . Oh, we got to do a self-defense class.”
“Really!”
“Yeah. We learned maneuvers for disabling an aggressor.” I throw an elbow back, demonstrating what Tambe taught us. The entire class, he led us with total solemnity. Not necessarily what you expect from a teen guy wearing a Beyoncé T-shirt. “The older kids get to do boxing, I guess. There’s a punching bag and everything. But the little ones just learn how to protect themselves if they get attacked. I thought it was a bit extreme; they’re third graders, you know? But . . . but I think some of them have pretty hard lives.”
“Yes,” she says quietly, and I have to figure she and Rhea have discussed this. “They sure do.”
My mom would be a good resource for Rhea, though she doesn’t talk about her childhood with me. I have asked only once why she left her family for foster care—a fact I don’t think she ever meant me to know. She said, simply, “They were not nice to me.”
When she told me that, I must have been in middle school. I don’t know what I thought “not nice” might mean. I think I imagined the Dursleys from Harry Potter—shut off and unkind. Now, I wonder sometimes: Did they leave her alone? Not feed her as punishment? Something worse? The earliest picture she has of herself is at age fourteen, and I can’t quite imagine her as a little girl. If what everyone says is true, I look just like her.
She’s the one who breaks the silence, reaching over to take my hand. “This is nice, huh?”
The words batter at my chest like pounding fists: Mom, please tell me everything about you while we still have time. Mom, let’s just be totally honest. Mom, Lukas broke up with me. It goes against every instinct not to blurt everything out to her. But the lake’s surface is liquid gold beneath the rising sun, and my mom’s hand is cool in mine, and all I can do is try to see my dad’s message from the pulpit. That there are traces of heaven in everything—in shifts of summer sun, in your palm curled around a cup of strong tea, in the clasp of your mother’s hand. So I close my eyes, and I try to memorize the way the world feels all around us.
CHAPTER TEN
Top Five Most Embarrassing Moments of Camp, Week Two
1. After my Monday morning swim, I’m toweling off on my way back to the cabin. I’m not sure of the exact time, but I haven’t heard the bugle yet.
And then I nearly run into the bugle. Or rather, the bugler. Jones. So it’s been him these past mornings, waking everyone up for the day. I didn’t put it together.
“Morning!” he says with a friendly wave. His trumpet is in one hand, glinting in the earliest sunlight. He is wearing a T-shirt and shorts like a normal human being. I am wearing a still-sopping swimsuit. And I know from experience that my goggles have pressed red ovals around my eyes.
“Heh,” I reply. Heh. Not “hi,” not “hey.” Very distinctly: heh.
And instead of trying to recover from that, I scamper away like a third grader.
2. During our Tuesday night activity—watching The Sandlot after playing all-camp softball—Brooklyn tugs on my sleeve and asks if I have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. We’re sitting on blankets outside, a projector playing the pool kiss scene.
“A boyfriend,” I whisper automatically, before I remember. “I mean, neither.”
“So you don’t have a boyfriend?”
“Well, I kind of do. It’s . . . I mean, sometimes relationships are complicated when you’re older.”
“What’s your kind-of boyfriend’s name? Have you kissed him? Are you in love with him?”
Lukas. Yes. And . . . I thought I was. Can you be truly in love with someone who would put you in storage for summer, like a nice enough but unnecessary winter coat?
“Watch the movie,” I whisper.
“That means yes,” Brooklyn says to herself, smug, as Anna pats my hand.
3. On Thursday morning, Anna and I are sitting together at breakfast. She’s flanked by her fourth graders, and I have a row of 3As at my side. We’re taking our trays up, when I see Jones and Simmons in the hallway to Rhea’s office. They’re nearly toe-to-toe, conferring about something, arms crossed as they whisper.
When Anna catches me staring at them, I mutter sheepishly, “They’re cute.”