Page 51 of Call You Mine
And we have to come clean to everyone.
The thought crosses my mind for the first time since all of this, alarming me in a way I didn’t think it would.
I try to push the thought to the back of my mind and adjust the keyboard on my desktop so it’s perfectly aligned with the screen and centered on my desk mat. I get to workon the few to-dos I can get out of the way to keep my brain busy. My anxiety begins to subside as I distract myself with all my tasks—I know it may be temporary, but I have shit to do.
I’m just crossing offMake next week’s schedulewhen my phone buzzes across my desk.
Glancing at the clock in the corner of my computer screen to make sure I didn’t somehow black out, work eight hours straight, and forget to pick Georgie up from school, I see it’s barely noon. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t her school’s contact popping up on my phone—or the fire department, which means I didn’t somehow accidentally set my apartment on fire.
Another, slightly more rational, fear of mine—since I’ve actually come home to find my home on fire. And even though I didn’t keep a candle lit or forget about cookies in the oven, it was still my fault.
When I register whose contact it is, relief flickers through me.
But then it burns out as quickly as it came.
My mom.
She’s calling a whole week after I left her house in the middle of the night with her daughter, leaving behind a note telling her to call me.
And the saying “better late than never” doesn’t really apply tothissituation.
There’s a moment where I contemplate not answering. Not letting this phone call interfere with everything I have to get done today or give me something else to worry about.
But the thought dissipates almost immediately. I know I’m going to answer. I know I’m going to either listen to her bitch and moan about her situation and everything she’s going through—not Georgie. Or, she’s going to bitch, moan, and blame me for all of it.
Exhaling through my mouth, I answer. “Hey, Mom.”
“You have five seconds to tell me why the hell I have Child Protective Services on my ass. They’ve called me a dozen times. Showed up at myhome. Telling me how I’m a horrible mother.” Her voice is shrill, and her words slur together. She’s drunk—in the middle of the day—and she’s probably been drunk since whenever she decided that drowning her grief over her late husband with a bottle of vodka was more important than her thirteen-year-old daughter. “How do you think it makes me feel, Ava? That I found out from some random woman that my own daughter was taken from me? How could you do this to me?”
Somehow, she finds a way to blame everyone and everything else in the world forhermistake. Forheractions. For forgettingherresponsibilities.
“Mom,” I try to say, but she keeps going on and on about how hard this situation is for her. Having CPS investigate her and her ability to be a mother, and how ridiculous that is. She is a mother of four, after all.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, lowering the phone from my ear, my mother’s voice turning to static the further I hold it away. I’ve been down this road with her before, and it isn’t even worth arguing. I doubt she’ll even remember this phone call tomorrow.
Even if she remembers, I don’t know how I will ever get her to understand that she’s been choosing herself over her daughters for my entire life, leaving me to put Phoebe, Jasmine, and Georgie first.
Because if I didn’t, who would?
I bring the phone back up to my ear, listening to her slurring about how embarrassed she was to open the door to CPS and have to tell them Georgie wasn’t home.
Because she had no fucking clue where she was.
She doesn’t say how scared or panicked she was.
She was too concerned with herself and how she looked. More so than Georgie’s whereabouts.
“Mom,” I try again, a little louder.
“What?” she snaps. “What could you possibly say to fix this, Ava? First, I lost my husband. Then, I lost my job. Now, I’ve lost my daughter?” Her next few sentences come out too slurred for me to make out.
The more I let her go on, the more my skin prickles, the more it feels like the room is closing in on me. The more I need to count, to organize, to do something that makes me feel like I’m in control.
It’s all about her. It always has been.
She hasn’t even asked about Georgie. Hasn’t asked to talk to her.
And that says more than anything she’s trying to tell me now.
