“Well, we will thank that pretty boy, Jay, one day when he comes back to visit but he wouldn’t even know we were here if it weren’t for you.”
My heart stopped and then restarted. “Jay did this?” I whispered.
“Of course, he did. I’m convinced he thinks that Ollie is his long-lost spirit child.”
A laugh bubbled out of me. “I’m so glad he did this.”
Margie slapped her hand onto her thigh. “Well, me too. With everything, I’ll have to have you look at some numbers, but I might be able to expand further in a few years.”
“Why more expansion, Margie? You keep saying you can’t handle much more.”
Her omens for the future scared me and probably the children even more. Without Margie, they had no place to sleep sometimes, no meals in their bellies other times, and no safe haven to rely on.
“Remember the first day I started showing you each child’s file?”
My gut clenched at the memory. Like a Rolodex, each child’s file flipped through my head—abuse, addiction, neglect.
I nodded my head, too full of emotion to speak.
“Children are resilient. Your mom was too.”
“She tried her best.” I looked away as I said it. Her best would have been leaving my father behind, trying to escape that fire without him.
Margie studied me. “Your mother was one of the strongest girls I’ve ever met.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth to stop from contradicting her but she must have seen the disbelief in my eyes.
“She came to this little house one morning hurt pretty bad.”
I squinted at her, not knowing this story and curious about what Margie knew.
“She didn’t talk about it with me, but she’d been beaten and the blood on her pants, well …” Margie sighed and shrugged as the wrinkles on her face deepened. “Your mother helped clean her own clothes that very day, and we went on as if nothing had happened.”
Each word landed like a brick in my stomach, weighing it down with the gravity they held.
Memories of pleading with my mother to go back to her childhood home jackhammered into my thoughts. I’d cried more than once, telling her nothing could be worse than staying with my father.
My mother stood firm, saying we couldn’t just leave my father and go back to where she grew up. She told me things could always be worse.
I shook my head, not wanting it to be true. “Why are you telling me this?”
Margie shrugged. “This place is for kids. I need to expand so there can be room for women too. Everyone should have a place they feel safe.”
I didn’t say anything after that. I couldn’t. My mind raced, trying to reevaluate everything my mother had gone through, how she’d stayed with my father, how she’d never gone back to her childhood home. I wondered if, for her, he was the only safe haven she’d known.
Afterwards, we sat in the living room listening to the kids in the basement. The giggles and screams about hot lava reinforced their resilience and their ability to stay innocent.
That night, I stared at the colors I had added to my room. I tried to imagine my mother standing there, smiling. I wondered what she would be had the world not been so cruel to her. Would she have let her long hair dance in the wind? Would she have spoken the words of her heritage and shared stories of what it was like to grow up on the reservation? Would she have really lived, bold and bright like the colors in my room?
I tried to imagine her like that. But I couldn’t. The tears that fell for her disappeared into my pillowcase and I wanted the weight of Margie’s words to disappear that way too.
I called Jay and told him everything. He listened but didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t know what to say either. I just knew I needed to tell someone about my mother.
When he couldn’t find a way to cheer me up, he persuaded me to drive with Rome and the girls to Chicago that weekend where he’d be ironing out some financials with Jett.
“We’ll go out. I’ll take you to my new favorite restaurant.”