Page 83 of Games We Play
“Because your grandmother is a very conservative woman deep down. That was doubly true back then. I didn’t know that I had options, so to speak. I would’ve never been allowed to do them.”God, I can imagine that blowing up in my face.If Sloan thought she had it rough with her husband… Jesus! “Thing is, sunshine, I found out I was pregnant early in the year. Mother got it in her head that you would be born in the late summer, and it would be perfect timing for me to go back to school as if nothing had ever happened. It was only a matter of pulling me out of the public eye as soon as I started showing. I only left the house to go to the doctor. For a time, I lived with your great-grandmother out on the coast.” That woman was worse than Janet. There wasn’t a day that went by when Leah wasn’t made to know how much she had fucked up and would be paying for her sins for the rest of her life.
“How did Mom hide the fact that shewasn’tpregnant? Didn’t people ask questions when she suddenly started carting me around?”
“There have always been rumors, but you know how Mom is. She quashes them like bugs, or at least stares at people until they stop asking questions. I don’t doubt that lots of people we know had figured it out long ago, but they wouldn’t dare say anything. What business is it of theirs, anyway?” Leah rubbed her daughter’s leg. She only flinched a little. “The only ones hurt the most in all of this were us. We were never allowed to have the right kind of relationship.”
“You could’ve changed that!”
“Could I?” Leah thought back to her teenaged years. The last thing she wanted was the responsibility of raising a child while in high school. “I didn’t have any power when I was your age, Karlie. The only thing I was allowed when you were born was naming you, but you knew that already.”
Karlie grinned, but only for a moment. It had always been a sweet anecdote that Leah had been “allowed” to choose Karlie’s name. Only it used to be told as a “can you believe it?” story, as opposed to the natural truth. Of course the woman who gave birth to her was allowed to name her!Even though Mom thought it was the dumbest name she had ever heard.
“Even though I was a dumb teenager,” Leah left out the part where angsty, teenaged her was grateful to be “washed” of Karlie, “I still loved you with all of my heart. You were my sister as far as you were concerned, but deep down I wrestled with a mother’s love. Why do you think we’re so close, though I’m from another generation? You may have thought of me as your sister, but you never stopped being my daughter.”
Karlie slowly sank into Leah’s awaiting embrace. “I wish you told me a long time ago.”
“I know. Me too. It’s always been a terrible truth to carry in my heart. The older you got, the harder I knew it would be to tell you one day. That’s why I tried to get as much as I could out of our relationship.”
“Did you think I would want to be rid of you forever or something?”
“How are you taking it right now?”
Karlie pushed her face into her mother’s bosom. Curly hair, identical to Leah’s, obscured the rest of her visage. “It’s like everything has changed.”
“Because it has. Now you know the truth of this family. You can’t ever go back to the person you used to be.”
“Like you, right?”
Leah squeezed her daughter. “No. Never. But I don’t think I’d want to go back, anyway.”
They remained like that for a few minutes, until Karlie pulled out of her mother’s embrace and asked, “What happened to my father?”
Leah allowed her fingers to linger in her daughter’s hair.I made this hair. It’s like she took it right from my scalp and made it her own.Only a mother could have those thoughts and not instantly regret them. “He got off the easiest, of course. He knew about you, but after my mother said she would be raising the baby, she told him that he would have no part of your life. I think he was too young to fully understand what that meant, but it’s not likehisparents stood up for him, anyway.” Leah hadn’t minded it. She didn’t want that constant reminder hovering around her. It was bad enough she lied to herself for most of her teenaged years. If Daryl were constantly coming by? She might have exploded.
“Does he know about me?”
“As it so happens…” Leah hesitated. Was it best to tell her about this? “I saw him the other day at the bookstore. He said he was proud that you were going to college.”
Karlie wiped a tear from her eye. “So he still lives in Portland?”
“He’s married now.” Leah wondered what his wife was like. “He also has two more kids. Much younger than you. Barely in elementary school, if that.”
“I have other siblings out there?”
Leah took her daughter’s hand. “The world is a strange place, isn’t it? Weird to think that you didn’t know any of this before today.”I wonder if Daryl would ever want anything to do with his oldest child.How absolved was he from this, anyway?
“Are you still gay, LeeLee?”
Leah almost couldn’t believe what Karlie had asked. “You kidding me? The only reason your grandmother puts up with my lesbian shenanigans is because it means I’m not having any more babies, but it’s not why I’m gay.” She shrugged. “I was doing things much too young. Too young to realize that my sexual feelings weren’t meant for boys. I had a girlfriend in high school. I wish… well, I wish she had been my first, but instead, she was my second.”
“I always did wonder how Mom put up with that. She always seemed the type to spout homophobic stuff if prompted.”
“Your grandmother is a complicated woman who has put up with a lot in her life. Including from me.”
“Does this mean I can’t call you LeeLee anymore? Do I…” Karlie looked away. “Do I have to callyouMom now?”
“You do whatever’s comfortable for you. You’re the one making all the adjustments right now. I’m not going to be offended if you keep calling me your sister or by my first name.”
“You promise?”
