Page 58 of A Lifetime in 30 Days
“Are you going to just stand there?” Vanna asked.
Diane nodded.
“Why?” That was a loaded question where Diane was concerned. There were so manywhys that had gone unanswered that despite her big ole age of thirty-nine, Vanna still wanted to ask.
“Told you, I don’t wanna mess up your place,” Diane replied with a slow shrug.
All her movements were slow, her eyes wide and bloodshot. As usual. For as long as Vanna had memory of this woman, she’d been drunk. In the morning when Vanna was in preschool, she’d awaken in the tiny apartment they lived in to Diane’s slurred words and the scent of what Vanna would later learn was alcohol clinging to her skin. She’d also learned that Diane’s preferred drink was Jack and Coke. Probably why Vanna stuck with light liquor.
“How would you mess up my place, Mama? All you have to do is walk up these stairs. I can get you some towels, maybe try to find you something dry to put on, and you can sit in the living room and wait for Granny.” Vanna sighed. “I won’t even talk to you.” Because it seemed to pain her mother so much. Anytime Vanna was near her or tried to have even a basic conversation with her, Diane always acted like it would literally kill her to participate.
“I’m just gonna stay here, Vannie. That’s all.”
“Fine,” Vanna snapped, and turned to leave her there. But then she stopped, one foot on the first step, the other still on the floor. She turned back to face Diane. “No, it’s not fine. The way you treat me likeI’m the worst mistake of your life is not fine. It wasn’t when I was a child, and unfortunately it’s still not now.”
Diane looked away, focusing her gaze on the mirror positioned on the wall above that table where Vanna normally put her purse. Today, for whatever reason, Vanna’s purse was still on her shoulder.
“I don’t push you,” Vanna continued. “I never pushed you. I just accepted that this was who you were, how you wanted to treat me. And I still accept that.” She breathed out slowly. “I know I can’t change you, but I am going to get this off my chest. You might have come here today for one reason, but I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I’m even seeing you to tell you how much you’ve hurt me.”
There was the smallest shake of Diane’s head, but she still didn’t turn back to look at Vanna.
“You abandoned me. Just walked away and never looked back. I don’t know why or how you could even do such a thing to your child, but I guess it’s not for me to understand. But I want you to know that everything you did, and even more so what you didn’t do for me, has scarred me, probably for life. I won’t blame all of my mistakes on you, but there’s a part of me that still carries that trauma that you inflicted. So if I never get the opportunity to speak to you again, Mama, I just want to say, thank you.”
For what felt like the billionth time since last night, tears stung Vanna’s eyes. “Thank you for the resilience and the strength being the child that you didn’t want has provided me.”
She stopped speaking then and waited.
But Diane had nothing. Not even another glance Vanna’s way.
So Vanna left her there. For her own self-preservation, she didn’t say another word, didn’t allow herself to expect anything more from the woman who’d only ever given her life.
It was an hour and a half later when a soft knock sounded on Vanna’s bedroom door. She knew who it was.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened and Granny stepped inside. “Dinner’s ready,” she said.
“Thanks,” Vanna replied from the spot where she lay across her bed. She’d been watching one of herI Love LucyDVDs, desperately searching for more nostalgia to cocoon her than the harsh realities she’d been forced to live with. “I’ll come down and get it in a little bit.”
Granny wasn’t so easily dismissed. She came farther into the room and sat on the edge of the bed by Vanna’s feet.
“She’s sick, Vannie.” Those words settled in the air. “End-stage liver disease.”
Vanna continued to stare at the TV.
“After I picked you up from the bus station that day, I found her ass and told her not to come back until she was sober and ready to be a mother. Told her she better find everything she needed in that bottle ’cause I had absolutely nothing for her if she couldn’t do right by you,” Granny continued. “She stayed away for a long time. I actually thought I’d never see her again. Then one day, when you were at school, I got a call from the hospital, so I went. She was there. Somebody had found her passed out on the street and brought her in. They did a bunch of tests, and she was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. They talked about treatments, told her she definitely needed to stop drinking and smoking to be able to live with the disease, ’cause it wasn’t going away. But she didn’t do a damn thing.”
Granny sighed heavily, and Vanna wanted to reach out and hug her. To tell her that she didn’t need to say any more, but as always, she knew it was best just to let her get it all out when it came to Diane.
“I didn’t give her money for anything for years, figured she was finding her own way, even if it was to another bottle. I’d done my job in raising her, I couldn’t do anything for the adult who didn’t wanna help herself,” Granny said.
Vanna felt her grandmother’s hand on her leg as she started to rub like Vanna was the one who needed soothing.
“Last year she came by the senior home. I don’t even know how she knew that’s where I was living. I hadn’t seen her in a long while. But she walked into the rec room, moving all slow, her eyes filled with tears. She told me then she was gonna die, and we sat in that rec room not saying another word to each other for, oh, I guess another hour. Then she got up to leave, and I got up, put twenty dollars in her hand.”
Tears spilled from Vanna’s eyes.
“She’s still my baby, Vannie. I know she hurt you. I know that she could never find it in herself to be a mother. It took me a while to accept that I couldn’t do a damn thing about that. But she’s still my baby, and now—” She sighed wearily. “Now I just want her to be at peace. However that looks for her for the time she has left on this earth, I want her to be at peace.” Granny choked back a sob, and Vanna moved until she was able to sit on the side of the bed and fold her grandmother into her arms.
