Baby Don't Return to Me

“Macy,” Her voice was weak and her milk chocolate eyes glazed from the medication. I couldn’t help take notice to her sallow skin that had once been a Tempe tan.

It broke my heart that it seemed more logical for Macy to return to her than I. But what hurt most was that in that moment I, once again, would have done anything to be Macy. The bright spot till the end, the daughter I could never become, and the pride I never would be. Even with Jamie on her hip, Macy had managed to be a spotless shining trophy in my parents’ living room. There were the dance trophies, the field hockey trophies, the Key Club award, The Future Leaders of America award, and the Debate Club ribbons. I had my 7th grade recreational Softball trophy, dusty and forgotten, even Kennedy had had his soccer trophies that towered over my solitary one. I couldn’t be Macy that much had been evident all through our childhood; that I simply could not compare to the shining star that was my sister.

“No Mom,” I whispered, I could feel Kennedy hovering behind me as though I would collapse from the pain of seeing her like this and he would catch me at any moment. But Kennedy couldn’t catch me, I’d already fallen and I’d already picked myself up off the ground—he was two years too late. “It’s Cassandra.”

Several emotions flashed across my mother’s tired face then; shock, relief, love, anguish, and other emotions that I simply couldn’t put a name on. All I knew was that in my heart it was every emotion I needed to see and understand. It was my mother’s apology written all over her face, it was her heart on her sleeve, her spirit healed. I saw then, in the face of my hospital bound mother, the damage I had truly caused my family.

My mother had always been the glue in any situation. Examining and understanding the broken pieces and then gluing them back together and making everything better.
But there was one thing my mother had never been able to glue the pieces to—our family.
No matter what she had always understood me, she had always been the one I confided in—she had been my best friend my entire life. But I knew my mother possibly better than my father ever had. I knew she would pry apart the layers of protection that had formed over the past two years. My mother would get to the bottom of everything even if it caused me pain. I loved my mother to bits but I also knew the truth of her. My mother was the heart of everything, she was the love in my family, the glue of the house, she was a mother to my friends, and an enemy to anyone who messed with her family. But my mother had an almost suffocating need to heal all problems. She would do everything in her power to right things that went wrong. I loved my mother but this was one thing she could not right—not that that would stop her from trying.

It was one of the many reasons I had kept my secrets from my mother, I didn’t want her to fix things, I didn’t want her to suffocate me with her love—especially when at the time I didn’t feel I deserved it. I knew that eventually my mother would come with her heart shaped crowbar and come after me, demanding answers, determined to fix the broken things.

But there had been something flawed and broken within our family that couldn’t be taken apart or glued back together; I liked to call that flaw ‘Dad’. Families had flaws, people had issues, but these weren’t things that could be fixed when the emotional and physical damage had been inflicted. My mother had always seen these broken pieces in our family but she had never tried to fix them during her marriage with my father...that was until she finally realized it had been her husband breaking our family to pieces in the first place. These weren’t issues that could be addressed and healed and all would be well in the world. Believe me, there were attempts to address the issues when Kenny and I were kids. Each and every attempt ended up with Macy fleeing the house to the neighbors and Kenny and I hiding in the darkness of the hallway closet.

I remembered the lyrics we used to whisper to each other in a vain attempt to comfort the other. Thinking back it was kind of ironic those same lyrics had been sung to us from the very man we hid from.

I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout all the time you told me your so full of doubt, you just can’t let it be.

We’d listen to them fight and just stare at each other saying the words like a chant praying it would make it all stop or that possibly our whispering words could drown out their shouts.

Eventually it would stop as it always did, of course the damage had been done, our relationship with our father destroyed. Macy, Kennedy, and I had gone so far as to change our legal name to our mother’s maiden name, and Kennedy had created a name for himself because he had not wanted to be associated with the father who had made our lives hell. So Kennedy had taken up the name of our deceased uncle, our mother’s brother that is, who had died when we were 9 in a motorcycle accident.

“Momma,” My voice was thick no matter how hard I tried to swallow the obstruction in my throat.

Tears welled in her eyes and I ran to her like the scared little girl I was. The truth was I was still that little girl who loved her mother. I was still that little girl who wished that in the arms of her mother could hide from the world or, perhaps, find all the answers to it.

I thought I could do this, I thought I could be the strong, tough exterior, bitch I had tried to become these past two years. But you can’t make yourself something that your not. I was a street fighter, a lover, a runner, a confronter—I was a careful contradiction of myself that had resulted in the destruction of my family.

“Mom,” I whispered as I perched carefully on the edge of her hospital bed, Kennedy’s forefinger and thumb encircling my wrist. As children anytime Kennedy or I had been scared or wary, or needed each other we had grabbed each other’s wrists with just our finger and thumb; it was our equivalent of holding hands, of a reassuring touch. Kennedy and I were always the more reserved quiet ones as kids, we didn’t lay out our hearts on our sleeves and we had undeniable levels of pride that left us unable to grab each others hand as kids or hug it out as teenagers.

“Shhh, Cassandra, don’t cry.”

Two years was not too late, it would never be too far away It would always yesterday to me and it would always bring pain to me. I had become an expert at hiding how I felt; I’d masked the pain so well in the 730 days that I had convinced myself that I was okay. One look at my mother had reduced me to a five year old, the weight of the world setting back upon my shoulders, my guilt, my broken heart, my ghosts flooded my memory and left me breathless until there was nothing to do but cry.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. I could see it in her swallow face and her sad, tired, yet loving orbs what I alone had done to her. Understanding and pain flashed across her face and it stopped the words on my lips.

“Hunny,” Her cool nimble fingers found my hand, giving it a squeeze. “Don’t you dare think for one second that me collapsing was caused by you.” Her hand cupped my cheek and she smiled fondly at me. “I’m old baby, that isn’t your doing.”

“But your stressed,” I explained tears still trickling down my face. “These things are caused by stress.”

“This wasn’t you Cassandra Jacquelyn,” My mother stated firmly, an almost angry edge to her voice. “It was never you,” She murmured. “Never my baby.” I saw mirrors in my mother’s eyes; I saw my own tortured reflection in her own tortured eyes. “Hunny you must do something that your brother and sister are by default.”

“What?”

“Do what is best for you and no one else. Put yourself first, be rebellious, don’t care about what others think of your decisions, and be selfish. Do what you feel is right.” I could imagine the unsaid words on her lips, or else.

“Or what?” I prompted curiously. Kennedy had said Mom was sick but she wasn’t on her death bed, this wasn’t her dying request—right? Panic flooded me then, had Kennedy lied to spare my feelings? “Mom are you—“

“I’m not dying baby,” She smiled softly before adding, “But that doesn’t mean you should treat what I say any lighter. Hunny I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with regret, wishing I had done things differently, followed my own instincts instead of what people told me was best. I see the way things are now and I see the way they could have been.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes you do, you torment yourself everyday with the idea of what would happen if you had done things differently. It drove you all the way to Boston because you couldn’t take it anymore. I’m telling you to do things right by you, Cassandra, no matter the pain you inflict or the hearts you confuse. You must always do what is right by you.”

“I’m sorry but your mother needs her rest now,” a slightly plump black woman with beautifully braided hair entered the room wearing nurses robes and clutching a neon orange clipboard.

“Tess she’s not bothering me. This is my daughter Cassandra and she’s finally come home.”

“It’s okay Mom,” I smiled softly, “I’ll come back.”

“I love you.”

“I love you Mom.” I hugged her as tight as I could and she hugged me back with as much strength. I forced myself to turn away and move from the room when she captured the wrist Kennedy hadn’t claimed.

Her fingers were startlingly cold against my flushed skin as she spoke. “There’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend.”

I rolled my eyes, grinning. Meet my mother, the only woman could lay in a hospital bed, produce a cheesy ‘Confucious say’ line and mean every word.