i am sitting on the kitchen counter. mama stands on the fluorescent-illuminated tile next to me, peeling an orange. her hands work at the fruit deftly. she offers me half without looking up, the habit of providing sinking deeper into her bones with each movement of her fingers. 

i take it, popping the citrus into my mouth and humming at the taste. mama smiles at the sound, but her eyes are blank. not empty, but blank. i know what that look is. i’ve seen it all my life.

a bead of juice pours from the corner of my lips. she wipes it away with her thumb.

blank.

my mama excels at that. remaining perfectly imperfect. she can quietly dissuade the attention from her own person onto her children, the way every parent does but not every parent wants to.

i wonder sometimes if my mama wants that attention.

mama peels the other half of the orange. i’ve always found that strange; the way that she peels one half and gives it away instead of undoing the whole skin at once. 

“why do you do that?” i keep my voice soft, not wanting to break the careful quiet we’ve stuffed in between the crevices of the cabinets and underneath the placemats. 

she looks up at me. “do what?” she asks, voice just as low, but i know she understood the first time i asked.

“why do you always peel one half before the other?”

mama smiles up at me, lips crooked. “because i’m a mother.”

but did you want to be?

_-_

i’m staring at a wall made of glass, peering through at rows of babies in plastic bassinets. a hospital, my mind provides helpfully. the pediatric ward. my eyes scan across the names pasted to the front of each one, until i finally land on a name i recognize.

a man appears next to me, a solemn look on his face but pride in his eyes. we’re looking at the same baby.

“which one is yours?” he asks, voice gruff and somehow wistful. i point at a random child, one with a blue hat and pouted lips. my eyes never leave the girl with the butterfly on her blanket. 

the man nods. my grandfather points at my mother and says, “that one’s mine.”

i nod. “she has your eyes.” it’s a lie. she doesn’t right now, but she will. the man puffs out his chest anyways.

“she looks just like her mother to me,” he tells me. i can’t help but look away, over at the man that would break the woman who broke me. i can see my mother in his eyes, not the ones i look into every day but the ones i see in pictures. pictures from a time long gone. 

his eyes are not yet blank, but they will be.

a crinkling hits my ears. i look down. my grandfather has a plastic bag in his hand, and i can make out something round inside. he follows my gaze. smiles.

“my wife loves oranges,” he tells me, reaching into the bag. he pulls out a fruit and reaches out his arm. “want one?”

i take it. i peel one half before the other. 

no one will hurt my mama.

_-_

i’m in the backseat of dad’s car. mama sits in the front seat, facing the window. her arms are crossed over her chest. my headphones sit snugly over my ears. no music is playing. 

“you aren’t listening,” dad starts. “do you hear what i’m saying? does this even bother you?”

mama doesn’t move, but i see her eyes flicker down. i can’t tell what she’s looking at.

my dad slams a hand down on the steering wheel. she doesn’t jump. she’s used to this.

i don’t jump either. 

i can see my dad peer at me through the rearview mirror. i don’t look up. i know if i did i would only see myself reflected back at me. the anger in our eyes was different, but it was anger nonetheless. 

mama looks out the window again. her eyes are different from mine. i don’t know how else to say it.

i got my dad’s half of the orange. 

i’m staring at mama’s eyes again when she looks down once more. she looks at her left hand.

i turn on my music. 

_-_

my grandfather takes me to meet his wife. i still have orange juice on my fingers, but i do my best to wipe it off on my jeans. i’m older here. my hair is shorter. i can see myself still, looking through the glass at my dad’s eyes and mama’s mouth. rageful and silent.

my grandmother is still in a hospital gown. sweat lines her brow but her lips are smiling. she eyes the denim residue sticking to my hands with something close to disdain. her husband raises the bag in his hand. she connects the dots.

handing her an orange, the man sits down by her bedside. i blink. i remember seeing this, when she was dying. but now an empty bassinet is at her side instead of the woman who raised me.

“who might you be?” she asks. her fingers look like mama’s as she peels the fruit.

i give my name. it’s odd. i can see myself in them but they don’t see me at all. 

my grandfather explains how we met. i say that the baby with the blue hat and the pout is my estranged sister’s, that this is the first time we have seen each other in a while, and it is also most likely the last. they frown. i shrug. it doesn’t hurt. i’ve never had a sister.

a nurse knocks on the door, a bundle in her arms. my heart clenches when i see how the woman and man light up, because i know it won’t last long before that light goes dark.

_-_

mama is cleaning the floors for the third time today.

she hasn’t complained once. not when dad trekked in with muddy shoes and never stopped to apologize. not when the dog rolled across the kitchen tile and left clumps of hair in her wake. not when i dropped my cup of orange juice and fell to my knees to clean it up. she only placed a hand on my shoulder to pull me to my feet and asked me to empty the mop bucket outside. 

i’m sitting at the kitchen table now, a fresh cup of juice in my hands. i tap the glass with my fingernail.

tap, tap, tap

i look.

mama’s arms are lined with tension. they tremble with every sweep of the mop.

tap, tap, tap

her eyes are still, unmoving in their sockets, not even glancing at the wet socks on her feet after water sloshes out of the bucket.

tap, tap, tap

tap tap tap

taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap

the mop snaps in half.

mama’s eyes don’t look down.

_–_

mama liked me. i had never been good with kids, but mama liked me. 

her parents had apparently deemed me suitable to be around their daughter. we had dinner every saturday night, mama peering around at us with the purest of joy in the eyes she got from her father. i felt her happiness in those moments. those small blips of time where she got to see the three of us together, the ones who would raise her and the one she would raise.

it was the first time her father had drank since her birth.

grandma didn’t like it when he drank, but she never told me that. she just looked at me with that strained smile of hers and gave a little shake of her head. “don’t mention it,” the smile said. “it’s not worth it.”

i couldn’t find it within myself to say anything; it wasn’t my business, despite it being my family. that’s the problem with secrets–they can only haunt the one who keeps them. 

eventutally, however, the bruises on the woman’s face and the tear tracks on mama’s cheeks became too hard to ignore. 

i came over unannounced on a sunday morning. they used to call it “God’s day” when they talked about it, but i had noticed grandma brushing the topic aside when i asked them about church. i couldn’t ask their church friends if they had been going–that’s the problem with dreams. you can only haunt the ones who caused them. 

i didn’t knock. the door was unlocked–they lived in a good neighborhood, no one locked their doors, they always said. 

the best neighborhoods always had the bloodiest of carpets.

mama was on the ground. that was the first thing i noticed.

i always noticed her first.

the second thing i noticed was that grandma was beside her, cradling her head in her hands and letting the quietest sorrow i had ever heard pour from her silent lips.

i know now where mama got them from.

the man was passed out in the chair across from them.

the first thing i did was pick up mama. grandma was too weak. she was young, but weakness doesn’t always come from age. 

the second thing i did was pull grandma to her feet. she wobbled before collapsing once again. she didn’t say a word when her knees met the carpet. silent lips never wailed.

the third thing i did was place a kiss on grandpa’s cheek.

i always noticed mama first.

i walked out with judas on my mind, the smell of stale beer in my nose, and a baby in my arms. 

_-_

i don’t like loud noises. i got that from mama.

the birthday party is loud. my dad is drinking again. there’s a bottle on his lips and laughter on his tongue.

he’s not a happy drunk, though.

i hold onto mama’s arm, fielding off touchy family members with forced smiles and too-tight hugs. she does the same. i learned from her, after all.

mama tugs on my hand. she leads me to the couch in the corner, letting me sit down before she settles down beside me. dad looks over. he’s laughing. his eyes aren’t.

mama looks down at her left hand.

“i wouldn’t be mad,” i whisper. she doesn’t hear me. asks me to speak up.

“your ring is pretty,” i say instead, not having enough courage to repeat myself. because i got my mouth from her, and my eyes from dad.

i know they’re sad–my eyes, that is. i know i look like a kicked puppy. mama knows it, too. she just strokes my arm. says, “i know,” in the voice i used the first time.

i can hear her.

_-_

grandma gives me custody of mama. she doesn’t say anything when she signs the papers. just adjusts the bulky sunglasses on her face and walks away.

she doesn’t sign the other set of papers i sent her.

mama adjusts to life with me easily. she likes my house. says it makes her feel like a princess because its so big. “like a palace,” she tells me.

she grows up under my care. her hair gets longer, the way grandma never let her keep it. the way mama never let me keep mine. she goes to school. she makes friends.

she comes home crying.

i ask her what’s wrong.

“they told me i would make a good mother,” she babbles through tears. i flinch. she doesn’t notice. “they-they said that i would be an amazing wife.”

i know what’s wrong. she’s twelve. she still remembers.

“you don’t have to be either of those things, you know,” i whisper. my heart breaks in my chest. i can see the hope in her eyes. her own heart swells. “you don’t have to be what they want.”

she tells me she doesn’t want a husband. she screams until her throat is hoarse that she’s never having children, that she’s never going to ruin someone by making them have a mother like her.

mama is twelve.

i feel younger than i am.

my hair is growing longer

i don’t know how old i am.

_-_

mama divorces dad the first time he hits me.

she gives me the ring.

she knows i hate the thing. but she gives me the ring.

_-_

the girl grows up. i don’t remember anything other than her name. i used to call her something else. i don’t know why. she has a name.

she turns sixteen. she tells me when she has her first kiss, says she hated it. she’s sure she doesn’t want to get married. i don’t know why it hurts when she says that.

i tell her things change. she tells me some things are meant to stay the same.

i help her decorate her cap for graduation. she paints it with oranges and blooming flowers. it tickles something in my mind, but i can’t put my finger on it. she tells me they remind her of me. i cry. she laughs. says i’ve always been too soft when it came to her.

i walk her across the stage at her school. she cries. i laugh. say she’s always been too soft when it came to things like this.

we go home and eat ice cream on the kitchen floor. i wake up the next morning to the smell of citrus. i don’t remember ever waking up before, i realize. how strange.

she’s sitting on the kitchen counter eating an orange. she peels the whole thing at once, a continuous strip of rind falling to her palms. 

she doesn’t offer me half. 

i wipe the juice from her lips.

_-_

a girl with long hair and a ring around her neck looks down at me. 

“mama?”