Mama fell asleep not long after that.
I sat beside her for a while, staring at her hand in mine.
Mama.
That word hadn’t changed.
But somehow everything around it had.
Thomas sat quietly on the other side of the room.
Neither of us tried to talk.
There wasn’t a sentence big enough.
Eventually I stood.
“I need to talk to her.”
Thomas nodded.
“You want me with you?”
I thought about it.
“No. But don’t go far.”
“Never.”
I stepped back into the hallway.
Michelle was sitting near the window.
She’d found a hospital blanket somewhere and wrapped it around her shoulders over that ridiculous emerald dress.
For the first time in my life, Auntie Michelle looked small.
I sat beside her.
For a minute, neither of us said anything.
Then she started talking.
“I was a mess after high school.”
“I’ve heard.”
“No. You heard the cute version.”
She told me that after high school, she was wild.
Not troubled.
Not broken.
Wild.
She snuck out.
Sang in clubs she wasn’t supposed to be in.
Stayed out too late.
Came home when she felt like it.
Granny couldn’t keep up with her.
“She used to hide my shoes,” Michelle said.
“Did it work?”
“I had other shoes.”
Of course she did.
Mama and Daddy were about five years older.
Married.
Established.
They had just moved into their own house.
“So Granny sent you to live with them?”
“Sent is a strong word.”
“What word would Granny use?”
“Sent.”
I laughed despite myself.
“It was supposed to settle me down,” she said.
“Did it?”
She looked at me.
“Have you met me?”
Their house had rules.
Dinner at a reasonable hour.
Doors locked at night.
Jobs in the morning.
Bills on the counter.
Mama wanted everything clean.
Daddy wanted everybody to stop touching his thermostat.
Michelle hated it.
“They were twenty-something going on fifty.”
“And you?”
“Twenty-something going on felony.”
I stared at her.
“Joking.”
“Are you?”
“Mostly.”
She kept sneaking out to sing.
Sometimes Mama caught her climbing back through a window.
Sometimes Daddy left the side door unlocked and pretended he hadn’t.
Sometimes Granny called at six in the morning asking if Michelle was there because she hadn’t figured out yet that Michelle had spent the night somewhere else.
“You were exhausting.”
“I was.”
“You’re still exhausting.”
“Also true.”
Then she got pregnant.
The humor left her face.
“There wasn’t some great love story,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I need you to understand that.”
“I said okay.”
“I wasn’t secretly planning a family. I wasn’t dreaming about being somebody’s mother. I was barely responsible for myself.”
She knew she wasn’t meant to be a mother.
Not then.
Maybe not ever.
“And then the job came.”
“What job?”
“The first real one.”
A singing job that would take her away.
Travel.
Hotels.
Stages.
Everything she’d been chasing while everybody else kept telling her to grow up.
“It felt like somebody opened a door,” she said. “And I was already halfway through it.”
“And you were pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“What did Mama say?”
Michelle looked toward the room where Mama was sleeping.
“Your mama and daddy wanted a baby more than anything.”
That wasn’t an answer.
“Chelle.”
“They’d been trying.”
“I know that now.”
“I had one I didn’t know how to raise. They had a home. They were married. They were stable. Your mama wanted you before she’d even held you.”
“So you just gave me to them?”
Her eyes filled.
“At the time, it didn’t feel like ‘just’ anything.”
She told me she left when I was two days old.
Mama and Daddy took me home.
And Michelle went after the life she’d wanted.
“You really left?”
“Yes.”
“Two days after having a baby?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I got on a plane.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.”
For a while, she said, she didn’t regret it.
That surprised me more than if she’d lied.
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
She looked straight at me.
“I thought I had made the right decision. You were safe. You were loved. I was doing what I wanted to do.”
Then she started coming home.
I got older.
I knew her.
I ran to her.
I wanted Auntie Chelle.
She remembered me waiting at the window when Granny told me she was coming.
She remembered me asking if I could sleep in her room.
She remembered me crying once because she had to leave again.
“Every time I came home, you knew me,” she said.
“Of course I knew you. You were my aunt.”
Michelle smiled.
But it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Yeah. I was your aunt.”
Eventually, she regretted giving me up.
Not all at once.
There wasn’t one dramatic moment.
It accumulated.
A birthday.
A Christmas.
A school program.
Me calling Mama when I was hurt even though Michelle was standing right there.
The first time I apparently told somebody, proudly, that Auntie Chelle traveled all over the world but always came back to see me.
“I started thinking I could do it,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Be your mother.”
My chest tightened.
“What happened?”
“Your mama said no.”
I stared at her.
“Daddy said no. Granny said no.”
“You asked for me back?”
“I asked what it would look like.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Michelle sighed.
“Yes. At one point, I wanted you back.”
I stood up.
She didn’t stop me.
I walked three steps away, then turned around.
“And nobody thought maybe I should know any of this?”
“You were little.”
“I’m not little now.”
“I know.”
“When were you planning to tell me? Thirty-two? Forty? At Mama’s funeral?”
“Camille.”
“No. You all got to make choices. Mama got a choice. Daddy got a choice. You got a choice. Granny apparently got a vote. Everybody got to decide what my life was supposed to look like except me.”
Michelle wiped her face.
“You’re right.”
That irritated me too.
“Don’t just agree with me.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth!”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Thirty-one years late.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I wanted to tell you.”
“When?”
“More times than I can count.”
“And?”
“Your mama didn’t. Your daddy didn’t. Granny didn’t. And every year there was another reason not to.”
Too young.
Too confusing.
Bad timing.
School.
Graduation.
College.
Another year.
Another excuse.
“Why didn’t anybody just tell me?”
Michelle looked down at her hands.
“Because after a while, telling you meant explaining everything.”
I frowned.
“Everything?”
She didn’t answer.
And then I realized something.
She had told me about getting pregnant.
About giving birth.
About leaving.
About regretting it.
She had told me everything except one thing.
“Who’s my father?”
The room went quiet.
Too quiet.
I looked at Michelle.
Her entire face changed.
Then I heard footsteps behind me.
Daddy was standing several feet away.
Nobody moved.
I laughed once.
“Oh, come on. We are not doing this again.”
I looked directly at Michelle.
“Who is my father?”
Michelle looked at Daddy.