Chapter 23 - June and Mara
The hardest question came when Hattie was nine.
“Would Mommy like June?”
I sat on the edge of her bed.
“I think so.”
“Know?”
“No.”
“Did they meet?”
Once.
At the adoption agency office after Hattie’s birth.
Mara and June spent forty minutes together.
I was there for part.
Then the counselor suggested they speak alone.
Mara later told me June asked:
“Will you tell her about me?”
Mara answered:
“Yes.”
That memory hurt.
Because Mara had promised something I delayed after her death.
I told Hattie.
She became quiet.
“Mommy wanted me know.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why you not do what Mommy said?”
No defense.
“I was scared.”
“She would be mad.”
“Probably.”
Hattie smiled faintly.
Then:
“June ever mad?”
“At me?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“For late letters?”
“Yes.”
“Everybody mad at you.”
“Apparently.”
She leaned against my shoulder.
Then asked:
“Can June see Mommy pictures?”
That question mattered.
We had been careful not to force June into Mara’s memory space.
But Hattie wanted connection.
At the next meeting, she brought an album.
“This Mommy.”
June looked.
Not competitively.
She touched one photograph lightly.
“She was beautiful.”
Hattie said:
“She snored.”
I almost objected.
True.
June laughed.
“Good to know.”
The women never met again after Hattie’s infancy.
Yet through Hattie, they stopped being opposing categories.
Birth mother.
Adoptive mother.
No battle.
No “real.”
Just parts of one child’s story.
May you like
That was the opposite of what Evelina had tried to create.
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