Making Peace

“She’s on the third floor, dear, third room on the left” the portly nurse said with a smile, “she’s never had many visitors over the years. I'm glad to see that someone came, if only to say goodbye. Just sign in here, take a visitor sticker and you’ll be good to go.” 

“Thank you,” the middle-aged blonde whispered as she shifted the purse on her shoulder, signed her name, and took a Sharpie to write on the sticker.

“Este is a pretty name,” the nurse grinned, “I have a granddaughter on the way, and my son claims to have no ideas for a girls’ name.” 

The woman across the counter winced,

“I think there are probably better names out there for her, maybe try Elena?” 

“I’ll give him the suggestion, you have a good visit, sweetie, and I’m so sorry you have to come under these circumstances. Let any of the nurses know if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” Este murmured again and turned to make her way to the elevator, which was old and slow- like most of the residents in the crumbling, stone building. 

Walking up to the medical facility had made Este’s heart sink. The windows were yellowed and cracked, some boarded up, the bricks pitted and faded; she could tell landscaping hadn’t been in the budget for a while. Weeds tickled her ankles as she walked up the steps to the visitor’s entrance, which appeared to be the most modern section of the institution. 

When the doors of the elevator closed behind Este, the machine gave an ominous shudder before creeping upward. The lazy pace gave her plenty of time to grow the cloud of anxiety in her chest getting darker and heavier with each second of the rickety elevator’s ascent. Finally, when Este’s sweat had soaked through her t-shirt and her breaths had begun to come shorter, the elevator’s overly loud ding! sounded and the doors slid open. Dingy yellow carpeting and sickly green walls made her feel like Dorothy trudging down the worst yellow brick road ever. She found herself wishing she had a Toto, or even a brainless Scarecrow to link arms with as she stopped in front of room 303. Este stared at the brass numbers nailed into flimsy wood as if they would come alive and give her a reason to run. She didn’t want to do this. 

I made my peace with her a long time ago, her sister’s words echoed in her head, you’ll regret it if you don’t make yours before you lose your chance. 

With one last shaky breath, Este raised her fist and knocked three times, paused, then twice more. It didn’t take long for a withered voice from inside to yell,

“Come in, Esther!” 

She pushed into the room and paused in the doorway, doubt once again lancing through her. The room was sparser than she would have expected, it seemed like any photos or decorations had been taken down, except for the bronze crucifix hanging over the bed, and the only pop of color in the room was a single bouquet of flowers already wilting on the bedside table. A simple wrought iron white frame held a twin mattress and plain white sheets that covered the lap of a frail, old woman wearing a modest nightgown and a scowl. Before Este could say anything the wizened voice said,

“I wondered when you would come. I see you haven’t forgotten our code.” 

The younger woman slowly made her way to the chair already sat beside the bed, she scooted it slightly farther away before sitting down and replying, 

“I don’t think I ever could. I have fond memories of you teaching it to me.”

They lapsed into silence, identical brown eyes staring into very different souls, not knowing what to say after such a long time. Esther felt a familiar itching in her spine under the elder’s scrutiny, but resisted the urge to straighten like she used to. The other woman ran her eyes up and down her form, observing the toll the years had taken and, apparently, not liking what she saw. 

“You look old.” 

“That tends to happen when 20 years pass,” Esther’s voice was even when she responded, but her stomach dropped again. 

What was the point in being here? Nothing had changed, this was the same bitter hag that Este had spent half a lifetime trying to avoid, just with white hair and far more wrinkles. For a split second, Este considered pointing that out, but once again she heard her sister’s voice in her head. She owed it to herself to make peace before this woman met her end. Silence fell again, filled with all the things neither wanted to say. Then, just as Esther was gathering the courage to ask what she needed, the old woman pushed her over the edge, 

“Are you here to repent?” 

“What?” she asked sharply.

“Are you here to repent?”

“No, I’m not here to repent, mother.” 

“Then why did you bother coming here?” 

Mouth gaping open, it took Este a few moments to fully process what she had said. When she did, she stood up and was going to walk out of the room, but, instead, turned and snapped, 

“Unbelievable. You are unbelievable. I came here because Elena told me that you were on your deathbed! She said that I would regret it if I didn’t make peace with you before you died, but now I’m thinking that maybe both of us would have been more at peace if I had let you go without bothering.” 

“I didn’t ask you to come,” she crossed her arms, “the only reason I ever expected to see you again was if you came crawling back begging for forgiveness. But I shouldn’t be surprised, you were always a selfish child.”

“I’m the selfish one? You truly believe that? After everything you said, everything you did, I’m the one who put myself first?”

“No need for dramatics, Esther Anne, your hysterics were never amusing.” 

“I’m not being dramatic!” Esther stomped her foot, then, realizing what she did, took a deep breath. It was amazing how, even after growing into a mature woman, her mother could always bring her back to being a frustrated child, even in the face of her demise. 

“I raised you girls the best I could after your father, God rest his soul, passed. I sacrificed everything to make sure you had a better life than I had, and you spat in my face. Selfish. No consideration for everything I did for you.”

“It was never about you!” Este’s shout hung in the air between them, her chest heaving in the quiet that followed, then she closed her eyes and sighed, “Mom, nothing I ever did was meant to hurt you. I didn’t have a choice in who I was, but you had a choice in how you handled it.” 

“And I made a choice,” it was the old woman’s turn to snap, “you put me in a horrible position. You gave me an ultimatum then abandoned me when I didn’t give you the answer you wanted!”

“I left to protect myself. You left me no choice,” tears were stinging the back of Este’s eyes now.

“Protect yourself,” her mother scoffed, “I never laid a hand on you. You left because you wanted to make a point, you didn’t want to do the work to better yourself and atone for your sins. You should be ashamed of the way you treated me and our parish, good people who did nothing but try and help you.”

“Not all pain comes from hands, mother. There is violence in words and in prayers; that is what I needed to protect myself from because you refused to. You chose your faith over your daughter and then blamed me for your loneliness.”

“You refused to even try to fix yourself. You turned your back on God, you turned your back on me!” 

Tears began to fall from wrinkled eyes, and Este watched as the cause of so much of her pain broke down. It was jarring to hear the pain in her mother’s voice as she choked on the story of her youngest daughter’s life.

“I read you Christ’s parables to soothe you to sleep as a baby- the words of the Lord quieted you when you cried. I walked with you as you took your First Communion, helped you claim a saint for your Confirmation. I spent my entire life waiting for the day you would be joined in the sacrament of matrimony. I waited and waited to share the joy and pain of motherhood with my daughters, and you ripped those dreams away. God asks us to make sacrifices, He places challenges in front of us, to test us. You and I were tested, Esther. And because of you we failed! I failed to bring my daughter back into God’s light, so I had to make a sacrifice, to do what was hard in order to do what was right.” 

“Did it ever occur to you that you didn’t fail because I left the church?”

“I failed long before that, when you refused to give up your lifestyle.”

“You failed because you couldn’t love your child unconditionally!” 

“You’re right.”

“You could have made a different choice.”

“I chose God, and I have never regretted it. You came here to make peace? I made peace with my choices the day you left.” 

Este could feel herself lose the battle with the tears behind her eyes. She didn’t know why, she knew exactly how her mother felt so it shouldn’t hurt to hear it after all these years. But it did. They sat in another pregnant silence, Este slumped back into the chair she’d vacated earlier and dropped her voice to a whisper.

“I have spent 20 years hating myself for leaving you. I used to have nightmares of you dying alone in that godforsaken house and nobody finding you for days. Maybe I hoped that after 20 years of loneliness that you would have at least been able to say that you missed me at the end. Maybe, if I couldn’t be your daughter for your last days on earth, I could have at least been a friend.”

“You had 20 years to mend fences, you only came now out of guilt.” 

“Well then I guess you did your job for the church after all.”

“I won’t apologize for any of it. It’s not your forgiveness that matters, not anyone’s on earth. I hope you learn that before your end.” 

It hit Este like a bullet. Her tears dried, her spine straightened, and she met her mother’s clouded eyes, intent in her own. She hadn’t come here to seek her mother’s forgiveness, and she hadn’t come to grant it to her mother either. 20 years flashed in the single moment after her mother’s words. Nights awake, desperate on the phone with Elena, crying and asking her big sister to call and check on the woman in the bed before her. Screaming at a crucifix she didn’t have the heart to throw away, asking why she was made this way if all it would do was cause her pain. Begging the sky to change her; begging for a second chance with her mother; begging for forgiveness. Forgiveness for the sin of existing. 

“You know what,” Este stood, surprisingly graceful, from the chair, “I think I found what I’ve been looking for.”

She turned and strode to the door, pausing with her hand on the knob when her mother asked, 

“And what, exactly, was that?”

“An exorcism. Mother, you died a long time ago and I have been grieving your loss since I walked out your front door at 18. I saw your ghost in the mirror every time I dared to look, I heard you in every therapy session, and now you are just some woman who called me slurs when I was a teenager. I built a life without you, and I owe you nothing.”

“I birthed you! You owe me every breath you take on this earth!”

“Not even that. When I decided to flush the handful of pills I thought about taking locked in the bathroom the day you forced me into the confessional, I stopped owing you for my life. Every breath I took after that day belongs to me. I didn’t need to come today, but I’m glad I did, because I do need forgiveness, but not from you. Seeing you bitter and self-righteous even up to the last days of your life has done more for me than years of therapy. I can forgive myself for everything I put myself through because of the lessons you and the church taught me.” 

Este opened the door and didn’t look back, but threw over her shoulder, 

“You can’t haunt me anymore.” 

She closed the door and breathed out as she walked towards the elevator. It hadn’t even been half an hour, but she felt cleansed, like a weight had been lifted. Este thought she’d be shaken from the ordeal, but she felt strong and steady instead. No shaking hands, no anxious sweats, or gulping breaths- just quiet. 

It was as the elevator doors were closing that she realized she’d forgotten her purse in the vile woman’s room. Reluctantly and with an audible curse, Este blocked the door and rushed back to room 303, pushing inside before she could find her fear again. 

“Don’t think I’m coming back to apolo…” she stopped in her tracks. 

The room was empty. 

No angry old woman, just a stripped twin bed. No crucifix, just an empty, stained wall. Este’s purse sat on the floor beside the bed. 

Heart beating wildly, Este darted out of the room and down the hall looking for someone, anyone. She saw a nurse turn a corner in the hallway ahead and called out, 

“Wait! Please, nurse!” 

The woman immediately came back around the corner and rushed up to Este, who, if she looked half as crazed as she felt, probably looked like she was about to pass out.

“What is it? Do you or one of the patients need help?”

“No, no.. well yes,” she was sucking in air now, trying to force words out as the nurse put a soothing hand on her back, “I’m… my mother… she’s gone… she’s not there… I was just…” 

“Shhhhh, shhhhh. It’s okay, honey, who is your mother? I can help you find her.”

“Anne… Anne Preston.” 

The nurse’s eyes immediately filled up with sympathy,

“Oh, I understand. I know that seeing our loved ones like that can be triggering, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“My loss? What do you mean my loss?” 

“Your mother, dear,” the nurse looked confused, “she passed on early this morning. It’s funny, I didn’t know Anne had another daughter. We notified your sister an hour or so after her death, and then Dottie at the front desk said you were coming up to say goodbye.” 

“I… I went where she said, room 303. She was…” 

“Oh, that’s probably why you are confused, you went to the wrong place.”

“What? I don’t… I don’t understand…” 

“She is in the third room on the left, the viewing parlor. Room 303 is on the right.” 

“She’s… She’s dead?” 

“Yes. I’m sorry, we thought you knew.”

“I didn’t,” Este blinked up at the nurse, “she’s really gone?” 

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Would you like me to go with you to see her? To say goodbye?” 

Este thought for a moment, then remembered her mother’s words: you owe me every breath you take on this earth. So she shook her head, straightened up, and gathered the purse she’d dropped before answering, 

“No, I don’t need to say anything. She knows.” 

Este retraced her steps down the dingy carpet, into the shoddy elevator, and out the same doors she walked through less than an hour ago. When she began digging through her purse for her keys, her hands brushed against something solid and metal that hadn’t been there before. She pulled out a familiar bronze crucifix, its weight heavy in her hand. A familiar itching began inching its way up her spine, and she turned to look at a grimy, third story window. She could barely see the scowling old woman glaring down at her, but that stare held no power over her now. So she simply turned away to get in her car, dropping the crucifix in the overgrown weeds lining the building where Este hoped it stayed forever.