Dear Mama

Calliope brushed her hand over the personalized invite and exhaled a heavy breath. Her mother’s name, Patricia Matthews, was scrawled across the top in neat, cursive writing. It was lettering she’d hired a calligrapher to create for her and Brandon’s wedding ceremony. The allure of it was simple but elegant, much like Calliope. But as she thought about the intended recipient, she felt anything but elegant.

           Her mind and her heart raced while she contemplated putting the invitation in the stamped envelope and placing it in a pile with all the rest. Why was this so difficult for her? So many of her teenage and early adulthood years were spent fantasizing about everything involved with marrying the man she loved. At the time, she had no way of knowing that man would be Brandon Sims, CEO to Payout and owner of her heart. Still, she’d always had wedding bells ringing in her head, and though the relationship with her mother was complicated, she couldn’t imagine taking such a big step forward without her.

Or could she?

She left the invitation on the desk and got up to take a walk around the house. Her three-year-old twins, Talia and Thomas, had gone down for their afternoon nap not too long ago. Brandon had been gone for a few hours, working at his office in downtown Seattle. Calliope had a full list of things to do for her own business, Creative Connections, but she had taken the day off to chip away at the massive and ever-growing wedding to-do list. At the top of the list were invitations, and she hadn’t been able to move past it once coming across the one meant for her mother.

Calliope sighed and walked into the kitchen. She opened the fridge to scan for a quick snack. The chef Brandon had hired to help after she started her business wouldn’t be arriving until three, but there were leftovers from last night’s meals that had been packed away. She grabbed one of the Tupperware bowls with lasagna and asparagus in it and the larger bowl full of a fresh salad.

While the lasagna warmed in the oven, she sat at the breakfast counter and considered calling her older brother, Henry. Besides Brandon, he was the only one who knew about the complexities she dealt with when it came to Patricia, mainly because he had a few of his own. She pulled her cellphone out of her back pocket and dialed his number.

“Hello?” He answered on the first ring.

“Damn, were you hovering over the phone waiting for a phone call,” Calliope teased. Henry sighed audibly, and Calliope could almost hear his aggressive side-eye through the phone.

“What do you want?” Just the sound of Henry’s voice lightened her mood. It almost made the task waiting for her in her home office seem not as daunting.

“I love you, too. What are you doing?”

“Working. Wishing I was anywhere but here, though.”

“Great, then that means you’re open to helping me with my wedding problem,” Calliope chirped. Henry would have the answer. He always did.

“You mean you managed to find a problem money can’t fix?” Calliope rolled her eyes. It was no secret to anyone who didn’t live under a rock that her husband was paid. Like millions on top of millions paid.

“Yeah, this ain’t a big bank takes little bank situation. It’s about Mama.” There was silence on the other end. Calliope knew Henry was working through any number of scenarios in his head that could have lead to this call. For years, he had served as the unofficial mediator between the two, when they all lived in the small apartment on Chicago’s southside.

“What about her,” Henry finally asked.

“I don’t know if I should invite her to the wedding.” There was that silence again. Calliope chewed on her bottom lip, deep in thought. She didn’t want to interrupt Henry’s thought process, but she needed to know his opinion; if she was doing the right thing.

“You don’t want her there?”

“I don’t know,” Calliope said truthfully. There was no point in lying about her feelings. “Part of me does. That little girl who always looked for approval and validation from her mother, she wants her there. But adult me, the educated, accomplished mother of two? Not so much.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“Not since the twins’ birthday.”

Patricia had sent a card and some toys for the twins’ birthday last month after declining an invitation to their birthday party that Calliope and Brandon had hosted in the lakehouse's backyard. Calliope, upset at her mother’s blunt refusal to get involved with her own grandchildren, had called her later that night to confront her about her absence. The conversation had gone less than well, and they hadn’t spoken since. Not that it was strange or a break from the norm for them to go weeks without speaking. They just weren’t that close.

“I think you should talk to her about it, see where her head is at.” Calliope knew that Henry would say that, but it annoyed her all the same.

“I don’t want to talk to her. That’s why I called your blockhead ass.”

“Then you don’t want a solution, Miss Pissy. Anything else?” Henry brushed her attitude off like it was nothing, something he’d been doing for all of Calliope’s thirty-five years. Calliope slumped over the counter with her lip poked.

“No, I guess not.”

“Well, call me after you call her, and if she pisses you off real bad, I’ll stop by after work, and we can make fun of all her church friends.” Calliope suppressed a giggle.

           “Henry!”

           “What? Don’t act like you don’t do that every time she posts something about them on Facebook.”

           “Bye.”

           “Good luck.” They disconnected the call.

           Calliope still didn’t have her answer, but she felt better. That was her whole purpose for calling Henry in the first place, to pull her out of her funk so she could take the next step in figuring out a solution to her problem. Her lasagna would be ready to come out of the oven in fifteen minutes, and there was no time like the present, so she took a deep breath and dialed her mother’s number.

           It rang several times, and Calliope was about to hang up and leave the situation in God’s hands when she heard her mother’s gravelly voice come through the phone.

           “Callie?” Calliope swallowed the last bit of doubt and hesitation. She would not allow this conversation to transport her back to being that little girl, afraid to speak up and advocate for herself.

           “Hey, Mama. How are you?”

           “I’m alright. What’s going on with you?” Calliope could just make out the sounds of gospel music playing in her mother’s background.

           “Well, I was sitting here preparing the invites to drop off at the post office, and it hit me that you and I never discussed my engagement or any of the details for my wedding.” Her tone was light and curious, but deep down, Calliope was hurt by her mother’s lack of involvement in what was sure to be one of the biggest moments of her life.

           “What is there to discuss?” The response punched Calliope in the gut, knocking the wind out of the little bit of courage she’d gathered to make the call.

           There it was, in a nutshell. Calliope could beat around the bush and make excuses for days, but in the end, Patricia would always find a way to drive her very hurtful truth home-- she just didn’t like her daughter. As a child, Calliope thought her mother was just mean, bitter from raising two children without the help or support of their fathers. But as she got older and started paying more attention, she could see that her mother’s treatment of Henry never seemed to reach the same depths of evil that she regularly unleashed on Calliope. Patricia was always finding reasons to punish Calliope, whether it was a skirt too short, a grade too low, or if Calliope looked like she was enjoying herself too much, Patricia would come down with a set of rules or punishments that felt almost medieval to Calliope.

“Do you not want to come to the wedding,” Calliope asked in a soft tone that belied the rage and fury unfurling inside. “And if you don’t, then I need a reason why not.” She expected her mother to take a moment to think over her words. She thought she might have responded angrily, upset with Calliope’s brash statement. She might even have chosen to not say anything at all; Calliope could have made peace with that. But the words that spilled from her mother’s mouth with so much ease chilled her to the bone and marked a moment in her life she would probably never forget.

“Because I don’t like you.” Calliope thought she heard wrong, so she asked for clarification before diving off the deep end and going to a place with her mother she knew they would not ever come back from.

“Excuse me?”

“I do not like you,” Patricia spoke clearer, emphasizing each word. She must have cut her gospel music off because Calliope didn’t hear it in the background anymore. “All your life, you’ve been a disappointment to me, and it's no different with this joke of a wedding,” she said, digging the knife deeper. “I knew then what you would be, and I tried my hardest to stop it. I prayed, and I planned, and when you laid up in this house and got pregnant with that devil boy’s baby, I scraped together my last few dollars to help you get rid of it.”

“You never helped me do anything,” Calliope spat through the phone. “I didn’t ask for your help, and what you did offer was not that. I wanted to keep my baby.”

“And do what with it? Become a welfare queen like every other young, fast-assed girl on this block? Not under my roof. No.” Calliope could see her mother shaking her head fervently in her mind like that alone was enough to keep the bad thoughts away.

           “But I didn’t become a welfare queen. I had the abortion and went to college like you forced me to, and now I’m living a life that I thought you would be proud of. Despite everything we’ve been through, I--,” Calliope was cut off mid-sentence.

           “Everything we’ve been through? Child, all I’ve done in this life has been to put food on the table for you and your brother. When your father decided he couldn’t handle the responsibility, I shouldered the weight on my own. And you repaid me by getting pregnant at seventeen. Be lucky all I did was take you to the abortion clinic.

           Tears silently streamed down Calliope’s face as she listened to the words her mother had never said out loud that were indicative of how she knew her mother truly felt about her. None of it should have surprised her; the writing had been on the wall since the very early stages of their relationship. Even with the level of anger and resentment she felt towards her mother, she had still strived to become the kind of woman she thought would make her proud. But Calliope now knew there was nothing she’d ever be able to do that would be good enough for Patricia. No amount of good could stamp out that evil. Calliope brought herself back to the conversation just in time to catch her mother’s words, the final nail in the coffin.

           “... so no, I am not interested in coming to the wedding of my whore daughter. That man’s money cannot wash away all your sins, and nothing can change the fact that you birthed two bastards.”

           “NO,” Calliope shouted. Hot, white anger replaced her sadness. Thoughts and feelings she’d suppressed for years bubbled up to the surface, fueling her fire. “There’s a lot of shit I’m willing to let you talk, but when it comes to my children and my man, my family, keep their names out your bitter ass mouth. Forever.”

           “What did you say to me?”

           “I’m talking now.” Calliope’s tears dried up, and she spoke with more conviction. “Talia and Thomas are better off not having a relationship with you, so thank you for stepping down and out the way. And it's funny to me that you mention Brandon’s money. It’s not good enough for me, but you had no problem with him writing a check to cover months of your unpaid rent, right?” Calliope laughed coldly, “You calling me a whore is also comedic because who is your baby daddy again?”

           Silence.

           “Oh. That’s exactly what I thought.” Calliope finished her rant, feeling like the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders. The adrenaline from the anger and the thrill of speaking her mind still coursed through her veins, but she was calming down. “I’m real enough to admit that those things you said hurt me, just like everything you’ve said or done in the past did. But I am moving on from you now, and you won’t ever get a chance to do it again. Goodbye, Patricia.”

           She disconnected the call before her mother could respond and placed the phone on the counter. That had never happened before. She’d never had the guts to stand up to Patricia and honestly never thought she would. But she couldn’t have planned for her mother saying hurtful things about her babies, and that was the straw. Despite the sour nature of the conversation and how sad it made her that they would never have a positive relationship, Calliope took pride in advocating for herself. She felt good.

           She picked the phone up and called Henry again.

           “Hello.”

           “Stop and pick up ice cream on your way here.”

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