Keep Me Steady

The letter came out of the blue just after her sixteenth birthday. It wasn’t the first letter she’d received from somebody in her first family - her sister wrote to her frequently - but the name at the bottom...well, she hadn’t seen that signature in over half a decade. 

Juliette hadn’t even realized who the letter was from until she was nearly halfway through with the first page. There were still six more to go after that. Her knees buckled and she had to reach out for her sister’s arm to keep herself steady, which elicited a chorus of concern from those gathered around her. 

Everything went quiet for a moment as the words on the page blurred together.

When she returned to herself, she was sitting in a chair and her cheeks were wet and warm. She realized quickly enough that somebody was wiping away her tears as they gently spoke her name. A pair of deep brown eyes came into focus and Juliette gasped, letting out the breath that she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

“Who is it from?” Ida’s voice echoed in her ears, sounding miles away despite their noses being no less than two inches apart.

Juliette’s throat was sandpaper dry as she answered. 

“My mom.”

Katherine Li was nothing like Juliette remembered. 

As a child, she’d seen her mother as swanlike, regal, poised to take over the world at a moment’s notice. Now, she was hunched over, a pair of round, wire-rimmed glasses perched at the end of her nose like some old lady. But Juliette’s mother wasn’t old. There was no way. She’d seen her just six years ago. It might as well have just been yesterday, in the grand scheme of things.

Juliette felt something squeeze her hand and looked to the left to see her sister - her biological sister, anyway - shoot her a quick smile that might have been comforting if it didn’t look so much like a grimace. Juliette matched her expression briefly before looking up at the woman they once called “Mama”.

“You look...well,” Juliette lied, keeping her tone as even as her expression. Katherine gave her a knowing look, but didn’t let on that she knew it wasn’t true.

“Thank you, Jac--Juliette, is it?” She nodded. “Good name. Beautiful name. Like Shakespeare, yes?” Juliette nodded. “You always liked those books when you were younger.”

“Plays,” her sister, Mae, corrected. “They were plays. And I was the one who liked them. Jules just liked it when I read to her. It didn’t really matter what.” She smiled at Juliette. “Did it?” Juliette shook her head and felt the tight muscles in her back ease up a bit.

She remembered a time when Mae had read the ingredients from the back of a lotion bottle to her because she was too lazy to get up from bed to grab a book. She’d fallen asleep to the lyrical way her sister sang Hydrogenated Hydro-Glycerides in her ear as she stroked Juliette’s freshly cut hair. 

“I remember,” Katherine said, breaking through the memory like a stone shatters glass. “You two were always so close.” 

“As close as any sisters could be.” Mae’s voice was chipper, but even Juliette felt the sharp edge to her voice. It was both a taunt and a warning to their mother. Neither girl missed the way Katherine’s face twitched, ever so slightly. 

She squeezed Mae’s hand.

“So,” Juliette said, after a moment too long, “what brings you around?” 

“I have news,” Katherine answered. “I thought it best not to tell you - either of you - through the mail.”

“Does it have anything to do with why Daniel isn’t here?” Mae asked. 

Katherine’s eyes took on their familiar sharpness and Juliette could see the way her mouth twitched as her tongue itched to do the same, that same old contempt rising in her throat to lash out at her children. But, somehow, she held it back. 

It seemed that she had learned something in the last half-dozen years, after all. 

“Your father,” she said, “is actually exactly the reason I wrote to you.” She pressed her lips together firmly for a long moment as both Juliette and Mae watched her, expectantly. Katherine took a breath. “About six months ago, he suffered a heart attack. It was not fatal, but it left your father in a bit of a...fragile state.”

“Bedridden?” Mae asked, sounding a bit too pleased, even for Juliette’s liking. She squeezed her hand again, a bit harder this time.

“No,” Katherine said, that sharp edge back in her voice, “but he was no longer well enough to practice medicine. He had to take an early retirement.”

“Okay, so what does that have to do with either of us?” Mae asked. “Y’all gave Jules up for adoption when she was ten and practically disowned me the second I turned eighteen.”

“You know how I feel about that word, Margaret,” Katherine warned.

“Which one?” Mae asked. “It’s been so long, I must’ve forgotten. Also, my name is Mae. Always has been.”

“I named you Margaret.”

“No, you named me Li Mei Mei,” Mae shot back. “And since when does anybody in our family go by the names they were given at birth. You and Daniel certainly didn’t. Do you, Li Jun?” She took a deep breath and relaxed back in her seat at another insistent squeeze from Juliette’s hand to hers. “Mae is closer to my given name than Margaret, anyway.”

“Please tell us why you’re here,” Juliette beseeched. The ‘so you can go away’ hung silently in the air between them. 

“Your father was diagnosed with congestive heart failure six weeks ago,” Katherine informed them, “after suffering several more, less severe, heart attacks. He died ten days ago.”

The news of her biological father’s death wasn’t so much devastating as it was...numbing. Like taking her hand out of an ice bath and being unable to feel her fingers. The pain might come sooner or later, but right now she just felt nothing.

Except maybe relief?

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Juliette said on instinct. 

“It’s your loss, too,” Katherine retorted immediately. “He was your father.” She looked to Mae. “He was both of your father.” 

“Daniel Li hasn’t been my father since I was ten years old,” Juliette corrected. “You both made it pretty clear that you wanted nothing to do with me and I’ve since come to terms with it. I was formally adopted by another man and woman last year. They are my parents.”

“You are still a Li,” Katherine insisted. “I know you kept it as your last name.”

“It’s hyphenated, actually,” Juliette corrected. “My legal name is Juliette Li-White. And I’ve only kept it as a reminder of where I started: as an unloved little girl from a toxic home.”

Katherine stood. “You are not a -” 

“Don’t finish that sentence.” Mae stood, too. Juliette hadn’t noticed when they were sitting, but Mae was at least six inches taller than Katherine now. It seemed she had inherited Daniel’s height and hot temper. Her hands were now balled into fists as she had let go of Juliette’s. “Just say what you came here to say and get the hell out.”

“Oh, did they adopt you, too?” Katherine asked, condescendingly. “A 20-year-old loser with no ambition or college degree? I thought they had more than enough charity cases on their hands.”

“Hey!” Juliette was on her feet in a flash, feeling her own temper begin to rise. “Call me whatever you want, but you do not get to speak about my family that way.”

“These people aren’t your family! They are all just as pathetic and weak and sinful as the two of you!” She glared at them with nothing but contempt and suddenly Juliette recognized the mother from long ago. The mother who she had thought was so regal and swanlike and beautiful. The mother who had smacked her across the face when she caught her trying on her makeup and dresses one rainy afternoon. The mother who had thrown her out like she was nothing more than trash, instead of her own child.

“What makes you think anybody in this house cares about your opinion,” Juliette said, crossing her arms in front of her chest, “Katherine.” 

Her ex-mother’s face bloomed crimson and her eyes turned from jade to venom-green as she shook her head. “Your father’s dying wish,” she said, “was to have his family reunited. But to think that was possible makes him just as big a fool as either of you.”

“Even we’re not that foolish,” Mae said, with a smirk. “Now, get out.”

“Gladly.”

And, with that, Katherine Jun Li was out of her life for the second time.

Juliette would have been lying if she said it didn’t hurt just as much as the first, though.