Chapter 32

32

I know that Sky doesn't care about meeting Mama, about hearing what she has to say. Sky has never known her, not really, so she doesn't have that sort of hole in her heart. What she's doing is creating an opportunity for me and Sage to gather our bearings and come inside.

The room is similar in taste to the gallery—made up of white porcelain furniture, white walls, two desks pushed up against the only wall with windows facing the walkway of downtown, where between the redbrick buildings across the street the ocean peeks through, right now becoming as dark as indigo while the sun sets.

I'm guessing the director or curator or whoever—a white woman with auburn hair and a confused look on her face—sits behind the desk, and leaning against one of its corners…is Mama.

The blue line stops right at her feet, so there is no question it's her. I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Of all the thoughts fluttering in my mind like a thousand dandelion seeds, the one that settles first is: She looks different from us and exactly like us at the same time.

We sisters don't look exactly alike, thanks to our different fathers, but we each inherited something from her—our skin, the color of dark gold, our sharp bone structure, recognizable even on our differently shaped faces. And I guess we each got her smirk—because she smirks at us now, and it feels very familiar, a look I've seen on both Sage and Sky and maybe even in the mirror, when I've had a productive and vindictive day.

Her hair looks dyed to be dark, thanks to the hint of white roots, and lines decorate her skin, mainly crow's feet at her eyes (Sky must've gotten her crinkly smile from her). She's about my height with Sage's curvy body, adorned in a black suit I'm surprised to see her wearing, because it looks slick and expensive and something her mother, Sonya, would approve of. And she and Amá Sonya, from the stories Nadia tells, never did get along.

I'm not sure what I expected to feel, laying eyes on my mother for the first time in over two decades, but for some reason, right now, it's a whole lot of nothing. Like my emotions have vacated the premises because of the intense stress of the moment.

"I didn't know you had a daughter, Viv," the lady behind the desk says, and the way she says Viv , like she's super good friends with Mama, makes me snap.

"We're all her daughters," I tell the woman. "She abandoned us when we were babies, and her name isn't Vivienne. It's Cora Flores-Gonzalez, or at least it was about twenty-five years ago."

My mother's expression sharpens when I speak, and the woman—Harriet, I can see her name tag now—looks even more confused, with hurt beginning to color her features. I wonder how long they've been friends. How long she thought she knew this woman—this faker—in front of her.

"Harriet, would you mind giving me a minute with my—" Mama coughs. "My daughters?"

Harriet nods and stands, not sparing any of us a glance on the way out.

As soon as the door shuts behind her, I glare at Mama. "I want it back."

Mama crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about." It's scary how much that statement sounds like Amá Sonya.

"Cut the crap, Cora," Sky says, and I blink—I've never heard her sound this mean and demanding before. "We all know what she's talking about."

Mama's eyes sheen. "It's been over twenty years…and this is the welcome I get from my own children?"

Now Sky narrows her eyes. "You've been in town for how long now? And so far all you've done is made damn well sure we couldn't find you." Sky scrunches her nose. "You were expecting a welcome-back party for that?"

"I've had to work," Mama wails. "I was going to come to you eventually —"

"What are you doing in town?" Sage asks. "Why are you even here to begin with?"

Mama shrugs casually even though her face is still contorted as though she's crying. Spoiler: no actual tears are happening right now. "Work. Things have been so difficult. I need to make rent, and since the recession, it's been hard finding a place to show my art. I know I'm always welcome here." She lifts her arms, indicating the gallery. "Unlike, apparently, with you three."

Sage's voice is so cutting, I'm surprised we all aren't covered in blood as she speaks, each word a shard of glass. "Did you really think you could leave me to raise them, leave Teal with half of her gift, and leave Sky in diapers, and that we'd what—throw you a party? Worship you at your feet? That's we'd fall over ourselves in gratitude when we finally fucking found you again?"

"I left you with Nadia," Mama hisses. "Don't act like I dropped you off on the streets."

"Nadia housed us and did little else," I tell her. "Sage potty-trained Sky. If you want to know how far Nadia's parenting went."

Mama blinks, then shakes her head. "Nadia wouldn't do that to me."

"Nadia thinks you're shit. Whatever camaraderie you think you had with her doesn't exist," Sky snaps. "Now give Teal's soul piece back, so I can go home and eat s'mores and drink champagne and finish season four of Gilmore Girls ."

It's the Gilmore Girls that does it. The fact that her own daughter would rather be watching a fictional mother and daughter rather than interact with her actual mother bruises Mama's ego enough that she drops the woe-is-me act. She legit snarls as she spits out, "I'm not giving anything back. For what? My own daughters don't care about me. My own mother never cared about me."

"Amá Sonya cares about you," Sage says. "She almost cries every time we can manage to get her to talk about you, and then she blames pepper for it."

"She tricked you!" Mama's voice is loud now, and screeching. It triggers some faded memories from when I was small—her yelling at us, at Nadia, at boyfriends on the phone. Somehow I had forgotten how angry and volatile she was. I had romanticized her in my mind, thinking of how she hugged me, of how she hummed to me when I was in her arms, but the truth is…she often did these things after she'd hurt me. She only did those things after she hurt me.

Mama opens her mouth, continuing on. "Mom is a spoiled bitch—"

"We all know Amá Sonya is a bitch," I say, and she furrows her brow. "You think we're that dumb that we haven't figured that out yet? Now give it back ."

Mama crosses her arms and lifts her chin. It's amazing, seeing this grown, almost fifty-year-old woman act like a teenager. Nothing is her fault. Everyone is being mean to her. I don't know what shaped her to be this way, but I can't say it doesn't hurt. I wasn't lying when I told Sage I wasn't expecting a Hallmark reunion with her, but that little girl inside me still, the one who ran after her in the storm, who showed up in nothing but lightning in front of me a few nights ago—that girl hoped impossible hopes. And each one is currently being shattered before her eyes.

"I can't," Mama says, allowing her eyes to sheen once more. "It's my only income. I'll be destitute. Would you three really leave me on the streets with nothing to my name but the clothes on my back?"

"Why don't you find a sugar daddy?" Sky asks wryly, her tone bored. "You're very good at that."

Mama rolls her eyes. "I won't stand here and be disrespected by the ones I birthed. You owe your lives to me. As for you—" She points at me with a sharp deep purple nail. "If she wanted to return to you, she would have by now." She dusts off her shoulders. "Before I leave for good—which you know how well I can do, since I'm sure you're aware of my gift—I have a few things I need to make clear." She looks at each of us. "If you all were better-behaved children, I might have stayed. But, Sage, you —"

And as she proceeds to insult us, I'm stuck on something she just said. If she wanted to return to you, she would have by now.

I've never heard Nadia refer to a soul piece by a pronoun before, but…it feels right to say it like that. She.

It's not just a fragment of my soul that went to Mama. It's that tiny child, so small the heavy wind of a storm could lift her up… she went with Mama. She was so scared, she volunteered to leave me with the hopes that her mama would stay, or someday return.

I stare at Mama and in my mind's eye, I see four-year-old me, drawn on the beach in lightning. I can feel her, right now, so close to me. Mama stops midsentence and looks at me. "What do you think you're doing?"

Tears stream down my face. I have no idea what I'm doing, actually. I don't even know if Sky, who's the only one who's read this damn spell, knows what comes next. But I do know this—that little girl is me. She's mine and I'm hers.

I see her step out of Mama and toward me, with equal parts caution and curiosity. Her hair, long and braided. Her eyes, so tired from all the crying. Her skin, as brown as a golden acorn, the one feature I've always loved because it matches the tone of each of my sisters' so perfectly.

She is made of lightning, but she's also made of me . I lower myself to my knees. And now I'm at eye level with her. She wants to come back to me, but she's so scared, her whole body trembles. So I open my mouth and tell her—little Teal—this. "You belong to me," I whisper. "You belong to me and I'll take care of you in the ways she never could. You never had a real mother, but I can be that mother for you."

I don't know the first thing about being a mother, but I know that's what I need to be for that child my mother left in the rain.

Mama legit growls like some kind of damn bear, and little Teal gasps and instantly disappears. To add insult to injury, Mama's visage begins to… shatter . She goes in and out, in and out, like a figure in a video game glitching.

She's trying to superimpose her power over mine. She's trying to disappear before I can become whole.

I'm not going to let that happen.

"I don't know shit about the old gods," I say, "but I am begging them to keep you here till I'm done with you."

And just like that, she stops flickering like a flame. She's firmly in this room, on this polished floor, lit up in fading sunlight from the window and bright fluorescents above.

"Stop it," Mama demands, but it's too late. She lifts her arms, like she's going to push me, maybe—and instead, yellow lightning bursts from her hand. "Make it stop!" she screams.

Sky takes my right hand, and Sage takes my left. "I'm scared," I whisper as my body heats up with light.

"I was scared, too, to step back in," Sky tells me. "But it's the easiest thing in the world. I promise. It's like taking one long, deep breath."

Mama's glowing in blue, and that same form, the one I saw at the beach—she's suddenly here, right in front of me. And Sky's right—it's like breath . I pull my left hand from Sage—the one where Mama took my light from me—and I offer it to little me.

It's as easy as an inhale when she returns. When I return to myself.

"Give it back! Give it back!" Mama wails, and the door bursts open.

"What's going on in here?" Harriet yells.

Then there are hands wrapped around my neck. I turn and see my mother, tightening, frantic, her eyes brown and wild, her hair frizzing. This close to me, I can see how weak she is, how much she has stolen her whole life and how none of it has been enough.

"Get off her!" Sage screams, pulling her back, but Mama won't let go.

"Stop," I say, and when I do, lightning crackles over my whole body. She gasps and releases me as though she was burned. Because she was. I made sure it hurt. Not for revenge, but as a warning.

I take a step toward Mama, and she takes one back. "I am the Witch of Wild Lightning," I tell her. "And until you are ready to apologize for all the wrong you've done to us—all three of us—I am finished with you."

And then I turn and walk out, my sisters right next to me.