8. Witness

8

Witness

W ith Mother’s Day, one of the busiest days of the restaurant year, nipping at the heels of Nan’s passing, I barely had time to breathe never mind grieve.

At Ayana’s, we offered romance and intimacy. With vintage lighting and soft decor, glittering crystal and flickering candlelight, crushed velvet, curvy chairs, and music that very nearly reached up under your skirt and teased your panties down your thighs, in short, a sensual snow globe.

We strove to deliver a tantalizing feast for the senses.

Except on Mother’s Day.

On Mother’s Day, like everyone else, we met the demand of our regulars by booking and running double time.

The kitchen clamored and pulsed with sound and energy. Rudolpho bellowed at regular intervals, his orders interspersed with hollered warnings from the others of ‘behind’ as they marched back and forth.

With our regular hostess stepping in to help serve, the responsibility for the front of the restaurant fell to me.

It should have been easy, the easiest of all the jobs but my spirit wilted by the hour. Even Gabe’s texts couldn’t hold off the onslaught of grief.

Every woman who walked in surrounded by her children came with a sword, skewering me even as I smiled and wished her a happy Mother’s Day.

They were part of a club I’d pledged my entire life savings to join and still I’d been denied. Yet, I was the one who felt the need to apologize, as if my very childlessness was an act of judgement against them.

The more children they had, the harder I had to grovel.

If the sight of the happy mothers skewered me, their words laid me out on the altar and flayed the skin from my flesh, leaving every last one of my nerves raw and defenseless.

I lost count of the number of women who asked if I had children.

A simple ‘no’ did not suffice.

Their easy, smiling, dismissal of my ‘no’ was the instrument that cracked open my chest as they encouraged, “Go ahead and jump in! You won’t regret it!”

As if I had a choice .

Their furrowed brows and curious eyes at my ‘no’ were the wedge set against my heart as they prodded, ‘‘Don’t you want children?”

With every cell of my being.

And their pursed lips and knowing eyes swung the hammer, splitting my heart in two and crumbling my broken pieces to dust, leaving me empty as they cautioned, “You don’t want to run out of time.”

Time was never the problem.

Smiling on the outside while I bled out on the inside reminded me why I was better off at home on this day.

Every forced smile rejected my grief. And grief was all I had left of them.

By the end of the night, once Rudy and the rest of the staff left, I could no longer contain my grief nor my bitterness over hiding it.

My footsteps echoed in the now cavernous space. Emptied of life, the twinkling lights snuffed out, Ayana’s underlined my solitude.

Awareness of just how alone I was prickled under my skin. The world was huge, much too large for a woman to travel alone.

Two people shorten the road, pet.

It hadn’t even been a week since I buried Nan, and I wasn’t equipped to face this life without her. This was the first Mother’s Day I’d worked in years, normally opting to hide at home with a bottle of wine and a pint of ice cream.

Retreating to the coat check, I found my little corner and slid down the wall. My tears started flowing before my ass hit the floor. The sobs I fought to muffle left me breathless, my heart clenching tight around echoes of my nightmares until I couldn’t hold them in.

My harsh cry ripped through the silence. Starkly out of place in this beautiful space, there was no more room for it here than there was anywhere else.

But it refused to be contained. The honesty of it soothed the edges of my soul that I’d burned with every forced smile. Every tight nod.

Pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes, I rocked and howled at the unfairness of it all.

Up until then, I’d grieved in silence.

Because as much as I wished it hadn’t, time ticked on, and the Earth continued to spin just as it had each and every time my life came to a soul-shattering halt.

This kind of loss demanded a witness even if it was only me.

There’d been no burial for mourners to gather together to weep.

No unsolicited delivery of casseroles seasoned with love and compassion.

No memorials, no prayers, no flowers.

And the little empathy afforded me ran out as quickly as the last grains of sand in the hourglass.

Friends I’d thought were forever lost patience with my inability to celebrate their children with them, distancing themselves as if my sadness was contagious.

The one who promised to love me forever, the one who once slipped a diamond ring over the knuckle of my ring finger, the one who swore he wanted me no matter what, confessed I wasn’t enough.

I should have known when he wanted to focus on the pregnancy rather than setting the wedding date that I’d been on probation. A couple of years ago I made the mistake of looking him up only to find him married with three kids.

Kids that should have been mine if the world had had a heart.

I turned my face into the corner, hiding even now.

What did I have left?

Pinprick scars dotting the tender inside of both elbows from the daily blood tests and a full-blown case of medical trauma from four years of increasingly invasive procedures.

One broken engagement and my battered self-esteem.

An elastic-bound pile of unsent shower invitations.

Three hand-embroidered baby blankets.

Five positive pregnancy tests, two of which had been false, one faded ultrasound picture, a barely started pregnancy journal, and tiny onesies that had never been worn but had been worn thin from the desperate rubbing of my yearning fingers.

And a broken heart.

It was all I had left, and I hoarded it jealously.

Tears spent, I tipped my head back against the wall and closed my burning eyes. In the absence of Nan, that corner held me tight.

But when my breath came easy, it was Gabe’s handsome face that filled my mind.

I blinked slowly as it hit me that I knew nothing about his life now. I didn’t know where he worked, what he did for a living, or if he was still close with his family.

My heart still recognized his, but the past twenty-two years of his life was a complete mystery.

One I wanted to unravel.

I swiped my fingers under my eyes and pressed the tips of my cold fingers to my burning cheeks.

Did he want the same thing?

Pulling out my phone, I reread his unanswered texts then rose to my feet. Lifting the bottom of my shirt, I dabbed my eyes then took a deep breath.

I grabbed my sweater to shield me against the chill of night. Locking the doors and setting the alarm, I got into my car and headed home, grateful for Mondays when we closed the restaurant.

One week from today, I would turn forty. A family wasn’t ever going to be in the cards for me. Perhaps it was time I started thinking about what I wanted to do about it.

Ayana’s and all it entailed filled my head.

I huffed out a laugh, but it tasted bitter.

Because managing Ayana’s was never my dream.

And it was a poor substitute.