“Nothing,” my Voice says. “Ever.”
“Mirabel, you scared me.”
“You should be scared.”
She is. I can see it in her face. And I feel bad, but not bad enough to stop. She waits while I type.
“No matter how the vote goes, I already lost.”
Mab thinks it’s not fair this town is so boring. Monday thinks it’s not fair that sometimes it’s raining in the morning but sunny in the afternoon and she didn’t bring a change of clothes to school. But what’s not fair is what’s not fair, the ways they feel they’ve been wronged by fate versus the ways I have.
“You have to look on the bright side, love,” my mother tells me. “It’s the only way.”
“No,” my Voice says, and she waits while I type. “You have to let me be on the dark side.”
“Never,” she says.
“Aaaaaaaahh!” I scream, I cry, I roar, and then I close my eyes to gather the energy necessary to type. “Even if everyone votes the right way, I will still be this way.”
“I love you this way,” Nora says.
“That is not enough,” my Voice says, and we are both stopped by it, for it is heartbreaking and it is worse than heartbreaking. And it is true. It is not enough to be loved by your mother. It is a good start, and you wouldn’t want to do without, and it helps, but it is not enough. You need also the love of your community, the love of friends and admirers, the love of strangers who don’t know you but still wish you well, the love that comes from passion and from commitment and from someone who will never, never betray you and not just because they’re related to you. You need more love. We all need more love. And here—in this town, in this body—love is abundant but it is not sufficient. It is not enough.
She crosses the room and takes my head in both her hands, makes me look into her eyes when she says, “You are wonderful exactly as you are, and I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
Tears snail down my cheeks which make tears snail down hers, and we sit there looking at each other through our mollusky eyes. I know that she means what she says. And I know there are ways she does not mean what she says.
Because why wouldn’t she want me different than I am? Why wouldn’t she wish it for me? Anyone would want a child whole and limitless. Anyone would wish it for themselves as a parent, and anyone would wish it for their child, for any child.
“I mean it.” She can see me doubting her. “You are so strong. You do a whole body’s worth of work with one hand and one amazing brain. You are so gentle. You are so smart. I know there are things you can’t do, but it’s a package deal. And it’s such a lovely package I think it’s worth the trade-off.”
She is still holding my face so I can’t see my tablet to raise my Voice. If I could, I would say I don’t want a trade-off. I want both.
“I know it sucks,” she says. “I know it’s not fair. I would trade places with you if I could. You know I would.”
I acknowledge the truth of this statement with my eyebrows.
She smiles, but a sad smile. “But if your body didn’t limit you, if it didn’t make you sit still and watch and listen and process, if you didn’t have so much time to think, you wouldn’t be you. And I love you.” I roll my eyes, but there’s more. “You wouldn’t be so wise or so observant or the smartest person I know.”
For she is my mother. Of course she thinks the part of me that works best is beautiful.
And this is Nora’s permanent, impossible bind.
If her children are perfect just as they are, then why is she so angry at Belsum?
If they’ve caused such damage, where is her proof?
And if the proof is us, doesn’t that mean we are broken indeed?
She sees my skepticism, or maybe it’s my scorn. “It’s possible to want two things at once, you know.”
I do, of course.
“Even opposite things. Even things that contradict and contraindicate. We don’t talk about that enough.”
I don’t talk about anything enough.
“Not we,” she clarifies. “They. In the world. Out there.” She waves at it, a world beyond Bourne. Sometimes it seems so close I think I’d be able to see it if only I could get up a little higher, like from the roof of the school maybe or the crest of the cemetery. Sometimes it seems so far I don’t even believe it exists. Opposites. This is her point. She means she is angry at what was done to her—what was done to hers—but she still loves us as we are. She means she can live in the past and still drag it along with her into the future. She means—or maybe she doesn’t but it’s still true—that this lawsuit is killing her and this vote is killing her and this battle is killing her. But she would not survive without it. So it’s hard to argue Nora can’t fight while she’s moving on just because those things are opposites.