Chasing Blue

Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
INDIGO

Mom's lasagna tastes just like how I remembered it to be. The cheese melts in my mouth as I funnel forkful after forkful into my mouth, despite the fact that the hot, juicy noodles burn the top of my mouth and my tongue.

She keeps giving me looks. Looks I've known and experienced for the last almost twenty years. The first is the 'I know something wrong with you and I'm going to make you tell me' look, the second is 'and if you don't tell me I'll tie you up and torture you until you do'. We have such a pure, loving mother-daughter relationship.

         She clears her throat, and then reaches for her water. Sometimes I can't get over how breathtakingly beautiful my mother is. She's several shades darker than me, but her skin is much brighter than mine. Of all the years I hold memory, I can only remember this woman before me, radiant, shining with the glow of thousands of suns, billions of stars. My mother is my rock. She is the one person in the entire world I can forever trust to have my back. After all, she could've let me down millions of times before. God knows my sperm donor had no qualms in doing just that.

         Mom clears her throat again. I look up, a furrow creasing my brows. "You good, Mama?"

        She nods slowly, as if trying to decide herself. Then, she shakes her head, as if snapping out of a trance. She used to do this little bit a lot when I was younger, on late nights after she had gotten off at the little diner. We would both sit down at the small table she had found in a junk yard, and eat. Normally my meal would consist of some chicken tenders, or some left overs she had made at work. Hers would be chips, or maybe some string cheese. Never an actual dinner.

"Mom," I say slowly, cocking my head slightly to the left. A stray curl falls my bun, I reach a hand about and begin to twirl it absentmindedly around my index finger, "What's bothering you?"

She chuckles a little, laying her fork down, "What's bothering me, is that I don't know what's bothering you."

I arch a brow. Riiiiiight. "I'm fine, I swear. But I know you're lying."

She sighs, and looks down at her plate as she speaks. I glance down too — she's barely touched her lasagna.

"You just look so much like him."

       She says it so quietly, if I hadn't been so focused on her, I wouldn't of heard it. And when I do, I kind of wish I hadn't, because my heart breaks a little for her. She, who has done all the work in raising me, she, who has always been one phone call away.

I've always known I looked like my dad. When I younger, it was all I heard. You're so pretty, you look just like you're daddy. All of the variations of that one might imagine, I've heard. And I hated it. Each and every single time. Don't get me wrong, my dad never laid a hand on me, or my mom. But you can't really touch someone when you're never around them can you? He was all too happy to give mom full custody of me, until he learned that meant child support. The checks were few and far between, and never enough.

Mom wipes her hands under her eyes, and shakes her head, "You know, I've tried, for so long, pretty well you're entire life to hate him, and yet I can't. Do you know why?"

I frown. Talking about my dad isn't my favorite topic. "No?"

She reaches her hand across the table until it lays atop mine. She interlaces our fingers, and runs smooth circles on my hand, "Because without him, baby, I wouldn't have you." She wipes away another start tear, "And how could I hate someone who gave me the world?"