Chapter 8 - Jenna's Quiet Corner
The morning after Dad told me about Mom not coming back, the house felt quieter than usual. I remembered sitting on the dark wood floor of my bedroom with my back against the white bookcase. The bunny with blue ears had tipped over on the top shelf and I didn't fix it. Dad had already left for work and his footsteps weren't in the hallway anymore. I had the silver frame flat on my lap so Mom could see the ceiling.
Jenna didn't come in right away. She stood in the doorway in her cream sweater and beige trousers the same way she had that night, but she didn't say bed now or tell me what to do. She just knocked lightly on the door frame with her knuckle and waited.
"Can I sit?" she asked.
I didn't answer at first. I watched her breathing. She didn't come to my bed or my little chair. She sat down on the floor near the foot of the bookcase, far enough that she wasn't touching my blanket or my dress. Her knees were pulled up a little and her brown belt made a soft creak when she shifted.
"I like this sweater," she said after a second. She smoothed the ribbed sleeve with her palm. "It's soft and warm. But I don't like when people think it means something it doesn't."
I looked at her. She wasn't looking at me exactly. She looked at the bookcase, at the teddy bears lined up, at the empty spot where I usually stood the frame.
"I'm not going to be your mom," she said. Her voice was quiet and even. "I didn't move in because I wanted to be your mom. I moved in because your dad asked me to be here and because I care about you both. But I know I'm not her. I don't want you to call me that."
I held the frame tighter. My bow had slipped a little to the side and I could feel it against my hair. I had expected her to want the title. Grown-ups at daycare always asked if she was my new mommy when she picked me up with Dad, and I would say what I had said that night. She's not my mommy. No one had ever told me they agreed before.
"Do you understand what I mean?" Jenna asked. She glanced down at me then.
I nodded once. My eyes were still wet from earlier and I wiped them with the sleeve of my off-white dress.
She didn't reach for the frame. That was new. Dad always tried to straighten it or put it somewhere safe. Jenna just kept her hands on her knees. The silver watch on Dad's wrist wasn't there, and I noticed her wrists were bare. It made her look smaller somehow, sitting on the floor like that.
After a minute I turned the frame over in my lap. The glass had a smudge from my thumb. In the picture, Mom was holding me on her lap in the kitchen, and my hair was shorter then, without the bow. I had looked at it so many times I knew where Mom's hand rested on my shoulder.
I lifted it up without thinking and held it out toward her. I hadn't let her hold it before. Not once since she had started standing in the doorway.
"Do you want to see?" I whispered.
Jenna leaned forward just a little, but she didn't take it from me. "Can I look while you hold it?" she asked.
I nodded and turned it so we could both see. Her eyes moved over the photo slowly. She didn't say oh how cute or anything loud. She breathed in and then out.
"She has your smile," she said. "Right there. And your hair."
I felt my chest get tight in a different way, not the panicked way from the night before. She said it like it was true and not something to fix.
"She said it so she can still see me," I said, very quietly. It was the same thing I'd told Dad, but it sounded smaller now.
Jenna nodded. "Then we should make sure she can."
She pointed with her fingertip, not touching the frame, to the middle shelf of the white bookcase where there was a clear space between two bears. "What if she stays right there? Where she can see you playing and sleeping, but no one moves her unless you say so. I won't move her. I won't clean around her without asking."
I looked at the spot. It was at my eye level when I stood. The light from the window hit it in the afternoon and made the silver shine. I had liked keeping it on my pillow, clutching it, but the idea of Mom watching from the bookcase felt steadier, like she had a chair.
I stood up carefully, still in my dress, and placed the frame there myself. My hands shook a little and Jenna didn't help, even though I saw her hand twitch like she wanted to steady it. I angled it just right, toward the bed.
"Is that good?" she asked.
I stepped back and checked. Mom's face looked out into the room.
May you like
"Yes," I said.
Jenna stayed on the floor. She didn't stand up over me or pat my head. She just sat near the bookcase with me, both of us looking at the silver frame where it belonged. I let her stay close to it. I didn't hide it behind my back. That was the most I could give her then, and she took it without asking for more.
