Mom Cooked Only for Bella, So I Found My Real Mother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Table
At her eighteenth birthday dinner every dish is sweet and every dish is Bella's. Ginny asks for spicy roasted potatoes, Mom says no in front of twelve relatives, and Ginny walks out to find the door locked and a suitcase on the porch.
On my eighteenth birthday, twelve of my relatives watched me ask for a potato.
Mom had called us to the dining room at six sharp.
She had taken the whole afternoon off from church and told everyone she was cooking my favorites.
I walked in wearing my yellow dress and stopped at my chair.
There was a ham glazed in brown sugar and pecans.
There were candied yams, sweet cornbread pudding and ribs lacquered in maple.
Even the green beans had been cooked in syrup.
I looked down the whole table, dish by dish.
Nothing on it was mine.
It was Bella's menu, the same one Mom had made for every holiday of my life.
Bella is my little sister. She is seventeen and she sat across from me in a pink sundress, pushing her ham around with a fork.
"Happy birthday, baby," Mom said, and kissed the top of my head. "I made everything you love."
Her voice was warm and sure.
My aunt clapped. My cousins raised their sweet tea.
I had been told what I loved for so long that I had almost believed it.
I sat down and a plate of yams landed in front of me.
My stomach turned over.
I like spicy food. I like it so much that I once ate a whole jalapeño off a dare and asked the boy who dared me for a second.
In my whole life I had never once been asked.
Eighteen years was long enough.
"Mom," I said. "Can I have roasted potatoes with cayenne? Spicy ones?"
The table went quiet.
Mom's smile stayed exactly where it was.
"Sweetheart, we don't make those in this house."
"I know. That's why I'm asking."
"Ginny." She laughed lightly and passed the ribs to my aunt. "You're just tired. Eat what's in front of you."
"I don't want what's in front of me."
My father cleared his throat. "Don't start tonight, Ginny."
Dad wouldn't look at me.
He never looked at me when Mom was smiling like that.
My aunt leaned in, trying to rescue everyone. "Brenda, tell the birth story. Ginny's turn."
Every birthday, someone asked for it.
Every birthday, Mom told Bella's.
"Oh, Ginny's was nothing special," Mom said. "Bella's was the one. A storm knocked the power out and I labored fourteen hours."
She told it the whole way through, with the storm and the generator and the doctor in his raincoat.
Bella stared at her plate.
The faces around the table were turned toward Mom, soft and smiling.
Not one was turned toward me.
I put my napkin down.
"Mom, it's my birthday."
"Yes, and I made you a ham."
"I've never liked ham."
"That's ridiculous. You ate it for years."
"I ate it because it was the only thing there."
Her smile finally slipped, and what came up behind it was a flat, tired look I knew from every birthday I could remember.
"Virginia, you are embarrassing yourself in front of your family."
"All I did was ask for a potato."
"You're being dramatic. Bella has never made a scene like this."
"Bella eats what she's given."
"Because she's grateful."
Bella's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.
She did not look at either of us.
I heard myself breathe in.
I could stay and eat the yams. I could say sorry, as I had a hundred times, and be good for another year.
Or I could stop.
So I stood up.
"Thank you for dinner," I said, and my voice shook only once. "I'm going for a walk."
"Ginny, sit down."
"No."
It was the first time I had ever said that word to her face.
My aunt gasped. A cousin lowered his phone.
Mom's voice went sweet again, so sweet it scared me.
"Take your walk, baby. Cool off. I'll keep your plate warm."
I walked out through the front door in front of all of them, past the framed photos of Bella at every age and the one blurry picture of me as a baby.
I walked to the end of the street and down to the creek and stood there until my hands stopped shaking.
I had two hundred and twelve dollars of birthday money in my purse.
I felt lighter than I had in my whole life.
When the streetlights came on, I turned around to go back.
I meant to go home and say it again, calmer.
The porch light was off.
My key turned in the lock and nothing happened.
I tried it twice.
Through the front window I could see the dining room, empty now, the candles blown out and the cake gone.
Then I saw the suitcase.
It sat at the top of the steps, zipped, with my winter coat folded over the handle.
Mom had packed it while I was gone.
Pinned to the handle was a card in her neat church-bulletin handwriting.
"Come back when you can eat what you're given."
I stood on my own porch and read it three times.
Behind the door, I heard the deadbolt slide home.
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