Chapter 13: The Letter

I unfolded the letter against the cold glass of the corridor window.

The first line made my knees go.

Natalie, if you are reading this, you are grown and I am gone.

Eleanor stood three feet away and did not speak.

The second line said that my father's name was on the letterhead of the charity that fed us.

My mother wrote that she met him at twenty-two, and he was already married.

She wrote that she knew it and stayed anyway, and that I was the best thing that came of it.

He paid for my coats, my rent and the church dinners, and she let him, because I was cold.

She never let the woman with the clipboard inside, because the day that woman crossed our door, my mother would belong to him.

I took his money for you, she wrote, and I have never forgiven myself.

The gray sweater is his.

He left it on my chair the night he told me he would never leave his wife.

I kept it to remember how little a warm thing costs a man who owns everything.

Do not wear it for warmth, she wrote. Wear it when you have a house of your own.

I looked down.

I was wearing it, and the cuffs were soaked with rain from the walk to the window.

I did have a house of my own.

There was a last paragraph, and her handwriting got smaller there.

I am told he has another daughter.

If you ever meet her, be kinder to her than he was to either of us.

It ended, I love you every day, even the days I am angry at the world. Mom.

I read it twice, and then I folded it along its old creases and held it against my chest.

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