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  “Being a part of a family isn’t about blood, it’s about love. Love isn’t created with genetics—it’s made with time spent together, small moments you will always remember, hard times that make you stronger, and so much joy you can hardly believe it’s real. I’ve been so blessed to have my beautiful goddaughter in my life, and I shudder to think what life would be like without her. She is spunky, smart, and empathetic. She brightens the world around her, and I truly believe she is where she’s meant to be.”

  Up by a Million

  by Caela Carter

  When I sit across this table from my mother, we’re transported. She isn’t really her. And I’m not really me, either. We’re in a different, pretend version of our lives. A version in which we get to live the end of my childhood the way we did the beginning: together.

  Prison has become my happy place.

  I feel so far away from my other life, my other mom, that I almost stop worrying about what I have to tell this mom today.

  Almost.

  “You look so beautiful, baby,” Mom says, collecting two cards from the pile between us. We’re playing our endless game of War. “Who’s doing your hair these days?”

  “Coach K took me to a new salon last week.” The words “Coach K” feel clumsy in my mouth. I haven’t called her that since I was here last Sunday. I’ve been calling Coach K “my mom” on the outside for a long time now. Months. Maybe a year.

  But in front of my real mom, she’s back to being “Coach K.”

  “Yeah?” my mom says. “How did you get her to do that?”

  “I asked her,” I say.

  I don’t tell this mom how scared I was to talk to Coach K about my hair when I first started living with her. How embarrassed I was to be fourteen with no clue how to take care of my own hair. How I tried to figure it out based on YouTube videos and things my friends were telling me. And how my hair was getting worse and worse every day because I was using the wrong shampoo in the wrong amount and at all the wrong times. I got more and more ashamed of my hair, and the words I couldn’t say built and built until finally I exploded and yelled at my other mom that she might be black like me but with her short hair she’d never understand mine anyway and how both of us being black wasn’t enough.

  “You asked and she took you?” my mom asks. “How’s that for easy.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  I don’t tell her how Coach K stared at me and said she didn’t know my hair was bothering me. Or how she called the most popular stylist in town and when that stylist said she was booked for three weeks solid, she explained that I needed her, that she was parenting a teen who’d never been taught a thing about her own hair. And how once Coach K explained that much, the stylist offered to open the salon early just to give me a two-hour lesson in hair care.

  I needed that lesson years ago. Maybe five years ago, when I was first a teen. Maybe I needed it the year my mom went away.

  But my hair looks good now.

  “I’ve always trusted Coach K with your heart,” Mom says. “I didn’t know I could trust her with your hair, too.”

  “War!” I say.

  I’m grateful for the way the cards have laid themselves out on the table between us. Normally, when I sit here across from my mother, we ignore our other lives and focus on the cards. It never fails that a war breaks out to separate us from the real issues as they pop up in the conversation.

  We each lay three cards out in quick succession, then flip the last one over.

  I flip a queen.

  Mom flips an ace.

  “Damn!” I say, but I’m smiling.

  We look at what Mom has won: two jacks and a three from me. And she recovered another of her aces. Not too awful, but not good.

  Either way, now she’s smugly collecting cards from me and smiling at me with all of her teeth, and I’m basking in the glow of her smile as I pretend to be upset about two lost jacks.

  And five years. Five lost years with her, so far.

  Today I might lose the rest of her. But I don’t want to tell her. Not yet.

  “How’s school?” Mom asks as she restacks her cards.

  “Fine,” I say. I don’t dwell on school when I’m with her. I don’t bring my mostly-As report cards to prison. I don’t brag about my brains to the mom who just earned her GED last year.

  I let my other mom hang those report cards on the refrigerator.

  “Still on track to graduate next year?” Mom asks.

  My face burns. Graduate? I’m on the honor roll.

  “Yup,” I tell her. I lay out a card. It’s a two to her ten.

  Damn. I could use another war about now.

  “Then what?” Mom asks.

  I shrug. I collect a nine from her and lay a pair on the table.

  “What’s the overall score by now?” I ask, to change the subject.

  But I have to stop changing the subject. Coach K says we have to talk about it. She said if I want to talk to my first mom first, today’s the day.

  She says we need to get the ball rolling if we’re going to have it all wrapped up before I graduate.

  When I’m talking to Coach K, I want it all wrapped up. Immediately. Now.

  When I’m talking to this mom, I’m afraid our whole relationship depends on the loose ends staying loose.

  “Oh, the score,” Mom says with a dramatic sigh. “You’re up by a million, and you know it. It doesn’t matter how many wars I win today.”

  My face burns again. I’m up by a million in our never-ending game of war that we restart each week after the guards inevitably stop us mid-shuffle. But I’m up by a million in life, too.

  I have chances she never had. I have people she never had. I have grades and connections and opportunities she never had. I’m up by a million.

  Sometimes I’d still rather be with her, though.

  Mom puts her cards down and places her elbows on the table on either side of the pile. She rests her chin in her hands.

  My heart speeds up.

  I’m going to have to say it soon. Now.

  I don’t think I’ll be able to.

  I can’t be the one who says it.

  I’m never the one breaking her heart.

  “Tell me about it,” she says. “Tell me about life with Coach K.”

  I bite my bottom lip.

  Mom straightens her back so her chin no longer rests in her hands. She’s backtracking. She can tell that question pushed me too far. She skipped a step or something.

  Mom doesn’t ask about my life like that. She hints at it by asking the easy questions about grades and sports and friends.

  She never asks about family.

  “You still running?” she says. And we’re back on script.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I came in fourth at the invitational last weekend.”

  Mom beams. “Did you get a ribbon?” she asks.

  I smile back at her. I pull it out of my pocket and lay it on the table on top of her cards. She strokes it.

  I feel a guard hover close to us. Mom doesn’t pick it up. She’s not allowed to pick up anything I bring with me. But her index finger gently traces the “4” printed on the purple fabric.

  She’s allowed to touch my accomplishments. She’s just not allowed to hold them.

  “That’s amazing, baby,” she says. “You’re going to ride those track feet right to college, aren’t you?”

  I squint at her, at my mom, because that’s exactly what my other mom says. That’s exactly how she puts it. “You’re going to ride these track feet to college.” And my moms are usually so different.

  “Well, aren’t you?” Mom adds.

  I shrug.

  There are things I don’t tell Coach K. I don’t tell her how I’ll call her “my mom” but I won’t ever call her “Mom” bec
ause it seems like the proper noun should refer only to the woman who has been around since the moment I was born, not the moment I was needy. I don’t tell her that no matter how hard she’s working for me as a parent and as a coach, I’m not going to be off to some big D1 school in a year if that big D1 school is so far away that I can’t visit my mom, my real mom, my first mom.

  And there are other things I don’t tell my other mom. Things I should tell her. Like thank you.

  “Let those feet run you straight to college, baby,” Mom says. “You earned it.”

  I put my hand out to grab my cards, but my mom catches it.

  “You earned it,” she says again. “Go to college.” It almost sounds like she’s telling me to leave her.

  We hold hands and stare at each other for a minute.

  “NO TOUCHING!”

  The guard’s words blast us apart.

  What kind of place is this? Where my mother isn’t allowed to hold my hand?

  More things I don’t tell this mom: she should be the one standing on the sideline when I’m the fourth girl in the county to cross the finish line and reporters line up to take down the exact spelling of my name.

  And she should be the one there on Christmas morning. And Mother’s Day. And my birthday.

  And it should be her signature at the bottom of my mostly-As report card.

  And she shouldn’t have messed up so badly that she ended up in a place where she gets in trouble for holding my hand when I tell her I’m the fourth fastest girl in the entire county.

  I protect my real mom from that stuff, from all of the stuff my other mom is doing for her.

  I want to keep protecting her. I wish today weren’t the day I had to stop.

  “How’s it going in here?” I say.

  My mom sighs. “I’m trying,” she says. “My roommate got out last week so I have a new one. A tiny girl. Too young. She looks scared all the time. I just want to give her a hug.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  I wonder if she does hug this new roommate. I wonder if she hugs her the same way she hugs me twice a week, at the beginning and end of these stupid visits. The only time hugging is allowed.

  I wonder if she’s allowed to hug this other girl all the time.

  “What’s she in for?”

  My mom sighs. “I don’t know. But no doubt she’ll be in way too long for whatever it is. She’s barely older than you, and she already has two babies. Can you believe that?”

  No, I think. No, I can’t believe that.

  I’m only eighteen.

  “How is Coach K?”

  I shrug. I hate to talk to one mom about the other.

  “She’s good to you,” my mom says, like always.

  I shrug again.

  But I’m grateful, too.

  It’s another thing I don’t tell each mom. How I’ll always be more grateful for the second one. How I’ll always love the first one just a little bit more.

  Too many minutes of silence roll by. We only have half an hour each week, my mom and me. We don’t get enough minutes to be silent for this many of them.

  Finally she says, “I think you have something to tell me.”

  I look into her eyes, the ones that match mine in shape and color and depth. I let her see my tears.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Just tell me.”

  The words sneak around the tears, but just barely. They squeak and slide out of my mouth, so quiet I’m not sure if my mom will hear them. They line themselves up on the table between the cards of War. They’re ready to let my mom declare war against them.

  If she does, they’ll fall over quickly.

  I’ll stop. I’ll forget about college. I’ll give up my other family. I’ll forget about my dreams to make sure I’m close to her.

  But I can’t make the words say all of that. Instead they say the bare, terrifying truth.

  “She wants to adopt me.”

  My mom’s eyes spill over right along with mine. We cry for too many minutes. Crying together feels like wasting time the way being silent together does.

  I half expect the guard to yell “NO CRYING” the way he yelled “NO TOUCHING.”

  It’s only after too many tears that I realize my mom has been talking right through them. “I know, baby, I know,” she’s saying. “I know, I know.”

  “You know?” I say, too loudly. “You know she wants to adopt me?”

  “Yeah, I know,” my mom says. “She told me when she was here last week.”

  My mouth falls open.

  My moms sat and talked together. About me. Without me.

  “She said she waited until you were eighteen, so that you really get to decide if you want her in your life forever. She said she wanted to do it, though, to get you out of the system before you age out at twenty-one.”

  I nod. That’s exactly what my mom—Coach K—said to me.

  “She also told you I was going to ride my track feet to college,” I say.

  Mom laughs a little.

  If we go through with this, she’ll become my birth mom, this woman sitting across from me. That’s what the world will call her. It seems wrong. She’s so much more than that.

  “And you don’t need my permission,” my mom is saying, “but it’s okay with me. Just know it’s okay.” The words are like a kitchen knife coming down in the middle of my rib cage. The image of my mother being taken from me in handcuffs springs back to my brain. It feels the same. I go from half of a family to just one person, alone, again. I get sliced right off.

  “I have your permission?” I say.

  My mom messed up. I get that. But everyone has always told me how much she loves me. Even in the middle of my other mom saying how she wanted to adopt me, she said how much my first mom loves me.

  Now I have permission to not be hers anymore?

  Mom reaches across the table and lays her hand right next to my arm. It’s the thing we do when we want to touch, but we can’t. She gets close enough so that I can feel the heat radiate off her finger and into my elbow. Our electrons are touching and the guards can’t do anything to stop that.

  “I’m your mom,” she says. “I love you more than anything. I want . . . I want what’s best . . . for you.”

  As hurt as I am, my brain is exploding with fireworks of possibilities. A college education partially funded by my other mom. A college loan cosigned in her name. A family to come home to during Christmas break and the summer and all the times that kids come home from college. A family to catch me when I fall.

  A chance to make what I’ve had with my second family for the past five years real in a way I thought it could never be.

  But my heart is breaking. My heart is going back four years to when my mom was first taken away and I was sure, just so sure, for so long that it was my fault. That if I was a better kid this wouldn’t have happened to me. Coach K got herself certified to be a fictive kin foster parent, took me in, and set me straight.

  But if I really am a good kid, how could Mom give up on me so easily?

  Mom takes a deep breath and breaks the rules again. She strokes my elbow. Enough of electrons, it’s her actual fingers on my skin now.

  “We’re strong, you and me. We’re strong, right?”

  I look in her eyes. She’s not crying anymore; instead her eyes stare at me intensely.

  “You were all I had and I was all you had. Until I ended up in here. I’m the one who messed stuff up for us, you know? And even then, as you grew and grew, as you made friends and had that silly boyfriend and had so much to do with school and sleepovers and track meets and dances and parties . . . even with the messing up I did . . . we’re still strong. Aren’t we?”

  I shrug. I don’t know what she’s getting at.

  “You come here every week just for the chance to hug me
twice. Don’t you?”

  Now I’m crying. I nod at her.

  “And that means nothing’s going to tear us apart,” my mom says. “Prison didn’t tear us apart. It didn’t tear us apart when you were sent to foster care. It didn’t even hurt us when the state took away my official rights as a parent. No matter what they do to us, I’m your mom.”

  And nothing has ever been more true.

  “You can have another mom—you can have thirty moms,” she says. “You’ll still be the best thing I ever did. You’ll always be mine. Another woman loving you the way only a mother can, that’s a good thing. And if all that bad stuff didn’t tear us apart, I don’t think we have to worry about a good thing.”

  My mom reaches for my hand and squeezes it. I see the guard watch this. I see him decide to let it happen.

  I realize he’s listening.

  My mom squeezes my hand like she has since I was little. She puts her other hand on the table and squeezes both of my hands. We sit like that, holding onto each other, and the realness of who we are is undeniable.

  I’m going to be adopted. But I’ll still be hers. She’ll still be mine.

  She squeezes my hands again. I’m surprised she’s still holding them. I can’t believe the guards didn’t come in and break us up yet. But they will. The guards, the lawyers, the courts, the system will always try to come between us—break us apart so we can’t even hold hands. But we can hold onto each other.

  Nothing can make us let go.

  Caela Carter grew up in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and Baltimore, Maryland. She’s been writing since she learned how to pick up a pen, but before the writing thing got serious she spent six years teaching English to middle and high school students in Jacksonville, Florida, and Chicago, Illinois. When she’s not writing, Caela is a teacher to some awesome teens in Brooklyn, a Notre Dame football enthusiast, and a happy explorer in New York City.

  “As a writer, reader, and foster parent, I’m always searching for stories that explore the complexities of adoption and foster care while honoring the dignity and humanity of all families and family members. I’m honored to be a part of this project.”