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I breathed a little easier now, and the pinch in my chest lessened from a raging fire to a throbbing ache, but we weren’t done yet.

“Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference, but Mama, I needed you to talk to me. I just… I needed you. You’re my mom. It wasn’t about what you might’ve said. It was about me knowin’ I didn’t disgust you too. That you could love me even if I wasn’t what you wanted me to be.”

A strangled sob bubbled out of her, but she didn’t cry. “Don’t you know how bad I struggle, Abey?” she said, looking in my eyes, seeing the tears welling up in the corners.

My bottom lip wouldn’t stay still. She shook her head and looked down again, and I tried hard not to let the pain on her face break me. Her struggle was clear, and I felt ashamed that I’d never noticed how hard this had been for her too. I hadn’t forgiven her, not even close, but I could see the pain inside her plain as day.

“What I learned in church tells me it’s not right. It’s what my parents thought. It’s what your daddy thought, and it’s what most everybody around here thinks.” She pushed away from the table and stood from her chair, and I hung my head, expecting that, like she had always done in the past, she would walk away from this conversation. From me.

I couldn’t force her to accept me. What else was there to say?

This was it. This was all I would get from her. And it would have to be enough for me.

Sure, I’d go on with my life. I’d take Devo to the dance. Maybe we’d get married someday, have a family. Maybe I’d get everything I’d ever wanted in Devo.

I already loved her.

But my mama wouldn’t be a part of that if she couldn’t truly accept me.

She’d walk away from her disgusting lesbian daughter, and she’d never look back.

And I’d have to figure out how to not have my mama in my life. To not see her grouchy face when I brought her groceries. To not allow myself to worry if she was taking her medicine the way the doctor had prescribed. To never feel her fingers glide softly through my hair as she separated it before pulling it into braids, even though her hands had to ache.

I’d never see her face again on Christmas morning when Athena opened all the presents Mama had bought for her by saving as much of her social security checks as she could throughout the year, even though she hadn’t bought new clothes for herself in as long as I could remember. And still, she lived in this god-awful trailer in the winter, when I suspected she had to wear two layers of thermals to bed to stay warm when the winds from the tops of the Tetons carried the dry, frigid cold down into the valley, even though there was a perfectly warm bedroom out at the farm, sitting empty, waiting for her to get over her own stubbornness.

She wanted to continue to avoid the truth, and it meant that I’d have to say goodbye.

But that wasn’t what happened.

Mama came to stand in front of me, and when I lifted my head and the tears finally dripped free and fell down my cheeks, she cradled my face in her hands.

I couldn’t stop crying. I tried hard ’cause I wanted to be able to hold my head high when I walked out of her life.

But she was looking at me. Really looking.

Was she finally seeing… me?

“But I love my only daughter,” she said solemnly. “I have loved you since the day I found out I was pregnant with you. I loved you the day you were born. I loved you when you were a ten-year-old brat and you couldn’t leave your brothers be. Even when you ripped out the braids I’d spent an hour on when they weren’t the kind the girls at school wore. I loved you the day Daddy saw you kissin’ that girl in the barn, and I love you still.

“You will always be my daughter, Abey. Even if we don’t agree. Even if you decide you don’t want me in your life because I disagree, I’ll still love you.”

Oh God.

The relief was immediate, like the sadness, fear, and weight of seventeen years had been traveling through my bloodstream, settling down into the very fibers of my veins, heavy like sediment, but finally, it had been washed free.

I felt weightless again but, this time, for an entirely different reason.

“And if I take Devo to the Fall Festival dance?”

She brushed the hair away from my temple, looking at it lovingly, but then her eyes moved back to mine. “I’ll love you even then.”

“Even if people talk? Even if they say nasty, mean things about me? Even if they say it’s my parents’ fault that I’m a lesbian and that God hates me?”

She swallowed loudly, but she said, “Even then, baby. My sweet little girl.” Her words made me feel like a little girl, like I used to before everything went to pot. “I love you. How could I not?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

DEVO