“That’s not what it meant.”
She pressed the picture against her chest. “That’s never what it meant.”
Helen pulled a chair from behind the service counter.
Mom sat.
People were still shopping around us. Carts rattled past. Registers beeped.
The manager quietly offered us his office.
Mom shook her head.
“No. Please. I need to hear this now.”
But register six had become its own little world.
Mom stared at the photograph.
“When I got pregnant with you, it was difficult,” she told me.
“I was sick all the time. Your father was working two jobs. We were behind on everything.”
She looked at Helen.
“Anna’s father, Robert, offered to take her for the summer. I said no.”
Then her face crumpled.
“Until one night.”
She had been exhausted.
Anna needed new shoes. The refrigerator had stopped working. Mom had spent the afternoon being sick.
After Anna went to bed, Mom cried in the kitchen.
