Grandma nodded through her tears.
“I know.”
“But you're my mother too.”
Her voice broke.
“And if it's all right with you, I'd like to call you Mom sometimes.”
Grandma began crying.
“Oh, Ruth.”
Mom leaned forward.
And for the first time in more than sixty years, she rested her head against her birth mother's shoulder.
Grandma wrapped both arms around her.
I stood silently in the kitchen doorway.
Tears streamed down my cheeks.
I had seen that woman frightened and bruised in a basement.
I'd heard her whisper that nobody would believe her.
I'd watched her struggle to reclaim her home.
And now I was watching her receive something she'd believed was gone forever.
Her daughter.
Not as an infant.
Not as a memory.
But as a grown woman choosing to know her.
That night, I returned to my own house.
The neighborhood was peaceful.
Lights glowed in the windows.
