Road to Paradise by Paullina Simons

“Who do you think I am? Who do you think has been raising you all these years?”
    I didn’t answer, but she glared at me as if expecting an answer. So finally I said, “I thought my father left my mother to be with you. So she left.”
    Gasping and falling speechless Emma straightened, her usually kind and casual eyes flushed with incomprehension. “I simply don’t understand who you are. Shelby, your father didn’t leave your mother. Your mother left him. And for your information, I am not your father’s slutty mistress. I am his sister.”
    I sucked in my breath. “You are?” I was dumbfounded. “How can that be?” I stammered after minutes of silent shame. “You—you—have different last names.”
    “So, expert on names? We had one mother. Your father was ten years younger than me.”
    “You are my aunt ?” This could not have been said with more incredulity than if I had said, you are a man ?
    “Why do you think you called me Aunt Emma?”
    “I was just a kid then,” I muttered.
    “Yes, and with more sense than now, after twelve years of school. When your father set out to look for your mother, he said he’d be back in two weeks. I agreed to watch over you. Two weeks turned out to be thirteen years. He left you with me because there was nowhere else for you to go.”
    I was ashamed and ashen. Humiliation sometimes turns into a parade of pride. It did so with me. To cover up, I said, “Well, why didn’t you ever tell me?”
    “You called me Aunt Emma!” she nearly yelled.
    “Just a name,” I doggedly repeated.
    She shook her head. “Yes. Just a name of your daddy’s sister.” She was breathing heavily, gathering her thoughts. “Does it benefit you to talk down your life? To make it up out of damaged cloth? Did you ever ask yourself why a jilted and abandoned woman would raise her ex-lover’s wayward, ungrateful and preposterous child?” I asked myself this a thousand times a day.
    “Because that’s you, Shelby,” Emma continued. “Preposterous and ungrateful. You’ve been spinning and believing these lies about yourself, but it’s not to make yourself feel better. It was always to make yourself feel worse.”
    I had nothing to say after that.
    Neither did she.
    “I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said. “And I’m not coming back till I find my mother.”
    “Good,” she said. “By all means, I beg of you, do keep open the questions of youth. As if they’re the important thing.” She turned to go. “That’s what your father said, too, by the way. But perhaps you’ll need your mother’s name, if you’re going to be looking for her, and all.” She fell silent and waited.
    Why was she waiting? As if she were holding her breath for me to choose to stay or choose to go. But she gave me a car! I had to go.
    I had to.
    “What was her name?” I asked, defiantly.
    Emma lifted her teacup off the table, her gray face tight, her gray eyes sober. “Lorna Moor.”
    Lorna Moor!
    My mother hadn’t left a letter. But she did send a postcard. Emma showed it to me. It had daffodils on a Main Street and beyond them cliffs and a hard-breaking ocean. Mendocino , California , the card’s location read, and in small sloppy handwriting, “ Say hi to Shelby .”
    This is how you move toward the rest of your life: sometimes by repetition and, sometimes, by revolution.

1
The Pomeranians
    It was a beautiful late June morning when I set off. I got to Gina’s house around nine. It had taken longer than expected to pack up and get out. I had told Gina to be ready at eight. I think I milled around for a few extra minutes to see if Emma would say something to me. What, no words of wisdom? She said, “Do you have what you need?”
    And I said, “Yes.”
    “You don’t.” She brought something out from my bedroom. “You forgot this.” She was holding my pillow with the pink cotton jersey cover. “You know how you don’t like to sleep without it.”
    She was right, I didn’t like to sleep