Camille

I pull out several filled journals from my carry-on bag Saturday morning and transfer them into a locked suitcase beneath my childhood bed. I’ve been transporting the older ones, a handful at a time, with each visit lately. Call me paranoid, but I don’t want them all in one place.

My mother knocks on the door, and I shove the unzipped bag out of sight. She doesn’t know about it. Linda Buchanan would be sick if she knew what her daughter was really doing in Washington, DC, and I don’t want to involve her in any of this anyway.

“Come in,” I call out.

“I was going to see if you were coming down for breakfast,” she says. “I made Mickey waffles.”

My sweet mother lives for the first weekend of every month. For two whole days she gets to step into her old skin, the only one that ever truly gave her purpose and meaning. And for two whole days, I get to forget about politics and sex and the hustle that’s become my life—I get to simply be someone’s daughter.

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be down in a minute.”

She lingers in my door, her warm smile drowning me in an innocent sweetness before she trots back downstairs.

I pull the suitcase back out and count the journals.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

My stomach drops when I realize I left one at the apartment. My most recent one is arguably the most important of them all.

Two deep breaths and I’m halfway to pulling myself together. If I fixate on this all weekend, I’ll never enjoy my time away. The good thing is that Araminta knows nothing about it. Someone would have to go rifling through my things to find it, and the odds of that are slim.

“Okay.” I breathe out. It’s out of my control, and I’ll be back home tomorrow night.

A minute later, I take my seat at the breakfast table, listening to my mother hum A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes as she whisks waffle batter and fires up the Mickey waffle iron she bought fifteen years ago during our first and only trip to Disney World. She saved up for years for that trip and it rained the entire time, but it was the most fun I’d ever had in my young, brief life.

Not even torrential downpours could wash away the magic of that place.

Even as a child, I couldn’t get over how absolutely perfect everything was. The streets were clean, swept daily. The bushes were shaped like Goofy and Donald Duck. Nightly fireworks made my whole body tickle with each pop and tingle with each crackle. Mickey-shaped pretzels, pineapple soft serve floats, and enchanted rides topped it all off.

Nobody cares about anything at Disney World, and everyone is smiling.

“Do you remember when you used to tell me you wanted to work at Disney World when you grew up?” Mom stops humming to ask me a question. Her lips spread wide and she laughs. “It was the cutest thing, Camille. You said you wanted to operate the Tea Cups.”

I laugh. “It was my favorite ride. And you were so wonderful to let me ride it five times in a row. I don’t think I could do that much spinning right now if I wanted to.”

She pours a cupful of batter onto the iron and shuts the lid before flashing me a wistful glance. “And I’d do it all over again, sweetheart. Even if it made me sick to my stomach the rest of the day, all I wanted to do was see that beautiful smile of yours. All those parents at Disney World? They’ll empty their life savings to see that smile on their kids’ faces. And let me tell you, it was worth every clipped coupon and Kraft dinner.”

“Maybe we can go back someday?” I propose. “I could really use some magic in my life. I kind of miss it.”

“Oh, honey,” she says. “Magic goes away the second you become an adult, and unfortunately it never comes back.”

I sink back in my chair. “But we could go back anyway. You know, for old times’ sake.”

“It’s not that I wouldn’t want to,” she says. “I’d love it. But I just don’t have any extra money right now.”

“I’ll pay for it.”

Her head whips toward me then shakes back and forth. “You don’t have any money either. A young lady living in DC on a waitress’s wages cannot afford a two-person trip to Disney World.”

My mother still thinks I’m a waitress, and it’s a sore topic of discussion I’m generally keen on avoiding. But not today.

“The holiday season is coming up. I usually get huge tips. I’ll save them up and we can go after the first of the year,” I say. “Please? Let’s go. Just us. I want to do this.”

She clucks her tongue and fights a smile.

“Please. You’re retired. You should be doing fun things.” A retired schoolteacher’s pension doesn’t exactly allow for Hawaiian vacations or Alaskan cruises. “You never travel. You never leave Oakdale. You’ve always been there for me, Mom. You’ve taken care of me. Let me take care of you for once.”

I always told myself that someday, when I become famous and my bank account is fat enough, I’m bankrolling my mother. She’s the sweetest, hardest-working woman I’ve ever known, and she sacrificed to give me everything I could ever need. She even took a second job so we could move out of the rat-infested, low-income apartments in the seedy part of town. For years, she worked two jobs and attended school part-time to earn her teaching degree.

Best of all, her summers were for me.

And when everyone else was traveling the country with their families, we read to escape. My mother always said books could take us anywhere we wanted to go.

“Let’s get away,” I urge.

She smiles, rarely able to say no to her pride and joy. It’s a quality I took advantage of far too many times as a child. In all my life, there was really only one question to which she ever told me no. And still to this day, she refuses to answer it.

“All right, Camille. You’ve twisted my arm. We’ll go,” she says, forking the waffle and dropping it on a plate.

If only it were that easy to get her to tell me who my father is.

There are two facts I know about him. The first? He works in politics. The second? They met in Washington, DC.

I’ve always wondered if my pull in that direction was because a missing piece of me might still be there.