I can hear my mother in the downstairs and I want so much for her to be happy to see me. I tiptoe down the steps and follow the sounds. I pass the living room where the TV is on. My dad is watching David Brinkley tell the news.

I slip into the kitchen and see her at the big black sink. It has a counter next to it. A glass of Mom's drink is on the counter. It has a long stick that holds up the little bowl with her drink in it. Mom's drink always looks like blood. She has to pull a cork out of a bottle to get it.

I can see potatoes, still dirty and brown, next to her drink. She is taking the skins off of them. There is a pot on the other side. She puts them in it when they are white and clean.

I know she can hear me push the kitchen chair up to the sink, but she does not turn around. That is a good sign. If she doesn't say anything, then she is not mad at me for anything I did earlier. I crawl up on the seat of the chair and I am careful not to touch her. If I am very, very good, she will let me stay there and watch her. I want to help, hand her the dirty potatoes and see if she smiles at me. But I am scared. I want to say, "Mom?" But if I do and she is still mad at me, she won't like that. I stand as close to her as I dare, sniff her flowery smell, listen to the water running over her hands and the potatoes. They make a plunking sound in the sink. I want to see where the skins are going and I inch closer to try to take a look at the bottom of the big black sink.

Boom. I hit my chin on the counter. I feel fire in my mouth, and my mother looks at me, annoyed. Her eyes widen.

"Jack!" She screams, "Jack, come in here!"

I put my hand up to my mouth to rub where it hurts and my hand is covered in red blood.

"Oh my God!" My dad screams, "What happened?"

I am crying now, blood is running all over the front of my dress, my neck. My dad picks me up. He holds me in his arms and strokes my hair. "Did she bite her lip?" He shouts at my mom.

"I don't know!" My mother screams back at him. "She crawled up here and the next thing I know, she's bleeding."

"Let's take a look, kiddo." My dad tries to touch my mouth, but I am still too scared to stop crying. Plus, it hurts too much.

"Man, oh man, I think she has bitten right through her lip, Andrea."

My mother is wiping her hands on a dishtowel. "Let me see," she looks at me. Her face is mean, though. I cry louder.

"I'm taking her to the hospital. This looks bad." My dad reaches for something—my mother's dishtowel—and he is still holding me. He wets it, and puts it on my mouth. I am still crying, but I feel a little bit better.

"I've got a roast in the oven. How long do you think you'll be?" my mother asks.

My dad doesn't answer her. He carries me out of the house, into the cool night. He puts me in the car. I crawl up next to him on the big seat. He tells me to keep the dishtowel on my mouth. He hugs me while he drives, with the hand he doesn't need to steer the car.

In my first-grade portrait, one of my front teeth is gray. It died, slicing through my lower lip on the slate counter top. It was soon replaced with a healthy, permanent tooth though. The only visible scar is the white line under my lower lip where twenty-seven stitches put it back together.

My parents divorced three years later. I was eight. Although I wanted to stay in Canada, I had to move to Massachusetts with my mom.

Nana, my dad's mom, died when I was sixteen. I flew up to Prince Edward Island for her funeral. The island looked like a patchwork blanket from the air: green, brown, red. Farmland, woods, beaches. I thought of Nana, who lived down the street from us and would spend long summer afternoons walking the shoreline of Brackley Beach with me. She was deaf and would knock with sharp, loud taps on the screen door to our house. During our walks, I held her hand and listened for cars as we walked along the highway to the beach.

Nana read lips, and my dad had his own way of talking to her—he did not use sign language. Instead, he would enunciate each word, forming them with exaggerated lip movements. Nana would respond in a monotone that I did not always understand. I wonder if Dad did? He would usually roar when he laughed with Nana. And, of course, Nana never heard my mom and dad when they argued.

Nana and I would leave our sneakers in the tall grass that grew just beyond the sand. We'd squish our toes in the cool, wet surface near the water. The loud symphony of the sea—cresting into waves and creeping up to our bare feet—made the reading of lips the only way to communicate. We'd search for perfectly round pieces of red sand, hard as rocks.

Nana's funeral was in her childhood parish church, St. Mary's in Indian River. The tall, white shingled spire with the statues of the twelve apostles cast a shadow on us as we left the church. The majestic building, with an impressive red roof, was in a scenic pasture. Cows actually grazed in the fields across from the front entrance.

My dad and I stood on the circular front steps, under the ornate stained glass window. Between mourners, Dad apologized for messing up my life. "I should have known better, Genevive. I was crazy. Frustrated."

"Its okay, Dad," I said, "I miss Nana."

Dad stood with his hands clasped in front of him. "Me too."

"I know."

He spoke in a whisper, "She was more of a mother to you than Andrea. I should have gotten a court order to keep you here with us."

"It's okay," I repeated. "I'm all right, Dad." I thought of the nights Mom went out and I'd have the place to myself. I would read the magazines she hid in her bedroom that I wasn't allowed to see, True Confessions and True Romance. But I learned to lock myself in my bedroom in case she came back loud and angry. She'd pound on the door and scream at me. I'd hold my hands over my ears and curl up on my bed. She was usually so hungover the next morning, she wouldn't remember the night before.

"I needed to start all over again, Genevive." He blinked and then he took a deep breath, "I had to create a new business from scratch, and I couldn't fight her. Even though she drank, they wouldn't take you away from her. She's your mother."

Everyone had emptied out of the church and we started to walk to the car. I spoke quietly, "Dad, why did you marry Mom?"

He stopped and looked at me. He raised one hand over his light blue eyes to shield them from the sun. "Your mother was absolutely gorgeous. The whole room changed whenever she walked in. I felt so lucky to have her."

I tried to imagine my mother the way Dad described her. I remembered I'd sneak down as far as I dared to peek at her through the white spokes on the staircase. She did shine. Her fluffy, black hair would gleam and she wore sparkling dresses that fanned out from her small waist. Her laugh came to me, suddenly. She would sing when she laughed, each gasp of mirth an octave higher until she would have to pause to catch her breath.

"She's a different woman when she is loaded. And, of course, she was through with me when I lost the business. We didn’t have a chance after that. I don't know if she ever really loved me."

Or me.

I escaped from Massachusetts and came to Baltimore to attend college. By the time I'd graduated, I'd also fallen in love with the city. Baltimore has the most spectacular springs I have ever seen. Every color you can imagine blooms. First the yellow forsythia burst from the brown twigs of bushes, and you know that the chill in the air is about to end. The white, yellow and green daffodils pop up next, and spring is assured. The tulips are breathtaking. They bloom in the primary colors, red, yellow, blue—and all their variations, violet, orange, pink, teal—grouped in large beds of fifty to a hundred or more.

Around our front porch, azaleas, in pink and white, frame the steps to our house by early May. We have planted impatiens in front of the azalea bushes each of my three Mother's Days. My daughter, Paige picks out their colors, which range from periwinkle to salmon. This year, she selected white impatiens and mixed them with bright red blooms. "Candy cane colors!" she squealed. She is my flower color expert.

Our neighbor will water the impatiens for us while we are away on our month's vacation.

I take a final look around my bedroom to make sure I have not left anything. The photos on my night stand catch my eye. They are primarily of Paige and me but there is one of my dad in uniform, and one of his mom, when she was twenty-two. It is dated 1918. She would have been over one hundred now.

"Mommy! Ready?" Paige, my grandmother's namesake, is standing in my bedroom doorway. Her eyes are wide as she gives me a bright, baby tooth smile. Freckles splatter both cheeks and her nose. Her hair hangs in a blonde, brown and red mop, framing her face. She is three years old.

"Let's go, sweetie," I turn away from Nana’s half smile—in black and white—and scoop Paige up. She places her head neatly into the space between my shoulder and my neck. "I love you, baby," I whisper in her ear.

"Love you, too."

We head out to the garage, our suitcases are already hidden in the trunk. I have a load of her music on cassette and some toys. We have an eight-hour drive ahead of us.

"Ready?" I ask her from my rearview mirror. She is buckled into a booster seat in the center of the back seat.

"Let's go!" She punches the air with both arms.

My daughter and I are headed north, to Massachusetts and on to Prince Edward Island to visit my parents, her grandparents. We’ll find refuge in the family lobster feasts and walks on Brackley Beach when we get to my father's home in Charlottetown. But first, we get to trek to my mom’s in Swampscott. That is the part of the journey we dread.

"Here, Sweetheart, sit next to Nana," my mother will pull Paige down on the baby blue and white checked cushion of the breakfast nook in her kitchen. Paige will squirm and shriek. She will reach out for me. That will anger my mother, who will accuse Paige of being a baby, as though that were an insult.

"Nana's mean," Paige says from her car seat. I want to nod, and agree, but I try to ignore her, instead. I think of my own Nana, and keep hoping for a bond between my mom and Paige.

"Mommy! I said Nana's mean!"

"I heard you."

"I don't want to see her." Paige runs her fingers through her hair with one hand. With the other, she fingers her pacifier, and watches me maneuver the car onto the Baltimore Beltway. The "Circle of Life" is wafting over us, and I am feeling anxious.

My mother surprised me when Paige was born. She came down to Baltimore for her birth and brought me my favorite dinner, the night before the obstetrician decided to induce my labor.

"So, tell me, where is what's his name?" My mom had placed a cloth napkin on my bed under a plate of crab cakes and coleslaw. I had been lying on my left side for twelve days.

She sat in the rocking chair I'd gotten as a gift for the baby, a tray in her lap.

"Paul, he moved away."

"So, you haven't seen him, he's not here?" My mother placed a small forkful of crab in her mouth.

"No, not since November." Paige had been due the week before, on the fourth of July.

"Oh, Genevive. What's wrong with him?"

I had waited to call my mother until I was five months pregnant. We did not speak often, and I did not know what to expect from her. The joy in her voice made me cry.

"A baby! You know, I'm not really old enough to be a grandmother, dear."

I glance into the rearview mirror and my heart soars as I see my baby's head, back on the cushion of the booster seat, eyes fluttering behind closed lids. She always falls asleep when we are in motion.

My heart sinks when we pull into the gravel driveway and I see her, khaki slacks over a white polo shirt that hangs on her. Has she lost weight? She is most certainly drunk. Oh no.

"Paige! Where is my baby doll?" My mother’s voice is fragmented. She speaks in old lady croaks.

"Mommy?" Paige awakens, and frowns at me. I know instantly I have made a mistake coming here.

"Shut your eyes, Sweetie. I am going to tell her you are still asleep."

Immediately, she closes her beautiful eyelids, smiles a conspiratorial smile and plays dead.

"I'm sorry, Mom. Paige is sound asleep," I say as I push open my door, and pull myself out of the driver's seat. "I need to get to the hotel to check in."

"Hotel! What the hell are you doing with a hotel? Plenty of room. Forget that nonsense," she tries to jiggle the back door near Paige, who looks at her, terrified.

"There's my baby!"

I instantly press the door lock button on my dashboard. My mom is successfully stopped.

"Mom, you are not in any shape, right now..." I begin.

"You insolent—"

I slip back down into my seat and I gun the motor.

My mother steps back, hatred and fury emanating from her. I can feel it as though I am five years old again. Suddenly I am back at the slate countertop, trying to get closer to her. The potatoes have the familiar smell of dirt, and it comforts me. My mother's hands and fingers work quickly to strip the skins off. Water is splashing from the faucet and it sprays on my face. It is warm. I shut my eyes to shield them from the water, and I feel a bump, a push on the top of my head. My mother's elbow has pressed me down onto the slate and my front teeth have cut through the skin under my lip.