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Her mother was not always here.
She’d correct Cassandra on that one, kind brown eyes framed by a gentle smile, and tell her that of course, she was here for Cassandra, always had and always would be.
Cassandra did believe her. At least she believed it was the truth. She just wasn’t quite sure, if there was just one truth out there.
She remembered being a child, playing with her doll house, moving the little figurines around as she narrated their stories to them and herself. She hadn’t noticed her mother watching, only when she had come into the room and had picked up one of her dolls.
“I like this one,” she had said, staring at it for a very long moment as she tenderly held it in her hand. “I also liked the old one,” she had added and Cassandra had looked at her with surprise.
“I didn’t have dolls before,” she had said, because she hadn’t. It had been a present, gifted to her at her brother’s birth.
“No, you’re right, sweetie,” her mother had said. “You didn’t have dolls before.”
Her mother had handed the doll back to her but her eyes had still been fixed on it. Cassandra had thought no more of it since her mother had stayed and played with her, telling a silly story of one of the dolls as a clown, unsuccessfully trying to cheer up a sad doll.
The story had made Cassandra laugh and her mother had smiled. The smile stays the same, Cassandra thought now, years later as she looked at her mother. The smile and the eyes and it was a weird thing to think but it felt like the truth.
One version of it at least. Her father would she say she was being morbid again. She’d counter that she was a Goth. It was in her blood, wasn’t it, and her father would laugh and look around their mansion, its dark colors and style such a contrast to the bright white of the houses surrounding it. The ancestral home of the Goth family, longer than Cassandra remembered, longer than her father or his father did.
Cassandra looked at it sometimes and for an irrational moment she wondered where the gravestones of the Goths before her had gone. Stared the weeping willow in the garden and thought of other mansions and graveyards in gardens.
Another truth inside her head.
“Don’t mind what’s in your head,” her mother said. “I’m sure it’s a lovely place to be.”
She never did care that Cassandra wasn’t like her. That she didn’t really like talking to people all that much, preferred spending her time inside her bedroom, playing the violin.
“Beautiful,” her mother said with a smile as she listened to her playing. “I’d love to teach you how to play the piano,” she added and Cassandra laughed.
“You don’t know how to play the piano,” she said because her mother didn’t. Nobody in their family knew how to play the piano. Her mother’s smile didn’t falter but a small frown appeared on her beautiful face for a brief moment.
“No,” she then said. “I suppose I don’t. It’s probably one of those things that just has to be, right? The Goth family needs a piano, even though nobody can play it.”
She looked at Cassandra but her eyes were distant, as if they were seeing something else beside the bedroom, beside Cassandra.
“I wonder if I used to…” her mother began and something inside of Cassandra twisted.
“Another song, Mom?” she interrupted her quickly. Her mother looked startled for a moment, brown eyes focusing, seeing her again, and then her mother nodded.
“Yes please, darling,” she said and Cassandra quickly started playing again. Inside her music, in the notes she was playing, it was too loud for anything else to be heard.
Her mother listened enraptured and Cassandra hoped she thought of nothing but violins as she watched her play.
Loving her music was easy, as easy as loving her family, loving her mother. Loving other people, now that was an issue.
“It’s fine,” her mother said, trying to sound reassuring. Cassandra felt anything but. “It’s just a meeting at the park.”
“It’s a date,” Cassandra hissed because it absolutely was a date. There’d be expectations of talking while sitting on benches together and joking around. And of hand-holding and oh god, maybe even kissing.
“I’m not going,” she said quickly. Her mother looked at her appraisingly.
“I won’t force you, obviously,” she said. “But are you not going because you don’t want to or because you are afraid?”
The first, Cassandra wanted to answer. Or maybe both.
“I just don’t … want it to go wrong,” she said instead slowly and reluctantly. And there were ways for it to go wrong, she knew that. Some of the other teens at school laughed at her pigtails. Her clothes, her name, her everything.
People, Cassandra had realized, weren’t always nice. Love, she had also realized, wasn’t always nice either.
There were other things here too, more truths in the back of her head, but she shied away from them. Pain was lingering there, deeply familiar and wholly alien at the same time, and her mother sometimes said that the way she played love songs on her violin made her want to cry.
“I’ll do your hair and help your with your clothes if you want to,” her mother said though and she had never been afraid of love, Cassandra thought. She still kept listening to Cassandra playing the violin after all.
“Okay,” Cassandra said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll go.”
It was a brave decision, her mother would tell her later. Brave, Cassandra however also realized, didn’t always mean smart. And love, she thought bitterly as she stormed back into the house, failing to hold back the tears running down her face, love could hurt.
Her mother knocked on her door some time later, allowing Cassandra enough time to dry her tears and to try and calm herself down.
Currently she was deciding whether it was better to run away to Sulani or Mount Komorebi. Her mother silently sat down next to her on her bed, not saying anything for a long moment.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she then asked, breaking the silence that had settled between them. Cassandra wordlessly shook her head.
What was there to say? She had gone to the date. Only it hadn’t actually been a date. More like several people, all waiting for her.
Staring at first. Then laughing. Her anger hadn’t felt good. But it had felt familiar, somewhere in the back of her mind and she had grabbed it tightly, suddenly desperate to not let this truth slip away from her because maybe remembering this one would save her from more heartbreak in the future.
Charming smiles and bright green eyes and it was the wrong memory because the eyes that had twinkled with mean delight had been gray but all Cassandra could remember right now was green.
Green and anger and pain. Replaced by sudden red as her mother softly touched her shoulder.
“Breathe, honey,” her mother gently said. ”It hurts, I know. But it will get better. And I’ll be there until it does.”
Cassandra stared at her mother, feeling like she had a lump in her throat and all of a sudden there was a desperate feeling of sadness inside of her, a bitter longing and a deep sense of loss replacing her anger.
Why weren’t you there back then, she wanted to scream at her mother. Why couldn’t you have told me back then, when I needed you to tell me this, needed you to be there?
Flashes of mansions and graveyards in her mind, of weeding arches and an empty chair where her mother should have been sitting. Green and gray eyes mixing together in her head and among all of it a lack of red.
It was another truth, knowing that whatever was lurking inside of her head wouldn’t have changed if her mother had been there. But maybe the tears would have felt different.
And there had been tears. The same way there were now. This Cassandra knew more than anything, believed this truth above any else.
A gentle smile on her mother’s face underneath brown eyes and sometimes Cassandra stared at mirrors and tried to find her mother looking back.
Not here, not now because right now her mother was here but other times, other times Cassandra had looked and searched and wondered and her mother had not been there.
Her mother was not always here. It was a truth amongst many and she couldn’t always keep playing her violin to keep those truths at bay.
A hand came up, wiping at her cheek and she suddenly realized that she was crying again.
“Don’t cry,” her mother said and then she pulled her into an embrace. “Don’t cry, Cassandra. It’s okay, I’m here. I’m here.”
Letting herself be pulled closer, Cassandra tightly hugged her mother. Because she was right, she was here. Right now, her mother was here.
And among the many truths inside Cassandra’s head and heart, at this moment it was the most comforting one.