she couldn't feel her wings
but knew they were there
so she built a ladder
that led to the sky
and when she touched the clouds
she remembered how to fly.
-atticus

-----

The next morning, as Nita sat at the kitchen table and slowly ate the bowl of oatmeal that Becky prepared for her, the teen decided to ask a question that she hadn’t felt brave enough to ask yet.

“ Freen, Becky,” the teen spoke up, making Becky look up from her coffee, and Freen glance over from her place at the sink.

“Yeah, honey?” Becky asked before offering an encouraging smile.

“Actually, never mind,” Nita quickly said, shaking her head when she realized it would be silly to ask.

Freen and Becky glanced at each other before Freen shut off the tap and approached the table.

“You can ask us anything, Nita. We don’t mind,” Freen promised as she dried her hands off with the kitchen towel.

“I don’t want to be a bother,” Nita disregarded as she pushed her oatmeal around with her spoon.

“You’re not a bother,” Becky reminded. “Besides, we are here to help you.”

“Can we,” Nita began to say as she looked between both women. She wasn’t sure why she felt guilty asking her next question, but she did. “Can we go visit my mom’s grave?”

Once more, Freen and Becky shared a look before Freen crouched down by Nita's seat and took her hand.

“Of course we can, baby. Why did you think we’d be bothered by that?” Freen asked as she smoothed her thumb over Nita's knuckles.

Nita could only offer a shrug in response as she looked down at Freen's hand holding her own.

“We’ll go after you finish eating breakfast,” Becky said, hoping to give the girl some incentive to finish her food.

Nita's lack of appetite the last few weeks was clearly doing a number on her weight, and Becky knew that skipping meals wasn’t going to help her with preventing more weight loss.

Nodding her agreement, Nita spooned some oatmeal into her mouth while Freen returned to the dishes and Becky stood up to help her with the rest.

At the sink, Becky briefly glanced at Nita before speaking to Freen in a hushed tone.

“We need to be careful today. Seeing her mom’s grave might push her over the edge.”

“We’ll take it slowly,” Freen promised as she offered a weak smile to her fiancé.

“Should we still talk to the girls about the wedding tonight?” Becky asked, her gaze returning to Nita briefly to make sure the girl still couldn’t hear them.

“Only if they’re doing alright after the visit.”

Becky nodded her agreement and started to dry the wet dishes. Neither women would admit it, but they were both filled with dread at what emotions would be brewed within Nita when she finally saw her mother’s final resting place.

-----

When they arrived at the graveyard, the mood in the car seemed to shift drastically.

Emily, who was talking a mile a minute before, grew sullen as she looked out the window and saw the hedge stones. Her moms had told her where they were going, but it really only sank in when she saw it with her own two eyes.

Nita, who was already quiet on the ride over, took on a more gloomy energy when she also realized where they’d finally arrived.

“I don’t want to go,” Emily said as she squirmed in her car seat.

Freen glanced at Becky who pulled the keys from the ignition. A subtle nod of Becky's head was enough for Freen to understand that they would have to go through with their plan B.

Already expecting Emily to react this way, Freen and Becky made the backup plan that Becky would take Emily down the road to some little shops while Freen took Nita to the grave.

Freen turned in her seat and looked at a still antsy Emily and a very concerned looking Nita.

“What if I take your sister to the spot and mommy takes you somewhere else?” Freen offered the little girl who instantly settled in her seat and nodded her agreement.

“We don’t have to go,” Nita started to offer, though it was clear she didn’t want to leave the cemetery without seeing her mom first.

“No, honey, we promised to take you. It’ll just be Freen, though. Is that okay?” Becky asked, also turning in her seat to look at the teen who nodded. Becky turned her attention to her fiancé to make sure they were on the same page. “Alrighty, so you two take your time here and text me whenever you need me to pick you up.”

“Mh-hmm,” Freen hummed her agreement as she grabbed her bag and started to open her door. “Maybe find something sweet to eat.”

“You hear that, Emi Bear? Mama just said we can get candy,” Becky said joyfully to Emily in hopes of lifting her spirits.

It seemed to do the trick as Emily started listing off her favourite candies while Freen helped Nita out of the car.

Waving off her fiancé, Freen set Nita's arm over her shoulder and began to lead the girl over to the entrance gate of the cemetery.

Silently, Freen and Nita made their way through the various plots. It was a public cemetery, so many of the plaques on the ground were the same aside from the names and dates chiseled into them.

There was the occasional hedge stone with further descriptions of who the person was and who they left behind, but it was rare to see.

After soldiering up a small hill and taking a brief break to catch her breath, Nita leaned heavily against Freen as they walked a few more meters over to find the resting place of Mind.

As gently as possible, Freen helped Nita to the ground where the teen kneeled over the generic stone slab that the others around her had as well.

Freen watched as Nita sat for a beat before her shaky fingers reached out to trace over what was engraved on the stone.

MIND ANANTRAKUL

No birthdate, no death-date. Just a name and nothing more.

“This is all that’s left of her,” Nita eventually mumbles out as she continues to write and re-write her mother’s name.

“ Becky said that the funeral directors couldn’t find any documents with her birthday on it,” Freen explained, making the teen shake her head slightly.

“September 13th, 1985.”

Freen paused as she recalled that today was September 13th. No wonder Nita wanted to visit despite only getting back from the hospital the previous day.

“Tell me about her,” Freen decided to say as she sat next to her kid on the still grassless patch of land.

“What’s there to say? She loved drugs more than her kids,” Nita said rather bitterly, making Freen shake her head in disagreement.

“She’s more than that, and you know it. Your mom is gone, which means it’s your job to help people remember her. Now tell me, who was Khun Mind,” Freen said, re-prompting the teen to talk about her mother.

“I can’t remember her before the drugs,” Nita explained as she looked at the stone disdainfully. “I want to remember, but it’s so hard. All I see is her getting worse and worse.”

“Close your eyes,” Freen prompted before she gently grasped Nita's hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “What was your first memory ever as a kid?”

Nita paused and mulled the thought over for a beat before speaking again.

“I was four. I had a little plastic pool in our yard, and I was playing in it.”

“What else do you remember?” Freen pressed, hoping that some digging would help the teen remember Mind in a better light.

“It was cold. I didn’t like it but my mom-,” Nita pauses as she’s finally hit with something.

In her mind, buried under years of trauma and abuse, under layers of helping her mother through her withdrawal and relapses and raising Emily to be a good kid, laid the only memory she had of when things were good.

“My mom sat in the pool with me,” Nita whispered as tears begin to leak past her closed eyes.

“Tell me what she looked like,” Freen encouraged as she lovingly squeezed Nita's hand and continued to let the girl just feel everything.

“Beautiful. She looks like me but her eyes…”

“What about her eyes?”

“They’re like Emi's. It was before the drugs made them milky. And her smile,” Nita mumbles as a sob breaks past her lips. “She was so beautiful.”

“Remember her like that,” Freen said as she allowed the teen to lean into her side and breakdown a bit more. “Push aside all of the negative memories for a minute and just remember your mom at her most alive.”

“Why couldn’t she stay like that?” Nita asked as she nuzzled her face into Freen's neck and allowed her tears to fall quickly. “Why wasn’t I reason enough for her to stay like that?”

Freen sighed and kissed the top of Nita's head before deciding to speak.

“I don’t know, baby,” Freen said honestly. “But sometimes, when things get too tough for us to handle, we like to turn to other things to help us get by. Maybe she was struggling, and the drugs made her feel better.”

“Why couldn’t I make her feel better, though? Why am I never enough for people?”

“Hey, no,” Freen quickly disagreed as she gently pushed Nita away so she could catch the teen’s gaze. “You are more than enough, Nita. And I’m sure that your mom thought the same. But maybe she didn’t feel like she could be a good enough mother, which was why she used drugs. It probably made her feel better and like she wasn’t failing you,” Freen said, hoping to give Mind the benefit of the doubt.

Sure, Mind failed as a mother, but it wasn’t Freen's place to put down the woman who was already dead. The least she could do was make sure her daughter maintained a good memory of her.

“And if you ever doubt her love, just close your eyes and remember her sitting in the pool with you. Remember her eyes, her smile, the way she held your hand. I’m sure you will find all the love she felt for you in there.”

Nita shakily released a breath and shut her eyes once more. With one hand grasped in Freen's, and the other rested on Mind's gravestone, Nita allowed herself to go back and relive that memory over and over until, sure enough, the love that Freen was talking about finally started to leak through.

And with that love came a gentle breeze, almost as if Mind was showing Nita that Freen was right and that she loved her the same way she did in that memory all along.

“What do you feel?” Freen asked softly as Nita allowed the smallest of smiles to slip past her lips.

“Everything,” Nita replied as she continued to remember. “Her.”

-----

For the time that Freen and Nita would take at the cemetery, Becky allowed for Emily to go a bit crazy and buy the largest bag of candy they could find in the shops down the road.

With little idea of how long their other half of the family would be, Becky and Emily parked themselves on a bench and ate their way through the candy bag, but not without a brief lesson in the humane ways to consume sour gummy bears.

“Head first,” Becky explained as she took a red bear and bit its head off. “That way they don’t feel it,” the older woman said before popping the rest in her mouth and laughing at Emily's slight shock.

“They’re alive?!” Emily asked as she looked into her bag and stared the gummies down.

“No, but it’s still the nice thing to do,” Becky said.

Emily shrugged and grabbed her own gummy before copying her mommy and biting the head off first.

“Do I have to do the same thing to animal crackers?” Emily asked as she puckered her lips at the sour flavor.

“Yes, and you have to eat two at a time so they don’t get lonely,” Becky explained, only confusing the little girl further.

“This is why I like toast. It has no rules,” Emily said, making Becky laugh again. “When’s Nity gonna get better? I thought the hospital fixed her all up,” Emily said, changing the subject as quickly as someone could flip a switch.

“She’s still healing. She just doesn’t need to be at the hospital anymore,” Becky said as she grabbed more candy. “Why ka?”

“She never lets people help her and now she does. It’s weird,” Emily explained, making Becky shake her head.

Clearly, Emily had some skewed idea of why Nita acted the way she did before.

“Well, she didn’t have people she could trust to help her before. In your old homes, I’m sure she thought that she had to take care of herself and you all at the same time.”

“I think she loves you and mama,” Emily said, making Becky smile softly.

“You do?” the older woman asked, making the little girl nod her head.

“Mh-hmm. She looks at you guys all the time,” Emily explained, which only further confused Becky.

“What does that mean?”

“ Nity never looked at other foster parents. They were always so mean and it was a bad idea to look at them for too long ‘cause they got angry. But you and mama don’t get angry, so Nity looks at you guys a lot. It makes her happy,” Emily said, making Becky smile even more as she also came to the realization that the little girl was right.

She’d noticed it the previous night, but she didn’t pay it much mind, but when Nita was sitting at the table she was always looking at Freen with a smile.

She seemed content, and Becky had no doubt that the teen was also feeling grateful.

“Well, we love her too. And we love you,” Becky promised as she playfully booped Emily's nose, which earned a giggle from the girl.

“I know that, mommy,” Emily said as she crinkled her nose and grabbed more candy. “We should buy another candy ‘cause I think I’m going to eat it all,” Emily said as she bit the head’s off of five gummies before eating them all at once.

“Maybe this much sugar isn’t a good idea,” Becky said as she pried the bag from the seven-yearold’s grip and tied the top off.

“But mommy,” Emily whined as she reached for the bag once more.

“No way, little bear,” Becky said past a laugh as she held the bag away from the girl. “You are going to be ridiculously hyped up on sugar and your mama will be very unhappy with me.”

“I like being hyped,” Emily stated before she stood up and did a little dance.

It was clear that her energy was already coming in full throttle.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” Becky suggested as she got off the bench and extended her hand to the still dancing girl.

“Can we dance while we walk?” Emily asked as she wiggled her waist and bopped her head to the non-existent music.

Becky, who not too long ago wouldn’t be caught dead dancing on a sidewalk for no reason, smiled kindly at her little girl and nodded her head in agreement.

“Let’s see those moves, kid,” Becky said as she joined in and began to dance as she continued to hold Emily's hand.

Emily giggled hysterically as Becky danced with her.

They looked silly, maybe even crazy, but they were having too much fun to care about what other people were thinking.

They were happy, and goofing off, and living their best lives. And Becky would do anything for her little girl, even if it meant making a fool of herself.

-----

“How about oatmeal, again?” Becky asked Nita as she sat on the edge of the teen’s bed and waited for her to agree to eat something for dinner.

Nita merely shook her head as she continued to lay on her non-injured side. She’d been through the wringer emotionally today, and she wasn’t feeling all that great physically, which made her completely revolted by the thought of food.

But Becky knew the girl needed to eat to heal, which is what brought her here to her ongoing attempt to get Nita to eat.

“Well, you skipped lunch. Dinner isn’t debatable,” Becky said as she continued to run her nails over Nita's arm in a soothing fashion.

“I’m not feeling good,” Nita protested for the umpteenth time. “I’ll eat breakfast tomorrow.”

“Mashed potatoes?” Becky offered, hoping to peak the girl’s interest with a different food.

“Too salty,” Nita explained as she shook her head.

“Well, I can make sure Emi isn’t in charge of salting them this time,” Becky said, earning a small smile from the teen that disappeared just as quickly as it came to her face. “C’mon, honey. I know there’s at least one food you’d be willing to eat right now.”

Nita twisted her lips in thought before she blinked and looked at Becky for a beat.

“Do we have instant ramen?” Nita asked, making Becky nod.

“Probably somewhere in the pantry. Is that something you’ll eat?” Becky asked, making the teen nod as she attempted to sit up.

Becky was quick to help her the rest of the way until Nita was sitting up with her legs over the edge of the bed.

“I just need one more ingredient,” Nita said as Becky helped her stand up and head in the direction of the hallway.

“I’m scared to find out what concoction you have in mind,” Becky said, making the teen wave her off.

“Look who’s out of bed,” Freen commented when both of her girls appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

“She’s willing to eat ramen,” Becky said, making Freen nod and head to the pantry where, sure enough, they had a few packets of instant ramen sitting on the bottom shelf.

“Did you want peanut butter too, Nity?” Emily asked from her place at the sink where she was helping to wash the vegetables for dinner.

“You remember, nong,” Nita said past a weak laugh as Becky helped her sit at the dinner table.

“Peanut butter?” Freen asked as she grabbed a kettle to heat up the water for the ramen.

“You’ll see,” Nita said suspiciously before accepting the jar of peanut butter that her little sister handed to her.

“You’re going to be weird and mix peanut butter into your ramen, aren’t you?” Becky asked, a look of concern on her face, which made Nita laugh and playfully shush her.

Sure enough, after everyone had their dinner in front of them, Nita took a spoonful of peanut butter and mixed it into her noodles which were strained upon her request.

It was Freen's turn to look on worriedly.

“Is there a story behind this one?” Becky asked as she motioned to the now peanut butter coated noodles that Nita happily ate.

“I had to eat a lot of ramen as a kid and I got bored of it after a while. My mom mixed in peanut butter once and I haven’t been able to eat it any other way since,” Nita explained, making both women nod in understanding.

“I think it’s yucky,” Emily said matter-of-factly as she shoveled more peas into her mouth.

“Good thing you aren’t eating it then,” Nita said before playfully sticking her tongue out at her little sister.

“Why haven’t you asked for this before?” Freen ventured.

It was the first time she’d seen the teen eat her ramen concoction, so it was obvious she’d gone well over a year without having it.

“It’s not a good idea to ask for things,” Nita said before looking down in disappointment.

She couldn’t help but feel bad for lobbing Freen and Becky into the same category as her other foster parents. They were better than them, which is why she could’ve asked for her favourite food without fear of getting in trouble.

But disconnecting was hard, and sometimes it was easier to stick to old habits than to adopt new ones.

“I get it,” Becky spoke up as she gently grasped the teen’s forearm. “Even little things feel like a burden sometimes. But the ramen is in the pantry and the peanut butter is always in the cupboard. You don’t have to ask.”

It was still a foreign concept, not asking to do things in a foster home, even something as simple as snacking.

But Nita knew she was okay to do that here, which meant that she could indulge and eat her favourite food without fear.

“Thank you ka,” the teen said before she returned to eating her noodles. “So, how’s the wedding planning going?” Nita decided to ask, making both women smile and Emily bounce excitedly in her seat.

“Can I pretty please be the flower girl?” Emily asked she clasped her small hands together in a plea.

“Actually, Freen and I had a different idea for the two of you,” Becky said, making Emily give her her full, undivided attention, and Nita furrow her eyebrows in question.

“Do you know what the maid of honour is, Bubs?” Freen asked, mainly to Emily who was unlikely to know the answer.

Emily gave a swift shake of her head in the negative, which prompted Freen to continue.

“The maid of honour is the right-hand the bride. They are usually the brides closest loved one, which is why Becky and I were wondering if you two wanted to be our maids of honour.”

“I can be a maid?!” Emily asked as her excitement peaked, making both women laugh.

“Of honour,” Becky supplied, hoping that the child understood that the title of maid didn’t mean she was cleaning up after them.

“How does this work? There’s two of you, so…,” Nita began to say as she motioned between both women.

“We were hoping that Emi would accept being Becky's maid of honour while you accept being mine,” Freen explained to the teen who briefly raised her eyebrows in shock.

“Don’t you want one of your friends to do it? Maybe P'Fa? You grew up with her,” Nita suggested, making Freen quickly shake her head in the negative.

“I love Engfa and Irin, but you are my-,” Freen stopped herself short. It didn’t seem like the most appropriate time to be claiming Nita as her daughter, especially given the recent passing of Mind.

“I love you so much, and I want you to be there, by my side, when I marry Becky.”

“And I want you,” Becky said to Emily who giggled and hurried off her seat to hug her mommy in thanks.

“What do you say, Nita?” Freen asked as Becky and Emily hugged one another. “You don’t have to say yes. I’m not going to force you. But it would mean a lot to me to have you there.”

Nita seemed to mull over the thought. She knew that if Freen was anything, she was sincere, which meant that she really did want her to be her maid of honour. And weddings were supposed to be a special day for the couple, which would make Nita a bad person for depriving one of the bride’s of something she wanted.

“Okay ka,” Nita agreed, making Freen beam as she got up and moved over to hug Nita from behind. “You can always change your mind, though. I won’t be hurt if you pick one of your friends instead.”

“I won’t,” Freen said gleefully as she quickly kissed Nita's cheek before releasing her from the hug.

Nita couldn’t help but smile as she watched Freen return to her seat and grab Becky's hand excitedly.

The two women shared a look, one full of love and excitement and relief, and Nita felt an itch to sketch it right then and there.

Her sketches were, after all, frozen pieces of time, and Nita would be lying if she said she didn’t want to freeze this very moment and have it engraved into her mind forever.

To be continued...