Iphigenia Murphy

by Sara Hosey

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Oh my god,” she repeated. I wondered if we’d just go on and on like this until it was time for me to go. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. But did you find her? Your mother?”

  I couldn’t answer. I held the phone to my face and squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t cry.

  “Iff?” she asked.

  I inhaled in a gasp. “I found her,” I whispered.

  I cried silently and she waited. I was so grateful for Corinne.

  When I could, I asked, “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice still aghast and high-pitched. She paused to see if I would say more and then went on. “Nothing unfixable, if you know what I mean. I mean, I’m still sore, and it’s gonna be a while before my hair looks good again, but I’m fine.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Is Ann’s house nice?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she a lesbian or what?”

  “Yeah,” I said, almost smiling. “I think so.”

  “So, are you going to live there?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not sure what … I have to go to a doctor today.”

  “Oh yeah? You okay?”

  “I will be, I guess. I mean, I messed up my hand. But that’s … not the most important thing.” I sighed. I curled myself around the phone. “I have so much I need to talk to you about, Corinne.”

  “Me too,” she said. “He—Henry—he came up here. My mother called the police.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I actually couldn’t believe it. I mean, she’s still totally out of her mind, but she’s been, like, weirdly great. Like, totally on my side and protective. And she hasn’t even called me Corey once.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m glad, Corinne. I’m really glad to hear that.”

  “Yeah, back to you,” she said. “What else do you need to see a doctor for?”

  Chapter 40

  After, they brought me to a room where other girls and women were sitting in a row of faux-leather recliners, lined up against a wall. Maybe the chairs were arranged side by side so that no one would have to look at anyone else. I appreciated that. The nurse guided me to my chair and gestured for me to take a seat and then she put some Oreos and a Dixie cup of water on a tray beside me. She walked away and then came back with a small green blanket and without asking, she tucked it in around my lap. I felt embarrassed but also grateful. The blanket was very soft.

  There was a magazine on the tray, too, a well-worn summer issue of Vogue. On the cover a woman in a striped one-piece bathing suit eternally leapt in the air, her arms and legs at insane angles.

  I sat like the others, holding the cup of water and staring straight ahead. And although it hadn’t been good, it hadn’t been too bad either, and then I felt a sudden welling of understanding that it was, at last and unmistakably, over.

  I began to cry quietly, taking jagged breaths. I felt the girl in the next recliner cut a glance at me and I hazarded a look back at her. Her face was annoyed—she was pissed that someone couldn’t hold herself together, and I could understand that. I whispered, “Sorry,” and gave her a little embarrassed half smile. After a moment she smiled back.

  “You okay?” she asked, gruff, but not unkind. She had thin yellow hair and bad skin.

  I nodded. “I feel a lot better, actually. Now.”

  “Me too,” she said, sort of laughing through her nose. “They make you think that you’re gonna be all sad and shit, but not me. I’m the opposite. Like, thank god, you know?”

  I nodded. “I guess.”

  The girl handed me a box of tissues from her tray and I wiped my face and blew my nose. A nurse came over and took the girl’s blood pressure and then told her she could leave. The girl untucked her soft green blanket and rose, moving gingerly.

  “Good luck,” she said to me.

  I waved. “You too,” I said.

  I took a bite of a cookie and picked up the magazine, resting it in my lap.

  I thought about Corinne, about what she had said.

  She’d gasped and been shocked. “Isn’t it the worst that characters on TV shows are always having these convenient miscarriages? Like, a girl gets pregnant and it’s a problem and then she loses the baby and it’s sad, but not really. But in real life you probably never have a miscarriage unless you really wanted to have a baby. I mean, why can’t you ever get a miscarriage when you need one?”

  We’d both laughed, though it was a little forced. Then Corinne had turned serious. “Wow, Iffy. That sucks. I wish I was there to go with you.”

  “Me too,” I’d said.

  “Look, you come here after. You can stay with me and my mom. Until I murder her. And then we can live in this amazing house. I mean, it is a split-level ranch.”

  When I didn’t say anything she had added, “Ha, Iffy. That was a joke. I hate ranches. And we don’t have to murder her. We could just save up and get an apartment.”

  I made myself smile wryly, as though she could see me. “Maybe.”

  “Iffy,” she’d said, serious. “Iffy, you have people. Do you understand that? You don’t have to do it by yourself. Think about that.”

  I thought about that.

  Maybe I’d go to Corinne’s mom’s.

  Maybe I’d go to Monticello.

  But I knew it wouldn’t be quite as easy as all that. My hand, the police, maybe even my father would have to be dealt with. And that was probably just the beginning.

  But after that, I knew, I would go, for real and far away.

  I looked at the magazine.

  Maybe someday, that could be me in a candy-striped bathing suit, leaping at the beach. Taking flight.

  Maybe I’d go ahead and follow the coast all the way to Florida, like I’d told Anthony I would.

  I imagined myself, walking slowly at sunset, barefoot and tired.

  And I knew I could do it too.

  But maybe I didn’t have to go alone. Maybe Corinne was right.

  I imagined. The sea breeze soft on our sunburned faces as we walked in the reddish light.

  Epilogue

  Anthony held my good hand.

  He seemed nervous. He kept getting up and looking at the subway map and then looking at the window and then coming back to sit next to me and hold my hand. I wondered if he was still feeling shy with me after being apart. It hadn’t even been that long, only a few weeks. But maybe too much had changed.

  Even the weather was changing, and as we rumbled through Queens on the 7 train, I saw that the leaves on the tops of the trees were already tinged yellow and orange.

  I thought of my mother.

  Corinne had found Anthony for me, had been able to track him down through his brother and pass on the phone number at Ann’s. When we’d finally gotten on the phone together, Ann and Jeannie were nice about it and had gone upstairs so that I could really talk to him, sitting at the kitchen table to tell him, if not everything, as close to everything as I could. Speaking softly into the receiver I told him about my mother and then my stepbrother. I told him that I’d had an abortion. I told him that Angel was back from the animal hospital and that I thought my heart was going to explode the day she came home. I told him that Ann had found me a group home and that I supposed it was going to have to be okay.

  I told him about my mother, that she’d been arrested, and that I was going to go and see her at Rikers.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said right away. “I’ll come down and I’ll go with you.”

  He knew what it was to go see a parent in jail.

  And so here we were, sitting next to each other in an almost-empty subway car, feeling shy with each other.

  I was jumpy too. I hadn’t ever been to somewhere like Rikers before. Someone from Ann’
s school, a nun who was some sort of prison specialist, had given me the rundown about what to wear and what to bring, how to act and what to say. She told me to be prepared, that the guards would be unpleasant, and that I might not even get to see my mother at all.

  To see my mother at all.

  Thinking of seeing her again had my hands shaking. I was gripping Anthony’s hand, to still my own, when he jumped up again and looked out the window. The few people in the car had noticed and watched him in the way you watch people on the train, without looking at them directly. I knew that to them he could seem like a weirdo, maybe high on something, maybe dangerous.

  But he began to smile widely and I couldn’t imagine how anyone, especially me, could mistake that face for weird or dangerous. He put out his hand toward me. “Come quick! Get up!” he cried. “Come here and look!”

  I stood and rocked as I walked to the opposite window. I grabbed the overhead pole and leaned forward. “What?” I asked. “What am I looking at?” Brown and red apartment buildings coasted by; rooftops and laundry lines and fire escapes.

  And then I saw it: my name, Iphigenia, in exuberant, enormous blue and purple letters, the lowercase i’s dotted with bursting red hearts, two huge white wings on either side, holding it aloft. Iphigenia, six feet tall on the side of the building.

  “I did it last night,” he said. “Do you like it?”

  I couldn’t answer because I couldn’t take my eyes off it, my mouth open a little in wonder. I put my face close to the window to watch until it was out of view before turning back to Anthony, smiling and laughing, shaking my head.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “You’re crazy,” I said. “I love it.”

  He nodded, so happy, too, and not nervous anymore, but bouncing on his toes, like the subway was a ride at an amusement park, and he laughed out loud and did a pull-up on the overhead pole before gathering me to his chest.

  “I did it so every time you come this way, you’ll think of me,” he said. “And you’ll know that I love you.”

  I buried my face against him and closed my eyes, smiling.

  I didn’t want to start crying again, so I didn’t say anything. Instead we stood together like that, him holding the pole and me holding onto him as we rode, rocking back and forth, flying past the people and apartments and buildings, flying over the streets below, heading to my mother, hurtling toward ourselves.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Tavia Gilbert and Cathy Plourde: I am grateful not only for your keen eyes, but for your vision, your courage, and your unfailing support. I am so glad you are in the world. Thank you to Sarah Twombley for your generous attention. Thank you to the folks at Blackstone: Jeffrey Yamaguchi, Lauren Maturo, Josie Woodbridge, Bryan Barney, Greg Boguslawski, Mandy Earles, Josh Stanton, and Ember Hood. Thank you, Karen Hernandez for your enthusiasm and encouragement. Thank you, Lisa Modifica for your steadfast friendship. Thanks to my colleagues at Nassau Community College and to my students, particularly the students in my WST classes and in the WSA, many of whom have inspired the work I’ve done here: Hollis, Lucia, Shanice, Doug, Laura, JR, Gillian, Annie, Andi, Jaslin, Lindsay, Sam, Ibiene. It has been a privilege learning alongside you. Thanks to the teachers and staff at NCC’s Children’s Greenhouse Childcare Center—and in particular Janet Walsh—who have created a sustaining community, the likes of which should be available to all people. Thanks to my family: Mom, Dad, Jules, and Johnny. And thanks, always, to Jess, who is the Bert to my Ernie and, sometimes, the Ernie to my Bert.

  Resources

  If you or someone you know is in need of help, please reach out. The following organizations are dedicated to aiding individuals struggling with a variety of serious issues.

  You are not alone.

  Rape and Incest National Network

  (800) 656-HOPE (4673)

  www.RAINN.org

  National Coalition Against

  Domestic Violence

  (800) 799-7233

  TTY (800) 787-3224

  www.TheHotline.org

  National Coalition for the Homeless

  (202) 462-4822

  www.NationalHomeless.org