—We will give the remainder of your boarding fee back, Elina said.
—How generous of you.
Elina was indifferent to suffering. Her term as president was nearing its close, and her responses were clipped short, as if she’d run out of the required ingredients for softness.
—We are being generous, she said. If Nationals looked hard at this they would say we had no obligation to return your money.
She handed me a check for $622.45.
A box of tissues sat in the center of the table, prepared for my tears. So much of my body was water by then, I was nothing if not a reservoir of bloat, and I refused to let my last commodity fall for them, not a single drop.
When the meeting ended I thought I would be left to pack on my own, but some sisters joined me in their final gesture of goodwill. Elina scooped my clothes into a trash bag, and Margot and Marcia hauled my stuff to the car, armfuls of jackets and books and blankets. My beta fish sloshed gently in his little bowl, wedged carefully between shoe boxes on the passenger seat. He scudded against his glass and gravel. Elina went back into the house and returned with a razor blade. She scraped the Greek letters off of my rear window and stuffed the sticky, crumpled vinyl into her coat pocket.
—Best of luck to you, she said. She shook my hand.
—Call me if you need me, Margot said, her back already to me, trotting up the steps and into the house.
Only Marcia lingered.
—I don’t know where to go, I said.
—You could go to your mom’s.
—I’m done with the house; I’m not done with school, I said.
My mom was a three-hour drive away from campus. She was likely at home at that hour, smoking pot and wandering up and down the backyard in her parka and pajama bottoms, bare feet jammed into rain boots, waxing poetic to a telephone psychic about the life ready to burst forth, life that was miraculously buried under the layer of frost.
—I haven’t told her yet, I said.
—But she’s cool, right?
She would hug me for long hours and call me an earth mother and discuss my yoni. She’d research doulas. It was too much.
—I can’t go home, I said. I rested a hand on my belly. I was just learning the power and vulnerability in the gesture.
Marcia sighed.
—I know where to take you, she said.
• • •
I found myself caravanning behind her little Toyota to her brother’s apartment in the Rosewood complex across town. I’d been there once before, when he was throwing a Super Bowl party where no one watched the game and my primary concern had been how to make a jersey look sexy. I’d woken up on his couch the next morning without underwear, but he’d been nice about it and offered me a half a bag of stale Raisin Bran before I left. Now I followed her car and worried that she’d change her mind if I lost her at a yellow light. I felt like a Russian nesting doll, fogging the glass of my windshield with our breath, two exhales in one, braking slowly so I wouldn’t throw any water out of the beta fish’s bowl. I never dreamed that I’d suddenly be adrift in the world as a civilian and not a sister. All of those long hours of carefully curated approval, the insane litany of songs during rush, the perfection of the head tilted just so at cameras, the sluggish dinner talks about what was on TV then and what would be on TV later and who had notes to Intro to Linguistics, all of that fraudulent cultivation of superficial friendship, gone. There had been so much potential to have people to love. I’d wasted all of my time on boys.
• • •
Her brother Nathan opened the door, his face absent of surprise. Marcia must have called him during the drive. He was fatter than when I last saw him. The ratty beard was gone, and now his cheeks stood out like dough. Hair curled from under his beanie. He still had an easy grin.
—Have we got a stray? he asked.
Marcia looked at me.
—Go ahead and bark, she said, and I was a little dazed because it hadn’t occurred to me that Marcia could be funny.
Later, after Marcia left, he asked me if you were his.
—Do the math, I said.
—I did, he said. I’m half-joking. But whose is it?
—I don’t know who the father is, I said.
—You feminists get weirder every year. What wave is it now? Sixth wave? Is it a tsunami?
—It’s still the third wave, I said. How long can I stay here?
He rubbed his hand over his bare cheeks, looking for his beard.
—How long do you need?
It wasn’t a bad apartment. It was messy, but not squalid. A fire detector chirped its low-battery death knell. Little clusters of herbs were sprouting on the kitchen windowsill.
—I don’t know, I said.
—You can stay until you cramp my style, he said.
We spent the evening watching sitcoms that were filmed live in front of a studio audience. When he fell asleep, I wrote him a check for $100 and left it on the refrigerator. Weeks later, it was still there, and I didn’t remind him to cash it.
Week Twenty-One
I drove home to tell my mother.
—Kyra, my girl, oh Kyra! she cried. The tendrils of her hair were catching in my mouth. She gripped me so tightly I felt you nudge in between us, she a rock, and me your hard place.
—I’m so glad you’re coming home, she said.
When I told her I wasn’t, she dissolved.
—But motherhood will transform you! she cried. You can’t stay with that boy without a job, without a future. You’ll have the baby and you’ll become an animal. You’ll do anything to survive.
—I don’t know if that’s true, I said. But I hope that’s true. Right now I can’t think past the next week.
—Pregnancy makes you complacent, she said. It’s a drug. Get a job.
—I’m not much of a candidate right now, I said.
—I’ll take care of it. Give me a few weeks and you’ll have something.
Week Twenty-Two
There were perks to my living situation. Nathan insisted on the couch. He said he couldn’t handle the idea of keeping a pregnant woman out of a real bed.
He never flirted with me. At first I thought that he was kind, or maybe even reverent about the fact that I was busy forming life out of nothing. Then I realized that he was likely repulsed by my bloating body. But he was fat, and he had no excuse! How dare he not want me! I was fat for a real reason! At first it was outlandish, then easy to be friends with a man without the anticipation of more. Still, nights, I missed it all the same.
My belly felt firmer than I’d anticipated, less gelatinous. I couldn’t understand the riddle of how many flimsy parts made something so solid. I stared at my popped navel in his bathroom mirror and willed it to retract. I was asexual, practically genderless.
Week Twenty-Three
The apartment was at the end of the complex by the Dumpster, a war zone of chittering raccoons and cats after dark. Our next-door neighbor was a Hispanic woman with two little boys. One warm morning in late March, she saw me waddling with a bag of trash to the Dumpster, the belly swelling before me.
—Ah, she said. ¡Estas embarazada!
It sounded like she was asking if I was embarrassed.
—Yes, I said, I truly am.
I wondered if she had a spare crib, or if her babies weren’t in big-kid beds yet. I was going to be a terrible parent. I didn’t even know when children could graduate from sleeping behind bars.
Week Twenty-Four
I withdrew from two classes but kept going to my classics courses. My professors showed slides of Olympian gods with tiny penises, of the rivers of Hades, of naiads, of Scylla, her six necks coiling themselves around the torsos of men, her mouths agape, teeth glittering.
Week Twenty-Five
I found myself spending long hours in Nathan’s tub, the belly rising out of the water as an island, your small kicks trembling it on its own tectonic plate. In the bath I was a goddess. I had hewn you from noth
ing. In the mirror I was a monster. I had destroyed this body for nothing. I dreamed of putting a soup can on the belly and yelling through a taut string, then holding my ear to my own can and waiting, and you would speak to me in another language, a voice of tin. I wondered if you could see red if I shined a flashlight on myself, or if you were always blind in the primordial darkness. I wanted to know: How much of you was made of me? Of my mother? My father? Of my grandma Mona?
Nathan bought those little rubber flowers that grip the tub floor to prevent slipping. He stopped cooking with onions when I couldn’t handle the smell anymore. I complained of strange aches in the very middle of my back, and he didn’t touch me, but he researched the dangers of Advil during pregnancy. He worked late hours and came home ruddy-faced from time in the kitchen. We’d watch cooking shows together and he’d fall asleep on the couch with a hand tucked into his waistband. We had skipped dating, love, and marriage, and now we were a dog-eared couple with a baby on the way.
Week Twenty-Six
Nights, I’d wake up on my back and panic—it’s bad for the baby—and then pause: What if I stayed where I was? Would it make things easier? I would hold my breath and wait and then lose the nerve.
Why do I tell you this, my girl?
You earned my love. You worked for it, and that made its dispensation better. To say that a mother loves unconditionally is a lie. To say that a mother needs her child: that is true, and fair.
Week Twenty-Seven
This is when I found out that my ex-sister Margot died. I didn’t even know until after the funeral. She’d spent the night with a graduate student from the university, rolling, and my sisters—ex-sisters—found her dead on the floor the next morning, maybe from dehydration. Molly makes you forget to drink, and you sweat yourself out on the dance floor until your blood is gummy. The heart can’t take it. It’s a fool’s drug, my girl, and Margot was a fool.
Marcia sulked at our apartment. She was glum but not sad, disturbed but not destroyed.
—The house is a hot mess, she said.
—The house was always a hot mess, Nathan fired back. Let’s be fair about this. Margot didn’t turn it into one.
—Yes, but it’s worse now, she said. The reputation is shot. First the pregnancy, and now this.
—I’m right here, I said.
—I’m sorry, she said. But let’s be realistic. I can’t believe our house is standing right now. You’re lucky that you jumped ship when you did.
—I didn’t jump ship, I said. They pushed me into the water.
—What did you expect? she snapped. Pregnancy ruins everything.
—None of it means anything, Nathan said. It’s just a system. It’s not the important stuff. Here, he said, and he dragged Marcia’s hand to my belly. The two of them pressed their palms and held their breath, their eyes closed, waiting. When I’d still lived in the house, if I made too much noise with a guest in my room, Amanda would gently tap the wall and I would tap back or ignore her and keep up the ruckus. It was the same game. We waited for you to kick, but you lay still until they removed their palms.
Nathan left for work and Marcia stayed, lolling on the couch.
—My dad’s girlfriend just had a baby, she said.
People were starting to do this. They’d stop me in the gas station and tell me about how their friend’s sister was pregnant, too, or how they had a little newborn at home, as if I were in a new sisterhood and I just hadn’t met the members yet.
—Congratulations.
—I guess, she said. What’s the deal with you and Nathan?
—There is no deal, I said. We’re roommates.
—He might love you, she said.
—Look at me. I’m a manatee.
—It doesn’t matter if you’re a manatee. Nathan could love anything.
Week Twenty-Eight
For six nights in a row I woke up at exactly 4:07 and tried to uncover the significance.
I ate white foods: cauliflower, popcorn, mushrooms, goat cheese, chicken husked of its skin.
At dusk I didn’t turn on lights to save electricity, though I never saw a bill and Nathan never asked me to pay.
I took hotter baths now, scalding baths, and when it was too much, I’d displace the water in a tidal wave and lie overheated on the bathroom floor like a fat old golden retriever in the sun. I drank water, peed, drank again, and thought of the myth of Tantalus.
I couldn’t decide which was more frightening: that Margot’s life could be taken so easily by error, or that she could have gotten to a place where she wanted it to dissolve.
Week Twenty-Nine
My beta fish died. He must have swum himself into a frenzy and self-ejected from his bowl because I found him on the kitchen floor, looking stunned and dry. My failure to keep even the smallest thing alive was impressive.
I threw him out in the Dumpster so he wouldn’t haunt the pipes in the apartment. I wondered about reincarnation. Would you be my beta, unblinking? Would you be Margot? When did you become official in the depths of my own body, when did you gain access to a soul? Some days you were profoundly real to me, and others you were just an extension.
Week Thirty
There was no more snow, and the mountains of winter ice plowed in parking lots had melted into nothing. The white was gone. The world was gray, and goldenrod with edges of green was creeping in. Spring was late that year, my girl.
I bought a box of Crayolas and ate the white crayon, paper and all, then left the box by the Dumpster. I watched from the window. I daydreamed that the raccoons and the cats would descend upon it and learn to draw, like those elephants that can paint with their trunks. At dusk a raccoon trundled up to the box, sniffed, and left it where it was.
I called my father. I have news, I said in the voice mail. Call me when you can. I said my phone number twice. He didn’t call back.
Week Thirty-One
I wrote a final paper about Scylla’s origins as a nymph gone bad. The professor called my insights “muddled, with hints of originality.” I got a B. I took multiple choice exams that asked how many children Medea killed, and who was the goddess of shame.
Nathan’s hours at the restaurant dropped off and he picked up a side job cleaning pools.
—It’s like mice have a death wish, he said. You won’t believe how many little bodies I pull out of filters.
The town emptied. My ex-sisters went home, and the line at the grocery store shortened, and I started walking on the empty campus, watching the ducks churn through the pond. Faculty nodded at me during their liberated strolls, saw the bump, and kept walking.
Week Thirty-Two
My mother did take care of my job. I started telling fortunes over the phone. I named myself Cassandra and listened to lonely women across the country ask why their men had cheated, or were they cheating, or would they cheat and when. I said maybe, yes, maybe, and I told them which constellations were guiding them. I told them about women’s intuition. How the most destructive creatures in Greek myth are female, and that should say something about our power, shouldn’t it? Medusa didn’t even have to blink, and sirens just needed to trill a few bars. Circe turned men into livestock, and the six-headed Scylla would consume them like carrot sticks.
Leeann from Boise was convinced that Terry was cheating on her and told me that the new moon was very significant to her, and she was going to try to dream of the moon that night so that Terry would stay with her through the luminous power of the goddess Diana, and maybe Terry just needed some time, you know, to decompress, some space to really see Leeann’s true beauty, and she needed to derive her inner power from the white glow of the moon.
—Sure, I said, and she didn’t want to pay another five dollars so our consultation cut off abruptly, and I listened to the dead air, thinking of lonely lunar Leeann in Boise.
Nathan shuffled into the kitchen.
—Men will kill you with their idiocy but women will kill you with their brilliance, he said.
I
smiled at him and rested my head on the table. He touched my hair.
Week Thirty-Three
I ordered a breast pump off of Amazon, then ate the white packing peanuts within.
I blew bubbles in my milk like a child and consumed the foam.
You wiggled less, slept more, and occasionally aimed a square kick at my bladder.
Week Thirty-Four
My father called.
—I’ve heard about you, he said.
—Have you.
—You’re in trouble?
—I wouldn’t call it trouble, I said.
—Your Grandma Mona is so ashamed.
—She was ashamed of me before this happened anyway, I said.
—Why didn’t you fix this before it was a problem? he said.
I thought of Agatha, weeks ago, and the way she held my hands. I thought of Margot’s stopped heart on her bedroom floor, of my dead fish, of the mice in Nathan’s filters, and how all of the boys I’d thought I loved were gone now, away for the summer, lifeguarding and interning and dating lean, leggy girls named Ashlee.
—Are you still there? my father said.
—I failed at being a good granddaughter, I said. And a good daughter, and a good sister. Maybe I could be a good mother. Maybe it’s my calling.
—You’re too smart to waste yourself on parenthood, he said.
—You hardly know me, I said. I could be a mouth-breather.
—I’d considered that, he said, but I think it’s far more likely that you’re just ill-advised.
I wanted to say, whose job is that, Dad? After I hung up I thought: it isn’t impossible. I can be a good mother, even if I failed all of the other tests.
Week Thirty-Five
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