#fivequarterly

Can I be blunt about this whole vag thing? What kind of person gets a degree in staring at vaginas all day? And if she, this gyno, is going to be looking inside my vag, then does that make me a lesbian? I mean, she is essentially fingering me, right? Aunt Marce says no, that fingering (okay she didn’t say fingering, she said, heavy petting) is for pleasure, and that gynos deal with the female reproductive system. Plus, she says, they deliver babies. So they stare at the bigger, scarier, hairier vaginas with bloody babies pushing out of their crotch like jelly donut-covered basketballs.

A gyno’s daily work experience must be like an attack of the vagina. And my teenage vag doesn’t even have that much pubic hair. She’s probably relieved to see a teenager on the list.

Though I was young when my mother left, I wasn’t too young to forget her massive pubs. Her  gorilla vagina popped up in the bathtub when she’d soak there for what seemed like hours. And then I’d sit on the floor filing my nails waiting for her to come out and her hairy vag with all of its dark curly pubs would hang down, dripping water all over the floor. Her vagina needed a separate towel. I wasn’t so sarcastic then, or I would have completely said that to her.

Anyway, Aunt Marce is bringing me to the gyno because my dad says its better to go with a woman. This is my father’s guilt trip of his life. He walks around with so much guilt about me not having a woman in the house to help raise me.

So Aunt Marce and I are driving along in her sporty little Prius. She doesn’t have any kids. She doesn’t have a husband either. She’s got plenty of time to spend with me, but sometimes I wish instead of spending so much time with me, she was obsessing over Ask Cupid or JDate instead. She’s a very in-your-face person, my aunt.

“Ali, I love you and I want you to listen to me.”

A lot of her statements start like that.

Even though I feel my phone buzzing on my ass, and I’m sure it’s Sammi, wondering where I am, I kick my feet up on the dash. Sometimes you just have to surrender to your elders.

“Your father told me about the drinking. He told me this was a very popular senior boy,” she swats my feet off her dash and I cross my legs underneath me. “That boy had no respect for you. He had no respect for Alistare Greenleaf. He took something from you. And I don’t just mean your virginity. He took your self worth.” I see tears sliding down her cheeks just underneath her glasses. “As a person. As a woman,” she says. “I know your father wants to respect you and your feelings. He doesn’t want to say something that is going to make you uncomfortable… especially considering—“

“That I was wasted?”

I don’t detail the airplane bottles of vodka that Sean Nessel lined up on the washing machine for me to drink, and how I drank them all. I just gloss over it.

“I want to know something,” she says. “And this is without judging you, okay?”

But anytime someone says they’re not judging you—they’re totally judging you. In fact, they’re not even in the process of judging you because they’vealready judged you.  

“I want to know why you went up there to that bedroom to begin with.”

“Is this what this whole car ride is about. This whole, I want to talk to you Ali, woman to woman? Are you now going to blame me?”

“There’s no blame,” she says. “Ali, I love you. I want to figure out what is going on with you.”

“Then you would know why I went up there,” I say. I lower the car window because I’m going to throw up. I haven’t eaten in a day.

She pulls over to the side of the road. We’re at a stretch near the New Jersey Turnpike that runs along side of the plume-filled wetlands. The plumes are these giant feathery tusks—kind of like the feather earrings I just bought at the mall. In the distance, a steel bridge crosses over a railroad track. Trucks whiz over the bridge at full speed. The train cruises through. I don’t understand this part of New Jersey at all.

She’s removed her enormous shades to wipe away her tears. It’s a messy cry. Guffawing and hiccups.

“Sometimes when we have an emptiness that’s so great, and I’m talking about your mother leaving, that we try to stuff it up and fill it up with bad stuff. And I think that’s what you did by having sex with that boy Sean.”

I’m dying to say: Yeah, I filled it up—with Sean Nessel’s dick. God, that is so inappropriate. I groan and rub my eyes—I want to rub them until they bleed.

  **

My mother left us because she fell in love with another man. The man was just the catalyst, actually. The real reason is because my mom is a drunk.

Excuse me. Alcoholic.

My father and I came home one day find my mother and Sam Pearlman, a curly-haired aspiring photographer, in bed together. They didn’t even hear Dad and I walk up the stairs. And we have creaky stairs.

I remember her standing at the door screaming with her sheet folded over her chest, “I’m not happy, Johnny! Don’t you understand I’m not happy!” My mother was the only person who called my father Johnny. I always loved that.

Then she chucked a lamp. It missed him by a few inches and shattered on the floor.

I hid behind my bed and covered my ears thinking of my mother’s fingers running through Sam Pearlman’s chest hair. I was 10. Light years away from understanding what a breakup really meant. My mother was always somewhat volatile, so I thought this was just another fight and that in 30 minutes, she’d be sweeping up the yellow chards from the porcelain lamp into a paper bag.

About a week later, my father sat me down. He held me in his arms which was a sign of something weird to come because as cuddly and warm as my dad is, I was already too old and too string bean-like to be cuddled by my dad.

“Baby, I have some sad news for you.”

“Is she gone?”

My father buried his head in my shoulder. And I was just a kid. My father was depleted. I rested my hand on his head and could feel his hair, greasy from not showering. Depression will do that to you. Make you dirty.

“She’ll be back, Dad,” I said. Without being able to verbalize it, I knew my mother wasn’t coming back.

I don’t know what this does to you when you see your wife in your bed with another man, but I’m sure turns you into a raving lunatic. My father would never admit this to me because he’s all about peace, love, Ganesh and Buddha, but I think I remember him telling her not to come around until she got she got straight.

This is why I’m supposed to respectfully refer to my mother as an alcoholic because she has a disease just like many other people in this world. And as my “feelings doctor,”—a.k.a., a therapist, someone I saw a few times after my mother left—told me, my mother has an “allergy” to alcohol. Some people can have a glass of wine. My mother can’t have a glass of anything. 

***

Dr. Connolly tells Aunt Marce that she doesn’t have to come in to the actual exam room and that there’s a medical assistant. Is that okay with me? I nod. I don’t really want Aunt Marce seeing me so exposed.

I sit on the table trying to cover myself with the paper towel gown. My ass crackles over the waxy paper they use to protect the table from my love juices. That’s what Sammi calls the flowery fluids that leak from your vagina when you’re all turned on. Like she would even know. Sammi swears that she had an orgasm while riding her bike. I’m like, someone has to be inside you, obviously. The farthest she’s gone is Stevie Goldman going up her shirt.

Dr. Connolly knocks on the door and comes back inside with her little puppy dog medical assistant who smiles at me with this weepy smile. I wonder how many vaginas she’s seen today.

“Have you had a talk with anyone about condom use, Alistare?” Dr. Connolly asks.

“Yes, I know I’m supposed to use them.”

“But what happened this time? Heat of the moment?”

“You could say that.”

So Dr. Connolly then tells me that she’s going to show me the speculum. Even the name sounds like a machine. Or an electronica band.

The speculum is this metal drum.

“That’s going in there?” I say and point to my crotch.

 “Yes, but if it makes you uncomfortable, we can do this exam over a number of visits.”

This is code for it’s going to hurt. I don’t care how she says it’s going to feel. How she’ll use lube to make sure it just slides right in there. How she uses a heat lamp. Whatever. I call bullshit on Dr. Connolly.

It’s just like when I was little and my parents were all—oh, that shot is going to hurt us more than it hurts you.

Shots always hurt, you asshats. At least with those doctors you got a sticker, and if you really, really cried, like a serious freakout, my pediatrician had lollypops.

I cross my legs and wrap the gown around my knees. The panic in my stomach churns more and I look over at the door.

 “It’s going to hurt.” I’m convinced now.

But she says it’ll feel like light pressure. Not hurt. There’s no hurt. Some people don’t even feel it, she swears.

 I think of the women who don’t “feel it.” Otherwise known as middle-aged stretched out vaginas.

“If at any point you don’t feel comfortable, we can stop.”

“What do you mean stop?”

“I mean we can just stop right in the middle of the exam. I’ll take out the speculum immediately and we can either start again or reschedule.”

This is hard to believe.

“And you’ll just stop?”

“I’ll stop right away,” she says. “That’s my promise to you. One that I will never break.”

I wish all people would keep that promise. “Do other girls freak out like this?”

“Well, it depends on the girl.”

Oh, great. I think. So I’m totally freaking out and making a spectacle. I think of other girls and wonder if they sat perfectly still for their first gyno visit. If their visits were all easy with their moms right next to them. Oh, shove the speculum in my vag—no problem. High fives with the doctor.

Then I think of me. I want to leave, but I’m stuck here forever in the prison of lube, heat lamps, speculums and vaginas.

I cross my arms over the gown. I wish I was wearing my t-shirt.

I wish I was wearing my pajama bottoms with the kittens on them.

I wish I had an adult pair of zip up pj’s like I saw at the store last week. The kind with the footies. The kind that snaps at the top so that no one can get in them.

I immediately begin a massive assault on my fingernails. They’ve taken a beating in the past few days. All that’s left are cuticles.

Dr. Connolly takes a long stare at me and then rolls her little stool over to the table. It whirs in the moist air of the office.

She asks if something happened to me.

This question stumps me so that I can’t even breathe. Did something happen to me? Why would she even ask me that question? Did something happen to me? Is that a question or a statement?

Yes, something happened to me. I lost my virginity to the boy that I love.

Excuse me. Loved.

Okay, obsessed over.

Okay, stalked.

A boy whose face I decorated with flowers and hearts. The kind of boy I would have jumped off a rusty bridge with. Even if he left me in a pond floating with tires. Which he sort of did in a metaphorical way, didn’t he?

I shake my head. If I talk, I’ll cry. I’ll cry so hard I might not be able to end it.

“Is there something you maybe want to talk about? Something that has to do with your sexual experience?”

“I just want to get this over with,” I say. And my eyes water. I wind my elbow around my face. I suck in my cries and my throat burns from it. I can’t hold it in the tears, though. It’s physically impossible. When tears are ready to explode, you just have to get out of the way. So I heave into my elbow, and it comes out like hiccups.

“Okay, Alistare, what’s going on?” Her voice is low now. I can’t even see her because I’m hiding in the crook of my arm.

 “I don’t know why I’m crying.” And that’s the truth. I don’t know. This shouldn’t be such a big deal. Maybe a weird deal. But not a traumatic deal. 

She tells me we’re going to do this another day. Dr. Connolly snaps off her rubber gloves. She wants me to feel in control.

Control is not a word that I can associate with right now. Saturday night. Sean Nessel. Control. Her words and my words bounce around like a weird language. Control. Stop. Promise. Speculum. Speculum? It really does sound like an electronica dance song. All of a sudden, my hiccup-tears turn to a crazed giggle and I imagine a dance party and people fist pumping to spec-u-lum. Spec-u-lum!

Dr. Connolly folds her hands into her lap. She’s not laughing.

I convince her that I just have a serious case of the nerves.

Once the tears and the giggles disappear, she asks me to lie back on the table. I do, but I tighten my knees together and pull the paper gown over my thighs. She puts little glasses on and glides her chair over to my feet. She places my feet in the stirrups and tells me she’s going to open my legs. I feel the silliest and weirdest I’ve felt in a long time, but trapped.

Dr. Connolly’s hands separate my legs. She tells me she’s going to insert the speculum.

Spec-u-lum.

I peer at her through my legs and then up at the turquoise parrot mobile that spins in a perfect circle above my head.

I close my eyes and get dizzy with all these weird images like Indians with saris bending over and lifting legs like they do in the Kama Sutra and Sean Nessel unzipping his jeans, then laughing and telling me how glad he was that I “wasn’t a virgin” all mash together in this madness.

I feel like such a fake. Like I duped Sean Nessel into thinking I was experienced. I go back to that night. My body is too lazy from the alcohol. The crazy lightening bolt-like pain as he grinds into me. Sean Nessel muzzles my mouth with his hand.

I cannot move.

The bloodied tissues. My puke in the metal basket. My saliva that I spit on the tissues to clean my face off with. The dirty sock that I poured beer over to wipe the blood off my inner thighs. Whirling.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I say to the doctor.

“Okay…you’re doing fine.”

“No, I mean, I want to stop.”

She looks up at me, her face serious and I feel her remove the speculum. She shuts my legs.

I hear her talking to me, but it’s one of those weird echoey sounds like the absent adults in Charlie Brown. Mwa-mwa-mwa.

I jump off the table and kick one of the stirrups aside in the process. The stirrups clang against each other as it ricochets back and forth. I grasp for my jeans on the chair. I hear her again. Mwa-mwa-mwa. I don’t even put on underwear. I just shimmy my jeans on, hiking one foot into each leg and jump up a few times.

Zip up.

Button up.

Closed shut.

            My jeans are on. I’m safe again. I try to catch my breath.

She hands me a brochure. It’s purple and glossy. My tender finger tips run over the edges. I think it’s about this pill that she’s given me. But I scan it and notice pictures of women with their hands in their faces, and that it reads “crisis” and “hotline number” and “sexual assault.”

“I give it to all my young clients,” she says. “It’s precautionary.”

“This isn’t for me.”

“Well, pass it to a friend then.”

“What would I say to that friend?”

She pauses and takes a deep breath, looking over at her medical assistant who has done nothing the entire time but take notes. Dr. Connolly tells me that my friend needs help. She uses air quotes to get her point across. 

“You should give your friend my number,” she says.

I fold up the brochure and stuff it in the back pocket of my jeans.

I look back at the table where I was just sprawled out. I wonder who cleans up the paper with the love juice?

As she gets off at 86th street, she panics that she’s left one of her bags on the seat and turns, catching the eye of a woman she didn’t seen before. The woman is wearing the same dress as Mindy is, and glares at her.

Her twin is short and curvy, half something—Italian or Latina—with dark skin that stands out against the white lace. She continues to scowl, looking Mindy up and down. Then the train whooshes off and Mindy is left alone, feeling nervous. Snap out of it, she tells herself. But a foreboding feeling remains as she shoulders her bags and fights the wave of people up the steps and out onto the street.

  Two years ago, Sheila would have fought that bitch. Drunk or sober, she would have got all up in her face until the woman left the car or she ripped that motherfucking dress right off her. When she got upset, anger zipped through her like a row of dominoes, and she was ready for blood when the last one fell. Poor impulse control, her grandmother called it, signing her out of juvie at 14, 16, and 17.

But she is different now. Although she still gets angry at times, she clenches her fists and says to herself, I’m not that person anymore. She has a good job now, friends who don’t shoot up, an expensive dress to wear on days when she’s doing something important. Like this one.

The train emerges aboveground as it speeds into the Bronx. It is sunny out, and each covered platform is indented with a block of stained glass that shines muted colors onto the sidewalk. Behind the lonely platforms, great brown buildings shackled with fire escapes butt up against warehouses. Sheila does not recognize some of them: she has not been to visit her grandmother in almost two years.

The train doors open at East 149th and she gets off, climbing the metal stairs down to street level. The road is empty but not quiet; traffic buzzes in her ears and a late-September wind flaps her dress against her knees. She is nervous, sweaty. But, pushing forward against her fear, she turns left and crosses the lawn of her grandmother’s two-story townhouse. The patch of grass in front is greener than any other on the block.

Sheila approaches the door, knocks, and retreats. Her grandmother’s sensible shoes click across the floor, and then there she is, tall and permed, imposing even through the gray muddling of the screen.

            “Sheila,” Harriet says, as if it’s been weeks, not years, since they’ve seen each other. “Come in.”

  Their playdate is at Make Believe, a brightly-colored storefront on East 79th street with a white board propped up outside that says HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOAH AND STERLING in green dry-erase marker.

Ava starts pulling at Mindy’s hand when she sees the door. She has just turned five, and her tiny grip is surprisingly strong. Mindy is almost knocked off balance.

“Wait up,” Mindy says. “You have to stay with me.”

“Daddy lets me run.”

“Daddy does not let you run.”

“He says I can run to the door if I don’t run inside.”

Mindy looks at her daughter. “Really?” Jeremy never told her about that. She feels suddenly guilty. Since Jeremy works from home, he spends much more time with Ava than she does.

Instead of answering, Ava twists away and pushes open the glass door, heading straight to the water table where a crowd of toddlers is racing boats. Mindy freezes, trying to decide if she should run after her or try to pay first, when someone calls her name.

“Mindy?”

“Oh—hi, Sophie—hi, Sophie.” The women are standing by the coat cubbies wearing matching baby slings, jeans, and Tevas. Their two older children, Kyle and Madison, sit quietly on the floor in front of them.

Mindy feels immediately self-conscious of her white dress, painted nails, and disobedient kid.

“Hey…” she says. “Let me grab Ava, I’ll be right back.”

“We can watch her while you pay,” Sophie M says. “Meet us over at the water?”

“Sure!” Mindy says too loudly. When they leave, she lets out a long breath. Make Believe is not a large building, but it’s packed with children, all screaming as they run from the firetruck to the costume stage to the pretend bank. The prospect of staying here for an hour and a half makes her antsy. She feels like she is being stared at. Stop it, she tells herself again and hands the woman behind the counter her Amex.

When she gets to the water table, the Sophies both have smocks on and are helping Kyle and Ava dam up a chute with squelching rubber blocks. The air smells like chlorine.

“I’m so glad you could make it,” Sophie M says, bouncing her baby as she talks. “I feel like we never see you outside of school.”

“Me too,” Mindy says. She wants to tell them that their babies—who must be within weeks of each other—are cute, but she doesn’t know their names and thinks she should. “How have you guys been?”

“Busy,” both of them say at once, then laugh.

“It’s been a crazy year,” Sophie W says. “I can’t believe it’s September.”

“I can’t believe the kids are already in elementary school,” Sophie M says.

Mindy shakes her head. “Crazy.”

“So how’s your job?” Sophie W asks. “Remind me what you do again?”

“I’m a senior product manager at Pfizer,” she says, trying not to sound too proud of the promotion she received last year. “I’m overseeing the launch of an MS drug.”

“That’s great,” Sophie M says. “Really great.”

            “Must be so rewarding,” Sophie W says.

They turn and watch the children, who are pushing Styrofoam turtles under the water then releasing them to pop up with a splash.

“I’m glad they’re all getting along,” Mindy says. “Ava can be a little shy sometimes.”

“But she’s so bright,” Sophie M says. “When I was in class last week, she was the farthest along in her reading log.”

“Have you been in yet?” Sophie W asks.

“No,” Mindy says, “But Jeremy’s coming in next week.”

“What a good dad,” the two say in unison.

              Harriet leads Sheila into the parlor that had once been her bedroom. Now, it’s back to its original use: filled with faded easy chairs and a couch. They face inward in a circle.

            “Sorry,” Harriet says. “They’re still set up for AA.”             Sheila’s grandmother has not had a drink since the Bay of Pigs invasion, but her daughter, Sheila’s mother, died choking on her own vomit at 19. Sheila was two. Her grandmother has run meetings ever since.

            “Please,” Harriet says. “Take a seat.”

            Sheila sets her purse on the table and lowers herself into a chair. She feels the sudden urge to run.

            “Would you like something?”

             “I’m fine. Water, I guess. I can get it.”

            “No, no—” Harriet starts to stand but Sheila springs up first, walking quickly into the kitchen. Being in her grandmother’s house makes her feel as if she is deep underwater, crushed by pressure in all directions.

            She fills two glasses with cubes from the freezer. The ice smells familiar. As she waits for the stream of water to crackle to the top, she pushes around the pictures on the refrigerator door. Harriet’s sister, Emy; Emy’s children and grandchildren; Harriet’s son David and his daughter Patti, Sheila’s younger cousin; Sheila’s mother in a blue dress at her high school graduation; and Sheila at fourteen, scab-cheeked and scowling. Leave it to Harriet to display a photograph of her at her most awkward stage.

            She comes back into the parlor and hands her grandmother a glass.

            “I should send you some new pictures for your fridge,” she says. “I can get a bunch off Facebook, it’s this new website where—”

            “I have a Facebook,” Harriet says.

            Sheila blinks. It’s funny to think of Harriet sharing status updates about her life: AA meetings, literacy tutoring, trapping feral cats in her backyard—all on top of her job at the office for Veteran Affairs. But isn’t it a little odd that Harriet hasn’t asked to be her friend?

            Sheila stares at the faded carpet as she drinks. Her grandmother is silent. “How is everyone?” Sheila asks.

            “Good,” Harriet says. “Patti left for college.”

            “Oh, okay.” Ten years younger than Sheila, Patti is the perfect granddaughter Sheila frequently prayed would get a DUI. She tries to quell her jealousy as she asks, “What college?”

            “Dartmouth.”

            “That’s a good one.”

            “It’s fine.”

            “Bet Uncle David’s sad to see her go.”

            “It’s close. She’ll visit.” Harriet’s tone is light but it still makes Sheila squirm. This is not the conversation she’d imagined.

            Sheila swallows. “Sure has been a while,” she says.

            “Sure has.” Harriet purses her lips as she meets Sheila’s gaze, and does not look away.

  When Kyle tugs at them to go to the pretend store, they dry off the children with paper towels and walk over to the bookshelves filled with plastic tomatoes and laminated boxes of cereal. Without a word, the Sophies crawl behind the cash registers and start chatting with each other in affected Valley Girl accents, pretending to be annoyed when the children present them with food. It’s a game they all seem to know well, and it sends the children shrieking. Mindy stands to the side, unsure what to do.

            “Can I buy this lettuce?” Ava asks.

            Sophie M tosses her hair. “Like, whatever.”

            “Can I buy a hot dog?” Kyle holds out a plastic bun to his mother.

            “Like, totally. I guess.”

            “Can I buy a hummus?”

            “Can I buy a milk?”

            “Dude, no way!” Sophie W feigns distress. “This is totally too much.”

            The children giggle. “I want a milk,” Madison says again.

            “I want two,” Ava says.

            “I want a million!” Kyle says.

            “Aaaah!” Sophie W throws off her apron. “What are we going to, like, do?”

            “I don’t know! I quit!” Sophie M crosses her arms.

            “No, I quit first!” They both turn to look at Mindy. She feels the heat rise to her face. The children look at her blankly.

            “Can I help?” she asks. She looks at Ava. Her daughter is pulling on her lip with a finger. Kyle and Madison look away. Mindy’s mouth feels dry. Then, Sophie M breaks in.

            “Hold it right there,” she says. “You can’t work here!”

            “I…can’t?”

            “I know you, you’re Mad Mindy—wanted in three states for… stealing pool noodles!”

            Sophie W shakes her head. “You kids’d better take her down to the station.”

            The children squeal as they pull Mindy up and across the hall to the miniature precinct.

            “You’re in trouble,” Ava tells her.

            Mindy resists the urge to grin. “Not if you can’t catch me!” As she darts away, she smiles at the Sophies, who are helping Kyle and Madison put on police hats. The two women smile back.

              Sheila’s throat is too dry to swallow. “Well,” she says, “I actually came here to tell you some good news.”

            No response.

“I got promoted.”

            Harriet nods slowly. “Congratulations.”

            “It’s just—you know—assistant manager, but I’m salaried now. More responsibility. I’ll probably take over when the manager has her baby and—that’s it. I just thought you might like to know.”

            Her grandmother stares back at her in silence. Sheila feels hot. Say something say something, she prays, but Harriet leans back instead and raises her glass to her mouth. It’s so quiet, Sheila can hear the gurgle of water as she swallows.

            “So?” Sheila says.

Harriet nods. “Thanks for telling me.”

            “You don’t seem excited.”

            “Well,” Harriet stretches her thin arms like she’s about to go running. “What about college?”

            Sheila beams. “That’s the best part. Next year, I’ll have been there three years and they’ll pay for me to take classes at CUNY.”

            “I offered to pay for you to attend CUNY.”

            “That was a long time ago.”

            “What’s changed?”

            Sheila grabs balls of her dress in tight fists, then, changing her mind, stands up. Switching position often helps her calm down. She turns away from her grandmother and runs her hand along the shelf where Harriet keeps vases. When she picks up her palm, she can’t see even a trace of gray. But she can feel something prickling, as if she’s touched acid.

            “Come sit,” Harriet says.

            Resisting the urge to swipe all the porcelain onto the floor, Sheila turns back around.

            “So tell me about the rest of your life. Do you have a boyfriend?” Harriet asks.

            “No.”             “Donna’s son is your age.”

            “I don’t want to go out with Donna’s son.”

            “Don’t get angry. It was only a suggestion.”

            “I’m not angry. I just don’t want to talk about boys,” Sheila says.

            “Then what do you want to talk about?’

            “I told you about my job but you didn’t seem to care.”

            “I do care. I think it’s very nice.”

            “But you’d rather I go to college.”

            “Well, yes.”

            Sheila stands up. “Well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry I stupidly thought you’d be proud of me.”

            Harriet drains her glass until the ice clinks against her teeth. “Please sit down,” she says.

            “No,” Sheila says. “I’m leaving.”

            “Well.” Harriet frowns. “I could have expected that.”

  They move from police station to puppet stage to hospital, where Mindy and the Sophies hang back while the kids climb into the wooden ambulance.

            “So, what are you doing this weekend?” Sophie M asks.

            Mindy blushes. “I don’t know.”

            “We’re thinking of taking the kids to the beach,” Sophie W says. “Do you want to come?”    

As Mindy is saying yes, please, the kids come running up, drowning in purple surgical scrubs. “Tie me, please!” Ava says, turning around in front of her mother.

            As Mindy knots the back of the costume, Ava says, “This is my favorite station.”

            “Oh? You want to be a surgeon when you grow up?”

            Ava nods.

            Kyle, who is picking through a box of bandages, says, “I want to build computers.”

            “Oooh,” Mindy says. “Big money.” Feeling giddy, she winks at the Sophies. “What about you, Madison?”

            Madison bites her lip and looks back at her mother. Sophie W is dangling a stethoscope in front of her baby, who grabs at it. “Tell Mindy what you told me last week,” Sophie W says. Madison still won’t answer until her mother says, “She said—”

            “I want to be a mommy!”

            Mindy laughs. “That’s great,” she says. “But what else do you want to be?”

            She wishes she could take it back as soon as she says it. She looks away, praying the Sophies will ignore her. Silence. Even the babies stop gurgling. “Anyway…” She tousles Ava’s hair. “Who are you guys operating on today?”

            The Sophies look at each other, then at her.

            Mindy bites her lip. “Sorry,” she says. “I don’t know why I said that.”

            Sophie W crosses her arms. “I think you should apologize to my daughter.”

             “I said I was sorry.”

            “Not to her.”

            Mindy feels anger replacing her embarrassment. “I just asked her a question.”

            “Apologize!” Sophie M says. “You’re setting a bad example for the kids.”

            Mindy’s chest feels tight. She’s so pissed at herself for screwing this up. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do.”

            Sophie W covers Madison’s ears. “I can’t believe…”

Mindy unties Ava’s costume and pulls it over her head. “Honey, it’s time to go.” Ava won’t hold her hand, so she picks her up. Ava starts to cry.

            “You’re hurting her,” Sophie W says.

            Mindy doesn’t trust herself to speak. She turns around as fast as she can and walks towards the entrance. Ava begins to scream, “I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go” and it feels like all eyes are on the two of them as Mindy drags her out.

  The door’s slam behind her is like a gun at a horse race and Sheila flies down the steps. Why had she thought this would be a good idea?

            She stomps across the perfect lawn and into the street, pushing knives into the forces that make her want to cry. Fuck Harriet. She doesn’t know anything.

            Except everything Harriet said was true.

            Sheila sweats through her cap sleeves as she walks on, trying to fling off the memory of this morning. She is so focused on the rhythm of her escape that she reaches the train station turnstile before she realizes she’s forgotten her purse.

            Fuck.

            She almost keeps walking. She could sneak onto the train. Get her roommates to let her in. Write or e-mail or fucking Facebook Harriet to mail it to her. She is so close to doing this that she begins placing her hands on the turnstile, ready to hoist herself over.

            But she doesn’t want to rip her dress, it was too expensive. This is not who you are anymore.

            She bites her tongue hard with the sharp point of her canine and turns around. Even the voice in her head sounds like Harriet’s.

  “I’m sorry,” Mindy says as she carries Ava down the street. “I’m so sorry.” She holds her flailing daughter to her chest as she waves for a cab. None stop. Her throat pulses.

            “Let me go!” Ava shrieks.

            Mindy puts her down as they walk towards the edge of the park.

            “I’m really sorry,” she says again.

            Ava doesn’t say anything.

            “I know this is probably hard to understand, but those moms—”

            “They were being mean.”

            Mindy stops, surprised. “Yeah, they were.”

            “You said a swear.”

            “Sometimes, grownups say swears.”                                              

            Ava is silent.

            “Do you want some ice cream?” Mindy asks.

            “Okay.”

            Mindy buys Ava a push pop from a cart as they walk down the sidewalk. The snakes in her stomach are starting to loosen. It’s too hot to feel anything. She holds tight to Ava’s hand and marches forward, replaying the morning in her head. Shame prickles through her, but underneath that, she feels a tendril of pride.

            She looks back down. Ava has smeared push pop all over her face. Mindy sighs, and bends down, using her hem to wipe away the sticky orange mess.

            “Mommy!” Ava says. “Your dress is getting dirty!”

            “I don’t care.”

            “Really?” Ava begins to giggle and Mindy laughs too, slowly at first then louder, until she scoops up her daughter and twirls her again against the white September sky.

  Her grandmother is waiting for Sheila on the porch, purse dangling from a thin finger. Sheila pauses on the grass.

            “I’m not going to throw it,” Harriet says.

            Sheila walks up the stairs. When she reaches the top, Harriet lurches forward so fast she puts up her hands.

            But Harriet only hugs her, holding her so close Sheila can feel the old woman’s heartbeat flutter against her skin.

            “It was good to see you,” Harriet says, handing over the bag.

            “You too.”

            “Come back soon.”

            “I will.” Anger dissipating, Sheila feels close to her grandmother. It seems like, for the first time, they’re made out of the same material. She looks down, embarrassed. “Well, I’d better—”

            “Yeah, you’d better.”

            Sheila turns away.

            “Sheila?”

            “Yes?”

            “Your dress,” her grandmother says. “It’s tucked in in back.”

When Dan arrived back on campus, and after giving his father an awkward hug following their unloading of a few boxes of clothes, books, and a few posters that he knew he would forget to hang, he made his bed and sat on it. There were signs the new roommate he had been there already. On the bed was a pillow in a blue pillowcase, and on the desk, a notebook with a pen sheathed in the spiral binding.

Dan decided to lie down despite all the noise and clanging coming from the hallway as the rest of his dorm mates assembled cheap furniture, unpacked computers and stereos, and tried to shoo away their parents.  He turned to face the brick wall, a comfort about the cramped quarters at school he’d missed over the summer, and let his eyelids close.

Dan kicked awake—a knock at the door. He sat up dumbly and briefly forgot where he was before he flung his legs over the extra-long twin and opened the already-open door a little wider.

“Hey,” said a girl with long, shimmering blonde hair. “Can I come in?” She strolled past him in sandals that clacked against the bottoms of her feet before he answered. She sat on the bed opposite Dan’s and put her chin on her fist.

“Don’t I know you?” Dan asked.

“Oh, probably. Are you a sophomore? I am.”

“Me too. I can’t believe I’m back here. Last year was probably the worst of my life,” Dan said, surprising himself. Was it really true? He decided it probably was.

“Well,” the girl said, straightening herself and twisting a jumble of bracelets around her wrist with her opposite hand, “I just came by for Jenny, really.”

“For Jenny?”

“Yes, Jenny.”

“How is Jenny?” Dan said, delivering his line in as monotone a voice as possible, even though his heart was roiling like an angry sea under his ribs.

The girl studied him for a long moment.

“She’s fine, I guess. I mean, I saw her for, like, five minutes today and that was all. Do you two know each other well?”

Dan suppressed a laugh. He knew Jenny so well. Well enough not to be surprised at her sending someone else on this errand. He shook his head and started to look for the box with her sweater in it. She had requested that he bring it back in the last email she wrote him. It was her favorite, she said, and while he’d sent her a nonchalant reply saying he’d see if he still had it, of course he did. He kept it in a drawer all summer and sometimes, when he brushed against it while reaching for a pair of clean socks, he’d remember the way it clung to her shoulders as he held them in the dark of his car, parked somewhere by the Multnomah bridge, listening to something sweetly painful, and the memory would remain wedged in his mind all day.

“I have what she wants, but I just got here, so you need to give me a minute.” Dan knew he sounded too surly to seem cool and disinterested.

The girl gave her eyes a little roll and started to weave her mane into a side braid as she stared out the window, which looked out onto the ravine where people went to fuck and smoke pot on the weekends.

Dan had a hard time believing that Jenny wanted her sweater this bad. It was the day before classes started and still 85 degrees and sticky humid outside.  She was so abrupt about their split, though, breaking it to him the week before finals, that he decided this was just another symptom of her impatience. She would never even wait in line at a club or for a table at a restaurant. She was so beautiful and assured that she could talk her way past almost anyone else, eclipsing all the pathetic people in life who had to wait for things and were expected to do so.  When they were together, Dan had trailed along sheepishly any time she talked her way to the front, knowing he was destined to return to the end of every line once she decided she was done with him.

Across the room, the girl let out a sigh. Dan turned back to see her, still twirling her hair between her fingers.

“I could always come back in a bit,” she offered, clearly wary that Dan would be able to produce anything from the pile of boxes he was slowly unpacking.

“It’s fine. If she wants it this bad, I can find it.”

Aha. Dan dug his hand deep to the bottom of the box full of the leftover things he needed to bring to campus but that didn’t fit into a clear categories like: books, clothes, computer stuff. He recognized the haphazard weave of the thing and it’s soft-at-first, scratchy-later exterior. And as he pulled it up from the depths, he caught a whiff of the faint smell of her, always an inexplicable mix of flowers and maple syrup. He turned triumphantly, waving the sweater in a crumpled mass in his fist before lobbing it softly at the girl across the room.

The girl let the sweater land in her lap and looked at it like a stranger’s baby she didn’t ask to hold.

“What is this?”

“It’s Jenny’s sweater. The one she asked me for.”

“Oh. I think there’s a mix up. I don’t know anything about any sweater.”

“What do you mean? This is Jenny’s sweater. Jenny. Jenny Harmon.”

“Yeah, Jenny’s my roommate, but this isn’t why I’m here.”

“Well then why are you here?”

“For…the other thing she asked you for?”

“Which is?”

The girl looked uselessly around the empty room and let her voice sink down a level.

“Come on. You know. X.”

“X?”

“X. Ecstasy. Which I have the money for right here,” she said, retrieving and waving a wrinkled envelope in front of her face.

“I have no idea what you mean.”   

“Okay. Well this is weird, and actually kind of awkward now that I think about it,” she said, standing and letting the sweater fall to the floor in a heap before grabbing it and stuffing it in her purse.

“You can tell Jenny Dan said to go fuck herself.”

“Dan? Who’s Dan?”

“Me. I’m Dan. I am Dan!”

“Shit. I guess that makes sense then. I was looking for Jacob.”

“Jacob?”

“Yeah, Jacob Sweeney? In 4D? Which is this room?”

Jacob Sweeney. The name sounded familiar to Dan, and maybe like it belonged to the guy with dreadlocks from his economics class last semester.

“Well, Jacob must be my roommate this year. Stellar. Awesome. Amazing.”

The girl started to walk backward toward the door, slowly, as if Dan was wielding a knife.

“I’m really sorry for the mix up,” she said, gripping the doorknob loosely. “But actually, can I leave you with my phone number? You know, so Jacob can give us a call when he’s back?”

Dan looked at the girl and the braid that was now half-unraveling on the side of her head. He’d been wrong about her looks.  She wasn’t pretty at all.

“Sure,” he said, handing her a pen from his pocket and standing dumbly as she tore off a corner of the envelope and wrote some digits in it in a loopy scrawl.

“Thanks. And I’m seriously really sorry,” she said, stubbing the toe of one sandal into the gray carpeting.

“It’s okay,” he said, ushering her out the door and shutting it the remaining few inches with a forceful slam. He looked at the number and memorized it before walking to the window and throwing it out, letting it make its slow descent to the bottom of the ravine, where he hoped it would be lost forever.