That Time Again
“We need to talk.”
It was that heart-racing age where I had to confront my eleven-year-old daughter about her genitals and tell her I’m not raising any grandkids. I knew she knew what was about to happen by the wide-eyed silence I was met with. My face was already flushed with shame. I looked at her comforter then looked back at her. She was staring at us in her mirror across the room.
“I know you don’t-- well, you haven’t started to, ya know, bleed.” I was looking at her carpet and lamenting the color. We should’ve picked baby blue over this hideous pink that aged terribly. Her scratching her knee brought me back to the conversation at hand.
“You will bleed someday,” I assured her. “But it’s fine. It’s supposed to happen.”
It was like I could hear her heartbeat in the ensuing awkward pause, but I couldn’t just leave on that note.
“Do you understand what I mean?”
She nodded. Liar. I couldn’t call her out on it though. Knowing her, she’d say a word like vagina and I’d know her innocence was lost forever and have to walk around in shame in my own house. It wasn’t happening.
“Do you have any questions so far?”
She was picking her nails, not looking at me. “Why will I bleed?”
I wondered why I always insist on saving the trees in the summer and refuse to turn on the A/C. It was really hot. I looked at my daughter to keep Nelly from singing the rest of the chorus for “Hot in Here”. I cleared my throat and looked back at my toes.
“Well, it means you’re a woman.”
“Why?”
Jesus, this kid and her inquiries. This was the same child who would question me relentlessly when she first learned to talk. I had gotten lucky that my second kid annoyed her into submission, but that inquisitiveness had kicked back in at the worst time imaginable.
“Well, because, God.” God. My moral trump card has come out at the best time.
“Oh.”
God helped me get my footing to get this spiraling conversation to a plateau where I could leave her to get the rest of her knowledge from a high school gym teacher that wears shorts that are three sizes too small. “Now because you’re a woman, you have to be careful about boys.” I paused. We were progressing as a people. Everyone was after that one thing now. “And some girls. They only want one thing.”
“What is it?” We made eye contact for the first time in this conversation.
Her big, innocent brown eyes were glazed in doubt and fear, and I was about to drop the rock of pain on her as my mother did me. For a split second, I started not to. I started to pull her into my arms, stroke her hair like I did when she had a nightmare, and tell her that this was all a prank, and nothing was bad. But, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t assuage her fears any more than I could answer her question without thinking of some pimple-faced jock or quiet cheerleader all over my baby. I sat there in stunned silence while she stared at me.
“Well... uh... you know...” Her eyes assured me that she didn’t know, so I couldn’t drop that rock of puzzling vagueness on her. I took a deep breath, focused on the troll doll on the shelf behind her, and spouted, “Your hormones are like a magnet. It’s like people begin to get easier to stare at and think about. You just want to... hug... them and be around them and talk to them all the time.”
“Like you and Daddy?” She sounded so innocent, and yet my mind went back to the sweaty fourth date we spent humping in a Taco Bell that led to the conception of a quickly aborted baby.
“Kinda, yeah. You like being around them, and you want to make mashed potatoes together.” That sounded like a euphemism for something. My ears were hot. “And it’s fine to feel that way. And other people will feel that way about you. It’s a really confusing time.”
My daughter paused and looked at the poster of JoJo Siwa on her wall. I could see the gears turning in her mind. She was piecing together all the fucked up things she’d learned throughout the years, and quickly coming to a conclusion. Finally, she turned to me with a pensive look on her face.
“Is it like when teachers say boys hit you because they like you?”
I was stunned for a second. I had heard that crock of shit too as a kid. Eddy Gravinsky was pulling my hair because he liked me. Daniel Smith kept pinching me because they liked me. It wasn’t until my sister got a bruise from her first boyfriend in college that I realized teaching kids that stuff in school is harmful.
“No,” I said quickly, shaking away my thoughts. “If someone likes you, they will never hurt you. Ever. And if everyone ever tries that shit, you hit them back.”
She made a face. I guess I had thwarted that learned notion. I mentally patted myself on the back. I’m a good mom. After about a minute though, the awkward silence had reached a fever pitch and I began to worry. What was she thinking of? Was some prepubescent punk smacking my kid around and teaching her that it’s love? Was she going to confide in me that one of her friends gets hit a lot? Was she going to call bullshit and argue with me about what this is really about? The suspense for what she would ask me was killing me. I had to get out of there.
“Well,” I said, trying not to sound too excited to escape, “do you understand now?”
My daughter smiled weakly and nodded.
“Good. I’ve got to go make us something to eat. You know you can always talk to me about these things, right?”
She nodded again. I kissed her head, said a little prayer that she stays innocent forever, and walked out of the room. I was greeted by my boyfriend, who was watching one of those countdowns of the best highlights ESPN has saved up to play during summer. He moved his leg a little so I could cozy up next to him and wrapped his arm around me as soon as I was in place.
“So did you talk to her,” he asked once it went to commercial.
“Yep.” I felt so unsure of that answer though it came out so confidently.
“What did you say?”
“Well, I told her that she’ll get a period and not to let boys hit her and that we’re always here if she needs to talk.”
It was so much when I was in her room talking to her, but now it seemed like so little. Part of me wanted to go back upstairs, kick her door down, and give her a whole Wikipedia page of information so I knew she’d be okay when she was out there with all those little sex demons, but I had no desire to go back into that warzone and see my baby growing up before my eyes. To reassure me and my boyfriend, I added, “I think it’s enough.”
My boyfriend nodded slowly. “That’s basically what I told Junior. We don’t have any grandkids yet, so I think we’re doing pretty good with this whole sex talk thing.”
He had a point, though my son wouldn’t even be on the list if we were betting on which of our kids were getting laid in the next decade. It was enough reassurance to make me smirk, though something was making me worry. I couldn’t tell him that. He always said I was too paranoid. She would be okay. We’d never let anything hurt her. I looked back at my boyfriend who smiled at me. He wasn’t worried, so I forced myself to calm down enough to reply.
“Yep. Two down, one more to go.”
Snowglobes
................
Ephraim shifted in his seat, eyes trailing the rim of the cold cup of coffee wrapped around his hands. “Yeah, I know... I’ll go back in.” He seemed to speak from some distance, fingers circling the rim, “I... uh... yeah - nevermind.”
“Hmm?” Mika picked apart Ephraim’s winter getup, the raggedness of it all, the despair and sunken hollowness of his eye sockets, and the glass cheekbones laid over by skin that wasn’t so different from wooden pallets draped over by a tarp. It was a far cry from the once happy little kid she grew up with, cheeks plump from their mother’s weekly apple pie, and eyes wide as they’d study different kinds of leaves in the backyard, made comically even wider from the thick pair of glasses he had to wear.
“You promised me Eef.” Her voice was as reedy as an oboe, the notes waltzed in the fleeting coffee-stained air.
“I know... I uh...” Ephraim swallowed, “I just-”
“You know you can tell me anything-”
“I need to borrow some money.” He punctuated it with a cough, and for the first time since he came back, he looked at her in the eyes. He saw his older sister clearly now, the wrinkles and lines that hug around the corners of her mouth; those solemn, calm eyes, holding in them suns that could thaw frozen packs of peas stuck at the very back of the freezer; and as instant as the cough was drowned out by the hum of the radiator, the heat in her eyes froze over, and held in them, twin dead suns.
“Fucking Christ Ephraim. What. Just for one last hit? Like the last time? Huh?” She spat the words out like brown chunks of phlegm.
He retracted his gaze, like a shivering hedgehog trying to find safety and warmth having seen some shadow in the periphery “No nothing like that, just-”
She stood up now, the chair shrieked against the hardwood floor and shaved the top of Ephraim’s teeth “And here I thought you came back to unfuck the-.” She shook her head, smiling, as if realizing she was the punchline of a cosmic joke before coming to terms of her lonesome role in this crowded world, nodding in agreement. “You know... Dave was right.” She beamed at him, eyes gripping bone “Should never had given you a chance.”
Time seemed to choke the two siblings, holding them in place, holding them in this cold red bricked apartment buried in a pile of snow by December blizzards, snowflakes batting against the window like clouds of moths in the dead of a humid summer night. Mika realized, in this newfound ambience, where the radiator’s hum and the shush of the winter outside forms the base, and the tick of their mother’s clock plods its steps rhythmically on this earthy, cloudy, ground, that she could never take back what she said, and that she doesn’t even know if she meant it. The forlorn soundscape pitted a vacuum inside deep in their bowels, a black hole sucking everything up and turning gravity upside down.
Mika’s throat constricted, clamping down the heavy bone rushing out in response to what she said “I’m not stupid... Ephraim,” she doubled down, in hopes to help hold whatever was coming out. “I’m not fucked in the head like the people you hang-”
“Stop.” He seethed through gritted teeth.
“What?”
“I just said... just stop alright?” Ephraim pleaded as he squatted on the chair, bony knees higher than his chin, arms tightly clasped around his legs, twig limbs all bundled up for heat.
When she saw him in the driveway that morning, images of a scarecrow flared in her mind; the highschool hoodie hung on him like he was a coat rack in a dark corner of a restaurant, unseen and forgotten until needed; cargo pants wrinkled and slacked, forming waves forever stuck receding; but she shut these thoughts out and the despair and pity and sadness and sorrow that came flooding with it, and welcomed him with open arms - because they were related by blood, because that’s what family’s supposed to do.
But now, as he squats on top of the chair, his paleness exaggerated by the dreamy white winter streaming shafts of heaven through the window, she can’t help but be reminded of that scarecrow again. And with that, the cocktail of emotions came flooding back in, finally pushing out the bone lodged in her throat. Tears streaked down, and she felt them, and she let them tear their way through her tundra skin, paving a wet path down her cheekbones to her chin, before they jumped to their doom, their carcass splayed on the dusty hardwood floor.
Regret, guilt, sorrow, and everything that makes people people lied in the guts and remains of the ocean tears. All the could’ves and should’nt haves, the amber lit memories of Dad visiting, Ephraim’s saucer eyes as that blue butterfly lands on his nose, and the expectations and hopes and the hopeless dreams came crashing down.
She wiped the snot and tears, and sniffed the remains back in, blinking away the tears, hopelessly. “Ah... Jesus...” Her words came out exhausted and was cleaved in half by the chair against wood as she sat back down, slumped over the chair like a jacket. “I... You know I love you right?”
Ephraim nodded, still looking like a nervous wild dog waiting for an attack.
“And... I- uh...” Mika cleared her throat, eyes trailing the rim of the cold cup of coffee wrapped around her hands, “I know you can... umm... you can do this. Just get in, and get clean.” She seemed to speak from some distance, fingers circling the stained rim. “Do all that meditation stuff I’ve been telling you about. Works you know? I know it sounds stupid, breathing and all...” She chuckled
“Hmhm.”
Time grabbed them again. Both siblings looked at opposite directions, avoiding any semblance of each other. Mika’s eyes followed the balletic snow performing pirouettes outside, wondering what else she could have done, remembering their mother.
“I’m going to be gone for a while hon’.” She croaked on the bed, the smell of clear biting alcohol singing the air, dancing with the cold steel. “You’re... you have to take care of him okay? Dad’s going to help out a bit... shh...shh... don’t cry, I promise I’ll be back alright?”
Ephraim studied the dead snowglobe, unshaken and still, wondering why he’s here, remembering their father.
“Go on now, go back inside... it’s just some man.” He said, ushering a child back inside the house. “I’m sorry, okay? Look... Jessie’s going to come back - I’ll send you the money... just... just don’t come back.” Their father’s eyes slipped through the curtains, sharing the same hue.
“Snowglobes don’t shake on their own.”
“What?”
“Just... some song I heard. I was walking through downtown last night. Heard it outside Bardo.”
“Jesus. That place is still open?”
“Right?”
Their lips mirrored each other, splintered into infinity, cracked, and broken, as they both tried to smile before slumping back down to tired lips.
“What’s the money for Eef?”
“Loose ends. I owe some-”
“How much?”
A pause hung, wings flapped like rifle shots outside, circling the sky. “Two grand.”
She shook her head and sighed. “When do you need it?”
“Whenever-”
“Alright. I’ll- I’ll check around our savings... You staying by the Marble right?”
“Yeah.”
“I can give you a hundred right now... I’ll drop the rest later.”
“It’s yeah... that’s okay. Thanks. I’ll pay you back-”
A hand stopped Ephraim’s words. “Eef. Just...” She turned around to check the time. “You should leave. Dave’s coming home in a bit. I’ll... yeah...”
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