Tami said, “How does it feel to be so loved?”
* * *
• • •
Maybe he says, “I live a couple blocks from here.” Maybe I tell him to stop talking.
* * *
• • •
Freedom: A small percentage showed signs of personality disorders. Grandiose delusions. Psychosis. Violence. Extreme behavior.
* * *
• • •
I don’t want to be the middle path.
* * *
• • •
Maybe as he touches me I fly away. Into my memories, the past all swirling and lost. I write my own history. I piece together the boyfriend I had because it seemed appropriate, the friends I let drift away until I only had Lily, how everyone else eventually faded to acquaintances, to blurry, anonymous classmates I’d see at school, who’d occasionally invite me to the parties everyone got invited to.
High school was the time when everyone became filler.
* * *
• • •
Freedom: There is a fine line between guilt and shame, and the drug could not tell the difference.
* * *
• • •
Those friends are the images that come up when you search “generic high school students.” They are nothing but filler.
* * *
• • •
Everyone is filler. The guy taking off my clothes is filler.
* * *
• • •
How does it feel to be loved?
* * *
• • •
I am the one who is always in control.
* * *
• • •
I imagine I am Tami. I imagine I am Ivy Avila. My body moves and suddenly I become more than filler.
* * *
• • •
How does it feel?
* * *
• • •
Freedom: Conclusion: There is no cure for shame.
* * *
• • •
My body knows exactly what to do. I am made out of instinct. I am not tamed.
* * *
• • •
Maybe there is no elevator, no car, no ferry. Maybe I fly all the way home. Maybe my body is made for sky.
* * *
• • •
Maybe I want to be wild. Maybe I want to feel something, anything.
* * *
• • •
Wrinkled dresses. Wrinkled sheets. Sleeping men. Women, barefoot, carrying shoes.
* * *
• • •
Me, alone, all the way home.
10
I wake up to a pounding head and oceans churning inside my stomach. Before the memories come of what I did last night, first there’s a wave of nausea to deal with. I hop out of bed, Gotami meowing in protest as I knock her to the floor and run to the bathroom, where I make it to the toilet just in time for last night’s drinks and whatever food I shoved in my face when I got home to come right back out again.
When I am done, I stay there for a while, the tile floor bruising my knees, my head lying on my arms crossed over the toilet seat. Thank god Daddy likes to keep the house so clean.
It’s not shame I feel, not exactly. More like disappointment. Isn’t rebellion supposed to be fun? Isn’t that supposed to be the reason people do things like stay out all night and get drunk and sleep with strangers?
I brush my teeth, drink some water, and go back to bed. I wake up again around noon to the sound of Papa and Daddy arguing in the kitchen. Their version of arguing, anyway. One that involves speaking calmly and using “I” statements.
I lie in bed listening to Papa say he heard me come in around three a.m., that he heard me throwing up at ten a.m., that this isn’t the daughter he knows. Daddy reminds him I’ve never broken a rule, not ever, that a little rebellion is healthy, that trusting me to make my own choices will help me grow into a responsible young woman.
They both do their jobs so well. The protecting and the nurturing. But as understanding as they are, I doubt even they would have a hard time saying what I did last night was healthy.
I hear Daddy laugh. “Honestly, I was starting to worry we’d raised her to be too sensible.”
I don’t come out until I know Daddy’s left for his Sunday meditation group. I find Papa sitting on the couch reading, Gotami asleep in his lap. He looks up at me and smiles, and I am nearly knocked down by the impulse to throw myself into his arms and fall apart. Daddy is the one I usually go to for comfort, but here is Papa, smiling at me with a kindness I don’t know I deserve.
“Good afternoon, sweetie,” he says, getting up, displacing Gotami. I have to hold my breath to keep from crying, which just makes my headache worse. Papa pulls a tray out of the oven. “I had this in there staying warm for when you woke up.” He dumps the pile of glistening, greasy, cheese-smothered tater tots onto a plate and sets it on the table. “Have a seat.”
He brings over a bottle of ketchup, a couple ibuprofen, and a glass of Daddy’s homemade kombucha, a fermented tea that’s supposed to have all kinds of nutrition in it but tastes like carbonated vinegar mixed with snot.
“Best hangover cure ever,” Papa says. “Perfected it in college.”
“Thank you.”
“I was ready to ground you for a month, but your dad talked some sense into me.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“I just want you to be safe and making healthy decisions.” He waits to continue speaking until I look up and into his eyes. “Were you safe last night?”
“Yes,” I say quickly.
“Do you need any sort of . . . protection?”
“You mean like a gun?”
That makes us both crack up, but then I almost cry again. He should be making me feel worse, not better.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Really.” They bought me a pack of condoms when I was sixteen that is still unopened and dusty somewhere in the back of my closet. I don’t remember everything from last night, but at least I remember he had a condom. It scares me that I might have been drunk enough to not care.