“No.”
She curls around behind me, leaning into the hammock.
“When you were little, I used to do this thing to your back,” and she tickles her fingers up and down my spine. “Spiders going up. Spiders going down.”
My body melts as she does this. It’s kind of the best feeling ever.
“Do the crack-an-egg,” I say.
I close my eyes, and my mother lightly hits her fist at the top of my head, spilling her fingers across my hair and neck and down my back.
“Crack an egg on your head, let the yolk trickle down,” she whispers.
* * *
* * *
In the morning, my mother and I bike over to Riverbend Hot Springs because everyone bikes in Truth or Consequences. No helmets required. I wear sweats and a bright green trucker cap that looks like it’s from 1975. My mother owns a collection of hats.
We pass an orange van that’s been parked there for five years. It’s very T or C. People sometimes drive an orange van here and then just never leave. It’s the kind of place people come to drop out of reality. People like my mother.
We ride into the parking lot, and the sign is bright blue, the same color as the sky behind the mountains. At Riverbend, the woman at the front desk is sweet and cheerful with braids in her hair and tanned cheeks. There’s a sign on the door that says LEAVE WITH A SMILE.
I want to smash that sign.
I woke up angry and I can’t shake it. I want to stamp on things. Even the little yellow flowers that follow the footpath to the front office. I want to bully those who have bullied me. I want to make everyone pay for it.
* * *
* * *
It’s a rocky little climb down to the pool. It faces the river and mountains and we have it to ourselves.
I’m in my T-shirt and bra and undies and we dip down into the pool. The water is hot, as in 103 degrees. My shoulders release into the water. I lean my head back on the rock and stare ahead at the mountains across the river.
My mom reaches out with her foot and touches mine under the water.
“Your feet used to be so tiny.”
“They’re bigger now. I’m a big girl.”
“Your dad told me what happened at the house, Ali. The graffiti. You gonna talk to me about it?”
But I don’t say anything and my mother sinks down into the pool. Her lips surface at the water’s edge. Blub, blub, blub. Her curls flatten out around her face.
I hoist my body up out of the water and perch on the wall. Stare at my mom. Blubbing in the pool. Taking the heat. Sammi’s mom braids her hair before breakfast. She doesn’t have to ask her dad to drive her to the store to get tampons. Her mother knows exactly what she needs. And it’s just there in the cabinet or next to the toilet. Magic. Sometimes Sammi will walk into her house and see her mom sprawled out on the couch and Sammi will spread herself across her mother’s body. Like they’re the same person.
My throat tightens, and I want to hold back all the tears that are fighting to break through, but I can’t. I splash the water on my face so that they’ll blend in. Doesn’t matter. I can’t stop crying. I hate it. I want to shut myself off. My mother lifts herself up, her skin pink from the heat, then reaches out and touches my hand.
“I could have used you around the past couple of months,” I say.
“I’m just a phone call away; you know that, honey.” But she sounds like a commercial.
“So you’re just going to pretend like everything is great because you live in this weird little town where everyone lives in run-down houses and people blast classical music from their trailers and no one has enough money to fix an orange van on the street? It’s always sunny here, right? Everything’s just perfectly fine.”
“Ali, what’s going on?”
“I’m being real, that’s what’s going on.”
My feet are going to explode in this water; it’s so hot. I tug them out, yet I’m still panting. Steam rises into the air.
“Ali, drink water.”
“Stop telling me what to do.”
“I don’t want you to dehydrate.”
“This is not about me dehydrating! Stop focusing on me dehydrating!” I want her to see right through me so I don’t have to say a word. “Because I’m the one who walks around without a mother. I’m the one who every day only has a dad to come home to. I’m the one who can’t go to the mother-daughter events. I’m the one doing all this without you.”
My mother takes a deep breath. Closes her eyes. “Ali, you booked a flight in the middle of the night to come here. What’s happening right now? Talk to me. I feel so in the dark. Your father said there was a lot of stuff happening, but ‘stuff’ can mean many things. I want to hear it from you. I want you to talk to me, Ali.”
“Talk to you? What else do you want me to say?”
She reaches her hand out to me and I swat it away. I would like to hit her. Hard. Harder. Like in the face. Or in the chest. But what kind of person hits her mother?
Only someone as angry and disturbed as me. Only someone as broken as me. Someone who gets raped by a guy she was totally in love with. Someone who betrays a group of girls like Blythe and her friends, who were nothing but nice to me.
Okay, so they were mostly mean. But sometimes nice!
“You don’t know what’s going on with my life at all,” I say, and it pours out. People in other pools stare at us. And I can’t stop it. My arms twist into a crazy, enraged concoction. “You have no idea what it feels like not to be able to run to you. That I can’t even tell you that a boy—”
“A boy what?”
But I’m silent.
“He what?”
I twist around in all sorts of pained movements—hands to forehead, slapping palms on rock, splashing feet in water. I want to tell her so bad. I want to purge it. I’m so tired from carrying it around. It hurts. The pit of my stomach deep down; I can’t hold it there anymore. It’s been trapped for so long and it wants to come out. It wants to be birthed and gutted and expelled, and I can’t even close my mouth fast enough before it comes out without me even having control of it.
“I didn’t want to have sex with him. Even though I did. But then I didn’t.”
“Then you didn’t?” she says. Her face trembling. Her eyes wide. Waiting for me to say it. And I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to say it at all.
She’s staring at me still. Waiting for me. Her face. “What, honey?” She takes my hand. “Tell me, baby.”