When I was five years old, I promised myself I would not cry anymore. Ten years after that, I had still not broken that promise. I didn’t cry when lost my favorite toy, nor did I cry when the dentist took my wisdom teeth, or when I had the worst stomach pain of my life. And I was determined to keep that promise, for as long as I could.
So, when the morning after my first night with Ceres came, and I realized how miserable I felt, I did not let myself cry.
I staggered to work in a daze. My mind was so full of different thoughts and feelings that it was hard to focus on just one, and even harder to try and answer the questions that had been bothering me ever since that night. Was I gay? Did I want Ceres as my girlfriend? Should I have a girlfriend at all? What were my feelings toward her?
But though consciously I had seemed to reach a stalemate, deep inside me I already knew the truth.
It wasn’t because Ceres was a girl, or at least, it wasn’t just that. I mean, I had kissed girls before (my friends from school) and I was never really interested in any of them. Nor was I interested in any of the boys who wanted to date me, either. It’s just that romance was something that had never happened to me before. Not until the day I met Ceres. And once it did happen, it caught me completely off guard.
Love is a pitfall, I hear. Once you realize what’s going on, it’s already too late. It was probably too late the minute I saw Ceres climb up on the stage to perform, the previous night. She had me completely captivated by then. And the way she’d danced was so…
My blood rushed hot through my body. I felt myself blush, as I went through my memories of that performance. It felt intoxicating. I don’t think there was any way I could have denied what that feeling was. In that moment I wished that the earth beneath my feet split open and swallowed me. I had never before felt as embarrassed as I did in the moment I realized that I wanted Ceres.
Goddamn, you hormones! That was your doing, wasn’t it? I can’t believe I would have ever allowed myself to think of a friend in a sexual way.
At work I was even more aloof than usual. Twice did I give clients the wrong change, simply because I couldn’t focus on what I was doing. I had no idea which books were sold that day. Far from clearing my head, realizing my feelings had made an even bigger mess in my head than before.
I put my cellphone to charge. The battery had died several hours before. Mom definitely must have tried to call me when I went missing.
When I turned it on to check, I found sixteen missing calls, which was completely out of usual: normally I’d only receive five or six calls in a month. Mom must have really been mad at me if she’d tried to call so many times.
I checked the call registry.
None of them were from my mom.
There was a call from a school friend of mine, probably because I missed school the day before. All the others were from unknown numbers. At least seven of those were from the same number. I decided to call that one.
“Hello, Jenna?”
I knew at once to whom that voice belonged. I had half a mind to hang up.
“What do you want, Eleanor?”
“Goodness gracious, where were you? I’ve tried to call you some fifty times yesterday, it never went through. You weren’t doing anything illegal, were you?”
“Spit it out,” I said.
“My! Aren’t we being a little rude today?”
She was right, I was being rude. Before that day I would have tried to maintain some composure over the phone. But now I just wanted to get rid of that awful woman as soon as I possibly could. I wasn’t taking any of her B.S. anymore.
“Anyway,” she said, “I’m calling you to say that your mom is in the hospital and she needs you there.”
“What?! What happened?”
“Ask her yourself, Jenna, I want no part in this. I called you and told you what I had to say, you’re on your own now.”
She hung up.
Could that day possibly get any worse?
I picked up my backpack from the floor and went to talk to the manager. Of course he’d let me go see my mother at the hospital, but of course I then needed to find someone to switch shifts with me. Capitalist pig. No wonder nobody loves you. I called the guy that worked the next shift and asked him to switch with me. As soon as he got to the shop, I was out of there.
Mom had no health insurance (and neither had I). There were just a few public hospitals nearby where she could have gone. The university hospital was the one closest to home, so I figured she’d go there if she had a problem. I was there half-an-hour later. After a while waiting in line at the foyer, the receptionist handed me a visitor tag and gave me instructions on how to find the room where my mother was staying.
I zigzagged my way through the maze of corridors inside until I reached the infirmary room. I found my mother laying down on a bed by the window. Her body was covered in bruises. Cuts on her arms and legs had been sutured, making her look a bit like those Frankenstein monsters from old movies. At first I thought she might have gotten involved in a traffic accident, but it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out what was really going on. Not when Eleanor was the one who’d called me, earlier.
Eleanor was that man’s sister. And even though that man was legally my guardian, even though his name was written on my birth certificate, I refused to call that monster my father. He’d been after the two of us ever since mother left him. He was the reason I carried a stun gun with me. It had been a while, but that was not the first time he’d found us.
“Janis,” my mother called.
“It was him again, wasn’t it?” My voice shook. “Mom, I swear to god if I ever see him on the street I’m gonna fucking kick every inch of his skin.”
“Don’t say that, Janis. He’s your father.”
“A fat lot of good that does me. I’d rather he were dead.”
“He’s a good man.”
“Good?! Just look what he did to you? He’s a criminal!”
“What’s up with you today, child?”
“What’s up with you, mom? How can you defend that man?”
“Janis, child, I’m tired. I’ll just do what he wants.”
“You’ll do what?” I began to shake. It wasn’t easy to hold back the tears.
“He wants us to go live with him.”
“Well, have you lost your mind?!”
“I have no money, Janis dear. He could help.”
“Mom, no. We’ve talked about this before. That’s why I go the job at the bookstore, remember?”
“Your teacher called to say you didn’t go to school yesterday. I don’t want my daughter to miss her classes because of work.”
Damn.
“That… wasn’t because of work, mom.” I was hard for me to confess the whole story. How could I ever tell my mother that I just up and skipped out of the blue? “I… had a fever yesterday.”
“See?” said my mom. “That’s because you’re working too much.”
“It is not!”
There was not much progress in that discussion after this point. Mother was convinced that she had to go back to that man. I couldn’t get any sense in her head whatsoever. It was hard work trying to convince the woman who raised you that you knew what was better for her, but if I was ever certain of one thing, it was that going back would be a mistake.
At some point I convinced myself that I’d not be able to talk sense to mom when she was in that state.
When I left the hospital, I was even more at a loss than when I had walked in.
Life isn’t pretty. They say that every person you meet is fighting their own personal battle. This was my battle. §
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