by Monica Drake
“It’s either that or menopause,” Nyla said. “Missed a period, and that old familiar feeling.” She gave a squeeze and a lift to one of her boobs.
Georgie said, “Who’s the father?”
Nyla waved a hand, then picked at a spot on her table. “This man.”
Dulcet said, “Obviously.”
Nyla said, “Speed dating.”
Georgie said, “Five minutes?”
“You move fast,” Dulcet purred.
Nyla said, “He was nice.”
Sarah didn’t say anything. Her face had turned splotchy below her eyes. Her ears were red.
Nyla said, “I’ve been a single mom a long time. I can do it again.”
Sarah knew the stats—women became pregnant more often after one-night stands than in long-term monogamy. Right before menopause. It was an evolutionary strategy.
It was a desperate move.
Sarah was desperate! Precisely. So why was she so monogamous? Because she wanted an actual family, that was why. Her ghost babies gathered around her, all of them clawing at her, not one of them alive.
“How do you feel about—” Her voice cracked, but she went on. “Population, and the environment?” She nodded at the store, the slim eco-merchandise. Sarah didn’t have one baby yet. Nyla would have three. That was edging on baby hoarding.
Nyla said, “This could be the child who saves us.”
Dulcet laughed. “That’s a lot of pressure on one kid, darling.”
Georgie said, “Have you seen a doctor?”
Nyla shrugged it off. “I’ll find a clinic. But I’m pretty versed in pregnancy.”
The phone rang. She said, “Probably somebody wanting a bicycle, or a funeral, or a funeral on a bicycle.” With a smile in her voice, she answered, “Hello? LifeCycles.” Then she said, “Yes, that’s me,” and she listened.
She turned her back to her friends. She turned the music down until Amy Winehouse was a whisper.
She said, “What do you mean?”
She said, “Arena wouldn’t sell drugs. She doesn’t do drugs.” There was a pause. “I’m sure all parents do say the same thing, but this time it’s true.”
When she got off the phone, she found her keys. She said, “I have to go. Lock the door on the way out.”
Dulcet asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I think it’s fine, but the police detained Arena. They say she sold kids crystal meth. Where would she even get that?” Nyla grabbed her purse, though it wasn’t really a purse. It was one of the hippie bags.
Georgie called, “Want me to go with you?”
Nyla was at the door, then out.
A sprig of dry lavender fell from the wall in a discreet hiss and rattle. The women sat together at the high, small table. Sarah rapped her knuckles against the wood of the stool she sat on, wanting to bring anything like luck her way.
Georgie said, “Crystal meth?”
Dulcet said, “At least Arena has a product.”
Georgie said, “That’s my future babysitter.” She reached for her keys, too, as though to run home and protect her child.
Sarah said, “She’s pregnant? Nyla’s pregnant? She’s almost forty-five.” Sarah’s face was still blotchy. Her shoulders slumped. She said, “That’s just not fair.”
Dulcet’s phone rang. She checked the number then silenced it. “Mr. Latex.” She added, “This guy wants to see me in my rubber skivvies. Private show.” She rubbed her thumb and fingers together: money.
Georgie asked, “Are you going to do it?”
Dulcet said, “Are you crazy? For all I know, he’s a cop.”
At the word cop, Georgie scanned the street. It was a nervous tick, since the day they’d showed up at her house. A flash of paranoia made her want to run home and clutch her daughter. Instead, she put a hand on Sarah’s wilting back. She asked, “Sarah?”
Sarah waved her away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Dulcet reached for Sarah’s hand. She said, “Honey, sometimes the worst things in life are free.”
Sarah straightened up only long enough to reach across the table for Nyla’s untouched drink. She wasn’t pregnant. Maybe she never would be. She poured Nyla’s drink into her own glass, and she drank.
Nyla tried hard not to be the kind of mom she never wanted to be. Still, in the car with Arena she couldn’t help but say it: “What were you thinking?” Her old car seats sank in the middle, forcing mother and daughter to rest in grooves they’d made over years of driving together.
Arena said, “I don’t know what everyone’s freaking out about.”
“You’re expelled, for one thing.” Nyla had to work to keep her foot from pressing on the gas pedal and racing home, as though home were some kind of safe place, a place where Arena could be a kid again.
“It’s not fair,” Arena said, and sounded like every child ever called on the carpet.
One thing Nyla had learned through raising children was that kids’ emotions run deep. They resonate against the tight landscape of inexperience, but even from the first day they’re about the same struggles as adults, navigating unsteady terrain between love and loneliness.
A truck in the next lane released a dark cloud of diesel, visible where it cut across the arc of a streetlight. The world smelled like breast cancer in the making. To live in a city means living with other people’s choices.
Arena said, “Dulcet was kicked out of high school, too. You don’t rag on her for it.”
“That was twenty years ago.” Dulcet had been kicked out for smoking hash on school property. She didn’t graduate; she went to summer school instead. Nyla could’ve been kicked out, too, back then, but on that particular day she was working on a letter to the editor of the Oregonian about landfills and the use of Styrofoam in the lunchroom, petitioning for change. Her decision to stay in the library that afternoon involved perhaps an hour, and separated her reputation from her best friend’s ever after. She could smoke hash all summer! She could stand outside the party store midafternoon looking for old men to buy them booze, and nothing changed—she’d become the good girl. Now she said, “Besides, that was different.”
“Right.” Arena looked out the window, then dragged a strand of dark hair across her cheek.
Nyla should’ve been spending more time with her daughter, not opening a store and reading Peace One Day.
This was her fault.
Arena was a good student, with a distinct learning style. She wasn’t a fast reader, but was committed to ideas. She’d been reading one book all year—Red Azalea—that’s how dedicated to ideas Arena was. She read the pages backward and forward and drew illustrations in the white space.
Now there would be a hearing. There’d be a big fine. There’d probably be a social worker sent to the house. There was a yellow slip of paper in Nyla’s bag documenting the charges and dates in question. Nyla said, “You’re kicked out of Maya Angelou High.” Arena’s high school, in a lousy neighborhood, was close to bottom rung. The school slogan was “Still I Rise!” a line from an Angelou poem.
Arena said, “I’m not the only one who does it, you know.”
Nyla said. “Dulcet only sells prescription drugs to friends. Adults. And only when she’s broke.”
Arena blinked her eyes. “Dulcet sells drugs? To which friends?”
Nyla realized she’d screwed up. In a fast effort to redirect, she said, “We’re talking about you.”
Arena said, “I mean at school, now. Other kids sell it. It’s really not that big a deal.”
Nyla wanted to say all the right things, only the right things, and at the same time she wanted very much to scream. She said, “Listen—just stay away from those people.”
Outside the sky was dark. In the winter in Portland the days were short, the sky was so often solid clouds, and what little they saw of the sun set by four o’clock. Now it started to rain, a fine mist that built up on the windows and blurred the lights of oncoming traffic. Nyla’s wipers made a muddy s
mear across the windshield. A scrawny man lurched across the street at a crosswalk. His hair was scraggly, his teeth half gone.
“You see him?” Nyla pointed at the man as he struggled to cross the street. A history of meth showed in his flat lips and missing teeth. He dragged one leg. “He’s a cautionary tale.”
“Mom!” Arena looked appalled. Her mom had taught her to be kind. They served men like that food at the mission. She said, “You don’t know his story.”
“I’m old enough to know a few things.” Sure, it was wrong to turn a man into a symbol, but this was about saving her daughter. “You need to rethink your actions.”
Arena said, “Kids like to have something to buy. Makes ’em feel street-smart.”
Nyla sputtered. She could hardly hold back her fury. “Does that man look ‘street-smart’? Does he look any kind of smart?” She tried to pace her words. She squinted through the muddy windshield and said, “You think you’re doing kids a favor?”
The windshield cleaner only made the smudges worse. Arena said, “Mom, are you still using water for wiper solution?”
“Solution. Ha,” Nyla said. “That’s a euphemism for poison. It doesn’t solve anything. Put enough ‘solution’ in the groundwater and we’ll all have liver cancer.”
Arena ran a finger over the glass from the inside. “Can you even see?”
“Ignore the windshield.” This was her baby girl! What about all she’d done—the breast-feeding, the co-sleeping, the family camping trips, the day trips to the mountains? “You need to take this seriously.”
Arena said, “It’s not serious. It’s a game, Mom. I’ve got more at home. A whole box.”
Nyla said, “A box?”
Arena fiddled with the car’s stereo. She picked up something she found on the dash—a seashell or a rock. Nyla’s car was cluttered with nature brought inside.
Nyla said, “Meth in a box?” It sounded so corporate. Drugs had come a long way since Nyla was in high school, since Dulcet was expelled. Those days looked innocent, back when the focus was on homegrown pot and magic mushrooms that popped up in local parks.
Arena looked at her mother, and her mouth opened. “Meth? That’s what they told you?”
Nyla nodded.
“Crystal meth?” Arena asked again.
Yes. Arena was being expelled from high school for selling crystal meth. Her daughter! Her good, quiet, thoughtful girl. A student had turned over evidence to a school security guard. He’d pointed Arena out and said she sold him the powder. Nyla had to meet with the guard, the principal, and the police. The wipers slapped the windshield, moving lines of mud across and back.
Arena said, “Mom. It was Crystal Light, not crystal meth.”
“What do you mean?” Nyla’s voice quavered. She drove a little slower, easing her foot off the pedal.
“Crystal Light? A drink mix, like Kool-Aid for grown-ups.” Arena quoted a slogan older than she was: “I believe in Crystal Light because I believe in me.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“YouTube.”
The car ahead of them showed only red taillights haloed by rain, and Nyla almost ran into it—had to put the brakes on fast. Then the line started moving again.
Nyla took a yoga breath, then said, “You’re telling me you sold kids Crystal Light, the drink mix?” She let this new version of the story sink in.
Arena nodded her head the same way she’d been doing her whole life, yes, like a child. Yes to all those questions over the years: Did Santa bring you something nice? Do you want a tuna sandwich? You mean you didn’t sell children hard drugs?
Yes, yes, yes. Nodding, nodding.
“The student had powder. Did you tell him what it was?”
Arena said, “Mom, it was in a Crystal Light stick. It was a package.”
Nyla was so relieved, she felt half-sick. She asked, “You didn’t fold it inside a bindle?”
“A what?”
“You know, a paper wrap? You take a square and fold it in half, and make triangle, then fold the ends in—”
“You sure know a lot about drugs, Mom. But no, no ‘bindle’ or whatever.” Arena picked at the car’s threadbare roof liner.
Nyla had to check one more time. “It definitely wasn’t crystal meth, then?”
She needed a meditation tape! She was ready to laugh and vomit at the same time. Her body didn’t know what to do with the chemical systems of alarm, how to turn it around so quickly—on a dime, as the saying goes. On a dime bag, she thought.
Arena said, “No, Mom. They put it in their water. I bought a box of six. They buy it for a dollar a pack. There’s fruit punch, lemonade, caffeine flavor—”
Nyla cut in, “Caffeine isn’t a flavor, honey.”
Arena said, “Whatever. Energy flavor, then. There’s one for your skin. Every jock with acne bought it. Are you crying, Mom?”
“I’m not,” Nyla said. But she ran a finger under one eye, then the other. She said, “Crystal Light is a corporate product with artificial sweetener, artificial color, artificial flavor, and way too much packaging.” Her voice was shaky. Nyla was dizzy with relief, afraid to give in to this new and improved version of events.
Arena said, “Not at all, Mom. They have real sugar in some of them. Studies show women who drink Crystal Light drink twenty percent more water on average.”
Nyla said, “You’re quoting ads as truth?” This wasn’t how she raised her children. She wiped her eyes again.
Arena looked the other way when she said, “I am.”
Nyla added, “They drink chemicals.”
Arena said, “You are crying. Mom?”
Nyla’s nose had started to run. She said, “Did you tell Mrs. Cherryholmes it was Crystal Light?”
“I thought she knew.”
“Well, Crystal Light’s not exactly high crime.” Nyla tried to quit being so emotional about it. She couldn’t stop her voice from quavering.
“They don’t like us selling anything at school. And I sold packets individually, or whatever. Where it says ‘Not for individual sale’ on the side?”
Her darling child!
Nyla exhaled. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She took another deep breath, started to laugh, then choked up again, and felt herself lost in an emotion between elated and crushed, and that’s what it meant to have children: happiness tempered with terror, panic laced with love. “We’ll clear it up.” She gave two more squirts from her water-filled windshield cleaner reservoir and left muddy rivulets down the glass.
Arena nodded.
Outside the car it was dark, raining, and cold, but in the car she felt close to her strange, quiet girl. She missed Celestial, who had always been so ready to tell Nyla everything, who thought out loud and asked questions. But maybe now, with Celeste at Brown, she and Arena would learn to talk. This problem with school could be a catalyst.
Arena asked, “Mom, what do you think happens when we die?”
“You’re not going to die. You’re just expelled.” Nyla was happy.
“We’ll all die. What happens then?”
“I have no idea.” A strange question. Nyla kept her eyes on the sea of orange and red taillights in the stop-and-go traffic, each light haloed by rain.
Arena said, “I met this cool guy?”
Nyla froze. This was it—the moment of mother-daughter bonding she had hoped for. Nyla had to be careful not to scare her shy daughter away.
“Let me show you a picture.” Arena dug in her backpack. Nyla held her breath, ready to see what kind of man or boy Arena took an interest in, ready for any clue to her daughter’s internal life. Arena pulled out her worn copy of Red Azalea. She leafed through it. There between the pages she found a photo. “Here.”
In the dark car it was hard to see what Arena held. Nyla tried to catch a glimpse as they passed under streetlights. “What’s that?”
The photo looked like twin taillights in the rain.
“It’s him,” Arena said,
“and me. We share the same energy field.”
Nyla looked again. She looked closely. She gave her daughter her full attention, forgot to brake, the taillights brightened, and she saw her daughter’s head jerk forward then back as they slammed into the rear of the car ahead of them.
Ben couldn’t stop to check his makeup; he was late for an underwriters powwow where they’d hash out details on tricky loans. Early that morning, Sarah had worked on his face, using a tube shaped like a bullet casing or a lipstick container, only the makeup inside was pale green. She tapped green dots under his eyes then across the cracked bridge of his nose. “Green covers bruises,” she said, leaning so close her breath beat against his lips.
A temp passed Ben in the wide corridor of their office, arms full of folders. She eyeballed him up and down. “Nice look!”
Was that ironic or sincere? He was wearing Dockers and a button-down, along with his smashed nose. Maybe that auburn-haired, ponytail-swinging temp could tell he was hidden under an oil-free coat of beige? The temp was young and thin, and slung her files like she had no investment in any of this.
He didn’t have time to talk, not even with a sexy, ironic temp who knew how to sling files. It was his first day back.
He’d sat on the edge of the bathtub at home while Sarah leaned over him; her nightshirt hung low, all cleavage and freckled skin. She’d put her tongue to the corner of her lips and tapped the green makeup with a fingertip. Her eyes scanned Ben’s face, looking everywhere except back into his eyes.
The beauty of Sarah was she knew how to take charge.
She patted a cool liquid foundation over the green dots and used her second finger to work the makeup down and out, toward his ears. She found a fat brush in her bag of tricks and swirled it in a plastic dish. “Setting powder,” she said, and gave the brush two good raps against the porcelain sink. He could still feel that brush coming at him with its crazy tickle, obnoxious and soft and sexy at the same time.
He’d watched this routine his whole life; now he was an insider, brought in on the makeup ritual.
“Powder makes it so it won’t travel,” Sarah said. “Longer coverage.”
“How long?”