Mia settles in Cortez, Colorado, working as a teller at First National Bank. The high-desert town plays host to a variety of tourists, mainly folks in the summer months who need a place to stay while exploring the ruins at Mesa Verde National Park or heading down for photos at Four Corners. In this rural and self-reliant community filled with ranchers and trucks and people planning on never moving again, Mia rents a narrow two-bedroom apartment, and after twelve years of upkeep, of weekly vacuuming and watching her daughter grow, the humble place now feels like her own. Most of her bank customers smile and gossip with her as she takes, and sometimes retrieves, their money. They call her “Me,” and at thirty she still notices and appreciates the local men sizing her up as she counts out their cash one bill at a time on the blue counter. She has tried to date, though prospects are limited, but she has her eye on a stocky policeman named Kevin who skips the outside ATM and nervously lingers when making cash withdrawals from Mia’s station.
Mia’s daughter, Taylor, has the face of a young Camila and already has two inches on Mia. With her long, not-quite-under-control frame, Taylor navigates the seventh-grade hallways uneasily but challenges her teachers daily with a sunny curiosity that amazes Mia, who has not set or demanded superior performance. While Taylor brings home top grades, Mia rarely sees her study, but sometimes Mia returns home and discovers her at the tiny kitchen table, drawing, Journey softly playing from an old stereo. It is one of the few ancient CDs Mia owns, and surprisingly, Taylor has never asked her for music of her own, so Mia listens and notes how her favorites become Taylor’s favorites. They share a favorite book (Jacob Have I Loved), the way they relax on the couch (lean back with one leg over the armrest), nervous tic (right earlobe pinch), how they want to be held (tightly, pinning their ears over the holder’s heart). Theirs is an emotionally stout bond, and while their relationship is about caring and friendship and soccer games and piano lessons Mia barely affords, it’s also about the occasional biting argument: the evening Mia learns that Taylor has cheated on multiple tests, the mustached ninth grader who leaves hickeys on her daughter’s neck, and the incredible fragility of one-deep dependency.
Mia receives rare updates about her parents and sister from Aunt Kathy down in Aztec but makes no effort to contact them. Last she heard, her dad was trying a risky surgery on his back and Camila was stationed on an island off Japan, but that was some time ago, so it’s with genuine astonishment that she returns home on a warm April afternoon and finds Taylor sitting in the apartment with Camila. For a full minute Mia has no words, just images: Camila, alive, present, hair pulled back, odd, puffy cheeks, the scar, a blue T-shirt with Independence in white letters, jeans, on my couch, in my apartment, in Cortez, right now. Mia looks over at Taylor, who touches her own cheek and gives a negative swivel of her head, which Mia doesn’t know how to interpret.
“She looks like I did,” Camila says with confident energy. She smiles, and her scar curls.
Mia debates saying “Get out,” but she hears herself say, “Japan. How is Japan?” She wishes her voice were stronger.
“I don’t live in Japan, Mia. In fact, I’m in the middle of a move.”
“That’s good.”
Camila stands, and her comfort in the space already unnerves Mia.
“Should we hug?” Camila asks, but she keeps her arms at her sides. “Are you glad I’m here?”
“I don’t know why you’re here.”
“Repentance, Mia. There’s a lot to repent for.”
Mia stands by the closed door. She tilts her head and folds her arms.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“How about introducing me to your daughter?”
“How long have you been here? How long have you been in my home?” To Taylor: “How long has she been here?”
“Aunt Camila’s been here about twenty minutes.”
“Aunt Camila?”
“That’s my name, Mia.”
“No. Your name is Camila.”
“I’m here to ask for forgiveness.”
“Give me a minute.”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“You’re telling me to sit in my own home?”
“I’m not telling, Mia.”
“Stop saying my name.”
Mia tries to compose herself. She sets her purse down on the wooden console and runs her right hand down her left arm. She asks Taylor to give them some time, and Taylor nods and heads for the door, but before she gets to the threshold Camila speaks.
“I want her to hear what I have to say.”
Taylor pauses.
“Give us a minute,” Mia says, and her daughter exits.
To Camila, shaking: “My God. I don’t know why you’re here. What do you need?” Pointing: “You don’t come here and talk to me and my daughter like you control anything.” Stepping forward: “You have something to say? Say it right now. You have ten minutes. I’m here. Go. And sit the hell down. Now. And when your time is up you will leave my home.”
“That’s fair.”
“I make the rules.”
Camila sits, and her confident aura dissolves into the sofa beneath her. She folds her hands in her lap and her chin quivers, and she cries. Mia commands herself to stay put, five feet from the sofa, standing, staring, in charge, but in her sister’s contorted face Mia recognizes profound fear, and it’s too much to take in so she moves to the kitchen for a paper towel. Mia inhales, tears off the towel, walks back, and hands Camila her makeshift Kleenex. While wiping clumsily at her face Camila pours out apologies in choppy fragments, first for telling their mom about Mia’s Yellowstone encounter, then for the fistfight, then for the “You’re not desperate enough” phone call, for not visiting, for not acting like an older sister, like an aunt, and she unloads her wreckage with startling acuity, recalls events years past, minor squabbles, meaningless slights, things Mia has forgotten or misremembered, and Camila sobs and trembles. Then: “I got a guy after me.”
Mia dredges up her dire call to Camila from a dirty pay phone in Shiprock, how later that night she had to beg a female bartender with pink hair tending an empty room to let her and her daughter sleep on the sticky, carpeted stage. It disgusts her that Taylor and Camila were here alone. Mia looks around the room, at her modest, sane life, and finds the resolve to say, “Two minutes left.”
A backfire or a firework or a gunshot sounds in the distance. Camila’s eyes focus and her face changes in a way that alarms Mia. She thinks of the baseball bat she keeps by the refrigerator. A minute has passed, but Mia will not continue the countdown.
“I need help,” Camila says. “Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t need help?”
“I think it’s time for you to go.” Mia strides toward the kitchen. “Now.”
“I need a thousand dollars or I’m dead.”
“Why?” Mia takes another step toward the refrigerator. Her right foot touches linoleum.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Five hundred will do it. You gonna make me beg?”
A rustle on the porch, and the door opens. Taylor asks, “May I come in?”
“This is your home, honey. Camila was leaving.”
Camila rises, shoulders down, but she lifts her chin.
“You like this, don’t you? You like it that I finally need something. You’re pathetic. And I know in your mind you think we’re even. I didn’t help you, you don’t help me. Genius.”
Mia crosses the room to Camila’s side. She has yet to touch her, but she considers placing her hand on Camila’s back, pushing her just enough so she takes her first step away, and then Mia notices a little stream of blood coming from Camila’s right nostril. She clears it with a sniff. Taylor sneaks past them.
“She looks like I did,” Camila says. “It’s true.”
“I’m going to give you forty dollars. It’s for a bus ticket. Go anywhere. Don’t come back.”
Mia reaches into her purse, removes four crisp t
en-dollar bills, hands them to Camila, and opens the door. There is enough light in the day to see the new growth on the ash trees across the street.
“I meant what I said,” Camila says. “I’ve done wrong to you. You think I don’t mean it, but I do. I’m not this person.”
“That’s not true. We’re only what we’ve been. What you want to be means nothing.”
After Mia closes the door Taylor rushes to the window to watch her aunt walk away, and she sees Camila turn right, away from the bus station, and disappear into the dusk.
A week after Camila’s intrusion, Mia drives to the western edge of town, to the community college, and signs up for classes. She hasn’t thought the school thing all the way through, but she remembers her father telling her that one of the best things parents can do for their children is have homework of their own. His theory went that if your kids saw you studying, they would internalize the importance of the act, and Mia did observe her father and mother reading, almost every night, even if it was the comics, and yet it’s only now that she appreciates their attempt to set a positive example. It certainly didn’t stick in high school. Mia also remembers seeing her parents with alcohol every night, but somehow her father left that out of his do-as-I-do mantra.
Kevin the cop stops in the bank and Mia informs him about her college venture, and he grins and offers to take a class with her. Even though they’ve been on two dates that have gone well, she neither declines nor accepts his offer, which he interprets as an invitation. He has a degree in interdisciplinary studies from Adams State over in Alamosa, where he was raised, but Mia won’t know this until later.
Mia starts with an English night class. As she walks into the aged classroom with poorly erased blackboards, she eyes the people scattered throughout the room. The scene isn’t what she pictured when she thought of the word college: a couple of high schoolers in the front row in khakis (trying to get a jump on college credit), a rancher in a brown, wide-brimmed hat (he will not say four words all semester), three Hispanics spouting lightning-quick Spanish and laughing loudly (two will turn out to be brilliant), a few fiftyish women fidgeting with their already bought books, five white college-aged kids, Kevin (seated next to her, wearing too much cologne), and her.
Mrs. Kelley, the instructor, is about Mia’s age, slightly hunched and heavy, with a cheerful face locked in a smile. Her accent is hard to place, but Mia is sure it is east of the Mississippi. Immediately Mia likes her, and that first night when they introduce themselves, Mrs. Kelley asks them to name their favorite book—“Even,” she says, “if you haven’t had time to finish it all the way.” From the high schoolers: Othello, Brave New World. One of them reconsiders: “1984. Well, any dystopia.”
“Thank you, sweetie,” says Mrs. Kelley, with a raise of her eyebrows to acknowledge their zeal. The rest of the room names their favorite books, and besides the Bible—three times—Mia doesn’t recognize the titles. Mrs. Kelley calls everyone “sweetie,” and this will be the one thing that irks Mia. She’s no one’s sweetie, especially not of a woman of like age, regardless of education. When it’s Kevin’s turn he says, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and glances over at Mia for approval, but Mia is already saying her book title before Mrs. Kelley’s “sweetie.”
“Jacob Have I Loved,” Mia says, and Mrs. Kelley smiles.
“Thank you, sweetie,” Mrs. Kelley says, but before she can move on—before Mia can pinch her right ear to ease the nerves—from the front of the room, barely audible but there, loud enough for most to hear, a teenager’s voice: “A kid’s book? I read that in seventh grade.” Sarcastic laughter arises among the small group of high schoolers. “Sixth grade,” a girl says, looking back at Mia.
A void builds; the laughter grows, then stops abruptly. The teenagers—decent local kids, but immature—feel the initial pings of awkwardness, and everyone glances at Mia for her reaction, but all they see is her open mouth, her pink face, her confidence edging toward defeat. Kevin rises from his seat, but before he steps forward Mrs. Kelley points at the kids.
“Not again. You hear me?” She steps close. “You do anything like that again and you’re gone.”
“Not my worst first class,” Mrs. Kelley says after class has ended and only Mia and Kevin remain. She forces a laugh. “No knives this time.” She smiles. “If we were in Denver, those kids would come after me.” Another smile. To Mia, “Sweetie, I love that book. I miss the open water and fish for breakfast.”
Mia will never forget that night or the night after, when she lets Kevin kiss her in his patrol car outside her apartment. He’s supposed to be making rounds, but it’s a slow Tuesday night, so he escorts Mia to the Dairy Queen for ice cream and drives her back to her apartment, but instead of leaving he tells her about his four years in the Marines, pushing paper at Pendleton, his degree, and his ex-wife in Alamosa, and, surprising to Mia, admits fault with his ex. He describes his pastor father: honest, harsh, and proud. How he himself has never been east of Kansas City, how he has hidden an unpredictable but severe ringing in his right ear—caused by a kick to the head in basic training—from his boss. Mia tells him about her family, her rush to leave Castle Rock, about meeting her daughter’s father while he worked on a paving project outside Aztec, about his disappearing a week after she told him she was pregnant. Kevin leans over and they both go silent, and Mia closes her eyes and plugs into the energy of anxious desire. His police radio interrupts them with numbers and codes that Kevin pauses to hear, then says can wait.
Later that night, still high from Kevin and his gentle hands, she hauls out the trash and dumps the plastic bag into the dumpster under their streetlight. The bag tears open, and while Mia glances at the exposed contents, something catches her eye. She looks closer and spies small clumps of bloodstained toilet paper among the dirty plastic and crushed cereal box. Soon it will all seem too obvious to Mia, but as she walks the forty steps back to her apartment she can’t wrap her mind around the sight. She wonders if Taylor accidentally caught herself on something sharp—Mia imagines a broken glass and a slit index finger. She enters her place and Taylor leaves the bathroom, Band-Aidless, in her bathrobe. The truth rushes to Mia. She’d always imagined a Safeway moment, with her daughter running to her, asking for advice and comfort and celebration. Taylor walks across the brown carpet towel drying her hair and Mia thinks, This might not be her first period. Mia strides to her daughter, intercepting her before she reaches her bedroom, and hugs her tight.
“I like him,” Taylor says. “I’ll say yes if you want to marry him.”
Mia feels absorbed into Taylor’s arms.
“You won’t lose me,” Taylor says. “Mom?”
Mia has her head glued to her taller daughter’s chest. She notices a half-dollar-sized hickey above Taylor’s collarbone.
“Mom? He’s good for us.”
Mia doesn’t say, “Tell me everything”; she doesn’t ask, “Is this your first period?” She will bring the topic up a month later, and they’ll sit on Taylor’s twin bed and Mia will remind her never to be ashamed of her body, to try to be patient with her boyfriend. Mia will learn that Taylor started her period five months earlier, and at that moment she will wonder what she has done wrong, what would cause her daughter not to tell her, but tonight, in her living room, she smells the strawberry-scented body lotion on her twelve-year-old and slides a step back and says, “Thanks, honey,” and watches Taylor nod, then enter her bedroom and close the door.
During the day Mia works her teller slot and turns her head at the sound of “Me,” and she pushes through the rough days and helps tourists with directions to Four Corners, reminding them that it costs ten dollars to spread-eagle into four states and the Navajos prefer cash. Most nights Mia and Taylor study at their kitchen table, Mia pushing through math, history, and science courses, Taylor drawing or daydreaming or waiting for her phone to ring. They put on their Journey and hit Repeat, and although they concentrate on their separate worlds, they always sit next to each other
, each offering an occasional leg bump to keep the other awake. Some nights Kevin comes over, even though he’s stopped taking classes, and he helps Mia with her math problems or tries to spark discussion with Taylor, who occasionally engages. While Kevin’s flaws appear—he always answers his ex-wife’s calls, he keeps a messy home and cusses too vehemently at the television when the Broncos or Avalanche lose—he hits the major checklist items: patient, knows how Mia likes to be held and touched, light drinker, good worker, educated, and takes to Taylor like a caring but not over-authoritative father. Still, even with Taylor’s blessing, Mia is conflicted about marriage. She can’t imagine—no matter how close she and Kevin get—a permanent addition to her and Taylor’s life. She’s content with companionship without the ring.
The night of community college graduation, Aunt Kathy drives up from Aztec. She brings Mia a massive white rose corsage and informs her that she’s single now and happy.
When Mia’s name is announced in the cramped auditorium, her legs go numb and she sees Mrs. Kelley tearing up and hears Kevin and Taylor scream out—it’s been so long since someone has clapped for her that the noise overwhelms her—and as she leaves the stage with the paper diploma and hugs Taylor, Mia remembers her as a newborn with a misshapen head and purple eyelids, and herself at eighteen, ignorant and somehow perfectly content to go at motherhood alone, resigning herself to hard work and modest living, and now, she realizes, she’s done something right. And not in a small way: she has raised a healthy, cheering daughter, and she has earned a diploma that says she finished something she never thought she would start.
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