Where You End

by Anna Pellicioli

  We’re both surprised at how loud my voice is. I’m sure now that I don’t want her to know what happened. Not before I know why I haven’t been bleeding. Not before I find out why Eva wants the pictures, why she’s left home.

  “Miriam, what are we supposed to do?”

  Her words are so earnest, I don’t know how to answer. There’s no room for snark.

  “I was mad, Mom. I was just mad. That’s why I did the thing at dinner that night. Don’t you ever make mistakes when you’re mad?”

  “All the time,” she says. “All the time.”

  “Okay, then you don’t need to jump in to rescue everybody all the time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you always have to fix things.”

  She looks at me like she’s trying to crack a code.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “I don’t know … let me make mistakes.”

  That sounds vaguely right, so I repeat it.

  Yeah.

  “Let me make mistakes. Don’t act like you never make them. Don’t act like you can always fix everything.”

  Mom’s eyes are turning red. She gets up and points a finger at my face:

  “I am forty-four years old, Miriam. Don’t talk to me like you know better. You know yours and I know mine, but I’m still your mother. That’s what mothers do.”

  The words are coming out strained. She’s fumbling.

  “We’ll talk about this later. Tomorrow, actually. With your father, in Ms. Kiper’s office, after school.”

  “All right,” I say, “fine. I guess we’re officially in family therapy, like everybody else you know. As long as it helps.”

  She walks back toward her kitchen and stops to pick up my shoes, align them, and stick them under the bench. My elbow is still burning from the attempted escape. I lift my shirt and see a scrape above my hip. Adam’s phone number runs through my head. The night pictures are still breathing on my bed.

  Adam calls my mother Meema, as in Meem’s Mama. Meema, you have the longest hair I’ve ever seen. Meema, my mom said I can stay for dinner. Meema, tell us the story of when you met Lee Friedlander. Meema, how about putting our pictures up at the gallery? Meema, let me do the dishes. Meema, can we use your printing paper? Meema, this roast is amazing. What do you think of the Iraq war? Meema, what about the settlements? Where are the paper towels? Years and years of riding in my car, eating my cereal, making my mother laugh. Meema, is Miriam up there?

  You want me out in the light? Fine.

  I tell Mom I’m not hungry and I’ll be back in an hour. She tells me that’s not the way it works, and I tell her I need to calm down, which are the exact words she’s asked me to use since I was three. Mom is disarmed.

  I’m so tired, but the bike is the place where I make the most sense. I push, and it goes. I circle around my neighborhood, feeling my gut grow full and my mind strangely empty. Here is my body, I think. Nice to meet you, I think. Where have you been, I think. Here is the cold air, the burn in my thighs when the hill starts. Here is my sweat. Out in the light, like you said.

  I ride toward Adam’s and stick my arm out to touch the mailbox without stopping. My fingers hit the metal, but they don’t make any sound. A voice calls from the garage, and I pedal so fast I run the next three stop signs. I freeze in the middle of the next block, letting several cars roll by me before I remember where I am and what I was doing. Then I push away from our world, toward the place no one else knows about, the place where I feel awake.

  I only make it halfway to Eva’s before the hour is up. I’ll have to turn back and try again tomorrow. I ride fast on the way back. Back in my part of the city, I ride past the pool where I learned how to swim. I ride past our shoe store, our movie theater, the post office where I got to stick the stamps. I ride through neighborhoods where people garden, and go to college, and have dinner parties where they talk about the election, whichever one is up next. My neighborhoods, where it’s safe and relatively happy, where people shield themselves from grief until it hits them in the face. Because it does, for all of us.

  I remember Mom’s eyes, the effort they made to stay dry, the love in her self-control. I know she’s worried, but I cannot leave my mystery girl now, with that sculpture off the pedestal and her house in my camera. For everyone else, I am a picture, a map of light. To Eva, I am the girl who was mad enough to push Picasso. She gave me my turning point. She showed me who I could be.

  I make one more stop before packing it in. I want to see if I can turn on his lights myself, if it will work. When I turn into Adam’s street, he is standing in front of his mailbox, and he is smiling. I want to turn back, but it’s too late now. I think of his note and the pictures. I should say thank you, but the smile and the hand waving hello are too much. It’s too much. Like an idiot, I ride past him, and he steps off the sidewalk into the street, just looking at me. I circle back and aim for the box, but he’s laughing now, laughing and holding his hands up, like he’s surrendering officially. I ride past him again.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” Adam yells as I ride, putting his hand on the mailbox, standing right in front of it. He looks so tall next to that thing. We used to drop new pictures in there when we couldn’t wait to share them.

  “Do you have anything for me?” he yells.

  I don’t have any pictures. I just want to touch the mailbox, because that’s what I do when I go out. I keep riding around in a circle.

  I’m stuck on this invisible rail.

  “Wait,” he says.

  I shake my head and bike faster, around the circle one more time, two more times, while he runs inside. I touch the mailbox and feel relieved, but Adam comes out on his own bike before I can ride away. He takes the outside lane of our invisible track. A dog barks in the neighbor’s yard.

  We ride around I don’t know how many times, around the street he grew up on, around that little island with the massive tree in the middle, the roots spilling toward the edges of the circle. Adam doesn’t say a word and I try not to look at him, because I’m embarrassed and this is weird, and it’s been a really long day. But I know he’s smiling his smile, so I try to relax and listen for the buzz of the spokes as we turn. I want to tell him something, but I don’t know where to start, so I just keep riding.

  When I speed up, he keeps up; when I slow down, he slows down. He starts laughing first, then I follow him, and we laugh for a couple of rounds, until he says you are funny and I say you have no idea and he says I never do and I look at him, but he’s not smiling anymore. He’s Adam, focused on something in front of him. Bigger and more than I remembered him. Here is this person, I think. Nice to meet you, I think. Where have you been?

  He seems to be reading my mind because, as we approach the next turn, he lets go of the handle and holds out his arm, toward me. There is his huge hand, waiting, and I do grab it, even though I’m scared our bikes will run into each other, even though I’ve never held Adam’s hand. It’s scary when we turn, and we almost lose our balance a bunch of times, but we make it around twice. I don’t know who lets go first, but he doesn’t follow me down the street, and I don’t turn around to look.

  When I get home, Mom and Dad are sipping tea and watching The West Wing re-runs. Their heads are small and still. That feeling comes over me again, the recognition. That’s twice in one day. I take the camera out and aim. My mother turns her head, and I manage to hide the camera before she can smile and say tomorrow, four o’clock, Ms. K said her door will be open.

  fifteen

  GUESS WHAT I JUST NOTICED.

  what?

  PABLO.

  ???

  NERUDA AND PICASSO HAVE THE SAME FIRST NAME.

  they do.

  SO DOES MY BROTHER.

  right.

  TOTAL SIGN.

  sign?

&n
bsp; THING THAT MEANS SOMETHING.

  what does it mean?

  NOT CLEAR YET. SOMETHING IMPORTANT.

  ok.

  HOW IS THE PICTURE?

  coming.

  YOU SEE? A SIGN.

  sixteen

  Before anybody has had their cup of coffee, I’m up and googling Picasso. It’s now Tuesday, almost four days after I pushed the sculpture, and I want to remember what it looks like. I sift through pictures and writings about his sculptures until I finally find the one I am looking for. It’s a small photograph; it probably belonged in a catalogue. The picture makes the woman look much shorter than I remember her, and it does not really show the texture of the metal, or the shape and light it was reflecting that morning. This picture is lying. It does not look like the thing I pushed. My mom calls my name, and I smell the morning starting.

  After saying goodbye and promising to be cooperative during the meeting with Ms. K, I walk to the closest bus stop to ride to Paloma’s house and see if I can get some more proof. The brother may not be home, but it’s daylight. Maybe I can find something else. Here we go: picture number two. I go over the transportation route in my head, remembering where I have to transfer, and dig through my wallet for my student pass behind the movie cards and coffee receipts. I’ve had a pass since the eighth grade, when Adam and I were finally allowed to ride Metro on our own.

  The N4 bus rolls up. I nod to the driver, show him the card, and move toward the back. Most of the passengers are older, carrying whatever groceries they can, lulled into peace by their daily errands. One woman sings to a baby, in Spanish, about an elephant balancing on a spider-web, bobbing her knees up and down gently. I can’t tell if she’s trying to keep him awake or put him to sleep. I pull out Paloma’s Neruda book. Only one person is talking on her cell phone. The rest are fixed on the city moving past them, or their music, or their shoes. This is what the world looks like when I’m in school. Sleepy and safe. We cross the city and the houses get closer together, more people on the street, coming in and out of stores. I flip to a poem called “We Have Lost Even”:

  “Always, always you recede through the evenings / towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.”

  I read it in Spanish. Estatuas. The word for statues. It’s still the middle of the day. No estatuas have been erased yet.

  I spot the street and yell back door louder than I intended. The lady presses the baby to her chest. It’s less than six blocks to Paloma’s house and I have to stop to catch my breath, twice. I pass travel agencies, clinics, more bus stops, dollar stores, a rusted playground, restaurants with the smell of chicken and frying corn. The camera trembles in my hands.

  In the daylight, the house is neither white nor yellow, something in between. It’s sandwiched between two other houses, one bright blue and another bright red. I don’t know how I’m supposed to hide. Thank God everybody is at work. Instinctively I look for a room with the lights on, but it’s morning. There’s nothing to distinguish one room from another. I don’t know what I’m looking for. From across the street, where I’m standing, you can’t see much. Just a bunch of shadows and reflections. Pablo, the little poet. Or Pablo, the budding Cubist.

  Nobody moves inside the house. There are no cars parked in the front. Birds scatter like they can sense the trouble. I stay on this side of the street, put the camera around my neck, and think. Be brave, I tell myself. Stay alert. Let it in. I didn’t tell anybody I was coming, so they couldn’t be waiting for me. There is no ambush. A small, round woman walks into the front room of the house. She picks something bright from the ground, maybe a toy, and disappears again. A rush of energy fills my head, like the knot at the museum before I pushed the Picasso, and I get the camera ready. The one who goes for it. Isn’t that what Adam said? Was that yesterday?

  I scan the front room and spot a colorful corner where a flame is flickering and beginning to make shadows. It’s from a small wooden table against the wall. The table is covered in a pink cloth and there are all kinds of random objects on it. The candle is in the back, made of glass, covered in turquoise paper. In the center, I see a silver frame, with a picture of a woman laughing. The frame is surrounded by orange flowers that look like marigolds. There are two smaller, black-and-white pictures that are yellow around the edges. Those don’t have a frame. One is balanced against a coffee tin, and the other is tucked into the strings of a tiny plastic guitar.

  I take the picture and count to seventeen in front of the not-quite-yellow house. Then I run to the bus stop. On the slippery bench under a broken shelter, I try my hardest not to break my rule and look at the screen. I’m sure I have found an absolute treasure, that what I saw at Eva’s house is some kind of mirage. I want to check if I was dreaming. I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about a picture. Was that candy scattered around? Were those Mardi Gras pearls? Was the bowl full of salt or sugar? I want to hear the story that only pictures can tell.

  I get on the bus and hide Bogart away under the rest of my things. I move to the back and call Eva right away, clutching my camera bag with the other hand. No texts. I tell her what I saw.

  “You found the altar,” she says. “What about my brother?”

  All that excitement quickly turns into shame, as the bus jerks forward and I grab the sweaty pole to steady myself. She insists she needs a picture of her brother as soon as possible. She sounds more desperate than the last time we spoke.

  “I’m sorry, Eva. There was a woman, but I only saw her for a second.”

  “A woman?” she says. “What did she look like?”

  “I don’t know. She was kind of short. It was really just a second.”

  “Young? Old? Light? Dark? What was she doing?”

  “I think she was sort of dark … ” I whisper, worried about what the other bus riders might think.

  Eva huffs, and I start to get annoyed. This was supposed to be my prize picture. I spent months taking pictures of people’s front rooms and never found anything as remotely interesting as the altar.

  “Well, do you want to see the picture or should I erase it?” I ask.

  “Erase it,” she says, her voice cold, flat, sharp.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Erase it and get a picture of my brother.”

  “I skipped class to get this shot,” I say, no longer caring who can hear me.

  “You did a lot worse than skip class, Miriam.”

  “I don’t know what you want,” I say.

  “Yes you do,” she says. “I don’t need pictures of dead people. It’s already been four days. Get me a picture of my brother, or I’ll walk over to the Hirshhorn and tell them myself.”

  I hang up. Everybody on the bus acts like they can’t see my eyes welling up. I turn on the camera and look at the picture. It is candy, and there are at least four strands of the pearls, some foreign money, a glass of water, and a giant, smooth stone. Whatever story it’s telling, Eva can’t bear to hear it, but it’s too late for me. I want to know.

  seventeen

  “To simplify a radical equation, you have to find the greatest even power.”

  Mr. L’s dry-erase marker squeaks out roots and variables in dark blue. We copy it down in our notebooks, hoping to hang on to the concept long enough to get our homework right. I missed every class except for Calculus today. When it’s time to go, I wish I could stay and spend the rest of my day practicing this straightforward task, in this room, with my quiet, patient, odorless teacher. But after everyone’s left, Mr. L just gathers his things and asks me if I’ll do him the favor of turning out the lights when I go.

  So I go.

  “Have a seat, Miriam. You’re a little early,” Ms. K says when I knock on her office door.

  “Yes, sorry.”

  “No problem, but I’d rather have your parents here before we start.”

  “Okay,” I say.r />
  “It’s a family meeting, and you—we—might say something they should hear as well.”

  “Right. That makes sense.”

  Ms. K sips her tea and checks her email. I bet she has a Facebook page. I bet she’s bummed about the schoolwide lock. I bet she’s friends with Jon Stewart. The sound of the keyboard is driving me crazy.

  “So, do you like it here?” I ask.

  She turns her head toward me, but her fingers are still typing. She’s wearing a headband, and I swear she’s got the smallest ears I’ve ever seen. They’re not pointy, like elves’; just baby ears, like they didn’t grow with the rest of her.

  “Yes,” she says. “It’s a great school.”

  I fatten my lips and nod.

  “Do you like your job?” I ask.

  Ms. K moves to one of the armchairs facing my couch. She tucks her long skirt between her legs before crossing them. She doesn’t seem annoyed that I interrupted her work. Maybe no one has asked her whether she likes it yet. The rings on her fingers are made of either plastic or glass. Tapping them seems inappropriate, but I want to. God knows why I want to.

  “I love my job,” she says, looking straight at me.

  “That’s good,” I tell her. “You’re lucky.”

  That’s what my father is always saying. Find a job you love, Miriam. Do what you love, Miriam. Make sure you care, Miriam. Follow your passion, Miriam.

  “I know I’m lucky,” Ms. K answers, smiling. “And so are you.”

  I almost laugh.

  “Do you feel lucky?” she asks.

  “Should we be talking about this?” I ask. “Before my parents get here?”

  “I asked the question,” she says.

  “Lucky how?” I ask. “I mean—I know I’m lucky. I go to a school with a big lawn and Ivy League teachers and photo labs. I’ve got a darkroom in my basement, a house with a porch. There are people who don’t have anything. Of course I am lucky.”

  “I’m not really talking about school, or your house.”