Billie’s phone rang, just as she expected, and she answered the call on Bluetooth. “You got my baby?” Colette asked, and Violet mewed hello into the speaker. The dashboard clock flicked to midnight and both sisters, as if planned, shouted, “Happy birthday, Mom!” They could hear Colette crowing, clapping for herself. Their mother said, “Thank you, babies! Praise Him. Now both my girls in one place. Now I can finally sleep,” and Billie wanted to ask if motherhood was always that way—waiting for rest to find you, for parts of yourself to come back together.
Billie made a pallet on the couch and shook a pillow into a clean case. She hadn’t meant to tell her sister anything, but the news came out, slippery, into the drowsy quiet between them. Violet sucked in a breath. “So it’s you. Mom’s been grilling me for weeks about safe sex, about the importance of finishing my education. I been trying to tell her I don’t ever miss a pill. How’d she react? She throw a parade?”
Billie turned her back, folded down the sheets. “I haven’t told her yet.”
“Ohhh, waiting for the party. That’s smart. You’re going to blow my little gift out of the water.” She made a drum of the coffee table. “Daughter of the Year goes to . . .”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?” Violet asked, and Billie told her. Her sister’s face scrunched into an expression that managed to demonstrate both confusion and displeasure. “So you’re, what, afraid the baby’s going to ‘disrupt your life’? Isn’t that kind of selfish?”
How to tell her sister—a baby herself, they both were—that this was the easy claim, citing the cities you had yet to see, the career you had not yet made. Telling yourself there was time later, of course there was time. Kids could be irritating, and even the most basic scars no longer faded entirely from her skin. Billie knew this baby would wreck her. How to convey that all these reasons could be true, were valid, but that there was another monster lurking behind disruption, a logic that told you that motherhood was not just some rite of passage, another stone to put in your pocket. That this would be a whole person, one you would be responsible for keeping that way, and what if you ruined it? Surely, not everyone was meant to be a mother—not in this conventional sense—and what would the world be now if women had been allowed more freedom to wonder?
“Look, don’t tell Mom. I need to figure this out.”
Violet took her small bag into the bathroom, the toilet flushed, the sink ran, and she came out some minutes later in sweats, face shiny with oil, and her hair secured with a satin scarf.
“I won’t say anything. It’s not my news to tell.” Violet got under the covers. She kept her eyes on Billie. “But maybe you could spend one day as if you were going to keep it. Maybe quit calling it an ‘it’? I know you don’t think I know anything, but what if it’s worth a try?”
“Fake it ’til you make it?” Billie said, trying to joke. She ducked low and kissed Violet’s cheek. Violet smiled, and there was a gravity to it, like something else was looking out from underneath her sister’s young face, ageless and terrifying. A truth.
“Yeah, why not? You think anyone really knows what they’re doing?” Billie couldn’t remember, when she was Violet’s age, if she’d been so ignorant and wise.
In bed, the puppy cuddled against Billie until Liam came home to take his place. She felt him tuck in beside her, the scent of shower water still clinging to his skin. She pretended to be in deep sleep, somewhere far away, her body a void. A space worthy of nurturing; worthy of love, and when she finally dropped down below consciousness, she didn’t dream. Or if she did, this, too, was above her understanding.
The cake was not ready—thirty more minutes the bakery promised (they had previously promised noon)—so Billie had time to kill. Violet was already at the venue with the box of decorations: streamers and tablecloths, the flutes and gold balloons. Pia would meet her sister to help, then take them back to the apartment where she and Violet and Liam would dress to Colette’s specifications—in spangled blue or black or silver, like old Hollywood money or their closest cocktail impressions of such. Billie’s dress—one-shouldered and mermaid pearlescent—hung neatly in the car, and after picking up the cake, she would drive to Colette’s to get ready.
While she waited, she wandered around the other areas of the department store, browsing the aisles of beauty and home improvement, the sad rows of tanks holding dim, limp-finned fish. All these things one could buy whose promises, at best, were half-full. She found herself in clothing. First Women’s, Misses, Children, and then, unavoidably, Infants. She’d, perhaps, been heading there all along. Everything on the plastic hangers was tiny, soft under her fingers, pastel and color-coded into two conditioned genders. While she was trying to imagine what was developing inside her buttoned up into a fox onesie complete with hood and furry ears, she felt a presence behind her.
“Billie the Kid?” An old high school nickname she had first hated, then grown into.
She turned to find a man—a low fade to hide his thinning hair, a tiny gut falling gently against his polo. His face was familiar but she was blank to his name. And then, in a warm and sudden wash, he came to her. Freshman year, a popular boy she’d briefly liked and had never had a chance with—Quentin, a sophomore at the time. She shook her head at her luck. Jacksonville was so wastefully big that only rarely did she run into people she used to know, and never when she looked this good. “Q?”
“Well shit, it is you,” Quentin said, a sleepy smile breaking over his face. Some of his old charm sparkled there. He stepped forward and wrapped her in the kind of hug people gave when overtaken by nostalgia, that made friends of even those they’d only barely known. Billie let herself be folded up and hugged him back, pretending too. “How’ve you been? You shopping for yourself up here?” As he released her, she closed her eyes. Paused in the small quiet. She leaned into her sister’s advice.
“Actually . . . yeah. My first child.” She beamed. Placed one hand over her stomach like she’d seen so many women do, this universal signal. “We’re so excited.”
“That’s dope! Congrats! I’ve got two myself. When are you due?”
And because she owed him nothing, Billie found she could speak freely, and everything she had not voiced, all the good that could come from this, burbled up from the deep. She spoke effortlessly: the spring due date, possible names honoring grandmothers or great uncles, how she and Liam would wait until birth to discover the sex, they didn’t want to put pressure on an outcome. She told him, with manufactured relief, that holidays and weekends would mean something again. Quentin agreed this was true, asked her if she had one of those baby tracker apps—his girlfriend had been crazy about hers. He congratulated Billie again. “It’s a miracle, truly. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’ll be tired as hell. But I just learned so much about myself. You just gotta hang in there.”
Billie wondered if it was possible not to sound like a motivational speaker when making small talk with those you’d casually shared a history. It was amusing but also a little nice, being this magnanimously positive. It was harder with people who knew you better. She and Quentin parted ways with another hug, empty assurances that they would keep in touch—but the thing was, she was hanging on. To this image, this baby as real and fixed in her life, her hands still cupping the small mound of herself. She could sense it as she hadn’t been able to before, more than just a wave of nausea, a needling thought. Violet had been right; visualization was key.
She saw a soft cheek, open to touch, and the reassurance of someone needing you. Someone you would come to need right back. She saw her mother’s pride. The company of three. That she would be changed. Billie pictured herself serpentine—lean and sleek. Circling around until her lips touched her own belly, and she could press them against the flesh that had gone firm and hot as a stone left in the sun. She saw her mouth whispering into the baby’s ear-buds, into that secret space between th
em, the words umbilical, passing through flesh and water and finding land: I love you, she was saying, but sometimes, I don’t like you at all.
Colette was glowing, leaning against the outside bar with a cocktail in her hand, telling a loud story, the only figure in all that sparkle clothed in gold, as she’d planned. It was a good turnout, her friends old and new, her family, and even Billie and Violet’s fathers had deigned to come, dressed in suits, Billie’s father wearing a blue porkpie hat with a new penny tucked in the brim. After their daughters had greeted and left them, the men stood bunched in one corner of the rooftop, sipping dark liquor and talking furtively, as if they hadn’t been invited and didn’t want to call attention to themselves. Both sisters found this comical. “What do you think they’re talking about?” Pia asked. “Trading secrets about your mom?”
Colette had come up behind them and she worked herself between her daughters, snorting into her glass. “What those two got to say, other than what a good mother I am? And how lucky they were to ever get a taste?” Then she strode toward the men, waving as she came, like a queen. Their fathers looked diminished and bashful in her presence. Pia cackled while the sisters lovingly rolled their eyes. Liam, his glass near empty, shook his head.
“Your mom is a capital T trip.” He rattled his bitten ice. “I’m going to the bar. You want anything?” he asked Billie, and then blanched at the sudden stillness in each of the women, that common question now loaded with weight. “I mean, any of you,” Liam clarified. Billie cleared her throat. She’d been sipping glasses of seltzer all night, each time garnished with fruit to throw Colette off the trail. But she liked drinking, especially at parties. She liked the buzz and giddiness and the lightness of her body as the alcohol suffused her bloodstream, as she lost herself to music and movement on the dance floor, beyond the point of any past or future—only present.
“Well, I’m not of age,” Violet said, though Billie had no doubt her sister indulged, would do so now, while their mother was optimally distracted, if not trying to make a point. Her sister’s face was a map, and Billie could see where any affirmation on her part would lead.
She shook her head. “I’m good for now.”
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” Pia said, and Liam shuffled quickly away. Violet made some excuse—that she was going to check on the hors d’oeuvres, request a song—and disappeared, leaving her judgements behind her.
“I see you told her,” Pia said, her eyes trailing after Billie’s sister.
“It slipped out.”
“Do you think she’ll tell your mom?”
Billie sipped from her glass, straining seltzer through her teeth. “I’d wring her neck and she knows it.”
They stood quietly, their thoughts eaten up by the party, all those people. Billie watched her mother flit from group to group, watched her dance, her dress sparking light onto whoever was near. Liam returned with the drinks and leaned close to Billie, the heat of rum on his breath, his lips cool against her ear. “Let’s dance,” he said. “Forget everything for a little while.” He led her to the floor and they crashed through the pulsing bodies to the center, and Billie threw her hands up, directed her feet and hips and shoulders in seamless rhythm. She obeyed.
Just before midnight, well after “Happy Birthday” and the cake, a couple of servers rotated through the remaining guests, offering trays of margaritas prettied-up with starfruit and lime. The grand finale. Colette’s send-off to the first day of her fiftieth year. She stood before them and toasted, to her great fortune—her daughters, her friends; to her long life and fifty more years just like the last. “What I’ve learned is, you’ve got to live. And you’ve got to be grateful. Don’t entertain regrets! And don’t let no man run you!” Everyone cheered—the men somewhat reservedly—and drank to her, to the promise they saw for themselves.
Billie stood at the back of the crowd, near the double doors that led inside the restaurant, where servers moved in and out, breaking down the last of the food from the party and returning abandoned dishes to the kitchens. She was alone. A server passed by with a spare drink on his tray and Billie found herself reaching for it. The glass was slick as an eel against her palm. She looked around, fingering salt from the rim. No one was watching, no one who would care. Billie tilted the glass to her mouth, inviting the cold rush against her teeth, the tang and salt. Even watered-down, the tequila was clear in the mixture, a brightness. A bite. She finished it quickly and set the empty glass on another passing tray. Her hand went up to her mouth, where the chill still lingered, the taste. One drink, she told herself, couldn’t possibly hurt, and even Colette had preached No regrets.
Of course, as soon as she thought it, the idea became real in opposition. A panic seized her. Billie threw herself into the restroom, into one of the stalls, and knelt down on the sticky floor. She thrust two fingers at the back of her throat and gagged until her eyes watered and burned, but couldn’t bring the drink back up. “Sorry,” she mumbled, hiccupping into the bowl, but she knew that it was only a word, that it excused nothing.
Billie wished she were home so she could crawl into bed, clothes and makeup still on, and sleep thought away. She wished someone else could make the decision. That someone else would say it. She was wiping her mouth with a square of toilet paper when she heard the clacking of heels. The stall door nudged open, her mother’s anxious face hovering there. Somehow she’d known, alerted by some motherly sense. Arriving, as always, even mistakenly, at the source of the trouble. Colette had on the same look she’d worn when Violet had fallen, before she’d been able to judge the harm that had been done and marched into the safer territory of rage. But here, between them now, there would only be comfort, no guilt to force her mother’s hand. Colette bent over Billie and rubbed her back and Billie thought, maybe even anger was a kind of love.
“It’s okay, baby,” Colette murmured, clucking. “You just had a little too much. Go on home. Drink some water. Tomorrow’s another day.”
The streetlamp on their side of the pond was out when they pulled up. Liam cut the engine and looked over at Billie, who sat staring ahead, seeing nothing. Violet had wanted to stay at Colette’s for the night and Pia, graciously, volunteered to drive the two of them home. Billie hadn’t told her husband what had happened, but he saw the smudged mascara, sensed her interior mood. He knew her well enough. He touched her hand and only then did she open the door to step out. The heat had cooled in the night, leaving the air tepid as a bath.
“You go up,” she told Liam. “Get the dog.”
He jingled the keys, wary, but then he agreed. “I’ll be right back down.”
After he retreated, Billie turned toward the water. Now the pond was sky-colored, glassy and dark as a universe. Minnow mouths opened and closed, puckering the surface like rain, and even so, with the fountain switched off, the water became a mirror. Revealing. Something to skip through; to be lost in or found. Billie considered that maybe anything could be a portal—a black hole, a body, a choice—and elsewhere, unobservable, every turn not taken continued on: there was a Billie who crafted songs instead of stories; one who lived a single life in Seoul tutoring English; another parallel to this current one, beckoned in the dark by nightmares, by that maternal sense, a glass of warm milk in her hand. An infinite number of almost-Billies, not lost, but just out of reach on the other side. Wasn’t it possible that somewhere, a child called her by another name? That, though she couldn’t see them, the carp were still swimming? Billie closed her eyes. She felt the night pulse around her, dark matter talking back to the matter of her.
Behind her, footsteps. The puppy barked—one short, deliberate yip. Recognizing her. Hailing her as his own.
Thicker Than Water
Our mother calls at nearly midnight, well past her usual sleeping time, so I know something has a hold on her. Some bug or a ghost, sleepless itself and unrelenting. Me, I always was a creature of night.
I pick at a pimple nestled in the folds of my left armpit. It appeared sometime during the course of the day, among the in-growns, painful, not yet ready to burst. When I withdraw my fingers, they are damp and smell lightly of onion. I wipe them on my shirt.
What about work, Mamá? I ask, when work—my mutable employment as a dog walker and babysitter—would never be the issue.
Just a couple of days. You can make the time. I can see what she looks like over the phone lines, the scarf covering her graying curls, her face determined, sheathed in darkness; how her words are a prayer but also a bondage. Cecelia, she says, it’s been too long. Your father needs rest. But what she means is, we all do.
After we hang up, I sit a moment holding my phone in both my hands. The flicker from the TV blues the room, accompanied by a nostalgic heaviness. My brother is of night, like me. For the last year, I have avoided thinking of him, across town, separate in his wakefulness. But our mother has summoned us, and there is no escaping that call. I dial. He answers on the second ring and this tells me he’s been waiting for me, as I’ve waited for him.
Lucas, I say. His name feels unfamiliar in my mouth, a little sour, but with a honey to it; I haven’t said it in so long. Mamá just called. He sighs and it sounds like storm.
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