Your body will have weird ways of showing you its hungers. Some are straightforward: food hunger starts in your stomach; sex hunger starts in your groin. Others are spooky, sneaking up on you from strange places. Like my hunger for my father—to know who he is, to meet him, to hear his voice even if it’s just on the phone. My hunger for my father starts in my arms.
DAY: 2, CONTINUED . . .
My father is on a lobster boat.
My father, born a Jew, is a Buddhist.
These are the two things I know about him for sure. The things my mother told me. I can infer other things—like, he is where my bright-red hair comes from, or he is not a very good person—but those two are what I know without a doubt.
The lobster boat thing is what she said when we were little, and we asked why we didn’t have a dad. The other thing she told me six months ago, when I found a copy of The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac at the bottom of a closet. “That’s your father’s . . . it’s what converted him to Buddhism.”
I also found a copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Mom didn’t know anything about that one.
I know not to ask about him. I know it’s a sore subject. I don’t know exactly why.
It’s one of the many subjects Mom won’t talk about, like how she wouldn’t let Maya play me any of her punk-rock records because they have curse words. She thinks I’m a child who needs to be protected from the horrors of grown-ups, because she somehow forgot that the world of children has its own horrors. And that the world of teenagers holds the horrors of both.
“Hey, honey,” she said, when she came home from work.
“Hey,” I said, sitting at the kitchen table, studying the fake wood grain on the dark plastic paneling that covered every surface.
She kissed the top of my head and barreled through to the refrigerator. I smelled the hog blood on her hands. I smelled the cigarettes-and-pig-stink of the slaughterhouse. I shut my eyes and breathed her in, my mom, this towering assassin, massive demon nightmare of every pig in three counties.
The smiley-faced bunny rabbit on her sweater didn’t fool me. She was a terrifying force of nature.
Hunger makes you stronger. Smarter.
It gives you, like, a power. You know? An ability.
I could see things now. Things I shouldn’t be able to. They’re dim, like lights through fog, but there. And soon I’d be able to see them clearly.
My mother was good at secrets, but she wouldn’t be able to keep them from me for much longer.
“What’s happening in your world?” she said, sitting down across from me, her heavy body settling into the chair like a weary king onto the throne.
“Not a whole lot. How was work?”
“Tough,” she said. “Quota’s up again.”
“Do you know something?” I asked, quick before my courage could fail me. “About what happened to Maya? Something she told you but wouldn’t tell me?”
Mom sighed, stood up, went to the coffeemaker. Stood there for a little while, wondering maybe whether she had the strength to make a pot. Then she sat back down. “No, honey.”
“Why didn’t you call the cops? That’s what normally happens, on the TV shows, when a teenager runs away. What if . . .” I gulped down air before finishing the terrible, terrifying sentence— “what if she’s hurt? What if someone hurt her?”
Mom frowned. “Life’s not a TV show. And your sister is going through a really tough patch. Getting the law involved could hurt her worse. I don’t think she’s doing drugs but, you know, lots of kids experiment. What if the cops catch up to her and end up arresting her? Then she has a record, then she might go to jail. I know too many people who . . .”
She paused, let out a long breath.
“Long as she calls in regular, and I know she’s not dead or in a coma, I’m going to give her a chance to figure this out for herself.”
“But, why is she in a tough patch? Because of what?” Mom leaned her head back wearily. A sign of defeat, of stop talking about this. Before, she’d snap defensively if I implied maybe something terrible could happen to Maya. What did it mean that she wasn’t getting angry about it now? Did it mean she was taking the possibility more seriously? Or that she knew something I didn’t? I stared at her face, its pattern of lines, its pain, a secret I couldn’t unravel, a story in a language I didn’t speak. Slowly, wearily, she took her long brown hair out of its ponytail.
I got up and went to the coffeemaker. I didn’t quite know what I was doing, but soon it was making a gurgly noise and steam was coming up from it, so I figured I had gotten the gist. Mom must have zoned out or dozed off during this, because when I set a mug of coffee down in front of her, she laughed out loud with surprise.
“Thank you, honey,” she said, and grabbed my small hand with one of her giant ones. Then she grabbed it with the other. And held on.
I looked around the kitchen. It was full of food. Fridge, cabinets, cupboard—all of it calling out to me. But I was stronger now. Strong enough to fight the hunger that made my head hurt. Especially now, when I could sense some kind of breakthrough was coming.
“Your nails,” Mom said, holding up my hand, showing the ruined edges of my fingers.
“It’s nothing.” But I didn’t pull my hand away.
After a long time she said, “Dinner’ll be ready in a little while,” and her voice was different. Shaky. Fragile. I had never noticed anything fragile about my mother before. I kissed her forehead and fled.
I took a tiny secret forbidden sip of her coffee on the way out. It wasn’t very good. My next pot would be better.
On the way to my room, I stopped and stood outside Maya’s for a little while. Listening.
I used to press my ear to the wall that separated our rooms, trying to hear the secret songs she played on her guitar, the music she wouldn’t share with me because it had curse words. The real reason, I knew, was because it was too personal. She always kept her headphones plugged into the amplifier so I couldn’t hear anything but the twanging of the struck strings. And now I didn’t even hear that.
I opened the door. Went to her desk, pulled out one drawer.
Memories of Maya screaming to stop spying you little turd flooded me, and I slammed it shut. My face flushed, and I fled.
I was waiting for myself when I walked into my own room. I stood in the doorway, and also, across from me, I stood in the full-length mirror: eyes huge, chin too big, skin too hideous to describe—a fun-house freak sent to mock me. I opened my window and sat on my floor in front of that mirror. October wind rushed in like a lost dog, curled around my ankles.
My hands gripped the radiator. My arms hurt.