“Hi,” he said. “I’m a friend of Alli’s.” One of the twenty-year-old drug dealers.
“Hi.” I tried not to, but I imagined him naked, me naked. I imagined him accepting the way my body has aged naturally, despite the near certainty that that would never happen. Very few bodies this close to San Francisco are accepted or allowed to age naturally.
“Alli told me you’re a mom.”
“That’s right.” It wasn’t the sexiest thing he could say, but maybe, I thought, this is how it will work, how he’d come to appreciate the lines and rolls of my abdomen.
“I was thinking, since you’re a mom, you might have some snacks? I’m really hungry. Like, is there anything in your purse?”
After a short excavation, the highest humiliation: he was right. I found both a bag of baby carrots and a granola bar in my purse. I passed my offerings across the table to the young man.
“Thanks,” he said, disappearing with the food. “Thanks.” Some mother’s child, some mother who had at least taught her son to always say please, always say thank you.
*
“Can you check me for ticks?”
Sam switches on a light, picks me over, stopping at each freckle. How lucky I am to know such love, to momentarily remember what it means to have the body of a child, ignorant of age’s humiliation. “Okay,” he says. “You’re all clear.”
“Thanks. Should I check you?”
“Nah. I’m good. There’s no Lyme disease in California, hon. Not really.”
“Says you.”
He switches off the light and now it’s night. It is really, really night.
*
What’s the scariest sound a person can hear?
Away from the city, inside a quiet country house where the closest neighbors are pretty far away, the scariest possible sound is a man coughing outside in the dark. Because why is there a man standing in the dark, studying the sleeping house, licking his lips, coughing? Why should someone be so near to my home, to my children, in this place that is not the city?
I know the sounds of this house intimately. The garbage truck, the school bus. I know the difference between the mailman and the UPS man. I know each door. I know the sound of a man outside coughing.
“What was that?” But Sam is already asleep. Or Sam is not here. “Wake up.” I whisper so the coughing man won’t know we’re onto him. “Wake up, hon. Someone’s outside.”
“What?”
“Shh. I heard something.”
“What?”
“There’s someone downstairs. Someone’s outside.”
“Who?”
“A guy. Please.”
“Please?”
“Go see.”
“See.”
“Yeah.”
Dead and dark of night, I send away the only man who has sworn an oath to protect me. I must be an idiot. I must be really scared. I send away the man I love. Why am I so scared? It’s not like I live in a war zone. It’s not like a flesh-eating epidemic has been found in our school district. What makes me so frightened?
Sam disappears in his underwear and bare feet, leaving behind the retired baseball bat he once thought to stow under the bed for just this sort of occasion. The soft pads of his feet pass down the top risers and then there’s no more sound. He’s so gone I have a sense our entire downstairs is filled with stagnant black pond water through which he’s now wading, swimming, drowning, trying to stay quiet so the bad guy, whoever he is, doesn’t hear him, find the staircase, and tear our tiny world apart.
*
The uncertain position we all maintain in life asking when will violence strike, when will devastation occur, leaves us looking like the hapless swimmers at the beginning of each Jaws movie. Innocent, tender, and delicious. Our legs tread water, buoyed by all that is right and good and deserved in this world, a house, healthy children, clean food to eat, love. While that animatronic shark, a beast without mercy, catches the scent of blood and locks in on his target.
“Sam?” I call softly so the bad guy won’t know we’re separated.
There’s no answer from downstairs. What is taking him so long to come back?
*
I hold the night the way I would a child who finally fell asleep. Like I’m frightened it will move. I am frightened it will move. I am always scared my life will suffer some dramatic, sudden change. I try to hear deeper, to not shift at all, to not breathe, but no matter how still I stay there’s no report from downstairs. What if Sam is already dead, killed by the intruder? Maybe choked by a small rope around the neck? What if the bad guy, in stocking feet, is creeping upstairs right now, getting closer to my babies, to me?
Part of me knows he is. Part of me knows he always is and always will be.
*
Where we live there are squirrels, rabbits, all manner of wild birds, foxes, mountain lions. There are rednecks getting drunk at the sports bar three miles away. There are outlaw motorcycle clubs convening. Drunk frat boys.
There are also children dreaming.
Other living things still exist in the night. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that.
Sam is probably fine. He’s probably downstairs on his computer. Barely Legal, Backstreet Blow Jobs. Looking at some other mother’s child perform sex on his monitor.
Night ticks by.
“Sam?” There’s no answer and the quiet becomes a dark cape, so heavy I can’t move my legs. I can’t move my body. I am only eyes, only ears. The night asks, Who are you? Who will you become if Sam has been chopped to bits by the guy downstairs? This is a good question. Who am I? Who will I be without Sam? Without kids? I can hear how well-intentioned people at Sam’s funeral will say, “Just be yourself.” But there is no self left. Why would there be? From one small body I made three new humans. It took everything I had to make them. Liver? Take it. Self-worth? It’s all yours. New people require natural resources and everyone knows the laws of this universe: you don’t get something for nothing. Why wouldn’t I be hollowed out? I grew three complex beauties. I made their lungs and noses. Who can’t understand this basic math?
The strangest part of these calculations is that I don’t even mind. Being hollow is the best way to be. Being hollow means I can fill myself with stars or light or rose petals if I want. I’m glad everything I once was is gone and my children are here instead. They’ve erased the individual and I am grateful. The individual was not special in the first place. And really, these new humans I made are a million times better than I ever was.
*
The bedcovers look gray in the dim light of modems and laptops and phones scattered around our bedroom. In this ghost light I am alone. The night asks again, Who are you? Who will you be when everyone who needs you is gone? My children are growing, and when they are done with that I’ll have to become a human again instead of a mother. That is like spirit becoming stone, like a butterfly going to a caterpillar. I’m not looking forward to that.