What Girls Are Made Of
Elana K. Arnold
When I was fourteen, my mother told me there was no such thing as unconditional love.
“I could stop loving you at any time,” my mother said.
We were folding laundry. A sheet, her on one end, me on the other. Together, like old-fashioned dancers, we brought our hands together to bisect the long white sheet, then stepped toward each other, the fabric collapsing inward, and then again, then once more, until the long, tangled mess was sorted into a sleek, flat rectangle. It was warm from the dryer and smelled like chemical flowers.
“No one loves without conditions,” she said.
I nodded and set aside the sheet, reached into the basket for another. I snapped it out and she caught the far end.
“Your father’s love for me is conditional,” she continued. “His love is contingent on lots of things. My willingness to listen to him talk about his day. My cooking.”
We came together. At fourteen, I was now as tall as she was. “And my beauty.”
“Your beauty?”
“Love for a woman,” my mother said, “is always conditional on her beauty. That,” she said, my fingers grazing hers on the final fold, “and sex.”
She was sorting out the truth of things for me, much as we together smoothed the wrinkles from the sheets, taking something lengthy and burdensome and rearranging it into a neat package.
“Of course,” she said, “My love for your father has conditions, too.”
I knew without her telling me what some of these conditions were. The money he made in real estate. His deference to her preferences, like the new car purchased every three years, whether the last one needed replacing or not. His donning of the black-and-white striped apron each Sunday afternoon, then going into the backyard to light the grill in the outdoor kitchen. The way he cooked her meat—soft in the middle, dripping red.
“What could make you stop loving me?” I asked.
“Oh, any number of things,” she said. “But you would never do any of them, so it doesn’t matter.”
I wanted to know what they were, the unlisted cardinal sins. But she would not tell me.
“It’s a ridiculous question,” she said, stacking the folded sheets into the basket and thrusting it toward me.
The basket was heavy. I took it.
???
There would have been other kids, after me. I remember my mother’s pregnancies, nearly one a year from when I was five until when I turned ten, when I suppose she decided enough was enough. Each of those pregnancies ended the same way—early.
She usually didn’t look any different, between when she was pregnant and when she wasn’t. I knew there was a baby when her favorite glass disappeared before dinner—squat, clear crystal, filled with two fingers of vodka and topped with diet tonic water. I knew the baby was gone when her favorite glass reappeared.
She stopped telling me about the pregnancies after the second miscarriage, and then I learned to notice on my own when the cup disappeared, understanding that its disappearance meant there was another baby inside of her.
It was clear that we weren’t supposed to talk about the pregnancies. Bad luck, I guess? So I didn’t, but each time the glass disappeared, I would make up names and stories and decide if it was a girl or a boy. The second-to-last pregnancy, when I was eight years old, progressed to the point where it seemed kind of silly not to say anything. She was puffing out, and her stomach was bigger—not hard big like the pregnant ladies I’d see out in the world, but definitely bigger.
That one, I’d decided, was a girl. A sister. I named her Chloe, because I liked fancy names like that, and because I thought it sounded good tagged after mine. Nina and Chloe. Sisters. She would have reddish hair. And she’d need glasses, like me. I would be the one to figure it out, that she was nearsighted; I’d take care of her all the time, after all, so I’d be the first to notice that something wasn’t right with her vision, the way she’d cling to me, afraid to venture on her own. We’d get her some of those really cute baby glasses, purple, with a flexible frame and the extra-long ear parts that tuck all the way around, not just right behind the ears like mine. Chloe would be kind of fat, but that would be okay, because she’d only be a baby and she would have plenty of time to grow out of it. Fat is cute, on babies. I would share a room with her. I wouldn’t need to; our house was plenty big, but I’d want to.
She would be my person, not my mother’s or father’s. She would be my person to love.
But then one night the crystal glass was out again, just like the other times. I remember feeling sick, like I had the flu, and I said I wasn’t hungry and went straight to bed. My mother never said anything to me about it, and I never said anything to her.
When the glass disappeared again the next year, I didn’t make up any names. I just waited for it to reappear again, and when it did, just a few weeks later, I was glad.
There’s a refrigerator somewhere. It’s a white refrigerator, with French doors and a pull-out freezer at the bottom, because those are the fanciest refrigerators.
This refrigerator, when you pull open the doors, both at the same time, and you throw them wide to peer inside—it’s filled with cartons and cartons of eggs. Each shelf holds cartons stacked like bricks, one atop another, rows and rows of them, and each carton holds twelve eggs. No more, no less. Always twelve.
And the eggs inside the cartons . . . they are smooth and they are white and they are perfect. Sometimes when you buy eggs from the grocery store (especially the organic kind) they are flecked with dried chicken shit. But these eggs are so clean as to seem bleached. How could it be that these eggs have been pushed through the slit of a worried hen? How could it be that these eggs are the product of a bird’s bodily function?
But they are. These eggs are the collected oeuvre of one hen, a nervous leghorn called Rose for the bright-red comb upon her head.
Red is the comb upon her head. White are the feathers upon her wings, clipped straight across to prevent her from flying. White are the eggs she lays, day after day after day after day.
Lay, lie, lay. She lays her eggs. They lie in the nesting box. She lies upon them, waiting, hoping. The farmer sneaks a hand beneath her warm white feathers to snatch the eggs. He does not bother with lies or promises. She will lay more, just the same, without a lie.