“Okay,” I say.
I tell her where to find the maxi pads and ask her to look in the top drawer of my dresser for the biggest pair of underwear she can find. I ask her to bring me my robe, which is hanging on the back of my bedroom door.
She comes into the bathroom minutes later, holding all the things I asked for. She’s opened the bag of maxi pads and fitted one into the crotch of my underwear, and she hands it to me while I’m still sitting on the toilet.
I pull on the underwear and flush the toilet. Then when I’m standing she gives me my robe. I pull it on and tie its belt, letting the towel drop to the floor.
“Do you want to go lie down?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sick.”
We go downstairs and Bekah ladles out two bowls of soup. I sit in front of mine and breathe in the steam that rises from it.
Bekah sits across from me. She slices into one of her matzo balls with the edge of her spoon and blows on it before she puts it in her mouth.
I do the same. The matzo ball doesn’t look like it’s going to taste very good; it’s this heavy, pockmarked, uneven whitish sphere. But it’s soaked up the broth like a sponge would, and it’s hot and tender and flavorful, salty and filling.
I eat the whole bowl.
“Is your grandmother Jewish?” I ask.
“Mm-hm. My whole family is.”
“Are you religious?”
“Sort of,” Bekah says. “My grandparents on my father’s side are Hungarian Jews. They’re not Orthodox or anything, though. Not for a long time. My mom’s family is full of right-wing Christian nut jobs. They were super pissed when she married my dad and converted. They said it could never work.”
“And your parents proved them wrong?”
Bekah snorts. “Nope. They were separated by the time I was four, when my mom was eight months pregnant with my little sister. She didn’t stay married, but she stayed a Jew.”
“Oh,” I say. “Why’d they break up?”
“You know,” Bekah says. “All the reasons people break up. They fought all the time. My dad drank too much. They probably lied to each other.”
Are those the reasons people break up? I think of Seth and me. We didn’t fight. Neither of us drank, except occasionally at parties. I had never lied to Seth. Had he lied to me? I would have forgiven him if he had.
I feel a rush of warmth between my legs, a heavy pulse of blood. It strikes me that maybe this is a lie of omission, my not telling Seth about the abortion. But I am not sorry.
I stand up to go deal with the blood, and I feel more of it coming out.
“Um,” says Bekah, and she’s looking at the chair I was sitting on.
There’s blood on it. “Oh, God. I’m sorry,” I say, and I grab the roll of paper towels from the counter.
“It’s okay,” Bekah says. “I’ll get it.”
“No, I’ll do it,” I say. “I don’t want you to clean up after me.”
“I’m here to help, remember?” Gently, Bekah takes the roll of paper towels.
I go back upstairs. This time, I lock the bathroom door.
I strip naked, throw my robe in the sink, and run cold water over the back of it where the blood has soaked through. The underwear and maxi pad I throw together into the trash. I sit on the toilet and I cramp and bleed, liquid blood and blood clots, something that might be tissue.
I run a bath. I slide into the water and watch as long strands of blood weave through it. The blood is terrible. The blood is beautiful. I close my eyes. The temperature of the water is just the same as my skin, as my blood. I can’t tell my insides from my outsides. I float.
???
Bekah stays with me all day. By the time it’s dark outside, the bleeding has slowed to my normal period flow. Bekah makes popcorn and we climb into my bed and watch the beginning of this romantic drama set in the 1800s, but it’s boring and depressing so we switch it to something funny.
Even that, though, we mostly ignore. We eat the popcorn. Mom’s cat wanders in and hops up onto the bed. She purrs loudly, her begging purr.
“She likes popcorn,” I say, and Bekah tosses her a kernel.
“What’s her name?”
“Hannah.”
“Hey, there, Hannah,” Bekah says, rubbing her fingers together. The cat comes over and rubs her head against Bekah’s hand. “She’s a pretty cat.”
Hannah is a big long-haired tabby with white whiskers and an extremely fluffy tail.
“We got her a couple of years ago,” I tell Bekah. “My dad had always said no to animals—he’s allergic—but the summer before I started high school he and Mom had some troubles, I guess, and she and I went away to Italy for a few weeks. Actually, it was supposed to be their anniversary trip. A couple of weeks after we got home, Dad came back, and he had Hannah with him. Like, an apology present, I guess.”
“What do you think the problem was with them?”
I shrug, running my hand down Hannah’s back. But an image flashes in my mind, like a snapshot, of the couple that was at the restaurant that night I got drunk in Italy. The much-older man. The younger woman. My dad with Judy, then my mother.
I turn up the volume of the movie. We settle back against the pillows. Hannah circles and curls up in Bekah’s lap, her tail draped around her own neck like a scarf.
???
I have to go back to school on Monday. I can’t use a tampon, so I’ve got a pad on, but the bleeding is way lighter now, and the cramps are gone.
In the morning Bekah sends me a text checking to see how I am feeling.
Better, I write. Thank you.
I type out thank you instead of thx because I want her to know that I really mean it, and she understands because she sends back You are welcome.
???
In the parking lot, I see Seth’s car. And I see Apollonia Corado, standing in my spot in the universe, just in front of Seth, pushed up against the trunk of his car, his arms draped around her waist, her chin tilted toward him, her hair in two braids down her back like thick black snakes.
I’m not surprised. Not at all. I park my car as far away from Seth’s Acura as humanly possible and go to class.
Over the weekend someone took down all the Thanksgiving stuff and painted fake snow in the corners of the windows. Construction paper pine trees are on every door. It feels like the crowded hallways part for me as I pass through them. It feels as though everyone is watching me, and I wonder with a sick jolt if I’ve bled through my jeans, if that’s why they’re whispering and staring.
But then I remember the parking lot, Seth and Apollonia, and I get what this is about. Do they want to see me cry? Do they want to see me shake with rage? What do they want from me?
What do they want?
But then, a tiny unhatched voice from deep inside my brain whispers a different question: What do I want?