“Who the fuck knows?” she says. “Probably not. Do you?”
“When I was fourteen,” I tell Bekah, “my mother told me that there is no such thing as unconditional love. She said that she could stop loving me at any time.”
Bekah doesn’t say anything. She gets up, goes to a drawer in her kitchenette, opens it. For a second I think she’s going to pull something out—something wonderful, some answer, a magic omen. But she brings back a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She knocks one out, offers me another. I shake my head. She lights the cigarette, pulls a little ashtray closer to her from the center of the table, and sucks the smoke into her lungs. Then she says, “Your mother sounds like a real piece of work.”
“I think maybe she’s an alcoholic,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve ever said this, out loud or even in my own head.
“Maybe,” Bekah says. “Lots of people are.”
She smokes. I watch. The bird outside gets louder, but I still can’t see it.
“You know,” I say, “the abortion is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. And I’ll never tell my mother. I never tell her anything, really. And she never asks. It’s like she’s totally disconnected from me, you know? Like I was this egg she laid and now I’m totally separate from her.”
“We don’t all get great parents,” Bekah says. “Some parents are just really shitty people. Anyway,” she says, “you can’t make people love you. Love isn’t something you earn, or something you deserve. Love just is. Or it isn’t. Anyway,” she says again, “there are more important things than love.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
Bekah leans back in her chair. She weaves her fingers through her hair and stares up at the ceiling. I look up, too, to see what she’s seeing. Just a ceiling, with a long, thin crack in the plaster.
“Like service,” she says, like she just thought of it that very moment. “Being of service. With love, you’re waiting around for someone to give it to you, you know? But service . . . that’s something you give. And you don’t have to give it just to people you love. It doesn’t matter who you serve. It’s the serving that matters. I guess that’s why I’m at the shelter,” Bekah says. “And I’ll bet it’s why you keep coming, too, even though you don’t have to anymore. To serve.”
Service. “Is that why you came to my house when I needed you?”
“Yes,” Bekah says. “You needed me, and so I came.”
“It wasn’t because you like me?” I feel stupid asking. It seems like something a little kid would ask another kid—do you like me? Do you want to be best friends?
Bekah grins. “Sorry. No.”
“But . . . do you like me?” I ask, feeling about six years old.
“Actually, I do,” Bekah says. “But even if I didn’t, I still think I would have helped you. I don’t know, when I help someone, it’s like I’m really helping myself, too.”
“That sounds religious,” I say, “like a nun or something.”
She snorts a laugh. “I’m no saint.”
“That’s probably for the best. Things don’t turn out so great for them most of the time.”
“The way I see it,” Bekah says, “you’ve got to do the things that make you feel good. Being active—doing things, making things better in whatever ways I can—that makes me feel good. Being passive—waiting around for other people to do things for me or to me—that makes me feel shitty. So, feel shitty or feel good. I choose good.”
Things that make me feel good. Being away from my house. Being with the dogs. That nurse practitioner and Angie at Planned Parenthood, and how much they helped me. I bet there’s something I could do there, to help out. To be of service.
The bird is silent now. Everything is—the bird, our voices, even my own heart feels quiet. There is a moment of total stillness, both in the apartment and outside. And then rain begins to fall, to pour, to thrum. Bekah goes to the door and opens it. I get up, too, and stand at her side. Together we look out into the curtain of rain. I breathe in, as deeply as I can. I close my eyes and breathe.
???
It rains for three days, and then stops. On the last day of rain, I take myself to the Anti-Mall and go to the running store, which I’ve passed by many times but have never actually been inside.
“I need really good walking shoes and socks,” I tell the sales girl, and she hooks me up. On my way home I stop for gas.
And the next morning I’m up early. Dad isn’t home—he hasn’t been around in days, and I don’t expect to see him anytime soon—and Mom is still asleep. I leave a note on the counter: Gone hiking.
And then I’m out.
The air is crisp-winter cold, and it smells like baptism. My Prius pulls silently out of the driveway and whispers down the street. I hesitate for just a moment at the freeway on-ramp, but then I decide that I won’t be scared, and just like that, I’m not.
Next to me is a backpack full of snacks that I packed for myself—nuts and salmon jerky and a couple of granola bars. I have a thermos of hot tea, and I choose the music.
When I get to the trailhead, I pull into a different spot than the one Seth parked in last time we were here. I shrug into my fleece, double-knot my new shoes, smooth sunscreen on my face and hands. I make sure my water bottle is full.
I swing my pack onto my back.
I have everything I need. I’ve made sure of it. I’ve ticked each thing off a mental list; I will be warm and dry. I won’t be hungry or thirsty. I’ll walk as fast as I want, and I will take breaks whenever I feel like it. There is no one to follow, no one to keep up with. There’s just me and this one beautiful day, this one moment, right here, now. The leaves around me rustle gently, and sunlight and shadows dapple the trail.
I am this foot on the trail. I am these hands on the straps of my backpack. I am these lungs that take each next breath, and these eyes that watch a leaf fall to the ground. I am this heart that beats, this womb that bleeds.
And I’m more than any of the parts of me—I am more than my good parts, and more than my bad ones. I am more than my mistakes. I am more than my memories. I will say these words again and again, like an anthem, like a prayer, until I believe them.
When I was fourteen, my mother told me that there was no such thing as unconditional love. But I am not fourteen, and I am more than my mother’s daughter.
Author’s Note
Sugar and spice and everything nice;
That’s what girls are made of.
Hearing this nursery rhyme when I was a little girl, I remember feeling smug. I was a girl, and therefore I was made of the good stuff; boys, on the other hand, were made of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails—slimy, icky, dismembered, even. Now, though, I read it differently.