If I Was Your Girl(7)

“Nothin’,” Chloe said.

“She’s fun in small doses,” Layla said. “Emphasis on the small.”

I sucked at the dregs of my soda, unsure what to say.

“God, I’m a bitch,” Layla said after a moment. “Hang out with whoever you want. We just met! But you’re welcome with us anytime.”

When the check came, they refused to let me pay. I fell into the Southern ritual I’d watched Mom play out for years without even thinking: Offer to pay once, they refuse, pull out your money and insist, they refuse again, and then concede. I wished all social interaction had such clear rules.

*

Twenty minutes later we pulled up outside my apartment building, an unimaginative tan brick box sitting beneath a tall ridge choked in kudzu vines.

“So you’re coming to the game then, right?” Anna asked.

The cicadas buzzed persistently in the growing dusk. I had read once that they lived underground for most of their lives, only emerging as adults to live out their final days. Was that going to be me? Was I going to live underground for the better part of my life, never coming out into the world?

They were all looking at me hopefully, the car’s engine running. Finally I said, “I’ll meet you guys there.”

Layla honked the horn happily, and they drove off.

After the car disappeared around the bend, I stood alone in the blistering parking lot. It was way past six, and Dad must have been home for a while, wondering where I was, with no way to reach me. I wanted to avoid whatever waited in the apartment, to wander around until midnight and sneak in once he fell asleep, but even at dusk the heat was still overpowering.

I climbed the stairs, turned the key in the lock, and stepped inside. Dark filled the space like a living thing. A single sunbeam came in through the gap in the balcony blinds and cut across the living room, red dust motes floating in a golden sea.

“Where were you?” Dad walked into the light, a hard edge in his voice.

“Sorry,” I said quietly.

“Sorry isn’t a place.”

“With some friends,” I said, looking down. “I missed the bus.”

“When I got home and you weren’t here I called over and over. I was worried sick.”

I started to speak, choked, and took a deep breath. “You never worried before.” I remembered the days after I woke up in the hospital and realized I was still alive. I remembered having nobody to keep me company but nurses and Mom and the television—no friends, no family, no Dad. I remembered suspecting, for the first time in my life, that he might not actually care if I lived or died.

I clenched my fists and looked up at him. “You never even sent a letter. I almost died and you were a ghost.”

“What did you want me to say?”

“Anything.”

He sighed, letting out his breath long and slow.

“I didn’t know what to do, okay?” he said, rubbing his brow. “You hold a baby when it takes its first breath, you sing it to sleep, you rock it when it cries, and then you look away for what feels like a second and your baby doesn’t want to live anymore. You’re my child.”

“I’m your daughter,” I whispered. “Nothing to say about that, either.”

A semi drove by on the highway outside, the dull whoosh of its passing loud in the silence. “Sorry for worrying you. It won’t happen again.” I moved past him toward my room, closing the door.



NOVEMBER, THREE YEARS AGO

The counselor’s office was a converted study in an old mansion in one of the Atlanta neighborhoods rebuilt soonest after the Civil War. It smelled like old wood, and the floors creaked with a century of traffic. An old CRT television sat on a rolling stand in the mouth of a fireplace large enough to swallow it whole. Embellished shelves meant for leather-bound books were lined with titles like, I’m OK, You’re OK and Coping with PTSD. A grandfather clock echoed persistently outside the door.

The counselor tapped his pen against his notepad, maddeningly out of sync with the rhythm of the clock. I pulled my knees up to my chest and tried to disappear into the overstuffed leather chair.

“How are you, Andrew?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I pulled mechanically at a loose thread in my jeans.

“What would you like to talk about?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Could I ask you a question?”

“If you want.”

He uncrossed his legs and rested his hands in his lap. He was using his body language to tell me I could trust him, because it was his job to seem trustworthy. When he spoke his tone was calm and even. “Will you tell me about the note you gave me when you were in the hospital?” I closed my eyes and shrugged. “Could you tell me what the note meant?”

“I like puzzles,” I said after a moment. My knuckles blocked my mouth, muffling my words. He leaned closer to hear. “And math. I like things that fit together neatly. I don’t like it when things don’t make sense.” I put my hands on the back of my neck and pushed my head down, speaking into my lap. “So I don’t know what the note meant. It means I’m crazy, I guess, because it doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense, Andrew?”

“My birth certificate says I’m a boy.” My chest felt tight. The room, despite its high ceilings, felt suddenly cramped. “I have a … I have boy parts. I have boy chromosomes. God doesn’t make mistakes. So I’m a boy. Scientifically, logically, spiritually, I’m a boy.”