Burning (28 page)

She looked up over the edge of her reading glasses. “You look better than you did last night, at least,” she said. “Sleep well?”

I grinned, a little sheepish. “Good morning, Mom.”

“Coffee?”

I wasn’t in the habit of drinking the stuff; mostly just water and juice. But I poured myself a cup anyway before I sat down across from her. “Anything interesting in there?” I asked, tapping the newspaper.

“Not as interesting as what’s in
there
,” she said, indicating the dryer that was running in the corner of the kitchen. “Whose clothes?”

I burned my mouth with my first sip of coffee. “Lala’s,” I choked. When I’d recovered, I elaborated. “Lala White. The Gypsy girl I told you about.”

I had to hand it to her; if she was surprised, she hid it pretty well. “I didn’t remember Cheyenne ever wearing a skirt longer than six inches,” she said, “so I supposed it wasn’t hers.” But then she looked at me more seriously. “I hope you were smart.”

It made me uncomfortable, but there was no getting around it. “Yeah,” I said. “We were careful.”

She nodded. “Well, that’s good, at least.”

“You’re not mad?” I blew a little on my coffee before taking another sip.

“Mad?” she asked. “No. Not mad. You’re a grown man. High school graduate … off to college … eighteen years old. I guess you’re old enough to make your own choices. If anything …” She shrugged. “I guess I would have hoped you would have chosen someone who was … special. A girlfriend, I guess. Someone who meant something to you.”

“You’re wrong.” My voice came out harder than I’d meant it to. “Lala isn’t like that. There’s never been another girl—who I felt like this about, who’s been special like she is.”

Shit. I hadn’t exactly wanted to spill my guts to Mom at the breakfast table. But I couldn’t stand the thought that she might get the wrong idea about Lala, so I went on. “You’ll really like her, Mom,” I said. “She’s smart. Whip smart. And she sees things, you know, about people. She isn’t someone who just gets blown around, you know? She … chooses things. And then she does them.”

That was the best I could do to explain how I felt about Lala. I don’t think it was the words I’d used that made the expression on Mom’s face shift; I think it was the sound in my voice. I heard it, too.

“You really like this girl.”

I nodded.

“That will make things harder for you.”

I didn’t tell her everything I’d been thinking in the hours between Lala’s arrival and sunrise. I wasn’t through working it all out yet. So I just nodded again.

“This won’t—change anything for you, I hope.” Her voice sounded anxious now. “You’re still getting on that bus to San Diego.”

I shrugged.

“You can’t
not
go to college.” Her voice sounded a little panicked now. “Not because of a girl.”

“I thought I was all grown up,” I said, a little angry.

“I thought so, too,” said my mom. She was more than a little angry.

We both needed some space, I thought, so I asked where James was.

“He’s with your dad. They’re helping the Wilsons load their truck.” She wasn’t anxious for me to change the subject, because she said, “Ben, there will be lots of girls.”

“There’s only one of
her
, though, Mom.” I wanted to find the words to explain how I felt. “Do you know how you’re always telling me and James about you and Dad? About how he was
the one
?”

Mom took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Ben,” she said, “you know I love your father. I wouldn’t undo what we’ve made together, not for anything in the world. But Ben, I don’t think I ever said your father was
the one
.”

I blinked. “You mean there was someone else? Some other guy you wanted to marry?”

She laughed. “Sure, Ben, there were a few of them.”

“I don’t get it.”

She sighed. “You’re eighteen, Ben, and you’re going off to college, but in some ways you’re still a boy.”

“Okay, fine, I’m just a big kid now. Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”

“Sweetheart, I don’t think there
is
a ‘one.’ Your father probably doesn’t either, though he’d never admit it in front of me. There are lots of paths,” she said, “lots of people. Probably there are
dozens
of men—maybe even hundreds—I could have fallen in love with, married, even raised a family with, given the right set of circumstances.”

“Real romantic,” I scoffed.

“Maybe not,” she said. “But I would have thought that would appeal to you.”

“To
me
?”

She nodded. “Crossing the finish line is pretty romantic,” she said, “but I’ve seen you after practice. Nothing real romantic about that—the sweat, the stink of your shoes.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point? Anyone could break the ribbon if you set him down magically right in front of it. But that’s not how you get there.”

I didn’t like the way she was using my running as a metaphor for whatever point she was trying to make. Lala was just a couple of walls away, still sleeping, and what I wanted was to crawl back into bed with her.

“No, Mom, I get there by running. I get it.”

“Do you? I don’t think so. A successful long-term relationship, Ben, is about a whole lot more than sex, or even finding the right person. It’s about a hell of a lot of work. Even when you feel like walking away.”

“I’m not afraid of work.”

“I know that, sweetheart. We’ve all seen how hard you’ve worked—on your running, your grades, all of that. Now imagine all that work times about a hundred, and you’ll have the beginning of an idea of what it means to be a husband and a father.”

“Who said anything about me being a
father
?”

“Condoms break.”

“Well, ours didn’t.”

“Not this time. But they do break. I can promise you that.”

It took me a minute to figure out what she meant. But then I saw it. “You mean—you and Dad—”

“That’s right.”

“But I thought you were high school sweethearts. That you loved each other.”

“Absolutely we were—off and on. And after I got pregnant with you, we got married. We moved to Gypsum. And I wouldn’t undo it, Ben, like I said, not for anything. That’s not what I’m trying to say. What I want to say is this—choose your path, Ben, and choose it carefully. Don’t lie to yourself about where it might lead.”

“Dad couldn’t have known moving here would turn out like this,” I said, gesturing to the boxes everywhere.

“No, that’s true. And it could have turned out differently, if the housing market had held.” She sighed, and for a second she looked lost. “I don’t know, Ben. I don’t have any of the answers. I guess any path could take you places you might not expect. Hell.” She laughed. “I never thought I’d be moving back to Reno.”

Mom looked at me like she wished she had something more to offer me, and I thought of that stupid story she used to read me about this tree and a boy. The tree just gave and gave until it was a stump, until it had nothing left. I thought about Pops, out in his garage, reorganizing his stuff for a life he never intended.

Maybe I would have said something more, but then I heard something from my room. Lala was awake. Drinking the last of my coffee, I pushed back from the table.

Mom smiled at me wryly, and I wondered why I had thought about the tree story. She wasn’t anything like that, not really. “You’re a good man, Ben. I’m sure you’ll do what is right—whatever that means for you. Now, why don’t you see if Lala White would like some breakfast?”

I woke to sunlight streaming through the windows. The rain was gone.

I was alone in Ben Stanley’s bed, and I was naked. Perhaps I should have felt shame, but I did not. Sitting slowly and stretching, I considered how I did feel.

Like a cat with milk on its whiskers.

My clothes had been left in the bathroom the night before and my satchel still sat in the hallway. Perhaps I could find something to wear in the dresser. Before I looked for clothing, though, I wanted to see something else.

I stood and turned back the blanket to gaze down at the bottom sheet.

There it was—smaller than I would have expected, an uneven rust-colored stain. Proof of my virginity lost.

It was funny; I did not feel that I had lost anything. Quite the opposite, I felt as if I had gained—experience, independence.

I remember my sister Violeta’s wedding—the food, the music, the dancing and excitement—and the white flag
carried by the men of Marko’s family, a symbol of the sheet on which her virginal blood would be spilled that night.

She had blushed as she looked at it, and though no one had displayed the actual sheet the following morning, Violeta did share with me that her new mother-in-law had inspected the marriage bed before pronouncing the wedding officially consummated.

Violeta had seemed to feel mostly relief that she had indeed bled—we knew that some girls, despite insisting on their virginity, did not have any proof of it, much to their and their family’s shame.

I had been angry on her behalf, even though Violeta was not at all angry. More than anything else, this was something I dreaded—that specific lack of privacy, my future mother-in-law’s right to see my blood.

But not now. I looked carefully at the stain.

My phone had given me a secret window into the world. Through it I had seen many things—glimpses of other cultures, other people, their past as well as their present.

One day last spring, I had come across a story. I think it was fiction, but perhaps it was based on fact. It was about a Catholic nunnery in Portugal, and so involved a country—and a religion—about which I knew very little. I had even suffered under the misconception that Spanish is spoken in Portugal until I began to research it a bit.

I had known that Catholics have a practice of celibacy among their priests and nuns, but was surprised when I read that some of their nuns wear wedding rings, and all consider themselves married to Jesus Christ. For my people, a life
without sex and childbirth is not a whole life; bearing children within the confines of marriage is what truly transforms a girl into a woman, more even than beginning her monthly blood or becoming a wife.

This was what the story had said: The convent in Portugal, where their nuns lived, had a special kind of collection. Down the walls of a long hallway hung a series of beautifully framed linen fabric squares. Each square bore the proof of a royal woman’s deflowering, proof that she had entered marriage pure, untouched, a virgin.

And people visited this nunnery, and they wandered up and down the long hallway looking at each fabric square, commenting on what shapes they imagine they see in the stains, much as children gaze into the clouds.

But there was one framed square at which everyone would stop and stare the longest, imagining the story behind that woman’s wedding sheet: it was unmarked, perfectly white, clean.

If my blood were to be added to that collection, this is what it would be. Small, pleasingly dark, one edge smeared, the rest distinct.

It would never be displayed for anyone—not a husband, not a mother-in-law, not a hall full of tourists. It was mine. Mine alone.

There was a knock at the door.

I sat back on the bed, pulling the blanket across my body.

Ben came in carrying my satchel and my clothes from last night, dry and folded, smiling at me as if he was not sure what kind of reception to expect.

“Good morning,” I said, and patted the bed next to me.

He sat down and leaned over to kiss my cheek. Such a sweet, sweet boy.

“Did you sleep all right?” I nodded.

“Do you feel … you know, okay?”

“I feel wonderful.”

His face split in a grin. “Really? That’s great. Because I was worried.…” Here he trailed off.

“I have no regrets.” I could have said more, but there was no need. He looked into my eyes and saw what I was feeling, that my words were sincere.

“Neither do I.”

He took my hand in his lap and traced his thumb across the lines on my palm. “So what do you see in your future?” It seemed to me that he tried to inject humor into his voice, but there was a real seriousness there that I was not yet ready for.

“I believe a shower,” I replied. “And perhaps something to eat.”

He did not look entirely pleased with my answer; it seemed he wanted to talk more. But I did not yet feel like talking.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.” He kissed me again, this time on the forehead, and then stood. “Um—my mom is out there, too. She says she can’t wait to meet you.” His grin was apologetic, and then he left me alone.

Ben Stanley’s mother. No doubt her opinion of me would
not be good; I had gone out with her son unchaperoned, my people had injured him, and then I had returned to spend the night in his room. There was a word my people reserved for girls such as I had become—
curva
, whore.

When I went to the bathroom, I took the sheet with me. I had stripped the bed entirely and put the blanket and the top sheet in a pile. The bottom sheet I wrapped around myself. Then I took my clothes and peered carefully into the hallway. No one was there, though I heard movement in the kitchen. I moved quickly up the hall into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.