Iggy
You know how you can fall in love with a friend? Especially if you don’t have any siblings and maybe your family isn’t picture-perfect.
Especially if you spent your whole life wishing for that feeling that other people seem to consider their birthright, that
feeling of being known and belonging, wanted.
Ana and I both had difficult lives before we met in the dorm room of Sacred Heart College that fall. We both knew what it
was like to be left out, left behind, to lose. But looking back now, I see that the things that hurt me, that weakened me
in some ways, only made Ana stronger. I was ground down by the hard stone of my early life, but Ana was a blade who was sharpened
upon her ugly circumstances. Maybe that’s because she had Vera and Agnes, and I had no one. Just a dad who left before I was
born, and a mother who never wanted me in the first place, who preferred to drink than to mother.
Until I met Ana, I felt utterly alone in the world.
The hospital room is quiet, and Brock is sleeping uncomfortably in his chair.
And I look down at my poor body run through with tubes, a machine breathing for me.
And the only thing I can think about is Noah.
Brock’s mother took him away. She’s not the warmest woman in the world, but she’s a good caretaker.
I never worry about Noah when he’s with her; she’ll make sure all his needs are met, is careful and watchful.
And I know he’ll never love Marge the way he loves me.
That’s what they should tell you when you’re growing up in a bad place, that when you’re an adult, if you do your work, you can make your own family.
You can create the thing you weren’t given.
And I feel like I’ve done that with Brock and Noah.
I want more babies. At least two more. So that no one will ever be alone like I was.
But I can’t get back in my body right now. The toxins racing through my veins are wreaking havoc on my organs. I’ve learned
enough to know what they will do, and it will take all of my strength to fight my way back.
I remember the first time Ana brought me to Agnes’s and shared with me what they were and what they did. It was Christmas
and Ana invited me home because my mother was off somewhere with her new boyfriend, and I was just planning to stay at school
with a group of the other kids who had no place to spend the Christmas break.
Agnes’s house smelled of cinnamon and pine needles, was decorated so beautifully with organic greenery and real holly leaves,
homemade candles, and strands of gingham ribbon. When I walked through the front door, it felt like a dream. Agnes and Vera
welcomed me warmly, and I was given my own room. And I knew from Ana that nothing about the situation was perfect, and that
she’d often been unhappy and lost her parents. But to me there was something magical about it all. The home, the garden, the
kitchen where there was always something wonderful bubbling on the stove. It inspired me.
Theirs was a world without men. And that suited me just fine.
Because my mother had a parade of them through her life, each one worse than the last. And they brought with them their wants and desires, their needs.
They trampled through our lives and took and broke.
I still bore the scars—a cut just under my ear from Ben who threw a glass at my mother in a rage and hurt me instead.
The jangle of alarm I feel when I’m inside a room and someone outside turns the knob, from when Alex lived with us and twice after my mother went to sleep he’d tried to come into my room.
I’ll always take care of you. You’re safe now, Brock whispered the night I told him all my ugly secrets. And he meant it; he is pure of heart. I watch him now, neck cricked
so uncomfortably, legs splayed.
“Iggy,” he says in his sleep. “Please.”
I put a shimmering hand on his forehead, and he seems to quiet, stirs, neck cracking, like he senses me. He should go home
and get some rest, but I’m selfish. I need him here. I’m scared. What if whoever did this to me comes back to finish the job?
He sighs. If I had a body or tears, I’d cry. And if he could see or feel me, he’d wake up and take me into his arms.
Ana used to say that, too, that I belonged with her now, and that she’d keep me safe. And she also meant it in her way. But
Ana is a very different animal from Brock. Brock is a protector. Ana is a warrior. She’s happy to harm if it means protecting
what she loves—or getting what she wants.
I used to dream of being an actress. I had some middling talent and a decent voice, earned lead roles in my high school theater
club. My teacher said that I had a gift for “inhabiting character.” I never forgot that. So, as soon as I got to college,
I tried out for the theater club. Ana came with me on the afternoon auditions were to begin. I was so touched by that, but
also nervous that she’d be in the audience watching. What if I wasn’t any good?
But I was good. I chose the Angelina Jolie monologue in Maleficent where she curses baby Aurora to become Sleeping Beauty.
I infused it with all the same notes of barely contained rage, and sadness, and jealous vindictiveness.
I think I even captured the irony of her mention of true love’s kiss as the only way to waken the sleeping princess.
Which of course she and everyone knows doesn’t exist. That’s what I thought then, too.
That there was no such thing as true love.
I know better now. There is one true love in this world, when it’s pure, a mother’s love for her child.
When I was done, everyone cheered. Then I sang “Tomorrow” from Annie. And again, more thunderous applause.
When I sank into the seat beside Ana, flushed, exuberant, she turned to look at me and grabbed my hand. “Wow,” she whispered,
smiling. “Just wow.”
I was good. But I wasn’t great. That much was clear when Clara took the stage. A hundred times prettier, more confident. Her
voice was stunning.
“She’s not better than you,” Ana whispered, reading my mind.
“She is,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“No,” said Ana, still clutching my hand. “It’s you. You’re the lead.”
I smiled at her, appreciating the vote of confidence. And as the auditions wound on it came down to three of us, all vying
for the lead in the Sacred Heart production of Beauty and the Beast. The final audition was at the end of the week. And I poured my heart into preparing.
But truthfully, I saw in Clara all the things I knew I didn’t have. An effortless beauty, the patina of privilege, style,
extraordinary talent. She was an “it girl.” I was a chorus girl. She was a star. And I was used to not getting the things
I wanted, which I think is better. Because so often we don’t and it’s okay. Really.
But on the day of the final auditions, Clara didn’t show. We waited. Someone went looking for her as I took the stage. We
all waited, looking toward the doors that didn’t open. Clara never showed. And the part—of Belle? It went to me!
Poor Clara had been on the toilet in her dorm room, violently ill from food poisoning, too sick to come to the door or answer the phone.
Her roommate took her to the ER, and Clara was hospitalized, returning to school a couple of days later.
A couple of other kids who’d eaten in the cafeteria reported symptoms, too.
Clara eventually was fine, but bitter in her secondary role, showing up late, flubbing her lines, and finally dropping out.
“Sometimes it takes hardship for people to show their true colors,” said Ana when I told her that Clara couldn’t handle being
second best. “And sometimes,” she went on, kissing me on the head, “people like you get what they deserve.”
It was months before I put it together. It was a long time before I understood Ana for who she truly was.
Brock stirs awake. “Iggy?”
He looks over at my still, pale body, slides the chair up close, and takes my hand. He kisses it, then bows his head over
it and starts to cry. Ana hated that about him, that he cried. But it’s what I love most. It takes so much strength to feel,
to show your feelings, especially as a man in this sick culture.
The beep and whir of the machines is steady and rhythmic; I feel a surge of hope. I’m still alive. I can still return to them.
“I’m here. I’m here,” I want to say. I want to tell him about milk thistle and how it can aid in the recovery of the liver.
But I have no voice. And I just hope it wasn’t Ana who did this, because I know for a fact that she has no mercy. And that
if it was her, and she doesn’t want me to, I won’t wake up.