11. Nicola
Nicola
“Mom, your face looks weird,” she says to me while I’m cooking.
“This is just my face. I’m concentrating.” Maybe I’m in denial, but I feel like she doesn’t realize the extent to which we are struggling yet.
“You look worried.”
“I’m not worried,” I lie.
“Are you tired?”
“Probably.”
“Is it because you feel like shit or something?”
“Don’t curse. I guess my leg is hurting today.”
Emmy thinks for a moment while I drain the macaroni and stir in the packet of cheese sauce. It’s lumpy and makes everything look vaguely like vomit as it goes in.
“You know, I’ve got like five hundred bucks I’ve saved up,” she offers. “Do you think that would help us out?”
“Where did you get five hundred dollars, Em?”
She shrugs and looks down at her computer. “Just, you know, birthday and Christmas money I saved up for a while. But I want to give it to you so you don’t have to stress so much. Every little bit helps, right?”
I look up at her, tears filling my eyes, wondering what I did to deserve her. I see Ben in Emmy. I see us in Emmy. We must have done something right to make this kind, strong, young woman. If I were put on this planet only so that she could exist and grow, then I have lived rightly.
I come around the kitchen counter and wrap Emmy in my arms. She relaxes a little into me, and I kiss her cheek. “Thanks, baby girl, but that’s your money. You keep it.” I look into her big brown eyes and touch her soft brown hair, the scar still pink and tender. “How’d you get to be so damn wise?”
Emmy shrugs. “You and Dad, obviously.”
“That’s beautiful, Em,” I say, hugging her.
“Also, I watch a lot of YouTube.”
Later, when I pull into the grocery store parking lot, I have a thick knot in my stomach and eight dollars in cash in my wallet—not enough for gas, let alone food, rent, or Emmy’s new prescriptions and mine.
My stomach rolls with the few bites of macaroni and cheese I crammed down earlier.
I flip through my credit cards, all maxed out, closed, or expired, and find the little plastic card I never imagined I’d have to use.
Food stamps from the state of California. I applied for them a while back because Dr. Constance said I should, but I was always too proud to use them. Now they are the only thing we have. I stow the card in my purse and look up.
That’s when I see him, standing there in the empty parking space before me, illuminated by my headlights. Blood drips from the side of his head. His face looks pained, misshapen, the way it did in the road that day.
Ben.
My heart races. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to steady my breathing. My hands grip the steering wheel as I try to remove the apparition from my mind. When I look up, the parking space in front of me is empty. Ben is gone.
The voice inside of me returns, and I stiffen, unable to keep the adrenaline from pumping through me.
Stop it. Get yourself together.
Inside, the fluorescent lights are too bright as I quickly make my way to the back of the store, where the display of clearance items is.
The stale scent of mildew and bathroom cleaner fills my nose as I approach.
A woman walks over with a shopping basket and looks at a shelf full of old candy and soaps.
She eyeballs me as I quickly snatch up a few items to help get us through another day—a few dented cans of soup, instant noodles that are expired and broken, a box of dusty granola bars, which are also expired.
I collect the other few items I’m allowed, then head up to the registers.
The gal checking out customers gives a half smile, which I recognize as pity. How must I look, traipsing in here late at night like this?
When I get home, I dump the groceries on the kitchen counter and put the few perishables away. A ringing begins in my left ear and travels across my skull until it’s in both ears at once.
Upstairs, I sit on the edge of the bed for a moment and sob into my hands.
Stop it. The voice returns, a stronger edge to it this time, as though it’s in my inner ear. Stop it, Nicola.
“No,” I answer. “Not right now. Please.”
Then get yourself together. Enough is enough.
At the mirror, I brush my teeth and wash my face without looking at my reflection.
I avoid my own eyes. A strange feeling comes over me, and I lift my chin to meet my own gaze.
My spine tingles with fear. The sensation washes over me, inexplicable, as though I’m falling through myself, as though the reflection will do something that I won’t do, and I won’t be able to stop her.
I step back, my whole body shaking, and brace the countertop. I shut my eyes.
She’s there. A bright, unearthly presence awakening inside of me like a sleeping child. She yawns and stretches. My body quivers as she takes form.
In the mirror, I lift my eyes to really look at the woman staring back at me. It’s me, and yet it is not me. Her face is familiar. I know her. She’s someone I have been before. She emerges, gentle at first, and then stronger, like a deep interior itch I cannot resist.
Hello, she whispers to me. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I blink once and try to resist her, to push her away, my head and body no longer my own, and then everything goes dark.