Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Maya
Last night was a blur of gritted teeth and shallow breaths.
The familiar ache in my flank started around ten, a dull whisper that, by midnight, had become a full-throated scream.
The debate raged in my head for hours, a frantic tennis match between two equally terrible options.
Go to the ER: sit for six hours under fluorescent lights that make my skin crawl, surrounded by the cacophony of beeping machines and coughing strangers, only to be given a shot of morphine and told they can’t see anything definitive on the scans, that it’s “probably just your lupus.” Or stay home: curl into a tight ball, clutch a heating pad to my side, and pray for the agony to subside into something manageable.
I chose to stay home. Now, with the morning light filtering through the windshield, I’m not sure I made the right call.
The pain hasn’t subsided. It’s coiled itself tighter, a venomous snake squeezing the life out of my kidney.
It feels like I’ve been kicked by a horse, the deep, internal bruising so profound that every bump in the road sends a sickening jolt through my entire torso.
The codeine I have stashed from my last full-blown pyelonephritis is barely touching the edges, draping a thin, gauzy curtain over a raging inferno.
My travel mug of coffee sits untouched in the cupholder.
I managed two sips before my stomach threatened a full-scale rebellion.
The bitter liquid now just sloshes around, its rich aroma, usually a comfort, turning my stomach.
I’m driving to school more than an hour before I need to be there, not out of an overabundance of first-day diligence, but because my apartment suddenly felt suffocating.
The four walls, my carefully curated sanctuary of plants and art, had morphed into a sickroom.
The dent in the sofa cushion where I’d writhed all night seemed to mock me.
I had to get out. I had to pretend this was a normal day.
My phone buzzes against the passenger seat, a shrill, insistent vibration. I glance over. It’s Mom.
Good luck on your first day, sweetie! Don't forget to check your email! xoxo Mom.
A familiar, bitter heat floods my chest, a sensation almost as unpleasant as the pain in my back.
I know exactly what the email will be about.
I don’t even have to look. She gets up at five every morning, paints for two hours while the world is quiet, and then, fueled by creative energy and a misguided sense of helpfulness, she turns her attention to fixing my life.
I pull into the still-empty faculty parking lot, the gravel crunching under my tires, and kill the engine. The silence is a relief. I lean my head back against the seat, closing my eyes, and pull up my email on my phone. There’s the email with the subject line: An Amazing Opportunity!
Inside is a long, rambling message about a local journalist she met at a gallery opening.
A woman named Debra Potter who is, apparently, a huge fan of my mother’s landscapes.
Debra is writing a feature for the Portsmouth Herald on “the silent struggle of young women with autoimmune diseases.” Mom, of course, immediately thought of me.
She’s already given Debra my name, told her all about my “brave journey with lupus,” and has copied me on this email to facilitate an introduction.
She thinks I would be the perfect interviewee.
My thumb hovers over the delete button. The frustration is so acute it makes my teeth ache.
She doesn’t see me. She sees a story, a narrative, a cause.
My illness has become her part-time crusade.
Last year was the apex of her campaign to make me the poster child for chronic illness.
Without so much as a conversation, she booked us as guests on a podcast called Mothers & Warriors, a show about moms supporting their daughters through chronic health battles.
She presented it to me as a done deal, a fun mother-daughter activity, like getting pedicures.
She’d completely ignored the fact that the recording was scheduled for the same Saturday as the fifth grade county-wide art fair, an event I had spent months planning, coordinating with the art teachers from the other elementary schools in our county, and pouring every ounce of my non-lupus-ravaged energy into.
When I told her I couldn’t do it, that the art fair was my priority, my professional responsibility, she was genuinely baffled. “But Maya,” she’d said, her voice laced with that wounded disappointment she wields like a weapon, “this is a chance to inspire people. The art fair is just for kids.”
The argument culminated in a spectacular, wine-fueled blow-out at Thanksgiving, where I finally screamed the words that had been building for years: “It’s my disease, Mom!
Not your narrative! I am not your damn inspiration porn!
” The silence that followed was as cold and heavy as a lead blanket.
We’ve been tiptoeing around each other ever since.
And now this. A journalist. I don’t have time for a journalist. I have a classroom to put the finishing touches on, lesson plans to finalize, and a horde of elementary schoolers to shepherd through the anxieties of the first day.
More importantly, I don’t want to talk to a journalist. I don’t want my pain and exhaustion packaged into a neat, thousand-word article for strangers to consume with their morning coffee.
Shoving the phone into my bag, I get out of the car.
The morning air is cool and smells of damp earth and cut grass.
I was hoping for a few quiet minutes to put the final touches on the room, to lose myself in the comforting, tactile world of sorting clay and sharpening pencils.
But as I approach the main entrance, my hopes for a quiet morning before the students arrive evaporate.
A figure is standing by the doors, arms crossed over a crisp button-up shirt. Trevor Delaney, the new principal.
“Ms. Gershawn,” he says. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’re here early.”
I had a bad feeling about him as soon as Anne told me about her retirement and mentioned he would be taking over as principal.
Then, when I met him during the pre-school-year staff meeting that bad feeling had grown even more.
He’s exactly the type: a middle-aged former gym teacher who coached his way up the administrative ladder, full of corporate jargon about ‘synergy’ and ‘optimizing outcomes.’ He has the entitled swagger of a man who has never been told no.
“Just wanted to get a head start,” I say, forcing a pleasant tone.
His gaze sweeps over me, landing on the bag overflowing with colorful paper and other art supplies slung over my shoulder. A flicker of disdain crosses his face before he masks it. The rumors are true, then. He thinks art is a fluff class, a budgetary line item he’d love to slash.
“I’m glad I caught you,” he says, his voice dropping to a more serious register. “Could you spare a moment? In my office.”
It’s not a question. My stomach, already a roiling mess of pain and frustration, clenches into a tight, cold knot.
I follow him through the silent, bright hallways.
The familiar smell of floor wax and the hot breakfast being made in the school kitchen does nothing to soothe my nerves.
His office is sterile and beige, the walls adorned with generic motivational posters and a framed photo of him on a golf course.
He gestures to a hard-backed chair and settles himself behind a large, mahogany desk that’s conspicuously free of clutter.
“So,” he begins, steepling his fingers. “I received a call this morning. From a parent.”
I wait. The first day of school hasn’t even started. What could a parent possibly have to complain about this early in the morning?
“A Mrs. Albright. Her son, Jason, was in fourth grade last year.”
My mind races. Jason Albright. A sweet, quiet boy. A talented little artist. I can’t imagine what problem she could have.
“She was going through his old schoolwork,” Trevor continues, his tone maddeningly placid. “Organizing it. She came across the end-of-year booklet project you did.”
I nod slowly. The project was one of my favorites. Each student chose their favorite book they’d read that year and created a small, hand-bound booklet with illustrations of their favorite scenes.
“She was concerned about one of Jason’s illustrations,” he says, finally getting to the point. “For a book about marine life in the Gulf of Maine. He drew a picture of a lobster swimming in the ocean.”
I stare at him, completely baffled. “A lobster?”
“A lobster,” Trevor confirms, “with a thermometer next to it in the water. The thermometer’s red line was very high. According to Mrs. Albright, it was clearly meant to depict the rising temperature of the ocean.”
For a moment, I think it’s a joke. A very, very strange prank. “Yes,” I say carefully. “The book discussed the impact of warming waters on the lobster population. Jason was just illustrating what he’d read.”
Trevor sighs, a put-upon sound that grates on my last nerve. “Well, Mrs. Albright feels that this is… problematic. She’s concerned that we are spreading the conspiracy of climate change.”
The words hang in the airless office. The conspiracy of climate change.
The sheer, weaponized ignorance of the phrase makes my head spin.
The pressure behind my eyes builds, and for a terrifying second, I think I might actually be sick all over his pristine desk.
My hands are balled into fists in my lap.
“Trevor,” I say, my voice dangerously low. “It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a scientifically documented fact. It was in the book the child was reading.”