I know I should be honest with him, but I don’t want to ruin our friendship. I don’t want to…lose…him. So, I’m stuck laughing too hard at his jokes and flipping my hair and trying to wink with one eye to hint at the fact that I’m dying for a second of his attention in a more-than-friends way.
I didn’t know having a crush was so humbling. My belly festers with a flurry of butterflies whenever he looks at me, my heart has nearly given out on two separate occasions when he inadvertently brushed my arm, and my mind has started to curate these fantastical scenarios of our married life in the future.Little House on the Prairie-style. I’m setting feminism back a hundred years. I’m imagining myself in an apron cooking for a man. A man! Me, who thinks compliance is subordinance. I have too much self-respect to give my autonomy up for a white picket fence.
I pass by the forsythia bushes flanking the gravel-grouted walkway to my mom’s and my small, two-bedroom cottage, whisking past the tissue paper petals of ochre flowers and the trimmed hedges of dark green foliage. A boscage of pine trees cossets our small plot of land, creating a subtle property line between us and the barrack-like row of our neighbors’ equally weathered houses.
Quaint and rustic, the front-facing, high-pitched gable welcomes me home—framework for the chipped, cedarshingles that overlap each other beneath a profusion of overgrown vines. Ironwood trim contours a few external fixtures, sundering the monochromatic colorscape and exuding an air of timeless charm that gets mottled closer to the beating heart of downtown.
The stone siding of the house harbors tracts of golden-dot lichen, and the six-paneled windows on either side of the decorative, arched doorway reflect the alternating shades of gray dancing across the sunless sky. The forecast is still as dismal as always, the promise of rain hovering in the air like an omen. It doesn’t matter what season it is in Maple Grove—a storm is always a thunderclap away.
I race inside before the first drop falls, slamming the door and shucking my backpack onto the floor. The unmistakable aroma of my mother’s famous pan-seared chicken wafts through the air, evoking a hungry rumble from my stomach. I forgot I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Back-to-back classes aren’t for the faint of heart.
Even with her busy schedule, I’m grateful my mom still finds time to cook for us. I wouldn’t mind if she relied on frozen dinners occasionally, but she values family time above all else—even her own debilitating exhaustion.
“Hey, Mom,” I greet, strutting into the kitchen to find the makeshift dining table—an unvarnished slab of wood in the corner—overloaded with lemon herb chicken, buttery mashed potatoes, salted green beans, and steaming crescent rolls. “Dinner smells delicious.”
“Hey, Buttercup,” she coos, her words webbed with tooth-aching sweetness. “You got here just in time.” She finishes setting the table with two gingham napkins before taking a seat.
My mouth begins to water, and I sit down before my belly starts to cannibalize itself. I shovel a little bit of everything ontomy plate, disregarding the portion sizes as my mother unfurls her napkin and sets it daintily in her lap.
“How was school?” she asks.
My answer rarely ever changes, but I welcome the small talk anyways. “Good, boring, the usual,” I respond, stabbing a clump of green beans and slipping the tines of my fork between my lips. Perfectly seasoned as always.
While I’m lost in the culinary pleasure that will undoubtedly lead to a post-dinner coma, it suddenly dawns on me that I have yet to tell my mom about my little scholarship complication. Partly out of shame, partly out of a full-bodied resistance in adding to her already-heavy workload. My glorious, glorious legumes—now macerated between my molars—aggravate the acid in my empty belly.
I…shit, I don’t know what to say. I need to tell her, I know I do. I’ve already kept it from her for far too long. I’m lucky she hasn’t sniffed out the truth yet. I’m notoriously terrible at lying.
Pulse flatlining, the collar of my shirt tighter than a tourniquet around my throat, I slow my passage of food, relying on my burnt-out brain cells to try and change the subject. It’s way too hot in here, and the temperature in the house is never higher than sixty-eight degrees. My appetite wanes almost instantly; I lose my footing on the conversation like I’m scaling the vertiginous side of a saw-toothed mountain.
I swallow harshly. “Uh, how was work?”
My mother, thankfully, is too preoccupied with her meal to pay any notice to my deafening guilt. “It was good. Picked up another midnight shift at the hotel so we can pay to get our washer fixed this week. You know how it is, making all that unnecessary clanking. It’s a miracle it still works.”
My lips twitch into a frown. “Another? You haven’t had a day off in weeks.”
She flaps her hand, breaking off a chunk of dough beforepopping it in her mouth. “Oh, hush. If I had a day off, I wouldn’t even know what to do with my free time.”
The worst possible thoughts sieve through my head, crawling up my brainstem and suffusing gray matter: disappointment, death, DISAPPOINTMENT.
How do you think she’s going to react to the fact that you can’t pay for your own scholarship, Staten? You’re her whole world. You know she’d do anything to help push you toward your dreams, and school is a direct pipeline to making it out of this dead-beat town. You’re supposed to take care of yourself so she doesn’t have to. You need to pick up the financial slack. She’s already working two jobs.
Look, I don’t have an arsenal of therapy-approved mechanisms to war with my feelings of inadequacy, so I play dirty and turn the tables. I don’t know anyone who hates talking about themselves more than my mom. She’s always putting everyone else first, and I’m not going to stand by and watch her will to live atrophy.
“Mom, you know I’m worried about y?—”
She analyzes the arguably flawless poultry on her ceramic dishware, hacking off a chunk and testing it with refined taste buds. “Do you think I added too much garlic? The chicken tastes a little bitter.”
My words refuse to take shape, and it feels like grease is clogging my esophagus despite the little food I’ve forced down. “I know you hate talking about this, but I really think we need to reevaluate your work schedule. You’re pushing yourself too hard.”
“Staten, I’m not having this conversation with you right now,” she declares with a shake of her head, sidestepping the elephant in the room as she eschews eye contact.
Suddenly, the dinner she slaved over doesn’t look appetizing in the slightest. Unimpeachable guilt crowds the spaces between my ribs, and if I don’t expunge it soon, bone rot will afflict whatever porous substance is left.
I never fight with my mom.Ever.We’re always on the same page. Nobody understands me better than her. The one downside of being carbon copies of each other? I inherited her bull-headed stubbornness.
A wave of frustration rankles down my spine, forcing me to drop my utensil and drag her attention by the goddamn scruff. The only way we’re going to get anywhere is if I start telling the truth, and the longer I hide this from her, the worse the aftershocks will be.
“My scholarship donor pulled out due to a lack of funds. I have to find two thousand dollars by the end of the semester if I want to stay enrolled in school.”
