I take a breath. “Yeah, well... I just wanted to let you know, I had to pop into the hospital last night. Just for observation. It was a little flare-up, but I’m home now and everything is totally fine. They just gave me a course of steroids to get the inflammation down.”
The silence on the other end is packed with worry. “Oh, honey. Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need anything? I can drive down.”
“No, Dad, I promise. I’m fine. Just resting. I’ve got Frida on guard duty, and my friends stocked my kitchen with more food than I could eat by myself in a year.” I try to keep my tone light, breezy. The last thing I want is for him to get in the car for the long drive here for no reason.
“Alright, alright. Well, I’m glad you called. Let me put your mother on.”
My stomach clenches. “Dad, you don’t have to?—”
But it’s too late. I hear the muffled sound of the phone being passed, and then her voice, sharp and clear. “Maya? Your father said you were in the hospital? Why am I just hearing about thisnow? You should have called me the second you felt something was wrong.”
“Hi, Mom. I’m fine. It was late, and I didn’t want to worry you,” I say, the practiced excuse rolling off my tongue.
“Worry me? Maya, that’s my job. I’m your mother.” There’s a pause, and I can practically hear the gears turning in her head, the conversation shifting tracks. “You know, this is precisely what I mean. This struggle, this fight… it’s so raw, so visceral. I’ve been doing more sketches for the series.”
My heart sinks. Here we go. “Mom, please. Can we not talk about this right now?”
“This is the perfect time to talk about it! It’s fresh. It’s real. I want to capture that. The vulnerability. The quiet strength of a body at war with itself. It could be my most important work. A series, Maya. On you. On this journey. Did you get any pictures while you were there? Even a selfie? The lighting in hospitals can be so stark and dramatic.”
A wave of exhaustion, more profound than the physical fatigue, washes over me. It’s a soul-deep weariness that only she can provoke. “No, Mom. I did not take any selfies in the emergency room. I was a little busy, you know, being sick.” My voice is flatter than I intend.
“Don’t take that tone with me. I’m trying to help you process this. To turn it into something beautiful.”
“I don’t want to be the subject of a painting,” I say, rubbing my forehead. A headache is beginning to bloom behind my eyes. “Let alone a whole series of them. I really, really don’t want my illness hung on a gallery wall for strangers to look at.”
“It’s not for them, it’s foryou,” she says with conviction.
“No, it’s for you,” I counter, my frustration bubbling over. “Mom, I spent my hospital stay knitting. I focused on the yarn, on the pattern, on the click-clack of the needles. I finished anentire sock. I did it to keep my mindoffmy health, not to wallow in it.”
“That is the exact opposite of what you need to do!” she says, her voice rising with an infuriating passion. “That’s your whole problem, Maya. You ignore it. You distract yourself with these little hobbies, and you refuse to confront what’s happening to your body. If you actually thought more about your health, if you were more in tune with it, maybe you wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital in the first place.”
The words hit me like a physical slap. Hot, stinging tears prick the corners of my eyes. It’s a low blow, an accusation I’ve leveled at myself in my darkest moments but hearing it from her… it’s devastating. Because she’s not entirely wrong. I do ignore it. I push it down and pretend I’m a normal, healthy person. I work, I volunteer, I paint landscapes with bright, impossible colors. I live my life in defiance of the storm brewing in my cells.
“That’s not fair,” I whisper, my throat tightening.
“It’s the truth,” she insists, relentless. “You try to live your life as though this disease—as though lupus, doesn’t affect you every single day. You pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“Because I’m scared of it!” The admission rips out of me, raw and ragged. “I’m scared, Mom. It’s the only way I know how to live. If I let it in, if I think about it all the time like you want me to… I’m worried it’ll consume me. That’s all I’ll be.”
The tears are falling freely now, hot tracks down my cheeks. I swipe at them angrily. Frida lifts her head, her dark little eyes fixed on me with concern.
“I have to have parts of my life that are just mine,” I continue, my voice trembling with the weight of this long-overdue confession. “Things that have nothing to do with being sick. Knitting, painting, volunteer tutoring… those are the things that bring me joy. They’re my escape. If you turn my life intoa project, if I have to spend my free time on lupus advocacy or posing for your paintings instead of doing things that make me feel like myself, then it feels like my whole life will just be… lupus. My whole identity will be defined by it. And I don’t want that. I can’t live like that.”
I’m openly sobbing now, the words I’ve held inside for years finally tumbling out into the open. I’ve never said any of this out loud before, not so plainly. A desperate, foolish part of me hopes that this,this, will be the moment she finally understands. That this raw, unfiltered honesty will break through her artistic ambition and connect with the mother I need her to be.
The silence on the other end of the line stretches for a beat too long. Then, her voice comes back, not soft with understanding, but cold and sharp as ice.
“You are being unbelievably selfish.”
I recoil as if she’d reached through the phone and struck me. “What?”
“This doesn’t just affect you, Maya. Do you have any idea what it’s like for me? For your father? To wait by the phone, to watch you push yourself too hard, to know that your body is attacking itself? You think you’re the only one affected by lupus? You’re not the only one in this, and it’s about time you stopped acting like you are.”
And then she hangs up. The dial tone buzzes in my ear, a flat, final sound. I slowly lower the phone from my ear and let it drop onto the couch cushions. The silence in the apartment rushes back in, heavier and more complete than before.
I don’t know what else to do, so I restart my movie. On the screen, George Clooney detaches his tether, sacrificing himself as he drifts off into the black abyss. I watch him go, a tiny figure shrinking against the vast stars. Frida crawls into my lap and pushes her head insistently against my hand, a small, warmanchor in my sea of grief. I pull her close, bury my face in her soft fur, and finally let the sobs wrack my body.
Will she ever understand? The question hangs in the air, as vast and as empty as the space on my television screen. And for the first time, I think I know the answer.
