Mid-Year
by Hope Kokot
You and I live above one of those places where you can get a great big plate of chicken and rice and beans and cheese for five dollars, and they recognize us; when I go alone it’s Where is your boyfriend? The apartment is a fourth-floor walkup, which I hate; it sometimes smells like pastellitos, which I love. I like to cook for you.
There are two bedrooms—or else my mother would never speak to me again—but we keep your PlayStation and my desk in the other one. At night, we crawl under a big blue comforter and you fall asleep with your arms wrapped around me, tightly, as if you’re afraid that I could disappear.
Your friends come over sometimes. They like me; I hoped they would. They smoke with the windows open in the summer and I cook them big plates of chicken cutlet and polenta. I’m good to you; I think that they can see that. I think that’s really all they want. I try not to lose patience with you.
I come home from work and tell you about my day and you smile, fondly, and sometimes shake your head. You gotta be tough with them, you say. Because this new generation is mad disrespectful for no reason. And I say They’re good kids, because they are, no matter how intent some of them may be on convincing me otherwise.
I ask you How was work? I hope you keep this job. I know how you get sometimes–antsy, and sort of self-sabotaging, sleeping in until you get fired. We have a fight or two after I get a call from your job asking if you’re okay because they’ve called four times and you’re not answering and I have to assure them, awkwardly, that no, you’re not dead, and that it won’t happen again, and that I’ll speak to you about it when I get home, like the mother of a chronically truant child. I don’t scream but l cry so hard that my throat hurts. You feel bad, and a small, shameful part of me revels in how utterly you’ve wronged me. I’ll say to myself Look what I put up with. We make up. Sometimes you leave and you don’t come home for three or four days; I know you’re at your brother’s house, staring at the ceiling. You come home, then, and I’ll ask you what I could do to make it easier; you tell me that it’s not my fault.
My friends come over sometimes. You like Manuela. She likes you. You and May aren’t close, really, but each of you recognizes that the other makes me happy, and you’ve arrived at a sort of unspoken peace. Kim always looks at you a little suspiciously, as if challenging you to treat me right, and once she leaves you nudge me and say She hates me. I always lie and promise you she doesn’t, and you always say That’s because you didn’t grow up with that look. I did. That’s the “wait till we get home” look. Sometimes she gives a too-toothy smile as she sees you coming in; sometimes she sucks her teeth. When you and I started dating, she talked a lot about the 2 train traviatas—you know, the vaguely vacant girls that you’ll see on the train, who twitch or stare at nothing or murmur softly to themselves, and you wonder how they got there—saying That’s gonna be you if you aren’t careful. I always said No, he’s different, because you are.
We watch Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and One Punch Man on your nights, and 90 Day Fiancé on mine. I love watching 90 Day Fiancé with you; I watch you as attentively as the TV. You laugh thunderously, with a sort of happy cackle, and sometimes kick your feet up off the floor. And then I think I’ve never loved somebody more, I never knew it could be like this. How do I describe happiness? There is a sort of buoyancy in it, and I’ve noticed it in you; I’ve seen you so happy that you float, with your big clumsy feet and bright smile. When you are happy, gravity bends to your will. And sometimes my heart soars and sometimes it is Tuesday night and my bones hurt but you’re there, on the couch, and I’ve never been so thrilled to do nothing with someone.
There is a missed period. You ask me if I’m sure. I am. You say Maybe it’s late. It isn’t. So I sit on the couch one day and make a list of pros and cons.
We could keep it.
I want a boy. Being a little girl is a terrifying thing. I’m afraid you will leave me. I know you won’t leave me for another woman, and I’ll take some small solace in that. I know you won’t leave me out of selfishness–at least, not out of the fun kind of selfishness, but the kind that tends to intoxicate you on your own suffering. For all your flaws, you’re not a dog. But I’m afraid you’ll leave because you leave everything.
And if you leave, I’ll have to stay. So I hope we have a boy because I couldn’t raise a girl alone. She would be nine soon. Then ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen–a little frightened part of me is still fourteen. I’d think of men in their cars pulling over, men following her home from the bus stop. I’d think of going to the library to read MAD Magazine when it was still in print and men breathing down my neck, of my fathers’ friends and friends’ fathers, of grown men online, of grown men on the train wielding their misshapen dicks like weapons, of uncles and cousins and boyfriends and my boyfriends–of men who choke you out in cars, of men who might sneak into her room while I’m asleep; they could be monsters and I would be so intent on self-medicating with dick that I wouldn’t even know. I have never been more afraid of my own loneliness.
And the worst part about it is that you never grow up. I’m afraid that I will have a daughter and I’ll see her when she’s eight, nine, ten, eleven, and I’ll think of myself then and cry; she’ll realize that another little girl is raising her, and that I’ll always be a little girl, really. A daughter is a life sentence, and if I have one I am afraid I will be slowly cannibalized by my own worry until there is no more of me left; she’ll remember me as a sort of ghost.
You would leave, but not completely. You will move—maybe to Connecticut again, because you lived there for a while after your mother threw you out. You will say I have a daughter when people ask. You will show pictures; you’ll say She’s my karma. You will come around on weekends, and on holidays, and you’ll have left when she was too young to hate you for it. I still think that I’ll hate you at first. I will be a bit of a martyr about the whole thing, holding my head up high and saying “I’m fine” when you ask and trying to guilt you with my display of dignity; gradually, though, we’ll become friends. Maybe we will sleep together, a few times–maybe it won’t even hurt anymore by then. Maybe it will feel familiar, warm, and on the bus later that week I’ll listen to “Still Crazy After All These Years” and smile, thinking of you. We will say our goodbyes, and then our hellos. Maybe we’ll be happier when we’re both alone; I’ve forgotten how good alone can feel and now I crave it terribly.
I’ll be a mother. That might mean I’ll never be alone again, or that I’ll be the most alone I’ve ever been. You’ve made me miss my old aloneness acutely. Maybe you should leave, for good; maybe I should have changed the locks a while ago and said You’ll thank me later! We could be at peace. I could even move to Queens, if I save up for a while. I could rent a bigger place–maybe half of a little duplex—and we could have a yard and a puppy. I can hear my mother saying I know Brooklyn has gotten so expensive, but Bensonhurst is nice, and then I’ll say Mom, I really don’t think it’s a good idea for us to live in Bensonhurst and she’ll say But why? But Queens is nice; I could take her to the little zoo in Rego Park in the summertime. I went there once, with someone else. It was a summer day and the sunlight fell on the trees and on the rows of red brick houses so brightly that I thought, improbably, of heaven. I saw parents dutifully taking their children to see the big cats and I heard lots of little voices gently shrieking things like Mom if I were a animal I’d be a snow leopard because they can read minds and Mira! Un cocodrilo and thought I wonder if I’ll come here again, with my kids, and if I do I might be happy. Maybe I’ll be okay; I’ll have to be.
And then what would happiness be? I think that it would remain a constant decision, but that it would become a little easier to make with each passing day. I would keep teaching—if I don’t ever end up moving to Queens, I might stay here, forever, and that would be good, too. Maybe I will be a good mother; maybe love is something that you have to practice for a long time before you can get really good at it. And dear God, I have been practicing—with you, with these kids, with my family, with my friends, with their problems and joys and faults and fears.
I would have to drop her off at daycare, which is 300 dollars a month for no real reason, and pick her up as soon as I get off from work. I will watch her crawl on the floor—or maybe she’ll go straight to walking, like I did. I’ll hear her first word. Mine was, allegedly, dada; God, I hope hers isn’t. I’ll hear her thundering with big plodding curious steps and laughing so hard that she shakes and I’ll think No, this is it—this is the most I’ve ever loved someone. And then I’ll try, fruitlessly, to get her to shut up as she screams at nothing in a Food Bazaar. People will pass me, and I’ll make furtive, panicked eye contact with a look that says I promise I’m a good mother.
She’ll go off to kindergarten; I’ll take a picture of her standing in front of school, with a gummy, slightly crooked bright smile. I’ll go to work morning after morning, and then pick her up in the afternoons, listening to her talk in circles. I’ll cook dinner and put her to bed, reading her nightly dose of Greek mythology with every remaining ounce of energy in my body. Halloween will come and we’ll go to Yonkers to get the nice, big pieces of candy; after she goes to bed with more Reese’s that she knows what to do with, I’ll ransack her bag and gorge myself 6 on them. She’ll have a school project that she forgets about, one day, until the night before it’s due, and I’ll have to run to the corner store and ask Do you still sell poster boards? They will, of course, say No, so we’ll have to go to the Staples on–is it 234th? I think it’s on 234th. All the while, I’ll look at her almost murderously, saying This is a lesson in responsibility. I am not going to do this again. I repeat: I am not going to do this again. How am I supposed to trust you with a dog, if you can’t even remember your homework?, and then she’ll nod solemnly. She’ll have sleepovers and science fair projects and favorite songs, and you’ll be there for some of it, for as much as you can; maybe someday I’ll have to tell her Your father loves you very much. He just has problems. She’ll grow up and go to school and get a job; I’ll stay here forever, gradually becoming one of those elderly arthritic women who’s been teaching since the Crucifixion, and fathers and sons and mothers and daughters will all have had me. I hope she’ll call at least twice a week. I hope that when she says My parents had no idea what the hell they were doing it is with awe instead of resentment.
I’ll see Mohamed at the deli every day for the rest of my life; he’ll say How’s your daughter doing? And I’ll laugh and say You know, she’s coming along. How are yours doing?, and they’ll be doing well, too. It’s so funny, that the rest of your life can come to you so suddenly, on one November afternoon, as you’re sitting on the couch writing a list. And I will keep waking up every day—every day I will get out of bed—I will try to be what I have to be. Forever is a sort of threat, but also a promise, a daily rhythm of little disappointments and little joys and deferred dreams and new dreams to replace the old ones—and that might be nice.
Or we could have a boy, and that scares me, too, in its own way. People say boys are easier. I think that might be true, because sons are often raised with the expectation that they will, eventually, become someone else’s problem. And if we have a boy, I hope men stop impressing me so easily. There has always been something magical about a man to me, an always-evolving promise or an open possibility, perhaps because my own is too daunting. The more men I meet, the less magical I should find them, but I keep on believing, ruthlessly and in spite of myself. And so I am afraid that I like men too much to raise a good one.
I’m afraid he’ll wind up like you, smart and silly and scared of everything, and that he’ll have days like yours where he’ll just sleep and stare at the ceiling, and that I’ll get phone calls at work again saying It’s the third time this week that he hasn’t come in. Is anything going on at home? I’m afraid I’ll say I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me anything, or something else that makes me marvel at my own incompetence.
I’m afraid I’ll go home, my throat torn with tears, and tell him You’re just like your father; I’m afraid that he’ll hear it so often that it will sound like an elegy, and that he will retreat into himself until he becomes his own least solvable mystery.
I hope that if we have a boy, he will tell me things—that he won’t become just a stranger who eats all my cereal. I’m afraid I’ll scare him away, just like I scare you away sometimes with the weight of my “What’s wrong?”s, with my pleas and my piled-up laundry and my big anxious eyes and my apologies—and you say it’s not me but it is. I am afraid of everything, but nothing as much as my own weakness. I’m afraid that I am a weak woman and that he’ll know, in the silent way that little children know everything. I’m afraid he’ll see me cry a lot. I’m afraid that he will know how afraid I am, and that fear will raise him more than I will, that it’ll consume him so completely that he’ll grow numb to it. And what can you do, then, but smoke a lot or sleep forever?
I think about your mother sometimes. Living with you means accepting her ghost as a sort of squatter, though she’s alive and well and lives in Jersey City. I wonder if she thinks of you often, if she goes home after work and sits in silence—maybe watching a little TV, or solving the crossword puzzle—and remembers the son that she should have allowed to stay just a little while longer. I wonder if she ever cooks fried plantains and chicken sausage and thinks This was his favorite food—I wonder how he’s doing. I know you must have left some of your books behind. I wonder if she still finds them, sometimes, when she’s cleaning—maybe Diary of a Wimpy Kid and a never-returned library copy of Native Son and old editions of Naruto and Tokyo Revengers—and smiles softly. I wonder if she keeps them
It never made any sense to me, throwing your son out over some weed. I’m afraid that I’ll grow to understand her a little better each day.
I’ve never known a lot about the particulars. I’ve never asked, beyond a certain point. There have always been things that we don’t talk about. Loving you is about learning what to say and what to leave unsaid—its own little language based on a balance of silence and rambling honesty. I know that your mother was intelligent; you always say was, like she’s dead. I know that she used to beat you when you brought home a bad report card, that you and your friends used to laugh and compare battle scars on the bus. She was a good cook. She always had books around the house; your earliest memories are of her reading to you, carefully isolating each syllable like a wonderful taste she wanted to savor. She liked the Bible and Isaac Asimov and Neruda—good books and bad soap operas, you said. She cried a lot, often when she was angry and sometimes over nothing.
Once we sat on the couch watching South Park. It was the Michael Jackson episode. You were smoking and told me that her brother had touched you both. Yeah. That happened to me when I was a kid too, I murmured, and so we sat together in silence for a long time. What a relief it is to tell someone who doesn’t say I’m so sorry.
I take pride in the fact that I’ve loved you completely, with inexhaustible patience. I often ask myself why. I wonder whether I’ve loved you more for your own sake or for mine, whether I’ve loved you to indulge in my own selflessness. In any case, I have as little business raising a child as you do, and so maybe together we can achieve something approaching happiness.
My head hurts and then the door opens. You come in with a quart of half and half and a bag of Taki’s.
“Hey—what the doctor say?”
I laugh. It’s an Oh, shit sort of laugh.
“Fuck,” you mutter. You sit down on the couch and grab my hand, anxiously. And then I look into your big, dark eyes and think I could love you forever. I could have your baby, and maybe another someday. We could get married in one of those small, furtive ceremonies—maybe in a church basement—where I’ll wear something white and my mother’s friends will pretend not to know that I’m pregnant. Or—someday within the next few weeks—we could come home together from the Planned Parenthood right next to the H&R Block, and you will put on Moonstruck and hold me tightly, and again I’ll think I’ve never loved somebody more, I never knew it could be like this. And even if I leave one day—I have always suspected that my eternal patience has an expiration date—I’ll think of the smell of beans and rice and the way that you moved when you were happy and the blaring sound of Dragon Ball coming from the other bedroom and think God, I miss him—that was nice.
And so maybe I should leave you—maybe I should have that abortion. Some people are better loved as stories: Let me tell you, I was in love with this idiot once. He was the sweetest guy, but so lost.
You will move back in with your brother, and I will go to work every day, a little before the sun rises. I will make a million smudged copies of Octavia Butler short stories and still run out within two days. I will sit with the chronically absent girl after school the day before the semester ends until she hands in something resembling an argumentative essay. I will pretend not to be amused at the commentary of the shithead boys who sit in the back of my classroom—I’ll pretend to be a real adult, instead of a facsimile of one—and I will hear myself talk so often that the strange monsters in my dreams begin to screech about figurative language. I’ll get better at it; what is living all about, if not to gradually get better at something? And then I’ll go home and the apartment will be empty and I’ll wonder how it had so much space, all this time.
“So what do you want to do?” You ask me.
Hope Kokot is a writer and educator who lives and works in The Bronx. “Mid-Year” was previously nominated for Pleiades Magazine’s Kinder-Crump Award for New Fiction.