I checked my phone again, my blue messages staring back at me.

emily!!
please respond. did you leave?

I locked my phone and placed it face up on the bar so I would see if she responded.

She always did this when we were out together. The moment she felt a man’s eyes on her, I disappeared from her periphery. Waiters, bar tenders, men who slid next to us as we grabbed a drink. It seemed she never tired of being the object of a strangers’ affections.

Usually, I didn’t mind. I was content melting into the background, observing the scene in front of me, front row to a private play.

Man, dark hair, blue blazer, enters stage right.

HIM: “What are you drinking?”

HER: “Well, I was drinking Chardonnay, but you might be able to persuade me to have what you’re having.”

New characters, same outcome. She knew her lines. She hit her marks. And I’d give her my standing ovation as I waited outside and watched her duck into a cab, a hand on the small of her back.

But tonight, it was different. I’d told her I’d had a bad week. Was it too much to ask that she cast aside the gaze of another to see the person sitting directly in front of her for one night?

i'm leaving

I sent the text, finished my drink.

​Exit stage right.

Sienna glanced down at her arms with frustration. Her whole body had broken out in a rash three days before and it would take weeks for it to fully clear up. She had known better than pick at the spots but had been unable to help herself. What were already eye sores were now real sores, a few of them scabbed over from her incessant picking. Her predicament was made worse by the fact that it hindered her from getting what she really wanted—to get laid.

Getting laid was no easy task even when her skin was clear, but now, looking like a child with chickenpox, the feat felt insurmountable.

She knew the rash wasn’t contagious. It was something she’d dealt with since she was seven, rearing its head at the most inopportune times, like when she wore a strapless dress for a piano recital or the time she decided to host a pool party for her birthday. She opened the app and contemplated canceling, but she’d already rescheduled on him two weeks ago.

She scrolled through their discussion: the flirting and banter felt promising. She swiped over to his profile and zoomed in on his top photo. The tattoos, battered tee and old camera draped around his neck screamed Bushwick bisexual in a way that made her mouth water. He could absolutely ruin her life and she would let him. Bagging such a man though, could it be done in her current state?

At least it’s winter, she countered to herself. She could wear a turtleneck and concealer and take him back to her place. With the lights off, he would undress her and be so blinded by the beauty of her naked body that he wouldn’t even notice she was more speckled than an egg. She’d sweat off her concealer, sure, but it wouldn’t matter as they lay splayed across her mattress. The sex would have been so good, he’d be panting and looking at the ceiling, not at her face.  

She bit her lip. “still on for tn?” She quickly pressed send before she could overthink it and stuffed her phone in her pocket. No backing out now.

She sank onto her bed, taking notice of her vibrating headboard. Going back to her place wasn’t ideal, but it was the only way she could ensure full control of the lights. Sienna’s roommate, Ari, constantly played their music too loud, the bass rattling the wall the two shared. She’d tried bringing it up to them but was met with dismissal. They needed to hold space for their creative process, they’d told her. Even if that process meant blasting EDM music from their bedroom until 2am, apparently.

She sat up and looked at Cheeto, who was giving himself a thorough bath, lapping at his leg loudly. She’d impulsively adopted him shortly after graduation and when closed out of her room, he would cry as if he was being impaled until she opened the door. The wails were a definite mood killer, so she often opted for the bone-in-room option, meaning her dates were subjected to Cheeto gnawing and crunching for the entirety of the hook up.

The odds were certainly stacked against her, but she checked her phone once more.
​
“def on”

The sun bore down on my shoulders as I squinted out across the pool. I exhaled and wiped sweat off my forehead as I watched Simon break out in a sprint.

His bare feet padded across the concrete leaving a watery trail as he accelerated toward the snack shop, no doubt to charge a grilled cheese and French fries to his parents’ tab.

There was no point yelling at him now as he was already nearing the pool gates. But my skin bristled with anger. Not once had he listened to my pleas, scolds and yells when I tried to discipline him this summer. And not once had his mother stepped in to aid in curbing his unruly behavior.

She sat now, lounging with the other country club mothers with their chairs turned toward each other in a circle, oblivious to the pool, to their children, or anything else happening in the world.

I glanced at my watch and blew the whistle. Rest break.

I steadied myself as I climbed down the latter and grabbed the leaf skimmer leaned against my chair. Mary Ella would probably come down to check on things soon and would have a stroke if she saw the leaves floating by the circle of mothers.

I walked over to them, ready to give a friendly nod if one of them made eye contact with me, but they were too engrossed in conversation to notice my approach. Thank god, I thought as I reached the skimmer toward the nearest leaf. Forced congeniality was not my strong suit.

They were carrying on about Samantha’s daughter’s new beau—“Vanderbilt and studying to be a doctor, can you believe it?”—when Debra shushed the group.

“Oh god, here she comes,” she whispered loudly, peering over her tortoise shell sunglasses at the entrance. I glanced subtly in that direction, trying to not give away that I was eaves dropping.

It was Ramona and her son, Diego, new members of the club. Ramona paused at the gate to wait for Diego, reaching out her hand. He quickened his pace to reach her, and they entered hand in hand, choosing two chairs across the pool from the other mothers. She laid out her towel and then his, tussling his hair as he sat next to her.
 
Debra smoothed out her blue and white striped one piece shaking her head. “I’m not judging, I just can’t imagine wearing something like that in front of my children.” The mothers all murmured in agreement in their tasteful one pieces and tankinis. None of them would be caught dead in a leopard print bikini. "It's just not motherly."

"And you know, if Peter brought home a woman with tattoos like hers, I wouldn't stand for it," Susan joined in. "It's a clear sign that someone is impulsive and a poor decision maker. It would tell me everything I needed to know about that woman's ability to be a good mother." 

I contained the urge to scoff, thinking of the cross I'd seen tattooed across Peter's bicep when he practiced for dive team in the mornings. 

The woman continued chatting in hushed tones about Ramona — they'd made their disdain for her joining clear from day one.  

She was boisterous, loud and often spoke in Spanish with the staff at the pool. The space she felt comfortable taking up seemed to grate on the nerves of the other mothers. Rumors had even circulated that she might be gay after she brought Chloe Caldwell’s “Women” to read by the pool one day. No one had ever seen her husband, so reason stood that the book was given to her by a female lover.

But for all the vitriol I’d heard spewed in her direction, I couldn’t help but admire her. She was everything I’d been taught not to be, and her quiet, confident rebellion stoked a fire within me. And though the other mothers seemed to label her as unfit, she was the most affectionate mother I had ever seen.

Simon had pushed Diego down one day, his knee scraped and bloodied on the concrete. Ramona held him and wiped his tears as I cleaned the wound, and I found myself transfixed as she stroked his hair and kissed him on the top of his head. I’d never seen such tenderness from the other mothers before.

When Sarah opened the package from her mother, there was a letter addressed to her and a book—“Finding Happiness Through God.” She smiled at the sentiment before tucking it under her bed, next to other devotionals and religious texts her mother had been sending her for years.

She could hardly recognize the girl her mother still seemed to believe she was — a doe-eyed 16-year old who was part of her church’s youth band, an active member in several Christian clubs and someone who prayed that the Lord would send her a man of God. That version of her thought for certain that by this age she'd be married with 2-3 children. She'd walk hand-in-hand with her husband into church every morning, their children trailing behind in dresses, khakis and button down shirts.  

She hadn’t told her mother how much she’d changed in the years since leaving home. It had been years since she stepped into a sanctuary, yet her mother would still ask her if she’d tried meeting a nice man at church, Your years are creeping up on you, you know.

She didn’t resent her mother, but she did resent the space that made her believe her value lied in remaining clean.

For years she’d hated herself. She’d said no, but she felt stained, dirty after being sexually assaulted in college. She should have been stronger. Her shorts should have been longer. She should have had less to drink.

She’d gone to church the day after the assault. She’d cried in the parking lot and cried on her knees while the lights were dimmed and a band played a worship song she’d heard a hundred times before. A woman beside her placed a hand on her shoulder and it only made her feel dirtier, unworthy of existing in the space.

She wanted nothing to do with a place that made her hate herself so much for something her therapist consistently told her was not her fault.

When my dad died this past April, we hadn’t spoken in six years. But I could still smell the tobacco that hung on his clothes and breath. I could still hear the Johnny Cash record he played at night, dutifully lifting the needle every time it started skipping on “Cocaine Blues.” I could still see his cup on the table beside him, the glass stained with tobacco spit and the inside littered with sunflower seed shells. I could still feel him ruffling my hair, an act I despised when I was younger, having to fix it again in the mirror every time I left the house. But I longed for nothing more than to feel that now.

Things took a turn when I was eight and my uncle Jaime died in a motorcycle accident. His brother was his best friend.

Two years later, my mom kicked him out of the house after he almost burned it down. The curtains were draped over the space heater he’d turned on and he was too stoned to notice until flames flicked against the ceiling of their bedroom. I’ve only seen my dad cry twice. Once after Jaime’s death and once as he begged her to let him stay.

I was waiting tables at Dennys when Dad started asking me for money. A few months later, I sobbed in the passenger seat of my mom’s beat up Toyota, furious at her, when she told me she was filing a restraining order. He’d broken into our house when we visited grandma the week before.
​
I wouldn’t look her in the eye, but she rubbed my shoulder as my body shook. “We can’t fix him,” she told me.  

“I want to touch you,” he had written, with an arrow pointing downward. Heat rushed to my face as I folded back up the note.

I told my mom when I got home from school and with her prompting, the next day, I turned it in to my teacher.

I hadn’t thought of Turner in years, but I cried when I saw his sister’s post on Facebook. Three portraits and five paragraphs on how much she would miss her brother. I was sitting on my bed with Susan who asked what was wrong.

In middle school, Turner often sat in the back of the classroom, propping up his DC Court sneakers on a graffitied desk as he furiously sketched in his black composition notebook. I rarely saw him with friends, but he seemed not to mind—he treated the presence of others as an inconvenience at best. We had nothing in common, but I was nice to him any time we had a class together. I never expressed any interest romantically.

Retelling it now, Susan told me I had nothing to feel guilty about. It was years ago, and I was protecting myself.
​
But I felt the weight and fear of a question bubbling up inside me: if my rejection back then was a drop in the bucket of what he perceived as truth, that he was unlovable and ultimately unwanted.

I looked down at the pile of hair on the ground and gently touched my shorn tips between my fingers. I exhaled and closed my eyes.

A month before we had broken up, Blake had protested when I told him I wanted to cut my hair.

“But baby, your hair looks so good when it’s long.” He tussled it and stroked my arm.

He had a habit of only acknowledging—and perhaps overestimating—my feminine side. On the basis of the three plants I kept alive in my Brooklyn apartment, he deemed that I would “be a good mother.” When I wore oversized clothes, he would tell me there was no need to hide my body.

And I was never more beautiful to him than when I was wearing makeup and something tight. I theorized that his preference of me in white had something to do with some kind of purity fetish he never acknowledged.

"Obviously, it’s your body,” he told me one night after retracting his hand my shin, “but I just have a preference for shaved legs.” He was a self-proclaimed feminist.
​
As I looked at myself in the mirror, it was more than the weight of my hair that I had shed.

I slid into the back of the classroom, hoping that by looking at the tile floor and not making eye contact with Ms. Lopez she wouldn’t notice me.

“Ahh, Sabrina. Kind of you to join us.”

I gave her a sheepish grin as I made my way to my normal seat.

“If you were on time, you’d know that you are headed to the wrong spot. You’ll be working with Ms. Smith today.”

I looked about my surroundings quizzically to notice we had indeed been assigned new desks. Monica Smith turned, her perfectly rolled curls bouncing as she cocked her head to the side and beamed at me.

Jesus Christ. She looked like she’d come straight from a Pantene commercial.

I gave her a weak smile in return. There was absolutely no way Monica and I would have jack shit in common and I was already filling with dread at the thought of having to feign interest in Real Housewives or whatever the hell else she was into. She was abysmally cheerful. And it was clear that the Starbucks she kept in hand—undoubtfully more sugar that coffee—was working overtime. It was humanly unnatural to be so energetic and goddam happy all the time.

I slinked into my chair and nodded at her, pulling out the book I was reading in hopes it communicated that I was in no mood to gab.

“Ahh, Durga Chew-Bose, one of my favs,” she said. She slid her Dior purse toward her side of the table to make room for me and adjusted her fuzzy pink sweater over her pleated white skirt. “If you like essays, it’s very different from Durga but I’ve been loving Randall Kenan lately.”

I snorted and stared at her trying to see if she was fucking with me. Kenan and Chew-Bose weren’t exactly "required-reading" type authors and I couldn’t imagine how else she might have found her way to them. She held my gaze, and raised her eyebrows, daring me to challenge her on it.

“Yeah, I like him… Which of his essays did you like?” 

“Ugh, I loved his essay about Eartha Kitt. People don’t talk enough about how much of a badass she was. I love a woman who can use her sex appeal to control the people around her.” She winked at me, putting the straw from her Frappacino between her painted red lips. I watched as the whipped cream began receding down the inside of the cup.

My face flushed. Maybe we’d have something to talk about after all.

When I left for college, there was a lot that I did not know. I had been more sheltered than I had realized, insulated by own desire to please. As such, I played the role of dutiful daughter well, a highlighter in my hand instead of a joint.

My mother had strong opinions when it came to religion. It wasn’t enough to wake up early on Sunday morning. It was best, in her eyes, to practically live at the church. I was unaware that four trips there a week wasn’t the norm for most families. Swimming through bible studies, prayer groups and AP courses, there was little time for me to get into trouble and even less time for me to spend with boys. When my mother pulled me out of a sex education class because I wouldn’t be having sex until marriage, I didn’t object. I heard some of the photos they showed on the projector were kinda gross anyway.

To say I was naïve when I started my unsupervised years is an understatement. My freshman year, a boy invited me over late and I showed up. I was shocked and insulted when he tried to kiss me.

I was good at making others happy. An expert at it, even. I knew exactly how to stow away my emotions to make more space for others. I could be anyone someone wanted me to be. A chameleon that floated from group to group morphing my opinions and values to match those around me.

Having always been so good at pleasing others, I was unaware how much would be taken from me when my body became collateral in my people pleasing game. I was accommodating. I didn't say no even when I was uncomfortable. 
​
I learned the hard way what every girl must know: that in pleasing others you lose yourself.

I needed air. The room felt hot despite the steady flow of AC. The weight of everyone else’s happiness was heavy. My skin prickled and the effort of keeping the corners of my mouth upturned became too much.

As arms flung around the shoulders of others and hands clasped, I slid through the back door and into a fenced backyard area. Muffled squeals of excitement traveled through the closed glass door. I concentrated on my breath as I stared at the glow of the pool, watching on overturned beetle squirm as it floated across the water.

My boyfriend and mother had both thought it would be a good idea to come here. To get my mind off things. But the lightness of everyone else made the weight of my own despair more noticeable. My best friend was getting married, and I knew I should be happy for her. But these days, displays of happiness felt disingenuous; a costume in the company of others I would quickly shed the moment I left. 
​
I looked around for a more discreet place to collect myself, worried the pool lights would give away my position. The idea of someone stepping out to check on me increased my already racing pulse. Joining the trip had been meant to pull me up, not pull anyone else down. I moved to a darker corner and squatted to the ground to pick up a pebble and hold it in my hand. I concentrated on its smooth, cool surface, feeling the stone slowly warm in my hand.