I said I thought I was pretty enough. But I knew what she meant.
Lelah then wrapped her arms around my back, pulled me toward her, and buried my face in her breasts. Because, I guess, my face was chest-level anyway. My hands dangled at my sides. I giggled. Because it was the subway platform, I giggled.
Beck noticed the car. She called, pissed, and demanded I find somewhere to fix it, pay for it myself. This was fair enough, I suppose, except that being fired made the paying difficult. I drove Beck’s car from her apartment, over the bridge, to right around the corner from my apartment. There is an auto body shop there. Last month as I was carrying my clean laundry home, the auto body man came and asked if I was new to the neighborhood. I was, sort of. We chatted briefly. I felt happy to live in the sort of neighborhood where people ask if you are new to the neighborhood. And now I was even happier to feel like I wouldn’t be shysted by some car shyster, because I was the girl who walked by sometimes smiling with a bag of fresh laundry.
This auto body man reattached Beck’s bumper, and I felt the mission of the day was completed. I felt good. I wanted to do more good things. I remembered Lelah was in the middle of moving. I wasn’t sure Beck’s offer still stood, now that I was an unreliable driver, now that we were just friends. Still, I called her. I left a message that I was going to help Lelah move. Then I called Lelah.
“This is amazing.” Her voice sang like windup blue birds. “I have been so stressed out about this whole moving thing.”
I went home and walked into Lelah’s room. Lelah’s room had always been filled with things. You couldn’t see the floor but it was somehow warm and comforting. Musty and red; dark and nutritive.
But now Lelah’s room was empty. Empty of vibrant photos and inspirational postcards; empty of clothes on the floor; empty of sunrise-colored fabrics draped from wall to ceiling and ceiling to floor; empty of its furniture and its overwhelming sage-and-marijuana smell. White and bright with fresh air. It had a quality of openness and possibility I had never before experienced in a room, as though so much had been killed and now something else could spring up new, alive. It was the emptiest room I had ever been inside. And with the spring air coming in through the open window, it felt wonderful. I laid on the hardwood floor and felt the breeze lap between my legs under my short skirt and smiled and mmhhed. The room was empty and I felt light. I wanted to make dust angels on the wood floor. I made one. I giggled. Like a child, I made dust angels on the floor and giggled.
Lelah laid next to me and forced my head onto her belly as she does sometimes, sometimes, a lot. I didn’t care. I didn’t care because the room suddenly felt like a strange, safe land where only good things could happen. Cool golden-blue light was swirling above me, as if in a weak vacuum toward the sun. Lelah pulled my head further onto her body, holding me with her other arm as though I were a long-lost child; a last hope; a dying wish—an oracle and a warm pillow. “Are you okay with money, little dove?” Lelah asked. I shook my head, accidentally burying my face deeper.
