Half Moon
The mud was so thick we unbuckled our sandals and slid in that slick mineral earth, sludge squished between our toes. Giggling, giddy, like kids, your grin carrying you up the hill.
We had shared years before that we wanted children, so badly we’d have them solo, without husbands, whom we’d tried so hard to find. Surrogate sisters, we slurped oysters chilled on ice, discussed dates and sperm donors, devoured Spanish seafood and swam Sicilian seas. Spoke of our mothers who held us too closely and not enough. In São Miguel in front of the flowering tree, we tilted with laughter as our bodies convulsed with so much joy we couldn’t contain it.
That day in Kauai, my cough slowing me like the mud slowed our steps, we shared my symptoms with the housecall doctor in our hotel room with one bed that overlooked the sea. A hacking cough, you said, and we fell over each other’s sentences. He probably thought we were a couple, you said, and I laughed and thought, It seems like we are and said, He probably did.
I would soon learn you sought privacy, worried what others thought–I don’t like people making assumptions about my life, you said–while I spilled my secrets like water poured into a clear glass. And in our hopes for motherhood, I didn’t know where you ended and I began.
I could not have foreseen the words you’d write months later: pressure… impossible for me to continue, that you’d close yourself like a mollusk.
Days before your final email, you told me you longed to hold a baby in your arms, to feel the curve of your pregnant belly.
Is that weird? you asked, revealing a softness you’d not shown until then.
No. Not at all.
At the golden hour, we had parked by the ocean, orange light casting its glow. There is a shot of our shadows on ochre earth, our arms stretched up and tilted toward each other, almost touching.
Anticipation
He tells you to wait for him in the bathroom, the one on the eighth floor by the gym. You wait for the shiny stone he promised, proof of his love. You’re ten years old, and you know that a ring means you’ve been chosen. Your mother has said about your new doll: “That Barbie has an engagement ring. So she’s getting married!”
For weeks, he’s felt your pinprick breasts through braless shirts. You like the way he seeks you out, his light brown eyes and long, thick eyelashes.
In the library days before, when he’d slinked toward you and kissed your cheek, his lips warm, then gripped your crotch with his clammy hand, you squirmed away and ran. You sprinted through the stacks from the boy who chased you, past the librarian who said, “No running,” and the steel barrier bar locked at your stomach.
That afternoon, you shoved him at the top of the stairwell. He staggered back, fell a few steps, then sprung up and slammed you into the wall, said You’re crazy, and you believed him.
But days later, he assured you of that ring, and you wait for him in the bathroom, hum Someday My Prince Will Come, a song you learned to play on the piano, a song that shows you need to be saved. You hear the plink of water from the sink, the buzz outside of fluorescent lights. You wait in the dark. You wait.
