xvi.
THE GRANT
January 2028. "Phone works two ways, you know?"—something about this sentence, a big frustrating and unsettling part of it, comes across like a tragedy, or something just as close to that. No simple stories are ever made or are ever safe to hear, at least in my experience, once you hear that sentence, or once someone tell you that in your face, or when you're about to go, or when you go silent, or when you're loud. May it be in an argument, in a falling-out, in a closure, or whatever comes in the wake of dénouement.
What are the things demanded of people to get a good night's sleep? The light dies and I write after that. The light lives and I also write after that—do most people as well?
It'll always be about the mess, the wreck, the stain; of people, and people—anything and anyone that testified to this life as either a farewell or a long dream, as though the two are but lasting emotions, and you are either bleeding so much or blessed enough to have the grant of feeling them.
An example would be this:
September 2015. My mother doesn't know my father and I have met with each other, once, but it was at least two months ago before our finals. It was my first time seeing him after years. But I think I know why I keep lying to her, my mother. Did she have to know? I had thought. Neither have I been honest with myself, but I know why I want to see my father. Is it a simple enough reason to miss him, perhaps again be close to him?
It was once, after class. There was a man standing near the gatepost in front of our school wearing an all-too familiar hoodie; its colour a washed grey, missing another sole. He had a motorbike near him. Somehow, he didn't need to turn around in my direction for me to recognize him.
"Dad?" I couldn't hear my own voice as I called. The word sounded as though every question in the world had a mouth, the only tragedy is that it couldn't form a sound.
"Luna," he said after turning around, all observing.
Every muscle in my face was icebound, unmoving. But it felt like a little act of kindness to not be in control, to not have to outlast self-possession. It was my first time to have a name, it had seemed, but I didn't like the fact that it had came from him. "Luna," he called again. "How are you?" his eyes asked more despite the loss of face at having to ask.
I wanted to tell him I'd felt the same way if ever he'd felt also ashamed and sorry and regretful. After all, for a little time, he was me and I was him. Don't be a stranger, I wanted to tell him. Instead I asked but this, "Why do you call me that?" even though I wanted to tell him that I was given a bronze medal a week ago for participating in the school spelling bee and partaking in more extra curricular activities and popping my own bubble in the worst way possible for being inside the same circle as the smarter kids, those marked as 'probable', and my presence made them feel far out or rather gross or both, as though my existence was a big question mark. I wanted to tell him that I feel all sorry for myself for only getting a bronze, but somehow, there was a fleeting comfort in knowing, or believing, that he would be proud.
Can we go to that restaurant near the catholic church, order the same old burger and fries and Pepsi? I wanted to ask him that. And that I never missed him because I knew we'd see each other again. I wanted to tell him I scraped my knee during lunch time for running after a boy who asked me out loud why my mother chose to be a whore for having different guys every year on my birthday, and was I a whore too for accepting different gifts from different men, and just how lucky am I? I only told Christine about my family situation because maybe I was desperate for someone—not even a friend, not even a listener. And I guess the idea of having friends was just another tragedy for me: she told everyone and every guy in my class, and I wanted to cry and hug my father and call him dad and feel for a short moment we are in the restaurant in front of the cathedral, and smiling and talking and sharing inside jokes and making more. I don't know, maybe because I wanted to hear him say that he loves my mother still, and he misses her still, and he wants to see her still after all these years, and that everyone, including me, is wrong, very, very, very wrong about her. But who am I kidding? I never even told him how I was, I never asked him how he was.
"What do you mean?" his brows lowered. "Is this the wrong Luna? What have you done to my daughter?" he asked a standing joke, attempting a smile, but it rather turned into a sad one.
I at least shared his sad smile. "Why are you here?"
"I came to see you, of course," he said. "You wanna go to Dave's—our favourite burger shack?"
"I don't know," really, I didn't know if I wanted to—and talking to him; I didn't know if any of this could last.
"Well, I'm here to give you money," at last he said, reaching out to his pocket in a way that was somehow dismissive and concluding, as if out of haste. "I'm glad you seem to have eaten—we'd have to use this money if we're going to eat. Don't tell your mom anything, alright?"
He handed an envelope. I could feel coins in there. I couldn't nod or shake my head or refocus my eyes. At the time, I thought I would be grateful if the grounds collapsed under our heels just to slip and fall and feel something, anything to remind me that I was human, anyone but his daughter, anything but his.
"You're only here for this, dad?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, 'why'? I asked if you wanted to eat. But you seem full, so . . ."
"I haven't eaten since yesterday,"
A silence.
"In that case, you should eat,"
"Okay,"
A silence.
"Just so you know, Lune, phone works two ways."
My mother once had told me the reason behind my name, and it wasn't because of the moon at all: she had believed I'd grow up dogmatic and harsh and gentle at the same time; not like her, not as her, not something close to anything—as though I'd be forging my own form of salvation in doing so. So she didn't call me Lara, nor Lune, nor Luna, nor An. I had to be Ara, her ma cherie, at least I had so believed, to be saved.
Before I could cry, I heard the bike's engine starting. He was gone then, his image deserting. On the ground, I pressed my knees against my chest, but I could see and smell the bruise on my left knee closely. My eyes began heating up, my lungs compressing, the tears stinging more the black and blue.
Before I had turned four, my father and I would go to this restaurant with, I'd thought, the best burgers and fries that I had wolfed the meat and fry at the same time in my mouth while sipping Pepsi—I think I was imitating that scene from the cartoon SpongeBob Squarepants where a character, I think it was a fish, ate his burger all satisfied and burped so much after drinking cola. "Slow down, young lady, slow down!" he would say with a big proud grin on his face, wiping off a side of my mouth with a tissue.
It is typical, this story: my mother and father were never close, at least that was what I'd always espied; they'd never kiss, not in the cheek nor on the lips, never showing any inkling of fondness towards each other in my grandmother's house, where I had lived until I was ten, though not once had I deemed any kind of good friction between them, only the quiet—one that wasn't peaceful but unresting. I grew up thinking parents were like that: jobs and jobs and jobs in their minds. Nonetheless I was always close with my father; he was the first man I had ever loved. Somewhere back home, back in Sydney, I think I still have the first doll he'd ever given me (even though it wasn't a birthday present) in one of the boxes hidden in my closet—I had named her Sunny, after the name of my favourite day of the week: Saturday. Because every Saturday, my father and I would spend time with each other going on dates and parks and restaurants: he'd buy me these big balloons with big faces of different characters from my favourite shows, and I'd always pick any characters from SpongeBob, because I had loved that cartoon so much.
I hadn't any idea about child support back then, I had only thought that it was the both of us through thick and thin.
He'd take me to the house where he'd lived with his brother and sister and Mamu, his mother; my beloved grandmother who had passed away on the second night of November. I remember my father crying; both of his elbows had rested on his laps in front of Mamu's catacomb; until now, in my memory, it's still as vivid as the first time I'd seen him cry and vulnerable and weak and couldn't speak to his daughter. I was trying to hold him, but all I had heard then were sobs and whimpers, the different, too specific kind of quiet. All I had seen was the redness of his swollen eyes.
A man appeared on my fifth birthday, a different man. I had known then that somehow that man was going to be my second father—I hadn't been aware about the idea of having stepfathers, but the man was tall, taller than my father—because we had this whole body mirror back in my grandmother's house, and my father would do silly little dances with me, watching our reflections in that mirror, before he'd take me out to eat and walk outside. But this man's height, I had thought then, would exceed past the mirror's length, and I didn't like it at all—and he had this protruding adam's apple that had bothered me whenever he'd tried to talk with me; asking me about my age, my favourite colour, my favourite shows, my lucky number, but I couldn't remember how he sounded like or how he'd looked like; I couldn't remember anything about him at all. But this man had shown up on my birthday, I think it was at least morning, "Happy birthday, young one," he had said, smiling, and all I did was stare up at him, wondering who he was, why was he there, why was he giving me a little box.
There were my classmates from the kindergarten I'd gone to, they were happy and smiling and playing. My aunts and uncles were there, clapping their hands and singing the happy birthday song, and Cheon-su was there, my first puppy, sleeping under the table where all the food was. But I couldn't see my father's face, nor a sign of him, nor a gift from him. A couple of years later, I had overheard my mother and aunt Evangeline outside the door to my bedroom, they must have thought I had slept early because of school. But they were talking about his new family, my father's new family. And I think it was my first heartbreak, I think it was the time I'd had to learn to cry a soundless cry.
Since then, every three years or four, there would be a different man on my birthday, handing me a present with the all too indifferent smile as my mother's second man—though I couldn't be too sure if that man was ever the second, I think I'd never bothered to know. I had this resentment towards my mother, the kind that I myself couldn't explain, the kind which was somehow unfair and uneven; it had begun to feel like a second skin, like a normal thing to have for her, like something independent enough to be needless of denouement. All these years would ask me: did I need closure? Did I need an explanation? Do I still need them now?
Not long after, I had learned about things on my own. It was the quiet, I think, that had helped me know. When I turned fifteen, I saw him again for the first time in a while. "You're beautiful as ever," he had said to my mother, who wore her normal smile as a reply. At the time I knew there was still that tension, the same one I'd always seen and felt during their times together. We were at the same restaurant where my father would take me every Saturday, the three of us sitting on the same spot where we'd always be: the second floor; seven steps to the table beside the window that exposed the cathedral. Then I saw his smile, one that only he could show me, one that I had only recognised and understood. Then it was a time too strange to think about Sunny, whom I had left under my bed back home. I'd felt bad for leaving her there alone with the roaches and small spiders. I had felt bad for cutting her brown locks and drawing x on her eyes and cheeks and mouth.
Over the meal, the two of them had only exchanged small talks, small how are you's and we've been good's that all led to nowhere, at least none of which I could remember leading to big topics. The food and drinks from the restaurant still had tasted the same, but there was only the placid unhappiness and starvation that had helped me want to finish what was on my plate. Though two hours ago that day, since they were still married by paper and divorce was still illegal in the country, my mother told me to give a note to my father—she didn't ask me to take a look at the note, but I had to give it to my father. After lunch, when it was only the two of us again standing outside the restaurant, I gave the note to my father. My mother excused herself to the restroom when we were all past the exit door, asking not to wait for her and go ahead.
I watched my father as he was reading the note; he was expressionless, everything in his face was unmoving except his eyes, and I noticed he looked more mature and older, some strands of his hair appearing white. After he seemed to have finished reading the note, I watched as he crumpled it and tore it to pieces and left it on the canal beside the street, and he said quietly, scoffing, "Your mom's still a crazy bitch, isn't she?"
For a whole month and more and more and until now after that, I had resented myself more than I had resented my mother. How could I do that to her?
July 2028. These years, most of my spun-out hiatuses happen in Barnes & Noble where I'd read and nap and let the time simply pass after running errands and long exhausting walks from the university. There is something classical about it: this freedom, this enough and to spare, this privilege, this peace, this prodigality—I owe it all to my mother.
Here and now I'm reading Austen's Northanger Abbey and a couple of excerpt poems of Woolf on my phone, trying to feel the nearness of their letters out of a little desperation to spot and make out some prompts of perhaps this trivial wisdom—this wisdom! It is on my hands, and I'd say there's something, well, uncanny about it, and I feel like a nagger of all things catholic—into something more, you know? All month, though I feel like someone's prodigal son with all this quiet delight in running errands on my own for myself, I still can't help but chance onto something, anything to occupy myself and obsess with (I know the act itself is obsession, now I'm but a delinquent); as if the wider the peace you were in the more exposed and tighter you feel. And page after page, sad to say, I'm starting to think that this afternoon won't be lasting the way I've been bent on all week thanks to a man—oh, this young, foolish fellow—who happened to have a forte in chewing a gum very loudly on the couch next to me like it's his first meal since new year. The wisdom's gone the wisdom's gone the wisdom's gone. I think I am going to die.
Thinking about it, my last meal was a scoop of vanilla ice cream and tic tacs and a leftover pad Thai which was yesterday's brunch, and the smell of the gum is making my stomach churn (I didn't know people get hungry for a gum? Is it just me?) like there's a livid being chiding me for a grain of anything minty and salty and sweet and sour. And I think I can feel my insides drying and warming up like a pre-heated oven, my skin is beginning to feel rough because of the sudden rise of temperature which I thought I swore I was fine with five minutes ago, and this is my fourth time breathing in and breathing out but I think all they did was make my lungs smaller. The longer I stare at my book the weirder the letters appear to be; its words seem as if condensed into only ink and symbols and I can't understand a thing from a chapter I was reveling. I try to read a sentence. I only see the colour of the ink.
What a dramatization: I remember the last time I had something to smile about was, I think, four years ago, when I moved to New York to study in Parsons Art School. My mother contacts me once or twice every month to ask me how I am since I moved out, and since I'd been having a lot of projects, and since my nth stepfather died. Sometimes she'd send pictures of her new dresses, or a new recipe she's been working on, or a dog she finds on the street and she'd text, "This old girl. Look at her white nose. Should I keep her?" but I'd be staring at the street, its familiarity, and also the same dog I'd been seeing when I'd go for a walk after class. But I'd tell her she can keep it if she wants to.
After my stepfather's death, which was sudden and random and quick, mother had returned to her old career as an art director in a medium company in outer South Sydney, having no reservations to let me move into New York to go 'chase my dreams'.
In the final months of graduating college, I had already looked up schools in West Sydney where I could major in fashion and design, but it was my mother's some sort of gambit to just carry out an independence and self-standing in another country where her sister lives, aunt Evangeline, whose residence is on on the Upper East Side with a man she doesn't love and currently, it seemed to me, in the throes of another divorce, selfsame as my mother, who I remember saying a week before I'd known I'd go, "I raised you well, and you're a woman. What do you think of your aunt Eva's idea: you live with her in NYC, and you live like her?"
But I had also looked up how much it'd cost to live in a thronging and lavish country like New York. I couldn't find cheaper apartments, and found little to no reason to believe I'd ever get into Parsons because of the yearly expenses, and even the student discounts wouldn't do. But of course, I'd had musings of being here; I had thought that if I'd had a chance it would be at least ten to fifteen years from now, since I could settle for a community college or get a course in TAFE, that way it would be easier to stay in Sydney. But now I'm listening to a man chewing his gum very loud and I get to internally complain about it because he's about four feet apart from a couch I'm on in Barnes & Noble at 82nd & Broadway and a big part of it is because of mum and aunt Evangeline.
Though I doubt that it was ever aunt Evangeline's idea: me living with her, and even more the thought of the latter that I'd live like her. But she and I had been unexpectedly close.
Sometime in June, the first month I'd stepped foot on the country, aunt Evangeline was the person whom I had first told (as luck would have it) that I personally think it's cereals before milk, and chickens before eggs, and I could never want or love or crave for a man ever since my father and last ex. "Goodness, you already had one? Too bad for you. What was he like, though?" she'd asked, her smile and oh-so white teeth proving wrong all's real joviality.
The wine didn't need to make it hard for me to reckon a reply, but thank God she'd put a finger on my mouth. "Don't answer. What do you think about this dress? Your mum has one, too. And I wore it after I divorced Lincoln Grey—you know him? Of course you don't—no one knows him. Well, he voiced a character, a merely mere one, from that South Park cartoon-whatsoever. My, woman you sure are skinny! That's a good thing. Here, try this on," and as I'd reached out my hand to hold and feel the dress, I couldn't help but think of my mother, how, almost technically, I was still with her. She used to wear one of these classy Queen Anne dresses; it'd reveal the moles on her neck, she had four or five of them also on her ever-prominent and deep collarbones, though I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen those beautiful moles, those warts, those two uneven, grey birthmarks. She had stopped buying and wearing beautiful things like these when a glass man is in the house. My heart would break.
I had told aunt Evangeline about the (my) repulsive concept of a man: his smell, his behaviour, his skin, his balls, his way of thinking, the way his blocked sinuses made him sound like a knocked-out seagull and how it made me want to kill myself every time we fucked, most of when I wouldn't (or couldn't) cum, and everything about a man. We were drinking wine that time to celebrate my moving out—which, at long last, turned into celebrating my coming-out.
Aunt Evangeline had told me first about the women in her past, and the ones she was then seeing, and before I'd had the chance to gape my mouth and enlarge my eyes at the number, which was rising and rising as she was talking, she then told me about how Lucard Porter, her fifth or sixth husband at the time, would FaceTime different women even in her presence at the balcony of their mansion, but she'd be drinking her most expensive wine from the bottle, and when she'd be tipsy enough, she'd join the FaceTime and say hello and give compliments to Fiona, and Tyra, and Deborah, and Judea, and would arrange galentines with them, only women. Then I grew more frustrated after seeing his picture—my gorgeous aunt with this man? Those gorgeous women with this man? Baffling enough. I didn't care if it was a non-monogamous relationship. But that of course couldn't stop aunt Evangeline from having more women than he ever had or could ever have.
Later on I had told her about this delusionship (it must have been our fourth bottle) with a woman I had met before in the park somewhere in Surry Hills, and at the time, I think it was the first sober and dour conversation we'd had. "Well, do you remember how she looked like? You know, too bad for her, babe: you're a nice young woman, and I see you're a creative, eh? Your mom and I, even though we were death-or-glory reckless teens, we'd talk about being like this—like you. Oh, and I'm just happy, happy for you. Hara's girl's my girl, know that, right?" she'd told me, the swift then but now soft Californian accent in her tongue. My only reply was a smile as I'd felt my eyes getting heavier and heavier, my hearing blunting—but I wasn't about to cry; I loved the way I could feel the nerves on the side of my head pumped and swelled and hurt at trying to recall the woman's face and the little big conversations we'd had.
"But why haven't you asked of her name?" when she'd noticed I was at a loss of face for the loss of an answer—this time absolutely not because of the wine but because the last thing I do remember of the woman was the turning of her back—she had said more things with her eyes, all inquiring. But my body was heating up, so instead I sighed, "Even her back's so pretty."
When I was able to save up allowance supposedly for fabrics and transportation fees, I'd go to Broadway and 5th Avenue to eat there at a small, almost secret, Thai restaurant for their soup and beverages and good nibbles, but more and more people, mostly younger than my age, would be there, and I'd feel uncharacteristically lonely, almost self-pitying even though there's nothing to pity for—if there were, it'd be too vague and it'd be too draining to point what it exactly is, and if I'd become so clear of it, it would be just another migraine of a closure, and another migraine means another advil and a pack of Marlboro, which was a huge part of the year's self-discipline. Year-in and year-out: failures of my attempts. Though I've been craving a roll or two for months now, I'd long thrown out the e-cigarettes which once helped me write the best things out of the little, ambiguous prompts of my once everyday life: the lipstick stain my mother left on her cup of chamomile tea while reading The Hours by Michael Cunningham, or the mess I had made of her vases of wilting carnations when the two of us had fought over something I barely even can conjure up the laurels of my anger for.
Even though I had raised my voice and rolled my eyes and they hurt and I'd broken her things and stomped on her cigarettes and had screamed and had been mean and I hurt her and she never really did hurt me; that she was only lonely and was only misunderstood and was only with a daughter that was too painful to look at because she had her father's face and his temper and his tantrums, I never wanted to fight with mum, I never wanted to be like those men. I wasn't sixteen and careless and stupid. I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and mum's horrible daughters. Two of it would be these:
9th May: Went home with a hickey; lied that it was a horrible insect bite; got defensive of her question; a calm set of questions; she asked if the boy and I did something more; "I'm not fucking pregnant, Mom." I howled, turning my back. A grip on my wrist. Turned around, pushed her. She cried, quiet. I screamed more, cried more.
29th July: Went home with horrible test marks; red and bold and big on four of my papers; another set of questions, calmer this time. A week ago, I kissed a girl; "You fucking crazy or what?" she said. I cried the whole week of finals; got C minus and F. Of course I didn't tell her about the girl; 'she' was to be blamed for bringing another man on my birthday three weeks ago; said I wish dad was here, not you. I didn't mean that. I wanted to hurt her, maybe just because. I ripped my test papers and pages from one of her books. She apologized; I said of course, she must. For hours she cried the following nights. I resented myself, greatly revolted of myself.
The third, I think, was continuing to live in the silence and sound of my mother and whoever stepfather I'd had. Somehow it was comfortable, thinking I didn't have to be her daughter, and I didn't have to be his daughter. I thought it was better to be the silent lamb. But I was no lamb; I was rather the prey, her wound, her trauma, her sadness. I was her most silent prayer. I know, I know.
This would be the same homesickness I had felt a couple of years ago when my family and I kept moving and moving houses only to move back into the same suburb where we had first lived. I'm just not quite too sure as to why I would feel homesick for places and people when I know I never had been a part of any of them, thus another tragedy.
About a month ago, I stopped going to and fro the school to use the facilities to finish more work in my apartment using the new cheap cloth iron I bought from the garage sale downtown 5th street—I almost fought with an older lady because it was the only iron to sell for 80% off around the city. Out of desperation, I had told her I needed it more since I was a student and it is my finals this month, to which eventually she'd let go but gave me a nasty face before turning her back. I had been keeping myself occupied with the projects and assignments and groceries and all the planning of what to eat for the rest of the week since the day I'd lived alone, and the latter thought of 'planning what to eat' alone is absurdly exhausting that I would sometimes settle for reheatable meals, but I couldn't help that, most of the time, I'd throw it all up. Such a shame, what a loss—but what am I to do? The sensation of having something in my stomach bothers me, which is also ironically concerning because I don't know why I'd feel averse to food. So I'd been having this habit of eating only half of my plate to forget about the churning and drying feeling, and drink warm water at the end of the day.
After a while, the man got up and went to the counter. But even though I couldn't hear the sound of loud chewing anymore and grew numb from the place's temperature, my eyes couldn't still focus on the book. Before I got up, my phone started buzzing from the bottom of my tote. When the screen lit up there appeared Ryan's username in the number of several other notifications, a lot of voicemails and emails and X notifications from astrology bot, all of which were below Ryan's name—all month we have been talking about how things have been going on in Sydney; his new boyfriend, my old projects and 'wasted potentials' as he'd sometimes remark, his new frequenters, and the old me.
I opened one of the voicemails and listened as he was asking me about this week's book recommendations, my thoughts about this month's new editorial agency from the North (Ryan knew I had to apply for a new one since the one I'm in on right now funds companies that support genocides, and skincare and beauty brands most of which tested on animals—but he of course also knew that I couldn't possibly fly from here to there . . . I'd feel bad to have refused, but maybe enduring a couple more months would do?), and his rant about this man who had ghosted him two years ago has reappeared as one of the audiences (Ryan: "Bitch, nothing in this world could have prepared me for that little jackass—this ogre dare show his face after ditching me with some bitch named Soliloquy? His junior don't even go past no one's ass porch?"), and how he and Gail have been missing me and wished me happy birthdays. I thanked and returned the sentiments, sending Ryan a message saying I'll respond more later because I really need to go home and maybe eat.
It was past nine in the evening when I got home. There is something delightful about opening the door to your own place and the scent of it welcomes the nose and you'd immediately think of your mother. The solitary life continues to grace me with the reverie of being more like her, my mother; I'd catch my side profile thinking I saw mum, I'd leave a lipstick stain on my cup and think it's hers; I'd get a whiff of my own cooking and remember her Sunday's best—and suddenly it is Sunday, and I'm seventeen. My mother is cooking and her hair's a mess, my stepfather is hugging her from behind and he hasn't showered, and I'm around the family table, arranging three plates, three glasses, and three pairs of spoon and fork, and till it feels like it, I'm pretending to be home.
But I watched my plants wilt on the window pane in the cold of the night. But in the fridge there's no brand of sauces and condiments and canned goods from home. But my duvet is now all different and doesn't smell familiar. But my unwashed knickers are here and there with period stains all over. But I'm almost out of the fabric conditioner I use for my clothes and I hate it because it doesn't smell like the one mum used to buy. But my desk is empty of the things I used to love: my old journals, my old books, my old sketchpads, my old trinkets, but is now full of things I need to pour drain myself into: fashion history articles, organic and sustainable clothes thesis, this week's and next month's notes and reminders, small tubes of liniment, and lavender oils. But I still need to buy a new mannequin because the airport's TSA screens couldn't possibly let me bring her. But on the floor are fabric scraps and canvases and unoriginal textiles and a sewing kit and needles and a broken sewing machine. But everything's a mess. But I'm part of it.
Days ago I got an email about fee confirmation for the last eight months' term. Immediately I opened my bank account. After typing the pin, a tennis ball could easily fit in my mouth. –$2,220.99. And I just have about a month before rent is due, and I still needed to properly budget the groceries since I'm not that much fan of food (at least I think, or so as to gaslight myself). My mom has just restarted her career and I didn't want to ask for anything, and never do I want to feel like I needed to—properly same with aunt Evangeline.
But I'm still going to rely on my savings account. Three years ago, a month before I'd turned twenty, I had finally got the paycheck from joining a clique for amateur fashion stylists called Sin Avenue—though it is flopping now a little. The club's initiative was of a man called Dylan Hart whom I'd learned was very wealthy and a divorcee of also two wealthy men, one of whom starred in last-year's popular sci-fi show called You Can't Save Me, Mr. Maximus, and the other a frustrated and sophist fashion lawyer and the author of High Society: Designer's Bible, according to Lis, another member. Oh, these people, I had thought. Dylan Hart had told us he was retiring as Ales-sander McQueen's creative director, and wanted to use the last bit of his money in founding a coterie for the ambitious, as the career—fashion and design—is itself demanding, as long as the person to join is 'on the side of cloth'. But it wasn't that much interactive for an online club that I'd made any friends with, but I did meet a lot of influencers and some socialites which opened new doors for me with my small age. From a lot of people, mainly Ryan (he was at the Vanities team and he took care a lot of models; he was also the one who had introduced me to Gail, this very properly handsome butch lesbian—although she may have flirted with me and I'd flirted back, a little, she later told me that she wasn't into anything serious, "And so am I," was my reply. But I loved that she admired my drafts and designs and my cutting and sewing skills, "Amateur, huh?" she'd smirk, and I'd only smile—and his long best mate from a prestigious aesthetics and cosmetology school), as I had learned a lot and heard a lot and seen a lot. I was thriving and satisfied with my first design portfolio—I knew I'd grow loving it as it didn't feel like working. It was like this long and important leisure activity.
There I had been a member for a year and six months right after graduating from a small college in Sydney, and my mother added a quarter of her income as some sort of a congratulation for not being pregnant at age eighteen, and for making it to my twenties absolutely not as a stoner junkie you'd encounter in some alleyways, to which I'd made countless protests about her prejudice, although I knew the intention behind it and a part of her was right, and only right. I'd accepted the money and stored half of it in my bank account, having used a little of the other half to finally feel the sting of needle and ink my skin—I've always wanted to quote Hanya Yanagihara from her second work, A Little Life, and see a phrase every morning that'll make me recognize it is hers, and that Jude, in my world, is alive and happy and all his aches are gone, at last.
Then I had chalked out and planned for the new epoch's sine qua non: transportation and tuition fees, decent labor-saving devices, design paraphernalia; fabrics and textiles and canvases and sketchpads and a pack of 0.1 point pen (possibly alternatives for the ones I'd buy at mini marts), a sewing machine, online extra curricular for couture hustle and bustle, and groceries—I was then so confident that my decent earnings would cover all these up, but right now I'm sucking a finger that bled yesterday from using the broken sewing machine I just bought for sale.
Amid the little big commotion in my mind, I got myself a can of tuna and fork and went to the bathroom, looking for a bath bomb, thinking that a long, warm soak would flatten things down a little. It's Sunday tomorrow, after all; I don't have to wake up early and be late and eat and have long walks and hear the man's loud chewing of gum and I get to be warm in my bed, for all I'd try. I can think of something—I always do. Don't I? Don't I? Don't I?
If I do think of something, sometimes I would be left with only a grip of ambition, and that there was nothing left for me to feel. Still, I had learned to be grateful. Whenever I'd felt happy, and scared, and inspired, and sad, though, there'd be an indistinct, little part of the gray matter that wonders about the woman. In my most sober thoughts, I'd convince myself that she was just another stranger. And that it was just another park, just another fall, and that months later since I had seen her, I wouldn't feel bad to only draw the trees. The unfinished portrait of her is still inside the same tote bag I'd used that day in October. I couldn't finish it. But it was somehow comforting to not leave it back home. I wouldn't want it to be thrown away by mum.
And all these years I think about mum, and I. I thought I would finally be away and get closer to myself and get to know more about the Ara she would love to be, and the Ara I would love to be. But as I feel my skin tightening, the acne on both sides of my chin stinging, my height increasing, and my face drooping, looking maturer, sadder, lovelier, paler, I see mum, my lovely mum. She is sitting in the empty auditorium, in the middle; the best spot, and I'm on the stage, and I'm making her happy. There she is, my silver lining. She was my love for literature, and Sundays, and the quiet, and the third secret thing, and 'I love you'. She was also in the fragile grounds of what I was: my existence in the gaps of her and a man, and the bland taste of forgiving a man, and the dried blue Marlboros on the pocket of my jeans from a man, and my utmost hatred for man, and 'I wish you weren't here'.
When the tub was full, steaming the mirror, I arranged my hair into a high bun and undressed. I lit the cinnamon-scented candle I got from the dollar shop, turning the light off. Then I got goosebumps from the warmth of getting in and feeling the gentle water's stillness. It has been a long while since this. Finally, I opened the can of tuna and ate chunks and chunks of it, leaving my phone on DND near the rim of the tub. In closing my eyes, I hushed a song.
Happy Birthday, Ara . . .
Happy Birthday, Ara . . .
Happy Birthday,
Happy Birthday . . .
Happy Birthday, Ara.
3rd Person's POV
After a while, Ara was to complain about the discomfort around her hips and back and the sudden stiffening of her neck.
The first thing she saw was the wall's seemingly spiteful blue; in her haze the candle's light got weaker, and for a while she had no concept time. Realizing she was still naked and marinating in the cold, she was careful not to make ripples around the tub, because if she moved a little the dry parts of her body would feel more the piercing chill. Her phone was on the rug and she hurt her underarm on the bathtub's rim reaching for it. The screen opened. 4:51 AM. But the first thing her eyes did was stare at the four texts from her mother thirty-nine minutes ago.
Finally, she thought, that type of grant does happen to people, and she did not have to bleed so much or be blessed enough. She just needed her mother
Mum
Good morning, ma cherie. If you don't mind, aunt Eva sent some designs from your portfolio to a friend of mine, Mrs. Solaire Hidalgo. Auntie wanted your approval but couldn't wait . . . very sorry.
Mum
Mrs. Solaire said she loved a piece of yours and would like to meet with you, but I told her you are in New York and very busy.
Mum
But what do you think? That friend of mine is kind, amazed of you. Yesterday in my office we had tea together :) Aunt Eva was on FaceTime. And she says you like girls . . . is that true? Just don't marry bad people, my Ara. Hun let me know what you think once you are not very busy. Mrs. Solaire does not do any FaceTime with fellow creatives, so I think you would have to go home.
Mum
Mum loves you a lot, misses you a lot. Dear I hope you bought a good cheesecake. Don't grow up so fast, okay? Happy birthday, my Ara.