Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,21
very least, be a roof over our heads for a certain length of time, and at best it would allow my daughter and me to live without fear of someone’s violence. By the time Dad called from work to tell me to leave, I’d already packed our car to move.
When I tried to confide in my aunt and brother about the bruises Charlotte had shown me, Dad had already talked to them and told them I’d made it up for attention, that I’d made up everything that’d happened with Jamie for attention, too.
* * *
“I’m sorry, Steph,” Dad repeated over the phone on the night of my birthday. He started to say that he’d been busy at work, but I stopped listening, regretting that I’d called.
He tried to make up for my forgotten birthday. A week later, I got a card in the mail with a check for $100. I stared at it, knowing it was a lot of money for him to just give away. Unable to fight my anger toward him for kicking us out, I decided to do something reckless with the money. Instead of saving it to put toward a bill or necessary toiletries, Mia and I went out to lunch at the new Thai place in town, the one that had little bowls of rice sweetened with coconut milk and mangoes for dessert. Mia got rice so embedded in the strands of her fine baby curls that she needed a bath. I put her down for a nap afterward, sat in front of the computer at my desk area in the kitchen, and then decided to do something solely for myself.
Match’s website had been open on my browser for several days. I’d already filled out the profile, uploaded pictures, and looked around at the profiles of men my age. My parents had both found their current significant others on there, and so had my aunt. While I wasn’t totally sure I would find that, one thing was certainly lacking in my life: a social outlet. Most of my friendships had faded over the past year because I’d isolated myself and hidden from the embarrassment of my daily life. In the hours at night, long after Mia had gone to sleep, when I sat still for the first time all day, I longed for company, even if it was just someone to email or talk with on the phone. Not my friends who knew about all the drama that surrounded my circumstances; I was tired of hearing myself talk about that. I wanted to flirt, to escape into the person I’d been before all of this, to that tattooed girl with her chin-length brown hair under a kerchief, who’d danced to bands with a sweatshirt tied around her waist. I wanted to make new friends.
It seemed entirely too desperate to be on a dating site in my situation, but I didn’t care. I talked to men as far away as Salt Lake City, Utah, and Winthrop, Washington. I preferred men who lived a good distance from me, because there wasn’t any risk of me developing feelings for them. There was no way for me to travel to see them or for them to come stay with me, since Mia saw her dad only for short visits. All of that felt like too much work, anyway. I really just needed to laugh and remind myself of the person I was before motherhood and poverty had taken over every aspect of my personality. I’d completely lost that person, the one who’d been so free to come and go, meet friends or not, work three jobs to save up and travel. I needed to know that person was still there.
If I’d been honest with myself, I would have admitted to looking for a partner or that I secretly hoped to find one. My insecurities, or possibly my rational, realistic side, knew there was a very slim chance of that happening. I was on government assistance, having regular anxiety attacks, still unable to process much of the emotional abuse I’d just experienced or know the depth to which it had affected me. My life was at some sort of standstill in its new identity; in being consumed with motherhood, which I wasn’t sure I really even liked. I mean, who in their right mind would want to take a person like that on?
After only a month on the site, to my utter dismay, one did travel to see me. He