I thought about this—should I confess that it was the boy she met at the café? Or maybe she already suspected, and was waiting for me to tell her. But I felt strangely reluctant to bring Benny back with me across the Rubicon that divided our two worlds. It felt dangerous, as if something critical might be broken in the process. “Maybe.”
She sat down on the toilet and tentatively massaged the toes on one foot. “OK. I think this is where I’m supposed to give you a lecture, so here goes. Sex—it can be about love, yes. And it’s wonderful when it’s that, and God, baby, I hope that’s what you’ve found. But it’s also a tool. Men use it to prove a point to themselves, about their power to take what they want. You’re just the first rung on the ladder of their world domination. And when that’s the kind of sex you’re having—which is most of the time—you got to make sure that you’re using it as a tool, too. Don’t let yourself be used up by them, all the time believing it’s some kind of equal relationship. Make sure you’re getting just as much out of it as they are.” She shoved the swollen foot into a shoe and stood, wobbling a little on her heels. “Pleasure, at the very least.”
I hated how this made me feel. My relationship with Benny wasn’t transactional, I was sure of it. And yet my mother’s words lingered there in the air between us, injecting poison into my pretty picture. “Mom, that’s a really antiquated view of sex.”
“Is it?” She studied herself in the mirror. “From what I see every night at my work, I would say it’s not.” She caught my eyes in the reflection. “Just, baby—be careful.”
“Like you are?” The words came out sounding more spiteful than I meant them to.
Her blue eyes blinked rapidly, as if trying to rid themselves of an irritant. A flake of mascara. A flotsam of regret. “I learned my lessons the hard way. I’m just trying to save you from having to do the same thing.”
I softened; I couldn’t help myself. “You don’t have to worry about me, Mom.”
She sighed. “I don’t know how not to.”
* * *
—
The last day that I ever saw Benny was a Wednesday in mid-May. There were only three weeks left in the school year, and we were in the midst of finals; I hadn’t seen him in almost a week while I crammed for my tests in a last-ditch effort to bring a last few B pluses up to As. When he showed up on the bus and sat beside me that last day, he handed me a piece of paper. It was a portrait of me, carefully inked on thick linen. He’d imagined me as a manga character in a tight black costume, the pink fringe of my hair whipping out behind me, strong legs leaping through the air. I clutched a sword in one hand, dripping blood; and below my boots was a fire-breathing dragon, cowering in fear. My dark eyes gazed out from the page, shiny and huge, challenging whoever looked back to just try it, fucker.
I studied the picture for a long time, seeing myself as Benny must have seen me: as a kind of superhero, stronger than I really was, capable of rescue.
I folded it and put it in my backpack and then wordlessly took his hand. He smiled to himself as he wove his fingers between mine. The bus coughed its way along the lakeshore, warm spring air leaking through the cracked-open windows.
“My mom’s in San Francisco for the week,” he said as we approached his neighborhood. “She had to go down to the city to get her meds adjusted. Guess she rearranged the furniture one time too many and my dad finally got a clue.” He tried to laugh but the noise that came out sounded like the pained squawk of a dying seagull.
I squeezed his hand. “Is she going to be OK?”
He shrugged. “It’s just the same thing over and over again. They’ll dope her up and she’ll be back and we’ll go through it all again next year.”