Girlhood

The windowpane is freezing against my forehead as I look out at the first snow of the season. I can hear commotion from my roommates through my bedroom door. It’s been going on since Maia came gamboling into the apartment, screeching Snow! It’s snowing outside!

One by one, I hear my other roommates getting home from the studio, bounding through the apartment like puppies, high off the snowfall, the weekend, the done-with-rehearsal feelings. It’s Friday night and I can tell by the sounds that they’re all getting ready for their evenings.

I’m in sweatpants (my nighttime sweatpants, as I changed out of my daytime sweatpants promptly at 5pm) and haven’t been out of my bedroom in at least six hours. I wasn’t at the studio today; I haven’t been in weeks. I’m taking a hiatus, I told my boss. I blamed it on an old knee injury.

The real injury is the crippling anxiety that sits like a rock in my stomach. The snow is a welcome, if flimsy, distraction. I’ve been sitting on my bed, watching it come down for hours now, looking idyllic against the backdrop of the streetlamps and freshly-strung holiday lights.

I try to count the voices outside my door but it proves impossible. It sounds like a lot. Is it possible that all of us are home? There are seven of us crammed into this apartment, and I can’t remember the last time we were all home at once.

As if on cue, Maia pokes her head in my door without knocking. “Hello, darling,” she says. Despite the inexplicable dread sitting on my chest like a weight, I can’t help but smile at her. She still has her dress rehearsal makeup on, glitter piled on her lids and hot pink blush packed up to her temples. She’ll go out to the bar like that and be the most beautiful girl there.

I think for a second she’s going to invite me out, despite my extremely visible intentions of staying home for the night. Instead she says, in an impressively innocent tone, “Someone handsome and salt-and-peppery is here for you.”

As soon as she sees my face drop, all pretenses of teasing drop. “Are you okay?” she asks, stepping fully into my bedroom and shutting the door. “Do you want me to tell him to leave?”

I shake my head, standing off my bed and willing my hands to stop shaking even as my anxiety rages at me, This is it. This is what I’ve been warning you about. I told you something bad was going to happen and here it is—

“No, Maia,” I say, pleased to hear my voice come out steady at least. I don’t know why I’m so certain of who’s at the door, but there’s only one handsome, salt-and-peppery man I know that would make the drive into the city on a snowy Friday night just to see me. I grab a sweatshirt from my closet and shove my arms through it. “It’s fine,” I tell her, even as my heart pounds.

She follows me out of my bedroom and down the narrow hall. The apartment is warm as hell, the windows steamed from all the bodies here, coats and boots and hats strewn across the radiators to dry. A pot of something fragrant simmers on the stove, and I know it's Rosie’s cooking without having to look. My stomach growls and I remember I haven’t eaten yet today.

I was right, and it is Tommy standing in the foyer—quite rich of a word to describe the tiny square of space in front of the door next to the coat and shoe racks— not looking abashed at all at having arrived unannounced at nearly nine at night.

“Hello, Uncle,” I say, attempting a combination of warmth and polite confusion. His expression tells me I’m a poor actress.

As I suspected, Tommy chose to arrive during the tiny sliver of time when all the planets align and each of my six roommates are home. Interestingly enough, they’ve all gathered on the mismatched couches and grin at him like hyenas. Maia tries shooing them out, looking at me apologetically when no one moves.

Tommy winks at my roommates, still a shameless flirt despite being well into his forties and enjoying a blissful marriage to Catherine. Then he turns to me and tilts his head toward the door. “Let’s go for a walk, Isabel.”

I’m sixteen and in trouble again, hands shaking as I shove my feet into boots that are more like slippers and a coat from the rack that I belatedly realize is not mine. He leads me out the door and I grit my teeth as I have to slam it three times before I hear the latch click.

“It sticks,” I mutter. I groan inwardly as I pull on the coat and the arms barely touch my wrists, the absurdity thrown into sharper contrast next to Tommy’s coiffured appearance.

If he notices he doesn’t let on, apparently more interested in the crumbling apartment hall than my haphazard appearance. “This seems unsafe,” he notes mildly, referring to a patch of ceiling that is just barely hanging on. I pretend I don’t hear him. When he stops to inspect the broken lock on the front door, I keep walking.

“I should call the fire department out here,” he says irritably. “Slumlord of a—“

“Do we have a destination?” I interrupt. I’m standing in the fresh snow, glad it’s not slush yet, and wondering how long until the powder melts and soaks my slippers. “Or did you come here strictly to criticize?”

He does his slow blink, the Tommy blink, the one accompanied by the deep breath where I can practically see him shove the irritation into one of the many boxes in his brain.

“I did not come here to criticize,” he says firmly. “Come on.”

The restaurant he leads me to is one of my favorites to order takeout from. I wonder if he remembers this from a previous visit, or if it’s just the only restaurant within walking distance that will let his sweatpants-clad, wet-slipper-wearing, too-small-coat-having niece through the door.

My heart twists when he asks if I want my usual and I realize it’s the former. I nod wordlessly and pick the table I want, sitting on the bench seat that faces the window. I foresee a lot of eye-contact-avoiding in my near future and watching the snow fall will be a pleasant and welcome distraction.

I’m viciously picking at the skin around my cuticles when I feel him sit across from me. I don’t look up.

“Bel,” he says. I can tell from his tone that, if I look up, his face will break my heart. “Tell me what’s going on.”

I’m silent. I’ve reopened a scab on my cuticle and it's bleeding. He passes me a napkin.

I was hoping he’d choose to be angry instead of understanding. To rage at the unanswered phone calls and voicemails, the bland text message updates I send without rhyme or reason that don’t provide any substantive information. To demand answers, and when I refuse, to leave and swear that he’s done trying, for good this time.

But of course he doesn’t. I can feel the beginnings of panic start to dig in, claws latching deep enough where I won’t be able to talk myself down. My heart is pounding in my ears again, and when I finally look up at Tommy it feels like he’s miles away.

Tommy knows everything about me, and instead of that being a comfort, it makes me feel cripplingly exposed. The knowledge that he, at his leisure, can remember all of the times I was emotionally flayed open by my mother, physically knocks the wind out of me.

He can remember my feigned grief when she died and my thinly-veiled relief that verged on joy that I was finally free. Free from her obsession, from her violent and erratic episodes, from her unpredictability, from the mysterious but persistent illness that cropped up when I stopped being an adorable toddler in a tutu and magically disappeared when she died.

He can remember the abject devastation I tried to hide when my dad, his brother, rejected me. When he, in his grief at my mother’s death, shoved me out and never let me back in. 

And, perhaps most horribly because they were the choices I made myself and can’t be blamed on anyone else, he can remember the drugs I did, the alcohol I drank, the disgustingly inappropriate men I dated. He can remember the stubborn way he and Catherine took me in and tried to heal me.

To repay Tommy and Catherine for their unconditional love and generosity? I hide from them. I ignore them. I avoid them. I convince myself they acted purely out of obligation. And while it makes me hate myself, it feels better than revisiting the agonizing first sixteen years of my life. 

I don’t say any of this, just stare blankly over his shoulder until the food comes. Neither of us pick up silverware, but the warmth from the noddles drifting up into my face is calming. I’ll bring them home if I don’t eat any. Julia loves these noodles. I’ll bring them home and split them with her and we’ll watch trash TV. She’ll fall asleep mid-sentence like she always does.

I almost smile. I start to breathe again.

“Do you need money?” Tommy asks.

The question surprises me. “No.” I’ve firmly refused money from Tommy since I moved out. Depending on them feels a lot like burdening them. “Why?”

“We saw that you pulled out of The Nutcracker this year.” His eyes are filled with questions, but his voice is kind.

I don’t ask how he knows or where he saw this. I don’t tell him about the knee injury. He’ll know it’s a lie. He’ll know the real injury is the mind kind.

“I don’t need money.”

“What do you need?”

I don’t answer.

“We miss you,” he says. I might be imagining it, but it sounds like his voice breaks when he says it. He sighs, does his slow blink again, breathes, composes himself. “There’s an Isabel-shaped hole in our house,” he tries again, half-smiling.

How do I tell him I’d rather die than ever feel the way I did three years ago? I’d rather die than even risk feeling that way? How do I tell him that, as much as I miss them too, as selfish as it is, this is the only way?

He seems to realize he is getting nowhere by being vulnerable and changes tactics.

“I’ve never been up to your apartment until now. Do you live with all those girls?”

I nod, twisting noodles around my fork but not lifting it.

“So there’s—seven of you in there?”

I nod again.

He's floored. “How many bedrooms are in there?” he asks, half amused, half aghast.

“Why?” I ask. “Are you going to call the fire department?”

His shoulders tense and he looks up. When he sees the small smile on my face and he relaxes. He switches to a safer subject. “Are they all dancers?”

“Mostly.” I finally take a bite. It’s significantly cooled but is as delicious as always. “Kat and Tig are new. I don’t know if they’ll last, but I hope they do.” I twist more onto my fork. The hunger has surpassed the anxiety. “Maia is the one that answered the door, I think.”

“Ah. The one that tried to save me from the horde.”

“Yes,” I say. “The same.”

“You’re closest with her,” he guesses. It’s an educated guess, and its accuracy is both startling and touching.

“Yes,” I say. “She’s my closest friend here.” I’ve never had a friendship like the one I have with Maia. I didn’t know they existed until she started barging into my room without knocking, unapologetically nosing into my business, perching on the bathroom sink to complain about her day while I’m in the shower. Instead of shoving her away, I find myself inviting her further and further into my life. I continue without mentioning any of this. “Then there’s Rosie and Julia. They’re both in the corps.” I count on my fingers who I’ve already mentioned. “Last is Gabby. She’s not a dancer, she works in real estate.”

“How’d she end up with you lot?”

I shrug. “Alcohol, I assume.”

He huffs a laugh like he wasn’t expecting that answer. “You like them?” he asks.

“Yes,” I answer, realizing he knows me as the girl with no friends. I realize my roommates don’t know that girl. “I like them a lot. All of them.”

He smiles at me in a way that makes me feel exposed again and I return my attention to the plate.

I want to scream and rage against whatever inner workings of my brain make me feel like I’m underwater and Tommy is above the surface. I desperately wish I could give him a glimpse inside of the knotted wires and make him understand. It has nothing to do with you. I know I love you. My brain just won’t let me feel it.

There’s silence for several minutes. I keep hoping Tommy will break it but I know he won’t. He’s a master of silence; he says so himself.

“I—“ I stutter, stop, try again. “I wish I could make you understand.” I close my eyes. Breathe. I will not cry, I think. “I’ll feel like I’m getting better. I’ll feel like I can breathe. Like I—care again.” I wince, knowing those words will hurt him. “But it always comes back. It’s always worse than before.”

“Bel,” he says calmly. Gently. “If you don’t take anything else away from this conversation, take away this: I do understand.”

I blink. “Okay.”

“No one is mad at you.”

“Okay.”

He takes a deep breath like he’s scared of what he’s about to say. “You’re not trying,” he says. He doesn’t say it unkindly. He says it like he knows it’s a hard truth. “You’re hiding.” He waits for me to argue. I don’t. “The longer you let yourself do this…” He sighs. “The path back is going to get harder and harder.” He’s looking at me like it hurts him to think of the hurt I’ll have to go through.

What he doesn’t know is that I never plan on going through it. I will slog through this purgatory forever before I willingly return to those dark places. 

We sit quietly for a few for minutes until I say, “I think I want to go home now.”

I see the devastation in his eyes, but his expression remains neutral. “Let’s go, then.” I shrug on the too-small coat that’s not mine and forget to ask for a box for the food.

The snow is thicker on the ground now, but less is falling from the sky. Tommy’s beside me for the short walk back to my apartment, through the broken front doors and all the way to my door with the pretty, sparkly Christmas wreath. I don’t ask him where he parked. I realize I didn’t ask him anything all night.

“Come see us for Christmas,” he says. I don’t look at him. “Or any time. We’re not going anywhere, Isabel.” Half threat, half promise.

I thank him for dinner. Tell him I’ll think about it. Close the door without looking back.

The apartment is silent. I can’t bear the thought of being in my bedroom for another second. I take off my sopping slippers and place them on the radiator before laying down on the couch and turning the TV on.

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I know Maia has scooched in beside me and my head is resting on her thigh. I can hear Gabby and Julia drunk and cooking in the tiny kitchen behind us. Rosie is trying and failing to manage them in between fits of laughter.

I can just tell from what I’m hearing that they’re making a mess. I don’t mind. The despair that I felt earlier is starting to ease as I listen to the familiar sounds.

Maia looks down and sees I’m awake. She doesn’t seem as drunk as the others. “Hi, sleepyhead.” She’s flipping through channels. She can never pick one. It drives me crazy. “What did you and your hot uncle do?”

“We went to Up Thai.”

“Leftovers?” Julia calls hopefully from the kitchen, even as she’s cooking.

“Sorry, Jules.”

She huffs, then decides, “We’ll go tomorrow.” I agree.

Maia is eyeing me suspiciously. “He drove all the way into the city to bring you out for counter service?”

“He wants me to visit for Christmas. Or sometime soon. Whenever I have free time.” I am grateful when she doesn’t mention that I have nothing but free time lately.

Instead, she gushes, “Oh, I love the country. I want to come when you go.” 

Tommy and Catherine’s trendy, upscale neighborhood could hardly be considered country. Tommy would probably be incensed by the comparison.

I don’t correct her and stay quiet, hoping she’ll drop it. Of course she doesn’t.

“Can I really come?”

I can’t tell if she’s doing this on purpose, if she’s picked up on how I’m feeling and thinks she’s helping. I feel like she is making plans for a happy life I’ll go through the motions of but never feel, but I don’t say that. When I first moved in, I felt like I’d be the outsider watching my roommates enjoy their lives, but here I am with my head in one of their laps. I suppose it’s not outside the realm of possibility that maybe there could be a day I’ll be ready to take the painful path Tommy talked about.

So instead I say, “That would be fun. I’ll think about it.”