Pay attention, or you’ll be sorry. The girl’s neighborhood has always had stores encased in metal gates and dark-tinted cars that cruise like sharks. She dashes from the bus to the lobby of her building. She is grateful to live on the ground floor—the door to her apartment shimmers like an oasis.
Come straight home after school. Momma is doing bills at the kitchen table. “You’re late!” she yells. She waits for the girl to come into the kitchen and root around in the fridge for a snack, but the apartment remains silent. Her Momma-radar jangles. When she discovers the girl has locked her bedroom door, Momma rattles the knob.
Don’t lie to me because I can tell. The girl reluctantly opens the door. She stares at Momma’s teeth and her upper lip beading up with sweat. She can’t seem to stop blinking. When Momma roars, “Are you listening to me?!” she startles, tries to speak, but the answers are lodged in her throat like a fishbone. She suddenly recalls watching a TV show where a group of Asian men dropped tiny, wriggling octopuses into their open mouths like how the Romans ate grapes. Then, the men swallowed the octopuses whole. Saliva floods her mouth. She pushes past Momma because the vomit is coming, ready or not.
Never wear headphones when you’re out. Momma listens to the girl retching in the bathroom. Lord have mercy, is she pregnant? She mashes her eyeballs around with her palms. Why do I bother if she’s not going to listen? But she doesn’t have time for this right now. She has to leave soon, or she’ll be late for her night shift at the Holiday Inn. At first, she didn’t care for the job: the constant din of machines, the endless folding that made her arms ache, the girl home alone all night. But she’s come to appreciate the simplicity of it: white sheets, white towels, no thinking, bleach, clean, starch, steam, tumbling, echoing white noise.
Always sit up front by the bus driver. The girl lies on the bathroom floor, pressing her cheek to the cool tile. She was on the bus reading her book when five guys got on, cackling and slurring. When she boarded, the seats up front were full, so she sat in the middle, facing the second set of doors. Now, the seats opposite the driver were unoccupied, so she readied herself to move after the guys passed her. Only, they didn’t walk past; they surrounded her instead.
Always keep your bag on your lap and your knees together. The circle of guys tightened around her, crotches at eye level, hands in pockets. She kept her eyes moving across the lines of words, but she wasn’t reading. Stupidly, she flipped the page. The guy in front of her pretended to lose his balance and tried to slip his leg between hers. “Hey,” the one closest to her right shoulder said, nudging her. “Kiss it.” She side-eyed a rigid dick popping out of a zipper. The other four tittered like he had just told a joke.
Never make eye contact with anyone. The bus came to a hard stop. The driver yelled in a fatherly don’t-fuck-with-me voice, “You boys better take a seat before someone gets hurt!” When they shuffled to the back of the bus, she grabbed her backpack and scurried up front. “You okay?” the driver asked. She knew she shouldn’t have looked back at the guys, but she couldn’t help it. One of them gestured, two fingers from his eyes to hers.
If you think you’re being followed, don’t go home; stay in busy areas and ask for help. The bus driver drove. The girl stared out the windshield. The guys watched the girl. Eventually, the driver asked which stop was hers, and she told him they passed it long ago. When the route passed a police station, he unexpectedly stopped and stood in the open doorway of his bus, motioning to some officers on the sidewalk. Everyone looked up. When the guys saw the officers approaching, they exited through the rear doors.
If something feels off, it probably is. Momma is ready to kick the bathroom door in. “I need to get ready for work!” The girl whips the door open and tries to run for her bedroom, but Momma is ready and has a hand on either side of the jamb like a trawling net. “Are you pregnant?”
And the girl’s honest face is mortified, “What? No!”
“Then what the hell is wrong with you?”
Life is tough, but so are you. The girl’s knees buckle unexpectedly, and Momma catches her by the armpits and gathers the girl to her like she pulls laundry from a dryer. Crusty sheets made clean again. Dirty towels bleached white again. White like hospital curtains. White like the waxy stuff that covered the girl when a nurse laid her – helpless and wailing – on Momma’s chest sixteen years ago. The girl quickly finds her feet again, but she’s silent, shivering, her teeth chatter, her breath smells of bile. Momma rubs her back in slow circles – it feels like she’s been rubbing circles into the girl’s back her whole life – and Momma lies, “It’s okay. You’re okay.” Eventually, the girl’s twiggy arms wind up and around Momma’s neck, much like the morning glory vines that climb up the side of their building, covering the graffiti, transforming the chain-link fences into lush, green mounds.
