another draft

Jo has her mouth wide open, her tongue out and to the side. I’m looking for white spots or growths. When I don’t find anything she pulls her lower lip down and I examine the inner lining.

“Are you having trouble swallowing?” I ask her.

“That’s not a question you ask a lady,” she says.

This week Jo is looking for cancer and she’s convinced it’s in her mouth. After class we walk across campus to the library and search through medical texts, trying to find symptoms that would lead to a diagnosis. Behind me, I listen to the study group ignore their studies and talk about the places they'll transfer to. We attend the city college. Jo and I know enough to not fool ourselves. What we do is this.

She takes my hands and brings them up to her neck, just below her jaw. “Feel,” she tells me, and I do. I think of silk, and I smell the cigarette smoke from her clothes.

“I think those are your tonsils,” I say.

“They need to go,” she replies, my hands still held where they are.

Jo’s mother, Jolie, invites me to stay for dinner. Tonight we’re meeting the new boyfriend and Jolie sets my place next to Jo’s at the table. Their home is full of lighthouses, statuettes and paintings. Lately, Jolie is trying to find God. She volunteers at the Lighthouse Baptist Church, organizing rummage sales and silent date auctions. This is how she met Mark.

Jolie introduces me to Mark and he gives an extra firm handshake. When we sit down for dinner Mark begins to ask me questions about myself and I turn to Jo for help, but she’s not interested in the show. Jolie explains that Jo and I have been friends for years, that I’m practically family. I’m waiting for Jo to talk, to begin to answer questions directed at her. She’s bored of the routine.

Mark compliments Jolie on the dinner, the meatloaf and mashed potatoes. She leaves them chunky and brown, full of skins. Jolie’s pink floral blouse is filled with her and she smiles and thanks him. I pretend that I’m like a probing adult and ask Mark what he does for a living. He tells us that he manages the new Bargain Warehouse off McKinley. Jo giggles, her head down. Mark smiles because he's polite, and I notice the lines in his face, how they don't make him look distinguished; that's not the right word. Worn.



“He was trying,” I say to Jo.

“She’s settling. She’s trying to settle.”

I watch Jo sit on the windowsill of her room, blowing smoke out into the night, the neighborhood dogs barking. She collects the things that killed her father years ago when we were freshman. On the wall above her bed she’s glued empty cigarette packs, positioning them at an angle, the entire wall covered.

“I remember the curtains in the living room, the smell and feel of smoke,” she tells me, “The curtains that were taken down.” I reach for her hair and my fingers run through the strands, effortlessly. My hand falls behind her neck and she rests her head on my wrist. I never want to move. But she does. She pulls on her lower lip again and feels the inside with her finger using the same hand.

“How would you like to go?” she asks.

I think about it for a while and then I answer. “My grandma went the best way. She did the two things she loved best before passing: she watched soccer and flirted with the young doctor. Then she told everyone she was tired.”

Jo smiles and flicks the cigarette butt out the window. When she looks at me I’m looking down. I thought that telling the story this way would make it easier.


When I return home I find my dad drunk on the couch, the TV on and muted. He looks like he fell asleep laughing. After work my dad drinks so much he can’t speak, he can only laugh, if he does. We’re all okay with this. It makes him happy. When he’s passed out, I like to hold his face—it feels like putty; his cheeks fall in folds in my hands. I kiss his forehead and his eyes open, dopey; he smiles.

“Go to sleep, dad.” I say.

My mom does sit-ups to infinity in the bedroom, her hands behind her head as she thrusts her torso forward and back down, her abs tightening. She sees me and she stops once she reaches her goal.

“Hi sweetie, how was Jo’s?”

“Fine.”

“Are you hungry? I can make you a shake.”

“No thanks. Keep going. I’m going to bed.”

Before she tells me she loves me, she asks if I've sent out any applications. She reminds me of the general deadline, of my second year. I give her the next best thing to the answer she wants, a smile. My mom is happy to avoid the truth, and she accepts this, flattening her body back on the yoga mat.

My mom has become something of a health-nut. Each day I witness her build her body into a machine through exercises and protein shakes. Her determination shames me. I find it hard to get out of bed, and in class I fall asleep. My mom encourages me to go on jogs. It’s become her solution to every problem.

Lately I have dreams that are more nightmares than dreams. My grandma visits and I forget what’s real and what isn’t. Who is alive and who is not.

I think back to after the funeral, when my mom was my mom. She brought back a plastic bin full of my grandma’s scarves, the lid sealing the box air-tight. She sat the bin down on the bed and called me close. Pulling the lid open, she stood back. “Go ahead,” she said. I slipped my hands in, clutching the silk scarves that felt like the dearest of skin. I brought them up to my face, smelling the familiar lavender lotion. “It’s her,” she said.