I don't argue. She's right. I only realize it in retrospect, but then I hadn't been thinking things through at the time. I wanted to believe I was being nice. Funny how generous and stupid can be so hard to tell apart... and in the end, all I'd really wanted was approval.

"You need to learn to take care of yourself," she continues. "I don't mean to sound like your mother..."

"Don't worry, you don't." She doesn't, and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that she didn't know my mother, and I know she was referring to mothers in general. I don't know anyone who treated me like she thought she was treating me. My own mother never could. The closest she ever came was a twisted role-reversing ritual like the late-night dramas, when she'd stagger into the house and collapse on the couch and wait for me. I'd send Portia to bed with a few reassuring words, not because I really could handle it myself but because I didn't want my little sister to witness what was about to happen. If I was quick, and if Portia was cooperative, I could take measures to avoid wiping partially digested vodka and burritoes and beer off the floor and cushions. If she let me, I'd give her water, but usually she screamed if I tried to move away. So I'd sit on the floor in front of her and wait and eventually she'd have the presence of mind to start crying.

She'd sob and choke, and then she'd draw me close and look into my eyes, and I'd hold my breath against her sweet-sour stench, and then she'd say, "I'm sorry."

"My baby, my baby," she'd say, as if for some reason she'd remembered a bond that she'd forgotten to build between us. She had a lot to apologize for, and sometimes she'd remember right then, and that was when I heard her confess her biggest regret. "I'm sorry I ever brought you into the world."

There was one time when she said it while Portia was still present, and I slapped her in mid-sentence. Yeah, I was stupid and selfish... I still am.

I want to tell this woman, this stranger, what I am. but I know she's already looking at the real me, because I can't hide it. It takes me a little bit longer to figure out that she looks directly at me and still can't see me. She sees what she thinks she wants to see. I don't tell her the truth - because if you do something stupid thinking it was nice, then what's the point of doing something you already know would be stupid?

So I do nothing at all. I wait much like I've always waited, on my knees on the floor, holding my breath... wait for her to be done with me so I can escape without a word of response. And I only half realize that neither one of us can see the other one as we are. To me, she's a threat, an obstacle, and I know there's much more to her and regret being unable to recognize it. I wonder what I am to her.


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