KIRSTEN’S APARTMENT was cleaner than Cheyenne had ever seen it. Members of the coven had been taking turns coming over. There was no dust, no dirty towels, dishes glinted in the rack, and the freezer was full of untouched food.
In a recliner in the living room, covered in blankets, was Kirsten. Her hair was still long.
Cheyenne had expected it to be gone. She expected to find her mother in a colorful bandanna, a charm around her neck signifying the eternal, looking worse than she did but in a temporary way, a stick image of survival.
Margaret greeted them, briefly obscuring Kirsten to give Cheyenne a second to adjust.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
Cheyenne went to hug Kirsten but Kirsten flinched so Cheyenne paused. Every touch had the potential to injure; even this kind of love has violence in it now. Cheyenne leaned down to kiss her instead.
Margaret offered Essex her spot on the couch. Trying to slide in between the couch and the coffee table he knocked it and, spilling a cold cup of tea, tried to reverse direction to go get a rag, but Margaret motioned for him to sit. He settled, an arm’s length from Kirsten, his knees jammed up against the coffee table, unsure of what to say.
Cheyenne, who was still standing by Kirsten’s chair with her hand resting lightly on her mother’s head, let it slide to her shoulder before taking it away. Cheyenne sat on the floor beside Kirsten with her feet tucked under her.
“You could have just told me Justine was a sociopath.”
Kirsten smiled. “I try not to label people.”
Margaret laughed abruptly.
“I could never figure out if Justine was born that way or if something happened to her to make her like that,” said Kirsten. “You could only catch it in certain light.”
Kirsten’s gaze drifted to the door.
“She wasn’t a good person. Isn’t,” said Cheyenne.
Kirsten shrugged. “Some people measure themselves by the distance they’ve traveled and others by how far they have to go. She was definitely a distance-traveled type.”
There was a sound at the mail slot as envelopes were pushed through and landed on the carpet, fanned. Margaret gathered them and set them on a desk with others, also unsorted and unopened.
“I’m sorry you have cancer,” said Essex. He cleared his throat. Cheyenne glared at him. He ignored her and scooted closer to Kirsten, knocking the table, spilling more tea.
“Me too,” said Kirsten.
Tears in Kirsten’s eyes, tears in Essex’s and Margaret’s eyes too.
“Can we not go there yet,” said Cheyenne to the room, then turning on Kirsten, “Why the hell didn’t you let us know? How long have you known? Since summer? That was why you were working at that stupid parking garage. How many months did you wait before going to a doctor? What the fuck were you thinking? What did you think you were doing?”
“Hey, hey,” Essex said in quiet tones. “Let’s dial back and deal with where we are.”
“You’re one to talk,” said Kirsten, rallied in her anger. “All of you. None of you gets to say anything to me. None of you. Livy gets raped. She doesn’t tell me. You get nearly killed in Texas. You don’t tell me. Essex shoots his oldest friend—”
“He didn’t shoot him!” yelled Cheyenne. “He just has a guilt complex.”
“Stop immediately.” Margaret’s voice rang with thirty years of kicking people out of birthing rooms.
Outside, a pack of kids ran down the stairs chasing one another. Then someone bit it and there was crying and more running feet.
“It was a mistake,” Kirsten said. “I thought I had time to decide. To see a doctor. I didn’t want to end up talking to collection agencies the rest of my life.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”
Cheyenne had never seen honest guilt in her mother. Cheyenne felt her insides seize. Kirsten turned to her.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” she said.
Kirsten sat forward, moving a pillow into place at the small of her back and got herself comfortable again. It was a labored gesture, but not undoable. Cheyenne’s panic was premature. There was time. She began to breathe easier.
“Did Justine answer your question?”
“That woman is nobody’s mother.”
Cheyenne glanced at Margaret to see if she had told Kirsten she knew, but nowhere in Margaret’s face could she find evidence of that. It wasn’t hiding, it was the opposite. Margaret’s expression held all possibilities equally; all truths existed in her face at all times.
Kirsten reached out without warning and brushed her hand across her daughter’s forehead as if checking a child for a temperature. Cheyenne set her teeth because the tears when they came would not end.
“It’s hot, isn’t it,” said Kirsten. “You’re all overheated. I can turn the heater down.”
“That’s all right. It’s a nice break from the rain,” said Essex.
Kirsten straightened her blanket. “I don’t even think I had real I Ching coins when Justine and I threw it. I probably used quarters or pennies. Keeping still, the mountain. And above, the fire. Pregnancy is a lot like a temporary prison in some ways.” She laughed. “As opposed to parenting, which is more like work release.”
“Oh thanks,” said Cheyenne.
“You’re welcome. You two were a nightmare,” said Kirsten.
“You’re the one who gambled your youth on a coin toss, so I don’t feel sorry for you.” Cheyenne’s voice had an unintended edge because she did feel sorry for her, so, so sorry. It was one more thing she could do nothing about. “Livy should be here,” she said.
“Leave her alone. She’s in love.”
“I don’t care if she’s in space,” said Cheyenne.
“The I Ching is all about the Man,” Kirsten said. “The Superior Man. The Great Man. What he does and doesn’t do. I read it in my late teens and thought, Who the fuck keeps us alive? Not the Great Man.” She sat up, repositioning pillows. “So you think it all came down to an unlucky throw. Is that how you see it? Ask me. Ask me what hexagram Justine threw that night. The night we decided I would take you both. Ask me what she threw.”
“Okay, what did she throw?” said Cheyenne.
Kirsten slapped the arm of the recliner. “I had no idea.” Kirsten glowed with victory, restored to her natural, unapologetic self.
Margaret’s mouth opened. “You are fucking kidding me.”
“Ha! There’s the East Coast.” Kirsten pointed. “It comes out when they’re surprised.”
“You tricked her?” said Cheyenne.
“Without a second thought,” said Kirsten. “I let her throw the pennies then read her the entry for the Wanderer. ‘The grass on the mountain takes fire. Bright light does not linger but travels on. All prisons are temporary…’ ” Kirsten paused, letting victory slip. “It wasn’t kind,” she said.
Cheyenne took her mother’s hand: As unfamiliar now as the wing of a fallen sparrow, it curled or splayed without resistance. “I’m glad you did,” she said.
The room became pressured and airless. They were sea creatures going deep too fast. Kirsten extricated her hand from between Cheyenne’s palms but hooked her daughter’s fingers for a second, moving them back and forth like she had when Cheyenne was a baby.
“I was afraid that if I knew which of you was mine I might love one of you more. I didn’t want to know.” She pulled her hand back and kicked at her blanket, freeing her feet. “I was afraid of a lot of things. All the looks I used to get, at the DSHS offices and in the grocery stores. Because god forbid I buy you cupcakes with food stamps.” She turned her eyes on Cheyenne. “I didn’t want those looks to land on you two.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Do you know, if you go to an expensive school they will tell you from age five until twenty-two how great you are and how unique what you have inside you is. They’ll make you write essays about your personal journey. You’re always the hero. You always have a destiny to fulfill.” She fell silent for a few seconds then grabbed Cheyenne’s hand again. “I couldn’t send you to expensive schools. I wanted you to have a myth of your own. So I gave you the North Star.”
Essex looked down at the carpet. Kirsten blinked and let go of her daughter.
Cheyenne realized her legs were asleep, stood, and stretched.
Essex looked at Margaret but she was silent. He moved closer to Kirsten.
“How long do they say you have?” he asked.
“A month at this point. Maybe a little more.” Kirsten’s eyes filled with quick tears again.
“How could you let it get to this?” Cheyenne’s voice cracked in anger and disbelief.
“I’m sorry,” said Kirsten, “I’m so sorry. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t torture yourself,” said Margaret softly. “It might not have made a difference. This kind of cancer is fast.”
“We need to make a plan for real,” said Cheyenne, shaking off the moment. “Am I on her medical paperwork? I want to talk to her doctors directly. Has she had a second opinion?”
“It’s not going to change what’s happening,” said Kirsten.
Cheyenne turned to Margaret.
“Cheyenne, I am more than happy to get you her doctor’s number and help streamline any paperwork I can. I’ll even call them now and find out if they have weekend hours,” said Margaret.
“Do,” said Cheyenne.
Margaret took her jacket off the back of the couch and stepped out onto the landing. Kirsten’s eyes followed her.
“It’s not her fault,” Kirsten said, once Margaret was out of earshot. “When it comes to my body, it’s my choice. She taught me that. Remember it. She only does what I ask. Even against her own opinions and wishes. Always has. Always will.”
With no sound in the room, they could hear Margaret on the phone. The tone of her words as firm as concrete, the meaning, firing, wiring together, plastic.
Kirsten pointed to the shadow through the blinds. “I was fifteen when I met her. The eighties. A terrible time. Shoulder pads and nuclear war, wall of bangs—I was so alone. Margaret showed me how my mind had been shaped. She was the very first person to say the word cunt to my face. Not like a slam, like a calling. All liberation begins and ends with the body, she said. She could trace any political issue, no matter how abstract, right back to the body.”
“I know she means well, I just think that we need better advice,” said Cheyenne.
Kirsten ignored her. She brushed at something invisible on the arm of her chair. “There were all these other women she knew back East,” she said, “living in funky houses and abandoned churches. She told me about this farm in the South that had the best midwives in the world. Totally radical. They didn’t listen to what anyone said if it wasn’t smart and those were the women who taught her. I didn’t see it. I really didn’t. How young she was then.” She turned to Essex, who instinctively sat up straighter. “I didn’t see it. I believed what she said about the world. I was like some little kid listening to her grandmother. I really thought that I was going to run off to all these places, meet all these women, and it was going to be some mystical experience. I didn’t know.” She turned to Cheyenne. “I didn’t know it was already gone. All those collectives, all those little colonies, gone. Most anyway. It was awful, awful, when I realized it.”
Kirsten turned back to Margaret’s silhouette on the landing.
“It was like being told there’s something great and important and beautiful but, hey, you missed it. Sorry. It was such a sucker punch. I stopped going to see her. We had it out one night about a year before you two were born. I told her she’d made my life worse. You know what she said? Sorry you didn’t get a torch, honey. You got a candle just like I did. I thought she was telling me to suck it up and be grateful so I told her to fuck off and walked out.”
Cheyenne laughed.
“I didn’t get it for years,” said Kirsten. “You got a candle just like I did. Her words, exactly.”
Outside Margaret finished her call and came back in.
“Do you want some fresh tea?” Essex asked.
“No,” said Kirsten.
“Are you warm?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is there anything that you can eat?” he asked.
She shook her head.
Margaret studied Kirsten. “You need rest,” she said. “Can you two give her a couple of hours?”
“Of course,” said Cheyenne.
She bent over her mother’s head and touched her dull hair. It was breaking off and thinning at the crown. Cheyenne kissed the line of gray skin where the hair parted, then went outside. Essex stayed only a moment then joined her, pulling the door shut carefully behind him.
Cheyenne started to say something but he took her hand, leading her off. They were near the stairwell when she pulled away and ran back to put her arms around her mother, encircling her, to hold her like a glass flower, hold her like a fragile painted Ukrainian egg—“I love you,” she said. Releasing her, Cheyenne started to step back but Kirsten clutched her upper arms, digging into her muscles, pulling her back in. She reached for her daughter’s head and brought it down to her lips. She kissed her daughter’s temple. Holding her head in both hands, she turned her head and whispered into her ear, “I wanted to give you torches.”