Clouds are heavy in the sky today, and it’s the coldest day we’ve had all year. Rain is spitting against the window, reminding me of ice storms back home. Of course, there won’t be any ice here; we are on the short side of spring, and this chill in the air is an anomaly. Tomorrow will probably be eighty.
“Life is struggle,” Ina says, rocking back in her chair, her eyelids dropping closed.
I am sitting on the floor in front of her, criss-cross applesauce, like a kindergartner. Cotton is on my knee, his head tilted as I rub under the warm flesh beneath the flap of his wings. He is so small, under all the feathers. “It shouldn’t be, though,” I argue. We have been through a lengthy discussion of the book, and her statement sums it up in a bow.
She purrs, nodding her head, opening her eyes. “Why?” This is her favorite question.
“Because it shouldn’t be.” I smile. It’s a flimsy argument . . . not even an argument. Just a crying out that life is unfair.
“It’s a better story with a struggle. Struggles make for better people.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say, thinking about my mother, whose life was nothing but a struggle.
“Though, not everyone is improved with struggles. Shirley, for example.” She says her name then curls her lips, dismissive, letting air puff her cheeks before sliding through her teeth. “Some people . . .” She shrugs as if there is no explanation.
I tilt forward to look at Cotton’s face. His head is bowed down, and his eyes are narrow. I wonder if has gone to sleep.
“Alcohol doesn’t help,” I say in Shirley’s defense.
“Alcohol is an excuse,” she says without heat.
“For what, though?” Tell me the answer, every nerve in my body is screaming.
“An excuse to fail, I think. All drugs are just a way for a person not to have to take responsibility for their choices.” I can feel her eyes on me. “You will never know the measure of a person until they have had struggles.” When she says that, I am reminded of Lola, my employer in Greenville. I always felt that she was gauging the “measure” of me. I tell Ina about her, and how I always felt like she thought I was some simple girl and had no real respect for me until she saw that I hadn’t had it easy.
“My mother was an alcoholic,” I admit.
She nods, as if she already knew. “Why do you think she drank?” The rain on the window stops, and we both turn to look at a pattern of shadows from the moving branches beyond.
“To not take responsibility for her choices.” The words come out quietly, and saying them feels like a betrayal, but also feels true.
“People are like rivers,” she says, breaking the tension in the air.
I laugh, startling poor Cotton so he fluffs his feathers before he settles again, his wings raised in anticipation of my fingers returning to the warm, soft fluff along his back. The rain slaps against the window again.
“Rivers travel from mountain to stream, to river to lake, to ocean,” Ina says.
I nod; it is true. I know there is something she is trying to teach me, so I wait.
“People are the same.” She lets out a long, slow breath. “Most people bump along through life, shifting course every time they hit a rock. That is typical. Man is a mass of crooked rivers. That is what we do.”
“Is that what you do? Are you a crooked river?” I ask, trying to get perspective. She purses her lips, letting the flesh of her bottom lip grow full with thought. I would love to have known her when she was young, looking forward to her life still unwritten.
“No,” she says after some time, “I cut my own canyon.” The quick spark in her eye glitters, catching the light, and I wonder if I have met somebody who has changed the course of history. Did she work for women’s rights? Did she enact laws to make our country what it is? Did she just live a free and independent life?
I sit still for a long time, rubbing the soft down under the bird’s wings, feeling the fragile skeleton beneath the warm flesh. I am a river. I have bounced along every day of my life, looking for the path of least resistance. I have run away when it looked like the direction was hard. Even now, I am in hiding, living in a basement apartment, not getting involved with anybody except this family.
I justify that everything I have done has been for good, valid reasons, but really I am just a coward. The only real thing I have ever done was to have my baby so she could have life. That is the only thing of value I have done in the world. That is the only time I made a decision that was hard. I tried to cut a path, a canyon, when I was working at the hospital, when I was going to school, but then the modeling thing was so much easier, and I just put aside what was hard. What Cici did at the MTV party, calling attention to Warren, calling him my “Baby Daddy,” was just the little push I had needed to find a way out. I was looking to run anyway, even if I wasn’t able to admit it. I feel shame creeping up my neck, and I want to stand up and pass the bird over to Ina, go downstairs, and hide. Even worse, I feel the itch in my feet that says I need to run.
“I’m a river.” I say, and I hear the shame leaking out the edges of my words.
“You are still young; you are a stream,” she counters, leaning back, closing her glittering eyes. “You have time yet.”
We sit in silence, her thinking back over the path of her life and me thinking forward to what mine needs to be. We sit, Cotton with his head bowed on my knees, his eyes closed, until we hear the garage door open. Cotton stirs and says, clear as day, “I love you.”
