I’m China, the former rectal canal, and I’m going to introduce Shane to my parents.
Dad left for a business trip without saying good-bye, but he left me a card. It’s one of those sappy cards that are made from textured paper and use script font. There’s something on the front that’s trying to impersonate a poem, but it’s so thick with adjectives under the I Love You Daughter title that I can’t read it.
Inside, Dad wrote You’re always my little girl.
Considering I’m about to produce a boyfriend from my room, I’m glad Dad isn’t here, especially because he thinks I’m still his little girl.
Mom should be okay with this.
Why wouldn’t a woman who walks around in latex and who washes her sex toys in the dishwasher want to work this out? She has to have a solution. Shane has told me it’s okay to use his background as a way to soften her up.
“I want you to meet somebody,” I say.
“That’s the same thing you said when you won that awful goldfish from the Boy Scout stand at the block party.”
“This time, he’s a little bigger than a goldfish,” I say.
Shane walks in and sits on the couch next to me.
“Mom, this is Shane. Shane, this is my mom.”
“Hi,” Shane says.
Mom smiles. “It’s about time. That dumbass Irenic kid wasn’t your type.”
“Wasn’t my type?”
“A mother can tell these things,” she says. “Plus you look a lot healthier now, after this running-away drama. Did you go vegetarian or something? Your skin looks fantastic.” Then she turns to Shane. “Where do you go to school?”
“Uh. Nowhere at the moment,” he says. “I—uh—I just moved.”
“Oh. That’s nice. How’d you two meet?”
We both stutter a bit, and then say it simultaneously. “On the Internet.”
“You were Internet dating?” she asks me.
“Not quite,” I answer.
Shane laughs.
“Anyway, I have a big favor to ask,” I say. “It’s, like, a huge favor.”
“A huge favor,” Shane repeats.
“Can Shane live here for a while?” I ask. “I mean, just until we can find him another place to live or something?”
Mom tilts her head.
Shane says, “I ran away from my foster home last month. And then I was staying in New York with some other friends from our group.”
“Your Internet group?” Mom asks.
“Yeah. But then it got annoying hanging out with people in real life.”
“It got annoying hanging out with people in real life?” Mom repeats.
“Yeah.”
“Well, how does China know she won’t be the next person you leave because you don’t like hanging out in real life?”
This is a good question and I’m happy she asks it.
He says, “I love China. I know what she’s been through. She knows what I’ve been through. We understand each other.”
“Was this one of those game chat rooms?” Mom asks. “I hear about those.”
“It doesn’t really matter where we met,” I say. “Shane needs a place to stay.”
“I’m not a foster home. You’re not eighteen. I don’t know if you’re running away from people who’re looking for you. This is no small favor.”
“It’s a big favor,” Shane says. “But I promise you, no one’s looking for me. I’m free of the system. I could go back for help, but foster homes aren’t really helpful. I mean, for me. I’m sure they are for other people, I guess.”
She looks at me. “So you went to New York to bring him back?”
“I went to New York so I could stay there. But it turned out this way by accident.”
“You weren’t going to come back?” Mom asks.
“No.”
“What about your sisters?” she asks.
“What about them?”
“They would have been devastated. And me. And Dad.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “There are things you don’t know.”
“There are things I don’t know?”
“There are things you don’t know,” I say. And then I hear a familiar sound. Thwap-thwap-thwap.
Mom goes into the kitchen and returns with a piece of paper and a pen.
“Write on that paper what I don’t know.” She puts the paper on the coffee table and goes back to the kitchen. She says, “Shane, what do you like to eat? I was going to make dinner tonight for myself and China, but I think we should celebrate by ordering Chinese or pizza or something.”
I whisper to Shane, “She says this almost every night.”
“I’d love a pizza,” Shane says.
“Pizza it is,” Mom says, then disappears into the downstairs bathroom.
And it’s me and a piece of paper and a pen and Shane and the truth and I’m fighting every urge I have to swallow myself.
Thwap-thwap-thwap.