The Mexican Year

Something you only realize about San Diego from a bus window on a drizzly afternoon — this is a desert city built for the rest of the year’s dry sunshine, not the winter rains. Water stands on flat surfaces everywhere, transforming the cityscape into a collection of wet glistening planes. Pedestrian malls look like shallow reflecting pools with people wading through. Vehicles splash through road-canals. Lawns become lagoons. Only on hills is the effect ruined, with the flatness at angles draining away, toward the ocean.

The bus shudders to the latest in a long line of halts stretching back to the Liberty Electronics store, where the rain interrupted my costumed waving, a foam-rubber Statue of Liberty slowly drowned. Doors hiss open and the driver announces “Camacho Plaza!” over the intercom. I force myself into motion, slinging my backpack over a shoulder and jostling into the drizzle. The strip mall’s parking lot is covered with an inch of standing water. Splashing across it, I watch my footprints disappear into a black bottomless ocean.

I don’t want to discuss anything with Nasrin. My stomach has been a pit of nauseous dread ever since I overhead her talking to Dad and Mom last night. Her big-sister impulse to run my life is only antagonized by all the bad choices she thinks I’m making, the way I’m becoming the America she never understood. Even meeting for coffee is a power struggle with culture mixed in. She picked a Lebanese deli with halal snacks. I insisted on a Starbucks.

Nasrin is framed in a rain-streaked window, unmoving at a table with nothing on it, her jaw firmly set. She’s wearing a bulky dolman-sleeve sweater that matches her patent leather boots. Her hijab doesn’t stand out in this weather. She looks like every other woman trying to preserve a perfect coiffure from the rain.

Approaching the Starbucks entrance, I falter with crisis — do the doors open in or out? My splish-splashing slows, then slows even more. I’m hoping I don’t guess wrong and splat into the plate glass, pushing the handle when I should be pulling, or maybe vice versa? I don’t realize that I’ve halted completely until a man holding a soggy San Diego Union-Tribune over his head yanks the door open for me, urging us inside.

Inside is a warm brightness of indirect lighting and blond wood furniture and shiny earth-toned floortile. Signs urge me to get in the holiday spirit with an eggnog latte. But I’m not like the rest of the people standing in line to order. I don’t have $5 to spare on anything, not even a delicious-looking eggnog latte.

Instead I beeline to Nasrin’s table, dripping every step of the way. “Hiya, sis. Can you believe this rain? I got soaked to the skin in my costume. Foam rubber smells awful when it’s wet.” I try to smile, but probably only manage the kind of miserable grimace that announces your life is falling apart.

She adjusts her headscarf before rising to hug me. “Do you want a coffee? I’ll buy.”

“You don’t have to — ”

“Sit. I’ll get us coffees.” Nasrin steers me into the chair opposite from hers, then goes to stand in line. She returns with a small house blend for herself, a large mocha for me. “There you go. Mocha is still your favorite, right?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I brush my bangs aside, trying to see her better. “Why can’t we talk back at the townhome?”

“Because this conversation is for our family only. I don’t want Farid overhearing us — or God forbid, the kids. And if we’re out in public, I won’t scream or try to kill you.” Nasrin says it without smiling.

My dread is intensifying, if that’s possible. “Um, okay…”

She reaches over and plucks the cellphone out of my purse. She pushes buttons until a thick eyebrow rises in displeasure. “No wonder Saman can’t call you. You’re blocking him.” Now both eyebrows are raised. “And you’re blocking Dad and Mom…our aunts…some numbers in the Midwest — both families, huh?” Then she flips the phone around, showing me the call history. A single word fills up most of the screen. Nick.

I grab the cellphone back. “I’m going to divorce Saman,” I insist in my firmest voice, just so there’s no doubt. “You can’t change my mind. Don’t even try.”

“Listen to me. I want you to understand something first. You have no idea what you’re putting us through. Me, Dad and Mom, our whole family. Even Grandfather’s memory is being disgraced!” Heads turn our direction, prompting Nasrin to quiet into a hiss. “If you’d just take responsibility for what you’re doing, instead of running away from — ”

“I know already! I’ve heard it ever since I can remember, how I’m the worst sister and daughter and wife ever. I’m just this huge embarrassment and everyone is ashamed of me and I can’t do anything right and — ”

“It’s all about you? Is that what you think? You are so wrong, Nooshin. So wrong!” In profile her hijab is welling up and devouring her. “Marriage doesn’t join two people, it joins two families. And Saman’s family wants the mahr back from us.”

“The…mahr?” The Farsi word is unfamiliar on my tongue. I’ve only spoken it a couple times in my life. “Why would they want the mahr back? It was spent on the wedding ceremony.”

“They want it back in exchange for an honorable divorce between our families.” She lets that sink in while Christmas music plays in the background. “Now do you understand what you’re doing to our family? What are Dad and Mom supposed to do, sell their house to repay the mahr? Is that what you want, our parents living on the street?”

“No! Of course not. But what do you mean, sell their house? The mahr wasn’t that much…”

Nowadays the mahr is symbolic, the groom reciting poetry or presenting a Qu’ran to the bride, or just a gift of money used to pay for the wedding. I drift back to my marriage ceremony, a simple gathering in the assembly room of our mosque. I was told Saman’s family didn’t pay for a more lavish wedding because so many of their relatives were traveling all the way from Iran. The mahr was only a couple thousand dollars, if that — or so I assumed.

A chasm is opening within me. “How much was the mahr? How much was it really?”

Nasrin leans back from the table. Her face is still hard and serene, but there’s an anxious crimp in her shoulders.

“Omigod,” I whisper in shock. My remembrances of our family — a neatly-ordered line of assumptions — are falling into the chasm, faster and faster. “That’s when you and Farid bought your townhome. The summer I got married. Dad gave you the money for the down payment, didn’t he?”

Her face is an odd clash of guilt and defiance. “And the mahr paid for Aunt Kohinoor’s medical bills too. Remember when she almost died?”

I nod from inside a dazed numbness. The old meaning of mahr, the original meaning — bride price. I was bought and sold.

“Do you think it was an easy decision for Dad? He tried to provide for all of us, including you.” Nasrin has switched to Farsi. The term for father — pedar — is more traditional than its English equivalent, reminding me of Dad’s role as patriarch, our guardian and provider. “He arranged for you to marry into an honorable family. Thanks to him you didn’t lack for anything. And you’re so ungrateful it’s incredible!”

I can’t nod anymore, or even cry. I’m too stricken.

My sister’s hand reaches through the pain between us and delicately cups my cheek. “It’s not like you had any options. There was no money to send you to college, and you didn’t have the grades anyway…” Her thumb is a shadow looming in my vision, tickling the eyelashes of my frantically crooked eye. “No one in this country wanted to marry you…” She presses down on the eyelid, forcing it to close. Making my deformity disappear. “But your family loves you. We love you just the way you are…”

Office hours. Two words that fill every teaching assistant with dread. Making yourself available for one-on-one sessions with the malcontents who sweat you for every grade point? No thanks. I want less facetime with my students, not more. Even the voracious learners are a downer, expecting you to be some kind of bookish demigod who shares their enthusiasm for KNOWLEDGE in booming all-caps — an enthusiasm I’ve never had and never will. Don’t stack books in front of me and expect a blissful pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. My enthusiasm is the get-the-hell-outta-Dodge kind. Point me at the next hoop of flaming bullshit and stand aside.

This is finals week, which means office hours are a zoo. Stacked up in the doorway are students who don’t have an ambitious bone in their bodies, suddenly asking if it’s too late for extra credit. Midterms and research papers are dropped on my desk and argued over — as if I’m going to regrade them and give extra points now. And there’s always the utter strangers, just names on my section attendance list who never showed up, never turned in a paper, never took the midterm. Invariably they want to know if they can somehow pass “Introduction to European History” by the academic miracle of acing the final exam. I just throw back my head and laugh. Welcome to an F, dumbasses.

My cellphone lies on the desk and silent-rings incessantly, vibrating and bouncing around. Normally I’m reachable via phone during office hours, but the student in your face always takes priority over the student in your ear. That doesn’t stop me from checking the caller ID. I’m waiting for Nooshin to ring with a job search update. Five calls go by. Then a dozen. 17 calls later it’s finally her.

“I gotta take this,” I tell the deflated fratboy sitting across from me. “We’re done here anyway. You’ll get a B- if you nail the final, a C of some kind if you don’t. Study hard!” I kick the door shut behind him, provoking yowls from the students waiting in line.

“Hi. It’s me. Your favorite unemployed person.” Nooshin’s voice is crystal clear. She’s calling from Nasrin’s townhome to conserve minutes on her crappy pre-paid cellphone. “Is your day going alright?”

“Could be better, could be worse. How’s the weather down there?”

“Beautiful, as usual. What about up there?”

“Hazy as hell. This time of year the air quality always sucks. But it won’t matter this weekend. Not where we’re going.”

“Yaayyy, my surprise! I can’t wait for my surprise.” Her excitement tails off into curiosity. “You just gave me a clue, didn’t you? The air quality won’t matter, because…we’ll be somewhere with clean air? Up in the mountains, maybe?”

“I wouldn’t tell you even if you guessed it. What’s new with the job search?”

“Well…” A too-long pause. “I’ve got an interview tomorrow.”

“Nooshin. That’s awesome! What’s the job?”

“Costumed waver.”

Now it’s my turn for a too-long pause. “A costumed…what?”

“Costumed waver. It’s just what it sounds like. I’d wear a costume and wave at people. I know it sounds stupid, but…” Her laugh is strained. “Here’s the job description I got from Top Temporary. Get paid to wave. Temporary daytime opportunity. Costumed Statue of Liberty characters wanted to promote Liberty Electronics. Duties include — waving at traffic to draw attention to office, going business to business to hand out coupons and giveaways. Must be dependable, enthusiastic, personable. Will train.”

I’m watching my right knee, which has quickened into an up-and-down blur. “They’ll train you? To do what, wave?”

“The training is mostly about the costume. Like, getting into it and getting out of it. And keeping your balance. Apparently it’s easy to tip over.”

“Tip over is a polite euphemism for face plant. Is there a spotter who follows you around?”

“Um, no. I’m pretty sure I’d be on my own.”

Things are happening out in the hallway. Voices murmur with impatience. Knocks on the door, then more knocks. Finally it creaks open just enough for a cheeky student to lean in and open her complaining mouth and say — “Out!” I demand, and plant a hiking boot on the door, pinning it shut.

“What did you say?” Nooshin asks. “Are you busy with something? Should I call back?”

“Nah, it’s nothing.” I take off my Quebec Nordiques meshback and rub my bald spot. “Do you have any leads on something permanent and full-time?”

“Not really. Although I just applied at the McDonald’s down the street. You know, the same one where you pick me up? I’m sure they’ll hire me.”

Nooshin. Burger flipper. Cash register queen. Disembodied voice of the drive-thru. Or worse — a waving Statue of Liberty by the curb. I gust a sigh of frustration. She could be so much more. She is so much more. But this is what she gets for a high school diploma and zilch work experience, for marrying Saman when she was 18.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll find a job sooner or later,” she’s saying. “You need to focus on grading your final exams, and turning in that supplemental grant application, and — ”

“I want to worry about you. I actually like worrying about you.” Admitting it, I feel glowing and expansive — and then an incredible rush of embarrassment. “I just…care, you know. I care what’s going on in your life. I’m your friend, for chrissake.”

Nooshin is radiating a shy, incredulous gratitude. Talking too quickly, trying to cover her own embarrassment. “I should let you go, Nick. I wanted to do some things around the house and surprise Nasrin. Maybe I can call you tonight, if you’re staying up late.”

I say goodbye with conflicted emotions piling up, staring blankly at this ramshackle TA’s office. Somewhere in San Diego is a minimum wage job waiting, and a guest bedroom that Nooshin calls home, and the girl herself. The girl who got under my skin, into my head, through my ribcage. Dull thuds are pulsing through my hiking boot and up my leg. Students, almost knocking the door down. “Hold your fucking horses!” I snarl, and pinch my eyes closed.

Every day Nasrin tidies the house and cooks the meals and washes the dishes, doing a job that was mine for the last five years. I feel adrift without those daily routines, my life unspooling like a ball of yarn across the calendar. She knocks me aside with an angry hip whenever I attempt to help. “Go back to finding a job,” she says in her fed-up voice. That makes two jobs I don’t have now — domestic slave to Saman, and earning a paycheck somewhere.

I’m left with the entropy of clean clothes becoming dirty. The guest bedroom’s dresser is emptying out, the plastic Walgreens bag is filling up. I want to avoid Nasrin and keep this last household chore for myself. I planned to pack my suitcase with laundry and wheel it to the laundromat down the street — LAUNDERLAND, SPEED QUEEN EQUIPPED — but that was before every quarter became precious. Every dime and nickel and penny, even.

Instead I’m handwashing my laundry in the bathroom sink. I start at the top of the Walgreens bag and work my way down, agitating the clothes as best I can in the sink, mixing in detergent and the hottest water the tap can provide. Stains I treat by rubbing with Tide and an old toothbrush. Then I wring out the wet clothes and hang them on the shower curtain rod, towel racks, and finally the shower head.

When I’m done, the bathroom is completely draped in soggy and wrinkled and dripping clothes, each one a memory. Victoria’s Secret panties that came with a matching A-cup bra, which was still too big. My J.Crew blouse, mail-ordered during a bleak month in Indianapolis. The pink sleepshirt I’ve had ever since 9th grade.

Surrounded by the slow drip-drip-dripping, I’m seized by a desire to throw everything away. No more clothes to wash. No more clothes to remember.

The locked door distracts me. Someone is banging on it. “Nooshin? Are you in there?”

I sit down on the toilet lid, a slow-motion collapse.

“Nooshin? What’s going on in there? Open the door.” Nasrin sharpens with threat. “Open the door, or I will.”

I reach out. My hand hangs in the air for a moment. Then I unlock the door and open it.

“Well.” My big sister manages to squeeze an incredible amount of disapproval into the word.

“Well what?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed to do laundry? I would’ve put your clothes in with mine. Now you’ve made a complete mess of the bathroom.” She grabs a hand towel and wipes off the countertop. “I swear, sometimes I don’t know what you’re thinking. Most of the time, now.”

I watch her drop the hand towel on the floor and slide it around with a slippered toe, drying up wet spots.

“You should be looking for a job, not doing your laundry by hand in my bathroom.” Nasrin bends down to retrieve the hand towel, flashing the chest I’ve always wanted. “Did you even look for a job when you were on the computer this morning? Or were you just writing emails to Nick?”

My cheeks burn. “I filled out applications all morning long — ”

“This is the life you wanted for yourself, isn’t it? Trying to find your first job. Taking the bus because you don’t have a car. The world is harsher than you thought, right? Now you see what it’s like on your own, what it’s really like.” She can’t keep the snottiness out of her voice, the triumphant I told you so. “Maybe this is what you need to appreciate Saman and the life he gives you. Don’t you wish you were back with him?”

“I never wish I was back with Saman,” I say almost violently, throwing it back at her. “You want to know what my marriage is like? It’s like living without any happiness, no spark inside, just feeling dead! And I can’t take it anymore. I’ve been married to him for five years. Five years, Nasrin! All my hoping is used up, all my trying. You don’t know how pointless it is. Nothing will ever change. With Saman and his family, nothing will ever change!”

My outburst causes her dark eyes to go wide. Then they narrow again. “Nooshin, I only say this because I love you — you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”

“I’m not making a mistake, I’m making a choice! And it’s the right one for me. That’s all you should care about.”

“You just think I’m all wrong, don’t you?” Nasrin leans against the bathroom’s doorjamb. “Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to be you. But you don’t know what it’s like to be me, either. To be the older and more experienced one. I already know what’s going to happen. I know what this mistake will cost you.”

“I told you, I’m not making a mistake. This isn’t a mistake for me.”

“What does God tell you in guidance?”

The question leaves me blank. “I, um…”

“You haven’t even been saying your daily prayers. You think I don’t know?”

“Even the Qu’ran says I have a right to divorce — ”

“The Qu’ran isn’t about rights that we have or don’t have. The Qu’ran is about our duties and responsibilities. It’s about being righteous in God’s judgment.” She leans closer, as if trying to close the years between us. “You want to be happy? That’s our path to happiness. Being a good servant to our God, our families, our husbands, our children.”

“But I already tried, remember? I went back to Saman and my in-laws, and it was even worse than before I left. That’s why I have to do this. I just have to.”

“I worry about you. As God is my witness, I worry about you. You’ll never know how much I worry about you…”

It’s a painful admission, carving wrinkles a little deeper into Nasrin’s brow, blanching the shine from her eyes. And it’s all my fault. I’m still the little sister whose Farsi sucks, forgetful of her daily prayers, friends with Hispanics and Asians and whites, playing basketball and listening to whatever filled the radio dial. A girl becoming American until high school graduation — and Saman — happened to her.

“Why can’t you just support me?” I plead.

“Because it’s like you’ve lost your mind. How can I support you when you’re living all wrong?” Her expression is a trapped thing, like the dripping laundry is closing in. “I feel like I don’t even know you anymore!”

You never knew me! I want to scream. But that’s a fissure we couldn’t survive. A fissure we can’t even understand, either of us. Instead I just… God, I don’t know. Sit here.

“Did you write Nick an email this morning?”

The question takes me by surprise. “Yeah. But after I finished my job applications.” I don’t mention that I also wrote Nick an email before I finished my job applications.

“And you talk to him on the phone.”

I can’t meet Nasrin’s gaze anymore. Instead I look at the girl in the mirror. Her crooked eye is twitching in its socket. When I nod, she nods, as if confirming my plaintive desperation.

“Do you talk to Nick a lot? Every day?”

“A couple times a day.”

“Hmmm,” Nasrin says.

Overhead is the low pealing rumble of a jet plane on approach to the Miramar military base. The bathroom echoes with its passage. I watch my reflection vibrate with the mirror. It looks like I’m going to shake apart, then I become solid again.

“What is Nick to you, anyway?” She’s piercing me with a canny anger. Not the big sister anymore. One woman to another.

“What do you mean?”

“What is he to you? Just tell me the truth.”

Visions of Nick flicker behind my eyelids. I see a graduate student who pushes himself relentlessly, driven by a giant invisible engine. I see a self-described manipulative son-of-a-bitch, impatient with bureaucracy and human foibles. I see a tall slab of sex appeal who would probably clean up nicely, if he ever consented to a wardrobe makeover. But mostly I see a man focused on me — me — not my physical imperfections, not whoever I’m supposed to be.

Of course, I don’t tell Nasrin any of that. Instead I just say, “He’s my friend. I don’t know how else to put it.”

She laughs, a flare of disbelief. Maybe I should be equivalently angry. Resentful of the accusation. Bridling against her lack of trust. But I can’t stop hoping that she’s prescient, foreseeing Nick and I joined by something more than this odd coincidence of a friendship.

Last night:

Highway hypnosis driving back from San Francisco and the Bancroft Library.

Second thoughts about my dissertation topic. Then third thoughts.

Closest parking spot to my apartment isn’t very. Too bad a mugger didn’t take these damn books off my hands.

Check email. STILL nothing. From Nooshin, anyway.

An aborted Manhattan, just whiskey in a cocktail glass, because I’m too tired to finish making it.

Another aborted Manhattan. Straight from the bottle.

And another…

Futon overloaded with pillows.

Remember when MTV had videos?

This morning:

Ugh…

Christ, this floor is wicked hard.

Water. My fucking right arm for a glass of water. And aspirin. And some Alka-Seltzer.

Do situps and pushups. Not very many. Not very well.

How do you look worse after showering?

I could eat something, but let’s not and say I did.

Fuck you, bright sunshiny day. You make my goddamn eyeballs bleed.

Today I’m a prisoner of public transportation. Farid and his Saturn are visiting relatives in Anaheim, Nasrin and her minivan are shuttling the kids to Qu’ran memorization class. Without a car of my own, it’s just me and my Metro Transit System map. The color-coded bus and trolley routes make it look so easy to get from here to there. But there’s nothing easy about it. I keep falling into the cracks of San Diego’s mass transit. Stuck waiting at bus stops until my watch doesn’t make sense anymore, until I’ve memorized all the graffiti and store windows and people memorizing me. Chasing after the butt end of the trolley and its clack-clack-clacking acceleration away, my arms flapping in despair. Trapped in the arcane transfer rules, fumbling in my purse for money I didn’t plan to spend, impatient harrumphing and oh-my-GOD voices at my back.

And the biggest cracks of all — the white blankness in between the colorful transit routes. That’s where I’m going today. Someplace the bus or trolley doesn’t serve. A destination ultimately reached by me and my Nikes.

This afternoon the closest I can get is the bus stop on Otay Lakes Road, a corner intersection tilted across a sunny hillside with the upscale part of Chula Vista sprawling away. Looking east I can see the small boulder-strewn mountains that hide Upper Otay Lake and Lower Otay Lake. A great place to dayhike, except I didn’t ride three buses for two hours so I could dayhike. I’m here because I need money. $9.25 an hour doesn’t seem like much — only $74 for a day’s work, and I’ve already missed half the day. But still, I’m excited. Top Temporaries has gotten me the first job of my life.

I sling my backpack over my shoulder and begin trudging into the white blankness of the transit map, up the squiggly line called Telegraph Canyon Road. The street is flanked by a sidewalk and bike trail, all rising toward the swimming-pool sky. Traffic hums by, so fast and close that my hair blows. In the carbon monoxide backwash I watch my foreshortened shadow proceed up the incline.

My attention wanders to the landscaping I encounter. The grass is fescue and bermuda, a too-green carpet interrupted by the defiant yellow splotches of dandelions. Flower beds are glorious with daylilies and bird-of-paradise, so tall they almost come up to my waist. Fern pines loom here and there, providing islands of shade. The verdant colors and textures are a blur from a bus window, but up close they become my own private arboretums, one lawn after another.

An automatic watering system clicks on, drenching the native sunflowers I’m admiring — and me too, within reach of a misaligned sprinkler. I shriek and try to evade and almost break an ankle when I step into the street.

Waiting for the walk sign at the next intersection, a middle-aged Hispanic man eyes me blithely. He’s completely unsurprised that I managed to find rain on a cloudless day like this. I get the impression he wouldn’t bat an eyelid if an airplane fell out of the sky and landed on me. Just more proof of my bad luck.

TSA International is the building on the corner, a plain brick office complex of the kind occupied by attorneys and chiropractors and Saman’s family business. The sidewalk follows the road to the parking lot entrance, winds around the periphery of the almost-empty asphalt, and finally ends at the glassed-in entryway. I step over a low hedge of Japanese boxwood and beeline directly across the parking lot.

The entryway door rattles when I pull on the handle. I try pushing instead. More rattling. I knock on the thick glass, a vague thudding noise. Past the deserted lobby I can see a room with folding tables stacked with cardboard boxes. Hispanic and Asian women, maybe 20 of them, are industriously taking things out of the boxes and stuffing them into plastic bags that say WELCOME TO THE NATIONAL SALES MEETING in enthusiastic block letters. None of the women hears me knocking. I go back to rattling the door handle, a louder noise.

A tired-looking Asian man in a ponytail emerges from the room. He crosses the lobby with brisk annoyed strides, a clipboard tucked under his elbow. This time it’s him rattling the door instead of me. The shiny glass opens a little. “You’re too late, sorry, go home now.”

“Wait!” I stop the door handle from closing again. “I know I’m late, but it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t get here any earlier, the 709 bus — ”

“It doesn’t matter, all the positions are taken, go home” He’s talking through clenched teeth now.

“What do you mean, all the positions are taken? My temp agency, Top Temporaries, they told me I have a job here today — ”

“The agency sends more than we need, in case some don’t show up, today we already have all we need.”

We’re tugging the door back and forth between us, him trying to close it, me trying to keep it open. He escalates to a yank. The door bangs into its frame — but then his clipboard clatters to the floor, scattering papers everywhere.

“Can’t I work here today? Please? Please!”

He’s simultaneously holding the door closed and turning the lock with angry movements of his shoulders. His gaze is a dagger through the thick glass, through my reflection in it.

“Please! I came all the way out here from Clairemont. It cost me $10.25 in bus fare just to come all the way out here…”

The Asian man finishes gathering up the papers and jams them messily into his clipboard. I watch him march across the lobby and back into the room with the women, the temporary work, the money I need. Then the room vanishes behind an oak-veneer door hung with a CONFERENCE ROOM plaque. The transparent Nooshin in the glass is squeezed uncomfortably tight within herself, until tears begin leaking out.

After a while my cellphone rings. I wipe my cheeks with a sweatshirt sleeve and dig the phone out of my jeans pocket. It’s Nick. Calling when he knows I’m supposed to be incommunicado, working this temp job. Checking up on me. Suspicious, but in a gentle way. Somehow he unwinds all my words, catches every quiver in my voice. I can’t even be silent without telling him something. That’s why I refuse to answer.

The ringing quiets, then starts up again, then finally stops for good. By that time I’m back at the intersection, looking up at the crest of Telegraph Canyon Road. Traffic is disappearing over the hill in the general direction of the ocean. I run my fingertip over the transit map, tracing a depressing length of different numbers. Three bus routes away is Clairemont and my sister’s townhome. I’m wondering if I can walk all the way back and save myself another $10.25 I don’t have.