Page 96 of The Deepest Lake

“Eva?” I ask after a few minutes have passed. I don’t want her to cover my mouth again, but I have to try.

Using the whispery, about-to-cry voice she used the night she told me about her In a Delicate State fiasco: “Yes?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

She nods, slowly.

“More than friends. I know you care about me.”

She nods—again, slowly. She smooths her hair back and looks to the door. “Things are . . . things are getting busy again. I won’t be able to come here every day.”

She hasn’t been visiting every day, already. “I understand.”

“But you have things to occupy you, don’t you?”

She looks around the nearly empty hut, reminding me of all the things I don’t have: books to pass the time, my antidepressants, medications beyond antibiotics and the medicinal tea, even the most basic toiletries, like tampons, which I’ll need soon. I can tell, because my belly feels heavy and crampy.

That tells me something about how long I’ve been in this hut—about a month. Maybe more, maybe less, because I’ve always been irregular under stress, never mind the fact that I suddenly and unintentionally went off birth control. I’ve been taking the antibiotics for about two weeks. A calendar is forming in my mind: how long I’ve been here. How long until my leg infection might be under control, if the antibiotics work.

Eva seems to shake herself, as if from a dream. “You should be writing!”

“I appreciate the blank notepad you gave me,” I say quickly, ingratiatingly.

“Yes! And you should be writing.”

For the first time she smiles, and her wide, anxious eyes return to almost normal.

“I should be writing,” I repeat back. “That’s exactly what I’ll do.”

After she leaves, I think about the last time Eva was truly pleased with me, when I wrote about my mother’s postpartum depression. That was the essay that earned her “brava” and a visit to the spa. Eva loved the story because it was about a secret, and because it was written by a bitter young woman seeking distance from her mother.

Lying on my side with the yellow pad on the mattress, trying to find a position for writing longhand that doesn’t hurt any part of my battered body, I think back to that earlier essayist persona. I write about an accident, keeping the details vague. I emphasize all the ways in which the accident and my injuries were my own fault. For added interest, I write about my anger at my real mother and how, even in my current state, she’s not the person I’d most like to see, because she always judges me. I describe my situation, healing slowly within the safe confines of a temazcal, enduring physical pain and sunless isolation—Eva won’t believe this essay if everything sounds rosy—but I act as if it’s normal, preferable to being out in the real world, an epiphany that could elevate this little think-piece into something inspirational you’d forward to a friend. Everyone needs time alone to become grounded, to strip away the falsities, to embark on a new transformation. I wince as I use the metaphor of a chrysalis and the butterfly. The writing is so bad that I have to push away the notepad for a while, chuckling quietly, but only until my jaw throbs. Such dreck!

And yet, how easily it flows out of me. Two pages of fiction, all to try to win over a woman who has the power to decide how long I spend here, “healing.”

29

JULES

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One day runs into the next, my mind even more restless now that I’ve finished the dishonest essay. Eva visits only briefly, avoiding conversation, not bothering to answer when I tell her I’m growing stronger, I could use more solid food, more protein. I don’t mention that the last drop-off of unwrapped tamales had been crawling with ants. I ate the tamales anyway. I don’t tell her I spend entire nights awake, having napped too much in the daytime, replaying old conversations, old mistakes, crying quietly in the dark.

A week has passed since Eva took my finished essay away, not commenting on it, when I’m wakened by a truck engine, followed by voices outside the hut.

“I don’t know why,” Eva says, her tone strident. “I just did. Haven’t I accepted your actions? You weren’t exactly making good choices, either.”

The second voice is muffled.

“Well, now we’re stuck,” Eva says. “At least Eduardo can follow directions.”

A truck door slams, but the two are still talking.

“It isn’t the easiest time to move a body in any condition,” They won’t look forever. And maybe when she’s better, at least in terms of moving her . . .”

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