You know you wish you were me Read online

  “I looked there, her bike is in the garage.”

  “What about around the corner? God, please Hana, it’s got to be a mistake, she has to be there. My baby has to be at home. Please.”

  Hana’s face and neck are soaked with tears. She can’t listen to Olivia anymore.

  “Olivia, get Trina back in the room, please. I’m worried about you,” Hana’s voice is stern.

  Olivia’s crying quiets. She has left the phone somewhere and has walked away from it.

  “Hello, Hana?” Trina says.

  “Trina, could you please get her here, please just get her home and don’t leave her alone at all,” Hana says.

  “Ok, yes. I’ll take care of it.”

  Hana is thankful Trina is there. She used to think maybe Olivia would leave her for someone like an assistant. Such a stereotype. Thankfully Trina has good boundaries and is very into men. As far as assistants go, in Hana’s unprofessional opinion, Trina is wonderful.

  “Thank you.”

  Hana hangs up the phone and looks around the living room. She kept it together pretty well on the phone with Olivia, but now, her legs are shaking and she feels a little dizzy.

  She staggers to the bedroom. The bed is warm from the day’s sun. She lays on her stomach with her arms spread out to her sides, soaking in the bed’s heat. She turns onto her stomach, breathes in then yells into the mattress. She yells as hard as she can and cries until her throat feels rough and raw. This is all her fault. She wasn’t outside to meet Evee, to stop this from happening, to protect her, which is her main job, as a mother. She takes some more shallow breaths and turns herself over on the bed and stares at the light bulb above her head. Stares until her eyes sting. There are a lot of police around and outside of the house now. They are going to want her to talk about Manny.

  She closes her eyes, but suddenly feels like she is being enclosed in a dark hole, a well. She is stuck, unable to move. She feels like the walls of the room are moving closer together. Then the space enlarges and she is in a room bigger than a stadium. Her body is buzzing, like there are electric currents running through her and she can’t tell where they start or end. She is finding it hard to take deep breaths again and this adds to the anxiety. She opens her eyes and stands up. She looks at her face in the tall mirror, but sees only a combination of shapes. Eye shapes, a mouth shape, and a nose shape. She has no connection to these shapes. They don’t feel like they are part of her body.

  “Carol,” she yells as she continues to stare and has the feeling she is moving further and further away from herself. “Carol.”

  Carol runs into the room. Hana’s arms are stretched out towards her.

  “I’m scared Carol.”

  Carol wraps her arms around Hana. She is a small woman, maybe five foot two, but she expands when she hugs. She can spread her arms out so wide that she can enclose the whole family, all three of them in a perfect hug.

  “I’m scared, too,” Carol says. “The police need to talk to you. I told them we will not deal with that man and I’m going to report him, put in an official complaint. I need you to tell me everything he said and I will write it up…” Carol stops. “Sorry, I get so worked up, you know. They want names of friends and phone numbers. I would do that, but I don’t know all of your friends. Do you have those? They want to talk to Templeton. I know his number, so I gave that to them.”

  Carol keeps talking and Hana lets her because it is comforting. Carol’s voice is something normal, like a list of groceries they need or plans for a trip. A trip. Hana starts to cry as she thinks about the camping trip. The reservation, being on the phone while something was happening to Evee. Something dark. Shouldn’t she have suspected? Shouldn’t she have felt something? How is it that she had no idea this could happen? If she couldn’t stop this, maybe she shouldn’t have this baby of her own.

  She hears the sounds again, the low moans coming from deep inside of her. She is rocking. Carol has her in her arms, with her head on the back of Hana’s neck. She can feel Carol’s tears on her skin.

  Carol is the only mother Hana has had. It was a package deal. A girlfriend, a baby and a mother in law. She couldn’t refuse an offer like that and she has never regretted it.

  Carol takes her out to the living room where a female cop is sitting on the smaller couch. Olivia likes to curl up on that couch after dinner. Seeing the policewoman sitting there adds to Hana’s discomfort. She wants to ask her to move, sit on the floor, or just leave. She doesn’t want to talk to any of them.

  The story of what happened with Manny embarrasses Hana more than anything. The cop says it is crucial to remember the details of him and them, for Evee.

  “We worked together for about six months,” Hana says quietly as the cop writes notes in her notebook. Carol rubs Hana’s back.

  “I was young and lonely. I was really lonely. That’s the only way I can explain our friendship, we were both unhappy, lonely people. We worked together at a bakery, early mornings. A lot of times we’d finish work before noon and then go to my house and drink and talk, watch TV, sleep and take some stuff and go back to work.”

  “What did you take? Drugs?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Speed, coke. It was to stay up, so we could work. I only did it for a couple months. I started to feel pretty disgusted with myself,” she pauses. “Do you really need the whole story? I haven’t heard from him in so long. I just had the feeling he could be involved because I can’t think of anyone else who would do this,” Hana starts crying again.

  “Ms. Morris, this information is crucial.”

  “Can you give us a minute please?” Carol asks. The officer nods with a sigh and walks away.

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t know why I have to talk about that, you know. They already don’t trust me. The way she just writes down everything I say. It makes me feel like this is my fault,” Hana squeezes her hands together tightly.

  “Nobody thinks it’s your fault,” Carol says.

  Hana looks at Carol and has the feeling that she is lying.

  “But, you have to tell her everything,” Carol sounds angry.

  Hana takes a shuddering deep breath. This is all her fault.

  ******

  FOUR

  Before Olivia, Hana hadn’t been with many women. She had been in love, unrequited love, several times. The last time was with a skinny pink-haired girl who worked at the bakery with her and Manny. She served customers. She sang in a punk band.

  Hana would walk to work in the dark hours of the morning, thinking about the back of her head, which she stared at each day as she slid loaves of French bread into paper bags. And as she worked, staring at the back of the girl’s head she would think about putting her lips on the exposed part of the girl’s neck. She dreamed of how soft it would be. They would hold each other tight for hours.

  The girl gave Hana gifts, strange things customers had left behind – erasers that go on the top of pencils and little toys. Hana would take the gifts home and put them on a windowsill in her apartment, dreaming one day that the girl would come over and see how special they were to her.

  The girl didn’t show up to work one day, then two days, then a week. Hana finally asked one of the other counter workers what happened to her and she said that the girl had moved to San Francisco with her boyfriend.

  Hana realized that the girl hadn’t cared about her at all. She probably felt sorry for her. Maybe she thought she was a little slow. All Hana ever did was stare at her and make silly jokes. Hana felt humiliated. When she got home, she threw all of the toys away and cleaned the windowsill with bleach.

  Despite the painful loss of her one infatuation, she liked the job. It was one of the best job she’d ever had. It wasn’t easy. She worked five days a week, waking up early every morning. She walked down the hill from her apartment building to the bakery. She loved the silence of walking in the dead of the morning. The city was sleeping and she could hear th
e wind in the trees. Her walk home from work was never as relaxing. Cars were lined up along the road and everyone looked stressed out.

  At the bakery, she was in charge of bread. Manny started at midnight. He made the fancy items, the danishes, brioche and croissants. So many croissants, she could hardly believe it when she first saw the case out front one day. It was packed full of hundreds of greasy croissants that he just piled on top of one another. Flour, butter, chocolate, bacon and eggs, fruit, ham and cheese smashed against the glass of the cabinet.

  Hana had liked Manny right away. He had tattoos up his arms depicting his life story. All she had to do was stand behind him at her table and look at his history. The old green ones with women’s names, Cheryl, Claudia, Maria and Rose, with the thorns that he had added a long time after he got the original tattoo done. Rose was the big one. The one that made him decide that being up early and baking fancy pastries was a good use of his time.

  After Hana had been there a couple months, Manny offered her some cocaine. She had never done it before, but she was curious.

  “Best thing is no one’s ever gonna know, all this flour around,” Manny laughed as he cut the white stuff up on one of the tables that they worked on.

  She took a deep breath in through her nose with the little rolled up dollar bill Manny had given her. Her brain burned, but she liked the way it felt. She also like the way it made Manny feel. He started talking.

  “I got this stuff from a guy I used to live next door to. That’s when I lived with Rose. This one,” he pointed to his forearm with the little rolled up dollar bill, which he had just snorted through. “Yeah, I go there sometimes and we talk shit, but he always gives me some nice stuff cuz he knows I still hurt.”

  “What happened?” Hana asked.

  “Oh, sometimes love is shit. It’s like a really nice car going way too fast toward nothing. Then bam,” he clapped his hands hard. “It’s history now,” he said, then he turned back to his table and started folding the croissant dough.

  “You never done blow before?” he said with his back to her.

  “Uh,” she managed. Her head was buzzing. She felt good. She wanted to jump up and down.

  “I didn’t think so. You just keep away from the knives and we’ll be fine.”

  From that day Manny shared a lot of drugs and even more personal information with her. Hana liked the way Manny looked at her sideways from time to time and asked if she’d met any hot ladies, even though he knew she hadn’t.

  “Ever since pinky out front has been gone, you’ve seemed a little lonely,” he laughed one day. “You need to get laid girl.” Even though he had been burned so many times, as he said “There’s still nothing better than a warm soft lady next to you.”

  Manny started giving her rides home from work. Then he started hanging out a couple times a week.

  She liked Manny because she thought he was uncomplicated. He didn’t seem to want much from her and that was good because she didn’t have much of anything to give him, except her time. She did have time and what she had, he got.

  After a couple weeks of hanging out at her house, they started going grocery shopping together. He would buy the beer and whiskey and she would buy the meat and potatoes.

  If she would have stepped back from the situation, maybe she would have seen what was happening. She would have protected herself more, but at the time, it was nice to have someone to go to the grocery store with. Someone to make dinner for. Someone who wanted to spend time with her, no matter the reason.

  He talked a lot. He had so many opinions. The government was a bunch of crooks, that wasn’t new, she had heard that from her father growing up. The police were crooked. His mother was a saint, his father a bastard.

  The days blended into one another. Manny’s voice mixed with the alcohol and the drugs mixed with the mechanical movements at work. Kneading, snorting, drinking, listening, sleeping.

  One morning she woke up with no shirt or bra on. She was lying next to Manny on the floor of her apartment in just her underwear. He was snoring and he had his shirt off. His pants were done up and he had a belt on, buckled closed.

  She felt hot. She smelled like him. She smelled her arms and her hands. She smelled dirty. She got up as quietly as she could and hurried to the bathroom, locked the door and got into the shower.

  Her head was heavy and she tried to remember, but the only pictures she saw were beer cans and laughing. They had watched The Blues Brothers. Car crashes and good music.

  She washed her whole body. She washed three times. Maybe nothing happened, she hoped. Then she remembered the feeling of his course cheek against hers and she smelled him through the soap and steam of the shower, she could smell his face and his mouth. He took her shirt off.

  Maybe he won’t remember anything. He’s a drunk, I drink. We’ll remember different things, she assured herself.

  It was her day off and she wanted him out. She wanted to be alone. She told him she wasn’t feeling well and he left, sleepy and smelly.

  That was the day she met Olivia.

  Olivia says she planned their life from the first day she met Hana. It was the day Templeton moved into the apartment above Hana’s in a run down building downtown. Templeton invited Hana to have a drink with them on the roof of the building to celebrate.

  Olivia was, and still is, striking, with high cheek bones and dark hair cut in a severe bob. Hana had been up for two days baking and taking meth with Manny and needed sleep more than a party, but she was able to keep her eyes open by looking at Olivia as much as she could get away with.

  She was mesmerized by Olivia, no matter what she did. Even when she covered carrot sticks in creamy onion dip and, as the dip fell all over her beautiful fingers, she had licked it off as if it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted, Hana was not disgusted. She was enamored and enthralled by Olivia’s fluid movements and her long arms with at least two dozen rubber bracelets some covered in dip as well.

  Every other sentence contained fuck or shit. Hana loved the way the words came out of Olivia, so often and with the perfect amount of emphasis, expected yet still a little dirty. When she spilled the red wine on her sweater, Olivia’s swearing sounded like a melody. Then she took her sweater off and Hana was quietly overjoyed. Her arms were toned and soft with a hint of a tan. She was wearing an old black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, but she had sewn red lace onto the frayed edges.

  She’s perfect, Hana thought as she studied Olivia and collected images to replay to herself later.

  “Olivia’s an artist,” Templeton said.

  “Cool,” Hana nodded, pretending not to be impressed even though she was ecstatic.

  “I am not,” Olivia said, throwing a carrot stick at Templeton. “I take pictures of people at the mall.”

  The two friends looked at each other and laughed dramatically like teenagers showing off. Hana didn’t get what was so funny, but she enjoyed watching Olivia laugh. Her whole body shook and strange grunts came from somewhere in the back of her throat.

  Hours later, the three of them had eaten most of the food and finished the box of wine. Hana was lying on her back and watching the clouds turn from white to orange as the sun set. She heard Templeton tell Olivia he had to go and did she want to leave. Hana held her breath as she waited for Olivia’s answer. She heard nothing for a moment, then the sound of feet coming towards her. Templeton’s face appeared above hers and she noticed, for the first time how much his ears stuck out from his balding head.

  “I’m going now, I’m completely fucked up to my satisfaction.”

  “Oh, thank you both for inviting me,” Hana said as she looked at Olivia.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, staring into Hana’s eyes.

  Hana smiled widely and immediately felt stupid. Don’t give it all away.

  “Be careful Hana, she may try to take your photo,” Templeton said before blowing Olivia a kiss and leaving the roof. Hana let out a little laugh, not sur
e what he was talking about.

  Olivia walked over to the edge of the roof. Hana watched her walk towards the bright orange horizon. Her legs were long and strong and her shoulders glowed hot light. She felt something easy about this woman and she was sure it wasn’t the alcohol.

  The undeniable fact was that Olivia had decided to stay with her on the roof and not leave with Templeton. Easy, unbelievable. Happening right now, she thought as she tried to gather enough courage to do something with the opportunity.

  She stood up slowly, her head and body were heavy and she realized that she was quite drunk. She looked at her full glass on the ground and decided she had had her last for the night. If anything happened she wanted to remember it. Who knows when I will have another opportunity like this? She walked over to the edge congratulating herself on the steadiness of her steps.

  “Templeton’s a cool guy,” Hana said as she approaches Olivia.

  “Yeah, the best.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Since high school,” Olivia said.

  “But he’s a lot older?”

  “Yeah, he was my art teacher. He took me to my first gay bar.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, then helped me through Tina.”

  “Tina?”

  “My first.”

  Hana noted a feeling of hatred.

  “Yeah, Patty Smith with bleach blond hair and biceps, you know, guns.”

  “Wow.”

  “And a girl, well let’s be honest, a girl in every bar in every city where there were waves breaking.”

  “This was in high school still?”

  “Yeah, I was 16.”

  Hana listened to Olivia’s stories of bad nights ending with calls to Templeton at three in the morning and hours of waiting at bus stops or coffee shops. He always rescued her no matter where she was stranded – wasted on bourbon and heartache.

  Hana couldn’t connect the trashed teenager to the strong woman who was standing next to her. Part of her hoped she would have the chance to rescue Olivia some day. She wanted to have an affect on her, wanted to be wanted, kind, mean, whatever.