Page 44 of Letters From A Stalker

No, but we’ll hide in one like a creeper.

I turn the bike back from where I came from but instead of going home, I ride towards the edge of the road where the trees grow thick enough to hide most of the property from the neighboring houses. The decision barely feels like one. I kill the engine several yards into the darkness. Still straddling it, I push it with my feet the rest of the way between two broad trunks. The tires crunch softly over dirt and scattered gravel, until the road disappears behind the vegetation.

For several seconds, I just stay seated. I leave my helmet on, hands resting on the handlebars as the engine cools beneath me. In the sudden silence, every professional instinct I've developed over the last decade waits for me to come to my senses.

Unfortunately, I don't.

I swing my leg off the bike and move closer. Not all the way to the property, but close enough. I decide the helmet stays on. Not because I’m leaving, there’s no point in telling myself that. I’m staying because I want to make sure she is safe inside the house as well. So I lean against the tree, cross my arms over my chest and wait.

A lamp somewhere deeper inside casts a soft amber glow across part of the kitchen, enough for me to see Julia enter through one of the large side windows. My body stills for a moment and then I straighten to see her better over the brush. I watch her as she drops her purse somewhere outside my line of sight and walks toward the refrigerator.

She opens it, then she just stands there. One hand rests against the door while light spills across her face and the front of her dark green sweater. I wait for her to reach for something. Anything. But she doesn’t move. Doesn’t seem to be looking for anything. It doesn’t even seem she’s looking at the food. She simply stares at her open refrigerator as if she’s trying to remember what to do now that she’s opened it.

My jaw tightens.

Come on, little ember. Take something. Eat. Drink. Fucking do anything.

My foot makes an absent move forward when Julia closes the door but remains in the kitchen for another few seconds. She bracing herself against the counter with both hands, as her head lowers between her shoulders.

Fuck.

Every part of me wants to move. I want to go in. The impulse arrives without analysis and the image forms too easily. She opens the door, surprised at first. Confused. But I tell her that I was worried, that she shouldn’t be alone tonight after what we talked about in the session and apologize for missing the signals. I tell her that she needs to sit down while I make her something to eat, something warm that she can get into her stomach. I’m aware that this is just want, devoid of any clinical justification.

Go to her.

My fingers curl slowly into my palms.

No. Not yet.

The answer surprises me more than the impulse. Not “never”, not “absolutely fucking not.”

Not yet.

I don't have time to psychoanalyze myself because Julia is finally leaving the kitchen and walks into the living room, stopping near the couch. For a moment, she just stands there, looking around the room as though she’s not entirely sure what she's supposed to do inside it. That lost look on her face fucking makes my chest painfully tighten.

Then she reaches for the throw blanket draped across the back of the couch and holds it in both hands. Thankfully, she lies down on the part that is turned toward the window and I can see her without having to leave my hiding place. She pulls the blanket over herself, curls slightly onto her side and stares upward at the ceiling. No TV, no phone. Just lies there, motionless. Gone again.

The recognition of absence lands before I can stop it. My mother used to look like that. That strange vacancy left behind when someone's body has reached the end of what it can process and simply shuts down and locks the rest of the world out. She, my mother, had two versions after my father hurt her.

First version was, she would become relentlessly useful. She would clean things that were already clean, cook when nobody was hungry, scrub counters when they were already spotless. None of it had anything to do with cleanliness. It was movement that kept her from feeling whatever would happen if she stopped.

The version that scared me the most as a child was the times she disappeared. Sat quietly with her arms wrapped around herself while bruises darkened beneath her sleeves and I tried to decide whether asking what happened would make things better or worse. She always said the same thing.

“I'm fine.”

I’ve learned that sentence from her. But growing up on the reservation, I also quickly realized it was a way of life. She wasn’t the only one. Some had it even worse, to the point where being fine didn’t fool anyone. Because it wasn’t just the bruises in places you can hide them from plain sight. Broken jaws, lips split in half… Life on the reservation resembled nothing like the quiet, safe little suburbs like this one. Alcohol addiction, drug addiction, criminal behaviour. Take your pic.

So when that sentence came out of my mothers mouth, it was to calm me or as an answer to an occasional question asked by women who just wanted a confirmation that their fate was no worse than hers. Sometimes I would see her watch someone notice a bruise. Her expression would shift for barely a second, a tiny spark of something that looked dangerously close to hope. Maybe this time. Maybe ask again. Maybe don't accept the first answer. But they'd just look away, and whatever courage she'd managed to gather would leave with them.

“Sometimes I think I wanted somebody to ask twice.” Julia's voice from the session cuts through the memory so sharply that my chest aches.

Fuck.

I close my eyes behind the visor. She's not my mother. Every rational part of my brain knows that. Julia is not helpless. Reducing her to some subconscious attempt to rescue a woman I couldn't save would be both insulting and clinically idiotic. She's smart, capable, sarcastic enough to make me work for almost every honest answer. She’s strong in ways she doesn't seem to recognize because she's spent most of her life confusing strength with how much pain she can carry quietly.

My vision zones in on her as she shifts beneath the blanket. She rests her one arm up over her stomach while the other disappears beneath her cheek. She looks small. I immediately hate that thought. Not because it’s not true, but because I know how hard she works not to be.

My little ember.