Page 99 of The Deepest Lake
“My mom . . .” I say, knowing the word itself is dangerous, because it reminds Eva. I am not alone in this world. Someone knows I’m missing. “My mom would talk me into an abortion.”
“No,” Eva says, eyes flashing.
“Yes. She was the one who wanted me to do the internship at Planned Parenthood.”
Eva’s lips thin, her glance goes to the far edge of the room. She’s further elaborating the story I’ve already given to her in pieces.
“I mean, I’m pro-choice. I know you are, too. But a baby, when it’s my own. I just couldn’t . . .”
“And yet you’re too young to keep it,” Eva says, her tone flat again. Still testing.
“Oh god. Yes. Way too young.”
Eva stands up suddenly, light on her feet, a wide grin transforming her face.
Now that I’m not drugged, I have time. Too much time. Little did I realize how being unconscious was saving me from the burrowing, itching anxiety of being in this tiny, dark, squalid hut that smells of tamales, bark, sweat, urine and feces.
I notice the cockroaches now—shuffling into the crate in the corner, disappearing under my bed. One afternoon I wake from a nap with a big, reddish-brown cockroach tangled in my hair, and I start screaming and flailing until I’m able to pluck it out and hurl it across the room. I sit in the bed, shivering, knowing that during those drugged weeks there were probably dozens of roaches crawling over me.
At times, I smell smoke and at first, it alarms me. But then I remember the slash-and-burn agriculture I saw all around Lake Atitlán, back when I was free. Small fires are common, but I wonder how often they get out of control.
I wonder what would happen if a major wildfire erupted. I find myself almost hoping for it, because it might mean the arrival of more people wandering up and down the hillsides. If a firefighting brigade passed within earshot, I could shout for help. But then again, if the fire blasted through, without people on its trail, trying to manage it, I’d be in big trouble. Roasted inside the hut. Cooked inside a clay pot.
I think of castaway movies, of Tom Hanks talking to his volleyball, of Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe. I try not to think about more murderous plots involving girls chained up to satisfy their captors who are nearly always male. I am something in between: not a stoic character sidetracked by natural forces, not a psycho killer’s inevitable prey. I am simply a problem. It is my life’s goal, then, to demonstrate that I am not a problem—not to Eva, not to Barbara, not to anyone.
My unborn baby—hello baby, how are we today?—makes me an asset. But only until I’m past the first trimester and Eva notices that I am not showing.
My period finally arrives, late.
It’s not a heavy flow, but there’s no doubt, either.
I don’t have laundry detergent. I don’t have a way to hide the stained underwear. I scrub the stain as best I can in a pail filled with a squirt of drinking water, and put the wet, still-stained underpants on to dry, terrified that someone will catch a glimpse, somehow. Eva can’t know I’m bleeding.
The irony strikes me. I’m hiding my bleeding. Eva hid her bleeding. She didn’t want anyone to know she’d lost a baby, months before Adhika was due. I don’t want the world to know I don’t have a baby. I never meant to inhabit Eva’s upside-down, mirror-filled world.
And then I realize a second thing: this isn’t the first lie I’ve decided to tell. I started lying the moment I walked into Casa Eva. I kept lying when I wrote the first essay, wanting to impress her. Maybe my lies aren’t as big as hers, but I’m not famous, either. It’s a slippery slope. Even before I came to Guatemala, I lied to my parents about applying, the second time, for grad school. How would they feel if they found out?
One particularly endless night as I lie awake in the dark, swollen leg throbbing and hot to the touch, roaches skittering near my bed, I think about all things I did just before flying to Central America. I argued with my mother at a fancy restaurant, loud enough for everyone around us to hear. I judged Mom for being friendless. I made fun of her clothes! I made sure to let her know I thought she was brutally, unacceptably boring. I made sure both Mom and Dad knew I didn’t want to live with them anymore. I whined about having no future. I wouldn’t stop talking about travel as if it were the only thing in life that mattered.
What could they have thought, when I suddenly disappeared? Now, it seems obvious.
They didn’t think I had an accident or was kidnapped. They thought I was somewhere even farther off the beaten trail, living the dream I’d had since I was a kid—the bohemian wanderer, old identity cast off like a worn shirt. George Orwell in Down and Out in Paris and London. Eva Marshall in Last Gasp.
I can imagine Mom crying, blaming herself, because we’re alike that way. We shouldn’t have had so many arguments right before she flew out.
I can imagine my Dad’s voice. She’ll come back on her own time. Nothing we can do about it.
No wonder no one has found me.
With effort, I eat every bit of tamale that’s provided to me, even down to the dry, salty crumbling bits. I must fatten up. One, to look at least a little pregnant. Two, to gain strength.
Every day, I test putting more weight on my left leg. Once, I get too ambitious and plant my left foot flat, then raise my right leg off the ground, but it’s too much. I scream out in pain, feverish heat flashing through me.
So, not full weight. But even with a palpable bump beneath the skin where the fractured bone is poking, the flesh around my shin is healing. If I’m careful, if I eat well, if I can just get through a few more weeks and then, if I get the right opportunity. Maybe I can hobble—not far, but somewhere. Timing is everything. Get out too soon, and I’ll move too slowly and be caught immediately. Wait too long, and my ploy will be revealed.
One day Eva steps into the cabin, smiling, with a box in her hand.
“Pregnancy test!” she calls out cheerfully.