Our Best Intentions by Vibhuti Jain

Author:Vibhuti Jain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

For as long as she can remember, Angie has had conversations with her mother in her sleep. Awake, conscious, she does everything she can to push the woman, the figment of a woman, really, from her head, from her heart, and from the top of her mind. Yet when dreaming, as much as she tells herself she doesn’t want her, doesn’t care about her, doesn’t think about her, and certainly doesn’t need her, she’s there. Not every sleep, but she shows up every now and again. And confoundingly, without fail, Angie doesn’t feel angry or ignore her like she imagines she will. Confoundingly, they get along just fine. Confoundingly, it feels natural.

It’s always the same: They sit on the front steps of a house that Angie’s never seen in her real life, the same dandelion color as the house on Lakeview Terrace. There’s a wraparound porch and a porch swing with worn cushions in a seashell print—the same fabric as the one on Angie’s bedspread.

They are surrounded by a sun-drenched field of tall grass that dances in light wind and shimmers with what appear to be flecks of gold. It’s always sunny. Endless summer. And it’s always just the two of them. No one else.

Her mother is braiding Angie’s long hair, which looks more auburn than brown-black on account of the light. It slips in and out of her fingers and glides through the bristles of the hairbrush like it’s made of satin. Never mind that Angie never wears her hair in a braid and that her actual hair is sharp and brittle like hay or dead grass, dried out from chlorine. Never mind that the braiding, which should only take a few minutes, is interminable.

On the steps, Angie does most of the speaking, when they’re not sitting in silence, always with her back to her mother, facing the grass. The uneven tufts remind her of the surface of water, always in motion, always changing. She tells her mother that. She tells her other things, too. About a recent swim meet and how she was worried she might throw up from nerves before the race; how it feels to be in water, to move in water, to hear nothing clearly but the water itself—because in her dreams, her mother can’t swim, a detail she may have assumed based on her father’s fear of water deeper than calf level.

Sometimes Angie tells her mother about more personal topics: like how in a group, she forgets to speak up, to share what she’s thinking. She forgets because she’s so absorbed in listening and observing and there’s never a natural break. Only it turns out that when she doesn’t speak, people think she’s stuck-up or not interested, or they forget she’s even there. What can she do differently, she wonders, and will it always be like this? Her mother seems to understand, because she pats Angie’s head, and when she does, it feels like she’s lifted a weight. Unwrinkled a crease in Angie’s brain.

Angie doesn’t speak with her mother about her dad.

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