"You have to go." As soon as the words leave my mouth I know that I have approached this all wrong. "Have to" is a surefire way to inspire Glenna’s revolt against any desired action. I know this, but I feel I must highlight the necessity. Eighty-eight pounds is too low a weight for "should," or "could," or "might want to consider." Glenna is too thin to have a choice in this, even though she is eighteen and can legally make her own decisions.

We’re in my galley kitchen. I’m making spinach salads with tofu for Glenna and me and chicken nuggets and broccoli for Nikki, who is half-heartedly poking at her homework with a pencil. Glenna is peeling organic cucumbers, expertly shaving curlicues from the dark then light green flesh like a sculptor, making a neat pile of shavings to adorn the baby spinach. Inspecting the peeler, she answers calmly, "I don’t have to do anything."

"You’re right. No one can make you. Certainly not me." I am Glenna’s friend, her next-door neighbor, not her parent, and her parents have had no success convincing Glenna of anything. Her mother is a therapist, but her best techniques will not sway Glenna, let alone cure her. Despite the malnutrition, Glenna is keenly observant, cognizant, and smarter than her parents, with a will of iron. As her friend, I exist outside the parent-child relationship from which she is desperately trying to wrest herself. It is possible, though not likely, that I can convince her. Her parents know this, which is why they have pulled me in, asked me to help. They don’t understand why Glenna and I are friends, but they are willing to utilize our bond to get Glenna to go to Laurel Hill, an eating disorder residential facility just outside Boston. She needs it. She can’t keep losing. She is slipping away to nothing.

"Listen, Glen, it’s not like Silver Hill, or McLean, or any place else you’ve been. At Laurel Hill they’ll let you out, let you shop and work and cook and use your laptop. You can even develop your recipes and try them on a captive audience."

Glenna has moved on to the porcinis, slicing them paper thin and arranging them in a sunburst pattern on each of our salads. Her chin-length, blue-black hair is falling over one eye as she concentrates. "Things are going well here, I don’t want to leave. I’m working on my book, my projects. My friends are here—you’re here. I’m happy." Glenna forces a thin, close-lipped smile.

"You may be happy, but you’re not healthy. Eighty-eight pounds is not healthy." I slice a tomato, tossing the slices randomly onto her sunbursts, and reach for the package of tofu. She immediately spaces out the small red slices, arranging them around the mushrooms. "Your doctor says you need a placement, and Laurel is the best."

"But, Noemi, it’s in Massafuckingchusetts. Besides, M isn’t done with my wings yet."

Glenna’s wings. Glenna’s eighteenth birthday was the day she began working in earnest on her dream of a tattoo. This would not be some random rite-of-passage tattoo on a wrist or ankle, but a full back-piece of angel’s wings. Glenna had a vision of the wings she wanted, strong but downy, a fringe of feathers growing out from between her shoulder blades, filling the space of her back, the wings flaring out slightly at the base of her tiny hips, the tips just below where her buttocks meets her hipbones. She envisioned the tat in black fineline, with shading of gray, blue, and yellow. This would be her first and only tattoo. She had sketched her idea, and pulled other images from books and the internet, but she needed someone special, someone who shared it to execute her vision.

Once it sunk in that Glenna was serious, I thought of M. His studio is in New Haven, at the end of State Street. M (no one is sure of his full name) has been tattooing for 30-some-odd years. He started long before tattooing became "body art." He is talented and a nice guy. He is also the only tattoo artist I have ever known personally. He did my tattoo when I was four months pregnant with Nikki, a colorful Phoenix in flames just below my left shoulder. I knew M would love Glenna, and the idea of her wings. It would be a challenge, though, for both of them. The process would be long, involved, and painful for Glenna, with no cushion of fatty tissue to absorb the pain of the needle. It would be a tough tattoo for M, too, with such a bony, sensitive canvas on which to work, but they were both determined.

I called Studio M and spoke to his wife, Bella, who made an appointment for Glenna’s consultation just two days after her birthday. I explained Glenna’s situation so M would be prepared for the issues unique to her, because I knew that Glenna wouldn’t tell him. I told Bella that I knew M and that Glenna was a close friend, and she assured me that my friend would be well cared for. M designed the artwork, and made an appointment to break skin by the end of that week. He estimated it would take six sittings start to finish, if she could tolerate the pain of four-hour sessions. Miraculously, she has made it through five, and now Glenna will not even consider treatment until her wings are fully finished. I see her point. But with the weight loss, malnutrition, it is possible her body may lack the energy to heal itself. Finishing Glenna’s wings is dangerous business. M is committed, but concerned. Glenna is resolute.

"MassaFUCKINGchusetts…" Glenna says the word again, stops her artful arranging. "Yes to wings. No to treatment." Adamantly, she turns away, storms off to the living room, picks up her crocheting. That went well, I muse silently, as I pull a tray of slightly overtanned nuggets from the oven.

"Mom, where is MassaFUCKINGchusetts?" Nikki says, giggling. At ten she is a whiz at Northeast geography, but wants to say the long, fun word with the forbidden one embedded in it, feel it roll off her tongue, find out if she will get away with it. Normally, she won’t, but I am preoccupied and frustrated.

"It’s just north of Connectifuckincut!" I am sorry the minute the words leave my mouth.

Glenna emerges briefly from her sulk, chimes in. "You know, you shouldn’t swear at your offspring, or let her swear either."

"You started it," I toss back, and then realize how childish that sounds, and try to re-assert my parental role. "Nikki, come set the table." She does so without complaint, and I am grateful for her momentary obedience. If only Glenna were so easy.

When I’m stressed I eat peanut butter—lots of it. Likewise, when I’m bored, or lonely, or uninspired, which is often. You can tell how bad a day it is by the number of spoons in the sink streaked with that greasy tan residue, the souvenir tongue print on each one. When it’s a really bad day, you won’t see any spoons at all, just finger-width ruts, treadless tire tracks in the creamy landscape of the jar, the memory of that nutty aroma lingering on my fingers long after I have washed them. After I had Nikki, the pounds amassed, and the needle on the scale steadily drifted upward, thirty pounds in just three months. It wasn’t only peanut butter. Cheese played its role, and muffins, and sugar in just about any form. Sleep deprived and isolated, trying desperately to nurse, no time to cook or eat, I turned to the available comforts of salt and fat and sweetness, washed down by large amounts of caffeine. It was a three-month bender of unconscious grazing on pretty much anything in reach that could be eaten at room temperature. After all, I had to keep myself going for the tiny, impatient little person who had filled my days and interrupted my already fitful nights. I threw on the pounds like a blanket against the chilling isolation, the cold responsibility, of being a mother. Of course, it’s not just motherhood, it’s everything.

Today I’m eating Jif creamy from the 64 oz. plastic jar, while listening on the phone to my mother. Today is a spoon day, but could easily work its way into a spoonless one, especially with my mother at the other end of the line. I would like to call what we are having a conversation, but its one-sidedness makes it feel more like a monologue, an accusatory, self-pitying monologue on bodily dysfunction, inattentive offspring, sin. Phone calls with my mother are always accompanied by food, like the pairing of movies and popcorn, but less entertaining. I eat my way through her hour-long diatribes, randomly moving from box to bag, from cabinet to cabinet to fridge, munching incessantly on peanuts, oyster crackers, marshmallows, cheese, chocolate chips, various indiscriminate morsels, as if by keeping my mouth full I can avoid saying even half the things I am thinking. Nikki is at school, staying after with the music teacher to participate in "recorder karate." I have visions of lines of fourth-graders breaking the colorful plastic tubes in half with flying wheel kicks. I am sure I have it wrong, but the visual image amuses me, gives me something to focus on besides my mother and the impending tightness of my latest next-size-up in plus-size jeans.

Glenna is sitting on the sage chenille couch in my living room in the lotus position, crocheting a cluster of grapes. The wide cuffs of her oversized olive pants and her large gray-green hoodie make her tiny form blend into the couch, amorphous. The pants she made herself, and could have made the hoodie too if she felt like it. Glenna can create pretty much anything. She started doing Amigurimi, which as far as I can tell is the Japanese craft of crocheting cute little palm-sized creatures. I bought her a book of patterns online for her birthday. The book was all in Japanese, but with diagrams and photos on each page. The entire website was in Japanese, so buying it was a leap of faith, unable to confirm what I had bought or how much it would cost or when it would arrive until the shabby brown paper envelope arrived from Kyoto. We were both proud and a little surprised when the book that emerged from the thin, grainy paper was the one she had wanted. Glenna also sews, beads, bakes, and sculpts miniatures in marzipan and Sculpey, but crocheting is still her favorite pastime. Not too long ago Glenna actually crocheted a smiling pile of poo. Her purple chrome hook was going a mile a minute for several hours and when she stopped she had this palm-sized, three-tiered brown dollop. Then she began cutting felt and sewing small shapes onto the dollop. When she was done it looked strangely cute with two round blue eyes, a pink yarn smile and rosy pink cheeks, kind of like a chocolate soft-serve ice cream with a face. I smiled at its cuteness, then caught myself in the realization that I was smiling at shit. There is rarely anything cute about shit.

Lately Glenna is into food. Yesterday she crocheted a slice of pizza. The day before that it was California rolls with wasabi. I never would have believed it possible, but so far I have witnessed fuzzy overstuffed slices of blueberry pie, chocolate cake, cups of coffee, Newman’s Own sandwich cookies, and a bowl of miso soup dotted with wisps of floating scallion. All were reasonable facsimiles of their edible models, with that nubby uniformity of yarncraft. It’s not surprising that Glenna is crocheting food. Everything Glenna does revolves around food. She was diagnosed anorexic two years ago, and has since been in and out of hospitals, to nutritionists, psychiatrists, and holistic healers. She has been locked up, tied down and force-fed. Finally, left alone, she was doing better with her weight for a while, not gaining but not losing either, until she took a turn and started losing big time. With the world that surrounds her so attuned to it, I sometimes think it’s no wonder she’s obsessed with food. Food that is healthy. Food that is animal-friendly. Food that is fattening. Food that is not. Food she will make, and crochet. Food she will not eat. At just eighteen, she has signed a deal to write a cookbook of vegan cupcake recipes, based on her blog on food and Amigurimi. The publisher could not believe she was just eighteen. Glenna is amazing. She is capable of anything. If she survives, she will be famous.

We are an unlikely pair, Glenna and I. She is young, brooding, artistic, an old soul. I am twelve years her senior, anchored by a ten-year-old, a condo, neighbors, a job. I’m both too old and too young for my age. Glenna likes to spend time at my apartment because it’s the kind of place she would have chosen to grow up in, if children could choose their homes and families. The house she grew up in is chillingly quiet, well-decorated, and eerily museum-like. Her father is an African Studies professor at Yale; her mother, the psychologist, is a would-be opera singer. In contrast to her parents’ expansive house in Westville, my condo in Hamden is small. It’s colorful, disorganized, and overly child-friendly, brimming with the chaotic jazz of daily life. Glenna’s place next door, while funky and serene—truly her, has only her within it. And Glenna is in no way one of Glenna’s favorite people. But for now, and for whatever reason, Nikki and I are.

My mother is sure that Glenna and I are lovers, waiting quietly in the closet for her death, when we will emerge from our delicious deceit and dance the lesbian dance of joy. My sister Rae, who is Glenna’s age, is jealous, and as such wants nothing to do with either of us. Glenna has observed all this, is well aware of the dynamics at work, as she is well-aware of everything that goes on around her. She will eat with no one but me these days, and by association Nikki, so mealtimes here take on a certain ceremonial rigidity: a negotiated menu, impeccable timing, and a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Glenna insists on going to her sittings with M by herself, which is fine with me because after Nikki and work I don’t have four hours to sit in a tattoo parlor. She has not offered to show me her tattoo, and I have not asked to see it, although I am dying to. Today, Saturday, is her final appointment, and this time she has asked me to come with her. I am surprised, and flattered, and I say yes. I have made arrangements for Nikki to be with my mother, so I take Glenna to breakfast at the Pantry on State Street before heading to Studio M. We sit in a booth near the back window, on the cracked vinyl cushions beneath the chartreuse sax of a ‘76 Newport Jazz Festival poster. Miles Davis’s "So What" breezes pleasantly from the speakers. The nutty, fruity bouquet of fair trade coffee and raspberry pancakes fills the air around us. Glenna frowns at the menu and orders fruit salad and I order a spinach feta omelet. Two hazelnut coffees, hers with soy. "We could have gone to Claire’s," I offer, but she says, "No, this is fine. I’m not very hungry anyway."

The coffee steams in two cobalt mugs, and she pours her soymilk, sips, and smiles faintly. Her face is a little brighter than usual, and her eyes are not as tired as they have been.

"I have always loved this place," I confess rather wistfully, as if my love for it is something unrequited. She seems happy that I am happy, and happy that I am with her.

"So are you excited to have this finally done?" I ask, knowing the answer by her face. "It’s just the color today, right?"

"Yeah, just the color. I’ve wanted these wings for so long, and now I’ll finally have them."

I take a sip from my mug, garnering boldness from the caffeine. "You know, I’ve been dying to ask you, Glen—why the wings?"

Glenna looks up from her coffee and her hazel eyes search mine for a long time. Her eyes are suddenly aglow, translucent, and I’m unsure whether it’s the lighting or something within her that is making them so. Then she offers that sprightly grin that is rare these days, the one she gets when she’s truly happy. "This way, when I die, I’ll have my own transportation."

We open the glass door to Studio M, setting off ghoulish laughter from the motion sensor. The place is empty, except for Bella, who greets customers, does bookkeeping and occasionally just hangs out. Some call her "Mrs. M." She has the look of an aging tattooist’s wife: her hair is long, slightly frizzed and graying; her chest and arms are a cacophony of various colors and styles of ink; a yellow and black striped tiger with emerald eyes and huge paws leaps from the open neckline of her tanktop. When she greets us, though, she is matronly and sweet. We are the first appointment of the day, and Mrs. M is busy setting up the workstation for Glenna’s session.

M emerges from the back with a DD’s coffee. His hair is grayer than when I last saw him. We watch him place a Pearl Jam CD into the changer, one of the bootlegs from the European tour, along with Janis Joplin’s greatest hits and something by Jethro Tull. Then he sees us. I am in my dark Lane Bryant jeans, and an off-the-shoulder tunic to show off my tattoo.

M’s voice is deep and booming, but jovial. "Two more lovelies to brighten up the place!"

I’m not sure whether he would have recognized me by sight; it had been almost ten years and at least thirty pounds since he last saw me. My hair is the same, long, dark and curly. Atop the flabby, ever-widening expanse of my body, my hair is my crowning glory. Nikki has my hair. She is lucky, good hair is an asset in life. Despite my increase in weight and age, I am sure, though, that he will recall my tattoo, so I pull my top down a little and stand straighter, allowing the phoenix just below my shoulder to spread its colorful wings. M’s eyes move from my face to the phoenix, taking in the tattoo. It doesn’t take long for it to register. He smiles and hugs me, saying "It’s been awhile! How’s tricks, kid?" Then he takes Glenna’s hand and kisses it, and says, "Your chariot awaits, m’lady." He motions us both to follow him behind the lacquered oriental screen that separates his workspace from the waiting area. I hesitate, and search Glenna’s face for a sense of whether she wants me with her. We hadn’t talked about my role in this. She certainly didn’t need my help to finish what she started. Glenna had gotten to this point all alone. Then there is the issue of her body. Glenna doesn’t show her body to anyone. Glenna thinks for a second and then nods, and we both step behind the screen. M pulls a gray folding chair from the back and places it in the corner of the small space. He looks at me and says, "Park it here."

Glenna is in a red Hello Kitty zippered sweatshirt and a pair of black yoga pants. Knowing the drill, she removes the sweatshirt and quickly lies down on her stomach on the cushioned table, pulling her sweatpants halfway down her butt and resting her arms under the small pillow beneath her head. Stretched out like that, her back looks even thinner than it is, covered by the pale blanket of skin that dips into the spaces between each rib. Her spine extends ridge-like along the center of the small, shriveled landscape of her back. With her face hidden, her body hardly seems human, more like that of a wraith than a girl. Then my eyes hone in on the wings, stunning in their texture and detail. Hundreds of feathers, the ones on top minute, downy, graduating to the larger, more majestic plumes of an eagle. They adorn her entire back, so real in their shading that, even without their final wash of color, they transform this shrinking mortal into a real-life angel. With her body stretched out like that, the wings seem as if at any moment they could unfurl, take on wind, and carry her upward.

M chats with Glenna as he works. I leave them to their bond as my thoughts turn to the last time I was here, nearly ten years ago. It was May. I was sitting in M’s workspace on an office chair with the wheels locked, my feet on an office supply box, with a vision of my own. I was just a few years older than Glenna, and just as resolute. M was on a rolling stool; I remember the aroma of sandalwood mixed with marijuana, latex, perspiration and ink coming off M, he was so close. His dark Abyssinian beard occasionally brushed my arm as he worked. He was tattooing the phoenix on the spot just below my left clavicle. I was about four months pregnant with Nikki then, hadn’t felt her kick yet, it didn’t seem real. Having just dropped out of college, I was using the next semester’s tuition money to pay for an apartment. I was unsure about my future, about how my past fit into it, and despite a few close friends and family who thought they understood me, I was totally alone. I remember that when I walked into Studio M I felt immediately at home. M was there alone that day, smoking pot in the back in the absence of customers, and he came out holding the pot smoke in his lungs. Finally, he exhaled, and maybe it was the pregnancy, but my historic love of that sweet, heady aroma turned to nausea. I looked at him curiously and a little green, and we both started laughing. From that point on, I felt like we were partners in crime. I explained my tattoo idea, the placement, and he pulled out a red Sharpie and drew the design freehand. Maybe tattoo artists are a little like bartenders, strangers that engender trust and disclosure, but as he worked, I found myself telling M the story I hadn’t told anyone, not my family or friends—the real story: why I left school; the pregnancy; the true meaning of the tattoo. Amidst the hum of the stylus, the sting of the needle, the wipe of excess ink, I unloaded my story in detail:

The child inside me will be born by choice, but it was not conceived that way. The father is Andreo Barco, a minor soccer legend in his home country of Brazil. A birth defect left him with no fingers on his right hand. Naturally, it didn’t take long for his friends to crown him "Lefty." Not very original, but it fit, and stuck, and he came to embrace it. I was twenty, a junior at Wesleyan, when I met Lefty Barco at a party in his dorm. He was mixing Bacardi and Cokes when I found him, whistling "Lady of Spain" off-key as he poured rum with his left hand and held the red Solo cup in place with his right stump. He did everything with swagger, was a character study in bravado. I assumed this was either cultural or a defense mechanism. Either way, or both, I found it subtly attractive. Rum and Coke had become my drink of the evening, having had three already. He made me a fourth and we started talking as I helped him tend bar. He told me to call him Andy. I remember being amazed at his utility with the fingerless hand, the way he could move the couple of stubby buds he had been born with to hold a swizzle stick, or steady a cup. It seemed vaguely grotesque to me that the suggestion of fingers could move like fingers, and I tried to imagine what actual digits would look like extending from the bumps on his tan, round club of a hand. I cut the last wedge of lime in two and squeezed both chunks into the drink he was making. That was the end of the fresh lime, so we walked to his room to get a bottle of Rose’s.

I don’t remember everything about that night, but certain details remain ever vivid. They do not degrade, although I often wish they would. The tomb-cool quiet of his small dark single. The assertive musk of Obsession that accosted me as the door opened. Even in the dark I noticed the conspicuous absence of personal effects: no comforter, photos, or posters on the walls. A stainless steel desk lamp, off, and a high-tech digital clock radio. A soccer ball in the corner by the closet. A box of Avanti condoms on the bedside table.

Andy started kissing me, and at first I was intrigued. I had never kissed anyone at college, let alone a Brazilian, or anyone with a birth defect. And there was something about the authority with which Andy did everything that could make others acquiesce, me included. The rum in my system made it even easier. But something was wrong. He seemed over zealous, too aroused. His plump lips should have been soft in their fullness, but they pressed hard on mine, pushing my own skin into my teeth. It hurt. His tongue filled my mouth and I resisted the urge to bite it to get him to stop kissing so hard. He was pressing his body against me. I pulled back, "Wait—" I said. "Wait—I have a boyfriend," I lied, as if that would have mattered. I was a conquest, all the better if stolen from some poor guy. He stopped kissing, looked at me, his dark eyes barely visible in the dark. Then he pushed me toward the unmade bed. I lost my balance, and fell backward onto the wrinkled sheets, then the impact of his heavy body on mine, crushing me. He straddled my hips and started kissing my lips, hard, then my neck, holding my shoulders down with his good hand and stump. I struggled, turning my head from side to side, trying to lift my shoulders from the bed like a wrestler trying to avoid a pin. I don’t remember the removal of clothing, the parting of my legs, or anything below my waist. Just that his body was heavy and hard, and the pain and heft of that stump pressing the fleshy hollow just below my left shoulder. His movements were angry, deliberate, and he was all fire, cauterizing something deep. My entreaty, demand, then plea battled his chant, my name: NO, NO, NO, Noemi, Noemi. He was trying to quiet me. Then we were a tangled, tandem mantra, litany of denial, defiance: NOemi NOemi NOemi, trapped in the knock of the bed frame on the wall, this forced union that had become me, NOemi. At some point I started crying, and I think it was the tears that made him lose his erection, climb off me, turn away.

I don’t remember putting on my clothes, or leaving his room, or going back to mine. The next day, though, everything hurt, and I felt empty and fragile, like the frame of a house that has burnt from within. I remember staring in the mirror at my left shoulder, a bruise that looked like a comet, circular with a flaming tail, purple and sore to touch. It hurt deep into the muscle, when I touched it or moved. It lingered three weeks, and turned shades of blue, then green, then brown, before it finally faded. I didn’t leave my dorm for a week. I slept a lot, and drank when I wasn’t sleeping, then eventually went back to class, and life. Then I missed my period.

The stupid irony was that the condoms were in reach but he never reached for one, and I don’t think he actually came, but still the telltale plus appeared in the tiny test window in that two-inch square of plastic in the Middletown Planned Parenthood. I was pregnant. When I saw the plus I realized that although something inside of me had been burned beyond recognition, something new had been created. I knew that the only way to make sense of this senseless act was to have life reborn from the ashes of the one who had perished in that small, dark room. I would leave Wesleyan, move back to New Haven, and have this baby. I would name the baby Phoenix, after the mythical bird that rises from the depths of its own funeral pyre. If it was a girl I would call her Nikki for short, or a boy, Nicky, but either way its given name, the only one that matters, would symbolize its fiery origin. And the tattoo would remain in place of the bruise to remind me that life could, and would, go on.

Before I know it I am pulled from my reverie by the words "It is finished." Glenna’s wings are complete, kissed with color, ready to fly. M sprays them with water and wipes them with a cloth, hands Glenna a large hand mirror and sends us to the full-length mirror in the back room of the shop. Glenna stands with her back to the glass and uses the hand mirror to view M’s masterpiece. She inhales audibly as she sees her finished wings. The colors are subtle but pure, the texture soft and real. Glenna looks for a long time, not moving or speaking, just staring deeply at her reflection. Her eyes are moist, but her expression is unreadable.

"My God, they’re gorgeous," I offer. And they truly are exquisite, almost holy.

On the drive to get Nikki, Glenna is quiet. I try to strike up a conversation about her tattoo, the healing process, application of the A& D, even Nikki and my mother, but Glenna is unresponsive. It is not until we reach the exit for my mother’s that Glenna speaks. "I’ve been thinking. Once my wings are healed, I might take a drive up to Boston."

Now I remain silent, give her a chance to offer up an explanation for her change of heart, but instead she turns her head, looks out the window, picks at her nails. Finally, I ask, "What made you change your mind?"

Glenna doesn’t look at me when she answers. She is wiping her hand across her eyes and sniffling. "It was me in the mirror. I was an angel…."

When Phoenix was born, I remember first grasping her slippery, warm body in my hands and pulling her strange beauty toward me. The first thing I did was inspect her. Check for fingers and toes. It sounds stereotypical, most parents do this, but for me it was imperative. I inspected the digits, searched her entire body frantically for some defect, sign, something missing or extra, a hint of fire in her eyes perhaps, any trace of the trauma that formed her. I found none, thanked God. She was perfect, beautiful, mine.

My friend, Painter (his real name is Jerry) is an art student at the Paier School in New Haven. He dropped out of Wesleyan just after I did to go to art school, then dropped out of art school to make his fortune as a painter, and now, eight years later, is back at school like I hope to be someday. Painter is gifted but not very disciplined. His life has loosely followed mine, but for different reasons, and with hope of different outcomes. Unlike Painter, I have no delusions of grandeur or, as some would argue, no real dreams. My plan is to go back and finish college, maybe go on to grad school, and finally decide what I want to be when I grow up. But a plan is not a dream. I hope one day to have one.

Painter’s baby gift to me was to paint my guest room, the room that would be Phoenix’s. He promised he would do it start to finish, primer to moldings, and I have to say I was a little worried, given his customary lack of follow-through. He had envisioned painting the walls something called Heaven Blue, and stenciling the elemental symbols of air, water, earth, and fire on the walls in metallic copper. Above the crib he would paint a mural of a fiery Phoenix based on my tattoo: the head, breast, and back in scarlet and gold, and the wings in iridescent purple, rose, and azure. Its feet would be a Tyrian purple, covered in fire in many shades of orange; its sea-blue eyes would be flecked with gold. I had visions of Painter petering out, becoming unmotivated with the head or a wing unfinished, or halfway through the fire, and the room forever in limbo. Painter was on a mission, though. Committed to me and to the baby, he did finish, and the room looked amazing. That was ten years ago, and I still go in Nikki’s room sometimes, just to marvel and be.

This morning I am sitting in the glider rocker in Nikki’s room, staring at Painter’s phoenix over her daybed. All other traces of her babyhood are gone. Surrounding the mural are haphazardly hung posters of teen idols that all look like children to me. I have the day off, and Nikki has just boarded the bus for school. Glenna will not be showing her tiny, elfin face today. Her wings complete, she is making her way up to Boston, crocheting bag and laptop in the passenger seat beside her, music enveloping her, I’m sure. I am alone with myself. The silence is so complete that the air rings with it. Suddenly, I miss the days when I could fit Nikki in my arms, sleeping peacefully, angelic, while I glided for hours. I also miss Glenna. In some ways I have needed her more than she ever needed me. Arms empty, alone, I am tempted to walk to the kitchen, assault the giant plastic jar of Jif, box of Wheat Thins, can of frosting. I am tempted to fill my emptiness with food, as I have done for as long as I can remember. Not today though. Instead, I pick up the blue chrome hook Glenna gave me for my birthday, and my skein of variegated green yarn. I wrap the yarn around the hook then carefully but clumsily, and pull it through. Glenna has been a good teacher, but I am still very much a beginner. My stitches are uneven, some loose and lacy and others pulled tight to the point of buckling. The effect is an inadvertent lettuce edge. That’s fortunate, because today I am crocheting lettuce.