They looked at me differently when I walked down the street. One even flirted with me in the produce aisle and asked for my number as we picked out our tomatoes.
I turned him down, just like I’d averted my eyes when other men gave me that “how you doin’” nod. I had no idea how seriously Victor was taking those vows we’d made, but I highly doubted he’d be okay with me hooking up during my “punishment.”
Still, as I walked away from the guy who’d asked for my number, I wondered if Victor would look at me differently when he saw this version of me.
Or if he would ever show up.
More months went by, and still no Victor.
By April, nearly a year after he dropped me off at this prison, I’d learned to stop expecting him. This must be my punishment. Ten sexless years, wasting away in Rhode Island instead of getting the medical degree my parents had been so excited about a year ago.
Whatever.
I had my workouts and my cooking hobby, and my job to keep me busy. I’d also started taking excellent care of myself with the help of YouTube hair and makeup tutorials. I bought a bike, and I almost felt free as I cycled everywhere with the wind in my face. Sometimes for hours.
And sure, that feeling that I should be doing something else, something more, hadn’t gone away. It nagged at me, especially at night. And, of course, it made me sad that I was basically lying to all my friends and family about where I was and what I was doing.
But that was what alcohol was for, and at least this ridiculous prison had a wine fridge that I could keep fully stocked with bottles. Usually, a glass or three was all it took to help me sleep when that restless feeling got too loud. Sometimes a whole bottle, which was why I’d quickly learned never to trade with any of the other daycare workers for a morning shift no matter how nice they asked.
But main point: I wouldn’t unravel like Victor probably thought I would when he left me in Rhode Island to rot.
I’d win this ten-year war. Until my sentence was up, I’d be living my best life ever.
Take that, Victor.
I was in the middle of ironing a stack of Perler bead boards for a bunch of eager five-year-olds when an electronic chime let me know that someone had just entered the Young Souls daycare center.
“It’s a dad!” Aniyah informed me in sign language from her position on the other side of the ironing board. She wasn’t deaf, but, like many of my Young Souls kids, she liked to use the “secret hand language,” even outside of our ASL lessons. “I don’t know who.”
I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder to try to confirm the guy’s identity.
Aniyah was our public announcement system disguised as a five-year-old. The kind of kid who liked to be the first to tell the other children when their parent was here, and it was time for them to go home. So if she didn’t know who this dad was, that meant that we’d need to check his ID.
Whoever it was, he was a little early. I’d just gotten started on fusing together the bead projects the kids had made on pattern boards. And from experience, I knew there was no way a kid would let their parent leave before they’d collected their cooled-off art project. Not without a mini-meltdown, at least. Hopefully this guy wasn’t in a rush.
“Ms. Marge, can you get that?” I called out to the other daycare assistant on duty.
“Got it, baby,” she answered back from somewhere behind me.
“Yay! Time to play Guess the Dad!” Aniyah said out loud to the rest of the group.
I laughed. This was a game the kids liked to play. Most of the time, moms handled pickup. But sometimes, dads we’d never seen before came in, and we’d had to ask them to present ID and make sure their name was on the approved pickup list.
So Aniyah and the other kids liked to play “guess the dad” whenever a male parent walked in that they didn’t recognize.
I set the iron down to sign and say, “Maybe he’s nobody’s dad. Maybe he just wants a brochure.”
I always spoke and signed to the kids when my hands were free. It was my way of immersing them in the language outside of formal lessons.
“No, he is Lara’s dad,” another kid named Benny signed, looking over the ironing board at the new arrival. Then he said out loud, “It’s gotta be.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked with signs. I scanned the pile of pegboards and pulled out the pegboard with Lara’s name written out in sharpie on top of a piece of masking tape.
“Because he’s Korean!” Aniyah answered for him out loud as I put a piece of wax paper over Lara’s bead project and started ironing.
“No, that ain’t Lara’s dad,” another kid named Ryan spoke and signed, his voice ringing with the authority of the future mansplainer. “Lara’s dad works with my dad at Price Rite. He shorter than my dad. And he don’t got tattoos.”
I was laughing at their sincere debate until they got to the word “tattoos.”
I stilled over the iron, the bony fingers of the past crawling up my spine.
And I jumped when Ms. Marge laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Oh, sorry, baby, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, with an apologetic chuckle. “There’s a very interesting-looking man here to see you. He doesn’t speak, I guess. But he gave me a note with the name Victor.”
My heart stopped beating.
And of course, the kids chose that moment to burst into, “Ooohhhh! Miss Dawn’s got a boyfriend! Miss Dawn’s got a boyfriend!”
Part II
The opposite of love
7
VICTOR
Dawn had girlfriends now. They showed up daily at their lunch table and often flirted with Byron, who they’d decided couldn’t really like boys, based on the way he flirted back. They always seemed to be buzzing around her locker when Victor visited her there between classes, sneaking curious looks at him and giggling behind their hands. Dawn assured Victor that she didn’t have “all these” friends before he showed up.
“I think you get them when you win a boyfriend,” she claimed, her tone dead serious. “Like some kind of bonus prize for finally doing something socially acceptable.”
But the friends he found gathered around her when he went to pick her up from her last class that Tuesday afternoon in January weren’t like the others. A few of them wore glasses. And though none of them were curvy like Dawn, they talked in the same overly enthusiastic way, with big hand gestures and lines delivered while laughing.
Victor hung back and watched them debate about the quality level of some anime he’d never heard of.
Eventually, one of the friends he’d never seen before asked her when she was coming back to the art club.
That was also when Dawn noticed Victor waiting at the end of the hallway for her.
“I have to go,” she told the other girls instead of answering. “See you tomorrow!”
She didn’t walk to him. She ran, not bothering to hide how happy she was to see him.
“Moshi! Moshi!” she said, even though that greeting was only meant to be used on the phone. “Why didn’t you come over and get me? I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”