incantation
by Bex Pachl
Mary and I walk up the restaurant steps; I am two-steps behind, following her strawberry-blonde hair and purposeful walk. A man approaches us from the side. 鈥淪ame coat,鈥 he exclaims. He delights in the observation; we laugh, caught in the joke. We are, in fact, wearing the same coat. Mary got hers second-hand, and I bought mine new, but they are the same brand, same dark olive green, with blue lining and orange stitching around the pockets. When I picked Mary up this weekend, the first thing I did was laugh. Somehow, each year, the coat still surprises us. Who bought it first? Are they really the same? (they are) When I drop Mary off at the train station, she says my signature farewell: 鈥渋t鈥檚 been real.鈥 We blur like that, all weekend, like a star in a distance that changes its location depending on which eye you shut. One location, and then, with eye clasped, suddenly two.
Mary is the most real thing I know, the most steady and unyielding friend. I spend all weekend taking photos of Mary when she鈥檚 not looking. Here鈥 Mary in mid-sentence, holding a box of flimsy popcorn with that green jacket on. Or here, Mary through a museum exhibit, hundreds of wispy strands hung between us, as they refract delicate light across her soft cheekbones. On her last night, Mary and I sit quietly on my blue couch, discussing the past. Our eyes pour opalescent streams鈥攖ears containing the love and loyalty that once made her (metaphorically) walk with me on her back across a desert, both of us repenting.
Mary and I met at Wellesley College in 2018鈥 a historically women鈥檚 college in Massachusetts, established in 1870. I was plunged into an unconscionable situation at Wellesley less than a year after Mary and I鈥檚 first encounter. Thereafter, my life would consist of ambulance rides and near-death experiences鈥擨 nearly killed myself in Wellesley鈥檚 frozen lake, almost went mad as leaves turned orange, then green, then fell off their trees in hapless piles. I would get to the other side, but I wouldn鈥檛 do so alone. I realize now, half a decade later, that only in Mary and I鈥檚 memories, and perhaps now only on this page, does the Wellesley we knew then still exist. Its trauma fits softly in my hand, cupped like sand, waiting to be erased by a single, slow pour.
I.
In the dead of winter, Wellesley College is mute, barely breathing鈥 the landscape has fallen asleep under the weight of thick snow. I feel my shoulders rise and fall as I walk for the first time up the winding hill towards Severance Hall, my new dorm. I invite the cold air into my body, definitive proof of life. I ground myself by sensing the air coming into my nostrils as either hot or cold. My new dormitory is like a castle鈥擨 discover I live in the top, tucked away, within a parapet. To get to the room, I have to go up a flight of stairs, through a long hallway, and then around circular steps to find my room on the left. When I get to my room, I see my mom has texted me good luck for the move-in, expressing that she is sad she couldn鈥檛 make it. 鈥淵ou only transfer colleges once!鈥 she jokes. She said something similar when I began college, the first time, when she flew to Ohio to unwrap my belongings and Target supplies into my first-ever dormitory. I am alone now鈥擨 only have myself to record this moment, to make sure this place sticks. I place my single suitcase on the bed, feeling a sense of importance for the moment, even though it is just me in a mostly empty dormitory. I unpack as if performing a ritual鈥攃arefully placing sweaters in small rows in the back of my closet, moving my boots and other shoes into a uniform line.
I left my previous college in Ohio after being raped. I am always afraid, even when I shouldn鈥檛 be, even in the careful act of arranging my belongings. Afterwards, I look in the mirror for confirmation my spell worked. I look the same. My skin is pulled taut; my back is curved like an inverted treble clef. I recognize, with satisfaction, that my collarbones burst from my skin like gnawed chicken bones, back when my mother and I would stand around the kitchen, parse the meat between our fingers. I was beautiful child, a beautiful girl, and now鈥擨 am not sure what I am. In an hour, I am supposed to meet my fellow transfer students. I spend most of the time fiddling with my long hair, changing and rechanging my sweaters, carefully grooming my eyelashes and cheeks. I leave with ten minutes to spare, wandering towards the small house near the lake where our orientation will be held. As I walk in, a few minutes before the allotted time, I realize with dread that I am somehow late. Overachievement, I soon learn, is how young girls transform into Wellesley women.
The transfer student orientation is brief, sparring, though I do meet the other three transfer students, two of whom are named Mary. I strike up a budding friendship over the snack table with the Mary with strawberry-blonde hair, though sadly this Mary and I are not paired as roommates. We watch the air on the lake waft over the frozen tension like a benevolent spirit, as if the wind is dancing with the cool frost. When the other students return to campus, I fall in step with other transfer students from different semesters. This new 鈥渇riend group鈥 includes a smattering of young women from a range of experiences and social backgrounds, though Mary and the other spring transfer students are not totally included. I am desperate to replicate the friendships I had at my old university, before the rape and the slow spiral, so I am willing to accept this group鈥檚 exclusivity if it means I have a place to eat. As I sit amongst this group at a long table within Severance, watching the sun sink outside the ornate windows, I get the feeling that we won鈥檛 talk again, when it鈥檚 all said and done. This is my worst fear鈥攖hat I will leave Wellesley unmoored, tethered to nothing. I snap back into the moment by scooting my wooden chair closer to the table, laughing as others laugh, invisible but included.
On the first day of classes, I walk to the media studies building, adrift between snowbanks and frozen pine needles. Rows of chairs greet my quiet entrance. Students mill about, unwinding coats and scarves as they drape them over open seats. I sink into a black, slightly too-firm chair, watching surreptitiously as the other students greet each other in recognition. Wellesley boasts an all-women student body, and the sight of a predominately female space is initially unnerving. The students in front of me speak and laugh with ease, a quietude not forced but rather embraced. I was afraid I might find judgment and competition in an only-women space, an outward manifestation of my inner mind, but instead, a few students smile at me as I scribble loops in my notebook. I feel something akin to hope fluttering in my stomach. The professor enters the room, holding her hands open as if she wishes to embrace us all at once. The professor lowers the lights like a lover鈥檚 eyelids, playing a film clip of an unrecognizable, untranslated film. I watch the scene with rapture鈥攖he class is so silent I worry about the sounds of my breathing. Later, when the professor asks for analysis, students happily speak, connecting obscure details to readings we haven鈥檛 yet been assigned. When I exit the film building, snow is falling in clumps. The evening has created a haze over the great lawn and the sleeping body of Wellesley is now stunned into trembling silence.
In a large room curved like the letter 鈥淐,鈥 our professor speaks only in French. When the room grows too still, like we鈥檝e lost the train of thought, the professor will pause and parse what she said into smaller ideas in French, elaborating with increasingly plain language until we begin to nod. Every so often, the professor gestures for us to repeat after her, which I do so quietly I am not sure if any sound comes out, or if it鈥檚 just stale air. Under muted breath, a frequent joke is made about someone named Wendy; I realize eventually that this is not a loathsome student but rather an archetype. Wendy Wellesley: a perfect student who sits on Wellesley鈥檚 brochures and floats down its halls. She is whip-smart, inexplicably ahead of the class by two weeks, produces and writes her own podcast, works out twice a day (Pilates, obviously!) and will go on to earn an inordinate amount of money. We hate these girls. (We wish we were them). I learn, early on, two fundamental truths about Wellesley: the cost of sticking out, and the burn of self-hatred. Immersion, everyone keeps promising, will help me learn, even if by fire.
As the first week draws to a close, I hear in corridors and in passing conversation about one of the first parties on campus. Posters about it appear trodden in the snow, placed on the entrances of dining-hall doors. The night of the party, the transfer friend group meanders to Lulu鈥攖he student center鈥攚here young men have strategically placed themselves, despite not attending the school. Frat boys, I hear, come to Wellesley for the plethora of options. 鈥淲ellesley women,鈥 the president espouses in the microphone as the semester commences, but Harvard students still call our bus to Cambridge the 鈥渇uck truck.鈥 Even amongst the most educated, liberal women, we accept these men into our spaces, preen and flirt as they walk through the crowds drunk and gluttonous. At the party, I meet a guy from the neighboring business school. We make out after the party, though I refuse to bring him to my room mostly to avoid my roommate and her incredulous stare. The man acquiesces to dinner. Then on Saturday, back in his dorm room, he directs me onto my knees, unbuttoning his pants. His eyes are ravenous, bright. I have become his conquest, made all the more alluring by my campus affiliation. I know. I kneel.
Over the next few months, weekends at Wellesley take this reliable shape; when men do not come into Wellesley, we leave campus to find them. During the weekends, Wellesley鈥檚 halls are predictably full of music and laughter as students 鈥減re-game,鈥 drinking liquor and wine before trekking into Boston. In Boston, young men, drunk with power, control which women are admitted to frat parties鈥 most weekends, I am lucky to get in, much less offered a lukewarm beer. Thus, I learn that we, Wellesley women, will drink early, and dangerously, if it means we can better tolerate the sting of humiliation. My transfer friend group begins to throw their own pre-game, attending solely by other transfer students, who glom onto one another at the margins of Wellesley鈥檚 social scene. I invite Mary to these transfer pre-games, hoping I might get to know her better. One of my first real conversations with Mary involves the pathetic nature of these interactions with fraternities鈥攚aiting eagerly for a drop of bittersweet human decency. Mary and I agree that when we are twenty-one, we will never, ever, subject ourselves to this kind of spectacle again.
With classes in full-swing, I attend a film screening for my cinema and media studies class, a required feature of the course. We meet every week to watch a film in the evening, which we analyze through assignments and class discussion. This particular dramatic film has no sound nor subtitles. It鈥檚 an old film, in black and white, with the figures appearing before us, larger-than-life鈥攔unning, screaming, hiding, plotting. Towards the end, the male character gets angry with his wife and begins to beat her. The woman sobs as she falls under the blows of his fists. I am already moving by the time he slams her into the door by her throat. I bolt outside, fighting for breath as panic swells around me. I cannot feel the cold, but it must be there, it must be. Over and over, in our classroom, this type of scene becomes commonplace, as if to understand the centuries of great male scholarship and artistic forays we must act undisturbed and unfazed. Wellesley women, I learn, do not panic, do not gasp for air. In the last film screening as the semester draws to a close, I watch an anime film depicting a violent rape. I stay planted in my seat.
Some nights, I resist the pressures of Wellesley womanhood by wandering into The Hoop, a student co-op known for its late-night nachos. The Hoop and its corresponding bar, across the hall, are queer hubs of the campus, though no one in my friend group ever seems interested in going. So, I take to exploring it by myself, ducking into the dark, constrained space to a wholly new and exciting landscape. I begin to immerse myself in this place, studying the splattered paint and feminist posters all over the walls. 鈥淎 woman鈥檚 place is in the RESISTANCE,鈥 a handmade poster declares. Everyone here wears cropped haircuts, nose piercings, and oversized denim jackets. Their combat boots sit like battleships, poised around the geography of the room in every direction. Most of the students appear more fluid in their expression of gender. Perhaps I have found Wellesley鈥檚 underbelly. These people are not Wendys, I learn, but Wandas. As Wendy鈥檚 alter-ego, Wanda is a punk-rock reclamation, a defiant resistance to the good-girl persona. Here, no one lines the walls waiting for a man to choose them. Here, the space is free, minds and bodies in no need of claiming. Wandas are not people chosen to sit on admission brochures. Still, they exist. I sit, alone, adrift in possibilities.
II.
I am a shadow upon the grass; my legs stretch like stilts. Fiery, orange leaves burst from the branches of dark, sinewy trees. The weather of Massachusetts feels sharp, focused, like everyone is walking with renewed purpose. After a year of equivocating, I am finally working with a therapist and nutritionist on my eating disorder. Likewise, after years of shame, I have decided to come out as bisexual, embracing the freedom and sense of possibility. I drive through the surrounding community at Wellesley, seeing tree-lined streets and magnificent houses framed by power lines. I am slowly learning to hold my gaze in the mirror, embracing the strength and renewed vigor I feel with a fuller body. As winter approaches, the beauty of Wellesley is swallowed by my sense of the familiar. Here, again, is the quiet; here, again, is my old winter coat and pink gloves, which have hibernated all year in my coat鈥檚 warm pocket. This semester, I am taking what I thought was a well-rounded distribution of courses, but it catches me flat-footed. I am bad at numbers, so economics goes poorly. My biology class, with weekly three-hour labs, feels like a special kind of purgatory. I am immersed鈥攑erhaps not socially, perhaps not academically鈥攂ut I am, all the same, learning Wellesley like the legs of a female lover. I linger; I take my time.
For my junior year at Wellesley, Mary and I have decided to live as roommates. We didn鈥檛 know each other very well beforehand, but we鈥檝e found a good balance as co-inhabitants. We live on the fifth floor of Tower Hall, in a small room split evenly between my belongings and hers, which overlooks the back of campus, towards bright orange trees and a corner of the magnanimous Wellesley Lake. Mary and I begin to grow closer as friends, our things marching surreptitiously from one side of the room to another鈥擬ary loves to wear my soft sweaters; I am eager to borrow her hairclips. Just like that, our friendship blooms, a symbiotic pairing. Mary works in a coffee shop, so she鈥檒l bring the leftover pastries home, late at night, for me to enjoy while tucked between my sheets. Conversely, when Mary and I chat late at night, she鈥檒l eat a spoonful of peanut butter from her prized Whole Foods jar, savoring the taste. Mary and I lap into each other鈥檚 company like the small ripples at the edges of Wellesley鈥檚 lake, where we sometimes walk in soft, meditative circles.
Mid-semester, I learn my grandfather is dying. I learn this one evening over the phone with my mother. 鈥淐an you come home?鈥 she asks. The short answer is no. The long answer is also no, but that I am starting to unearth in therapy whispers of something unseemly in my past, something that blocks the air in my throat when I try to utter it. Given a family member has already accused him of sexual abuse, I suspect I was abused by him too, especially since he was so ever-present in my childhood. I haven鈥檛 told my mother until she pries, offended I won鈥檛 say goodbye to my father鈥檚 dad. My confession sends my mother, predictably, into a tailspin. Although I am here at Wellesley, a place that might understand, and I even have a few people I might consider close friends, I realize I have no one to talk to. In my transfer friend group, we stick exclusively to lighter fare. We often stand and sit and lounge all together in dim rooms, blurred by soft fairy lights, discussing the latest band or the newest show. It never becomes deep, and I realize, even with Mary, I do not know how to speak what feels otherwise unutterable.
The fall semester is nearing its conclusion鈥攊t is dark, all the time, even when it鈥檚 not. My mother keeps calling. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know how to explain this to your dad,鈥 she complains one day. Then, more distressed: 鈥淚 think this information will be catastrophic.鈥 Finally, the crescendo, as I am walking up the brisk shortcut from Lulu to Tower, hidden by trees and a cloudy sky: 鈥淚 am telling your dad tonight, but I hid the guns just in case.鈥 I fidget in French the next day; the silence from my phone is deafening. No text, no calls. I have lost the thread the teacher weaves. I don鈥檛 try to listen as she breaks the language into smaller terms. My mom texts me as I walk out of the classroom, students streaming around each other like one buoyant mass. I stop, glance at my phone as people glide in front and behind me. 鈥淎ll good! 鈽,鈥 she says. I have been worrying for the past day or two about a murder-suicide scenario in my family, and I am so angry now that I want to throw myself out the stained-glass windows. I want to break and crumble, down to the smallest elements of my structure. I want to run; I want to hide. The bell tolls, but I don鈥檛 see Wellesley, hear its presence, feel its sharp breath. In fact, this might be the last opportunity I have to ever see it again. I don鈥檛 absorb it; instead, my anger dissolves the snow-covered pathways in a seething red blur.
When my mom eventually calls, following up, I place myself in the dorm hallway鈥檚 kitchen, sunk against the white cabinets as a faint fluorescent light flickers overhead. Given the combination of roommates, crowded halls, and bustling sidewalks, there are no good places to take a phone call like this. I anticipate that my mom might apologize, but instead she sounds worn and beaten down. A familiar worry takes over, and I pry, beg, demand she shift the guilt onto mine. Her resolve cracks: she confesses that she knew about the sexual abuse that I disclosed. She explains that memories have begun resurfacing like ice on a frozen pond. She knows it likely happened to me too. 鈥淭here鈥檚 more,鈥 she continues. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know for sure about your grandfather, but I do know about your father. I walked in on the act, when you were three.鈥 I don鈥檛 scream, throw the phone, hang up the phone, stand up, run, fight, light something on fire, crawl, cry. Heaviness overtakes me. 鈥淚 need to sleep,鈥 I say, sealing the conversation in finality. I sink into my bed, cradling my ugly body in between the fabric of a cheap floral comforter. The light dims, and I feel Mary鈥檚 inquiring gaze as she waits for me to give the go-ahead. I roll over; the light goes out.
I am dead-eyed, walking amongst indistinguishable piles of snow as I hold my breath. For the past month, I have not been breathing. If I don鈥檛 breathe, I don鈥檛 have to think, and if I don鈥檛 think, I don鈥檛 have to wander up to my room in Tower Hall, grab all my books, place them in my backpack, and wander into the frozen lake in hopes of drowning. If I don鈥檛 breathe, I will slow the stream, slow the water entering my bursting, breaking lungs, push back the flood of tears I cried last semester and even more importantly, all the tears I have still failed to cry. One question remains: Note, or no note? Would anything be sufficient; did anyone deserve that much?
Mary confronts me as I enter back into our room in Tower Hall. She stands up from the back of the room, where she usually sits perched in her studies. She walks towards me鈥擨 eye the heavy stack of books on my desk. She speaks as my field of vision narrows. 鈥淎re you OK,鈥 she says, though it鈥檚 not a question. Some people will justify their words, soften the silence. Mary, instead, lets the silence linger; she knows the answer. I tell her a piece, and then another, until the story is frayed and tattered before us on our red carpet. We bought this carpet in our first week of living together. It holds memories, holds whatever it is that exists between us, that convinces her to lean closer rather than away. We call the non-emergency line, asking what we should do if we knew someone who wanted to hypothetically kill themselves.
Mary takes me to the emergency room, a pale lobby with folding chairs and grey, stained carpet. I walk up to the woman at the front desk. Mary鈥檚 eyes are like a cloud around me, pushing me forward. 鈥淚 need to talk to someone,鈥 I say. The receptionist looks at me sideways. I elaborate, without language: 鈥淚 am trying not to kill myself.鈥 The receptionist finally glances in my direction. 鈥淚nsurance card?鈥
Later, I sit under observation in my hospital bed, in a hospital gown, in a town I had never been to, fifteen-minutes from campus. My world had both just enlarged and constricted. I ask the head nurse: 鈥淐an I have my copy of Moby Dick?鈥 She looks at me inquisitively, the first pair of eyes to meet my own. 鈥淪ure, kid,鈥 she replies. During my stay at the psych ward, I get on medication, ask my parents not to contact me, and put down Moby Dick with 45 pages to go. Death, I realize, is a white whale under deep water; I cannot bear knowing the end. Though the transfer friend group sends a card to express their warm regards, most of the world keeps turning. Mary and the other two spring transfer students, however, see my passage back into life as a shared responsibility. Mary C. and Artie meet me, waffles in hand, to drive me back to campus. I sit, ravenous, in the backseat, wearing the clothes from seven days ago. As we drive to campus, the world looks different; winter might finally be fading. Later, Artie and Mary C. lie with me on their dorm floor. Mary C. places her head gently on stomach; Artie鈥檚 feet rest against mine. We sit, silently, the weight of their bodies holding me glued to my own. Mary C.鈥檚 hair, blended into my dark sweater, smells like tea tree oil; Artie, at my feet, wears bright socks. Though they don鈥檛 say it, I feel their bodies on mine like a wordless plea.
III.
I drop my classes for the rest of the semester, join a support group, and will myself not to jump in front of trains. In August, as we return to campus, the large friend group meets at the back of Tower, near the steps with a row of marble columns. I am the only one invited from my spring transfer cohort. Mostly this is a spot where students come to smoke weed, the cloud floating up and over the expanse of the tepid blue lake. One of the transfers has brought a bottle of champagne, and we toast in red solo cups to our senior year. I never thought I鈥檇 get here, but I raise my cup, willing myself to make it be true, to actually cross the finish line. There are certainly benefits of the charade鈥攕pecial attention during Commencement, where we get to wear our graduation gowns over our clothes, the black robes billowing out behind us. Knowing this is my last year, I am beginning to accept that I do not know my exact place at Wellesley. I have grieved, and now the sting of the un-belonging fades a little more each day.
With the many changes of the past year, I decide I need a haircut to match my softening face. I take the train into Boston, walking into the first barber I see. I ask them to cut my curly hair, which drapes like a curtain near my hips. 鈥淗ow short?鈥 the man asks. I hold my hands above my ears. 鈥淗ere,鈥 I say, as his eyes widen. He cuts the curls in sections, each one falling limply on the floor like an arm. 鈥淒ead weight,鈥 I think. When he鈥檚 cut my hair to where I indicated, I drink in my image from the mirror. It looks like I am holding something I have only seen others carry. On the train, as I sit on the red pleather seat, watching the suburbs stroll by, I realize the feeling I am carrying is one of peace.
Since childhood, I have molded my image over many years to finally be where I am鈥攊ncluded, with the popular girls, sitting amongst them at their table, leading them while they walk. But, when acquaintances and friends see my new appearance, their reactions hint at the social transgression. Most remark: 鈥測ou got the chop!鈥 The Wellesley chop meant a young woman was trying to buck the male gaze by cutting off all her hair鈥攊t was both famed and slightly satirized. The myth is not entirely inaccurate鈥擨 do think I am rebelling against the male gaze, and I also think it鈥檚 my right to give it a try. Most of my friends are indifferent, rolling their eyes at my flair for the dramatic. Mary, by contrast, is supportive, and accompanies me to get my nose pierced too. We walk through the brisk streets of Boston, in a neighborhood we鈥檇 never otherwise encounter, and we look at the rows of jewelry within the glass cases. Mary exudes patience, giving her sage advice on what style might look best with my face. When I come out from getting my septum pierced, Mary鈥檚 face lights up. She takes a few photos of me, as I laugh and pose with unaltered excitement. Those pictures don鈥檛 have Mary in the frame, but I can feel her written in the happiness across my face.
As the weeks pass after my piercing, I decide to get a tattoo and buy few new items of clothing. I find myself gravitating towards looser clothing, more traditionally masculine items. This type of clothing doesn鈥檛 stick for long, but I am eager to experiment and try things I have never before considered. I have, all my life, felt like a sacrificial lamb in the mouth of an unconquerable monster鈥攑laying with my gender expression may not fix this reality, but it provides some relief. I prance and preen in front of my mirror in my Tower dormitory. Though my transfer friends seem unperturbed by my new changes, Mary and some supportive acquaintances cheer me on, as I enter into class one day with baggy clothing, the next a bandage over another tattoo. The more I conglomerate a new version of myself, the more eager I am to see the endpoint, the culmination of where these changes might lead. As a final reclamation, I decide I will change my pronouns to they/them and my name to Bex. Previously, I have been 鈥淏ecca,鈥 the quiet, pretty soft girl who allowed men unfettered access and undeserved forgiveness. Bex鈥攖hree letters removed鈥攑ays homage to who I鈥檝e been but also imagines who I could be. The 鈥渪鈥 in my name feels like an invitation, an opening, a self that is unfinished.
The transfer friend group greets my pronouncement鈥攏ew pronouns, new name鈥攁s a non-issue. While they humor me at first, eventually they slip into calling me by my old name, using my pronouns incorrectly. It feels like I am speaking a language my friends do not understand. I can鈥檛 explain why this change matters so much, even to myself. No matter how small and uncomplicated I make the words, most people cannot bridge the gap. Comparatively, the spring transfer cohort鈥擬ary, Mary C. and Artie鈥攁ccepts the change more gracefully, even with some excitement. Though Mary initially forgets to change my name on her phone, she takes my concern seriously. She changes the name on the spot when she sees the hurt swimming in my eyes, never making mistakes like this again.
As my final spring semester begins, I decide to live in the French house to pursue learning its language more fully. At the French house, our immersion requires we only speak in French, which seemed like an exciting prospect, but my limited knowledge means I mostly stay quiet. The curriculum gets harder in class; I am, despite my efforts, hemorrhaging language. My French tutors teach me a helpful phrase: Je ne comphrend rien. I understand nothing. The whirlwind changes of my identity have begun to fade in their excitement, and I鈥檝e found, on the other side, that there isn鈥檛 much about me that feels stable. I鈥檝e isolated myself from nearly everyone I know, given the French House鈥檚 location at the very edge of campus, and I find I am quickly sinking, vacillating between suicidality and complete numbness.
Mary, when I meet her occasionally around the lake, sees me approaching and can recognize the numbness even before I can. As we walk near the shore, where wooden chairs recline in perpetuity, Mary glances at me and says: 鈥測ou鈥檙e not doing well.鈥 It鈥檚 still not a question. She takes me twice to the psych ward again. The long table full of transfer students, gathered around in my memory, mid-laugh, dissipate into silence. The relationships fizzle out with unreturned calls and texts. Almost all my friends leave or distance themselves, except Mary. One night, Mary walks across campus at 2 am to prevent another episode that lands me in the psych ward. She is soaking wet when she arrives鈥攕he must be cold. She looks at me, sits with me in my messy room, clothes and empty food containers strewn about the space. She sits with undivided attention. When I try to apologize, for everything, she insists she doesn鈥檛 mind walking in a rainstorm at 2 am. 鈥淚 like walks,鈥 she smiles.
When the semester threatens to end abruptly with the emergence of a pandemic, Wellesley students organize a mock-graduation for seniors who will miss the real one. They celebrate, arms intertwined, near the lake, singing songs about Wellesley, rolling their famed hoops with laughter, in spite of grief. The pictures look beautiful, I think, as I sit in the parking lot of the French House, so high from marijuana that I cannot remember how to get out of the car.
IV.
Four years later, Mary talks about our time at Wellesley like she failed me. Mary looks back, wondering if she could have prevented these years of suffering, softened any of its pain. I feel the agony in her voice, know it intimately because it鈥檚 mine too, because it鈥檚 ours. We shared everything鈥擨 joked we were communists, pooling our resources. I try to explain to Mary that she was the only thing that kept me glued to reality, that she couldn鈥檛 save me ultimately because the situation was, perhaps, irredeemable. In my memory of Wellesley, I can see these many versions of her, apparitions of the past. Mary, standing bereft in the gray lobby of the psych ward, deflating as the door closes behind me, when she thinks I can no longer see. Mary, sleeping in our empty room, next to my empty bed, thinking about the collection of razors I confessed to stealing from my biology lab, harming myself in plain sight. Mary, the next day, marching to the biology department to demand they use better discretion when handing out such objects. Mary, driving my rickety car on the highway, despite her fear of driving, if it means she can get to me, if it means she can bring me home.
As a girl, I was told the incantation of the name Mary would summon a ghost in the mirror, if I turned off the lights and called her three times in a row. Mary, Mary, Mary鈥攑lease come find me, I am about to kill myself and I need you. Mary, Mary, Mary鈥 I am scared, and I can鈥檛 go on any longer. She emerges from the rain like a swan out of a lake, she waits like a specter in the hospital lobby, she holds my shoulders in a photograph, pulling me towards her.
Though it will take a few years, when I recover from the trauma that unfolded at Wellesley, I will model my life, somewhat consciously, to mirror Mary鈥檚. We are both in serious relationships; we both go back to school, chasing our passions. All this time, as I am descending into darkness, into bereft nothingness, I do not know where my future will lead. And yet, on the other side there would be a path forward, and it鈥檇 be following her, watching Mary鈥檚 golden hair sway in the path in front of me. We say, 鈥淚 love you,鈥 at the end of every call鈥攖ime is too short, too finite, not to confess it. The sand, pouring from my hand, begins to grow thin. Mary, Mary, Mary鈥擨 love you; you are a home. The sand will eventually stop. This is what the story is about. Mary鈥
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