Jesse Goolsby - I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

Mia settles in Cortez, Colorado, working as a teller at First National Bank. The high-desert town plays host to a variety of tourists, mainly folks in the summer months who need a place to stay while exploring the ruins at Mesa Verde National Park or heading down for photos at Four Corners. In this rural and self-reliant community filled with ranchers and trucks and people planning on never moving again, Mia rents a narrow two-bedroom apartment, and after twelve years of upkeep, of weekly vacuuming and watching her daughter grow, the humble place now feels like her own. Most of her bank customers smile and gossip with her as she takes, and sometimes retrieves, their money. They call her “Me,” and at thirty she still notices and appreciates the local men sizing her up as she counts out their cash one bill at a time on the blue counter. She has tried to date, though prospects are limited, but she has her eye on a stocky policeman named Kevin who skips the outside ATM and nervously lingers when making cash withdrawals from Mia’s station.

Mia’s daughter, Taylor, has the face of a young Camila and already has two inches on Mia. With her long, not-quite-under-control frame, Taylor navigates the seventh-grade hallways uneasily but challenges her teachers daily with a sunny curiosity that amazes Mia, who has not set or demanded superior performance. While Taylor brings home top grades, Mia rarely sees her study, but sometimes Mia returns home and discovers her at the tiny kitchen table, drawing, Journey softly playing from an old stereo. It is one of the few ancient CDs Mia owns, and surprisingly, Taylor has never asked her for music of her own, so Mia listens and notes how her favorites become Taylor’s favorites. They share a favorite book ( Jacob Have I Loved ), the way they relax on the couch (lean back with one leg over the armrest), nervous tic (right earlobe pinch), how they want to be held (tightly, pinning their ears over the holder’s heart). Theirs is an emotionally stout bond, and while their relationship is about caring and friendship and soccer games and piano lessons Mia barely affords, it’s also about the occasional biting argument: the evening Mia learns that Taylor has cheated on multiple tests, the mustached ninth grader who leaves hickeys on her daughter’s neck, and the incredible fragility of one-deep dependency.

Mia receives rare updates about her parents and sister from Aunt Kathy down in Aztec but makes no effort to contact them. Last she heard, her dad was trying a risky surgery on his back and Camila was stationed on an island off Japan, but that was some time ago, so it’s with genuine astonishment that she returns home on a warm April afternoon and finds Taylor sitting in the apartment with Camila. For a full minute Mia has no words, just images: Camila, alive, present, hair pulled back, odd, puffy cheeks, the scar, a blue T-shirt with Independence in white letters, jeans, on my couch, in my apartment, in Cortez, right now. Mia looks over at Taylor, who touches her own cheek and gives a negative swivel of her head, which Mia doesn’t know how to interpret.

“She looks like I did,” Camila says with confident energy. She smiles, and her scar curls.

Mia debates saying “Get out,” but she hears herself say, “Japan. How is Japan?” She wishes her voice were stronger.

“I don’t live in Japan, Mia. In fact, I’m in the middle of a move.”

“That’s good.”

Camila stands, and her comfort in the space already unnerves Mia.

“Should we hug?” Camila asks, but she keeps her arms at her sides. “Are you glad I’m here?”

“I don’t know why you’re here.”

“Repentance, Mia. There’s a lot to repent for.”

Mia stands by the closed door. She tilts her head and folds her arms.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“How about introducing me to your daughter?”

“How long have you been here? How long have you been in my home?” To Taylor: “How long has she been here?”

“Aunt Camila’s been here about twenty minutes.”

“Aunt Camila?”

“That’s my name, Mia.”

“No. Your name is Camila.”

“I’m here to ask for forgiveness.”

“Give me a minute.”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

“You’re telling me to sit in my own home?”

“I’m not telling, Mia.”

“Stop saying my name.”

Mia tries to compose herself. She sets her purse down on the wooden console and runs her right hand down her left arm. She asks Taylor to give them some time, and Taylor nods and heads for the door, but before she gets to the threshold Camila speaks.

“I want her to hear what I have to say.”

Taylor pauses.

“Give us a minute,” Mia says, and her daughter exits.

To Camila, shaking: “My God. I don’t know why you’re here. What do you need?” Pointing: “You don’t come here and talk to me and my daughter like you control anything.” Stepping forward: “You have something to say? Say it right now. You have ten minutes. I’m here. Go. And sit the hell down. Now. And when your time is up you will leave my home.”

“That’s fair.”

“I make the rules.”

Camila sits, and her confident aura dissolves into the sofa beneath her. She folds her hands in her lap and her chin quivers, and she cries. Mia commands herself to stay put, five feet from the sofa, standing, staring, in charge, but in her sister’s contorted face Mia recognizes profound fear, and it’s too much to take in so she moves to the kitchen for a paper towel. Mia inhales, tears off the towel, walks back, and hands Camila her makeshift Kleenex. While wiping clumsily at her face Camila pours out apologies in choppy fragments, first for telling their mom about Mia’s Yellowstone encounter, then for the fistfight, then for the “You’re not desperate enough” phone call, for not visiting, for not acting like an older sister, like an aunt, and she unloads her wreckage with startling acuity, recalls events years past, minor squabbles, meaningless slights, things Mia has forgotten or misremembered, and Camila sobs and trembles. Then: “I got a guy after me.”

Mia dredges up her dire call to Camila from a dirty pay phone in Shiprock, how later that night she had to beg a female bartender with pink hair tending an empty room to let her and her daughter sleep on the sticky, carpeted stage. It disgusts her that Taylor and Camila were here alone. Mia looks around the room, at her modest, sane life, and finds the resolve to say, “Two minutes left.”

A backfire or a firework or a gunshot sounds in the distance. Camila’s eyes focus and her face changes in a way that alarms Mia. She thinks of the baseball bat she keeps by the refrigerator. A minute has passed, but Mia will not continue the countdown.

“I need help,” Camila says. “Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t need help?”

“I think it’s time for you to go.” Mia strides toward the kitchen. “Now.”

“I need a thousand dollars or I’m dead.”

“Why?” Mia takes another step toward the refrigerator. Her right foot touches linoleum.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Five hundred will do it. You gonna make me beg?”

A rustle on the porch, and the door opens. Taylor asks, “May I come in?”

“This is your home, honey. Camila was leaving.”

Camila rises, shoulders down, but she lifts her chin.

“You like this, don’t you? You like it that I finally need something. You’re pathetic. And I know in your mind you think we’re even. I didn’t help you, you don’t help me. Genius.”

Mia crosses the room to Camila’s side. She has yet to touch her, but she considers placing her hand on Camila’s back, pushing her just enough so she takes her first step away, and then Mia notices a little stream of blood coming from Camila’s right nostril. She clears it with a sniff. Taylor sneaks past them.