(story written at age sixteen, virginity intact, four years into Mom's cancer)

Perhaps the beauty of her first child made her so worried. How she was born with already thick hair and open smiling eyes. The way the little girl learned to walk and talk long before other children her age had, and how her work in school was always above expectations. Worry seemed misplaced, though, more of a question that lingered in the background of parties and family conversations. Mother watched as her Perfect child grew, and knew that something so sublime would sink one day just as Mother had sunk.

Perfect’s eyes saw as though everything was circumstantial. People existed with their own knowledge that was always right for them. She was the kind of person that would talk about her faults in order to make others feel more comfortable with their own. And she would listen. She would listen like clouds that surrounded you both for miles and miles, the only thing existing besides vapor was you, your words, and your thoughts. Perfect knew more than a sixteen-year old girl should, but understood that she didn’t know more than age did. She was solid bodied, and soft. Her lips were always smiling and waiting to laugh, consequently scaring away those less confident. So she searched for more people she could listen to and help. She searched through her neighborhood, her school, her town, and she always ended with empty hands. Perfect stood alone. And Mother watched with growing worry. Mother saw the signs of someone who was too eager to help and give of herself.

As Perfect’s breast grew, as her black hair got longer, as her gray eyes got sadder, Mother watched. Mother watched Perfect swim in the lake behind their house. Mother watched through the kitchen window with her arms folded on her stomach. Mother watched as her Daughter would dive below the surface with toes pointed in the air, watched as her Daughter would let no bubbles of air escape, and sensed how happy her Daughter felt in the depths. Mother distinguished this as being the only time Perfect was ever happy. Happiness, Mother saw, is something that Perfect only achieved on her own.

Through Perfect’s door many handsome, lonely Boys walked in. These Boys had heard stories of an untouched girl who wanted to listen, and was happy to give. These Boys had been damaged in previous battles with conceited deities. Boys who told Perfect everything that had ever hurt them, Boys who became addicted to her lips forming comfort, Boys who always needed another hit. Mother saw Perfect love them, love being needed. Surrounded by words, Perfect was feeling each syllable of every word as though they were people with their own emotions. Perfect took every painful thought that was said to her and felt ashamed for not having felt the other’s pain. She felt guilty for being innocent and unscathed. Mother saw what Perfect was missing with her age. Mother saw Perfect making Their problems her own and developing scars from accidents that she wasn’t a part of.

So tonight Perfect is bathing in the great-white-footed tub. Tonight she isn’t singing, and Mother is listening for the sounds of sloshing water to stop instead. Mother stands outside the door to the bathroom and slowly lets the steam escape in tumbling swirls from the opened door. She leans over her sleeping, naked daughter and kisses her forehead and then stands again with lips pushed tight together and eyes pensive, but not worried. Mother drains the tub of its murky soapiness, and opens the only set of French doors in the house. The doors had been placed in the bathroom, intent on sowing romance. Mother had never reaped the harvest of those doors, and she was now saving Perfect from those seeds. The tub moves easier than Mother expects. It moves across the tiled floor and out the doors and over the deck and down the stairs and onto the sandy beach. Mother kisses Perfect on the forehead again, and pushes once more on the porcelain vessel. The tub floats and drifts slowly out into the lake, the almost-not-there-moon using her light to pull the arc. The drain in the tub begins to work in reverse, filling up more and more until the center of the lake reaches over the edges and pull the tub and all in. No bubbles escape, the perfect girl does not wake, and the mother thinks to herself that this gold will stay.

So at the bottom of tourmaline waters there exists this one perfection. Preserved while surrounded by porcelain and algae, the pale girl rests. Seaweed watches her motionless body, and fish use her for protection from other, bigger fish. And she sleeps as herself, alive and innocent with wisdom that cannot expand inside her mind and a body that will never change. And her mother lives through each day knowing that her daughter was saved from her mistakes. And her mother still worries.