‘Come,’ Anna said from the corner of the kitchen.
I followed her to the side door of the pantry. She opened a large red leather bag. I sat down on the floor and closed my eyes. Anna didn’t say anything as she rubbed some kind of cream into my jaw that smelled like milk past its date.
Then she made me ginger tea, to bring down the swelling, she said. She was quiet and compact and kind.
When my father came back downstairs, I was drinking the tea and Anna was cleaning the counter.
‘Do you want to go visit your mother? We can put it on my points.’
‘I don’t want to,’ I said.
‘But it’s not working. This isn’t working.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘This. You’re having problems. We can all see that.’
My father was trying to formulate a plan.
‘So maybe you living here isn’t working anymore.’ His father’s voice caught. He looked over at Anna. It occurred to me that my father was looking to Anna for support. ‘I think you should try something else. Another school. You’re not attending.’
‘I am! I’m almost finished my final paper!’ It hurt my jaw to exclaim. ‘I just have to finish the conclusion, all right?’
Anna crouched down underneath the sink.
‘I still think you should go visit your mother. Myra, I don’t know what to do anymore.’
‘You know my mother’s staying at a love hotel, right?’
‘I’m not interested in that.’
‘She’s teaching businessmen how to read.’
‘Good. Good for her.’
‘She says that Asia is the new Europe and she’s going to backpack around Thailand and Indonesia for a while with her new friends. Maybe Anna has some pointers for her about the locals. She could probably use them. You’re from Indonesia, right, Anna?’
‘I said, Myra, we don’t want to know.’
‘We?’
My father put his face in his hands. He made a few half-coughing sounds.
There were pictures in photo albums stacked in our basement of my father holding all of us as babies, first Jody, then me, then Jeff. He held us all up in the air over his head and we flew. He looked happy in those pictures with his skinny arms straight up. He was able to make us laugh. I didn’t understand how that father was the same person as this one.
Anna held a yellow plastic bottle of dish cleaner in one hand. She went over to my father and handed him a tissue. My father looked at me, embarrassed. He took the tissue.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Anna.’
‘I’m not going to visit my mother,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t want to go.’
‘Okay,’ my dad said. ‘Then we’re going to the hospital.’
‘No!’ Anna yelled.
Anna looked at me straight. I looked at my father. I didn’t blame him that he thought he should take me to the hospital to find out what was going on. But it felt like Anna understood where I got my beat-up face: in a learning position.
‘See, Dad? It’s okay, I’m fine, Anna agrees.’