No Place like Home

Anna never had a problem telling me no. When she was little, just like every toddler, "No" was her first favorite word. "No, I don't want peas!" "No, Mom, no." "No, I don't want to go to bed."

That last one was ironic. Why couldn't she have said that to Brad?

"No, I don't want to go to bed!"

It hadn't taken a lot of detective work. A pregnancy test in the trash. Negative, thank God. She had gotten nasty too. She snapped at her dad and wouldn't look at me. Something told me not to confront her; she might come to me on her own. Why can't I tell myself no?

Tuesday afternoon, she was half an hour late coming home from school. That was all it took to pop the top off my mental pressure cooker. I exploded all over her in the living room.

"Darn it, Anna!" I managed to censor my language. "I know! Did you think I wouldn't find out? What do you take me for? How could you be so stupid?" So much for censorship. That was the wrong thing to say.

"No!" There was that terrible word again. "No, I'm not stupid. This is you and your stupid agendas, your stupid goals, your stupid idea of a good daughter and your stupid old-fashioned ignorance! I hate you and I will do everything I can to never be like you!"

The pop of smoke as she fled the room was all but visible. Why hadn't her dad said no to a car? And where was he when I needed back up?

I had been stupid. My heart splintered as it dove toward my feet. One splinter wedged in my womb, she was my little girl. Another splinter popped my inflated air of self-righteousness. Why did I say that? What if she never came home?

**********

I drove to the lake not ten minutes from Mom's house. Mom expected me to

go as far as I could, she wouldn't look for me here. I didn't call Brad. He had changed since Friday night. That night I didn't say no. Now apparently, I was a slut.

Stupid girl. I knew it, I hated it. Too stupid to know what to do next, I grabbed my backpack from the seat next to me and threw it on the ground. I remember how my skinny jeans stretched white over my knees when I sat down. Is that how a pregnant belly stretches? Thank God it won't be mine.

Ms. Warner had assigned stories for our senior critique papers. Two days ago I had picked up the library's musty hard backed copy of The Wizard of Oz. Talk about an easy assignment. I flipped the book open, but my eyes were too bleary to focus. I tried to zero them in on something farther away - a Canadian goose on the lake. That was better.

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home." My eyes fell on the most iconic line in the whole story. Says who? I wondered.

My red Converse tennis shoes suddenly seemed to glow. I know that's crazy, but they were all that I could see when I looked down. I imagined the laces disappearing, patten creeping over the canvas like some alien skin. The shoes became glittery and beautiful.

I searched for my anger. I tried to resurrect it so that I could continue reading with the energy of fury.

"Well, I - I think that it - it wasn't enough to just want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em - and it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?" Dorthy stammered.

Is that right? The shoes took on that eerie glow again. No place like home. Where was I going to go, if not home?

The wind picked up, not like Dorthy's tornado, but it blew truth across my heart and offered the only solution I had. "There's no place like home." Grabbing my backpack, I stuffed the book back inside, only two paragraphs read.

I had to go home again.