18

My mother told me to expect nothing.

6:00pm. A cafe that felt like the inside of a burlap sack, lit by lamps, a kind of dry environment that beckons you to buy soup.  If you have an appetite.

I chose a corner table, adjusting the chair away from all the scruffy soup-drinkers and their spectacled girlfriends. We looked out of place. Mama, she sunk to my left, shuffling under her coat.  He sat to my right, obligated.  His daughter turned 18 that day. You should've seen her.

Those sunken shoulders, sheltered by long strands of hair.  Those eyes, swollen under layers of bright skin.  You should've heard her muffled breathing, the low screams that came from the deepest part of her body. Her long fingers in tiny white hands, shaking under the metal table. 

It had been a day of that.  A day of no plans, of being silent while people forgot, or pretended not to notice. She'd stepped into the classroom as another student, another graded paper, an unfinished assignment.  Those clear eyes, they'd looked for someone and no one, all at once.

I think her heart dropped an inch lower in her chest. She'd slid down the painted brick wall of the main room, feeling nothing but the echo of obligated compliments.

Her lip had shaken as she'd pulled wrapping from new sweaters, and skirts, and crested jewelry; and then, alone, exchanged for sports and carpools. Her tears were laced with poison, so she fumbled to her car and strode across the wet streets of her town, crying herself dry.  It's a terrible thing to be sad under dark skies, alone.

And her mother had looked at her, and told her not to hope, to expect nothing.

But she couldn't.

I cried for that girl who'd strung lights from high arches, rallying giant groups, and tormenting herself with fondant cakes and red velvet messes.  I cried for all the plastic cups, and glass platters she'd collected, and all the curfews she'd broken to celebrate.  All the parties she'd spun in her depressed web for them.  I cried because she watched them all do it for each other. And when it was her turn, she was pressed against a dark wall in a cafe between the two parents who hadn't thought to reserve a place at her favorite restaurant, which they probably couldn't tell you anyway.

I cried for the 18 year old who had woken with every intent of joy, but fell asleep clinging to her own body, in the coldest part of her house, alone.

She got over it.

But she never turned 18 again.