Ama by Stephanie Kroll

I had thought that once I started at Stanford the brochure images would become homey and familiar, but nearly a month in, it still felt unreal. The approach to campus was a long road lined with palm trees—trees I barely knew existed outside of postcards. And then, beyond the trees, I found myself in a gallery of titans. In high school they had organized rallies and edited school newspapers. They came from New York and Boston and San Francisco and always looked hurried and knew that everything they had to say mattered. They had ideas about the way people should be—that coming out to my roommate when I couldn’t even tell my parents would be an expression of freedom. They looked picturesque there aside the Rodin statues. They were magic, in a sense, with their confidence. But I had my own magic, my own secret magic. Her name was Ama.

We met at the Stanford Theater, a small movie theater in Palo Alto that showed double features of classic films amongst décor restored from the 20’s. Mira, my roommate, had taken pity on me, and brought me along with her friends. Between shows, I’d lost sight of them, and wandered around the lobby, wondering whether to spend money on pop or not, when I felt a sudden surge of warmth, and I pulled off my sweater, tucking it under my arm. The scent of a garden, grass and earth, wafted through the room, but no one else noticed. My peripheral vision grew blurry; I could only see what was directly before me. And it was she stood before me, so tall, hair curled down in impossible dark ringlets, wearing a long draping dress that brought out her eyes.

“I know you,” she said to me.

“I… I think you’re mistaking me for someone else,” I said, resisting the temptation to bolt. There was something in the way she looked at me, with confidence, with expectation that held me there. She smiled encouragingly, and I hoped I was not misreading what seemed to be a touch of lust in her gaze. I wondered if there was a secret code to these things that I didn’t know about.

“I’m Val,” I said at last, extending my hand as I had done so many times over the past month, “I’m a freshman at Stanford.”

“I know,” she said.

“Who are you?”

“I am Ama.”

She brought me home to her apartment in San Francisco that night. I don’t remember quite how point A made it to point B. We were talking, and she asked if I wanted to see the city and then…I know it sounds bizarre: freshman girl ends up sleeping with inhumanly gorgeous twenty-something woman. I knew, at the time, it was crazy. But she said, she said that two paths never cross in vain. And I was nineteen, a college freshman from Minnesota in California. And she was twenty-five. And she was beautiful.

It was like a choice had been made for me, just like I was used to. I did not have to sparkle to others when Ama saw the sparkle in me. I did not have to make friends when Ama loved me. Mira asked me every morning, when I turned off my alarm if I was going to class; she’d ask me every Friday if maybe just once, I’d come to a party instead of leaving campus—she was a regular mother hen. But every weekend instead of going to parties or dances I’d take Caltrain up to the city, and then MUNI to Fillmore where she rented an apartment in one of the old Victorian houses. I’d find her in the kitchen when I arrived, bent over a cooking pot. Her hair would be pinned up in complicated twists and she was always wearing long robes: orange, fuchsia, and green, the collar low enough to reveal the odd dark birthmark on the back of her neck that looked like a candle. She’d heat olive oil until it bubbled like lava, and then pour in mustard seeds, which would explode like bits of popcorn, releasing a scent that cut into my nostrils. Next would come the onions turning the air unbearably pungent, and my eyes would clamp shut. Blinded though I was, she’d hand me her wooden spoon and have me stir while she ground the other spices with a mortar and pestle, familiar spices, strange spices. I’d glance at them sometimes before I surrendered to the cooking pot. Some I can identify now: paprika, turmeric, saffron, cumin. Others looked like blue tips of feathers or had oily, iridescent sheens even when ground to dry powder.

I’d stir the pot, blinded by scents, and she’d fill it with ingredients that I couldn’t see. When I opened my eyes, dinner would be there—a miracle. She had no refrigerator, nor much room for storage. We’d eat on the floor because she had no kitchen table. We’d drink wine from bowls because she had no cups. But dinner was always delicious.

Then we’d go to her bedroom, to the brass bed that barely rose above the floor. She’d draw the curtains, blocking out the city. Her room became the world. Everything was very slow and deliberate, almost a ritual. She’d whisper songs of love as she undressed me. She smelled like wet earth and fresh bread. When I think of my freshman year, this is what I see: the tangle of sheets, my favorite pink shirt thrown onto the foot of the bed, one of my boots spooning with a silk slipper by the door. And Ama. Always Ama.

During the week I drove Mira crazy—I was always in the room, reading, reading. She couldn’t talk on the phone to her boyfriend or enjoy a moments privacy in her own room. I stayed up late into the night reading mythology and love poetry, things to tell to Ama so my pillow talk would live up to her.

But Ama held the talk anyhow—that’s how this all started. With pillow talk. Once—I’m sure it was March because the cherries were in bloom—she told me, as we lay in her bed, my eyes taking in just how very naked she was, that she remembered her last two minutes in the womb.

“I wanted light,” she said, eyes staring at something that didn’t seem to be there.

“You knew what light was?” I asked, rolling over on my side.

I don’t remember her reply—probably something about dreams or the innate quest for understanding. I was nineteen at the time and focused on her breasts. My right shoulder was starting to itch and my neck was feeling stiff, so I shifted slightly, hoping I wasn’t fidgeting too much. I started wondering, as I always did, what was expected of me—should I hold her close, or would we overheat? It was late March, and the weather somehow already had brightened, and I felt pleasantly drowsy. I slept better there, in Ama’s apartment, than in my dorm room.

“And, you know, Val, when we have our baby, she’ll remember hers too,” she added after a few moments of silence, but babies were so far out of my mind, and I wondered why they mattered now, or why any of this mattered when the present was so sweaty and warm and real. Her eyes still focused on that empty point in space. She had nice eyes, Ama, wide eyes. Gray-green.

I don’t think she saw it as I saw it, but then, I don’t know what she saw. As I said, that one Saturday in March when she told me about her two mysterious minutes, I was focusing on her breasts.

I thought of that conversation a week later, when the moon was full a week earlier than it should’ve been. Mira was an astrophysics major and dragged me out to the Dish with a rented telescope to see “the unprecedented astrological event”. The whole department was out there, hypothesizing and guessing, and I stared at the strange full moon, but could only think of Ama. The other majors threw around jargon with gasps and giggles, while the non-majors asked thousands of questions, but I had no questions to ask. I said I had too much homework and went home, gazing up at the moon and wishing it were Saturday.

Walking along, I thought that it must be a lonely memory to hold, remembering your last two minutes in the womb, and maybe I was a bad lover for not listening or pretending to. I was never good at the “uh huhs,” or the “that’s interestings.” But then, Ama never seemed to expect them.

Nevertheless, I felt like I should apologize, so I bought her some flowers at the train station that Saturday, pink poppies wrapped in newspaper. I cradled them to my chest as the vender handed them to me, and I longed to give them to Ama right then. I almost forgot to pay. I clutched them tightly as I rode the MUNI, terrified that the other passengers might crush them. It was raining gently, and I hid them under my raincoat as I walked to shelter them, deathly afraid of even a single petal falling off. Sounds crazy, but they were important, those flowers.

I walked carefully, deliberately to her apartment; the door was unlocked as always. But as I entered, there was no sizzling sound, no clatter, no humming from the kitchen. I rushed in in a panic, stopping short when I found the kitchen empty. I held the flowers closer to me.

“Ama…Ama!”

“Just a few minutes, Val,” came her soft voice from the bathroom.

Instead of relief, prickles ran down my arms. I began to fidget, adjusting the newsprint around the poppies, mussing my hair. Ama started to hum. I looked at the clock—two minutes had passed. I started reading the stories wrapping the flowers.

“Here we are,” she said suddenly, “Just as I thought.” And then moments later she stood before me. I handed her the flowers. She took them from me, gave them a glance and a half-smile, and placed them on the counter. All her energy then turned to me, the complete weight of expectation in her eyes.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

I took a step back. My eyes dropped to the ground, and I stayed silent until I could bear it no longer. “Whose?”

“Ours.”

My eyes jumped to meet hers. I thought she must be joking, but Ama never joked, and there was no humor in her eyes. “But…but, Ama, it can’t be mine.”

“Not it. She.”

“That’s impossible. You know that.”

“She is ours.” Her voice hadn’t risen, but somehow I felt shouted at.

It couldn’t be true—I knew it couldn’t be true, but I had no will to argue. I knew that it was somehow true. I couldn’t look at her, though I felt her tugging at my gaze. This had happened. Without her asking me.

Ama reached to my chin and tilted my head up to meet her eyes. She gazed at me with a look of such sureness and smiled, smiled with a calm joy. “Our daughter.” She gently took my hand and pressed it against her stomach. It was far too early, I know, but I felt a slight tremor. She wrapped her other arm around my back and rested her cheek on the top of my head. The man vanished. I inhaled, whispering her name. For a while, we just stood there, her holding me, me breathing her. I felt peaceful there, soft, like warm wax. I melted outside of myself—I don’t know how else to describe it—pooled against her stomach, her chest, her shoulders.

“It’s alright, Val. This is our family. You belong here with us; don’t you feel it? I will be the mother—that’s who I am; I take care of people. And we will take care of her.”

I jolted at the word mother, as if I suddenly remembered I had one of my own. And a father. Both of which saw me as a writer or a journalist every time they looked at me. Neither of which I had spoken to in weeks.

Ama stroked my back, “Leave it to me, my love, leave it to me. I chose you for a reason.”

“But why?”

“Because from the moment I saw you, I knew that you needed me. And you can stay with me because you need me, as long as we are family—that’s your responsibility. The baby is yours.”

I could no longer picture a hospital.

For the third week in a row, I didn’t do the reading for my Classical History class. I was going to have to turn in my Shakespeare essay late, and I couldn’t tell you the French subjunctive from Greek. Mira didn’t offer the usual empty invitation to a party that Friday. I didn’t answer my cell phone when my parents called. I felt unusually self-conscious sitting alone in the dining hall. But that Saturday I bought her flowers again at the train station—peach blossoms.

She was heating milk and some herbs over the stove when I arrived. She wasn’t quite showing yet. I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed her cheek. “For you,” I said, offering her the flowers.

She hardly looked at them, setting them on the counter besides my poppies, which, still wrapped in newsprint, thrived. I swear, I swear they had new buds. She beamed at me, and sunlight streamed through the window.

“I’m making an infusion to give her strength,” she said.

“Ama, I… I am very happy for you…for us, but…”

“Trust me.”

“Ama, I’m too young to have a family! I’m a freshman in college!”

“And you could be more. You could be mine.” She poured the milk into two bowls, and handed one to me.

“I thought it was for the baby.”

“Our baby.” She stroked my hair, and I leaned in close.

“What am I going to do about school?”

“Don’t worry. You don’t need that world. That’s why you have me.”

“But…”

She kissed me, and then squeezed one of my hands. “Come.” She led me to her room. I could hear loud music playing from an adjoining apartment, but it vanished, suddenly, when Ama drew the curtain. For a moment I thought of my roommate, dancing, drinking, staggering home late. But then Ama kissed me again. My shirt found the foot of her bed, my shoe her slipper. Her robe met the ground with my jeans.

Later, as we lay curled like kittens, I whispered, “The moon’s been full for two weeks now.”

“Yes.”

I shivered.

I couldn’t look up at the night sky anymore, and it made me feel somehow like a shirker. Like I was one of those men I despised who got women pregnant and then vanished. Like this was no different. I didn’t go to the city the next Saturday. I couldn’t. I sat on my bed, my head throbbing, and I tried to read A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I felt like a fool.

Mira offered to take me to a party that night, and I almost didn’t go, but she promised me it would be good for me, and my mind was driving me crazy. So I went. And the pulse of loud music hypnotized me. I drank. I drank beer. I drank vodka. It burned my throat, and I drank more. I danced, I staggered, I rubbed, I tangled, I shouted. I knew no one, and no one knew me. And no one cared. There was a girl, red hair bobbed, skirt short, who joined my stumble, and we fell into a corner of the room. She was nothing like Ama. She didn’t care who she was kissing. We staggered outside, and I looked up. The moon was a crescent. My head felt like a million bubbles rising to the surface of a glass and bursting.

And they burst into a headache at one o’clock the next day, when I awoke, still in my clothes from the day before. There was vomit all over my boots, like it was somehow too late to go anywhere.

“As long as we’re family. This is your responsibility.” The words echoed in my mind, and I realized that I, unwittingly, had made a choice.

I bolted out of bed, threw on my shoes, and ran to the train station. As I sat in a seat near the window, head in my hands, I began to wish that trains floated on air instead of clunking along tracks.

I bought calla lilies at the train station.

And the apartment was empty and silent. I walked to the kitchen now devoid of even plates and bowls. My flowers were still there.

My poppies had become vines, bursting out of their newspaper. They had wrapped around the counter, entwining with the twigs of the peach blossoms which had swollen to tropical size. I glanced at my lilies. They already looked dull and droopy.

A lump in my throat, I walked over to the window, resting my arms on the sill. I felt cold. I felt hungry. I felt empty. I knew I’d have to go back to campus, and there would be classes, and there would be people I was supposed to make friends with, and grades and a future to fuss over. My head throbbed, and I tried to make myself focus on the view. The street was lined with pastel Victorian houses. People walked dogs, parents children, couples each other.

“Ama. Ama. Ama. Ama.”

I do not know how many times I said her name. I whispered it until I shouted it. The As blurred together.