Wishing Well

Your child peers into the well, his eyes swimming with wonder.

Your child. God, your child. When I first heard you were having a baby, I thought, Oh, God. She must be freaking out.

That night, when I told my parents, my mother said, How nice.

What do you mean, “how nice”? I snapped. We’re way too young for this.

You’re thirty, my father reminded me. You’re practically geriatric.

You and I grew up at the tail end of the corded-phone era. My memories of my mother slamming the phone back into its cradle were vague at best. Right then, though, I would have done anything to have a more forceful way to hang up than angrily jabbing my finger against a sheet of glass.

I knew I shouldn’t have been internet-stalking you. I’m sure you never think of me. You don’t waste time marinating in memories. Not when you’re helping your child create his own.

IT’S A BOY, your announcement post read, the letters bubbly and blue.

How perfect, I thought. You had wanted a boy first. A boy, then a girl. You had always told me so. There was a brief period in which you wanted three. Then, after our fake-baby assignment in the seventh grade, which further solidified my hunch that I was not cut out to be a mother, you quickly switched to two.

I watch you now, your hand curled around your son’s. You walk him along the edge of the wishing well, pointing out the koi below.

This well wasn’t around when we were his age. For us, with our parents, wishes were for shrines, made only after a certain number of bows and claps, the obi of our best kimono just barely holding us together. As children, we complained, wondering why our lives weren’t “normal,” like those of the blonde-haired girls from Scholastic books we would swap during lunch breaks.

Then, later, once we started applying to colleges we knew we couldn’t afford, we clung to those differences, hoping all-white admissions teams would take pity on us and give us enough money to let us pretend for a year or two.

“Look, Mommy,” your son says, pointing a stubby finger at the well. “It’s just like in Snow White!”

Ah, yes. Snow White. You always hated her. Even when we were young, at the peak of our fairy-tale fanaticism, you could not be bothered with the likes of her.

She’s boring, you would tell me, and her singing isn’t good.

I liked it. Found it pretty. Never would have told you so.

I shift my weight from foot to foot. You haven’t noticed me. I doubt you ever will. Workers at children’s facilities are like stagehands in a play, dressed in black, moving silently, essentially invisible.

“Mommy,” your son says. “I wanna make a wish.”

You hand him a penny from your wallet, then take another for yourself.

Why? What could you possibly wish for? You have everything you want. Everything you told me you were afraid you wouldn’t get back when you took that test in our high school’s bathroom. I held your hand the whole time, even though I knew you hadn’t washed it after peeing.

What are the chances? you kept muttering.

Chances of what? I tried to ask. Ending up with a positive result? Getting pregnant after your first time?

You never answered me. Because I loved you, I let it go.

We waited those three minutes, then turned the test over together.

You cried with relief as I buried the stick in a shroud of paper towels. When I pulled the bathroom door open, I said, See? as if I hadn’t been worried. As if I wouldn’t worry for the rest of our lives, even after you had your son.

You close your eyes to make your wish. As always, I do the same. You will never know how lost I was when there was no you to follow.

I wish with you and for you. The “you” you were back in high school. I want your laughter, even if the neighbors come pounding on my door. I want the companionable silence we maintained on your house floor.

People always ask why I left teaching five years ago. I’ve made up a thousand semi-true reasons—I don’t like teaching children rules; I hated middle school—but even as I speak, I swear the truth leaks from each word.

I started out teaching high school, then asked to be moved a few grades down, but no matter where I went, all I ever saw was us. Us at fifteen or ten. At seven, eleven, seventeen. Some days, I lashed out at students for doing the same things we did. Other times, I let things slip.

Let them have fun, I wanted to say, while they still know how.

Naturally, that didn’t go over well with administration. I quit after that year.

At least here, at the well, any resentment comes not from the end of our friendship but from the lack of my “normal” childhood. That’s much easier to resolve. One call to my parents, and I’m okay again.

I don’t think I’ll ever feel okay about you or, now, about this well.

You ask your son to tell you what he wished for today. Wisely, he refuses, reminding you, “If I say, it won’t come true.”

“Right,” you say. “Of course. That’s my smart little boy.”

“I’m not little,” he tells you.

You kiss him on the cheek.

After pulling him off the well, you leave without noticing me. Once you’re gone, I fish out your pennies; the coins aren’t healthy for the koi. I study the two pennies, then pocket the ugly one. If I know you at all, you give your son only the best.

At the end of my shift, I clock out, your penny in my pocket. I make my way to my boss’s office, knock twice, and say, “I quit.”