From across the street, I watched a tiny woman wearing a batik scarf over her blonde dreads take slow, floating steps. She was tapping a wooden staff in front of her, though she seemed to have no trouble seeing or walking. She was smiling. The lacquered stick, adorned with runes, was pure affectation.
It was the summer after my junior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and I was having one of my bad days. It had been four months since I was dumped by Landon, a professor’s son living at home who wanted me to be more independent. I slept over at his parents’ most nights, and in the mornings, I’d scavenge their fridge and make an Italian sub masterpiece to pack for my lunch. Whenever they were out of salami or capicola, I’d leave them a note on the magnetic white board: PLEASE BUY, with three exclamation marks. Then, it was homemade waffles, coffee, and a ride to campus, courtesy of Landon’s father. His mother was a different story. She said you could smell the damage on me. Landon told me this once, laughing, back when he found my damage alluring.
My efficiency on State Street had no kitchen, and the only window had a view of the adjacent brick wall. I owned a lopsided second-hand mattress, a mini-fridge. I lived alone among objects that sometimes seemed to stare. I wasn’t good at keeping people close. All my friendships from the dorms had imploded. If I wasn’t working, I’d go days without talking to anyone, then bring home men I barely knew. In the mornings, I’d call myself a skunk and a skank and a skuz-ball pervert. I’d scratch up my arms with the manicure scissors of my Swiss army knife, then move to all the other parts, for variety.
The sun’s warmth on my skin that morning felt artificial. I was nauseous, leaning against the front door of my building, convinced the air was poisoned. I was desperate to be anyone else. The woman with the batik scarf and staff looked ridiculous, but her assured performance of contentment was a welcome distraction from my woes.
I followed her to Frat Row on Frances street, by the lake, where the occasional condemned Greek house had been rehabbed and repainted in bright pastels. From a block away, I watched several people embrace her on the porch of a lavender two-story whose front lawn was cluttered with Nader signs. I happened to like Ralph Nader. The mere mention of his name made my stepfather Bill spitting mad. Buffalo Bill, as I dubbed him privately, hated Nader for pushing to pass the seatbelt law. Bill saw it as an infringement on his personal rights. Whenever he was driving, he’d glare at my mother and me if we tried to buckle up.
I knew about the Madison co-ops but had never considered living among the neo-hippies who were caricatures of themselves with their massage trains and languid games of hacky sack on the library mall. I watched the woman laughing with her housemates on the grass. Maybe communal living was just what I needed. I imagined a platonic orgy of hair-braiding and group hugs where you didn’t know which limbs belonged to whom. I saw visions of circle dances on a warm meadow, of myself laughing, holding hands with and staring into the eyes of people who liked me, who might even love me, a family that had nothing to do with biology or debt.
After that first sighting, I shadowed the woman as she tapped along her walking staff. I visited the vegan Nepali restaurant where she ate, the Shakhti gift shop where she worked. Inside the employee-owned Café Assisi, I ordered a Rooibos tea and mimicked her blissful smile into the rising steam. I lingered by the community bulletin board. Reiki sessions. Bikes for sale. Missing pets.
“Excuse me,” a voice trilled behind me.
It was her. I had summoned her! I felt the adrenaline rush of a celebrity encounter as she glided around me to put up a flier. Under a photo of the lavender house it said: INNISFREE CO-OP. OPENINGS FOR HOUSEMATES. CALL FOR MORE INFO. Providence. Salvation.
“What’s the process for getting in?” I asked, aware of how much lower my voice sounded compared to hers.
She turned her head and, as though getting back to a conversation we were already having, said with a lilt, “Come over for three dinners and we’ll have a chat. See if it’s a good fit.”
“I’m Alisa by the way.” I put out my hand to shake hers but she just slid her fingers over mine, like she was collecting some invisible essence.
“Trinity. Glad to meet you.”
***
The night before my first dinner I couldn’t sleep. Was there a chance Innisfree would take me? I didn’t give a shit about politics, but had been calling myself a Democrat since I was ten, when my mother married Bill. Could I fit into a place that called itself “activist, feminist, clothing-optional, vegan?” Could I fake it long enough to get my fill of communal love? Sure, I wanted to make the world a better place. When my professors spoke of genocide, of racism, of colonialism, I felt a fluttering in my chest, a nebulous desire to fight for something. I imagined my hair blowing back on some treacherous cliff where I’d decide to sacrifice myself for humanity. But then I would come home drained from my food service job, to the mattress, the mini-fridge, the brick wall, and forget that other people existed.
When I arrived at Innisfree promptly at six the next day, Trinity greeted me at the door. She gave me a squeeze. Small as a bird in my embrace, I inhaled her scents of sandalwood and B.O.
“Come, come. You have to meet everyone.” She led me inside by the hand.
In the front hall a bearded man was wrestling a gray husky. The dog nipped at his hand and the man bit the dog’s ears. The man tore himself away from their play to greet me.
“I need to remind Foucault who’s alpha.” He smiled luminously at me, flicking a piece of animal hair from his jeans.
“He’s beautiful,” I said, even though I didn’t like dogs.
“That’s Isaac,” Trinity whispered, like it was a wonderful secret.
The dining room was brightly lit with mismatched lamps and string lights. Trinity pointed, as house members raised a hand or nodded. “Mayumi, Todd, Moses, Krissy…” I couldn’t keep track of all the new names and faces.
A group of four very good-looking people, two men and two women, dressed in goth black, each with perfectly articulated eye-liner, sat so close they were practically in each other’s laps. They picked at their food, pouting, and occasionally stroked one another’s hair.
“Those are The Barbaras,” Trinity informed me. “They’re a post-punk band and a poly quartet.”
The lively chatter and warmth of the room washed over me like a wave. I want this, I thought. How do I get to stay?
For dinner, they served soup. My potential housemates apologized before I even had a chance to take my first bite. “Moses doesn’t usually cook, but Tim and Allison are out campaigning for the Green Party tonight.”
Moses grumbled into his long beard as he waddled in, almost spilling the second giant pot of his soup as he placed it on the table.
“No, this is fine, this is wonderful!” I said, tasting carrots and dirt.
“So, Alisa, why do you want to live here?” asked Trinity.
The room went silent and everyone at the table looked at me. I cleared my throat.
“Well, I’ve been looking for a community of like-minded people who want to make a difference.”
“So, like, what kind of activism are you into?” Trinity seemed to be the designated speaker for the group.
“Animal Rights,” I said a little too quickly. “I’ve been a vegetarian for a while.”
That seemed safe enough and wasn’t entirely untrue. For the past week, I’d been living on pretzels and raspberry iced tea from the Walgreens on the lower level of my building. I slurped a spoonful of soup and choked on some cayenne, a welcome diversion. I took my time clearing my throat with water.
Isaac got this faraway look in his eyes and put his spoon down with a clang.
“Isaac’s served time for breaking into a poultry factory farm in Green Bay,” Trinity said hurriedly, as if on cue.
“Did you liberate any chickens?” I asked, then wondered if my tone had sounded sarcastic.
“They had 24-hour surveillance… So, no, the chickens…They remained caged.” Isaac sighed. “But that’s not the point. We got closer to liberation. I thought a lot about this in my cell. How incremental progress is.”
Things I hated about myself: my perpetual desire to be witty rather than kind, my cynicism at good deeds, my suspicion that everyone was faking it. I wanted to admire Isaac’s courage. I wanted to be the kind of person who didn’t question heroism, realized or attempted. But it was funny how Isaac was hailed a hero for accomplishing nothing. The solemnity in his voice when he said “chicken.”
Still, Isaac had been more courageous than I ever had. The few times the cops had shown up to restrain Bill then left without doing more than call my mom “ma’am” as she nodded apologetically, I was terrified. And they were on our side. I’d never stuck my neck out for anyone, never did anything to defend or protect my mom. I hid behind furniture. I ran out of the house.
“How long were you locked up?” I asked.
“I did a lot of thinking there,” Isaac repeated, ignoring my question. “That’s when I decided to leave the bullshit university.” He spoke for half an hour about how his philosophy professors begged him not to quit his program because his ideas might change the world and how he did anyway, even though he only needed three credits to graduate. He didn’t want to be part of the system. So now he drove a cab and headed the Dane County Green Party chapter.
My soup got cold as I listened. This man might be a living saint, I thought. How easily he gave up worldly things. How freely he dedicated himself to the service of others. But a voice deep inside me laughed at the man’s grand sense of himself, at his postured humility.
After my third dinner, which I thought had gone well, Trinity told me that someone “had concerns” and they still weren’t sure if they’d take me.
“It wasn’t me. I think you’d be great,” she said with a tinge of sadness before we hung up.
I spent that week exacting my revenge on them, but mostly on myself. I fucked some guy in finance I met at the bar, and after the stabbing sex, made him take me out for a bloody steak.
When Trinity called again and said that they wanted me after all, I broke my lease and lost the deposit.
***
On my first day at Innisfree, Trinity led me to her room. It was immaculate, a sanctuary from the dust-bunny-infested common areas. Sprawling ferns thrived on the open light from her windows. On her walls hung pictures of Buddhist saints and symbols.
“These are Tibetan thangkas,” she explained. “The Wheel of Life, The Kashgari Buddha, The Red Dragon. Have you ever meditated before?”
“No,” I said. “But I’d love to learn.”
She pulled over a cushion for me and lit some incense.
I’d seen the wall hangings at Shakhti gift shop next to Mahayana for Dummies and The Enlightenment Kit, which was always 40% off. Trinity showed me how to hold my hands in a mudra and we sat in silence with our eyes closed. Counting my breaths, I was blanketed by peace, my mind quiet as snow. I opened my eyes and wondered how much time had passed.
When I lived alone, the twilight hours howled their siren song through me, luring me down into an infinite sadness. I never wanted to kill myself. I’d vowed a long time ago to outlive Bill. But sometimes, I got so low I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to swim out.
I looked outside Trinity’s window. The evening sky bore its indigo melancholy, but I didn’t feel the weight of it in my chest.
“Feel better, right?” Trinity remained cross-legged on her cushion.
“It’s like some evil spell has been lifted,” I said in earnest.
“We used to do evening meditation downstairs, but everyone got bored of it, and the Barbaras wanted the space for their jam sessions.”
“So you meditate every day?”
“I have to. Otherwise, I start thinking too much and I’m such a mess.”
I couldn’t imagine Trinity as a mess. In high school, I was always befriended by girls looking for a bad influence, someone who could shit talk, shoplift liquor, sneak boys in. I’d find shelter from my own family’s dysfunction in their happy homes. As payment, I’d play the bitchy jester, the wicked-tongue-for-hire, until they got tired of my barbs and decided I was toxic.
The days went on and I never once heard Trinity utter a bad word about anyone. And she didn’t seem to expect anything in return for her kindness toward me. Our friendship was forged in silent communion: cooking, meditation, walks on the lakeshore path, naps in her sunny room. We had a mutual understanding that we would keep the world’s cruelty out.
I felt like Mother Theresa in those first months at Innisfree, between the parties raising money for Nader’s campaign and the weekend protests against Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Coffee. Despite the co-op’s clothing-optional parties with body painting and kissing games, my libido snored peacefully. Co-op nudity was as sexless as childhood bath time. I didn’t have to charm, con, fuck, or beg anyone to feel included. I was a celibate vegetarian who was making a difference. For the first time in my life, I felt like a good person.
I was also the most exhausted I’d ever been, running on three hours of sleep as my co-op responsibilities piled on top of my schoolwork and my evening shifts at a local Tex Mex restaurant called Pascual’s.
“You know, her name was Reba before she came here,” one of the male Barbaras who called himself Barbara X, said during our shared cooking shift.
“Who?” I didn’t yet understand that the co-op wasn’t above gossip.
“Miss white girl dreads. Trinity. She’s like Amish or something. Okay, maybe not Amish, but you know what I mean. Crazy religious farmers. Ran away from home.” The Barbara munched on a piece of broccoli meant for the stir-fry as I stared in anticipation. “She was one of those feral State Street tweakers when Isaac brought her here two years ago. That was before my time. But can you imagine? I can’t believe she didn’t tell you… Reba!” he snorted.
Trinity and I had an unspoken pact that we would never ask each other about our lives before Innisfree. But now I wanted to know more.
“Where are you from?” I asked her the next day after meditation.
“Wisconsin.” She didn’t name the town. “Where are you from?”
My question struck a nerve. I wondered if she knew what people said behind her back. I offered up my painful truth first.
“Chicago,” I said. “But I’ll probably never go back. I’ve basically divorced my parents. My stepfather’s a real asshole. He beat me and my mom.”
“So your mom’s stuck with him?” Trinity asked.
“Well, it’s sort of her choice,” I said without conviction.
“That’s tough,” Trinity said, then got quiet. She seemed to be deciding how much of her story to share. “I don’t have much contact with my family either. They’re convinced I’m going to hell.”
The moment felt fragile. It could shatter in my hands if I squeezed too hard. “How did you end up at Innisfree?”
She took a breath. “When things got bad at home, I caught a ride with this girl to a place she heard about in Madison. We get there and she introduces me to this older guy who called himself Thumper. Used to be in a punk band. I don’t know what he did for money, but he wasn’t around much and let anyone crash. He said he believed in anarchy. It was a pretty big house with lots of rooms, mattresses everywhere. A squatter’s paradise.
First night I was there, I watched a girl push off on the living room couch. Rubber tourniquet wrapped around her arm. Her eyes rolled back. All of it. Just like in the movies. It scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t prepared to see that. I wasn’t prepared for any of it. No one was violent. But there was just this air of danger, of desperation. Drugs everywhere. Young girls sucking off old guys for money.
That night, I barely slept. I tied the straps of my backpack tight around my ankle, so no one would steal my shit and I’d be harder to drag out.”
“Oh god, that’s so awful.”
“It was. My friend, the one who brought me, left almost right away. Didn’t leave me a phone number. I had no money and I couldn’t go home. But I had to get the fuck out of there.”
“Where did you go?”
“I felt safe walking around the university campus during the day and spent the night at the youth shelter. They didn’t allow drugs but you could tell some of the kids were coming off something after getting high somewhere else. I wasn’t a tweaker, I want you to know that. I barely drank. I was just lost.”
I took her small hand. She let me hold it for a second before pulling back.
“So where did you meet Isaac?” I asked.
I saw her eyes get misty. “On State Street. I borrowed a guitar from the shelter and would play outside of Paul’s Club at bar time. It was two a.m. and a bunch of bros were yelling for me to play “Free Bird.” Isaac, who had just gotten off a late shift, said, ‘No, play some Joni Mitchell.’ The drunk bros left when we started singing ‘River.’ After, Isaac and I just talked for a while, then he invited me over for dinner.
He let me stay here rent-free until he helped me get my job at Shakhti. He’s taught me so much about myself, about the world, all the work that needs to be done to reduce harm and suffering.” Trinity closed her eyes and her face bloomed into that expression of total bliss I had come to know.
“Do you ever think about going back to school?” I asked. All this time I thought Trinity was an older sibling, guiding me. Now, I felt tender and maternal toward her.
“Maybe massage school, but I’m happy where I am right now.”
“I can see that,” I said.
***
Sure, Innisfree was the most rundown place I’d ever lived in. Even more dilapidated than my mom and Bill’s apartment in Chicago. The wallpaper was peeling and there was mouse shit in the cutlery drawers. You could hear the tiny claws scuttling through the uninsulated walls. We put out empty tofu buckets with spoonfuls of peanut butter at the bottom to humanely trap the mice and drive them out to the nearby farm. The mice were indifferent to our kindness. They refused to get caught. They grew fat and multiplied. But the squalor was washed clean by the way I felt there. I was Alisa of Innisfree, graced by the loving embrace of the commune.
Every Friday night, we had hug therapy. We held each other for eight seconds while exchanging compliments. Trinity and I found each other right away.
“Trinity, you’re an amazing woman,” I said theatrically, though I meant it.
“Alisa, you’re pretty amazing too.” Trinity mirrored my tone. We blushed and giggled like newlyweds.
But then came the intimate moments with everyone else. Sometimes I didn’t know what compliment to offer without sounding disingenuous or forced. Did the others write their compliments ahead of time?
To Moses, the math professor I whispered, “I bet you’re really good at solving complex equations.”
Moses whispered back to me, “You make delicious nachos.”
We switched partners and I found myself alone, arms limp and heavy at my sides. If this were a school dance, I could have swayed or snapped my fingers with my eyes half-open, pretending I was happily lost in my own music video. But there was no music. I stood and watched everyone else hugging, a voyeur. Trinity hugged Isaac on tippy toes, her arms reaching around his neck. He held her close, cradling her head with one hand. I was struck by how hyper-hetero they looked: a tiny woman and her big strong man. Cheerleader and football player. Sailor and nurse. A tableau from another genre, from another time.
Isaac turned to me next. We were almost the same height, but he embraced me and cradled my head in the exact same way he did Trinity’s. I felt an electric charge. Not the pleasant tingling of mutual attraction, but the shock of an exposed outlet. Power, constant and indifferent, emanated from his body.
“You’re a great leader,” I said, like some low-level official paying homage to a dictator. I heard no return compliment.
Over Isaac’s shoulder, my eyes met Trinity’s. She was now standing partnerless. I offered a bumbling smile but was only met with eerie, unseeing eyes, like she was looking right through me. Then she turned away.
***
After that night, Isaac invited me to accompany him and Foucault on walks down Lake Shore Path. Foucault growled if I got too close so I stayed a few feet behind.
“See, it’s like I was saying yesterday to Trinity, you decide your own destiny. But it’s also like karma, you know. Whatever happens to you is self-created. I don’t really believe in God—Are you coming?”
I shuffled after them, careful not to break into a run and make Foucault jump up on me, which Isaac always found hilarious. I was afraid of dogs, but especially this one, who seemed to only respect people who bit him back.
“While I was serving time, I kept this faith in myself, in the rightness of what I was doing.”
I wondered what his parents thought about his heroism. I knew that his father was a retired judge and his mother was an artist. She often came to the house, a flurry of wild curls and giddy exclamations, arms full of vegan baked goods, fussing over her Izzy.
We stopped again to let Foucault relieve himself.
“Yeah, but don’t you think some people are just dealt bad cards? Like starving kids in Africa.”
“Which country in Africa?” Isaac asked. “You know that it’s a continent, right? You shouldn’t generalize. Some African countries are quite wealthy.”
“My point is that not everyone can choose their destiny.” I thought about my mother continuing to watch Oprah while Bill dragged me out of the shower by the hair. Inured to each other’s daily tragedies, I tried not to be there when it was her turn.
“That’s fear talking. Even Foucault can smell it,” Isaac said as Foucault came up to sniff my hand.
“But isn’t not being afraid a kind of privilege?” I said quietly. I didn’t want to seem like a nag, but I was propelled by some inner force. “Isn’t it a privilege to think that everything will work out because nothing really bad has ever happened to you?”
Isaac gave me a sideways glance, then turned back the way we came. He was taken aback by my audacity. I was surprised at myself. I wanted to stay in that moment, with the satisfaction that I had stood my ground for once. But Isaac’s reaction only filled me with dread. He whistled for Foucault to follow him back to the house. And I followed too.
Isaac’s attention toward me dimmed after that walk. He began to assign me extra chores. Cleaning the bathrooms, the floor of the pantry. He made me sub his dinner shifts with no reciprocation, told me to walk a grumpy Foucault while he was at work. He’d thank me with the same smile he gave everyone, which he bestowed like a gift, holding eye-contact while he showed you his teeth as if to say, “This is for you. Enjoy it.” But mostly, he ignored me.
Trinity cornered me in the kitchen. “You’re walking Foucault now? Are you Isaac’s personal assistant or something?”
“No, he just asked me to do a few extra things for him. I think he’s working more than usual.”
Since that night on Lake Shore Path, I had only become more convinced that I’d come to know the real Isaac: thin-skinned, prideful, vindictive, verging on despotic. The mere suggestion that he might not be exactly the great self-made man he thought he was wounded his ego. But I was willing to give him another chance. A part of me wanted him to be as good as he professed to be. And more than anything, I didn’t want to be the one to tarnish Trinity’s image of him.
“Well, how nice of you to help him out.”
Trinity’s tone told me that she had the wrong idea. She was jealous of me. But she couldn’t fess up to it because of, what, pride? Because it was beneath our communal ideals? I was still so certain of our bond. When we sat in Buddhist silence, I really did feel a telepathic connection. I imagined us as twins, conjoined in perfect stillness. And outside our sanctuary, I thought of us as sisters in arms against Isaac’s mercurial demeanor. Wasn’t it obvious that I was on Isaac’s shit list? That he was punishing me?
***
The temperature dropped below the 20s in early October. Isaac was the only one who knew how to turn the heat on, meaning he was the only one allowed to. We begged him to make it warm.
“The house isn’t winterized. We’re just gonna waste energy,” he said. “Get extra blankets or help your housemates with their rooms.”
We had started putting plastic coverings on the windows but the cold spell had hit so unexpectedly. I still had my server job at Pascual’s and was taking 18 credits so I could complete my accounting degree in the spring. I didn’t have time to winterize other people’s bedrooms.
I shivered in my winter coat indoors while Isaac pranced around in his bathrobe and slippers, whistling like a happy mountain man. I was still walking his stupid dog in the cold, but I’d stopped picking up his shit. When I cleaned the bathrooms, I muttered curses, putting the evil eye on Isaac’s hairline and genitals.
I approached Max first. He wore a hat indoors. “Are you as cold as I am?” I asked.
Max nodded. He didn’t talk much, conserving his voice for canvassing and rallies.
“Do you think it’s right that one person gets to decide when the heat comes on? It’s not very communal.”
Max thought about it for a moment. “The house should be winterized, and maybe some people need the extra motivation.” As it turned out, Max also reserved his convictions for issues outside the house.
I approached Barbara X who was always pissed off about something. “What do you think about the fact that we’re freezing our asses off?” I asked him.
“It sucks.” Barbara X replied, not looking up from his book. “Winterizing is such a bitch. Every time I walk by the Omega house, I’m looking inside their windows, staring at their fireplace like a street urchin.”
“So can you tell the other Barbaras to support a consensus vote about the heat when I bring it up at the next meeting?”
“Sorry, can’t. We’re playing Indianapolis next month.”
Finally, I confided in Trinity when we took refuge in the warmth of Café Assisi with cups of cocoa. I could no longer deny that there was a growing distance between us.
“I know Isaac can be strict about the house rules,” Trinity said. “But it’s only because he wants us to live up to the principles Innisfree was founded on.”
“Aren’t we Innisfree too? Did you see how mad the Barbaras were when he said he wouldn’t buy cheese anymore? Why does he get to make the rules?”
“Sounds like a first-world problem, Alisa. Isaac’s doing the right thing. We’re a vegan co-op after all.” Trinity shuffled her feet under the table. “And here I thought you were so desperate for his approval.”
My heart sank. I was already grieving but I didn’t yet know how much I was about to lose.
***
The rupture happened a few days before the presidential election. It was one of those drizzly nights when the cold wind coming from Lake Mendota flayed your cheeks red. Trinity was at a Madison co-ops board meeting. Krissy, Mayumi, Max and I were staying warm and cozy, watching Heathers on the cuddle couch when we heard a tapping on the door. I made some dumb joke about Poe’s “Raven,” at which everyone laughed. It was the co-op way to support each other’s attempts at personality. We were pleasantly high, drinking warm mulled wine, and eating homemade popcorn topped with paprika and nutritional yeast.
“Probably those Omegas throwing shit,” Krissy said. We mostly lived in parallel universes with the Greek life around us. Once in a while, we’d chase drunk frat boys off our porch with push brooms. They in turn pelted our windows with snowballs in the winter.
The tapping happened again. I opened the door and saw a little boy wearing a white baseball cap, drenched and shivering.
“Hey, are you okay?” I touched his shoulder.
I could see now that he wasn’t a boy but a small young man. His eyes were glazed over and his pupils quivered. His hands were trembling too. Freshman year, a guy in my dorm ate too many hash brownies and looked exactly like this. An ambulance came for him, but there was nothing they could do except keep him hydrated. He was fine the next day.
I came back inside. My housemates were still absorbed in the movie, laugh-yelling all the lines they knew by heart: “Lick it up, baby, Lick it up!”
“So there’s this kid outside. This frat boy. He’s really high. What should we do?” They didn’t seem to hear me so I left them to finish the movie.
I was sure that Trinity would have approved of what I did next. We had a house rule not to call the cops or to call anyone who might call the cops. Several of our housemates, including Isaac, were on probation. The kid couldn’t speak. He couldn’t tell me where he lived.
He could barely walk. No cops, no frat brothers, I thought. At that moment I didn’t trust anyone but myself to take care of him. This felt like the new Innisfree me, someone who welcomed people who needed shelter, helped those in trouble, no matter who they were. I decided I’d take care of this kid and figure out where he lived in the morning.
I pushed from behind to get him up the stairs trying to make as little noise as possible. He stumbled forward, nearly tripping on every step.
I didn’t know which direction Isaac had come from. He just appeared.
“What have you got there, Lis?” he smirked.
“This kid needs help,” I muttered, embarrassed, from behind the boy. This looked bad.
“So why are you dragging him up to your lair? You gonna drink his virgin blood?”
I was feeling edgy. Maybe it was my own high going bad. I could have explained, but I didn’t think that he’d believe me. By now I knew that Isaac called me Elvira behind my back, that he had voted against me after the third dinner. And what gave him the right? He only dated eighteen-year-olds while he himself was thirty-four and no one batted an eye because he was supposedly so noble, driving his cab, not eating animal products, not even honey, because “the bees didn’t give him permission.”
“Fuck off,” I muttered without malice, pushing the frat boy zombie past him.
He knocked his shoulder into me. “No, you fuck off, you succubus. Your boy toy better be gone by morning.” I was actually surprised by his anger, relieved when he left me and the frat boy alone.
I laid the frat boy down on my bed. He closed his eyes. I put a warm washcloth on his forehead. That night, I slept on the floor. By three a.m., he was able to speak again and asked for a glass of water. When I woke up, he was gone.
I had a bad feeling when I came down for breakfast. I’d done nothing wrong. But I felt wrong. Like my run-in with Isaac was a mirror I’d broken. Isaac and Trinity were already downstairs. They stopped speaking as soon as I approached.
I ate my tofu scramble alone. I could see that the work jobs chart had been changed. My name was erased from my dinner shift with Trinity. I was reassigned to clean the upstairs bathroom, which always had a drain full of hair.
Since it was Sunday, we had our weekly house meeting. Every week, we faced each other in a semi-circle to discuss whether we should still be buying dairy and how much money we had left for the next fundraiser. When someone had the speaking stick, the rest of us had to be quiet. You could only sparkle in response. Sparkling meant stretching your arms out in front of you and wiggling all your fingers to signal agreement. If you disagreed, you waited in silence for your turn with the stick.
In the beginning, I’d been charmed by the intimacy of our secret codes, by the seriousness with which we considered whether cockroaches deserved the same humane treatment as the mice.
After the usual twenty minutes of not reaching consensus about which milks we should buy, we moved on to a surprise agenda item.
“Well, first of all, is everyone aware of our guest policy?” Isaac asked.
Everyone, including me, sparkled. I knew that we had to vote on all overnight guests, but the policy was never implemented. Aside from a few steady partners, people rarely visited.
“Well, Alisa, without asking anyone, decided to bring a frat boy to her room.”
Everyone looked at me. I thought I heard a gasp.
“Listen,” I began. “Others can attest–”
“I have the talking stick,” Isaac said like a school headmaster. “That was really uncool of you. We don’t judge anyone’s choices. But you disrespected every one of your housemates.” Isaac handed the talking stick to Trinity.
“Why would you bring someone off the street into our house?” Trinity asked.
“Trinity, I can explain.” I reached for the talking stick, but Trinity held on to it.
“As many of you already know, this kid wandered into my room early this morning and tried to take a piss in the corner. He had his dick out.”
I scanned the room. Was everyone here against me?
Even one of the Barbaras, usually indifferent toward co-op drama, snarled. Fifteen people were about to break my heart all at once. I couldn’t lose this. I wouldn’t. I’d wedge myself under the cuddle couch. They’d have to drag me out by the ankles, my hair alive with dust bunnies. I’d scream and claw.
When I got the talking stick I looked straight at Trinity. “Listen, this kid was on something. He needed a safe place to be and I was sure that you of all people would understand. I thought you’d be proud of me.” My face was crumpling into a sad clown mask, I felt the corners of my mouth pulled down by her merciless stare.
“What do you want me to be proud of, exactly? You intentionally put us all at risk by bringing an intruder into our home.”
Isaac interrupted, stickless, a referee breaking up a fight.
“It’ll be bathrooms for the next month and no guest privileges for Alisa. I think that’s fair.”
Everyone sparkled. No one spoke out against his pronouncement.
They didn’t kick me out, but for the next month, I was a ghost. My housemates seemed uncomfortable around me. Trinity barely spoke to me, and I never got to visit the inside of her room, our shared sanctuary, ever again.
As election day 2000 approached, they talked more and more about how we needed to get 5% of the vote for Nader so the Green Party could officially get federal funding.
“No one in this house is voting for Gore,” was a refrain they repeated to each other, like they were pioneers of a new age, when the two-party system would become history.
On the morning of November 7, 2000 Isaac put a sheet of notebook paper on the dining room table. It had two columns: Nader and Gore. You were supposed to sign your name under Nader once you voted for him. It was added pressure to make sure that everyone “did the right thing.” There was some grumbling among some of the older members that Gore might not win, that we’d be wasting our votes on Nader. I was beginning to listen to them. Dinners had been dominated by Isaac’s broken-record preaching about how Gore was the same as Bush.
That day, I voted for Al Gore and my name stood alone on Isaac’s ledger. Underneath Gore’s name, I added, “You’re a fucking tyrant, Izzy.”
No one dared to acknowledge my note, least of all Isaac who stopped talking about the election after the Supreme Court decision to hand the contested victory to Bush. Nader didn’t even get close to 5%. He just siphoned off the Democratic vote.
“Dems won Wisconsin,” Isaac would say, still self-satisfied. Now that he was planning his own common council run, all politics were local.
***
In January, shortly after George W. Bush was inaugurated, I moved out of Innisfree and into a two-bedroom in the Willy Street neighborhood with Carl. Carl had been kicked out of Walden co-op. I was widely known as the idiot who let a frat boy urinate in her house. He was widely known as the idiot who almost burned their whole house down, lighting a bunch of candles in his room before he fell asleep.
We clung to each other in our twinned co-op infamy, two castaways with a longing for a common homeland. We cooked dishes from How It All Vegan, the de facto kitchen bible of the Madison co-ops. On the weekends, we marched side-by-side for a Free Tibet. When we had sex, it was always oral. We licked and sucked, guaranteeing equitable orgasms.
After graduation, we broke up amicably. Carl joined the Peace Corps. I got an accounting job at a tech company in California with the motto, “Don’t Be Evil.” I really liked that. It made me feel like a good person.
Masha Kisel is originally from Kyiv, Ukraine. Her writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Columbia Journal, Prime Number Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, McNeese Review and elsewhere. Find more of Masha’s writing at www.mashakisel.com
Hannah Kasper Levinson, born in Ossining, NY in 1981, is based in Dayton, OH where she is an art educator and freelance writer. She has a BFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art (Philadelphia and Rome) and an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland.