On the fourth day, my housemate’s ex left radishes and kale on our stoop. They shouted up at our second-floor porch until my housemate came out. They told her she could have the garden plot they’d sown together. It’s too far from my place, they yelled. I can’t keep it up.

Okay, she yelled. I’ll think about it, she yelled.

After they left, we walked to the community garden. She showed me the chives and the calendula and the bolted kale. This all seemed to be tremendous good luck. The grocery stores were newly to be avoided. This was the time, if ever there was a time, to have a vegetable garden.

They never had the stomach for salting slugs, she said as she plucked one from a strawberry plant.

They had been lovers. We were not lovers, she and I. We were not friends. We were housemates, that category of person both more intimate and more distant than friend. Back at the house, she gave me the radishes and kale.

I can’t eat them, she said. I can’t even look at them. 

I can understand that, I said. I ate them.

On the seventh day, they approached her in the parking lot of the Safeway. She had bags, more bags than she could carry, her two-week provisions. She had set the bags down to reposition them when a voice behind her said, Can I help you with that?

Could it have been a coincidence? she asked me when she arrived home. Them being at the same Safeway at the same time?

Could be, I said. 

I remember this moment—my housemate at the front door, the sanitizer she’d attempted to make from vodka and xanthan gum glopping off her hands—because right then the best friend texted me. This was a surprise. For six months we had not talked. She had needed space. I had been giving her space.

Hey, how are you doing? her text said. I read it again: Hey. How are you doing? I read it again: Hey. How. Are. You. Doing?

The words inflated in me a helium balloon, which made it impossible to attend to whatever my housemate said next, impossible to eat the potato I’d just baked, impossible to do anything but float around the house on tiptoe for hours, thinking about how I would respond.

I’m okay. How are you? I sent the two statements in separate texts just for the joy of sending them.

At two in the morning on the ninth day, my housemate heard three knocks at her window. Her cat heard them, too. The hair down his spine stood up. She called, Who’s there? 

No one answered. 

She crept to the kitchen, where she took a knife from the knife block. She crept back to her room. She thrust on the ceiling light. Through her window, the light illuminated the second-floor porch. On the porch, we kept a futon. That night, due to the shadows, it looked like someone was sitting on the futon. She yelled and threw open the window, but no one was there. She put the knife down on her dresser and got back into bed, where she watched Disney+ until dawn. She told me all this in the morning. I hadn’t woken up. I hadn’t heard a thing.

I was so scared, she said.

A knife? I said.

I was so scared, she said. She hugged herself.

What if it had been me on the porch?

Was it you?

Of course not.

Well, someone was there.

On the eleventh day, I found a leafy plant with red berries on our front stoop. In the pot, a folded note—Goldenseal helps heal, it said.

I called my housemate down to look at the goldenseal. That’s their handwriting, she said. The handwriting wasn’t anything special. Messy, a scrawl.

We showed the goldenseal to the woman who lived next door. She stood in the doorway of her house. We yelled from six feet away, Did you see this plant?

The what? she yelled.

The plant, we yelled.

Oh, that, she yelled. That’s been there a couple days.

I knew it, my housemate said. I knew they were there that night.

I don’t like the idea of them hanging around here at night.

You don’t like it, she said, a high-pitched edge to her voice. You don’t like it.

On the fourteenth day, they sat in their car one block down the street, facing our house, for four hours. She didn’t recognize the car, but she recognized their profile—the square jaw she’d massaged with a jade roller every night when they were together.

This isn’t okay, I said, watching them from the window. I don’t want us to pretend this is okay.

She wasn’t pretending. She knew what to do. She recorded the date in her Notes app. When they left, she recorded the time in her Notes app. She paced around the house, and I moved out of her way. The whole day she kept her phone in her hand, so she could be ready to record anything at a moment’s notice.

I envied her ease with her phone. I was avoiding mine. The best friend had not responded to my text. I had texted her again—Want to catch up? She had not responded. I’d sealed my phone in a waterproof bag and buried it while repotting a dahlia in our kitchen.

On the seventeenth day, they came to the front door. I was on the stoop. My housemate was sunning herself in the backyard.

They said, Is C. home?

I said, She’s in the backyard.

They went to the backyard. My housemate went still, she later told me, when she saw them. They sat six feet away from her in the grass and said they wanted to do the garden together.

That wasn’t the deal, she said.

Why not? they said. Then they asked other questions—Could we try again to be together? Do you still care about me?

She sat with them for thirty-five minutes, then offered to get them lemonade. They accepted this offer, so she walked evenly to the front door. She said to me, Come inside. A command.

I followed her. She slammed the door behind us, all her weight against it. She threw the deadbolt and ran up the stairs, heaving at the top, saying, You told them where I was. Why the hell did you tell them where I was?

I didn’t know it was a secret, I said.

You can’t tell them where I am, she said.

Three years before, when she’d tried to leave them, they’d followed, tailing her so close that the bumper of their car nudged the back wheel of her bike. Now do you understand? she said.

This isn’t okay, I said. We should do something, call the police.

They’re gone, she said. She checked from the windows. She checked from the porch. The police aren’t going to do anything.

I went to the dahlia and dug my phone out of the pot. 

Why is your phone in the dahlia? she said. I don’t want you to call the police. She had put a sign on our front door—DEFUND THE POLICE, INVEST IN COMMUNITY.

Why didn’t you tell me they were dangerous? I said.

They’re not dangerous, she said. Not to you.

Perhaps I would, still, have called the police, but when I turned on my phone, the best friend had texted me back. She had responded that she felt a short conversation was in keeping with our intention for contact.

I texted the best friend, Tomorrow?

She texted, Tomorrow is too soon.

The best friend and I had once been inseparable. We’d worked together at the dingy county health center. When she suggested I try out they pronouns, I did. When I suggested she return to grad school, she did. Everyone said we were good for each other. Then she met her boyfriend. I never expected him to last, but he did last. I trailed the pair of them like a street dog when they allowed it, moped when they refused. She moved with him to the Southwest. I tried to kill myself. I told her. In the long nights that followed that attempt, when I lay awake afraid of what I’d almost done, I texted her—I can’t take this anymore. I just want to skip out on the next five years. 

She texted things like, Just try to sleep, and, The day is wiser than the dark, which was a saying she knew in Russian, and, Are you safe? Should I call someone? 

I had to sit down on my bed when she texted that, her texts little shots of adrenaline that left me lightheaded, dizzy with her care.

When she didn’t respond for a night, I texted, Hello? I texted, Are you there? I texted, Please talk to me. I texted just her name, over and over and over until she sent, Are you okay?

After months of this, she said she thought we should take a break.

I said, What do you mean a break?

She said, A few months off, then we check in.

I muted my phone and kicked the front door of our house, three strong kicks, then unmuted my phone and said, Okay.

But now the break was over. Now we would have a phone call.

On the twentieth day, my housemate and I were on the second-floor porch. I was working, which meant writing a monthly newsletter for county health-care providers. In the newsletter, I reminded them to take regular breaks to avoid burnout. I included a link to new evidence in support of ventilator splitting. She was pulling vines out of our hanging planters. 

I have to be able to go out in the world, she said. I can’t stay locked up in this house forever.

She was an aesthetician, but the salons weren’t open. No one knew when they would open again. She could spend only so many days practicing lashes on a rubber head. She said, The people working from home don’t understand. 

I was working from home, responding to occasional replies from the health-care providers. Most were annoyed. They wrote, Who are you? or, I didn’t subscribe to this! They had subscribed, but I always sent an email apologizing, telling them we would immediately delete them from our list.

I acknowledged to my housemate that I didn’t understand. 

What happens next time they come to the house? she said.

I’ll run them off, I said. 

This was optimistic. I had never been in a fight. My housemate had. She’d broken a man’s foot with her stiletto. The best friend had once slapped a man. She’d told me this in a voice low with regret. I’d said he probably deserved it.

You don’t have to worry, I said to my housemate. They come around here again, I’ll take care of it. I wanted to make up for last time. I wanted to prove I could hold my own.

But they didn’t come that day or that evening. They didn’t come the next day. I wished they would come. I wanted to tell the best friend about them, to share with her the story of my victory.

On the twenty-second day, I talked on the phone with the best friend in the graveyard near our house. She was furious, mostly at the government. I cupped the phone to my ear, her fury lovely to behold, refreshing and familiar. I was okay. I had missed her, and I said that, and she didn’t say anything, and I wished I had said something else. She said she needed us to approach friendship slowly, cautiously. I imagined us approaching, together, a boar hit by a car, a boar made more dangerous by its injuries. I imagined I had been hit and stunned by a car and she was approaching me. 

She said her boyfriend was worried about the impact our friendship had on her mental health. He was concerned about abuse in the friendship. 

All I remembered about this boyfriend was that he had once dropped his car keys in a bush and lost them forever. What could he possibly know about me?

I said, Do you think he’s right?

I just feel like I’m walking on eggshells, sometimes, around you. 

She had said this once before. One month after I tried to kill myself, I’d asked to visit her, to spend a week with her in the city where she lived. She’d said she wasn’t ready for that. She was afraid, she said.

Afraid of me? 

Afraid for you.

I responded to her refusal by buzzing my head. I nicked my ear, and in the photo I sent her afterward a little blood was there on the tile, mixed in with all my hair, and she’d texted back immediately, What happened? Are you okay? What did you do? 

It’s hard to hear this, I said.

She said, I know, I mean, it must be.

On the twenty-third day, they brought cat food. They stood on the sidewalk in front of our house, saying, Cat food! I brought you cat food! She went out onto our second-floor porch. They wanted to bring the cat food inside, so she wouldn’t have to carry it up the steps. She told them just to leave it. They wanted to see the house. She told them to leave the cat food. Or take the cat food. But leave. They walked to the front door, which was closed and locked. They walked into the door. They bounced off it, walked into it again, stumbled backward, the cat food like a small body on their shoulder. They walked into the door again.

Stop, she said. Stop.

I stood just behind the door. I wanted to go out onto the porch. I wanted to drive them away, to make the best friend proud of me, but I was newly afraid. I stayed inside.

Eventually, they left the cat food. I went downstairs and dragged the bag through the front door and up the stairs, like a leopard dragging a gazelle’s body into a tree. My housemate was waiting at the top of the stairs.

What happened? she asked. I thought you were going to run them off. 

You had it under control.

I have to seem in control, she said. She showed me her hand, which was shaking. I thought you were going to come out. I was waiting for you.

I’m sorry.

If you tell them to leave, they’ll leave. They listen to masc people.

She blamed testosterone, in part, for their violence. A few months earlier, when she’d interviewed me for the room and I’d told her I was genderqueer, she’d said, Are you thinking about transitioning?

I’d said, Not medically. Not right now.

She’d said, Okay. She’d said, I had a partner who transitioned, and I don’t think I could handle that. I don’t think I could handle having a housemate on T.

Of course, I did think about transitioning. I thought about it regularly, but—and I’d told her this—I was scared of T, too.

Do I remind you of them? I asked her.

My housemate snorted. If you were like them, you’d protect me.

On the twenty-fourth day, I texted the best friend, I can’t stop thinking about our call. An hour later I texted, Do you feel abused by me? The next day she texted, I don’t know. I don’t know how to tell when something is abusive.

On the twenty-sixth day, I texted the best friend to tell her I’d been spending more time with my housemate. She liked the message. She wanted me to have more friends.

I thought about sending her a second text—I don’t feel safe. 

I wrote the text, let it sit in the drafting box on my phone while I worked in the morning. 

The text was true, on its face. I was afraid of the ex, their gaze, the newly apparent porousness of our house, which had a porch door with no deadbolt, a trellis up one side that anyone could scale. 

But the best friend knew about none of this. She would think I was worried about the medicine cabinet, about anything that could be looped and tied. She would read the text and her heart would thud and she would respond immediately, a flurry of texts—hotlines and reminders of safety plans and an offer to call a friend who lived just thirty minutes away and could drive me to the emergency room, if needed, as a precaution. A battalion of texts, her fierce protection enwrapping me. And later, after I reassured her that I was okay, her relief, which felt like love, her wanting me to be alive, wanting me.

I didn’t send the text. It would cause her pain, a text like that, and I didn’t want to cause her pain.

On the twenty-seventh day, I texted other friends, My housemate’s abusive ex is stalking our house.

One texted, Shit. The other texted, Report them.

I guess they’re lonely? I texted. Or just trying to scare us.

One texted, Who knows, people are crazy. The other texted, I don’t think we need to spend time trying to empathize with an abuser.

Disney+ now played in my housemate’s room from sundown to sunup. I started to need it, too, the cartoon voices lulling me to sleep.

On the thirty-second day, the best friend texted me. She’d gotten into a fight with her boyfriend and had said a thing so terrible he’d asked her to leave, and now she was driving somewhere in northern Arizona and was low on radiator fluid and didn’t have enough cell service to search for a mechanic. Could I find her a mechanic? 

I could. I did. I found her four mechanics and texted her addresses for all four in order of nearness to her current location, then in order of price. I sent her a summary of Yelp reviews for each one.

She texted, Okay. Thanks. I’ve got it from here.

But how was she? I texted. If she needed a place to stay, I texted, she could come here.

On the thirty-third day, she texted to thank me. Her car was fixed. She and her boyfriend had worked it out.

I can see why your friend is upset, said my new therapist on day thirty-four, but I don’t see the friendship as abusive. You’re not trying to get control.

I was sitting in an empty bathtub, fully clothed, both curtain and door closed for privacy. I am trying to get control, I said. I need to get control.

Control over yourself, he clarified, but not over her.

But he knew only what I had told him, and I hadn’t told him everything. I hadn’t told him that if I could move her fingers over the screen of her phone, composing texts and sending them to myself, I would. I would do that.

You’re here, he said. That’s something, that’s a sign of something.

My housemate’s ex had been in therapy. My housemate had told me this. Couples therapy and individual therapy, talk therapy and DBT.

At the advice of my therapist, I made a list of things I could do instead of texting the best friend—make tea, go for a run, listen to music, masturbate, do fifteen jumping jacks, tie myself up with rope, run again harder and longer until my mask was limp with sweat, take a bath, text a different friend, take a recommended dose of sleeping pills, watch a movie, get high, bake a cake.

On the forty-first day, they came to our house with a bandanna covering their nose and mouth. This was socially responsible, but also made them look more capable of violence. They stood on the sidewalk in front of our house, alternately tapping at their phone and reading  Mrs. Dalloway, which had become popular. I watched them from inside, waiting for my housemate to summon me. This was it. I would have to face them. But my housemate didn’t summon me. She stepped out onto the porch. They said, Hey. I got kicked out of my place, they said. Where am I supposed to go? It’s a fucking pandemic. Where do they expect me to go? 

They looked sorry and afraid. 

I could sleep on your porch, they said. I wouldn’t have to sleep inside, even. I could sleep on the futon.

You need to leave, she said. 

They reached out with one hand and touched our magnolia tree with gentleness. Then they broke a branch off the tree. Then they broke off a second branch. They snapped the broken branches into twigs like they could have built a fire with that green wood. They plucked three blooms from the magnolia tree and stepped on them while she leaned over the porch railing, saying, No, don’t, don’t do that, like she was talking to a dog.

I stepped out onto the porch and looked down. We had similar hairstyles—shorn on the sides and long on the top. We were wearing the same brand of shorts.

I said, We need you to leave.

They said, We?

We’re not together, she said. They just live here. She gave them a look I could understand only as a joke at my expense.

Leave, I said. 

And, with a wink at her, they did.

On the forty-second day, I texted the best friend, You’ll never guess what happened yesterday. I texted her, Someone was stalking our house. I sent her a text, paragraphs long, the whole story, ending with me telling the ex in no uncertain terms to get out of here, and them getting out of here. I waited two hours for a response. There was no response. I sent her a photo of the trellis I’d been concerned about, a photo of the damaged magnolia tree. I tried to imagine her receiving these texts. Was she reading them now? Was she on some long drive, out of service range? Was her phone dead? I tried to imagine her in the city where she lived, but I’d never been to that city. I couldn’t imagine her there. I sent her a text saying I hadn’t been touched in forty-two days. Then I sent her an upside-down smiling emoji. That night, she sent me a text, and I danced my thumb over the screen, shifting the notification left and right on the screen, not opening it.

Her text said, I’m worried I can’t respond quickly enough to your texts. Her text said, Time for me feels sort of thick right now.

Typical of her, to say something like that. I thought of taffy, the kind you really had to chew. I searched for GIFs of taffy and sent one to her.

She texted, All these texts make me feel depressed.

I texted her, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to feel depressed. Maybe we should talk on the phone about this?

She did not reply.

On the forty-fifth day, I downloaded an app that stops you from texting between the hours of 10 P.M. and 7 A.M. The problem with this app is that it is servile. When it opens to stop you from sending a text, you can simply swipe left with your thumb and it will without protest disappear for ninety seconds before opening again. In ninety seconds, if you are a reasonably quick texter and the texts you send are reasonably short, it is possible to send upward of twenty texts.

On day fifty-one, a person on the radio said, For many Americans, this is the defining crisis of our lives, but all I had done that day was eat sugared mango slices and write a list. The list said: I have never physically hurt someone. I have never threatened to physically harm someone. I have never screamed at anyone. I have never destroyed another person’s property. I have never stopped someone from seeing people they love. I have never forced someone to have sex with me. 

If anything, the list made it worse, because there were so many gaps. I could have spent the rest of my life listing terrible things I had not done, and there would still be things forgotten or left off because I ran out of time, things I hadn’t thought of or things I had done.

On the fifty-sixth day, I lay awake on the couch listening to a special about coral reefs, which was streaming on Disney+. I did not text the best friend. Then, in the next moment, I did not text her. 

I wondered if my housemate’s ex had lain like this on long sleepless nights before they came to our house. Had they considered instead making tea or masturbating or going on a long run? 

Tonight, were they lying awake on a bed or in a sleeping bag somewhere, not coming to our house? Were they thinking, Don’t go to the house, don’t go to the house? Or had they already given in? Maybe they were driving here even now to park beneath our magnolia tree. Maybe they had already crooked their fingers into the trellis, climbed to the second-floor porch, where the door was unlocked. Maybe they were at that door, reaching for the knob, their face bandanna-covered, their eyes glowing, their hands holding a goldenseal seedling or a handgun or a cat toy. I grabbed my phone and walked through the house, lit blue by the parrotfish scraping at coral. I went to the porch door. I peered through the window to the porch beyond. Its safety light was motion-activated. It had detected no motion. 

I opened the door. I stepped onto the porch, and the light twitched on. Against the futon the shadows thickened, as if someone were sitting there. I pointed my phone toward the futon like my phone could protect me, but there was no one on the futon. There was no one on the porch. 

But I considered this: At any moment a person could climb onto the porch. At any moment the person whose shadow it was could come and recline into its shade, shoulder the shadow like a tailored coat.

I appointed myself guard. Here was a useful thing, a good, protective thing I could do. I sat down across from the shadow, which had the limbs and proportions of a person. I said to the shadow, I can wait all night. Come sunup, it’ll be you in trouble, not me. I thought about the best friend, who, when depressed, hardlyslept. Possibly she, too, was lying awake somewhere.

The shadow sat on the futon as I would have sat on the futon—reclined against one corner, lower back supported by the armrest, arm slung along the back, one leg sprawling across to the other armrest, one stretched to the floor. I had taught myself to sit this way, overcoming the tendency bred into me over years of girlhood to constrain myself to one half, one corner of the futon, to curl with my knees tucked in or to bind my legs, crossing at knee and at ankle. The shadow sprawled as a man would sprawl.

Minutes passed, and they did not come. The porch light twitched off. I moved one foot, and it twitched back on. I pulled out my phone to check the time, then my fingers moved to check my messages, and in an instant I had texted the best friend—I can’t sleep.

I watched this text escape from the small drafting box at the bottom of my screen, private as my own mind, into the white space we shared. I imagined, somewhere, her phone chirping or jumping a little as if lightly shocked. I felt the shock, too, a flex of my stomach. I wanted to recall the text, but there was no way to recall the text. The text was sent. I put my phone into my deepest pocket.

But having sent one text, it was easier to send a second, and soon my phone was back in my hand, and I was looking at another blue box—I’m afraid. 

Having sent the second, it was easier to send a third—I still can’t sleep.

The light twitched off, and I stood, and it twitched back on. I went to the railing. The lights of the city across the river were beautiful. I pulled out my phone and sent her a photo. I wrote, I’m standing at the railing. I can see the city. 

Her response came immediately—How high up? Are you safe?

I could imagine her. So easy to imagine her now. She was gripping her phone. She was with me, fully with me, eyes on the screen, and I could have texted right away, I’m safe. I’m on the porch.
I could have let her go just like that, easy as that. Instead I texted, I think so.

She texted, How high up?

I waited as a car drove slowly down our street, passed our house, and made a right at the stop sign. It wasn’t the ex.

I texted, I’m okay. I’m on my porch.

She didn’t respond.

I texted her name.

Are you there?

Please.

Answer me.

Why won’t you answer me?

I tapped my phone on the railing twice, as if to fix it, as if it were broken, failing to do its job, failing to transmit the best friend back to me. 

My phone jumped a little in my hand. I nearly dropped it. 

You sure you’re okay? the screen said.

The rush hit me then. I put my phone down, held on to the railing with both hands, picked up my phone.

I thumbed into the box, Am I abusive? I pressed the arrow and watched the words issue up into the space where her eyes were looking also.

She answered quickly, almost immediately—I think certain elements of our friendship approach abuse.

I need to know yes or no, I thumbed. I have to know.

You promise you’re safe?

Yes or no?

I think this is a place where there’s ambiguity. I’m okay with that ambiguity.

I’m not okay with ambiguity on this question, I thumbed. I need a yes or no.

We can discuss this tomorrow.

It’s okay if I am just tell me. Yes or no?

Her three dots appeared, pulsed pulsed pulsed, disappeared.

Yes or no?

Yes or no?

I texted her name.

Yes or no or yes or no or yes or no

Her three dots pulsed pulsed pulsed dissolved—No. No I don’t think you’re abusive.

My whole body sagged. What should have been relief but felt instead like defeat. Okay, I thumbed. Thank you. I’m okay. You?

She didn’t respond. I stayed on the porch until dawn, waiting.

Home page image: Erin O’Keefe, Doorway, 2020, from New and Recent Photographs in issue no. 235, Winter 2020.