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My mother started acting strange the week before my 18th birthday. Maybe it was some kind of emotional thing – me getting accepted to college, getting ready to graduate, turning 18. Maybe she was having trouble coping with the idea of me growing up. I didn’t know, but it all started with the owl.
I was doing my homework that February night, sitting at my little white desk in my pink room writing an essay on Wuthering Heights on my laptop when I saw it out the window. We live in the exurbs, so an owl isn’t that unusual. We have barred owls all the time, but this one was a big white owl, like Hedwig in Harry Potter. I’ve never seen one around here before. It sat in the tree for a long time and didn’t even startle when I went to the window and looked at it, even when I got my phone out and took a picture. It just sat there watching. It was really beautiful. I went downstairs and when I came back up it was gone.
The next day at breakfast my phone alerted and my mom stopped she was doing, a wary look on her face. “Who is it?”
I checked. She was always paranoid that I was texting with an axe murderer or something. “It’s just likes on my post about the owl,” I said.
My mom frowned. “Owl?”
“Owl,” I said, showing her the post of the picture. “Big bird. Pretty. In the tree last night. I posted a wildlife picture. That’s all.”
I thought that would get her to stop stressing, but no. Instead her mouth pursed in a thin line and for a second I thought there was a flare of something in her eyes.
“What’s that doing here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It looks like a snow owl. I never saw one around here before. Maybe it’s lost.”
“Maybe,” she said. She was still frowning.
It was past time for her to lighten up. “Mom, I know you love me and all, but you’re really off the rails about the phone. I’m posting wildlife photos, not sexting a stranger. I wouldn’t do that.”
At that her face relaxed and she smiled. My mom is really pretty when she smiles. “I know you wouldn’t. You’re my good baby girl. I know you’d never do that, Olivia.”
“I have never sexted anybody,” I said. Which is true. Or kissed anybody. Or done freaking anything with anybody. Not that I intended that to stay true next year when at least I would be 42 miles away at college. And I wasn’t going to keep the tracker on my phone turned on either, but I planned to have that fight from 42 miles away.
“You’re so good.” She patted my cheek. “It’s just that there are men….”
Here came the lecture again. I jumped up perkily. “Sorry, mom. I’ve got to go. I’ll miss the bus if I don’t run.” And I did.
Maybe she would have dropped the whole thing if the owl hadn’t come back. Or maybe not. My mom’s been super overprotective since the divorce. That was ten years ago. And it’s not like my dad’s an axe murderer. He’s an intellectual properties attorney and a perfectly nice guy. And yes, he’s married Joy and my mom hasn’t dated anyone seriously, but it’s been ten freaking years! My parents aren’t but 56. It’s not like they have one foot in the grave!
Anyway, that night the owl was back, just sitting in the tree outside my window, occasionally preening. I watched it for a while and it didn’t startle. I was so busy watching I didn’t hear my mom come in.
“Olivia? What are you doing?”
“The owl’s back,” I said, quietly so I wouldn’t scare it.
“Oh it is, is it?” My mom took one look out the window and then she unlocked it and opened it. “Shoo! Go! You’re not welcome here!”
The owl just looked at her.
“Mom, what are you doing?” I said.
“Go!” She grabbed a pillow off my bed and waved it at the owl. “Get out of here! Go! You’re a fucking perv!”
“Mom, it’s a bird!” She was scaring me. I grabbed her arm because she was leaning so far out the window I thought she might fall.
“Leave!” She threw my pillow at it.
Almost lazily, the owl opened its wings and glided away, a white shadow among the trees.
“Mom?” I pulled her back in and closed the window firmly. “What the hell?”
She was almost crying. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “You’re going to leave.”
“Next fall.” I sat down beside her on the bed and put my arm around her. “I know that’s hard for you. But I’m eighteen on Saturday. I have to grow up.”
“You don’t. You could stay your sweet, imaginative self.” She folded my hand in hers. “You could stay here.” She looked around my room. My Harry Styles poster looked back at her, smiling. My stuffed animals were neatly corralled in a crochet net with fairy lights along the edges, my big stuffed unicorn across the head of the bed. “This is you. This is my Olivia.”
“Maybe I want more,” I said gently.
“A boyfriend?” She shook her head. “You can dream about your Heathcliff or whoever, but those are just dreams, Olivia. Real relationships are painful and messy and heartbreaking.”
“Unsafe,” I said. That was her favorite word.
“Yes.” She touched my cheek. “You may think that you can handle it, but you can’t. You can’t actually be the equal of somebody like that.” She gestured with her chin at Harry.
“Because I’m not good enough.” There was a flat sound in my voice.
“Baby, there is only one reason why men want to talk to an eighteen year old little girl, and that’s sex.”
“Because she has absolutely nothing else to recommend her,” I said. Something was starting to uncurl inside me. “After all, why would anyone bother with me except to get my pants off? It’s not like I’m intelligent or interesting or brave or anything.”
There was something like real fear in her eyes as she stood up. “You cannot handle the things you want. Now go to bed. And close the curtains before you undress.”
“Mom, my window looks into a tree.”
“That’s what I mean.” She went to the door. “Goodnight, baby.”
“Goodnight, Mom.”
I sat there a long time, taking deep breaths like everyone said to, tracing the flowers on my comforter, roses and lilies and big red poppies.
And then I got up and very deliberately opened the window and said to the night, “I want to get out of here.”