Her Body and Other Parties

The main character’s girlfriend, Bad, shows up on the doorstep of their home with a baby called Mara. Bad says, “She’s yours,” and hands the baby to her before leaving. The woman recounts her fraught relationship with Bad, a charismatic, impish woman. The protagonist met Bad at a wedding, where Bad was dressed sharply in a suit. Bad walked up to the protagonist and asked her to dance. The protagonist admired Bad’s unabashed manner. She recalls scurrying around the Brooklyn Museum with Bad, then going to the beach, where Bad tells the protagonist, “The ocean […] is a big lez” (50). As the relationship develops, the protagonist fantasizes about a domestic life with Bad. However, when they have sex, the protagonist is silently thankful that the two of them cannot have a baby. She corrects herself in the present: “We made a baby. Here she is” (51).

As the protagonist comforts the baby, she looks around the house in the Indiana woods for evidence of her share life with Bad: cloudy silverware, glass jars with the labels peeling away, an altar to all of their favorite female icons, like Billie Holiday and Patsy Cline. She recalls when a teacher at the school she works at overheard Bad screaming at her on the phone and advised her to reevaluate her relationship.

The story skips back and forth through time. The protagonist takes Mara to Indianapolis and then to Bloomington, then back to the house in the Indiana woods. When they return, the house has clearly been neglected. A family arrives the house with an 11-year-old girl whom the protagonist recognizes as Mara. However, Mara does not recognize her. The protagonist slips into a fantasy about the birth of a second child with Bad and Mara’s life as an adult. She warns Mara not to flood the house and laments that she never taught Mara how to swim.