What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

by Helen Oyeyemi

“Everyone on the plane was freaking out, except the girl beside me,” you said. “She was just reading her book—maybe a little bit faster than usual, but otherwise untroubled. I said to her: ‘Have you noticed that we might be about to crash?’ And she said: ‘Yes I did notice that actually, which makes it even more important for me to know how this ends.’”

It was the usual struggle between one who loves by accepting burdens and one who loves by refusing to be one.

Really the mother’s pursuit of pills wasn’t motivated by the necessity of avoiding pain, but a determination to avoid any feeling at all. That’s why the pills were better than holding the child’s hand.

With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be there—not always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came up so quickly.

But she really couldn’t get used to being a widow (she would’ve liked to know if there was anybody who got used to that state of affairs) and didn’t often feel as if she had anything much to look forward to.

Consent is a downward motion, I think—a leap or a fall—and whether they’ll admit it or not, even the most decisive people can find themselves unable to tell whether or not their consent was freely given. That inability to discover whether you jumped or were pushed brings about a deadened gaze and a downfall all its own.