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"To the countless mothers and fathers who lost a baby. Your love endures beyond what words could ever express."—Ara
"The man who thought he was building a kingdom and woke up one morning to discover he had simply been allowed inside someone else's." —Carlos
(Ch 1) Genesis
(Ch 2) The Hot Stove
(Ch 3) Alina is Nineteen Years Old
(Ch 4) Carlos is Forty-Three Years Old
(Ch 5) Private Discords and Friendships
(Ch 6) The Coffee Shop
(Ch 7) Mommy, Mommy, and Daddy
(Ch 8) Experimentation
(Ch 9) The Breeding Gospels
(Ch 10) Convertible Road Trip
(Ch 11) Conception
(Ch 12) The Bleeding Started
(Ch 13) Attempt at Pregnancy
(Ch 14) The Quiet War
(Ch 15) What We Broke
(Ch 16) Abruption and Emergency
(Ch 17) Aaron is Strong
(Ch 18) The Real Exorcism
(Ch 19) Alina's Soul
(Ch 20) I Need This
(Ch 21) I am Pregnant
(Ch 22) Overwhelming Odds
(Ch 23) Carlos's Pledge
(Ch 24) The Confession
(Ch 25) Graduating to Motherhood
(Ch 26) The Little Ones
(Ch 27) An Old Friend
(Ch 28) Heart of Ours
(Ch 29) Weight and Wonder
(Ch 30) Magic Kingdom Miracle
(Ch 31) Ara and Alina
(Ch 32) Ara and Carlos
(Ch 33) Alina and Carlos
(Ch 34) The Unexpected Reunion
(Ch 35) Grand Canyon Revisited
(Ch 36) Not By Blood
(Ch 37) The Asthma Attack
(Ch 38) The Voice
(Ch 39) Love That Transcends
(Ch 40) Momma's Soul Deed
(Ch 41) Under the Pillow
(Ch 42) Hope's Soul Deed
(Ch 43) Christmas Dinner Revelation
(Ch 44) A Roundtable Dialog
(Ch 45) The Backyard Porch
Carlos bought a house in Northeast Portland that had a 24-foot long master bedroom with 14-foot ceilings. The walls were thick enough that the neighbors would never call the cops no matter how loud we screamed. It was a safe place. It protected everyone from the elements with eight inches of cold cinderblock. The house needed a lot of work. As old walls came down inside, so did the walls inside us.
Ara is 24 years old.
I was orphaned at fifteen when my mother overdosed in a Vegas motel. No one ever came looking for her and I don't think anyone ever knew I existed. That evening, I gave some guy a hand job to buy me a bus ticket to Seattle. I never made it all the way there as I walked away at a stop somewhere in Portland.
I learned to come for strangers on camera before I ever came with someone who knew my real name. It was easy. No one knew how old I was and nobody cared. They wanted me because I looked young. I'd finger myself at least five times a day on camera to survive. I was fucking myself since I was twelve, anyway.
My childhood was a series of motel rooms. All dirty, smoke-stained, with wet jizz still on the carpet. I remember my mother bringing home men who looked at me way too long. I was thirteen the first time my mother let one of them finger me. She told me,"This is the way we survive." She used her body as a shield, then as a weapon, then as currency. Then she used me.
It was inevitable that I would grow up to be just like her. I thought about it all the time. I never walked the streets but knew where the money was and how to get it.
I stepped off the bus at the old Portland terminal on 5th and Hoyt, back when it was still gritty but functional.
It's late fall, chilly, but not freezing yet. It was raining.
I had an empty backpack that used to carry school books. After giving that guy a handjob in one of the bathroom stalls to buy my ticket, he opened his wallet and gave me everything he had – eighty-seven dollars in cash. I spent a few minutes talking about what happened to me and why I was willing to do that, "I have to survive now that I'm on my own."
I cleaned up the best I could. He wasn't a hero. He knew I was only fifteen and if he had more cash, would have paid anything to fuck me.
I'm glad he didn't have any more money and that there wasn't an ATM anywhere nearby. My first day getting out of the city and the only thing that I brought with me was picking up where my mother had left off.
And, it had only been eighteen hours...
I spent the first night in the bus station's waiting area. Bright lights shone on me all night long. I was terrified but put on a good game pretending I did this all the time. I popped in and out of sleep trying to keep an eye on everyone doing the same.
The station wasn't like the one in Vegas, but I still had an irrational fear of waking up blindfolded and tied up in the back of a van. I slept on a hard bench with my head resting on my backpack that I rolled up, transforming it into a makeshift pillow.
Security never looked closely at a pretty girl who stayed out of everyone's way.
By morning, I was stiff, hungry, and knew I couldn't stay there.
I walked to the Central Library on 10th and Yamhill so I could use a public computer to search for "Portland Youth Shelters." I found Bradley Angle House (now Bradley Angle), a domestic violence shelter that sometimes takes runaways under the radar. I call them from a payphone and they tell me they can put me up for a few nights if I'm in immediate danger. I tell them I am. I'd stay there for ten days.
They had group meals, shared rooms, and counselors that didn't push too hard when I clammed up about home.
At least I wasn't on the street.
The best thing was that I wasn't worried I'd be woken up with a pervert breathing on my neck or my mother smoking a cigarette after giving a creep a blowjob. I fell asleep until 7am the next morning – at least a full eight hours...
The next day, the shelter connects me with a caseworker who helps me get a state ID, but it would take a couple weeks for it to arrive. In the meantime, I got to know one of the girls aging out of the program. She was turning nineteen. They were setting her up with a room she'd rent and over the last year, helped her find dependable, legitimate work.
She chose a job at a vintage clothing shop and got paid under the table. Her name was Jessica. Everyone called her Jess. She eventually let me crash on her floor.
I'd give her fifty dollars a week that I got from the caseworker from a grant for disadvantaged and homeless teens. Jess was rough-edged but kind. Her hair was dyed carnation pink, and she had lots of piercings and tattoos. She had a "big-sister vibe." She taught me how to dress to look eighteen and how to walk into bars without getting carded right away. She also shows me how to spot men who pay for company without expecting the "girlfriend experience." She didn't try to make her believe it was going to be easy. I liked that about her.
I stayed there about four months, enough to feel somewhat safe and long enough to start hating the floor. The smell of weed and burnt coffee never left anything that ever came into the room. Even to this day, I can barely stand the smell of it.
I saved every dollar I could, eating cheap (ramen and dollar-menu tacos). I was already thinking ahead. I needed money that didn't come from a man's wallet or a boss's pity. I looked Jess up about a year before meeting Alina and she was still at the vintage clothing store but was now the manager and had a baby boy. Jess said she had no idea who the father was, didn't care, nor want to find out. I was happy for her. Her life really turned around. We kept in touch. She became an important friend of the family.
I survived with the help from others and men I became "acquainted" with. I couch-surfed early on. Later, rented rooms from couch owners. I had a lot of time on my hands. Those first months in Portland blurred into a cycle of borrowed couches and careful smiles. After the shelter and Jess's place, I learned fast.
People will open their doors if you don't break anything and if you make them feel good about helping. I never asked for money outright. I asked for company. A shared joint on the fire escape. A late-night talk about nothing and even a hand on a shoulder that lingered long enough to make them feel seen. Sometimes they slipped me cash "for groceries" or bought me dinner "because I looked hungry." Sometimes they let me stay another week because I listened when no one else did.
I couch-surfed through Craigslist ads and word-of-mouth, mostly artists, baristas, early tech guys in the Southeast or off Alberta. All the houses had mismatched furniture and most had mildew stains on the walls. Concrete basements were always damp. The burnt remnants of rolling papers littered the ground next to every back door. The lofts above coffee shops were the worst. The espresso machines woke me everyday at 5am! I kept my backpack light: a change of clothes, my pay-as-you-go phone, the EBT card the caseworker renewed every month, and whatever cash I could tuck away.
The men I engaged with were the easiest. They wanted to be helpful. I'd sit on their laps in dimly lit living rooms, let them kiss my neck, whisper in my ear "how pretty I was" or "how special I was." I'd guide their hands but never let them go too far unless I decided it was worth the sympathy tip... fifty dollars here, one-hundred dollars there. Everything helped. I always returned a smile and a thank you. I told myself it was acting, like I did during the motel days, but on my terms. I chose who, when, and how much I'd let them touch me. I wasn't anybody's property and didn't owe anyone any favors. No one could hurt me if I always stayed one step ahead of them.
The nights I was alone were the hardest. When the houses went quiet and I was laid out on someone's futon or old couch, I'd stare into the darkness and feel the weight of everything on my chest. I was sixteen, then seventeen, then almost eighteen, and still nobody needed me. They wanted me around because I was beautiful, because I laughed at their jokes, and because I made them feel less lonely. But need? That was different. Need meant I mattered even when the lights were off and the clothes were on.
No drugs, very little partying, and no wasting time. I bought thrift-store clothes that made me look older, and practiced walking so it looked as if I belonged in any room. I waited.
Months passed the fastest while the days seem to linger.
On my eighteenth birthday, the day I could sign a lease, open a bank account, start something that was mine, my day would be making as many of those things happen. A man from one of the couch surfing houses offered me the spare room in his big place on Hawthorne for four-hundred dollars a month, cash. I moved in the next day. I locked the door and cried for the first time in years. Not from pain, but from the simple relief that this key was mine. It could keep everyone out or let anyone in – I got to choose.
In the shadowed valley where the wolves hunted, there was a flat black stone that the sun baked all day until it glowed like a coal at dusk.
The old wolves called it "The Whelping Stone" and warned the young, "Touch it and your paw will blister. The pain will teach you once, sharp and true. Never again."
One spring, a young wolf named Bardo, hungry for the respect of the yearlings crept close while the pack howled approval.
"See how brave he is!"
They sang. He pressed his pad to the stone. The burn came fast. The pain climbed up his leg. He yelped, pulled back, and limped away, later licking his wound. The pack laughed, then licked his ears.
"You survived," they said. "Now you're one of us."
Bardo told himself the lesson was learned.
By summer, the yearlings had their own game. They gathered at twilight around the stone.
Chanting low, "Whelp, whelp, whelp, show your fire."
Bardo, now with a faint scar, felt the old burn echo in his memory, but the chant was louder. A new pup hesitated. Bardo nudged him forward.
"It's quick," he said. "We all did it."
The pup touched, cried out and the pack howled louder still. The scar on Bardo's paw thickened. The pain felt smaller, almost ordinary.
Autumn came, and the pack moved to the high ridges for the mating season. The Whelping Stone waited below, warmed by the last sun. The adults circled it in a ring, tails high, voices thick with the season's heat.
"Touch for the pack," they howled. "Touch to prove you're alive."
Bardo watched a young she-wolf step forward, eyes bright with the group's gaze. She touched, the burn rose, she flinched but held. The pack sang her name. Bardo joined the chorus, though his own paw throbbed in memory.
Later and alone, he nosed the scar and thought, "I knew. I still led them to it."
Years passed. The pack grew old together. The Whelping Stone remained, black and patient. When new pups arrived, the elders (Bardo among them) told the old warning.
"Never touch the stone, it burns."
But when twilight fell, the chant rose again, soft at first, then insistent. The young wolves looked to the scarred ones for permission. The scarred ones, throats tight with old apologies, stepped aside or even nudged. The stone took its toll each season: blisters, limps, quiet whines in the dark, but the pack never moved the stone away, never stopped the circle.
One winter night, an old wolf lay apart, paw curled around a scar that had never healed clean. He watched the young circle the stone once more, heard the chant, saw the first touch, the first yelp, the first proud howl...
He closed his eyes and thought, "We all knew the first time. We knew every time after. Yet we kept the stone hot, kept the circle turning, kept telling ourselves the burn was the price of the pack."
The Whelping Stone waited through the cooler and colder seasons. Faithful and unforgiving, the wolves sang that the pain made them stronger, closer, and alive. They never admitted that the only thing it truly made, was more scars.