Thirty years old, too young to be a mom, or so I thought. The positive pregnancy test sat on the bathroom counter. I paced my apartment, which felt like a dark, lonely cave. I noticed cobwebs in every corner and was about to start cleaning the place, the only therapy I could afford at the time.
A knock at the door. Beatrix stood on the doorstep with an Oreo shake from Carl’s Jr.
“Let’s go on a walk,” she said.
We walked along “the wash,” the drainage system that ran throughout the valley. Just like we did when we were kids. I smelled damp things—algae and tadpoles. Skunk or weed, not sure which.
“I don’t want to leave this town. I don’t want to grow up.” I picked up a rock and threw it down into the murky water below.
“This town sucks,” she said. “And you’re already grown up, you can’t help it.”
“But I’m going to be a mom, and that’s crazy.”
“Did you know,” Beatrix said, “that women are born with one or two million eggs in their uterus?”
“So, we’re born millionaires,” I said.
“When it comes to eggs,” she laughed.
“I want you to be my baby’s godmother,” I said.
“Look at us,” she said. “Not only surviving but having babies.”
We found a stack of boxes someone dumped on the side of the wash. Beatrix and I looked through the ones labeled kitchen and found dishes and glasses. “Hey, these aren’t bad,” she said.
“It’s Corningware. I think they’re supposed to be unbreakable.” I tossed a dish into the wash, watching it shatter on the concrete below. I smiled, satisfied, and reached for another.
“I think these might be worth something.” Beatrix grabbed a casserole dish with a glass lid and catapulted it into the wash.
We smashed the entire box, and then another, until it felt as if time had stopped. We walked home, hand in hand. No babies, no worries. Two girls who liked to break shit.
*
That lazy summer afternoon, Beatrix and I were fifteen and thought we were sexy as hell. Posted up on her roof, spying on the neighbor boy, Marko, who never actually came out of his house. The sun glinted off my baby-oiled legs. Beatrix curled up beside me, slathered with sunscreen, her mother’s tennis visor shading her eyes. We wore our homemade zebra print bathing suits, swaths of fabric tied onto our bodies, barely covering our private parts. The towel, damp with sweat, indented my skin.
“So, do you like my new bangs, or what?” I asked.
“They’re kind of crooked,” she said. “Maybe I could help you straighten them up.”
“Not a chance,” I said. “That’s how they got so short. Besides, your mom doesn’t let you have anything sharp.”
Beatrix glanced at her arms, with their haphazard cuts that looked like hieroglyphics. “You shouldn’t talk.” She peered at my potbelly, where I had carved the word slut into the tender skin beneath my belly button when I couldn’t sleep one night.
“I wonder if we could jump into the water from here,” I said, looking down at her above-ground pool. “I’ll do it if you do,” I said.
We stood on the edge of the shingles, just shy of the rain gutters. Held hands. The roof burned my bare feet, so I ran in place on my tiptoes. In Marko’s window, the curtains billowed.
We jumped, and for a moment, we flew through the cerulean, cloudless sky. Plunged into the shallow, above-ground pool, icy green water surrounding us, splashing onto the hot concrete. We felt around for our suits, but gravity had taken them. Sunk down, feeling tiny bubbles spread across my naked body. I reached out my arms, kicked my legs, and swam.
*
Outside my window, brown leaves danced in the Santa Ana winds. Alone on my sixteenth birthday, in a house that echoed my own voice back to me, with only ghosts to keep me company.
I stole a bottle of pills from my mother’s medicine cabinet. I emptied them out onto my bed, shoveled them into my mouth, swallowed them. I called Beatrix and then fell asleep.
Later, Beatrix shook the empty bottle of Vicodin at me. “Did you take this?” She crammed her hand down my throat, and I threw up all over my bed.
People in uniform put me on a stretcher. “I can walk,” I told them. But I couldn’t. There were lights and there were sounds. And then nothing.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Sounds of life. Damn it.
My mouth, a desert. Head felt like a truck hit it.
I opened my eyes, lifted my arms. Ripped the stickers off my chest, the blood pressure cuff.
Beatrix was at the end of my bed, calling for the nurse. “She’s trying to get up again.”
The nurse came in and put something in my IV, which I felt spread through every vein. “This should calm her down.”
I sank into myself, smelling bleach clean. I descended into a perfect dream.
The social worker came in at some point and I looked at her through miles of fog.
“Why’d you do it?” she asked.
“For attention,” I said. I didn’t want to go to the psych ward.
“What’s her birthdate?” I heard her ask Beatrix.
“She’s sixteen today,” Beatrix said.
My mom had planned to take me to a Japanese restaurant, the kind where they cook in front of you. I wondered where she was, if maybe she had gone without me. I imagined her watching a stack of onions burn like a volcano.
When I finally went home, the house was boxed up. “I’m moving in with my boyfriend,” my mom said.
“Great, that’s closer to school,” I said.
“There’s no room for you.” Her face was flat, like a great earthquake had knocked down every structure.
I bit the inside of my cheek. “He has a five-bedroom house.”
“You’re going to your dad’s.” She handed me an empty suitcase. “Maybe he’ll know how to handle you better than me.”
“There’s no room for me over there either. He has a new family now.” I backed away, toward the door.
“Selfish. Did you ever think about me? Don’t you think I want to drive off the side of the road sometimes?” Her sharp stare, a dagger.
Like when I cut my finger down to the bone, so deep I didn’t feel a thing.
*
I showed up at Beatrix’s with a Hefty bag slung over my shoulder. Her mom answered the door.
“You don’t have to knock anymore, Mija,” she said, tossing her sun-bleached hair. “Just walk in.” She snatched up the chihuahua, Patches, who tore a hole in the bottom of my Levi’s.
I made a beeline down the hall to Beatrix’s bedroom. Each wall a different shade of purple and plastered with posters; inside, it smelled like a dirty belly button. Beatrix in her bed, day sleeping as usual. I climbed in next to her, gently setting a doll with no eyes onto the floor. Patches stood on her chest and barked, waking her.
“What’s with the trash bag?” she asked, noticing I’d brought luggage.
“I was wondering if I could stay awhile.”
“Thought you were at your dads,” she said.
“That didn’t work out,” I replied.
“Hmm.”
I cuddled up to her. “Can I stay?” I whispered. “Pretty please?”
I closed my eyes and pretended the world was the sea and Beatrix’s bed, a little boat. We could float away. Nothing around us but water, water on all sides.
*
Beatrix drove up Sweetzer Ave, a steep incline just off Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. She slowed her mom’s maroon Chevy sedan to a near stop in the middle of a cul-de-sac. We sank down in our seats, becoming invisible.
“There’s a light on across the street,” I said. “That’s Johnny Depp’s house, right?”
She nodded and I believed her, though I wasn’t sure where she got her information. She focused on the Mediterranean-style mansion in front of us. “Clark Gable built it,” she said. “Then some writer owned it.”
“Which writer?” I asked.
“F. something.”
“F. Scott Fitzgerald? That’s amazing. I don’t even care that Morrissey lives there. I’m more excited about the guy who wrote Gatsby.”
“That’s sacrilegious,” she said. “Morrissey is a fucking god.”
“He’s just a regular guy. My friend Tony said some of his friends saw Morrissey at the bowling alley here in Hollywood. They asked him to bowl with them, and he did.”
Beatrix squealed. “Oh my God, I would die.”
“I saw a dumpster at the end of the street. Maybe we should go dig through it and see what we can find.”
Beatrix shook her head. “We could get in trouble for that. That’s how I found his house. His name is spray painted all over that dumpster.”
I turned up the stereo and sung along, “to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.”
She turned it down, looked around. The street was empty. She peeled out and tore down the hill.
We laughed, turned right toward the Hustler Superstore, the Virgin Megastore. The lights of a strip club danced past the window with all the allure of sex and skin, the curfew of a school night looming ahead. We were supposed to be at a coffee shop in suburbia, but instead we followed our lusts across three different freeways. Rolled down the windows, spread my fingers in the warm, rushing wind, lit a cigarette and watched the ashes fly.
*
Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood, CA. Beatrix and I peeled off our clothes and dropped them onto a white chaise lounge. Beatrix wore red G-string panties and a hot-pink Wonderbra. At least my modest black push-up and boy shorts passed for a bathing suit. A few hotel guests stared as we dove into the deep end of the rectangular pool.
I floated on my back and gazed up at the palm trees. Beatrix did a series of backflips, splashing water on a nearby sunbather. I saw a security guard watching us out of the corner of his eye.
Beatrix surfaced, spitting water out of her thin red lips. “Let’s get our story straight, in case we’re asked.”
I plugged my nose and dipped my head under, slicking my hair back. “You’re a movie star, of course, and I’m a bestselling author. We’re staying on business.”
“Pleasure,” she said, splashing me.
“Doesn’t it feel good to be in the upper echelon?”
“As long as we don’t get caught.” She slinked up the steps, grabbing a fluffy white towel from a basket nearby.
I rested my chin in my hands on the side of the pool and grinned at the security guard. He smiled back. The sun glazed the sky with a soft amber glow, in the way only L.A. pollution can transform a sunset. The whole world felt like a movie, where the impossible becomes permissible.
*
We were nineteen and hadn’t talked for months, but we sat on the floor of Beatrix’s room, toe to toe, in matching purple polka dot dresses. Out the window, a wildfire raged in the hills a few blocks away.
A loaf of Wonder bread between us. We took the bread, peeled off the crusts and placed them into a pile on the floor. Rolled each slice into a ball of dough, which we devoured in a single bite.
In the closet, an open trunk full of journals and photo albums. I helped her go through them, deciding which ones to take if she had to evacuate.
As I flipped through the albums, I realized that no one, not even my own mother, had more photos of me than Beatrix. If I ever died, she was the place to go for a slideshow of my childhood and adolescence. Not only that, but she also had every zine I had made back in high school, all those fat original copies. A lot of my old journals, and even a few hospital bracelets.
My mom didn’t have many photos of me. She never even made a baby book. But here was Beatrix with my whole life stashed away in the back of her closet.
*
We sat at Tu Madré, the best taco place in Los Feliz. I held Beatrix’s infant daughter, swaying gently, trying to get her to sleep. Beatrix scarfed down an enormous veggie burrito. I couldn’t believe she was pushing forty and still a vegan. Juices dripped down her hands, silver rings on every finger, her long nails painted black. I handed her a napkin.
Beatrix’s daughter sucked on my knuckle, hungry for milk. I pulled a clean bottle out of Beatrix’s backpack, already prepared with a scoop of dry formula. I added a few ounces of bottled water and shook it up just like I did when my son was small. Held the baby in the crook of my arm and fed her, looking into her eyes, two infinity pools.
We heard sirens—the music of Los Angeles—but these were so close Beatrix had to set down her burrito and cover her ears. Flashing lights colored her face red, then blue.
Soon, police were everywhere. The busy corner was congested with dogwalkers, joggers, and people having lunch at bistro tables. Everyone had their phones out, filming what was happening in the street.
On the pavement, traffic was stopped in both directions. A group of LAPD officers were taking down a guy—they had him surrounded, guns drawn. I took Beatrix’s baby and hid behind a parked Range Rover, peeking out as the cops got the man down onto his stomach and cuffed him, then dragged him toward the back of one of the police cars.
Once the coast was clear, I emerged from hiding with the little one.
“Typical Pasadena housewife,” Beatrix laughed. “You’ve been spending too much time holed up in the suburbs. You’re out of touch.”
She was not wrong. I didn’t feel safe anywhere in L.A. where traffic signs and billboards outnumbered trees and playgrounds. I lived in a neighborhood where they often filmed movies, where hundred-year-old oaks formed a canopy over streets lined with bungalows. Beatrix lived in Echo Park and drove the streets of Hollywood daily on her way to work with at-risk youth. She walked past homeless encampments spilling out over celebrity’s stars on the Walk of Fame and knew the dreary realities of L.A. dreams.
I watched the suspect ride away in the back of a police car. He woke up that morning thinking it would be a normal day and ended up going to jail. I’d had days like that in the past.
I looked down at Beatrix’s daughter who, comfortable in the chaos and noise, had finally fallen asleep in my arms.
–
Carrie Lynn Hawthorne is a writer and mother from Pasadena, CA. You can find her work in publications such as Reckon Review, The Hennepin Review, Sunlight Press, Cultural Daily, Parhelion Literary Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles.Reckon Review, The Hennepin Review, Sunlight Press, Cultural Daily, Parhelion Literary Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles.
© 2025, Carrie Lynn Hawthorne
Halfway Down the Stairs 