those dreams, I was always alone.
Now, when I close my eyes, there’s somebody waiting for me in that liquid dark.
The air between us is always full of murk and mush and shadows, her face is hidden behind her hair. But she knows I’m there, and she knows I know that she is.
Who she is.
How did you know I was here?
I’d asked, behind the safety of my eyelids. I asked without moving my lips. My words swirled inside my head and then all around us, echoing back at me from corners unseen. Out of the blackness, so did hers. An answer, drifting in space.
I’d know you anywhere.
My mother is always waiting for me. In the night, in my bloodstream, carried on the wings of Dr. Sharp’s pharmaceuticals. Waiting, in the ether, to see me again. When the wreath of her tangled hair moves closer, and her long fingers with their oval-shaped nails float out to brush against my cheek, I close my eyes and breathe in deep.
Sometimes, when I wake up, my pillow is soaked with tears.
—
My father is quiet as we drive the hour home, chewing on whatever he’s been told behind closed doors. The move, the uncertainty of a new place and new faces and new regimens of drugs, has evaporated his confidence in me. Whatever Dr. Sharp tells me, my father insists he say again in private, behind the closed office door that the two of them shut in my curious face. Now, he flicks on the radio—an unspoken kibosh on conversation—turns it up, and stares straight ahead at the hard-baked highway stretching away in the distance, while the sun slinks away at our backs. He stays like that all the way home—humming tunelessly, answering my questions in distracted monosyllables, lost in the world inside his head. He’s too preoccupied to notice the strange silver car parked just beyond our driveway. Too preoccupied even to notice that the doormat is askew, that the key doesn’t turn in the lock. That someone is already here.
The whirling dervish of my aunt sweeps me up before the door can even close behind me. I’m wrapped in it, buried suddenly in a jangling rush of fabric and bangles and long, long hair.
Nessa
, I try to say, but the word is so huge and ungainly, swelled with feeling, that it sticks in my throat and I can only make a croaking sound.
“Callie!” she yelps, right into my ear, and I realize suddenly that she’s no longer taller than me. The last time I hugged her good-bye, I had pressed my face into her stomach, against the crinkly linen of her swirling skirt, and heard her voice shushing from somewhere overhead. Now, her cheek is soft against mine and my arms wrap around her neck.
It has been almost ten years.
She sees it, too, throwing me out to arms’ length and taking in the whole of me. Brittle hair, pockmarked skin, so much pale, pale flesh. The look of unhappy surprise is there only a second, not more than a momentary crease of the forehead and a dark, angry flicker in her eyes, but I see it; I was looking for it.
“Holy shit, you’re practically a woman!” she cries, and grins so hard that her nose crinkles, hard enough to erase the last lines of disappointment from her face. She’s different, too. Older, with creases at the corners of her eyes, courtesy of the California sun. The skin on the backs of her hands is looser, weathered, studded with splotchy freckles.
My father has appeared from behind me, scowling, as though Nessa’s use of the word “shit” set off a silent alarm. Only that’s not it, I know.
“Breaking and entering, Nessa? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he says drily, and looks pointedly at me. “Although it’s a bit strange to find you in our house, considering that I don’t remember telling you that we were here.”
I try to look puzzled and shrug, but my thoughts go straight to the mailbox—the one at the end of the street, drab green and rusted at every joining, where only two weeks ago I’d placed an envelope emblazoned with our new return address. I had loved writing that
Now, when I close my eyes, there’s somebody waiting for me in that liquid dark.
The air between us is always full of murk and mush and shadows, her face is hidden behind her hair. But she knows I’m there, and she knows I know that she is.
Who she is.
How did you know I was here?
I’d asked, behind the safety of my eyelids. I asked without moving my lips. My words swirled inside my head and then all around us, echoing back at me from corners unseen. Out of the blackness, so did hers. An answer, drifting in space.
I’d know you anywhere.
My mother is always waiting for me. In the night, in my bloodstream, carried on the wings of Dr. Sharp’s pharmaceuticals. Waiting, in the ether, to see me again. When the wreath of her tangled hair moves closer, and her long fingers with their oval-shaped nails float out to brush against my cheek, I close my eyes and breathe in deep.
Sometimes, when I wake up, my pillow is soaked with tears.
—
My father is quiet as we drive the hour home, chewing on whatever he’s been told behind closed doors. The move, the uncertainty of a new place and new faces and new regimens of drugs, has evaporated his confidence in me. Whatever Dr. Sharp tells me, my father insists he say again in private, behind the closed office door that the two of them shut in my curious face. Now, he flicks on the radio—an unspoken kibosh on conversation—turns it up, and stares straight ahead at the hard-baked highway stretching away in the distance, while the sun slinks away at our backs. He stays like that all the way home—humming tunelessly, answering my questions in distracted monosyllables, lost in the world inside his head. He’s too preoccupied to notice the strange silver car parked just beyond our driveway. Too preoccupied even to notice that the doormat is askew, that the key doesn’t turn in the lock. That someone is already here.
The whirling dervish of my aunt sweeps me up before the door can even close behind me. I’m wrapped in it, buried suddenly in a jangling rush of fabric and bangles and long, long hair.
Nessa
, I try to say, but the word is so huge and ungainly, swelled with feeling, that it sticks in my throat and I can only make a croaking sound.
“Callie!” she yelps, right into my ear, and I realize suddenly that she’s no longer taller than me. The last time I hugged her good-bye, I had pressed my face into her stomach, against the crinkly linen of her swirling skirt, and heard her voice shushing from somewhere overhead. Now, her cheek is soft against mine and my arms wrap around her neck.
It has been almost ten years.
She sees it, too, throwing me out to arms’ length and taking in the whole of me. Brittle hair, pockmarked skin, so much pale, pale flesh. The look of unhappy surprise is there only a second, not more than a momentary crease of the forehead and a dark, angry flicker in her eyes, but I see it; I was looking for it.
“Holy shit, you’re practically a woman!” she cries, and grins so hard that her nose crinkles, hard enough to erase the last lines of disappointment from her face. She’s different, too. Older, with creases at the corners of her eyes, courtesy of the California sun. The skin on the backs of her hands is looser, weathered, studded with splotchy freckles.
My father has appeared from behind me, scowling, as though Nessa’s use of the word “shit” set off a silent alarm. Only that’s not it, I know.
“Breaking and entering, Nessa? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he says drily, and looks pointedly at me. “Although it’s a bit strange to find you in our house, considering that I don’t remember telling you that we were here.”
I try to look puzzled and shrug, but my thoughts go straight to the mailbox—the one at the end of the street, drab green and rusted at every joining, where only two weeks ago I’d placed an envelope emblazoned with our new return address. I had loved writing that
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