A Breath Too Late Read online

  I. Am. Dead.

  I collapse onto the floor. Our row house is long and narrow, as if it is squished on its sides. I feel it pressing in. The walls are going to suffocate me.

  Beside the chair is a metal bowl with charred ashes. I blink. I don’t remember that bowl. Don’t remember what could have burned inside it. I crawl over to look. I reach in to try to pluck some of the uncharred bits of paper out of it and my hand drifts through it. I fall back on my feet and let out a shuddering breath.

  The world and I are no longer of each other. It isn’t mine anymore.

  I grit my teeth. It was never mine.

  My head falls into my hands and I rub my temples, fighting to remember. I had thoughts of suicide all the time. Passing thoughts. They had felt tender and secret, but I don’t remember that moment—that moment when it wasn’t just a thought but a secret monster made real.

  My mind is a jumble of images and memories and I can’t put them together in the right order. Time feels disjointed and I can’t hold it.

  It is only then, me on the floor and looking over to my bed, that I see how the mattress caves in the middle. There is a heavy weight on it. I push up to my knees and see someone curled up, facing the wall.

  I blink.

  Standing up, I see that it is you, Momma.

  You look too big for my mattress. You were so much taller than me. Your knees are tucked up by your chin and you’re asleep. I circle the bed so I can see you more clearly. Your lower lip is split and starting to scab over. I can see the blood crusted on the inside of your nostril.

  Your head is on my pillow. I want you out. I want you away! I want to be on my own bed with my room locked.

  But then I see you are still holding my bear.

  And it is such a sweet and tender feeling that swells in my chest unbidden.

  You had bought me that bear when we moved here. Just me and you and this house on Sunset Street. His fur had been a rich golden-brown and he had two sparkling black eyes. You got it when we drove through Baltimore. It was the fluffiest, fuzziest, and cuddliest one you had said, for my cuddliest little girl. I remember squealing in delight when you gave it to me. I sat in my booster seat and I used my bear as a pillow as we made the long drive to our new home with the car windows open—air and sunlight pouring in.

  I inhale as the sunlight sputters out of the memory.

  The bear has matted fur now. It is tearing at the seams. It looks old and raggedy. I needed to squeeze it tight for too long for comfort. And now there is hardly anything left to hold.

  I step away from the bed and clench my fists. I don’t want to forgive you. You kept us here. You let him in. I don’t care how much you cry. You are too late.

  You are years too late. But then, you are the one breathing and I am the one who isn’t. An itch comes to my mind: You were too afraid to leave. I was too afraid to stay.

  The thought is a bullet to my chest, splitting me open, and a fresh rage roars inside me. I punch the wall, but my hand just flies through it and I swear. I didn’t swear often when I was alive, but in this moment when I am just a smudge among other gray shadows, I use up the entire dictionary of expletives.

  I want to break this world into pieces and I can’t even make a dent.

  The world isn’t mine, I think again.

  It never was.

  5

  Momma,

  After my monologue of swear words, I am exhausted. It doesn’t stop me from trying to reach back into the real world, though. I try grabbing you, to shake you, but nothing I do lets me reconnect. I yell in frustration until finally I just collapse against the wall, sliding to the ground to curl up on the floor.

  I am an idiot. An idiot! I should’ve just left. Run away. Ditched this house that smelled of whiskey and cigarettes and too much sweat. Abandoned this house of controlling gazes, fierce punches, and too much quiet.

  I recognize the cold sweat that trickles between my shoulder blades and the way my breath hiccups even though I don’t need any breath in my lungs. I wonder if those church ladies were right. A suicide case goes to hell. On top of that, I am a bastard child and I will be set squarely in the unconsecrated ground come my funeral.

  My funeral? Isn’t that what you should be doing, Momma? Or did it already happen?

  I stare at the bed. You are still curled up like a baby.

  Is that why I am still here? In this in-between, in this smudgy, unreal place? Have I not been put to rest yet? Is it because I wasn’t baptized? Is this all a dream?

  My head aches. I walk into the bathroom and stare in the mirror. At first, I don’t see anything, but then slowly, probably because I know I am there, the edges of me solidify and my features become clearer. My skin tone is ashen. My eyes just a shade too pale and my bone structure looks more pronounced. Is this what being dead looks like? I lean in closer and stare.

  I stare as if my reflection will hand me answers, tell me why, tell me what to do now. But it doesn’t. “Tell me!” I scream.

  The doorbell ring startles me. My head jerks toward the bathroom door and the shrill sound. A doorbell? I didn’t even know the doorbell still worked. No one comes to our house tucked between the two vacant row houses on Sunset Street.

  I creep out into the hallway as if someone could actually spot me. They can’t, obviously. I am a ghost. At least I think I am. Nevertheless, I still creep. Quiet. Hesitant. I walk down the stairs to look out the window to see who is on our front porch. I inhale at seeing the familiar hunch of his shoulders and the way his hair falls into his eyes.

  August. His hands are shoved in his pockets and he waits, clenching his jaw. He swallows hard and knocks. He looks at the driveway, sees the mismatched colored doors of your minivan barely holding on to its own life, and then bangs on the door harder. He knows someone is here.

  I am here. August is on my front porch and I am here, forcing my hand to stay put against the glass so it doesn’t slide through. I want this to be real. My eyes beg to be seen.

  He looks toward the window and I gasp as his gaze travels over the very spot where I stand. But then it slides right past me. He bangs again. I hear you moan upstairs and the mattress creaks. I bristle, thinking about how the movements in my room echo throughout the house. I never knew that. It was good that I cried into my pillow.

  It was good that I learned to be quiet and hold my breath, because the house could hear all of our secrets.

  You are stumbling down the stairs. You squint, trying to make August’s face out through the cloth-covered glass until finally you call, “Who is it?” Your voice is too weak the first time. It rasps out. So you call again, this time after clearing your throat. “Who is it?”

  “Hello, Ms. Walker? I, I am August Ma—”

  You crack open the door and look through it with your one non-bruised eye. “I know who you are.” It sounds like an accusation when you say it, but I don’t know why.

  “I … I … just heard…” He trails off. I stare at him. He looks so much younger than what I remember. Did he just want to see if this was a prank? Real? What was he expecting? I try to remember the last time he was on our porch and can’t. I try to remember the last time we spoke, but where there should be memories to turn to, there is only fog. Something’s there, itching at my mind, but nothing reaches out to illuminate me.

  He waits for you to speak. I can see it on his face. But you don’t say a word.

  He finally says it. “Is … is it true? About Ellie?”

  You stare at him dazed, as if you are confused. As if you can’t quite piece together the English language anymore. With the subtlest of motions, you nod and close the door, locking the boy and his realness out, and keeping us tucked in here where it looks like you’re trying to pretend that I am just somewhere in the house and you are somewhere else, and it is all right, yet we both know …

  It isn’t.

  You slide down the wooden door as August knocks again,

  and again,

  and again,<
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  but he doesn’t pound as loudly as my heart.

  Funny, how hearts beat, wild and frantic, even in a ghost like me.

  6

  Momma,

  I stare at you.

  You are wearing your work uniform, but your shift should have started hours ago. You have never missed a day of work since you were hired at the grocery store as a cashier a few years back. But you are slumped against the door, hands clenched at your temples. You don’t have makeup on either.

  You always brush on your mask so the black and blue is buried under piles of CoverGirl twenty-four-hour foundation. You paint on eye shadow and blush, and your face always looks like a Crayola box. Fake.

  I used to be embarrassed that you were my momma. Embarrassed by how you smiled so much, lied so much with foundation and liner crinkling and smudging by your eyes. Yet, even in my embarrassment, I felt ashamed because I knew the pain hiding behind that mask.

  Now here you are, face clean of makeup, eyes nearly swollen shut, the skin black and blue, not the powder. I walk closer to you and kneel down. I don’t know if I imagine the cold floor or actually feel it.

  I am not sure why I am taken aback, but I am. Without the makeup, without the lies, you look just like me.

  Pale skin. Freckles. Chocolate eyes.

  And like a quivering breath, a whisper of a vision at first, a memory shudders into place.

  * * *

  We have chocolate eyes.

  It had been so long ago, but now I remember.

  I was four, wasn’t I?

  I remember looking into the rearview mirror and seeing your eyes and saying, “Mommy, Mommy! We have the same color eyes!”

  You beamed back at me. “Yes, we do, love. Chocolate! We have yummy chocolate eyes!” I liked that. Chocolate eyes. You had a long drawl to your voice. There was no twang to it, just a richness that made me think of sweet tea on summer days. I was still smiling when we pulled up to our house and saw an old ’79 Cadillac in our driveway.

  Your smile fell and you drove by our house.

  “Mommy! You missed our house, silly!” I was giggling. I saw how you tensed up, the way you kept looking into the mirror, the way you drove to all the wrong places. We parked in parking lots and drove around neighborhood streets. You even stopped in front of a police station. I could hear your breathing. It was shaky. I asked you why we couldn’t go home.

  You didn’t say anything at first. You just sat there staring out the window, looking like the only thing on your mind was escape. Then, the world came back into focus and you said, “Mommy’s just thinking, sweetheart.”

  We sat in front of the police station a long time. You never got out of the car, and as the sun started to set, you pulled out of the parking spot and kept driving.

  I didn’t mind. I liked our drives. I stared out the window and thought of sweet, melting chocolate.

  It was dark by the time we finally pulled up behind the Cadillac.

  You looked in the rearview mirror. Your eyes were wet. “Hey, my girl. No matter what happens, it’s you and me, okay? I’ll keep you safe.” Your voice shook. It didn’t sound like a promise you could keep, but I believed you anyway.

  I was wrong.

  You did everything so slowly. The way you let the seat belt click before you started pulling it back. The way you turned toward your open door and let your feet hang before hopping down. The way you undid my booster seat belt and hugged me so tight. “Mommy, why are you crying?” I asked.

  And you said, “Mommy just loves you so much, love.”

  You tried to carry me up the driveway, but I wiggled free, announcing that I was a big girl and wanted to walk. So you let me. You held my hand. It was so small. You kissed my fingertips and we walked to the door. It opened from the inside and I stared up at the man who stood on the threshold. His hair was black with a dusting of grey around his temples, his face scruffy. I hadn’t seen him before.

  “Mommy, who is that man in our house?” I asked you.

  “Your father,” you said, voice breaking. “That’s your father, Ellie. And it looks like he found us.”

  He. Found. Us.

  * * *

  That was years ago. A memory dislodged.

  The recall of that moment, once in place, was a solid and vivid thing. It blotted out the present for few seconds, as if it demanded every ounce of my attention. As if it mattered.

  I exhale. I wish I could’ve gotten lost in it. I wish I could go back and live in those carefree days before he showed up at our door, but it is just a memory and nothing more. But maybe, just maybe, I will remember enough to know why. Why a piece of me, of my consciousness, was left behind. And maybe if I know why, I will know what I have to do to be gone from this limbo. Maybe the key is to understand.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, probing for another moment, but no more memories come. I grit my teeth, desperate.

  Please. Please. Please. Give me something more to hold on to. But Memory is cruel and keeps her secrets.

  You move and I open my eyes. I realize the knocking has stopped. August must’ve left. Part of me wishes he would come back just so I could look at him again. But you move, and for a split second, it seems like you can see me. You are squeezing your arms around your legs. “I’m sorry. Oh, my dove, I am sorry. It’s my fault,” you say so softly.

  I want to shake you. Of course it was. Of course it was your fault! Then I remember how you had said “he found us.”

  You whisper, “I was so close, so close.”

  I sit back on my invisible, ghostly self and stare at you. So close? To what?

  I keep staring, waiting for you to answer. You don’t. I cock my head to one side to examine you.

  You are bruised, makeup-less, pale, with freckles and a split lip.

  Under it all, I see the same woman who looked at me in the rearview mirror all those years ago, before we had a Cadillac parked in our driveway.

  I see my momma who had chocolate eyes like mine.

  You were so beautiful.

  I look at my hands and think of how tightly you held on to them, how they hurt even as you planted kisses on my pudgy knuckles.

  A realization hits: You died every day that you walked into this house.

  Maybe you were a ghost long before I was.

  A feeling that isn’t anger pokes a hole in me and reaches out to you. I try to plug it up and push it down, push it away.

  Because it hurts too much to know that now you are crying and it’s because of me.

  I reach out …

  You jerk your head toward the door. The roar of an engine pulling in. That goddamned ’76 Cadillac. You scurry to your feet and bolt up the stairs to the bathroom. Scrubbing your face with one hand, you reach with the other to pull out the bag of cheap makeup from under the cabinet. You have to paint your mask back on … otherwise, he will break you into little pieces until not even your fake doll face is left.

  The face without freckles.

  The face that looks nothing like mine.

  7

  Father,

  I am staring out the window, watching you get out of your car. You pause for a second and look toward the street. I am a cannon and I want to blast right through you. Momma’s in the bathroom and I am heading to our front door. The same doorway where I saw you for the first time all those years ago. I remember …

  You hadn’t always been cruel. That’s what Momma told me once. That’s what I vaguely remember from before the belts and whiskey bottles. Everything about the outside of you has stayed the same. The same wiry, strong build and flexing forearms, the same dark hair with shocks of gray, the same hooded eyes with crow’s feet wrinkles that imply you smile often. You do, but most of those smiles are lies. The outside of you looks like the same man who stood on our porch all those years ago.

  But it is your insides that have changed. They twisted up in your gut when no one was watching. Your voice sounds rough and low, but there was a time when I wasn’t afraid of it. Whe
n I thought it sounded like a lullaby. You never sang, but the sound of it, the roll of it, lulled me to sleep.

  When Momma held my hand so tight that it hurt as we walked up the driveway, you looked at us with eyes that made me think of a lost puppy we had found on the side of the road when we first moved into the row house on Sunset. It even had slick black fur and white patches. I wanted to keep it. Momma pulled over. It was raining and one of our windshield wipers wasn’t working right so it was hard to see. She got out, took off her jacket, and wrapped up the little pup in it and then handed him to me to snuggle. He was small. So was I, and he didn’t quite fit in my arms, but he nuzzled my neck and licked me. It tickled and we brought him home and I was laughing and coming up with names as we drove.

  We had him for months. He peed on the floor. He chewed on Momma’s shoes. He barked at squirrels. He was loud and messy and I loved him. But then one day, I had my arm dangling over the bed and when I heard his paws scratch on the hardwood, I smiled and smothered my face in a pillow. I knew he’d come and lick my fingertips like he usually did, but that day something was different.

  He growled.

  I started lifting my head from my pillow, eyebrows raised, but before I could say his name, he charged and clamped his jaw down on my forearm. The teeth dug in and a moment of shock gave way to pain as I tried to shake him off. He didn’t let go. He was saliva and teeth and growls, and I screamed.

  Momma yelled my name and I heard her frantic footsteps up the stairs. I begged him to let go, I tugged and pulled my arm, but it just made the pain worse. Momma lunged for us and she pried the dog’s jaw open and I snatched my arm away the second it was loose. Momma wrestled with the dog until she could shove him outside and close the door. He growled at the door and barked through the wood.

  “It hurts! It hurts!” I cried as Momma gathered me in her arms. Blood was everywhere. On my shirt. On my sheets. She scooped me up and then ran for the door. The dog kept barking and seemed poised to nip at her feet. We were out of the house. In the car. And on our way to the hospital. It was the first hospital visit I remember. It was the only hospital visit we didn’t lie at during the intake.