Prologue
I remembered my first lie.
That’s important. Write it down.
It wasn’t one I told; instead it had
been given to me by my mother. I don’t know what that said about her as a
mother and what that meant for me as her daughter. The lie found me the same
night Daddy and Mama had got into an argument about “She” and “Her”.
“She’s done this to me!”… “This is her fault!” ….
Mama’s voice broke often. They were
downstairs and their voices, more of Mama’s, came drifting under the door into
my bedroom. The hall was still lit. Its tiny
yellow light peaked under my door.
I wasn’t sleep but I’d been sent to
bed at my usual time. There were nights I stayed up watching the talk shows
with Daddy. Mama hadn’t known. This was our secret. Daddy hadn’t said that but
I knew. I never got the late night jokes. I just laughed when Daddy did.
Tonight wasn’t made for laughs.
The covers were pulled up to my
chin. My toes tickled the edges of the quilt mostly to find the warmth and also
because I liked the sound it made. I was pretty ashe. Mama had forgotten the
cream after I got out the bath. I wanted to remind her but her mind didn’t seem
to be in the room.
“She ain’t right,” Mama
yelled. It was quiet. Daddy, I thought. I hadn’t heard him.
I looked out my window trying to
forget. The clouds had dropped to the ground. White fluffy clouds misted us,
blessing us here down below; it came down from the sky to cushion the moon. I
told Daddy my theory once about when clouds came down and he laughed, “It’s
just fog baby girl.”
“Okay,” I said. I let Daddy believe
what he liked. He lifted a brow to me but smiled instead of pursuing it. We
picked our battles.
“Don’t you dare Earl! Don’t you
even,” Mama said, “I don’t want it in here. S’pose it goes off?! No, get it
OUT!”
I still hadn’t heard Daddy. The
floorboards creaked and there was silence. I wished I was sleep. At least I
wouldn’t have heard them.
My mind wandered back to the lie my
mama had told me years earlier. “An angel touched your lips here,” she said.
I touched the dip in my top lip and
wondered about the sort of angel that had laid their finger on me. Was the same
angel somewhere around the world opening the door to a sleeping child? Or did
they go into hospitals and hang out in the nursery? Was that the angel’s job in
life? I was thinking of all the questions I’d wondered long ago that Mama
hadn’t answered. I was going to ask her first thing in the morning when a door
slammed and the steps thundered.
“You’ve done this to me!” Mama said
and the light outside my door disappeared. “She’s…” I heard Mama’s voice
stop as if she were choking.
“Just give me…” Daddy started and
paused.
“NO!”
My window opened and the fog crept
in.
You ready?
“I’m not… I’m not…” Mama repeated
and her voice inched closer, the sound was in my room. I heard the door handle
turn and light poured in.
You ready?
Daddy said something. Mama cried.
The trees rustled. The mist whispered and then an explosion shattered the air.
And another. Then there was silence.
There was quiet. The clouds misted
my eye. They cushioned nothing.
“You okay?”
“Al, wake up, it’s just a dream.
Alicia,” Two bodies hovered above me, horror etched in one face and death in
the other.
I felt like I needed to be asking
that question. “Just a nightmare,” I croaked, my throat was incredibly dry.
“Sorry.”
“You were screaming ‘it hurts’,” Ty
said, his face looked the most severe. Mika was in her robe and silk head wrap.
Her body was faced toward me but her eyes registered CLOSED ‘TIL 8.
I shook my head and smiled, “I’m
okay. You guys can go back to sleep. First night jitters,” I said. Mika
accepted it without any argument, waved, walked out the door, and wandered back
like a zombie to her room. Her bug eyes never made an appearance.
Ty was still perched on the side of
me, staring harder than usual as if my face might reveal some double meaning.
He got up and walked to my door. He stood near it for some time. I waited, his
eyes focused on me and finally he blinked. Whatever he’d considered saying
landed on saying nothing at all. Decided on nothing was a Joe trait. I almost
called Ty on it but before I could he nodded, left the room, and closed the
door.
I touched my face. I was sweaty. I
tossed the sheet to the side and walked to the balcony. I opened the balcony
doors and let the breeze cool my moist skin. The moon was high in the sky,
there wasn’t a cloud in sight. The sounds of the ocean waves at night swayed
me. I leaned against the door and stared out into the night and felt everything
settle around me.
“There’s my island,” I said aloud.
We’d become friends earlier in the day. Of course it was completely one sided-
for now. It seemed closer, more accessible. I thought for a brief second of
going out to it but a chilling wind and an onslaught of goose bumps said ‘think
again’. I left the balcony door open and returned to my empty bed.
I started to let my mind wander to
what Joe might be doing but I stopped. I wasn’t going to let this be a lonely
night. I wasn’t going to think about how he wasn’t here. How he might not ever
be here.
As I closed my eyes a breeze drifted
across the silken drapes. A light touch pressed against my lips, sleep found
me.
You’re
ready.
