Chapter Four
CHAPTER
FOUR
Jae
I never should have left the bathroom stall.
His eyes feel like black water. Like something to sink into. To lose your breath for.
There’s more than one way a body can drown.
The first time it happened was the summer after Dad left, on a weekend with no school and no money for a babysitter.
Mom took me along to old Mrs. Higgins’s house, which sat up on a hill at the end of a cul-de-sac where Confederate flags fluttered proudly from front porches.
The house was so big I was shocked to see Mrs. Higgins’s small, bent frame standing in the front door, wrinkles snaking through white skin.
A taller woman with a stern face, Mrs. Higgins’s daughter, came and stood behind her.
Mom and I made our way up the winding driveway, and it seemed like the steps to the front door went on forever.
Inside, I ran my curious fingers along every shiny surface, along crystal vases and marble counters, shiny wooden seats and gold-framed mirrors, until Mom finally grabbed my arm and dragged me to the backyard, where she dropped me like an unwanted package.
“Just sit over there and don’t move,” she said, pointing to a table underneath an arching peach umbrella.
As I made my way across the yard, she closed the screen door and the voices inside floated toward me.
The younger Higgins said in a slow and careful drawl, “I’ll be here on the weekends to watch her, but we need you here every night from Sunday to Friday, without exception. I live hours away, you know, and I can’t just drop by if you decide not to show up for work.”
It was a miracle that Mom got the job considering what happened later that afternoon. Maybe the Higginses felt sorry for her.
I turned away from the voices coming from inside the house and looked down at the grass beneath the table. The brightest green I’d ever seen. Full like a carpet, with no broken glass or plastic littered around. I pulled my feet out of my shoes, stepped out from under the umbrella and into the sun.
I kept walking, feeling the different textures beneath my feet, until I stepped onto the smooth stone pathway that led to the pool.
I stood at the edge of the water, ripples whispering over smooth glass. A small seven-year-old stared back. Dark, thick lips, quiet eyes. Two braids rested at the collarbone with purple balls holding the ends together. I must not be pretty, I thought, if Dad could leave my pictures and leave me.
As I watched the water, I wanted nothing more than to be someone else, something else.
Even a fish, like the one Dad had mounted up on the wall.
He loved that fish more than anything, couldn’t leave it behind.
I imagined myself with skin that glistened in the light.
Silver. Feet that wiggled and propelled me through water so fast he’d have to use all his strength to catch me.
I touched the surface of the water with my toe, and the water changed shape and I disappeared.
And when it settled again, smooth like glass, there I was.
I waved my toe and erased my reflection.
And then suddenly, like I really had become a fish, I plunged in.
Water and time slipped cold through my fingers. I begged and I couldn’t hold them. There were fleeting moments of a captured breath, a vicious, hungry breath. And then it all slipped, and I disappeared, blackness surrounding blackness.
I woke to the sound of beeping machines in the hospital, to Mom frowning with her eyes wet and bright and red. “I told you not to leave the table.”
The second time I drowned was after Austin Green leaned against my locker and said, “Hey, let me take you out.” He was the tall basketball player with hair and eyes that said he was more than just Black.
Everyone thought he was something special.
And anyone he liked became something too.
The whole world tried to tell me I was beautiful.
But when Austin said it, I heard it. He caressed me with words I always wanted to be true.
He took me everywhere. To the movies, where he held my hand and whispered in my ear.
To the ice cream parlor, where he scooped minty-chocolaty spoonfuls into my mouth.
To his house, where I learned how real another person’s skin could feel beneath my fingers.
I learned how a body could scream without making a sound. Clenched thighs. Clenched breath.
But the day he stood with his friends and laughed, his eyes dancing, his lips saying, “It was only a dare,” I found everything beautiful about me gone.
I realized I was drowning when I found myself staring at a bottle of Mom’s painkillers in the cabinet. I remembered the blackness surrounding blackness. The beautiful quiet. I wondered if I should let myself sink deeper, if I should come up for air at all.
I emptied the pills into my hand and busied my mind with counting them, trying to keep my hands from shaking. I counted more pills than good memories. More pills than years with Dad. More pills than people who would listen.
My phone rang and I closed my eyes to it. If I could just remember what it felt like to be gone, maybe I could do it. Be gone. Quiet.
There was silence again, and I wondered who had called. Who was on the other line waiting for me to pick up? What would they think if they could see me right now, with a bottle emptied out in my hand?
Each second in silence made me more afraid, like that moment before you step off the edge and free-fall.
The phone rang again, and this time it didn’t stop.
Leave me alone, I whispered, hoping for silence that wouldn’t come.
I made my way to my room, the pills still clutched in my fingers.
“What?” I asked, pressing the receiver to my ear. “What do you want?” I didn’t know I was crying until I heard it in my voice.
“What do you mean, what?” Mom barked on the other end. “Is that how you answer the phone? What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing, Mom.”
“Doesn’t sound like nothing to me. Are you okay?”
I wiped my runny nose on my sleeve. For some reason, I had at that moment the distinct memory of her standing over a pot of newly planted portulacas that had quickly drooped and died.
She was heartbroken. What did I do wrong?
she asked herself as she yanked the dead stems out of the pot. I must have done something wrong.
I heard Mom’s sigh on the other end. “I’m using the hospital phone right now, can’t find my purse. Don’t know if somebody took it or what. But I might need you to let me in when I get home. You hear me, Jae?”
“Okay.”
She hung up the phone, and I stood at the door, waiting until she knocked.
I stayed because she needed me.
But Mom’s not here now. I only have myself and this second chance. And that might be gone now too.
So I never should have left the bathroom stall.
Those dark eyes. Those pretty eyes.