Chapter 7
Itwisted beneath the blanket, tossing from one side to the other as another strained groan slipped from my throat. Sweat dampened my skin, and my fingers tightened around the cover as the nightmare pulled me deeper into it.
It was hot. Sunlight beat down on my shoulders and stuck to my skin until it became hard to breathe. The smell of fresh dirt and flowers filled my nose, and when I opened my eyes, I was inside the dream.
I was dressed in black, though I couldn’t remember putting the dress on. A casket was being lowered into the ground, and I couldn’t see who was inside.
I didn’t want to know.
My legs felt weak, and the ground seemed to wobble as if I was standing on the deck of a ship.
Around me, people stood in dark clothes, their faces blurred and indistinct, but I could feel their eyes on me. All of them were watching and waiting to see what I would do.
Air wouldn’t fill my lungs. My chest locked up, my vision tunneled, and the grass rushed up to meet me before Booda’s arms closed around my waist.
“I got you,” he whispered as he lifted me off my feet.
He carried me, always, just like he promised the day we met.
The problem was, I didn’t want to be caught. I wanted to fall. I wanted to disappear into that hole with whoever was there, wanted to trade places, wanted literally anything but this moment where I had to stand here and accept that she was gone.
The sobs came out of me, raw and ugly as I clawed at Booda’s chest. “Put me down!”
“Nah, baby. You can’t stand on your own two feet right now, so I’m holding you,” he said, but his voice sounded distant.
My fingers dug into his shirt, and I couldn’t seem to let go. Everything inside me was fracturing, breaking apart piece by piece as I watched that casket disappear into the earth. The finality of it hit different when it was real, when it was her.
Mama.
The word sat heavy in my throat, refusing to come out. If I said it, if I acknowledged it out loud, then it would be true. And I wasn’t ready for it to be true.
“Stop fighting me, baby. It’s time to go home,” Booda murmured, his lips grazing my ear.
I shook my head violently, my whole body trembling. “No. No, I can’t—I can’t leave her here.”
“I got you,” he repeated, but this time his voice was clearer, pulling me back from the edge of that dark place.
The graveyard dissolved around me. The black dress faded, the crying mourners disappeared, and suddenly I was back in my apartment. My eyes flew open, and I barely got untangled from the blanket on the floor before my stomach turned.
A violent gag ripped out of me. I scrambled up too fast, nearly slipping over the pillow and sheet twisted around my legs as I stumbled through the dark apartment with one hand clamped over my mouth. My shoulder clipped the wall on the way to the bathroom, but I barely felt it.
The second I reached the sink, bile burned up my throat.
“Fuck,” I choked out between heaves.
Nothing but bitterness and stomach acid came up, but my body kept trying anyway. Tears streamed from my eyes as another gag bent me over the sink hard enough to make my ribs ache.
The smell of funeral flowers still clung to me. Roses. Dirt. Heat baking down on black clothes.
Mama.
My belly cramped again. Cold sweat covered my skin, dampening the oversized shirt I slept in while my heart slammed against my ribs. I turned on the faucet with shaky hands and splashed water over my face, breathing through my mouth while I waited for the nausea to ease up.
It didn’t, and the migraine followed right behind it, mounting behind my eyes like pressure trapped inside my skull with nowhere to go.
I braced both hands against the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked terrible. My eyes were red, my skin was shiny with sweat, and I was breathing too hard.
That dream had dragged me somewhere I didn’t want to be, and the worst part was how real it felt. I could still feel Booda holding me together while everything inside me fell apart.
I pressed my palms into my eyes and cursed under my breath. If I stayed inside this apartment any longer, I was going to lose my fucking mind.
I reached for my medication, shook a pill into my hand, swallowed it dry first, then chased it with water from the sink before the pounding behind my eyes got worse.
After that, I cranked the shower to the hottest it would go and stepped in.
The pressure was weak, but the heat was vicious, and I stood under the water until my breathing slowed and the trembling in my stomach finally settled.
Even then, I still couldn’t shake the memory.
It felt as though part of that graveyard had followed me home.
After washing up, I pulled on a pair of dark denim jeans, a grey hoodie, and my only sneakers before brushing my hair into a ponytail.
On my way out the door, I noticed my keys sitting on the counter in the kitchen. I stared at them for a second. Then I left them there.
I needed air. I needed to move. I needed to walk this off.
The second I crossed the threshold and let the apartment door click behind me, I was hit by the living pulse of the city. The morning air was heavy with humidity and thick with the smell of exhaust and stale grease drifting from the surrounding restaurants.
Someone in apartment 218 was yelling at her kids, and a neighbor a little further down was sitting on their porch, blasting trap music through a dented Bluetooth speaker.
The clang of a dropped glass echoed in the courtyard below. Car alarms sounded in the distance, and tires hissed through rain puddles left from last night’s storms.
The moment I stepped onto the street, I was swept up in the current of people moving toward bus stops and wherever else they needed to be at this hour.
My mind was still fractured and trying to piece together the fragments of that dream, so I wasn’t paying much attention to any of them until I turned left down a side street.
It stretched out before me in a state of disrepair that felt familiar, even if I couldn’t place why. Its appearance didn’t deter me. I’d been here before. I was comfortable, at least that was what my body told me. But comfortable wasn’t the same as safe. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
Every doorman, every cluster at the bus stops, every old man with his morning cigarette clocked me in a heartbeat and moved on, but I carried it with me anyway.
I passed by a group of kids squatting on their haunches near the curb, arguing over something on a cracked cell phone with two corners taped up. Their voices dipped as I walked by, and one of them made a little cough-laugh, as if to puncture the tension I’d brought with me into their universe.
I kept my chin up and didn’t look their way, but I could feel their curiosity anyway.
The corner store on the next block caught my eye. It was one of those hood stores with the iron bars on the windows and a handwritten sign taped to the glass, advertising cheap liquor and lottery tickets.
I knew that store. My feet slowed as I approached it, and a flutter of recognition twisted in my stomach. Martinez’s. That was the name on the faded awning.
I’d walked through that door with its chiming bell and bought something. Cigars, maybe, or I’d stood outside talking to someone. The specifics dissolved the moment I tried to grasp them.
As I crossed the street, something tugged at me, not physically, but there was a pull in my chest that made me turn right.
There, on the corner, stood a diner, its neon sign flickering the name, Rosie’s.
The windows were fogged with condensation, and I could see the blurred shapes of people moving inside.
My mind flashed with images, each one spiking a white-hot lance of pain in my head that made me stagger.
I gripped the edge of the brick wall to steady myself, my vision swimming.
The pill I’d taken earlier wasn’t working.
Nothing was working. I needed to sit down, and just maybe, have a real breakfast. I can’t state the last time I’d had one of those.
Rosie’s looked like every other greasy diner in the city, but the moment I stepped inside, I was hit with a wave of deja vu that was almost violent in its familiarity.
The air was scented with burnt coffee and fryer oil, and the walls were the same shade of faded mustard I remembered from somewhere deep in my bones.
Booths lined two sides under the window, all of them patched with duct tape. The counter was crowded with regulars, old heads mostly, nursing bottomless mugs and watching the news on the television hanging on the back wall.
At the door, a young woman with copper skin, tiny red freckles, and a smile that was too genuine for this hour greeted me.
“Just you?” she asked as she grabbed a menu.
I nodded, my eyes slowly perusing the room. A booth near the far wall, half in shadow, called to me. There was something about its angle and the way it dipped out of sight from the rest of the patrons that pulled me in its direction.
“Can I sit there?” I pointed.
The hostess grinned, flashing a gold tooth. “You sure can,” she said, leading me over.
Once at the booth, I slid in before she could set down the menu, all but hiding behind the skinny laminate table. She set the menu, a mug, and a paper-wrapped set of utensils in front of me.
“Someone will be over to take your order in a moment. Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’ll have a coffee, three splashes of cream, extra sweet,” I replied, and she set off to grab my drink.
I looked at my hands, then chewed-up cuticles, and flexed my fingers as I tried to focus on my heartbeat instead of the static in my skull.
“Here’s your coffee.” The hostess was back faster than I anticipated.
“Thank you.” I grabbed the warm mug from her hands and flashed her a polite smile.