3. The Name
Thandiwe
Bliss and Matthias’s Apartment, Downtown San Francisco. 1215 hours.
The room is too quiet.
I keep waiting for someone to tell me what to do. Nobody does.
Bliss told me this is their guest room. Their home.
I’m still trying to understand what that means.
There are paintings on the walls. Not the kind Meridian hung in hotels because somebody decided they matched the furniture. These have fingerprints in the paint and tiny imperfections around the edges.
Bliss made them. Downstairs is her gallery.
Art By Memory. Fitting.
Up here, she lives with the man who says he’s my brother.
Something warm presses against my ankle. I look down.
Crystal is curled against my foot, a tiny white ball of fur with rainbow-colored ears and a tail that looks like somebody dipped it into several pots of paint.
She’s been following me all day. Bathroom. Kitchen. Bedroom.
When I stop, Crystal stops. When I sit, she finds some part of me to lean against.
Nobody told her to.
I reach down and touch one rainbow ear. It’s really soft.
Her tail taps against the floor. Once. Twice.
I almost smile.
The red-haired doctor came earlier. She explained the medication they’re giving me.
Less each day. Slowly weaning. She said stopping everything at once could hurt me.
Bliss understands. She sat beside me this afternoon with Crystal between us and said, “I took them too.”
Nothing else. She didn’t need to explain.
Sometimes my hands shake.
Sometimes sounds become too sharp.
Sometimes I wake knowing I’ve forgotten something important, then remember I’ve forgotten almost everything.
My name is Thandiwe Cross.
I repeat it silently.
Thandiwe Cross.
Crystal lifts her head.
Footsteps have stopped outside my door. Nobody enters.
Crystal doesn’t bark. Her tail starts tapping again.
I stare at the door.
I know who’s there.
I don’t know how I know.
But I do.
Bliss and Matthias’s Apartment, Downtown San Francisco. 1340 hours.
Crystal is asleep in my lap.
I didn’t put her there.
I was sitting on the sofa when she jumped up beside me, walked across my legs twice, then curled herself into a ball as though the decision had already been made.
I haven’t moved since.
Bliss sits at the other end of the sofa with a sketchbook resting against her knees.
She doesn’t watch me. I like that about her.
Most people watch me.
They try not to, but I see it. The careful looks. The questions they don’t ask.
Bliss draws.
“What are you drawing?”
“Crystal.”
I look down at the white bundle sprawled across my thighs.
“She’s asleep.”
“Best time to draw her. She can’t interfere.”
Crystal opens one eye.
Bliss smiles. “See?”
Something escapes me.
A laugh.
Small. Rusty. But a laugh.
I stop breathing.
Bliss doesn’t make a fuss. She keeps drawing.
That makes me want to cry.
I stroke Crystal’s back instead.
“Were you like me?”
Bliss’s pencil stops.
“Not exactly.”
“But the drugs.”
“Yes.”
“Did you forget?”
“Some things.”
I look at her.
“Did they come back?”
“Some did.”
Possibility rises so quickly it hurts.
Then Bliss adds quietly, “Some haven’t.”
I look down again.
Crystal stretches one tiny paw across my wrist.
“What if mine don’t?”
Bliss closes the sketchbook.
“Then Matthias will help you with what can be helped. And I’ll be here for the parts I understand.”
“Why?”
Her brow creases.
“Why what?”
“Why would you do that for me?”
She looks genuinely confused by the question.
“Because you’re his sister.”
I wait.
“And?”
“And nothing.”
The answer makes no sense. But something about it feels familiar.
Family without a price.
Care without instructions.
I look down at Crystal.
Her rainbow tail twitches in her sleep.
Maybe this is what home feels like.
I wish I could remember.
Bliss and Matthias’s Apartment, Downtown San Francisco. 1545 hours.
Bliss makes coffee.
She asks me first.
I’m beginning to notice that. Coffee. Tea. Food. Shower. Window open or closed.
Questions about things nobody used to ask.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s allowed.”
She pours me half a cup anyway and leaves milk and sugar beside it so I can decide what happens next.
I add both.
“Joshua might come for coffee in a few days,” she says.
“Who’s Joshua?”
“A doctor. A psychologist.”
My hand stops around the spoon.
“Do I have to talk to him?”
“No.”
The answer is immediate. I look at her.
“You can meet him. You can talk about Crystal’s ridiculous ears for an hour if you want. Or you can tell him to leave.”
Crystal looks up from beneath the table.
“I like her ears.”
“So do I. Don’t tell her though. She’s already unbearable.”
A door opens downstairs. Crystal launches herself toward the stairs.
Seconds later, I hear a man laugh.
Then Matthias walks into the kitchen with Crystal tucked beneath one arm.
Something inside me shifts. It isn’t fear. It’s something harder to name.
“Hey.”
I know his voice.
He doesn’t come closer until I nod toward the empty chair.
He sits.
Crystal immediately abandons him for me.
Traitor.
Matthias smiles.
“She likes you.”
I look down at Crystal.
“She follows me everywhere.”
“Yeah. She’s decided you’re hers.”
Crystal settles more firmly against me as though confirming it.
I look into my coffee.
“Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“About before.”
He thinks carefully.
“Mom sang while she cooked. Badly.”
A picture almost forms.
Warm light. A woman moving between a stove and a table.
Then nothing.
“Dad complained?”
“Constantly. Claimed she was ruining perfectly decent songs.”
“Was she?”
“Absolutely.”
A laugh catches in my throat.
Matthias smiles.
“Our parents loved music. Mom couldn’t carry a tune, Dad thought he could. He was the one who could actually sing.”
“Could he?”
“Yes. Beautiful voice. You got that from him.”
I look at him.
“I sing?”
His expression changes.
Of course. The stage.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “You always did.”
Something brushes the edge of my mind.
A sound this time. A woman laughing.
I close my eyes.
It’s gone before I can reach it.
But for one second, I heard my mother.
Bliss and Matthias’s Apartment, Downtown San Francisco. 1915 hours.
We eat dinner together.
Nobody tells me when to start.
I wait anyway.
Bliss notices but doesn’t say anything. She simply takes a bite of her own food. Then Matthias does.
I pick up my fork. Maybe one day I won’t need somebody else to go first.
Afterward, Bliss takes Crystal downstairs to the gallery, leaving Matthias and me at the kitchen table.
He doesn’t fill the quiet. I’m grateful for that.
I think about what he told me earlier.
“Mom sang badly.”
His mouth curves. “Terribly.”
“But she sang to us?”
“All the time.”
“Even though Dad could sing?”
“Especially then. Drove him crazy.”
I smile.
“Did she sing to me at night?”
Matthias goes still.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“A lullaby. In isiZulu.”
Something moves at the edge of my thoughts.
“Sing it.”
His eyes meet mine. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
He starts quietly.
I don’t know the words.
I do know the melody.
My fork slips from my fingers.
Matthias stops.
“No.” I reach across the table. “Keep going.”
He does.
The room disappears around the edges.
Darkness. Warmth. A hand moving slowly over my hair.
A woman’s voice, beautifully, wonderfully out of tune.
My eyes fill.
I don’t know her face. I can’t find the room.
But I know that voice.
And somehow, I know what comes next.
I whisper the final few notes with him.
Matthias can’t continue. Neither can I.
Tears slide down my face. I look at him, and something else pushes through.
A boy singing the same song deliberately badly.
Me throwing something at him.
His laughter.
A name.
One nobody has told me.
One that belongs to the boy in the memory.
“Matty.”
His eyes close.
When they open again, they’re wet.
“Yeah.”
I reach across the table and take his hand.
“I remember your name.”
His fingers close around mine.
And one small piece of the life they took from me is mine again.