30. Nicola
Nicola
I’m deep in the dark place now, where memories swirl around me, and my actual life is so far away, like a half-forgotten dream.
The memory appearing now is a thick miasma of color and sound, shapes and figures sharpening until I can see my childhood bedroom, the pale pink lamp at my bedside, the worn fabric of my comforter, the walls covered in magazine pictures of places I longed to escape to.
“Nicola? What are you doing?” My mother’s voice cuts through the darkness, and she appears in her dark blue robe, face made up like she was going out, hair in curlers.
I sit up and stare at her, back in my nine-year-old body. “What?”
She glares at me, a strange suspicion in her eyes as though she’s caught me red-handed. “You’re doing it again, talking to yourself.”
“I’m not.”
She comes and sits on my bed. Her blue eyeshadow and black mascara make her eyes seem so small, I have to search for her pupils. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”
I nod once.
“Good. Because sometimes I wonder what’s going on up there.” She laughs and taps my temple with her forefinger, the temple that would later throb as an adult, a beacon, a warning. I know what she fears most of all. That the sickness that grips my father has been passed down.
“I’m just thinking.”
“What about?”
“About Daddy, mostly,” I tell her. “He’s angry all the time.”
My mother sighs. “Your father has his challenges. He tries very hard, you know. It isn’t easy for him. But he still loves you girls. You know that, right?”
A stiff hand pats my back, but there’s no comfort there. I want to crawl away from her and hide inside the floor, but I can’t move. The darkness is holding me prisoner.
My mind flashes, and the scene changes again.
My mother is whisked away, an apparition, a ghost disappearing into the blackness.
Overhead lights illuminate. I recognize the smell first. It’s her smell.
Clorox bleach and perfumed soap. The bathroom vanity lights are so bright bright bright I can hardly see.
I’m huddled in a corner. At my back, I recognize his raised voice, the steam hitting my bare skin, the thick pang of fear oozing from my gut and creeping along my spine.
Terrified to turn around, terrified not to.
Do any of my friends have this happen to them when they disobey?
The bathroom fogs with steam, and soon, I taste soap forced into my mouth.
I feel the sting of the burning water on my skin, the redness like a sunburn.
In my mother’s bathroom, the clean, cold tiles are waiting for me. My body hits them, and I cry out in pain. “He isn’t a bad man,” my mother’s voice echoes distantly, though she’s nowhere to be found. “He just has a temper.”
I flinch at the sound of my father’s voice, cracking with rage and the wear of shouting.
Please, just stop, I pray silently. But nothing seems to stop my father once I’ve gotten in his way. My hands clutch my body, and I think I can hear another voice. Not mine. Not my mother’s. Not my father’s.
Hers.
I bolt from the bathroom and run upstairs, tripping on the thick, stained carpet.
My head whacks against the baluster of the stairs, and white stars glitter in my periphery.
I scramble up, reaching for the top, eager to escape the hot wrath of my father behind me.
Through my bedroom door, I bolt toward the closet.
Inside, I slam the door, lock it, and topple the dresser over against it, barricading it so he can’t enter. The door thumps once, then twice.
“Open this door right now!” he shouts. His fists and body hit the door. A grunt of frustration. My body quivers uncontrollably with adrenaline. The stillness and muffled quiet of the closet surround me, and I sink to the floor, my back to the dresser, just in case.
My hands cup over my ears, masking the sound. Finally, his voice moves further away, like a ship drifting from shore, its horn blowing softer and softer with every mile. Soon, I hear nothing at all, and I am alone in the darkness.
That’s when I ask a question. “Please,” I whisper. “Can you take him?”
And the voice I heard before answers.
That depends.
“On what?”
On whether you are ready.
“I’m ready. I’ll do anything. I just need him to stop.”
Then you are ready.
“So, you will take him?”
Yes, but you can’t have something for nothing, you know. There is always a price to pay.
“What is the price?”
One soul for another. A trade, if you will.
“What do I have to do?
Nothing. Just open the door and tell your father what you really think of him.
“I can’t. I’m scared.”
It’s okay. You don’t have to be scared. A friend is coming to help you.
And she did.
“Ben?” I call his name now into the void, hoping to hear him again. The void answers, a rush of his scent in my nose, the briefest feeling of his hand in mine. “Was that it? Was that the time she emerged?”
You know it was, Nicola. You know that’s when they gave her to you.
“You make her sound like a gift.”
Wasn’t it?
“I’m trying to remember.”
Try harder.
When I eventually gather the courage and move the dresser aside, I know he will be there. But it’s okay now because I’m not alone anymore. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. A gift from the nothing that surrounds me.
My father kicks open the door, knocking me back to the floor, the scent of musty coats and clothes in my nose as they topple onto my head.
My hands and arms tremble, and a wave of sickness careens through my body. I dig my fingers into the carpet. “If you’re there, now is the time I need you!” I whisper. “Whoever you are, please. Help me.”
She roars beneath my skin, then rises up inside of me, forcing me to stand and walk toward him. I feel her take her very first breath with my lungs, hungry and unafraid.
The words tumble from my lips before I can stop them. A wave of power courses through me like I’ve never known. I let them ring out, my father absorbing the fury I spew forth.
“Don’t touch me!” she spits. “You piece of shit! You’ll rot in prison like the garbage you are!”
My father’s eyes bulge. His arm raises. His fist flies toward me. It’s me who freezes, me who doesn’t know how to resist. But not her. She knows. She ducks, swooping past him, and bolts down the stairs. I tell her where to get the keys from the peg they hang on in the kitchen.
We sprint toward the car before he can stop us, working as one.
Upstairs, my little sister, Janice, wakes, even though she usually sleeps through these moments.
But I see her staring out the window at us from the window of the car.
I asked her to go back for Janice. Don’t be a fool, she tells me.
If you go back inside, you won’t make it out again.
And I know she’s right. So I show her how to start the engine, and together, we reverse out of the drive, barely a head above the steering wheel.
The front door opens, and my father runs out, the pistol he keeps under his bed in his hand.
“Can you make him use it one day?” I ask her.
But she doesn’t answer. I know it is because she’s thinking.
My father runs after us as we speed away into the night, the darkness swallowing us up, Martha and me.