In This Life

by Terri Herman-Poncé

  “How old?”

  I sifted through the images again, trying to peg down at least one that could give me a clue, but I came up empty. “I don’t know. I can’t see them clearly. I see snippets but nothing long enough to give me the information I need.”

  “But you said today’s memory was very vivid. What was different about that one that made it more clear to you?”

  “It wasn’t that it was clear, Paul. It was more the feelings and sensations that came alive for me that had an impact. And the emotions lingered for a long time after.” Too long, in fact.

  “What kind of feelings did you experience?”

  I glanced at David, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer. “Sexual.”

  David’s jaw locked. “You’ve slept with Galen.”

  “No. Well, yes, but no.”

  “Which is it? Yes or no?”

  “David, I understand that this may make you feel upset — ”

  “This isn’t about being upset,” he shot back, but his tone betrayed him. David wasn’t just upset. He was bordering on infuriated. “This is important, Lottie. Galen is in line to join my team and you were going to evaluate him today. Now, tonight, I learn that you not only know him but that you’ve slept with him.”

  “Whatever past Galen and I had shouldn’t impact his role on your team.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Are these details in your report?”

  I swallowed over a dry throat. I’d promised David a complete evaluation and I couldn’t give it to him. Not right away, anyway. “I didn’t complete Galen’s evaluation because a half hour wasn’t enough time to do what I needed to do. I tried to make it work because you wanted a report quickly, but I need to meet with him again to do this properly.”

  “I see.”

  “You can move ahead without my input,” I reminded him. “You already have the go-ahead from PROs. You don’t need me or my evaluation on this one.”

  “That’s not the point and you know it, Lottie.”

  “That’s right. I do know it. And I also know that I’m going to sort this out with or without you and if you want to be of any help, you’ll find that open mind you promised me earlier.”

  David’s eyes fired with impatience but I’d called his bluff and we both knew that he had only two choices. Neither was perfect but one was clearly worse than the other. And it became obvious that David realized that very quickly too, because he let out a long sigh that sounded more from resignation than a need to expel pent-up, restrained hot air.

  “Look,” I said, recognizing the subtle shift in David’s mood. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, and I also know that my professional thoughts about Galen are important to you and your decision, but there’s something else going on that’s much bigger than what we anticipated.”

  David rubbed his hands over his face but it did little to hide the fatigue that shadowed his eyes and the edginess that threatened to drive us into an argument that might not be settled for days.

  “I’m working very hard here,” he said, dropping his hands to his lap.

  “I know.”

  He let out a long breath, still troubled. “I still don’t understand how you could have slept with Galen and not remember who he is.”

  “It’s not what you think. I remember all the men I’ve slept with.” I stopped, quickly catching my slip-up. “You remember who you’ve been with, don’t you? Not necessarily all the details, or maybe even all the names.” One side of David’s mouth quirked with a grin. “But you remember something, right?”

  “I remember.”

  “That’s my point. I look at Galen and see these memories but I don’t know why I have them.”

  Paul leaned in. “I still think this is a repressed memory coming to surface. It’s a very logical and rational explanation. Perhaps you had an experience with Galen that you didn’t want to remember because it was distressing to you.”

  “Whatever Galen and I had was very passionate and intense. It doesn’t seem like something I would repress.” Which made me wonder how I could even forget it to begin with. Galen was not a forgettable man.

  “That still doesn’t mean it’s not a false memory,” Paul said. “Or that your memory is accurate.”

  “True, but what I’m remembering is real, Paul. I know it is because I can feel it. This isn’t something I made up in my head as a substitute for an inadequacy or a shortcoming.”

  “And feelings have also been known to be inexact. They’re not always a measure of reality.”

  I stilled, unsure of the meaning behind his words and if they belonged in this particular conversation.

  “They may be inexact, Paul, but that doesn’t make them any less real.”

  “Real feelings can be very different than reality,” he said. “They’re not completely indicative of truth.”

  “But they are a pathway.”

  “If one is honest enough to find that path.”

  “Are we all still talking about the same thing?” David asked. “Or have you moved onto a conversation I don’t know about?”

  Paul withdrew and folded his arms over his chest again.

  “I just want to find out why this is happening to me and what it means,” I said. “I want to find sense in emotions and thoughts that don’t have any right now.”

  My thoughts and feelings about Galen felt real, and yet they defied every rational, educated part of my brain. I didn’t know him and yet I did. I’d never been with him, and yet my body told me otherwise. I didn’t know why I felt what I felt and the more I concentrated on Galen, the more confused I became.

  I felt tension tighten around my chest and press down, hard, and I was starting to have trouble finding air. I gulped in several breaths, feeling light-headed, and then the room started to sway.

  “I don’t feel very good,” I said, sliding down onto a pillow and pulling my legs up onto David’s lap.

  The back of David’s hand found my forehead. “She feels clammy.”

  “I’ll get her a glass of water,” Paul said.

  I closed my eyes and heard cabinets open and shut until Paul found the glass he needed. David stroked my forehead and hushed me into calmer breathing, and when Paul returned I drank as if I hadn’t had water for days.

  David put the empty glass on the coffee table and Paul knelt by my side, watching. I concentrated on the feel of David’s warm, sure caress and studied the ceiling, focusing on a tiny imperfection in the white paint.

  “Your color’s coming back,” Paul said. “Feeling better?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Do you want more water?” David asked.

  I remembered the water again. And I was running now. Running and laughing after a boy named Bakari but he was too fast to follow, and he dove into the river, laughing at me as he disappeared below the surface.

  “Bakari!” I screamed. “There are crocodiles!”

  I skidded to a stop at the edge of the river, kicking mud up onto my sandals and legs, but I did not care. I did not know where he had gone and that scared me. I watched the water, looking for ripples or bubbles that would tell me he was fine, but nothing moved and I started to panic. What if he had drowned? What if something had happened? What if the crocodiles got to him and — ?

  Bakari jumped up, breaking the surface in a large spray of water, and laughed like I had never heard him laugh before.

  “You are mad!” I yelled, pretending to be angry but he was laughing too hard and that made me laugh, too.

  “Come on in,” he called out, and he splashed me with water that felt cool and smelled like clean, crisp linen.

  “We will get in trouble,” I called back.

  Bakari held out his arms. “So?”

  I laughed even harder. He was so daring and so sure of himself, and no matter how many times he was given extra chores because of his defiance, all meant to teach
him a lesson that he did not want to learn, he still did not care. Nothing ever stopped Bakari, and as I watched him dive back down into the river, I thought nothing ever would.

  When he came up for air the second time, he grinned at me. “How are we to have any fun, Shemei, if we stay away from all the fun?”

  “There are other ways to have fun that will not kill us,” I giggled.

  “Ways that are boring. What good is this life if we do not live it?”

  “Do not say such things,” I gasped. “We are not only about this life, Bakari, but the one after it as well.”

  “And I ask again,” he said with outstretched arms, “what good is this life if we do not live it?”

  I could not find the answer. The sun felt hot and the wind off the sands even hotter, and I would have liked nothing more than to cool off even for a little bit. But there were still crocodiles out there and one other small thing that, to me, was not so small.

  “I have nothing to wear, Bakari. I have only my sheath and I did not bring a change of clothes.”

  “So?”

  “It will get wet.”

  “So?” Bakari waded toward me, not caring that his own linen kilt was soaked. “That is what water does, Shemei.” He swiped his hands down his arms, half to dry them and half to tease me with another spray of cool water.

  “And you wonder why you are always in trouble,” I said. “You cannot seem to help yourself. And I bet your mother would agree.”

  I looked past his shoulder and to his mother, Hebeny, who was walking toward us. Hebeny kept a steady, ceremonial gait, and one that I always admired because she truly looked like a goddess from above. Her linen sheath shimmered with threads of fine gold, while the gold bracelets, armlets and anklets she wore reflected the bright sun as if they were suns themselves. Even the gold in her braided wig sparkled and I wondered if I would ever look as beautiful as she did.

  “My mother?” Bakari swung around but it was too late for him to get away. His mother grabbed his sidelock and yanked, not too hard but hard enough.

  “What do you think you are doing?” she asked. “Why are you not at studies this afternoon?”

  “We had a break.”

  “Then why are the other students in class?” She yanked harder.

  “Hey!” he cried out. “That hurt!”

  “Not as much as getting injured or killed on a battlefield,” she scolded. “Is this the way a future general behaves?”

  “No, mawat,” Bakari said.

  “Do you think that every time you get bored or hot, you can just run off and play?”

  “No, mawat.”

  “Do you think that the soldiers you will eventually command will take direction from someone who does not take his role seriously?”

  “No, mawat.” Bakari looked at me and rolled his eyes. He slid out from her grasp and stared at her, and I held my breath. I knew what he was going to say before he even said it. “Who says I want to be a general anyway?”

  “Bite your tongue, Bakari!” Her hands went to her hips. “Your father is a general, and his father was a general. Every male in this family has served the royal family and its army, and so will you.”

  “But — ”

  “Get back to your studies, Bakari. Now.”

  Bakari scowled and I felt sad. I wanted to spend the afternoon with him. We did not have many days left together before he would leave the royal court and my life for good, and before my own future would be sealed when my brother took the throne and found me someone to marry.

  “Yes, mawat,” Bakari said. “I will return to class.”

  His shoulders slumped and he trudged away with a loud sigh. Hebeny headed in the other direction, back to our village and the royal court in the center of it. I watched her disappear over a small hill and into the valley in the distance, and then turned and watched the ripples in the water. It was going to be lonely here when Bakari was gone.

  Mad, I kicked a pebble into the river and watched a school of fish scurry away. Maybe I had made a mistake in not swimming with him, dangerous as it could have been. But could-have-been did not always mean definitely-would-be, and I had lost out on a wonderful chance to —

  Bakari came charging out of the brush, grabbed me by the arm and hurtled the both of us into the river. We flopped over each other, splashed each other, and laughed until our sides hurt, and not once did I complain about crocodiles or my wet sheath. We never did make it back to wherever we should have been that day, and we both paid the price to our parents when we returned home for Last Meal. But my punishment of having to translate ten scrolls in two days had been worth it.

  The vision of glittering water and sunbaked sand disappeared, and David was looking at me, his eyes as green as the thin-leafed reeds that edged the river in my memory.

  He sat down beside me and brushed my hair from my face. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “I saw another memory.”

  “About Galen?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “This memory was about you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was looking at David and trying to tie in the boy from my memory to the man I knew and loved now and couldn’t find a connection. I’d known David since he was two and I was one, and nothing I’d seen in that vision even came close to the childhood we shared.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” I said.

  Paul squatted down in front of me. “What happened?”

  I hesitated, still trying to get my own head around what I had experienced. I recounted the episode slowly as I carefully pulled at the entangled threads of my past and present, separating them in my mind as I went.

  “But that wasn’t my childhood,” David said when I finished.

  “Except for the part about you always getting into trouble?” I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t.”

  “My mother’s name isn’t Hebeny. It’s Rita. And who are Bakari and Shemei?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I sat up, teased by a vague and formless mental picture filled with carefree, happy emotions that hinted of another life I couldn’t identify.

  “Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way, Lottie,” David said. “Maybe these aren’t memories after all.”

  “That’s a very strong possibility,” Paul said.

  “No.” I pushed off the sofa, determined to find answers, and faced them. “These are memories. I’m sure of it because I can feel it in here,” I said, pointing to my heart. “And I know it in here,” I added, pointing to my head.

  David came to me. “But that wasn’t me, Lottie. I know how I grew up, and so do you, so how can these be memories if I didn’t live any part of what you’ve just told me?”

  “It wasn’t a story, David.”

  “And that wasn’t my childhood.”

  “But I was there. We both were there.”

  “Maybe you should sit down, Lottie,” Paul suggested. “Get some rest.”

  “Neither of you understands any of this. Or me.”

  I strode out of the den and ran up the stairs to the spare bedroom we used as an office. David followed, and Paul came in seconds later.

  “What are you doing?” David asked as I powered up the computer and launched a browser and a search engine.

  “Looking.”

  “For what?”

  “Explanations,” I said. “Clarifications.” Anything.

  My fingers flew over the keyboard and I plugged in the names and details I remembered, then watched the search engine kick back results. None of them were helpful.

  I slumped in the chair, feeling even more confused. “These are all Egyptian websites,” I said. “Why do my memories link to Egyptian history and narrative?”

  Paul shifted on his feet and his silence started bothering me.

  “You’re thinking something,” I said. “What is it?”

  Paul exchanged a look with David, and David nodded. “I’d like to suggest a couple of counseling sessions,” Paul said. “I think
they will be helpful to you right now. I have time tomorrow afternoon and I’d be more than happy to spend it with you.”

  “My God. You think I’m crazy. That I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Lottie — ”

  “It’s true. Isn’t it?”

  When Paul didn’t answer, I turned on David. “You’ve known me for my entire life, David. Answer me. It’s the least you can do.” I squeezed the armrests and held my breath, angry and irritated that I couldn’t get through.

  “I think,” he said slowly, “that Paul’s suggestion is a good one.”

  All the air escaped from the room and my lungs, and I tried steeling myself against a sudden and potent surge of self-doubt.

  “Lottie,” David said in a soft voice, “I can understand that you’re feeling confused.”

  “Now you’re patronizing me.”

  “No, I’m not. We can talk about this but that can only happen if you settle down.”

  I shoved out of the chair and started for the door and my bedroom down the hall. “You’re not listening to me!”

  “Lottie!”

  I felt David hard on my heels, trying to stop me. I dodged his grip before he could take hold.

  “Leave me alone,” I said, slamming the bedroom door in his face. It was childish behavior and I didn’t care. I only wanted to be taken seriously. I only wanted them to understand.

  I paced the bedroom then shrugged out of my dress and threw on a yellow T-shirt and striped girlie boxers and got into bed. Every now and then, I glanced at the clock on the nightstand and watched time tick away until David came in nearly thirty minutes later.

  He stripped and slid into bed next to me. “You want to talk about it?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I understand that you’re upset,” David said, rolling away, “but next time you might want to consider giving me a little more credit than you did tonight.”

  “Only if you can do the same,” I said, and I rolled away from him, too.

  Chapter Seventeen

  David’s side of the bed was cold and empty when the alarm went off for work the next morning. I took a quick shower, fixed my hair and makeup and slipped into a pale blue blouse, floral skirt and sandals. When I entered the kitchen, David greeted me with a guarded look.