Mirage

by Tracy Clark

  “No.”

  That word slams like gnarled hands on piano keys.

  The beep of the heart-rate monitor keeps slow time.

  “Instead of me singing my song, my song is singing to me.” Gran’s voice is a low, scratchy purr. “That’s how I know it’s time to go,” she says. “It’s calling me home.”

  From behind me, my mother sobs into one hand. The other hand is in a cast. Tears seep through her fingers like she’s dipped her onyx palm into holy water. Her reaction tells me this is not just melodramatics. Gran isn’t the type for that. If she says she’s going to die, she is, and there’s nothing any of us are going to do about it.

  My father paces restlessly across the room. Helplessness strikes a chord of anguish in me. I feel like we’re letting her die, and it’s strangely familiar, like I’ve lived this moment before. My awful dreams becoming real. I close my eyes, afraid my muddled thoughts will summon the face again.

  Ayida sits alongside Gran and strokes her face with her working hand. Gran accepts the loving touch with gratitude, already looking relieved to have announced her imminent departure. She’s just broken every heart in the room, yet she looks peaceful.

  “Tell me something true,” she demands.

  My mother bows her head reverently and thinks a moment before raising herself up proudly. “Your mothering has been solid and mystical. Mama, you’ve been my rock, you’ve been the clear waters at its edge, and you’ve been the deep mysteries of the darker waters. I thank you for sharing your life with me.”

  My father clears his throat. I have to look away from the glassy film of tears over his blue eyes. He clears his throat a second time. His legs are tented in a wide stance, like he needs help balancing. His hands are clasped low in front of him. “You’ve made me a better man.”

  Gran nods appreciatively. “Burn a cigar with my body, Nolan.”

  She inclines her head toward me, anticipating. I swallow hard. What do I tell her? I’m tortured? Screwed up? That I feel responsible for everything that’s gone wrong since I was lying in this same hospital weeks ago?

  What’s true is that I don’t know what’s true.

  Those things can’t be the last thing she wants to hear from me. “Gran?” I start, with a slight tremor. “Do you think people want to hear the truth no matter what it is? When someone is dying, it seems you should say what will bring them peace.”

  Her weathered hand clasps my own. “That’s how I know you’re not yourself. I didn’t always agree with you, child, but I trusted you because you spoke your truth no matter how untrue it was for the rest of us. No matter how foolish or headstrong you were being.”

  Does this mean she doesn’t trust me now?

  A wry laugh puffs from her chapped lips. “But God, you sure live the deep end of life’s pool. That’s something to respect.” Ayida wipes her eyes. She gives me a sad, knowing smile as Gran talks to me. There’s a long pause and a breath that seems to take more effort before Gran says, “My something true . . . you’ve got to live with integrity so you can die with integrity.”

  Tears stream down my face. A braided knot twists in my stomach. I desperately want Gran to stay with me. I want to tell her all my truths, even the ones that might turn her away. The scary and confusing things I’m seeing, the visions inside my head that have no continuity, how nothing matches up, as though the puzzle pieces of two lives got scrambled and don’t fit together.

  I’m the imagination of myself, like that paper said in the motor home.

  Gran’s blind, but she sees more than anyone else. Right now it feels like she’s the only one who can help me.

  My mouth opens to speak, but Gran doesn’t just look like she has her eyes closed. Her face has lost its expectancy. My heart stutters. Has she . . . ?

  Machines are still beeping, though. She’s simply fallen asleep. Her chest rises and falls slowly. The pauses between exhale and inhale are excruciating. Every gap extends. I find myself holding my breath until she takes another one. My body taps into an inexplicable knowing of how it feels to have your breath come slower and slower until that last one becomes a boulder you can’t push uphill anymore.

  My dad falls wearily into a chair. My mom doesn’t move from the bed, just sits there staring at Gran’s face, her eyes replaying a lifetime of memories as she watches her sleep. We don’t know if she’ll ever wake again. Every so often, the corner of her mouth tips up into what might be a grin. I wonder if she’s dreaming or revisiting her own memories.

  Memories are so much like dreams.

  An hour passes. Maybe more. We are all suspended, not wanting to leave for fear she will tiptoe out of life behind our backs.

  “Now sing me your song again, Ryan,” Gran whispers into the new night, startling my mother and me. My father was snoring softly a few feet away, but he wakes with a jolt at Gran’s voice and the mention of my name. Soldiers half sleep like that.

  “My song, Gran?”

  She answers so low, we have to lean in to hear. “The one you were humming to me just now.”

  “It’s okay. She’s slipping away,” my mother chokes out in answer to my confused expression. She leans in and kisses her mother, leaving tears on her cheek. Tenderly, she wipes it into Gran’s skin. “It’s okay to go, Mama. Nothing to be scared of. It will be beautiful there.”

  I’m sobbing. I can’t help it.

  “Yes, it’s okay,” Gran adds. “Ryan is waiting for me.”

  Everyone frowns and darts glances at me. Shivers roll over my mom’s skin, making her head shake.

  Gran’s last breath is an exhale. It sounds like relief.

  Twenty-Six

  IT’S NEVER RIGHT to go to the hospital with four people and come home with three. Never.

  A scream: It’s your fault!

  Rattled to my bones, I yelp and stumble into Nolan’s side, and he looks at me like he wants to shove me across the room far away from him. His eyes are as accusatory as the voice. I don’t know if it’s the girl, who’s been abnormally quiet since our accident. It has her anger but feels more intimate. Like another part of me. My throat constricts with the tears I’m trying to hold back.

  Wordless, everyone disperses with heads down to their own corners of the house. I go to my room and find myself staring at the white walls, the pinholes where the lights used to hang above my bed, the books on the shelves, and scrapbooks of pictures, which I hadn’t realized were tucked in with the books. Odd that I’d forget the scrapbooks were there, but I see now that there is one for each year. Yes, Joe and I made these together every summer.

  Until this summer.

  Life came to a halt this summer.

  I flip through the years of us: me and JoeLo. God, our friendship was beautiful. I can see it in the way we make the same expressions. The way our bodies lean into each other with such comfort. We are brother and sister. Were . . .

  My heart hurts.

  Live with integrity; die with integrity.

  Joe went and spoke to Dom after we fought. Proof of love. I need to apologize to him.

  Dom’s origami tiger watches me from the dresser as I flip through the pages of another life. The paper tiger was supposed to be a message. I thought I understood the message when I decided to jump. But maybe Dom intended for me to hear a different roar. I pick it up. The delicate brushstrokes of paint speak their own message: that Dom cared enough about me to painstakingly make a reminder of how he sees me.

  Saw me.

  Could there be a message written inside? It seems a shame to ruin the tiger to find out. We stare at each other, this tiger and I.

  I rip it in half.

  Tumbling from its belly is a small memory card. The rumble in my chest is unwelcome​—​I don’t know anymore if it’s the girl who disturbs me or my own broken mind, but I do my best to ignore the feeling of eyes on me. I put the memory card into the laptop on my desk and press play.

  Dom’s deep voice fills the room.

  Dear Ryan, I made you th
is video to remind you of who I see every time I close my eyes. Who I dream of at night. Who I miss. You . . . in all your wild glory. You are the most beautiful creation.

  Never have I seen myself like this. A candid picture of me walking with my chute crumpled against my chest after a jump, a mass of ringlets, and a mass of attitude. No one is in the picture with me, but I’m smiling. I appear to be smiling to myself, giddy with an inside joke about how badass life is. A picture of me and my mother, belly laughing. Our smiles are the same. A side shot of me giving the bare ass to my father with his back turned to me as he briefs a bunch of his boys before a jump. The smile on their faces says it all. The first sergeant has momentarily lost their attention.

  The memory of this thought rushes in: Now he knows how I feel.

  These are all pictures of me, but . . .

  Babe, I love strong women. Hell, I was raised by one. And now both of my strong women are gone. I’d give anything to go backwards and erase that night in the motor home. Everything changed that night. You changed that night. Does it have to be forever?

  The skydive calendar proofs scroll by. I gawk at the brazen images, feeling disassociated, like the girl I see is so completely foreign to me, I can’t even say she’s me.

  It is no longer me but her.

  Her with her cola skin, her full lips sauced with shimmering gloss, and her skintight red skydive jumpsuit unzipped down her ridged belly. Everything in her cat eyes says she’s blatantly unafraid of being looked at, of showing the world exactly who she thinks she is.

  She. Is. Unafraid.

  Being unafraid of experience is what made you extraordinary.

  On top of a mountain. Her naked body is a silhouette, a dark S of curves against the night sky. Wind blows her puff of wild hair, licks her skin. A lightning storm rages and strikes out in the distance in front of her. Arms overhead, she is powerful: it’s as though she can shoot lightning straight from her soul and out through her fingers. Watching her, I’ve no doubt she can.

  Video now, of different jumps. Dom wears a camera on his jump helmet, flying toward me, her, floating in the sky; wind makes her cheeks ripple like water. She zooms closer, reaches for him with muscled arms in a tank top, and kisses him in freefall. Does everyone fall to the earth with such peace? Does everyone look so radiant after a kiss?

  There are video clips of multiways of synchronized jumpers. I feel like God watching from above. It’s a dance in the air. A colorful snowflake falling to earth. I’m in awe. And confusion. I’m watching superheroes. Do these people know how special they are? How dynamically alive and rare they are?

  One jump is filmed from the ground. I hear Dom behind the camera, talking to someone next to him, excited anticipation and pride evident in his voice. One by one, parachutes burst open. The camera zooms out, then in, trying to focus on a dot of color hurtling toward the ground.

  Falling so fast.

  Falling.

  Then, my father’s voice: “Open, baby. Open, goddamn it. Jesus, Ryan, don’t do this to me . . . open the damn chute.” Hearing such anguish fills my eyes with tears. “I love you, Ryan, please . . .”

  He’s never said that to me.

  My eyes are glued to the screen. There is no way that chute is going to open. I know who I’m watching, and somewhere inside, the memory is there, but it’s like watching a movie of my own death.

  Her death.

  My whole body vibrates in terrified anticipation as she plummets toward packed dirt. My hands cover my mouth. I’m pleading with her now, like her father, to please pull. I want to look away, but I can’t.

  I’m watching my life flash before my eyes.

  In an exhalation of color, the chute gusts open just in time to catch her before she tumbles to the sandy ground. Dom yells out and runs, the desert floor bouncing by onscreen. I dread what he’s about to see, until I realize the camera has stopped moving and is pointed at the smiling face of the girl who haunts me in every reflection. She’s holding something toward the camera.

  “The penny, bitches!”

  For the first time, I really see what everyone else sees. No wonder they miss the old Ryan. No wonder they want her back. That Ryan was larger than life. I’ve tried to be that Ryan, but it’s like she’s died in me. She deserves to live on. I don’t know whose side I’m on anymore: mine, or . . . mine?

  In a daze, I wander to Gran’s empty room. It smells like her: warm skin, strange medicinal creams, cigar smoke. Magic.

  I feel her.

  Her soft, aged skin in the bath water. Her wrinkled hands, limber only on the piano. Her blind eyes, which saw through me. She was magic. I’m so privileged to have known her.

  I realize I can’t think of her proper name. This baffles me. How can I not remember my grandmother’s name?

  The Obeah religion Gran practiced was a lot of the “dark water” my mother spoke about. Unknowable, mysterious. She probably made much of it up. I think Gran was her own religion. Her philosophy of life and death rings true, though.

  Live with integrity. Die with integrity.

  If you don’t do one right, you can never do the other right.

  Wishing I could use magic to rectify things, I finger the objects of her altar. Placed around a creamy hand-spun bowl are a shell filled with cigar ashes, feathers from various birds that look like they died in a fiery crash, and four flat, smooth stones that feel as solid as vows when I press them into my palm.

  I light a half-burned stick of incense and walk to the freestanding antique mirror that’s in the corner of the room, between two windows. Smoke curls up into the air behind me.

  I lean toward the mirror. The old glass ripples my image. Flecks of black paint shadow the glint in the glass. Shafts of moonlight slice through the night air and land at my feet. I’m so tired, my heart is sagging against restraints in my chest.

  She’s been chasing me for weeks, filling my head with strange words and memories. I’m ready to be done with our battle. I’m exhausted. I want to step into the light with Gran. My palms press against the cool glass of the mirror as I stare into myself, willing Death to come. Closer and closer, I inch my face to my reflection, until my forehead knocks against itself.

  This feels familiar, this pressing my face against the glass, this longing to merge with something larger than myself.

  This is how we found each other.

  I whisper against my own lips, “Come and get me.”

  Twenty-Seven

  NOTHING HAPPENS. This is more startling, now that I’ve requested her presence, than seeing her face would be. I pull back, angry.

  “Did you hear me? I give up! Come for me!”

  The glass vibrates under my fists. “I don’t want to live this life anymore. Do what you’re going to do and quit playing with me.” A sob escapes. “I give up.” I’m angry at myself for thinking it, saying it, but it’s true. Everything is wrong. Everything.

  I saw who I used to be. Like everyone else, I’m mourning the spark of that person. I’m not her. I’ll never be her.

  Death is after me, speaks to me, watches me. She took Gran. Who will be next if I don’t let her win? Why not submit?

  Death always gets her way in the end.

  Twenty-Eight

  THE SHADOW OF Gran’s head indents her pillow.

  Strange, the shadows we leave behind.

  I’ve stared at it so long, the sun has risen and set on its wrinkled surface. The sun rises and sets on everything. On every life. When the last shaft of golden light tiptoes away from her bed, I crawl into it. I want sleep, the dark kind. I want to never wake up. Gran’s sweet, old smell envelops me as I burrow into the covers and wrap myself in silence.

  Night comes. Day passes. The earth tosses and turns in its big black bed.

  Black morning.    Black mourning.

  I hear whisperings. They drift in and out like oysters opening and closing in the current.

  “We should call the doc.”

  “Depression?” />
  “It’s been two days.”

  “This is what heartbreak looks like. She loved her grandmother.”

  “This is scaring me.”

  I want to tell them I love them before I’m gone, but love is stuck like a pearl in my closed heart.

  Twenty-Nine

  I dreamed I was somebody else.

  I wake, and still I feel like somebody else.

  Both lives equally real.

  Both lives equally dreamlike.

  Clear water and deep water.

  Not fully rested, not fully awake, I’m tired down to my soul.

  I figure that today is a good day to

  fall.

  Thirty

  THE JOURNAL SITS on my lap, and I snap it closed. I said once that nothing is more fun than to give Death the finger and have fun while you’re doing it. But Death’s a relentless hag. When you cheat Death of its prize, it keeps coming after you. Death never forgets a debt. Those eyes will follow me everywhere. Always.

  This is no life.

  The destructive force I’ve become to the people around me makes me a reaper. There’s only one way to stop it. I have to face the fact that I wasn’t supposed to live.

  I have to right the wrong. So much of me has already died. Why not give up the rest?

  The few final notes I scribble into my journal aren’t supposed to be a goodbye, though I realize that anything I write will read like one. I wish I could take away the only question they will have afterward, but Why? isn’t the right question. How? will be self-explanatory. The right question is What? What happened? What really happened to the girl we used to call Ryan Poitier Sharpe? I tried to tell them I wasn’t mentally ill. I tried to tell them I was being haunted. If anything drove me crazy, it was that.

  And not being believed.

  Doubt is a chain-rattling ghost.