The woman got up, guided Nina into the chair. She told her not to apologize. Moments later, there was a tissue in Nina’s hand. Moments later, she was alone, the woman having told her to take your time, please, take your time.
And so Nina did. And in that garden, she let herself cry until she was almost exhausted. She took deep breaths. And when she finally felt she had cried herself dry at least for today, she got up and began cleaning her brushes.
Pain comes in waves, she thought as she packed up her items. In tsunamis of tears. Nina reminded herself she couldn’t allow the overwhelming grief to crush her. She had to continue. Even when thoughts of Emilia persisted. And somewhere, in the back of the garden, she heard the song of a bird. She walked in its direction.
She passed flowers and flowers, remembering the fern she imagined was back here. The one large enough to hold her and wrap her in its leaves.
She walked to the back, closer to a bird she could not see.
I wish you were here, with me. I want you back here. With me.
There were plants and flowers in every color. But no large fern. Nowhere to put her pain, tuck it away. No choice but to carry it with her.
When she returned, there was a cup of tea on the table. Nina slowly drank it, calmed herself as much as she could, before finally gathering her things and leaving the garden. The woman’s kindness was so profoundly touching as she escorted Nina out, asked her to please come back, handed her a flowerpot with purple flowers to take home.
Nina refused it at first, but the woman said, “Pain is . . . so hard to carry alone.” Her words echoed in that large house and her eyes flickered with some kind of recognition as she looked at Nina. “Please.” And she pressed the flowerpot into Nina’s hands.
Nina accepted it. “Thank you,” she said.
She looked in the rearview mirror, saw the woman still at the door as Nina drove away, out the gates, until she could see her no more.
When she arrived home, Nina walked up the steps to her house. A breeze blew and she felt a cold left over from winter brush against her arms. She was sure no one else could feel it. But she did. She always would. And she suddenly pictured Emilia, shivering, even when it wasn’t cold outside. Even when the water was hot. And she understood her daughter in that moment more than ever. The way the cold always found her.
Crows cried in the distance and Nina sat on the front stoop to listen to them for a moment, the flowerpot next to her.
Emilia.
Nina turned her head to the sky. She watched the crows dip and glide and circle above. She closed her eyes and her tears glistened in the sunlight.
The crows cried.
Emilia, she heard in each one.
Emilia.
Tomás Held On
Tomás held on to the little checkered dress and cried. It was folded so small, and tucked into the corner of his drawer. On top, he also saw the green eye shadow she’d shown him that day at the pharmacy and a small piece of paper folded in half. Tomás opened it. His hands trembled as he saw his sister’s handwriting, read her words.
Don’t be afraid to talk to me. I love you.
It, and all that it meant, took Tomás’s breath away.
His chest filled to bursting with regret and sadness and the realization of being understood and understanding his sister. But too late. He cried tears he didn’t know he had left. And thought of Emilia.
So she had known, and she had understood that day in her room.
It had scared him. How close she was to the truth. He’d been afraid to say any more that night.
If I had your eyes, I’d wear this color, she’d told him, so softly, so gently, at the pharmacy. He couldn’t even look at her as his heart raced. All he could manage was to ask her where she was going. He was planning to talk to her, tell her everything. He knew he could.
He held the dress tighter.
See you.
He remembered the gentle way she smiled just before the doors swooshed closed after her.
You did see me, Emilia.
But now she was gone.
Tomás cried harder, aching for his sister. For her smile and her words.
He stared at the boxes through his tears, the ones that had been haunting him for weeks now. Stacked neatly and undisturbed in the corner of his room. Each day he grew more afraid of them and pretended they didn’t exist. Each day he was more afraid of coming face-to-face again with what was inside.
Because it was Emilia.
Emilia was inside those boxes. In bits and pieces, recognizable and unrecognizable. And opening those boxes was like pouring alcohol on raw wounds.
Tomás opened the first one and caught his breath when he saw Emilia’s face staring back at him.
The pictures.
He had thought they were crushed and buried. He pulled out her picture and tacked it onto the wall. He stepped back, sat on his bed, searched Emilia’s glossy eyes.
How? he asked her. How did it happen? How did she fall?
How did they let her?
She stared back at him, still and silent. She looked so lonely on the wall by herself. Tomás added the picture of his mother, of himself, and, finally, even the one of his father.
He sat back on his bed, wiped the tears that wouldn’t stop coming, as he searched all of their faces, asking them unanswerable questions.
What did we know? What did we know?
He continued, unpacked the squirrel, and as he reached up to put it on one of his bookshelves, he saw Emilia had written SAM on the bottom of it. It made him laugh and cry. He unpacked one item after another, let himself get lost in thoughts of his sister. He heard her voice, felt her presence, as if she were with him. And maybe it was the unpacking—what he’d been so afraid of—or maybe it was seeing again all these things his sister had found beauty in, all those forgotten, strange items, that made him less afraid somehow.
We lost you, Emilia. But I’ll look for you. Every day. And I’ll find you somehow. I won’t forget you, he promised her.
* * *
*
This is what he thought when he saw his mother on the patio later that week, pouring another bag of dirt into a large flowerpot.
Tomás watched as her hands dug into the dirt. How she would cry as she filled the pots. Her face became smudged with dirt as she wiped away tears with her hands—almost as though it were therapeutic—and still each day, more work. More bags of dirt and pots in every size, plants and flowers and seeds. Lattices and green support rods.
Today, though, he knew it was more than just the work of it all. The distraction. The ceremony. It was more than therapy.
She’s looking for Emilia, Tomás realized.
His mother sat back and brushed her hair out of her face, exhaled. She looked up and saw Tomás watching from the window. She looked at him softly for a moment before waving him over. He opened the screen door and went to her. She looked up at him and he worried she noticed the slight hint of green on his eyelids.
She smiled, motioned for him to grab a bag of dirt. And together they filled more pots; they turned the earth, the smell of damp dirt and fertilizer filling their noses. Reminding them of life.
* * *
* * *
Through the rest of spring and summer, Nina and Tomás plant flowers and plants and watch as tears fall and penetrate the soil. They watch them bloom and thrive, the vivid colors so alive in the sun. They watch as crows begin showing up, perching on the edges of flowerpots. They think of Emilia.
They tend to the garden, knowing the cold will come and take it away.
And it does. Prickling and fast and so full of pain.
* * *
*
Ma and Tomás look out the window as winter approaches.
“I feel like I’ll always be looking for her, waiting for her,” Tomás tells Ma.
<
br /> “Me too,” she says.
* * *
*
Winter arrives, swirling and large and so, so cold. They watch as life is choked out of all the flowers and plants they so carefully tended, how they die bit by bit.
And then they wait.
For life to come back to them again.
Author’s Note
Emilia’s story was difficult to write for many reasons. Because I am a mother to daughters. Because Emilia, in many ways, became like a daughter to me. Because I am a believer in hope. And because, more than anything, I so badly wanted her to be okay.
I worried when I knew she wasn’t going to be okay. I worried that I was writing a story without hope, that I was not providing the kind of story I feel we need most in today’s environment, stories that are rallying cries of power, calls to action.
But I could not be untrue to Emilia, or to the depth of her pain and suffering. And I could not be untrue to you, the reader, or to the realities girls face in this world every day. I knew in this book I had to be honest about some ugly truths.
And the truth is, every day in this world, girls suffer. At every turn they are told they are not good enough. Society has made a habit of using and misusing, of discarding and preying on girls without thought or care. Of sexualizing them, perpetrating violence toward them, of turning a not-so-blind eye on it all, and refusing to acknowledge there is consequence to it. This is particularly true for young girls of color.
And that—that fills me with rage. It should fill us all with rage.
Because another truth is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can, and should, live in a society where girls are allowed to simply exist and are not at a constant risk. Where they are respected and valued and not objectified. I know at times it seems far off, this kind of society. But I am hopeful.
Change is coming.
I see girls and women coming together, marching and filling the streets with unwavering spirit, and calling for justice and change. There are girls and women in courtrooms refusing to let their attackers get away with the crimes done to them, lifting their voices, unwilling to be intimidated or ignored. And there are more and more people standing with them, joining the fight.
But this story is about a girl who doesn’t get that chance.
I wrote it to acknowledge all the silenced voices. To acknowledge that there is consequence to this appalling treatment of girls and women. There are broken lives and long-lasting effects. There are Emilias, many Emilias in the world, whose stories go untold or are hidden away and who go without justice. I wrote The Fall of Innocence so we don’t forget that. Because we can’t. We shouldn’t. And no girl’s story should ever have to end like this.
I wrote it so we all fight like hell,
for change—
for ourselves,
for those around us,
and for those who have fallen.
Resources
Suicide Prevention
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-8255
The Trevor Project
1-866-4-U-TREVOR (488-7386)
Sexual Assault
National Sexual Assault Hotline
1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
rainn.org
Girl Empowerment
WriteGirl
writegirl.org
Girls Inc.
girlsinc.org
Girls For A Change
girlsforachange.org
CARE: Women’s Empowerment
care.org/work/womens-empowerment
Plan International USA: Because I am a Girl
planusa.org/because-i-am-a-girl
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Kerry Sparks of the Levine Greenberg Rostan Agency for your tireless belief in my work. Thank you, Liza Kaplan, for your guidance, talent, and vision. I am so incredibly grateful this story ended up in your hands. Thank you also to Michael Green for your support, and to Talia Benamy and every member of the Philomel family who worked on this book.
A million thanks to my family: mis padres, Miriam y David Torres; my sister, Nancy; and my brother, David. To my beautiful little crew, Ava, Mateo, and Francesca Sanchez and David and Matthew Willibey. Each of you and all our days together, who we were and who we are and who we still have yet to become inspire me every single day of my life. And to Nando, with your incomparable heart and love, always believing in me. Thank you forever.
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The Fall of Innocence Page 30