You make a choice. You make a definite choice.
You can seek out other guys, or you can keep yourself for him only.
You ask yourself if you can forgive him, and you know you can.
You ask him if he can forgive you. You ring and he doesn’t answer his cell phone, so you leave that message.
‘Can you forgive me, Kane?’
‘What are you drinking, baby?’
I look at this guy standing in my space, breathing his hot breath on my face.
I don’t want his breath on me. I don’t want his air in my body.
I want every guy to be Kane.
‘She’ll have a vodka and tonic,’ says Melissa.
I ask Melissa to come to the bathroom with me.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I want Kane back.’
‘Fuck Kane.’
‘No, Mel. It was me. I hurt him.’
When I got home from Melissa’s on Sunday morning, I did what I did every day: cleaned up the rat droppings in the kitchen cupboards. I always made a lot of noise before beginning and then allowed half a minute to pass, so that if any were lingering they’d hopefully leave through the cracks and the crevices that gave them such ready access to the house.
It didn’t always work. Every now and then I saw one. And every time that happened, despite half expecting it, it shocked me.
I swore it couldn’t be legal to live like that. And why didn’t the rats fucking learn? No scrap of food was ever left out. Everything was either in the refrigerator or in airtight plastic containers. I didn’t even leave paper out for them to chew on.
I hated that house, but it had occurred to me that if Kane and I were really and truly over, I wouldn’t be able to afford the rent on my own. I’d have to move out and into one of those boarding places where the kitchen and bathroom were shared.
The idea made the place we were in a whole lot more appealing.
Reesey came over in the afternoon to invite me over for an early dinner.
‘I know you go to bed early ’cause of work, so I thought we could eat at five thirty. Beyden won’t be home till morning. It’ll just be us.’
The thought brightened me no end. I told her I’d bring dessert.
It got later and later, and Reesey and I kept sneaking spoonfuls from the berry cobbler I’d made.
‘Girlfriend, this is the most amazing dessert. You should be a chef, or a cook, or just have a business making lots of these and selling them.’
‘Maybe one day,’ I replied. ‘I have thought about it.’
‘Really?’ asked Reesey through another mouthful.
‘I didn’t know until I started working in the bakehouse, but I actually really like cooking food and baking things.’ I put my spoon down and shrugged. ‘It has its downsides though. I like eating it too.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I used to be about your size.’
‘My size?’ said Reesey, her hand going to her round stomach. ‘Girl, I’m six months pregnant.’
‘You know what I mean. I’ve put on twenty pounds this year. I can’t stop eating.’
‘Do you think you’re pregnant?’ asked Reesey tentatively.
‘I wish.’
‘You want to have a baby?’
I shrugged. ‘If it meant Kane would come home. Which it wouldn’t. He’d go in the exact opposite direction. He doesn’t want kids for a long time. He’d be a good dad though. Although you probably don’t think so.’
Suddenly I just really wanted her to know the truth. I leaned forward in my chair, and looked straight at her.
‘Reesey, I swear, Kane has never done anything like that before. He’s never even hit me. I pushed him to get that angry at me. I pushed him for months. I wanted him to hurt me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
Reesey looked so sad at my words, I quickly added, ‘I know he’ll never do it again.’
‘I hope so, Nat.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Bey and I lived in the same foster home for a while. I know him. Feel like I’ve always known him. If he’d been treated right, if he hadn’t been so badly hurt …’ Reesey looked up from the remains of the cobbler. ‘Sometimes he’s in so much pain, he can’t even think straight.’
‘Pain? From his face?’
‘He’s got nerve damage, and he gets headaches like you wouldn’t believe. For a while he was using – just to control the pain. It was around the time the guy who hurt him died.’
‘His uncle.’
‘He weren’t no uncle. He was a monster. I was glad when he was dead. I think Beyden thought it would be different.’
I felt like she was telling me something, something big.
‘Reesey, what happened to his uncle?’
Reesey looked straight at me. ‘He pleaded insanity ’cause his own son had been killed. Nothing happened to him. It was Beyden who paid. He lost his brother, his mother and his face. If he just hadn’t had the pain …’ She lifted her head and said defiantly, ‘I know who Beyden is. No one knows who he is more than me, and I’m no saint.’
‘You seem like one,’ I offered, while thinking about the fact that Bey was a murderer. Bey.
‘I was pregnant,’ said Reesey, interrupting my thoughts. ‘I lost her at four months. I called her Anise. I could hold her in my hand. There was nothing wrong with her. She was perfect. She was just born too soon.’
A moment passed between us. Her eyes searching mine, my eyes no doubt revealing that I was reeling.
‘Oh God, Reesey. I’m so sorry.’
Something in her broke. Tears flooded her eyes and then overflowed.
‘I’m so much better now,’ she said, looking the exact opposite. ‘And in the long run, I think it’s what’s saved us. Beyden only hurt me once more after that. I was drunk. We’d been out and I’d let someone else buy me a drink. Someone I knew Beyden couldn’t touch. I flirted with him all night. When we got home Beyden hit me. Just once, and then he stopped. Said there was something wrong with him. That he was no good. We both cried for ages. Apart from when I lost Anise, it was the worst night of my life. After that it was still really bad. I was crying all the time, and I knew Beyden was in so much pain and I couldn’t help him ’cause I couldn’t even bear what I was going through.’
I wanted to offer words of comfort, but I didn’t know where to start.
Then Reesey seemed to strengthen a little, although her tears continued to fall.
‘You know Reverend Joe, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Do you?’
Reesey nodded.
‘That man is everywhere,’ I said, and Reesey managed a smile at the tone of my voice.
‘Beyden came home one night, and just said straight out to me that he was sorry he’d killed our daughter. That he’d loved Anise and that he loved me. That he would spend his whole life trying to do right by me. Said he was gonna get clean, and stay clean. Then he asked if I could forgive him.
‘I said yes straightaway – that I forgave him. I hadn’t, though. I felt terrible for him but deep in my heart I couldn’t. She’d been alive inside me. I was feeling her move. She had her whole life ahead of her. And I was her momma. He stole that. All that love was ripped away. There was no way I could forgive him.
‘Then Beyden told me he’d met this priest when he was dropping off a car at the shop that night. Kane had introduced them. Beyden said he and this priest just got talking out in the yard, and Beyden told him everything. What he’d done to me. What he’d done to Anise. He said Reverend Joe prayed over him, and it was like he could breathe again. That he didn’t even have any pain in his face.
‘I wanted that too. I wanted to be able to breathe without feeling my heart was being torn in two. Also, I didn’t want Beyden to feel let off. I was angry that his pain had lessened. Although it was stupid to think that way. It hadn’t really lessened at all. He hadn’t stopped suffering. He never stops, really. It’s always there underneath the surface. I think it was just that he
accepted he would have to carry the suffering. That he could carry it and still live.
‘Anyway, I went to the reverend’s church, but it was empty except for a lady doing some dusting, and she said just to go on over to the house next door, that Reverend Joe would be there. I didn’t want to – thought that would be rude – but she was real insistent. She ended up ringing across herself, and Reverend Joe came over to the church. As soon as I saw him I burst into tears, and then cried and cried and cried. He sat beside me in a pew and gave me a handkerchief. When I’d used it up he gave me another one, and said he’d always found it paid to carry two. He was so nice to me – even the lady dusting was nice to me. She came over and patted my arm and said “May Jesus carry your pain away.”’
‘Was she a big lady with grey hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s Aunt Sarah.’
Reesey nodded. ‘She said her name was Sarah. You’re lucky she’s your aunt.’
‘Not a real aunt. What did Reverend Joe say to you?’
‘He said he could get me counseling. He said if I wanted to leave Beyden then there were places I could go, and that I’d have his support. I’ve never had anyone say something like that to me. Not say it, and mean it. When I went home Beyden was there and I told him I was thinking about leaving.
‘He changed, Nat. I mean, he changed everything. His friends practically lived at our old place, and we hardly see them now. I mean, we’ve moved out of the neighborhood, so that helps, but I think Beyden makes it clear to them not to come over. And he’s clean. Doesn’t even drink now.’
‘You forgave him just like that?’ I asked.
‘What happened was my fault too. He couldn’t have hit me if I wasn’t there. I was her mother. She was inside of me, and I didn’t protect her.’
Tears were once more running freely down Reesey’s face, and I realized they were running down mine too.
‘I love him, Nat. People don’t change, but he really has. I promised him though,’ said Reesey, her eyes resting on a nearby photo of the two of them, ‘that if he ever hurts me again, or if I even get the smallest feeling that he might hurt this new baby, it’ll be the last time he ever sees either of us.’
‘You’d just leave, and never see him again?’
‘Yes,’ said Reesey. ‘If Beyden ever hurt this baby, that would be it forever.’
I was about to fall into bed when Kane came home. I heard the key in the lock, then the front door opening and closing.
My mind had been occupied with everything Reesey had told me that evening, but all thought of anyone else disappeared when Kane appeared in the bedroom door.
He looked at me warily, waiting to see what I’d do or say.
‘Hi,’ I said quietly.
‘Hey,’ said Kane, coming further into the room.
‘I was just going to bed.’
He narrowed his eyes, and I knew he was taking in the new piercings. But he didn’t say anything – just walked out. I held my breath until I heard the refrigerator door open. He wasn’t leaving. I could breathe again.
I couldn’t sleep. I’d left the bedroom door ajar, and I could hear him moving around. I heard the television; I heard the refrigerator door open and close again. I heard the static click of the television being turned off, and then I heard him going into the bathroom and shutting the door. There was the squeak of the rusted hinge as he opened the tiny window above the basin, and then the sound of running water as he turned the shower on.
He came to bed, and my senses were full of him. I was acutely tuned to his presence: the dip in the bed as he lay down, the sound of his breathing, the scent of toothpaste and soap. Then there was just that enveloping feeling I’d been living without for so many weeks: the feeling of being safe.
‘Kane?’
‘Yeah?’
‘If you want to have sex, then I do.’
My voice came out high and small-sounding.
Kane didn’t respond. I could feel my cheeks burning, but I went ahead and added the word ‘please’.
I heard him exhale a lungful of air, and then he turned toward me.
I pulled the old t-shirt of his I was wearing over my head, and he moved on top of me.
We didn’t talk and we didn’t kiss. Not on the mouth. I didn’t try and he didn’t try. The rest of it was so familiar though. My body just fitted in against his, exactly how it was supposed to. Kane’s weight on me; the feel of his skin as his body moved against mine; the way he felt moving inside me. It wasn’t just sex – it was us, us being together. Kane was my home. I couldn’t understand why I’d left him like that, why I hadn’t fought harder against myself to keep this safe from harm.
I loved him. I told him that, and he stayed quiet, and neither of us slept. When I got up to go to work in the dark hours of early morning, he rolled over in bed and said, looking toward me, ‘Can’t you go in late?’
‘If you want me to.’
‘Do you want to?’
I sent my boss a text telling her something had happened and I wouldn’t be in till late.
31
You find a way to push out the hate. I’d breathe in the smell of my first coffee in the morning, and when I breathed out I’d try to exhale all the day’s misgivings before they’d even arrived.
When the till wouldn’t balance out at work, instead of allowing the usual flare of anger, I’d force myself to shift my mind onto the next job.
When a customer yelled at me because we’d sold out of the bread they bought every Wednesday without fail, I merely smiled, took her name and told her we’d always hold one for her from now on.
Walking home from the bus stop, I’d look up at the lone oak tree on our street and notice how each day more of its green leaves became red and yellow. I wanted to be able to change how I felt, the way those leaves could change their color.
The night Kane left a wet towel on our bed, I almost lost it. I was standing at the foot of the bed with my fists clenched and my jaw clamped shut, screaming expletives at him in my mind. Then I forced myself to take deep breaths. A rational part of my brain kicked in, and I realized that it was just a wet towel. It wasn’t even lying on my side of the bed. I went and had a cold shower. It was painful, standing under that pathetic stream of freezing water, but I made myself stay in there until I was a shivering mess and couldn’t think about anything other than getting warm.
Then I went and sat on his lap, wrapped in my own wet towel.
‘What the hell, Natalie? And why are you so cold?’ he said, putting a warm hand over the goosebumps on my thigh.
I clutched at him, and just managed to speak the words ‘Please warm me up’ through blue lips.
‘Jesus, Nat,’ said Kane. He was pretty pissed off, because he was watching a live basketball game on a tablet Bey had just given him. He didn’t take me to bed and try to warm me up that way, like I wanted him to. Instead he forced me to get up off him, went into the bathroom and turned the shower on again.
I followed him in and he opened the age-stained shower door, which no amount of scrubbing could relieve of its ingrained marks. His hand on my elbow, he took the towel from around me and guided me back into the shower, not letting me back out when the sharp pain of hot water on my ice-cold skin caused me to flinch. Then he shut the bathroom door and, leaning back against the washbasin, watched me stand under it.
The transparent plastic panes of the shower fogged up quickly, but I could still make out the form of his body, the color of his clothes.
I stayed in the shower till the water ran cold, and he stayed with me.
‘Warm?’ he asked when I stepped out.
I nodded, but shivered at the same time. He grabbed a dry towel and wrapped it around me, trapping my arms against my body. He then rubbed his hands over the towel, providing continued heat.
The friction, and the warmth, brought back a memory. Dad used to do that when I was young: get me out of the bath and then immediately wrap a towel around me and rub me d
ry. I’d taken it for granted as a kid. Just wanted to be dry and in my pajamas and onto the next thing the evening offered before I had to go to bed. But Kane doing that for me – drying my body and not missing a single inch of my skin – I didn’t take that for granted at all.
He didn’t ask me about my hypothermia attempt. Maybe he thought it would lead to a fight; maybe he just put it down to me being the crazy bitch he knew I was. But when I joined him on the couch, wearing old sweatpants and one of his hoodies, he pulled me into his lap and held me a long time. He told me he’d be working late the rest of the week. I asked him if I could come see where he worked.
‘Yeah, I’d like that,’ he replied.
Mending. That’s what I called it. There was a lot of mending going on between us. Sometimes things would unravel a bit too.
We were having homemade cheeseburgers for dinner the night I asked about the girls he’d slept with. I couldn’t help asking. I wanted to help it – told myself over and over I had no right to ask. But the whole time I’d been making dinner it had been drumming around in my head. How many? Who were they? Was he with any of them more than once?
Kane had three cheeseburgers on his plate when we sat down on the broken couch to eat. He’d barely got through one when I asked.
He swallowed his mouthful and stared at me a moment, before saying, ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it. Please tell me.’
‘One.’
One? That meant … that meant something. She meant something. She might still mean something.
I put my plate on the ground and stood up. I couldn’t see past the next moment. I was completely overwhelmed with hurt, and I couldn’t escape it.
I went into the kitchen. There was nothing to clean up. I always cleaned as I cooked, and I never left any food on the bench because of the rats. Which meant there was nothing to distract me from the thought of Kane being with her. Touching her body. Kissing her. Undressing her …
‘You think she compare to you, Nat?’
He was standing behind me. I turned around and faced him.
After Nothing Page 21