Where All Things Will Grow

by N. K. Smith

  He was quick to interrupt and I recognized his anxiety immediately. “I kn-know. You don’t hhhhave to...”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, cutting off his acceptance of my unacceptable behavior. “It was mean. I’m sorry.”

  He turned away, but I saw him nod.

  “When you said that word, I couldn’t think of anything other than being that girl. Dr. Stone says people with PTSD can’t always control their reactions. She said that...well, it doesn’t matter. I’m responsible for doing those things. I was wrong to do that to you; I was wrong to treat you like that.”

  “I-I-I fffforgive you, Sophie. I-I’m sssorry for ssssslamming you into the w-wall, a-a-a-and c-c-c-covering your mmmm-mmmmouth.”

  I cringed. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

  I felt pressure on the index finger of my right hand. It was an odd sensation, but then again, everything to do with the right side of my body was odd. I looked down.

  His hand was curled around my finger and I looked back up at him just in time to see his other hand rise slowly. He stroked my scar with his thumb and I closed my eyes.

  “Then d-don’t. And I won’t hhhurt you either.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “I’m ssssorry I l-l-let you g-go, b-but we’re t-t-together now.” He gave my finger a squeeze and I felt my spirits lift.

  I would live the rest of my life trying to get better. Not for him, but for me. I didn’t want to hurt him and I couldn’t bear it if I did again.

  Sophie came back to school the day before the homecoming dance. No one thought she’d be able to do all of her work, but thought it was better to keep her in an academic setting. I could see her all day again. Well, not all day. Dr. Emmanuel and I were working on knowing what “enough” meant. Not just with Sophie, but with the video of my mother, with coffee, with anger, with panic.

  The night of the dance, I went to her house. It was the first time I had been in her room since last school year. Posted next to her bedroom door was a schedule. Instead of the work schedule that had once been there, this was a list of things she had to remember to do each day.

  In nice bold printed letters there were things like:

  – this was the first I’d realized that she even had an insulin pump –

  – this had a question mark by it –

  – this had a different subject each day of the week, but it wasn’t specific. Instead of Calculus, it just said “Math.” I wondered what exactly that meant. She was still in the same classes at school, so I thought she was studying the same subjects as before. The list was finished out with:

  She must’ve noticed me looking because she said, “Sometimes I forget to do things.”

  Sophie had regained control of nearly all of her facial muscles, which helped her enunciate.

  I pointed to the blank lines and turned to her, “Sssso you c-can add sssuff?”

  She nodded and then sat down very carefully on her bed.

  I sat down in the rocking chair and neither of us spoke for a while. Things continued to be relatively awkward between us. We had gone through so much, but beyond the reference to being “friends,” we lacked definition of what we were now.

  “We can listen to music,” she offered.

  I smiled and went to her dresser to flip on the radio.

  When I returned, we listened in silence to the song already in progress. When it changed, Sophie frowned. It was a particular kind of frown, and I wanted to learn her facial expressions all over again.

  “W-what?”

  “I don’t like this one.”

  “W-why?”

  She shrugged. “It makes me sad.”

  “Ssshould I ch-change the ch-channel?”

  She shook her head. “Put in a... a... you know, one of those... round, flat things.” She sighed but then pointed to her CDs. “You know...”

  “CDs,” I supplied.

  “Yeah, CDs.”

  I went back and sifted through them until I found the one labeled Songs That Sophie Likes volume 2. Wasting no time, I immediately put it in. I was thankful when she let me give her all of the things she had given back to me.

  “Are you hhhhhappy t-t-to be back in school?” I asked, back in the rocking chair.

  Sophie pointed to the schedule by the door with her left hand. “I can’t graduate on time.”

  “They ssssaid that?”

  She nodded and spoke slowly. “They showed me a book. I guess it was math from last year and... it was just a bunch of numbers and letters. Some woman tried to teach it to me, but... it... I was very confused.”

  “I’m sssssorry, Sophie.”

  She shrugged. “My dad’s getting me a tutor.”

  “W-what are all those m-meetings?” It was written four or five times on her schedule. I had a pretty good idea what they were, but I was eager for something to talk about.

  “The ones on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, are Narcotics Anonymous. The others are for abuse, rape, and Dr. Stone.”

  Damascus didn’t have much in the way of mental health care, so I wondered if she was going to the same place I was. “Your other g-g-groups are they...?”

  “In Germantown.”

  “Mmmmine, t-t-too.”

  “The same nights?”

  “Sssssome.”

  “Why... why is everything so weird now? I know you can’t be my boyfriend, but...”

  I didn’t want things to be weird. I recalled the awkwardness between us last fall when she first moved here. I smiled, thinking of the memories even though some of them had been embarrassing and devastating at the time.

  Our first nondate. The subsequent kiss. Our first dance. The first time I touched her scar. The dance had lasted less than a minute. She’d felt so wonderful in my arms, like she’d been made to inhabit that space.

  We couldn’t be significant others, but she was no less significant to me now than she had been then, and I wanted to feel her in my arms.

  I knew this CD well. I remembered picking just the right songs in the right order. The next song was painfully beautiful. It was a song called Sampson by Regina Spektor. It wasn’t Otis Redding, but it was an adequate substitution.

  “Sophie?”

  She looked back at me.

  “W-w-will you d-dance with me?”

  Her smile was shy but beautiful, and I took it as a yes. I stood, feeling as nervous as the first time. Taking her hand, I gently pulled her up and brought her close to me. I felt her breath against my neck. The heat of her body pressed to mine felt natural.

  I breathed her in as we started to sway. We were quiet and, as usual, there was always amazing beauty in the silence. The fingers of her left hand pressed gently on my shoulder as I held the fingers of her right. I couldn’t hear her heartbeat, but I could feel the rise and fall of her chest in time with her breathing.

  When she started crying, I tried to pull away to see her face, but she buried it in my shoulder. I smoothed down her hair with one hand, wishing I could say something charming or do something dashing to save her from the tears, but the only thing I did was hold her. She didn’t need saving. Neither of us was damned. Holding her seemed like sometimes it was the only thing I could ever do. I never wanted to let go. I always wanted her in my arms.

  “You’re always so good to me.”

  “That’s b-because I love you.”

  “I want you to love me,” she said softly, finally looking up at me and letting me see the pain and hope inside her brilliant blue eyes. “I haven’t been a good person, but I know that I can be.”

  Again, I felt as though I had to say something, but nothing came out. I ran my thumb over the top of her scar instead.

  “Everyone says that I’ll get better. If I do memory exercises and if I study hard, I
can still...” her voice trailed off. I didn’t like how vulnerable it was. “I promise I’ll be so much better than I was. I was so dumb.”

  “Y-You’re a g-good person, Sophie. You t-take c-care of p-people,” I said, not wanting to hear her put herself down. I moved us to the bed and when we were sitting, I took both her hands in mine and looked her straight in the eyes. “You t-take c-care of m-me. You hhhhelp me. M-m-my life is better because of you. You’ve always g-given t-to me.”

  “Not much.”

  I smiled. “You’ve always g-given en-nough.”

  Sophie stepped over the threshold carefully, her hand tightening on my arm. She looked around at the empty foyer, swallowed hard, and then took a tentative step forward, just enough for me to get the door closed.

  “Hi, Sophie!”

  She flinched and moved closer to me, her fingers really digging into my flesh as Jane’s voice took her by surprise. I wanted to be mad, but I knew Jane was just excited for Sophie’s first visit. She’d been lonely since Trent and the others left, but she still should’ve known better.

  Sophie smiled but headed toward the stairs.

  She was careful and cautious about everything now. From what I’d read, it would be a lasting effect of the stroke. If she’d had a right brain stroke, she would have been impulsive and careless.

  That was exactly how she’d been before, so if she had to have a stroke, as bad as it might have sounded, it was kind of a relief that it was this kind and not in the right hemisphere. An even more impulsive Sophie would have been hard for everyone to handle.

  This cautious Sophie was sometimes difficult as well. She didn’t like leaving her house, which was why it took until early December to get her to come over. She could barely make it into school some days. She was nervous the entire ride over and asked a lot of questions. She wanted to know who would be there and what we were going to do. She wanted to know if anything had changed and if I was going to be okay waiting for her to get up the stairs.

  The steps were intimidating for her. She’d come very far with her physical therapy, but stairs made her unbalanced and wobbly. She clung to the banister and threaded her other arm through mine. Each step was a milestone.

  Nothing much had changed about my room. I entered first and sat tentatively on my bed as she hovered around the door, peering in.

  “It’s o-okay.” I wanted her inside so I could close and lock my door. Although I was getting better, it still made me feel anxious to leave it open for too long.

  Two small baby steps and she was inside, and then she just wrapped her arms around her midsection and stood there.

  “You c-c-can ssssit down,” I said closing the door and taking my seat.

  “Oh. Okay.” She looked at me on the bed and then over to the empty couch. “Where?”

  That she felt she had to ask made me sad, but I understood that just like everything else, this was something she had to relearn. “An-anywhere.”

  “Can I look at your books?”

  “Of c-course.”

  I watched as she picked out an art book and sat down with it. After flipping through it silently, she seemed pleased as she ran her hand over the woman in orange. “You like this one.”

  She looked up and I smiled. “I d-do.”

  Her face lit up and then returned to looking at Flaming June. “Me too.”

  After an hour of going over all of the things we both liked, I let Jane in my room. They sat on the couch together while I sat on my bed. The conversation flowed from piercings and new tattoos to making plans to go to the National Art Museum as soon as we could.

  I couldn’t help but feel intense happiness. The two women I loved the most on this earth were right in front of me. Perhaps they weren’t the picture of health and stability all the time, but they were the best they could be and that was all that mattered to me.

  I still got sick at Christmas, but I told Stephen as soon as my neck felt stiff. With encouragement from Dr. Emmanuel, I took medicine without question and avoided the worst part of the illness. I watched the video of my mother more times than I should’ve, but fewer times than I had last year.

  Sophie wasn’t as accessible as she had been last year. She couldn’t spend every waking moment with me. Even though I didn’t care what either of our therapists or guardians said, I knew our relationship had been unhealthy, and it wouldn’t be right to put that much stress on her when she was trying to heal.

  She had her own demons to fight, so while I cried for my mom with Jane, Sophie went to a meeting for addiction after tackling a grueling PT session. I slept through most of the holiday and the days leading up to it. I wrote letters to my mother and to Joseph, then shredded them and wrote them again. I tucked them into the drawer beside my bed.

  If I wasn’t sleeping, I played music. It was the only thing besides Sophie’s fingers in my hair that helped. We weren’t close like that all the time. She wasn’t technically my girlfriend, so I only got to touch that little four-pointed scar on her neck occasionally, and it wasn’t every day when I was blessed with her fingers through my hair.

  But we did take a nap together Christmas Day.

  It was difficult being a part of Sophie’s life, yet not be what we once were, and I could tell it was the same for her. I hoped that it helped more than hindered. Sometimes all I wanted was to be close to her.

  I woke up from the nap wanting to have sex with her. In my mind, I saw my hand moving between her legs, the other one to her breast. I wanted to taste her skin. My hips bucked on instinct and the sensation was enough to make me grit my teeth and fist my hands.

  I got out of bed quickly and crossed the room, moving as far away as I could.

  Despite what we’d done together in the past, neither of us was in a place right now to do any of the things my mind and body seemed to want.

  It seemed with the new, cautious Sophie as though sex was the furthest thing from her mind. Both of us were active participants in both individual and group therapy for victims of sexual abuse, and even though we were both eighteen, neither of us tried to move forward sexually.

  It wasn’t the right time. Not for her; not for me.

  One weekend in early February we drove to D.C. and spent most of the day in that little bookstore. It had taken quite a lot of begging for her father to let her go, but even he had to agree that her progress was amazing.

  We had an argument over what books she had picked out that first trip. “B-b-but y-y-you w-were hhhhigh that d-day! A-a-and n-now your b-brain...” I trailed off when I saw her expression. She was upset that I mentioned either of those points, but it was ridiculous. How could she stand in front of me and be so sure that she was right when she couldn’t even remember what song we’d just finished listening to in the car?

  “I might have a brain injury, but I’m not stupid, you know. I can remember picking up that, that, that, you know, the book with the two people on the cover.” She pointed off to the Classic section, as if that would give me a clue as to which book with two people on the cover she meant.

  “Sssssee my p-p-point?”

  Even before she called me out, I felt like a jerk for even thinking it. Her quick anger faded and all that was left was hurt. “You don’t have to be an ass about it.”

  I felt horrible for making her feel horrible. I sighed as I shook my head. “I-I’m ssssorry.”

  “Whatever.”

  I took her hand because I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to make her feel bad. “N-n-no. I’m really ssssorry.”

  It wasn’t until we’d settled into the reading chairs that she shook her head at the book resting on her lap. “This isn’t the one I’d picked.” I tried to stifle my smile, but she saw it anyway. Fortunately, Sophie was able to laugh at herself. I loved the sound. It was better than an apology.

  The rest of the da
y went well.

  During Spring Break, Stephen and I visited schools and I completed the final round of interviews. I only had two mild panic attacks in the hotel before interviewing with Harvard and Juilliard.

  Juilliard was the most nerve-wracking of the lot because I had to prove my musical worth... in front of other people.

  I got through it and even felt proud of my performance. Stephen seemed pleased, too. While in the past I used thoughts of Sophie to calm me, I used my mother this time. I could hear and see her in my mind, singing like she knew it wasn’t a sin.

  I knew my music wasn’t a sin.

  If she could stand up in front of people and sing, I could play in front of them.

  I was good, better than most, and the school would’ve been insane not to want me to study there. At least that was what I kept telling myself.

  I tried to keep Sophie out of my mind, because she would not be going to college with me. Anywhere I went, I would go without her. Georgetown was my first pick for geographic reasons and Harvard for obvious intellectual reasons, but Juilliard was what I really wanted. Despite it being located in New York City, I felt drawn to it.

  Both medicine and music were outlawed by my father. Both would be an acceptable choice in Stephen’s eyes. If I had to be one hundred percent honest, music soothed me, and I could think of nothing better to do with my future than to spend it creating the music that filled my head, the music that was in my soul.

  I’d just gotten to Sophie’s after dropping Jane off at home. The day had been long and ended with a stressful session with Ms. Rice. She switched the routine on me and suddenly we were having a conversation instead of just reading. I felt pressured, because one of my goals had always been to have a conversation with her without stuttering, but I couldn’t. I elongated the “M” in the word “music,” stuttered my way through the word “Juilliard,” and had a block form on nearly all words that started with “P.”