by Xavier Neal
“Go away now!” Emma groans. “You’re letting all the light in.”
“My baby sister,” Thomas brushes off. “Can’t hold her beer.”
“Fuck you.”
Another mumbled exchange takes place before the front door shuts and I let out the breath I had been holding.
“Was that your girlfriend?” Kenny’s voice trembles. Reluctantly, I turn to face her, bracing myself for the shit storm about to hit me. “Was that your fucking girlfriend, Bailey?”
I quietly plead, “It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated?!”
It’s not. But at this fucking moment it feels that way.
“I can explain-”
“Fuck you!” She shouts in retaliation. “I’m the other woman!?!”
“Kenny-“
“Oh my God!” She screeches, scrambling for the shirt she slept in. “Here I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna be some sort of wifey when really I’m just another side ho’.”
“Is that a rap music reference I should know?”
Her burning face pops back up. “How could you do this to me?! How could you…How could have sex with me last night while you had a girlfriend?!”
“Congrats on finally getting laid,” Emma calls from the other side of the wall.
I roll my eyes at the unnecessary comment. “Kenny, let me explain,-”
“No!” She scoffs. “And never call me that again! Or ‘your girl’ or any fucking thing else for that matter! I never wanna see you again! I never wanna think about you again! I hate you!”
“Was this the point?” I bite, sitting straight up in my seat. “To remind me what a piece of shit I was for not thinking about my girlfriend once? For not giving a fuck about what it would do to her?”
Emma faces me.
“Which point are you trying to make subconscious? The fact I was an asshole for cheating on my girlfriend with Kenny or the fact that every time I was with another woman it felt like I was cheating on Kenny?”
“Neither.”
My jaw drops in bafflement.
“Now stop interrupting or I’m going to push the intercom button and collapse a lung,” she warns.
“You can communicate with that part of my body?!”
“I’ve got connections….”
“Then wake me up!”
“Not how it works! Come on, Bailey. Didn’t you ever watch Scrubs or ER?”
Kenny and I binge watched Scrubs less than a month ago. The McCaws were going to California for one of Michael’s business trips and asked if they could take Em with them, wanting her to see Disneyland. It was a very peaceful week filled with very little work, an unusual amount of television, and an abundance of sex.
“Your brain communicates to the rest of your body subconsciously all the time. Blinking. Breathing. Making your heart beat. That sort of thing.”
“Fine. You win. But I don’t wanna watch this,” my quiet voice quakes. “I don’t want to watch Kenny kick me out of her life.”
Emma starts to reply but stops to chew on a thought.
“I don’t care if you have to take my kidneys or a lung or my goddamn liver….that pain pales in comparison to the pain I felt after she said that to me.”
“Alright. I’ll skip the rest of her tantrum and move on to the actual point. How you kept more than just the secret of your one night with Kennedy from your girlfriend…How you had another secret you’d never share.”
With Kenny’s tearful dismissal of a chance to explain what I needed to fresh on my mind, I pull into the driveway of my parent’s house, driven more than ever to stand up for the girl I want. Stand up for what’s right. To do what my sister would rather avoid than ever actually try. If I can just tell him I’m going to be with whoever the hell I want whenever I want then I can drive down the road, drop to my knees, and beg Kenny to hear me out. To thoroughly apologize for not telling her about Hannah and for basically forgetting she even existed. If I can just declare to him that I’m an adult now who is capable of making my own decisions then I can tell her why I’ve spent all these years away from her and why we couldn’t be together until last night. I need her to know that I don’t regret what happened and how much I don’t want her to regret it either. How I want her to graduate, go to the same college, and spend every free moment she has letting me worship her body in ways neither of us have ever experienced.
I open the front door of their house and call out, “Mom! Dad! We need to talk!”
When there’s no response, I head through the living room, shouting a second time, knowing both of them are here since their vehicles are in the driveway. “Mom! Dad!”
As soon as I round the corner into the kitchen, my father grunts, “She’s gone.” He slowly lifts his face from the whiskey glass he’s staring into and slurs, “For good.”
His words seem so foreign I’m not sure how to respond. I soak in his disheveled clothing, the redness in his eyes, and the dark rings beneath them.
With caution and curiosity alike, I approach him. “Where’d she go?”
“Her fuckin’ wetback boyfriend’s house,” he growls and tosses back the remainder of the liquid in his glass. “She’s not taking my fuckin’ car to drive him around! She’s probably living with fifteen people, none of them fucking legal. It’s not enough they steal our fucking jobs, good hard working white people’s jobs, but now they steal our fucking wives too?” His eyes lower to a glare. “Your grandfather and mine had it right. Klan protects their own. I knew I should’ve joined. I should’ve made you join.”
That’s not even a thought I can comprehend.
He refills the bottom of the glass. “But nooooo. She somehow talked me out of it. Then forbid me from ever bringing it up to you before you graduated. Promised to take you and your sister away and hide you. Like you didn’t need your father. Like you didn’t need a man in your life. I only listened because women are supposed to be smart when it comes to raising children. Not your mother apparently. Fucking dumbest bimbo in the bar…”
“How…” My hand wipes away the stunned expression on my face. “When…” Still unsure the best way to proceed, I stumble until I manage to question, “Did this just come out of nowhere?”
“Her refusal of the Klan?”
I refrain from retching over the word. “Her unhappiness in your marriage.”
He shrugs and pours himself another drink.
“Why’d she leave?”
“To love a wetback. What? Are you fuckin’ retarded now?”
It’s no fucking mystery why she’d leave him. Not to anyone who has fucking ears. He’s a miserable bastard who expects everyone to be just as fucking miserable as he is. And for most of my life he’s accomplished that whenever he was around. But if mom can leave him, so can I.
“Who fuckin’ needs her anyway. Always bitching about intolerance and other horseshit. It’s people like her who are fucking up this great country. Driving it straight into the ground. Screwing up our children.” His eyes meeting mine again. “At least I stopped her from doing that. You and your sister will never love a ‘spic.” He tosses back the drink. “Or be a nigger lover. Or a chink chaser. Or a turban taker.”
The hatred tumbling out of his mouth continues, but thankfully slides to such a slurred speech I can’t make out most of it. His rant flows as does the liquor into his glass until the bottle is damn near empty and the aspirations I walked in with completely shattered.
Finally, he questions, “What the hell did you need to talk about?” Without waiting for me to answer, he snaps again while wobbling onto his feet. “What the hell are you even doin’ in town?”
“I um…I brought a friend home. She needed a ride.”
Despite the fact she was completely disgusted by me, Kenny let me drive her home. Emma had planned for them to hang out an extra day with Kyle and when Kenny begged otherwise, I volunteered. Figured it was the least I should do. We didn’t exchange a single word during the drive, but I planned every word of the s
peech I was going to give him. A speech that’ll have to wait now.
“She cute?” He chuckles and winks. “You sleeping with her?”
I did…
“Why didn’t you bring her by?” Trepidation taints my expression and he twitches a glare. “She’s not a spic, is she?” He stops with his body too close to mine. “You’re not like your mother are you, boy? Dating outside your own kind?” His eyes bore into mine. “You remember what happened last time you tried?” Before I can flinch out of the way his hand clasps around my throat. “You learned that lesson your mother never did, right?”
I struggle for air, hand hitting his, each blow like striking steel. Years and years of working construction alongside running the business side has given him more strength in his older age than other men who work less strenuous jobs.
He shoves my body away from his like a rag doll. My back hits the back door with a heavy thud, knocking the remaining air out of my lungs. Slightly dizzy from the lack of oxygen and the impact, his words seem fainter than I’m sure they are. “Maybe I should give you the beating that she never got. Make sure you keep away from those niggers and mescans.”
Her and Jess never got beatings. They just got hit. Love taps, as he called them. That’s all the reminder women needed according to him and grandpa.
At that moment he stomps over to me barely leaving me a window of opportunity to brace myself for the first blow to the face.
Tears sting my eyes as I try to hide the tremor in my voice. “I ended up with two broken ribs, a bruised lung, a swollen jaw, and a shit ton of stitches from where he hit me with the bottle.”
“He beat the shit out of you,” Emma sums up, the screen now frozen on my face in fear. “And you tried to protect yourself. You tried so hard…but his rage….His fucking rage was rapid and consuming.”
I suddenly find it difficult to breathe.
“He almost killed you that night.”
My eyes fall shut.
“And yet you lied to everyone and told them you got your ass handed to you in a bar fight.”
Sniffling away the humiliation, I state, “They didn’t need to know.”
“Not even Kenny?”
“Especially not Kenny.” I dart my eyes to her. “She never needs to know. I’m taking that one to my grave.”
In a mocking yet haunting laugh, Emma says, “Might be sooner than later…”
My patience dwindles further. “Why? Why did I need to watch that? Why did I need to remember-”
“The only other time you almost died?” With her laughter now gone, her body completely rotates to face me. “Because after that, you gave up on Kennedy again. You took an ass whopping for nothing. You just let her walk out of your life. You didn’t fight for her to stay. You didn’t fight for you to be together!”
“He could’ve killed me!”
“And this time, he might actually have!”
I clamp my mouth tightly closed.
She sympathetically tilts her head at me. “Here’s the question I’m mulling over. Was she worth it then? Looking back, knowing his hatred for her was so strong he was willing to beat you, break you, hell, kill you over it…”
My eyebrows furrow.
“Was she really worth it? When you were nothing more than dumb kids who thought they needed each other?” Emma moves to sit on the edge of the seat directly in front of me. “Was it worth the bruises and the scars? Lying for years to everyone who could’ve helped? Denying yourself the opportunity for true escape because of the humiliation and shame you felt from letting your own father beat you like a piñata? Was she worth taking the pain for back then? Was she worth taking even more of it now?”
Without hesitation, I lean forward and growl, “She’s always been worth it. Bends. Breaks. Bruises. Scars. I’d jump in front of a fucking car to save her. Take a bullet to the chest if it meant she would live. A brick to the brain is at the bottom of a long list of pain I’d endure for her. Kenny’s life matters more than mine ever will. It always has and to me it always will…”
Emma lets a small smile slip onto her lips. “You might’ve just saved your kidneys.”
Kennedy
Em adjusts herself around in my lap as Dr. Phillips tries to maintain an even demeanor. “His kidneys are trying to fail.”
Alarm grabs me by throat. “Wha…”
“They haven’t failed yet,” he calmly continues. “However, they are steadily decreasing. If they reach below 15% in function we will start dialysis. ”
“Will he need a transplant?” I immediately bark out. “If he does I’m a match. We’re a match in every way possible.”
We got all those things checked out when we found out I was pregnant. While all the testing was obnoxious, along with reading and signing tons of legal documents on what to do if either of us were in a horrible medical situation, at the end of it all it actually made me feel better about us as a unit. To see we were so medically matched and mentally prepared to do the same thing for one another if the time came, was a blessing. But I’ll change my mind about that to believing it’s a fucked up curse if I can’t use it to help save his life.
“At this time Mrs. Cooper-”
“Kennedy.”
“Kennedy, it is not necessary. Given your husband’s state, organ failure or attempts at it are expected. At this time we’re going to run a few more tests. Check for new infections.” He slides his hands into his coat pocket. “His room will need to be clear during that time. You are free to wait in the waiting room or if you choose to go home to get some rest, we will have someone alert you when you’re allowed back in.”
I nod my understanding and he leaves without another word.
Em looks up at me. “Lunch time?”
With a strained smile, I ask, “Are you hungry already?”
Becca and Jose took her home last night, put her to bed, and gave her breakfast this morning as well. They would’ve kept her longer, but she kept insisting she needed to be with me. That she needed to be with her daddy. That family gets better by being with their family. It took everything in me not to break down in tears when Becca repeated the words. Part of me thinks when she left, after stealing a minor glimpse of her son through the tiny door window, that she did. I can’t imagine the horror she’s facing as a mother who could possibly be losing her son. I don’t want to it imagine it either. This experience as the wife is traumatic enough.
“So hungry,” she dramatically claims.
I push the hair off her face and sigh, “Then let’s go get you some lunch. Can you kiss daddy goodbye? Tell him we’ll be back soon?”
She hops out of my lap and bounces over to the edge of the bed where she can reach. With her stuffed animal tucked tightly underneath her arm, she states, “We are gonna go have lunch, daddy. Be right back!” Her little lips plant a kiss on the back of his hand. “I love you. Don’t wake up ‘til we get back, k?”
Trying to swallow the sadness her little gesture created, I stand, grab my shoulder bag, and drop a kiss onto his forehead. “I love you.”
Em takes my hand and cradles her tablet almost as tightly as her bear. The two of us start to exit the hospital when a set of unexpected faces move towards us in the waiting room.
“Uncle Thomas!” Em squeaks and rushes for his legs.
“Em!” He replies, swooping her up into his arms. “How’s my favorite niece?”
“Hungry!” She giggles before reaching out for his beautiful, blonde wife. “Aunt Tami!”
“Hi princess,” Tami coos at the same time Thomas shifts her into his wife’s clutches.
His smile tries not to fall when he turns to face me. He offers me a hug and I take it. After he pulls back, he asks, “How’s bro?”
A grin tries to grow from the term. They basically are brothers. They always behaved like it. Growing up, the McCaws treated Bailey the same way they treated Thomas. They’d buy him t-shirts while they were shopping. Scold him if his homework wasn’t finished and they were alread
y playing video games. Later, after Em’s death, Michael revamped the role of a father figure for Bailey. Not sure how he knows that’s what has always been missing from Bailey’s life, but he definitely enjoys the role. He’s the one Bailey takes to baseball games. Occasionally he’ll invite his stepfather to go too, but always invites Michael first. He’s the one who offered to take him fishing when he realized it was something he used to love doing when he went to his grandfather’s ranch. He’s also the one who gave him the fatherly speech about what it takes to make a relationship work when he found out we had finally gotten together. Of course Thomas and Bailey fought like siblings too and even drifted apart for a couple years, but they never stopped considering one another family. And their sister’s death brought not only me and Bailey together, but recemented a bond that had been fractured.