“Shit, Nor, I’m sorry, I’m at a stage with dinner where I need both hands . . .”
She sniffles. “Okay. I’m sure if you change your mind, Ms. Lim—”
“I won’t.”
As soon as we hang up, I’m choking on sobs I haven’t let loose since before the trial. Chester’s there, constant witness to suffering, or else hoping I’ll drop a scrap of food. Either way, I sink to the kitchen floor and bury my face in his jet-black fur.
Chester, short for Mr. Rochester, named by Elinor in her Jane Eyre phase, back when she thought dangerous, brooding men were intriguing and mysterious. But Mr. Rochester’s a perv and a cheater who keeps his mentally ill wife locked in the attic.
Chester the loveable furball nudges my face with his wet nose. I sob a little harder, hard enough that I don’t hear the garage door open or my mom come into the kitchen. She appears around the edge of the counter and, not expecting to find me and Chester huddled on the kitchen floor, lets out a startled yelp.
I yelp back, then sob harder, until Mom is on the floor too, Chester between us.
“Oh, honey,” she says, when our sobs die down. “I understand how you feel. After all she did to get into that program. It’s so unfair.”
I don’t know what Mom’s talking about, but it doesn’t really matter because she’s stroking my hair and she’s here with me.
“She was nervous to tell you,” Mom says. “So I’m glad she did. But I’m sorry you’re taking it so hard. Is something burning?”
I leap up. The risotto is obviously ruined if culinarily clueless Mom can smell the charred bits melding onto the bottom of the pan.
“I wish she would move home, take some time off. She says that would be letting him win. But if he’s run her out of the program she loves, isn’t he already winning?”
“Out of the oceanography program?”
“She didn’t tell you?” Mom’s stricken. Somehow she’s gone from being the sort of mother who throws her daughters menarche parties and takes their friends to Planned Parenthood to suddenly not knowing how to tell me the basic facts of my sister’s life. “It just got a bit . . . untenable. He had a lot of friends in the program. And Nor’s advisor made some comments . . .”
I haul the risotto pot over to the sink to dump its contents down the disposal.
“Oh, honey, no! I’m sure it’s fine! We’ll eat around the burned bits.”
Nor dropped out of her oceanography program at University of Washington. Which she had been talking about since a seventh-grade field trip to the aquarium. The whole reason she chose the school where she met Craig. He’s not even there anymore, but he’ll always be there for her.
“There’s salad in the fridge,” I say, filling up the risotto pot to soak. “Pot roast in the slow cooker. I’m not feeling well.”
* * *
—
The blues swirl into each other, faded shadows of the day Nor and I painted them years ago. She was about to start high school; oceanography was already her world. The mural is faded, and never was a work of art, if I’m honest. But it’s still the undersea haven Nor wanted, her walls and ceiling swirling blues, with tendrils of seaweed creeping up around the edges of her bed, her desk, her dresser.
She took magazine photos of her favorite sea creatures and Mod-Podged them onto her walls. The clear Christmas ornaments suspended from the ceiling had been my idea, bubbles drifting toward the surface.
Whenever my friends slept over, they always wanted to sleep in Nor’s room. She always let us.
When Nor left for UW, though, I stayed out. I wanted it to be perfect whenever she came back. Like we could slip back into our normal roles at any moment. Then Craig happened. Nor didn’t come home. Lately I’ve been spending more time underwater than not.
Now Nor’s done with the ocean. With this vast, unknowable thing she’d made it her life’s mission to know. She won’t see these creatures up close. She won’t blaze new trails in the 95 percent of the ocean that’s still unexplored.
Those discoveries are for men like Craig, men who supported him, who have one another’s backs and then shrug when asked why there aren’t more women in their field.
I pull my notebook from under Nor’s pillow. I’ve opened it a few times since I dug it out of my closet. But my thoughts have been messy, incoherent things, impossible to boil down to something as mundane as words.
They aren’t just thoughts, they’re a swirling tornado of fury and hurt and fear and girl.
BLOODIED TAPESTRIES
Vengeance is
my second thought.
First: my sister.
Did the monsters
crush her wings
to dust between
barbaric fingers,
a nuisance moth?
Or did the moth
flit away, fold
into a crevice
unseen, out of reach
like when we
were girls at play?
I’d wander the halls
in search of the sister
I’d find eventually
tucked away in a nook
blanket, book
our game forgotten.
What I do not
can not
consider in the mayhem
of the only home
I’ve ever known
turned upside down
iron on stone
bloodied tapestries
wreckage rubble ash
is my own wings.
Not so delicate
but like Helene’s
meant for flight
not bondage.
Or perhaps
I could consider
my wings but
I won’t.
Not three steps
from my chambers,
my refuge until this day
I stumble on
wreckage
of another sort.
Not toppled statue
or broken window but
Etienne
captain of my father’s guard
a shout away from my door
sword useless at his side
he could be sleeping
if not for his guts spilling out
blood soaking the rug
that cushioned his fall.
This did not happen
only
to
me.
Helene is not
tucked in a corner
with a book.
Not in her chambers
oblivious to her role
as damsel, gazing out a window
on a world that would see her wings
pinioned on display and call them
beautiful.
Mother’s chambers
are still, a chapel
devoid of the faithful.
I turn to leave but stop
at the faintest scent
of the oils she rubs
behind her ears
fresh from a bath.
It lingers after
she leaves a room.
A memory, promise
of her return. It doesn’t
mean she’s here.
But in this chapel
a whispered prayer
pulls me back
makes me stay
tread lightly
through the rubble
around the bed—
dead
sprawled in blood
skirts askew
empty gaze
here but not
If I should scream
will Fat
her come running?
My brother? Sweet Helene?
I send heavenward
a plea to a god
I’m not sure is there,
crouch down and swipe
my mother’s eyelids shut.
Then pull the brooch
from her shredded bodice
and run.
CHAPTER NINE
Words fly like I never buried this notebook in my closet, never stopped screaming my rage at boys who take what they want and burn down the rest. Screaming my rage into a notebook in a coffee shop, no one’s going to try to silence me.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”
At first I don’t think anyone is talking to me. I’m sitting at Chocolati with Marguerite and the chai I’ve been nursing for an hour. I’m on one of the tall barstools at the counter reserved for loners who didn’t come here to gab with a writing group or interview a prospective doula or hash out their relationships for all the world to hear.
But suddenly someone is sitting on the stool next to me, facing me. Talking as though I look like someone who wants to socialize, as though I don’t have headphones on.
“My uncle is the crew coach. Well, assistant. But still he’s in the department, so I’m thinking he could ask the athletic director to make a statement. I don’t know, ‘Kyle Cameron’s decision to leave had been in the works for some time’ . . . Something that takes the heat off Nor.”
My head pops up. Jess Stevens drums black fingernails on the tabletop, waiting for me to catch up. “Are you following me?”
“What? No.” They pop up when the barista calls their name. I scowl at their back as they retrieve their drink and doctor it at the counter.
I don’t even want to know what they were talking about. I am so beyond caring what the Husky football coach does with his life.
“I came here to work,” I say when Jess returns. “Alone. No offense. I just . . . have a lot going on.”
“No shit. It’s so fucking awful. I thought you might need help brainstorming what to do next.”
I sigh, then start packing up my stuff. “Next? The judge made his ruling. There is no next.”
Jess waves their hand like I’m talking nonsense. “Yeah, yeah, that asshole. No, I mean Cameron moving to Michigan State, the hashtag?”
I passed Head Coach Kyle Cameron in the courthouse on one of the last days of the trial—I was coming out of the women’s bathroom as he went into the men’s next door. His massive shoulder knocked me into the wall.
“Whoa, little lady,” he boomed as he reached out to steady me by the elbow. “Watch yourself now.”
He looked me straight in the face with zero recognition, even though I’d been sitting next to Nor the entire trial. If he’d glanced her way at all, he would have known I was her sister.
I shrug. “Serves him right if U Dub fired him. I’m sure he’ll only fail up.”
“Um.” Jess scoots their stool closer to mine. “He wasn’t fired. He left for a better program. Because of ‘the distraction.’ The football zombies are pissed.”
Distraction: anything the people in power want to ignore.
“But that’s . . . that’s great! Isn’t it?” I fumble for my phone, pull up the hashtag #JusticeforNor.
I haven’t checked it for a few days. After the judge’s sentencing, everyone moved on to being outraged about something else.
“Wait, hang on—” Something in Jess’s voice makes me pause and meet their eyes. “I mean, sure, in the schadenfreude sense, it’s pleasant to watch the meatheads denied something they thought they were entitled to. It might even look like consequences of some form. But . . .”
“Jess, what?”
“Some assholes, like, they’re to be expected, right? You know it as well as I do. Maybe you didn’t before the whole trial and everything, but you must know now, because, like, I only followed the coverage some of the time, but you must have—”
I grab my things and leave the coffee shop.
“Wait!” Jess follows me out. “Wait, sorry. I ramble when I’m nervous. Here’s the thing: It’s bad for the football program to lose their head coach.”
I scan through the top search results for “Kyle Cameron” + “college football.”
MICHIGAN STATE SCORES UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON HEAD COACH
CAMERON DEPARTS UW AMID OFF-FIELD DISTRACTIONS
Under one of the headlines, I read “‘I want to focus on what matters,’ says Cameron. ‘And that’s football.’”
“I still don’t see why this is bad for Nor.” I scan through #JusticeforNor. Nothing.
“It’s bullshit, but like . . . football is life for some people.” Jess reaches out, takes my phone, and types something in the search bar. “Are you sure you want to see this?”
I grab the phone. #IgNorTheWhore. It isn’t only a few loser MRAs, either. This hashtag is constantly updating with new results. It’ll probably be trending soon, if it isn’t already.
Cowardly Cameron’s dooming an entire football season on the word of one lying bitch. Good riddance. #IgNorTheWhore #PurpleReign
Just because that cunt Elinor Morales will lie down and take it doesn’t mean Huskies will. #IgNorTheWhore
News flash for Cameron: There are lying sluts at Michigan State too. #IgNorTheWhore #GoHuskies
Title Nine? More like TITLE WHINE! Take your feminazi friends and go back where you came from! #IgNorTheWhore
Maybe Elinor Morales is working for Wazzu—cry rape, destroy Lawrence, and maybe finally the Cougs can win some games. #IgNorTheWhore #PurpleReign
My vision goes blurry. It’s not tears. I’m way too enraged for tears. Jess’s hand steadies my arm.
“Hey, are you—”
Then I’m crumpled on the sidewalk, breathing fast, trying to suck in enough air, but something isn’t working right in my lungs or my brain or my—
“Marianne, should I call—”
This is my fault. The blaming, the look-what-she-wore, it was such bullshit when it was weaponized against her, but this time it really is my fault. If I hadn’t pushed my sister—
Jess dials their phone. My hand shoots out and knocks it away from their hands.
“Sorry!” I blurt, reaching blindly for the phone.
“I got it.”
“Don’t call anyone. I’m fine.”
“Okay.” They start to rub my back, tentative at first. “Is this okay?”
I nod. “Don’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
We sit there. After a minute, a shadow falls over us as a stroller stops. I don’t look up.
“We’re having a moment,” Jess tells the person pushing the stroller. Or maybe the baby. When they’ve moved on, Jess says, “My therapist has me do this thing where I focus on two things I really like. She says two things that bring me joy, but whatever, two things I like. It can be anything. So it can be, like . . . hedgehogs and boba. Then I breathe in and out slowly, and when I breathe in, I think hedgehogs, and when I breathe out, I think boba. Just sort of say the words in my head. I don’t, like, ponder the existence of boba.”
Jess’s words washed over me. Something about boba. But their voice is soothing. I focus on their voice and the steadiness of their hand on my back. There’s somebody willing to sit on the sidewalk in Wallingford and not say awful things about my sister, and that helps a little.
“Can you think of two things you like? To do or eat or whatever?”
I process the words. I do. I even manage to reach through the flood of horrible words about my sister and try to wrap my fingers around something—anything—I like in this shitty, shitty world.
“Yeah,” Jess says after a while. “I get it. Sometimes there’s nothing to like.”
* * *
—
> Papi has seen the new hashtag. The aroma of rising bread tells me before I even walk in the door. My father had so many emotions to process during the trial that he mastered every variety of pan dulce, and then moved on to macarons, croissants, and croquembouche.
He tries to plaster on a smile when I walk in. “Hola, canchita. ¿Cómo estás?”
“Well, I’ve been on the internet, if that answers your question.”
His face falls. “Your mother hasn’t seen it.”
He doesn’t say let’s call her. Or don’t tell her. Probably because he doesn’t know what to do, either. There’s no point upsetting her, but would it be worse if she finds out later that we kept it from her?
Besides which, Mom teaches college. Probably some of her students are following the hashtags. She might find out in the middle of a lecture on colonial slut-shaming.
I reach for my phone. I keep meaning to change the lock screen. That photo of me and Nor at Lake Atitlán looks like something from another life, the wind whipping our hair into a swirl of dark strands and light, our identical smiles the only clue of our shared blood.
Of course, Nor must have seen those vile posts. She did a pretty good job of staying away from social media before, but someone would have told her. One of her friends, whoever she’s talking to these days. Not me.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. After everything, what are hashtags?
But Nor still lives on campus. People who are enraged about potentially lost football games are obviously not the most rational people.
“She needs to come home.” I sink onto a stool. I hadn’t intended to talk to Papi about it. But things keep happening that I hadn’t intended.
“Mom?”
“No, Nor! What if they . . . do something?”
Papi sighs and drops his head into his hands, no bread challenging enough to process this. His elbows rest on the floury countertop. “¿Qué más hay?”
But there is more. There’s always more. The horrors never end.
BLURRING FACES
Father is a book
splayed open
We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire Page 5