by Tiana Laveen
The tension became palpable. In that instant, he felt her hatred for him.
“My sister suffered. Not me.”
“Did she? She couldn’t miss what she never had, Yasmine. Like riding a bike, kissing a boy for the first time, cheerleading practice, debate club, you name it. You had all of that. But you were the overachiever, wishing to prove your love to your sister, your family, and your parents. Look at me, Mom! I’ve got it! I’ll take care of it! WATCH ME EXCEL! WATCH ME GO! They probably never even put that pressure on you. Sure, they wanted you to be successful, but all of that was self-imposed because you didn’t feel good enough. You’d lose your own damn identity to help everyone else keep their own. You’re a sacrificial lamb of your own making. Being perfect costs way too much. And that’s why you’re broken. That’s why you want to relinquish control behind closed doors… That’s why broken people gravitate towards other broken people. We’ve got a story to tell. Tell me I’m lying…”
The woman was shaking now, eyes like gleaming sable oceans. Her beautiful walnut skin contrasted strikingly with the blue dress. Her chest rose and fell in harsh movements, her collarbones shifting, twisting under her flesh.
“No. You’re not lying.” She exhaled. Her shoulders drooped and she lowered her gaze, remaining so for a long time. Meanwhile, he drank his wine and studied her. He liked her a little bit more with each moment. Unpacking damaged goods was a difficult task, but breaking a woman who had the potential to steal your entire fucking heart was a job within itself. She finally looked up at him. Picking up her glass of wine, she tasted it, and smiled. A tear streamed down her face.
“This is delicious.”
He nodded. “So, how did she pass away?”
She shook her head, not even bothering to ask how he’d figured out the truth. Just accepting that he knew.
“Tamia died when I was twenty-one. One week before my birthday. I was slated to finish undergrad at the University of Chicago, then go on to start my law degree program there. I’d wanted to move out at nineteen but stayed for Tamia. Most of my siblings, except for Zonnell, my brother, had left already and gotten their own place. Tamia… Tamia was still quite dependent on me, even though she had more of our parents’ attention and had learned more life skills by then. Our parents still worked quite a bit. My mother was an assistant principal at a high school that year, and my father was a school counselor at an elementary school.”
She took a deep breath and continued, “One night, my friends asked me out to a party. I was pretty excited. People had been talking about this for weeks. I got dressed in one of my favorite outfits.” She smiled sadly, shaking her head. “Combed my hair just so… I had just gotten it done, too, with money I’d earned working at Subway. As I was leaving the house…” she paused, took a moment, “Tamia started grunting… moving about. I could hear her trying to get my attention. I was… I was so irritated. I turned to her and said, ‘Stop it. You’re trying to manipulate and guilt trip me. I will be back in a few hours. I need time away.’ I felt like Mom and Dad were there, Zonnell was there, she’d be fine.
“I went to the party. Smoked a little weed, drank a bit, danced with Jason Monfrey… a boy I liked at college. He was two years older than me. Smart, sexy, popular and somehow, I managed to catch his attention…” She looked down and shook her head as the tears started to fall in earnest. “We made out in his car. I had him stop at the last second. He wasn’t happy about that, but accepted it. I asked if he would take me home. He said yes. After he dropped me off at about two in the morning, I went inside the house. It was quiet. Everyone was asleep. I took off my clothes, still happy because at least he’d kissed me goodnight and told me he’d call me the next day. I got in the shower, humming, singing songs. After I was done, I put on my pajamas and went into Tamia’s room to check on her. She had her own room now that everyone was gone. I went in there… and… I screamed.
She closed her eyes, shutting herself away from the world for a moment. “I screamed… and screamed… There she was, lying on the floor, blood seeping from her head all over the place. Her eyes were looking straight up, glazed over. Somehow, she’d fallen. It was later stated that she must’ve tripped over her nightgown some kind of way. She hit her head hard and bled out. I remember my parents and brother entering the room, and then, everything moving in slow motion. I couldn’t help but feel responsible. If I had only been there. If I hadn’t gone out… My last words to her had been so dismissive, so rude…” Tear after tear slid down her cheeks. “I had felt like she’d been holding me back. I felt like—”
“Stop.” She did, her face etched with confusion as she dabbed at her tears with her napkin. “You know, logically, you’re not to blame. No one blames you; in fact, everyone who loved her, and I imagine that was a lot of people, are probably blaming themselves. She came into the world a gift. She left also a gift. She saw the beauty of being free, even if only in her own mind. And if she could learn to be free, while cooped up in a house for most of her life, with the exception of the never-ending doctor’s appointments and physical therapy sessions, then surely, you can repay her by setting yourself free?” They locked gazes for what seemed like forever. “This is probably the longest period of time I’ve gone without cursing.”
They both burst out laughing. When she was done drying her face, she spread the napkin over her lap, real slow, meticulously.
“I saw a grief therapist after her death, Nix. I went through a depression. I’ve discussed it… many times in the past.” She shrugged. “But never have I talked about Tamia and the conversation went this way.”
“Well, there’s a first for everything, right?”
“Your turn. I want to know a truth about you, and not something silly or mundane. Something excruciating. Something lurid. Something scandalous, gut-wrenching, or just plain ugly.” He picked up his glass of wine, wishing for a buzz he doubted he’d receive. Running his finger up and down the glass, he finally set it back down and basked in her beauty. Her openness.
“You are the other side of my coin.” She threw him a look of curiosity. “I know the pain you just shared. I know it well. I had a cousin born two days before me. We were very close, with similar personalities – the silliest kids in the room. We’d share birthday parties, a two-for-one deal. We did everything together. Samuel was unlike me in one way though. He was afraid of water. Like rivers, lakes, things like that. He wouldn’t go on boats. He wouldn’t go fishing on a boat and when the whole family went on a cruise, fuhgettaboutit! Nope. He stayed in Chicago with a friend of the family. When he and I were both about thirteen, we went on a family vacation, on a farm. There was a river near this big old house we were all staying in. The Iroquois River.” He had to stop to choose his words carefully, and doing his best not to let the memories get the best of him. “I kept sayin’, ‘Come on, Sammie! Grow some balls! Let’s go!’ He’d often go with us for fishing and things like that, but he never got too close to the water.
“So I convinced him to go and it was a gang of us, right? About twenty teenagers; maybe a few more. Sammie was there, having a good time, laughing. He was talking to other members of the family and seemed to be fine. I told him I’d be right back. I went off with a couple other cousins, not far, maybe thirty feet away, and we were smoking some cigarettes I stole from my dad. Sammie never smoked, so I didn’t bother asking. Honestly, I wasn’t into cigarettes, but I was tryna be cool. All of a sudden, I hear all of this commotion, right? Screaming, people runnin’ around. Me and my cousins took off in that direction and found that someone, a guy we didn’t even know who was with his friends nearby, thought it would be funny to run by Sammie and push him in the river. I have no idea why he’d been standing so close to the water. He must’ve been comfortable in that environment for some reason. I guess the guy who did it was just horsin’ around, but Sammie couldn’t swim.
“I and a few others jumped in to get him. I remember yelling, ‘He can’t swim! He can’t swim!’ over and over
again, like a siren or something… Like I was tryna remind God, ya know?” Yasmine brushed away a tear and nodded. “Trying to remind Him that my cousin couldn’t swim. We couldn’t find where he went, Yasmine… I stayed in that river forever, shivering, searching, until I was dragged out the water kickin’ and screamin’ by my uncle. A few hours later, they found him…”
Yasmine’s face held pain. It held hope. It held forgiveness.
“It had been all over the news, and that night, I stayed up. I barely blinked. Me and Sammie had shared a room at that old farm house, just the two of us.
“I went in there and tried to fight anyone who attempted to move his stuff, pack it up, put it away… People were leaving back to the city. The entire family was in shock, mourning. I insisted he was coming back, and he’d want everything left just as it was. I never lied to myself like that again. And then, I broke down… I went crazy. I kept playin’ that old tape in my mind – the one that said, ‘You made him go to the river. You made him go, and then you didn’t even have the guts to stand with him, to be with him, spend that time with him. Sammie loved you; you were best friends. I was closer to him than even my own brother. I had let Sammie down. He was in the water, like a fish… like a fish in an aquarium…” Yasmine shook her head. “I had nightmares about how those final seconds must’ve been for him, knowing he was drowning, that his greatest fear was coming true. I wondered if he thought about me, blamed me? I got there too late. If I had just been faster… if I had, if I had, if I had… The list was endless. All of those things haunted me for years and years, Yasmine.
“We’re all fish in a big aquarium. Maybe your sister realized that. You said she was wise, and I believe you. We’re in here, controlled, and we don’t even know it. We’re brainwashed. All of us, in one way or another. If we can’t see the edges of the tank, we think we’re free. The edges make us feel safe though. It’s a false sense of security. We live our lives in there, ya know? Not knowing that the world is bigger than that aquatic cell and nothing is worse than standing on the edge of the bank, watching life go by. Your sister wasn’t trapped by it; you were. She accepted her lot in life, but held onto you like a life preserver because you represented what she wished to be. And there is no shame in that. My cousin… my cousin was trapped by it – an overwhelming fear. A fear that kept him from reaching his full potential. But he was happy with his life, in spite of it. I was still to blame.
“I was known to not be scared of anything. Halloween, horror movies… scary scenes never made me jump or react much. But this? Sammie’s death? Scared the shit outta me. Our family pointed fingers at the boy who’d pushed him, railed at his parents and said he must’ve come from a terrible home. They pointed at the music of our youth, the video games. It was everyone’s fault but the river’s. No one looked at me, but I looked at me, Yasmine. I might as well have pushed him myself… drowned him… kept him under the current. I blamed myself over and over, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw a selfish bastard. A kid who wanted to be an adult, who thought I was cool when I was just some loser… A piece of shit whose father was a drunk and still cooler than he was, including when he was passed out cold. I was just a punk whose mother was at times complicated and problematic and a little crazy, yet deeply loving and had more pizazz and creativity in her baby finger than I had in my entire body. How could I look into a river and not see my reflection? I saw myself for who I was. A soulless whisper.”
He grabbed the bottle of wine and poured them both a fresh glass.
“I didn’t deserve happiness. I deserved abandonment. And that’s what I got. I learned to expect it. I forced abandonment to happen, extinguishing any chance of true closeness, connection. Whenever I began to feel deeply for someone, I shut it all down. Immediately. I deserved to be left on a bank and pushed into something that would kill me. I deserved to rot. I was never the same after that. Yeah,” he waved lazily about, “people die. Death is a part of life. I’d been to plenty of funerals and had lost loved ones before that day, but see, Sammie was like me. We even looked similar. We looked like brothers, not cousins. When they pulled his dead body outta that water, I threw up. It was like looking at myself. Dead. I was ashen and blue, not him. It was me. No heartbeat. I no longer cared. I still don’t care. Everything is turned off and shut down so I don’t go bonkers. Dead on the inside, now. By choice. Sammie and I would have to both be dead, together, because in death, there was safety. Like the edges of an aquarium…”
His chest tightened. “When stuff like that happens, after a while, you get to feel nothing. And when you want to feel something, it has to be emotions on steroids! You have to get high off your ass, Yasmine. You have to fuck the living shit outta beautiful woman… but be careful.” He placed his finger up to his lips in a shushing gesture. “You can’t fall in love too hard, because if you do, you just might die again. But I’m not a pussy. I’m nobody’s punk. I need more, now.” His heart raced as he told his truth, left his burden at her feet. “I want that crazy love that I know I’m going to get if I just get outta the gotdamn fish tank. I want that love my parents had when they were first together. I want that love that will accept me and all of my fucked-up ways, and see the beauty in my blackest holes and hardest, jagged edges. Sometimes I’m still that thirteen-year-old boy at the river, ya know? But most of the time, I’m a complicated man, like my mother, and a functional drunk like my father –not from alcohol though. I get high off life, Yasmine, over and over again. I’m an adrenaline and philosophical junkie, thinking about how this shit works then feeling determined to make something happen.” He swirled his finger about in the air.
“I like to think about shit, the hard shit, the things people run from. I make a lotta fuckin’ money, baby. But I can’t take that shit with me. I believe we can take love with us, though. It imprints itself on our souls, like the love of a sister whose way of telling you she loved you was by needing you. She didn’t mean any harm. You were just that special to her.”
Yasmine lowered her head and shook like a leaf. He could hear her quietly crying over the soft, romantic instrumental music. With a sigh, he tossed his napkin down, stood up, and walked over to her chair.
Resting his hands on her shoulders, he gently pushed her ponytail to the side and kissed the gentle curve of her neck, then her crown.
“And now you know what the journal was for. Good job, beautiful. Second tape in your mind has been officially erased. I’ve replaced it with a new memory, just like I promised. Now, when you think of Tamia, you’ll think of beautiful, vibrant fish… not the ones swimming in a tank or at the aquarium, but those swimming free in an ocean. There are no edges… no ends… no stop signs there. She’s free. Nothing can stop her now.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it for dear life. “Come on, baby. Time to take you home…”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Asking for a Friend…
Goldie’s condominium had all the accoutrements one could desire. The white walls were adorned with minimalistic art, large canvases with random scribbles. She found these annoying yet captivating all at once. The decor looked rich and luxurious – matching emerald vases with gold and silver flecks at the entrance, expensive Greek statues and matching bookends here and there.
The woman was beautiful, with dark, flawless skin, the lean, toned body of a super-model, and long, merlot-colored, poker straight hair parted down the middle. She handed Yasmine a glass of Sangiovese.
“Thank you, girl.”
Goldie sat down next to her, the scent of her sweet perfume filling the area.
“You’re welcome, honey. So good to have you here. We’ve not had time like this, just the two of us, for about two months.”
Her best friend, an attorney who worked for a different law firm, reached for a cigarette she’d left resting in a clear astray on the coffee table. The onyx table legs were in the shape of a male crouched on all fours, his back supporting the glass surface. She and Goldie had met in 8th grade, both at the top of their class a
nd rather popular, and later attended the same law school to boot. That’s when the friendship really took off and stood the test of time. Goldie was Yasmine’s best friend, a true-blue girlfriend who’d seen her through thick and thin.
“It’s so good to hang out with you in a non-professional setting.” Yasmine treasured her time spent with family and friends, despite her hectic schedule. An instrumental, jazzy version of ‘Roni,’ by Bobby Brown, regaled her ears, taking her back to childhood memories that were soft and fuzzy around the edges. Good times.
“So.” Goldie took a long draw of her cigarette, placed it back into the ashtray, then drank some of her wine. She sipped daintily, pinky finger sticking out and all. “Why have you seemed, oh, I don’t know…” she shrugged, “so distracted yet gleeful lately?”
Yasmine looked away, hiding a smile.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Goldie burst out laughing. “That means one of two things. It has to do with money or a man. The two M’s of life are the only bullshit that cause us this type of distress.”
“It’s not distress, but it is a mess.” Yasmine chuckled and crossed her legs. She glanced at her black glossy heels that sat near the front door. Goldie’s white Persian cat sauntered by, looking stuck up and sadiddy. The damn thing stopped to glare at her as if to say, ‘Tell that bitch living with me that I want you out of my house. You don’t even buy sardines for me as a form of payment for me letting you stay.’ “But I’m… happy with it. At least, so far.”