“You don’t know what I think.”
He groans, squeezing his eyes shut and nodding like he’s talking to the grass.
“There can be two exceptions,” he says, but he gestures at me with his chin, like he means that’s what I think. And then he shakes his head. Slow. “One.”
I don’t respond.
It’s my eyes that roam now, even though I shouldn’t let them. Kelly’s regaining his composure. He’ll be able to stand up again soon, to walk around, to focus on something other than the poor state of his beaten and bruised body. He’ll read whatever I leave on my face.
“They only want one.”
“You don’t know the Whitmans,” I tell him. The words come shooting out at their defense, even though I want to dam them up and hold my tongue. I don’t want to say anything to Kelly that I didn’t already decide. I don’t want to lose control, only fold it primly and set it aside when I decide I can. He isn’t even worth it, but I can’t stop. “They want me here. Brianne wants me to stay, whether my parents move or not. She keeps secrets with me.”
I manage to stop myself before I say that there’s something even Cherish doesn’t know. In the drawer on my side of the bed, there’s a gift that has nothing to do with the daughter they already have. And I trust them because of her. Because of how they’ve always been with her, of how they use their privilege to shelter her in the only way Brianne says white privilege must be used until it’s dismantled for good.
“You don’t trust them because they’re white, and normally that would make a lot of sense—but you don’t know them. You don’t even know Judge Campbell, after everything he’s done. He had an exceptional son, and he still took you in.”
“For something else.” He forces the words out, as though no matter how much air he’s taken in, it isn’t enough.
I don’t wait for the words to sink in, the way too much of what Kelly’s said has tonight. I stand up so that I’m looking down at him.
“It’s probably gonna take a while to get back,” I tell him. “You shouldn’t lie there much longer.”
I turn on my heel without waiting for his reply, for some ridiculous request for assistance that I wouldn’t honor in a million years, and I head back to the house. I go home to my bedroom, and to the bed I share with Cherish.
X
I t’s the rain that wakes me up. At least I think it is.
There’s the sound of torrential rainfall, the kind that doesn’t come for days, and when it does, it’s because something snaps. Lightning, at last, when the air has gotten so still that it feels like the whole world is coming to a dangerous pause. Just when you think you’ll never breathe again, when you’re Kelly on the soft ground writhing while his eyes roved like they were searching for the air that wasn’t in his lungs—the world cracks with light and the roll of a timpani drum the size of the sky.
When relief comes, it’s unrelenting. It can’t be stopped. It can’t be sated.
The rain will fall until the world drowns. But it doesn’t matter if you’re already underwater.
I know it’s a dream because I can hear the raindrops smacking the surface of the pool. Cherish and I are both below the surface, in a dual baptism without need of a priest, and when I finally open my eyes, I’m looking toward the turbulence, the way the rain attacks the water and causes waves.
It should join the rest, droplets being absorbed by more of their kind, but it slaps instead, little pellets that strike like bombs and then explode, or else prove themselves impotent and somersault away.
I want the dream to stay this way. I want this world where there’s only Cherish and me, in a place no one ever thought to look for us no matter how many times we came. I can sense the rest of the house where I used to live, the way you can in dreams, and I can feel the white birch trees, but all I can see is the rain breaking the surface and Cherish’s arms or legs as they churn slowly beside me so that we stay at the bottom of the pool.
We’re holding our breath and we’re somehow breathing deep.
It doesn’t matter.
We belong together.
Not the way you think.
Kelly’s still writhing on the grass outside the gazebo, and I try to bring my foot down hard on the bull’s-eye across his ribs, but the water slows me down. The effort is frustrating, the way I can lift my leg with ease, but it grinds to a slow motion so that there’s no force left by the time it strikes him. It doesn’t matter that I’m still in the pool at my house, and Kelly’s far away; I should be able to reach him.
Instead I try to take hold of Cherish, but her arms and legs are gone now, and neither of us is at the bottom of the pool.
I must’ve heard the rain outside the bedroom window, the difference in the sound it makes against the roof, or else the glass, or else the drainpipe, or else the grass down below. I’m in bed, where I should be, and I remember climbing in beside Cherish and nestling against her back so that I could hear her breathe, and for a moment I think I’ve woken up.
That’s the best part of sharing a room. No matter what she’s like during the day, no matter how she looks at me—even that expression she gave me that seemed to wonder what was wrong with me—at night, we’re at peace. If I use a phrase I know will burrow under her skin, if she spends the day away from me when I’m delirious and ill, when we sleep, all is forgiven. I make sure to sync our breathing, and she wraps herself around me when I come close, no questions asked.
But Cherish isn’t in the bed. She’s standing over it.
She’s standing over me, even though this isn’t the pool.
I can’t see her face, but I know it’s my Cherish by the shape of her hair.
One two three four fiiiiiive, she whisper-counts, one two three four fiiiive.
The numbers come one after the other, immediate and brief except for the last. The last one she draws out like she’s dragging it across the others.
Like she’s making tally marks, the way she does in the journal I found.
What are you counting? I ask her, but her shadow face doesn’t change. She doesn’t lean closer or turn away; she just recites the numbers again.
One two three four fiiiive.
This time I feel them, four fast, one slow. Five is deeper than the rest, because it has to reach farther. It has to be sustained.
I’ve been feeling something all along, tiny, sharp pinpricks that don’t connect. They accumulate now, the sensation taking on weight once I know what they are. They become distinct when they join with Cherish’s count.
I can look down now, at the naked side Cherish hovers over.