“What if you drown again?”
Brianne shoots back up onto her knees.
“Cherish,” she says, her voice raised.
We have to do this now, before the fire goes out or the neighbors alert security again.
“Then there’ll be no more whipping girl,” I tell Cherish, lacing my fingers behind her neck to keep her close despite her mother. “If I drown, only you’ll be left to face the consequences. You’ll be a whole person, the way they didn’t want you to be. The way they can’t help you be.”
“I love you, RahRah,” she tells me.
“Even if I’m a monster?” I ask, and I know what she’ll say.
“You aren’t the only one.”
She disconnects our foreheads long enough to lay her head on my shoulder just as my mother lays her hands on Brianne Whitman’s shoulders.
Cherish is still wet when we wrap ourselves around each other, and her baptismal water soaks through my underwear and my skin.
She can’t know what’s going to happen next, but this step is crucial, the way she knows that she could lose me, that I would sacrifice myself for her to be a better Cherish. A complete Cherish.
I bury my face in her neck, too, and then I pull back before she’s ready.
“Baptize me,” I tell her, and then I go down.
“Cherish,” I hear Brianne Whitman cry out before my ears are underwater. “Don’t!”
My best friend’s hands find my chest, and one atop the other, as though to do compressions, as though to bring me back to life, Cherish pushes down and I go all the way under.
There are warbled sounds, as though Brianne has lost all decorum and gone into a frenzy immediately.
Through the water, I keep my eyes on Cherish, and for a moment she is looking back at me. Despite the noise and the way the light creeps up the sky from all sides, eating up the darkness and promising to rain down thick, burning red-orange when the destruction of the darkness is complete.
When Brianne finally gets in the pool, it’s like an explosion disrupts the water and I turn my head to find her legs shooting out as though she doesn’t know there’s no use trying to run.
She is crying out for Cherish to stop, to pull me out, and I hold Cherish’s wrists so that she doesn’t give in before her mother arrives.
Brianne is too frantic; the faster she tries to move, the slower she seems to go. She is exhausted by the time her hands land on her daughter, but taking hold of Cherish does nothing to bring me up.
“Cherish, let her go!” Brianne shouts as she wrestles her daughter and finds for the first time that she is no match in strength. I can hear her now that she is directly above me, though the water sloshes around me, and even though I hold my breath, I feel the burn as some invades my sinuses.
“Why? So you can punish her instead of me?” Cherish demands. “Isn’t that the way a whipping girl works, Mommy? Won’t one of us have to pay? Why can’t it be me? Am I not strong like they are? Don’t you want me to be?”
“No,” Brianne cries. “Cherish, please!”
“Baptize her,” Nichole Turner tells me from outside the pool, and I plant my feet on the bottom.
I erupt from the water, taking hold of Cherish so that she doesn’t fall back—only Brianne does.
The water moves in the space between us as though it has traded places with the air, as though it has all risen with me. As though it is mine, like the fire and the lava.
Brianne is off-balance, her whole body contorted, half in and half out of the water, her thin hair already plastered to her pale skin. When I take hold of her, she doesn’t know to resist.
She is underwater with little effort, and for a moment neither she nor Cherish fights back.
The water that’s been airborne crashes back into the pool, and the world inside the fence is quiet.
I am holding Brianne Whitman underwater, when my mother speaks.
“Control.”
I must not do this alone. Cherish is bewildered somewhere behind me, but I have to bring her back.
“Cherish, baptize her with me,” I say, tension entering my voice when my best friend’s mother collects her bearings and understands what is happening. She’s thrashing now, and though she is slight, I cannot hold her down without Cherish helping me. I won’t.
“Cherish,” I say again—but she’s already beside me.
Cherish is looking down into the churning water, but her hands are at her sides.
“Che.”
“They’re monsters. But they love me, RahRah.”
“They love you, Che, but it doesn’t matter. They didn’t think you could be strong without struggle, and they kept you weak so you wouldn’t see that the world they made for you only exists here.”
Brianne almost breaches the surface, and I focus for a moment, gritting my teeth to force her back under.
The calm insistence returns to my voice as quickly as it escaped, and the whimpering shriek Cherish made settles below the surface again when her mother does.
“You can’t be them, Che. You can’t. And you can’t keep us both. They made sure of that.”
I don’t give her the ultimatum. I don’t tell her that it’s Jerry and Brianne Whitman or me—just remind her that it is the dynamic they forged.
“Help me, Che, so they can’t hurt me again.”
It takes her longer than it should, after everything her mother said. After all the things she told us that apply to everyone who looks like us. After saying words that people who love and learn and sound the way the Whitmans do shouldn’t be capable of saying, it shouldn’t take Cherish long to come down on my side.
But I’ll forgive her. Cherish is the one I’ll protect, the one I’ll always love even when I hate her. And she belongs to me now, the way I told Kelly she did. The way Tariq knew she did when he saw that she had witnessed and never tried to stop me.
Cherish is baptizing her mother with me and I am swallowed up in rapt intoxication. I am rocked by waves of Brianne’s resistance quelled by her daughter’s forceful response. I ease off her mother to test Cherish’s pressure, and Brianne Whitman cannot break free.
I let go completely, stumble back in the water, and witness. The sky is red-orange, and the fire is raging outside the fence, but now the water is changed, too. The light that cuts through has transformed the pale and slight blue-green to the color of the flame, and as Brianne struggles against her daughter’s baptism, everything burns but Cherish and me.
Lights turn on in the house next door, but it’s too late.