“Tell me,” she persists. “Your boyfriend, he hurt you, yes?”
The scorching summer’s day and boiling soup in the kitchen make the air like a wool blanket around my shoulders, hot and heavy, but I still shiver. Caleb is far away and has never so much as sent a text to the pre-paid phone only Lo knows about. He doesn’t have my number, and I don’t think he knows to search here, but I find myself on alert.
Some people are afraid a gator will crawl out of the swamp and emerge as a threat. My nightmares star a different predator. I dream Caleb will rise out of the bayou some day and eat me whole, and next time I won’t be able to pry his jaws open and escape.
“He took from you.” MiMi says it like she knows for sure. She probably does. “He took, and you think you’ll never want a man again.”
I glance self-consciously at Sarai, but she is too young and oblivious, chewing on crusty bread with her little teeth and eating the grapes I put on her plate.
There was a man I wanted once, but if he knew all that’d happened to me . . . God, the thought of August finding out about Caleb and all that he did. I touch my neck. The idea of wanting a man again is hard to swallow when I still feel Caleb’s hand at my throat. Only it’s not his hand cutting off my breath, choking me. It’s shame.
My spoon drops, clattering in the bowl. I’m shaken by my memories, so visceral that after a year, I still feel Caleb shoving inside me like a battering ram. The sting of his belt buckle biting into my hip is still fresh. Yesterday’s regrets make today’s sorrows.
“You’ll want again.” MiMi covers my hand with her weathered one, the ringed fingers squeezing mine. “You need to be cleansed.”
She’s right. I’m dirty. How could I not be after that animal was inside me? After he subdued me like a rabbit he only left alive for sport? Even so, I don’t put much stock into the rituals MiMi thinks will make a difference.
“Meet me in the back after her bath.” She nods to Sarai, whose long, drowsy blinks send shadows on her cheeks.
After bath with bubbles in MiMi’s claw-foot tub, Sarai insists on a story. She loves fairytales, and I don’t have the heart to tell her that sometimes Prince Charming turns out to be an abusive asshole like her father, and sometimes his kisses bust your lips. When her lashes flicker and her breath slows into sleep, I turn off the lights in the small bedroom we share. Funny. We lived in a mansion, and every day I felt caged, claustrophobic. Now we live in a four-room house out in the middle of nowhere. We share a bedroom whose walls I can practically touch with each hand when I spread my arms, yet the sense of freedom is like none I’ve ever known.
I push back the curtain, studying MiMi’s “back room” with interest. I’ve seen people enter distraught and leave clutching their newfound peace and a mason jar or bottle of something from MiMi’s shelf of solutions. I don’t understand all that MiMi does—the potions people from town come to buy, the rituals she performs in the back of the house behind a curtain. I don’t know all that she does, but I believe every word she says.
She lights the last in a line of candles on a table against the wall, glancing up to find me paused on the threshold.
“Come,” she says. Even her voice is different here. Brusque, but not stern. Soft, yet impersonal. Gentle and firm.
She has work to do.
Work on me that I’m not sure I’m ready for. Once I climb on that table, I don’t know what will come next. Delaying, I browse the bottles crammed onto shelves lining the wall, a restless tactile exploration with my fingertips. I hesitate over a bottle with an unfamiliar symbol.
“Don’t touch that one,” MiMi says with her back turned to me.
How did she . . .?
I’ve stopped asking questions. There’s an omniscience to my great-grandmother. Some days, when her shoulders droop and her bustling steps slow to a shuffle, I wonder if she’s tired of knowing all the things she’s learned. If maybe soon, she’ll weary of living in a world that no longer holds mystery and set off for a new adventure.
She’s bent, looking for something under the table. Still nervous, I ease open a drawer, surprised to find a pocket knife. The handle is curved and ornate. It’s delicate, designed for smaller hands. I pick it up, caressing the jeweled button that opens it. I press, and with a snap, it unfurls a sharp, wicked length of blade.
“Touch a lady’s knife,” MiMi says, some humor sprinkled in her words, “you better be prepared to use it.”
I glance up, then catch the slight smile on her lips and return it. The simple connection spreads warmth over me as effectively as a physical embrace. MiMi communicates more with fewer words than anyone I’ve ever known. It feels like we learn as much about each other in glances, touches, and smiles as we do with the things we say.
“I was surprised to find it,” I admit, replacing the knife and closing the drawer.
“Well, a woman in this world has to keep her wits about her and her weapons at hand.” MiMi measures me from head to toe with a glance. She gestures for me to climb on the table. My nerves stretch so tight I’m sure I’ll tear in half.
“You must breathe,” MiMi whispers. Her words float above me, shrouded in the candles’ aromatic smoke. Below, my body’s held by a cloud of pillows. I should feel safe, secure, settled, yet I feel exposed. I’m so vulnerable, I close my eyes and cover my heart with my hands.
“Hands down,” MiMi commands gently.
Lowering my hands, I lock eyes with my great-grandmother and draw in deep, scented breaths.
“Breathe out.” Her eyes never leave mine as the breath pushes past my lips, and the longer she looks into my soul, the sadder her gaze becomes, shimmering with tears. “Oh, ma petite.”
Can she see? See past the fragile façade I’ve erected to cover the ruins? Can she see that last night and all the nights before? How he ravaged me? Does she know that I feel plundered, like a picked-over battlefield littered with dead bodies? That some days I am dead, and that Sarai, taking care of her, is the only thing forcing me through the motions of life? When MiMi looks in my eyes, does she see?
Her hands pass through the air above, covering me in scented breezes. Her words migrate from Spain, from France and West Africa, all the places that made us and mix in our blood, in our heritage. The syllables fall from her lips, foreign and familiar, as tossed and varied as the gumbo she taught me to prepare.
“Breathe out the lies,” she says. “That it was your fault. That you failed. That you are what he said you were.”
When her words sink in, when they drill down to my core, a sob explodes, detonating through my belly and chest, and blasting open a wall of deceit I didn’t know was there. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes, and I’m so damned tired of tasting my tears. The image of Caleb pressing his thumb into my mouth that first night, soaked with my tears, flashes through my mind. The night his wicked trap caught me.
“Breathe in truth.” Her hands are busy in the air over me, slicing through lies. “You are pure. You are enough. You are strong.” She leans closer, her whisper as sharp and fierce as the knife in her drawer. “He can’t hurt you.”
My shoulders shake and my head tips back, emotion stretching me wide, arching my back, elongating my neck, and wrenching my mouth open in a wail, a warrior cry. And in a smoky room filled with shadows, those parts of me Caleb scattered, I reconvene. All the pieces he splintered, I mend. And everything he stole from me like a petty thief, those things, every single one of them, I repossess.