An Act

Amelia Wright

This is not a story. This is a conversation; you and I are learning from each other. This is not a story, but if it were a story it would be a story about people we can pretend to be. But this is not a story; it is an act. Give yourself to me.

When you show up on my doorstep, a decade has passed since the day I stopped believing in God. When you show up on my doorstep, it won’t be long before I start to believe again. I look into your eyes and see someone gone. Like looking at the ghost of what could have been. In that same second, you are looking past me at a memory you tried to forget.

Me: I haven’t seen pale blue eyes like yours since the day my son died; I am stunned into silence, in awe of you;

You: You haven’t seen the cracks in those floorboards in ten years. You are unsettled and frozen; everything has been frozen.

We stand and stare at one another, seconds dragging to minutes. The afternoon sun encourages sweat stains and scorched grass. My body is limp, yours firm. The scent of molded wood howls. Finally, you explain that you received mail meant for me, apologizing for being a bother.

The seconds drag on as you wait for a reply. You don’t know it, but my heart pounds in my ears. Discomfort finally strikes you, and you thrust forward the manila envelope in your left hand. You hope that I will take it, free you from staring into the familiar living room beyond that filthy white door. I do not. You feel your palms become clammy and dull.

            I am hurting.

            You are young.

Stammering with what you perceive as fear, I ask who you are. It is not fear but astonishment; though, of course, you do not yet know this.

You offer your right hand, letting the envelope dangle at your side. You tell me the truth, albeit an abbreviated version: that your name is James and that you live four doors down. The friendly harmlessness you try to inject into your voice comes out stained, more like anxiety’s high-pitched waver.

Though my doors have always been locked and my shades drawn, I look to you as though I may have never laid eyes on another human being in my lifetime, eyes wide and legs shivering.

Me: My frame is slim—rounded spine and long fingers. I move like the wind took hold of me. I am visibly broken, lines like cracks in a face that should look young;

You: Your build is stocky—broad shoulders and thick legs. You move with a military rigidity. You are not visibly anything—if there is a spark within you, it has been buried.

My eyes wander from your eyebrows down to your knees, back up to your hairline and down and up and down again. Time ticks slowly by, and you notice you have begun to fidget, suddenly uncomfortable under my unwavering stare and uneasy at the scene behind me.

You have two urges: 1) to ask me if I am okay, to offer support and cradle my aching limbs until I can trust again, 2) to run.

You do neither.

I do both.

I pull you into an embrace tighter than anything you imagined a woman of my stature could muster. You can feel my lungs pressed against you, feel them struggling under the weight of a sob repressed. Stunned into submission, you are silent and still. When I pull away, you notice I have slid the manila envelope out of your hand. I retreat into the house and close the door, without saying a word.

Let’s rewind.

You are James. You are twenty-six. You live in the dark, carpeted basement of your childhood home in Syracuse. Yes, with your parents.

You moved back here last year after returning from Afghanistan, where you served for three years because you flunked out of your second college and tried to run from your shame. You have never believed in God.

You only ever had two friends (here the term friend refers to people that you give yourself to), Kyle and Sam—but Sam moved away when you were ten, so perhaps it’s more authentic to say that the only person you felt safe with was Kyle. You met him when you were four and moved four doors down from him when you were nine.

You were fifteen when you went to your best friend’s funeral.

When Kyle told you he wanted to die, you were going to save his life. It was a Wednesday, and it was raining. You two were in his basement with the red shag carpet and the ugly wood paneling that made the room itself look like a time machine. You lost so much time in there. The sound of feet on the concrete outside, and the smell of dust and weed clinging to a dingy brown couch, and a video game console. What more could you have asked for?

On that Wednesday, Kyle asked you to leave. He had never asked you that before. You asked what was wrong and, in an instant, confessions fell faster than the rain. They tumbled over his lips and fell on unsuspecting ears and crept into your lungs until neither of you were breathing and silence fell. You watched your reflection waver as lakes infiltrated his eyes and took over his slender frame. All you could do was hold his wiry body close and promise him you wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

You went to his mom, and Kyle went to therapy, and Kyle was prescribed medication, and Kyle said everything was getting better, and Kyle lied because then Kyle took a bottle of oxycodone that was left over from when he tore his ACL.

On the morning Kyle died—January 14, 2008—you were knee-deep in your pants when you heard a distant wail, a deep whine that could have cracked the earth, and paid it no mind. You went to school as usual, drank the same grape soda you always bought from the vending machine for lunch, and dropped your backpack in your living room before running four doors down, like every other Monday, to hot box Kyle’s basement and play Call of Duty.

You knocked, but no one answered. You knocked louder. You turned the doorknob and were surprised to find it locked. You called him, twice, and no one picked up. After a few moments staring dumbfounded at his front door, you trudged home through the snow and did your homework for the first time all year.

You were called downstairs that night by a gentle tone in your mother’s voice. She described distantly a suicide with opioids and withheld the note with no mention of you. You were immobilized, held tight by the cushioned couch; you could have sunk into it and drowned right there and then.

You were told that there was no way you could have known things weren’t getting better. That you did everything you could and it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t save him—there was nothing you could have done. And then your mom told you that Kyle’s mother would hold the funeral that Saturday and that she hoped you would attend. You smoked tobacco, popped benzos that did nothing to ease your physical or psychological pain. You lost track of where and why you were. You turned numb to your limbs, blind to the world beyond your haze.

On the day of his funeral, you hurt like the world hadn’t forgotten you.

Blooming purple flowers were the only sign of life in the drab, windowless viewing room. Eyes pretending to nurture examined you—the stinging smell of formaldehyde thinly veiled by perfume too sickeningly sweet for the occasion.

It was a closed-casket funeral, so you had to imagine. You imagined constricted pupils and blue lips, saliva dripping down his chin, and cold fingertips. You imagined his mother holding his body, limp, in her arms. You could not stop imagining. You could not imagine peace.

When you left his funeral, you were not alone. You walked his mother back to her house: silence. A paneled white door shut in your face and never reopened. Days later, you knocked and heard nothing. Weeks later, you had still been trying, thinking maybe if you could look into the eyes of his mother, there might be a bit of him left for you. Silence rang from the other side. A month later, once again sinking into your couch, you heard from your own mother’s gentle voice that they had moved out while you were at school.

You were knee-deep in blinding white snow watching someone else move into Kyle’s home when you heard a wail, a deep whine that could have shattered the icy roads, and realized it was your own voice.

When you show up on my doorstep, it has been ten years since you’ve seen the inside of that house.

A memory: empty knocks on the grimy door of a haunted home.

Let’s go back once more.

I am Briana. I am thirty-five. I live in a small, broken house down the road from you that I bought with my ex-husband.

My ex-husband proposed to me because I was already malleable and flimsy and would become any person he wanted me to be. My ex-husband asked for a divorce when he realized he was married to a mirror, not a soul. I got married when I was thirty and divorced when I was thirty-one.

I was twenty-five when I birthed the blue corpse of my son.

When I found out I was pregnant, I wept under the mingling reds and yellows of my church’s stained glass. On my knees, palm pressed to palm, fingers interlaced as if I could squeeze reality away, I muttered under my breath, shaking my head against assent. I asked God why.

Why had He given me this weight, this responsibility?

Why had He done it now, when I was so young and so alone and so afraid of my future and still so in love with my departed past?

In whispers, I begged for it to be untrue. I pleaded with Him: Please don’t let me be a mother.

The night I lost my baby—January 14, 2008—I prayed for the last time.

On a stiff exam table, I felt the cool jelly against my stomach. I had been here four weeks earlier, and they had promised that at my next visit I would be able to see a child’s shape on the ultrasound. I’m having a bit of trouble finding the heartbeat. And so another doctor joined in, a treasure hunt for life. Whispers.

Then there were only fluorescents and letters and numbers, some of which were: twenty-two—how many weeks pregnant I was when I found out my baby would never hear my heartbeat; TORCH— medical shorthand for the series of tests that were performed to find the cause of death; twenty-five—the number of days my baby boy was soulless inside of me before I found out; CMV—cytomegalovirus, the symptomless virus that infected my little boy and took him away.

I was told that there was no way of knowing—nothing I could have done. That a common placental abnormality combined with a surreptitious virus made for a quiet death. And then they told me that they would induce my labor and I would push. They loaded me with drugs that did nothing to ease my physical or psychological pain. I lost track of what was mine and how I was. I turned deaf to the words of the midwife, blind to the world beyond my lids.

A new number: nineteen—the number of hours I was in labor before I was finally able to push, push, that’s it you’re almost there just one more push his rigid form out of my body and into my arms; nineteen—the number of hours that my stillborn son held on to his wailing mother; nineteen—the number of hours that I repeated my little boy and goodbye and I’m so sorry like an echo of myself.

Knees on cold tile, palm pressed to palm, fingers interlaced as if to hold myself together, I rocked back and forth, gently banging my forehead against the side of the hospital mattress. I asked God why, a deep power surging from my center and implicating He who could have saved my son.

When you show up on my doorstep, it has been ten years since I have seen eyes like yours.

A memory: a blue-skinned child with light eyes and rigid body.

            Let’s start again.

When you show up on my doorstep, several years have already passed since the day God stopped believing in you. But the day my water bill got delivered to your address was the day he gave his faith back.

You, James, interact with me, Briana, for several excruciating minutes of staring in silence, save for twenty-three words and the sound of cicadas ringing in summer’s swelter.

We see each other.

A memory: light eyes and a rigid body.

A thought: what would it be like to hold him again?

I press my body to yours and hold you like a mother out of practice. When I pull away, I have taken a piece of you with me. When I retreat into my (his) house and shut the door, you want that piece back.

A memory: a closed white door to a haunted home.

A thought: what would it be like to breathe inside it once more?

You reach out your hand and knock. You expect nothing; you are used to silence on the other side. But the thrill of an answer a few minutes ago has instigated a need for someone to shatter the cracks in the paint, peel open the door, and let you in again. And here I come. I return and usher you inside.

I have mist in my eyes and offer you a glass of water.

You pick at the dirt under your nails and accept.

You and I sit apart in the living room. Like a strange forgotten memory.

My body is ensconced in a disintegrating leather chair, yours stiff on an ottoman five feet away. There is no other furniture. There is no air conditioning, and the air inside is stickier than under the blue sky, though a fan whirrs in the corner. The carpet is the same used-to-be-white beige. There’s a discolored stain underneath your foot from the night Kyle tripped on your shoe and spilled Chinese food.

Me: You have my son’s eyes.

You: You have my friend’s house.

It has been ten years since you walked up the steps to this house and been welcomed inside. Now, you sit in a home rebuilt and begin to believe once more in cure. There is a painting of a vase of flowers on the wall, purple and sweet like the ones at Kyle’s funeral, the last proof you have of his existence.

It has been ten years since I last felt like my body was whole. Now, I find solace in a young man who looks the way I always pictured my son ending up. There is a birthmark on your cheek, not far from the spot that I kissed my dead son over and over before the nurses took his tiny body from my arms.

You knock because a piece of you is inside that house.

I answer because you are a piece of me.

You will never get that piece back. But you will take scraps of me in exchange. We will give ourselves to one another, bodies and spirits. We will dance in reciprocation, devour one another and offer ourselves. This act is for us.