Josiah

When I found out she was staying in Mark’s vacation house in Rhode Island for a few days, I called her. It was time. I couldn’t forget her. We had to talk and figure out what went wrong. I fucked up badly, but she didn’t seem mad on the phone. I was nervous, but hopeful we could work something out. I was still in New York when I called, but I made the drive up there.

The dream I had the night before, made me think she might bail from our meeting. Her brown body, glowing in the sun, running away from me. I kept chasing her, but she was always faster than me, always ten feet ahead of me. It could have been the nerves, but I didn’t want to take the chance. So I drove to the house early, very early, anticipating seeing her for the first time in months, and ready to be there for her. It was an especially hot day, but the morning breeze cleared my head.

Mark’s spare key under the carpet let me in and I walked to the guest room. I couldn’t believe white people actually left keys under the carpet, but I felt good about not having to ring the doorbell. The room was neat except her jeans were sprawled on the floor and her shirt was on the desk chair. Where was she? I looked out the window. I froze.

Black hair floating in the water attached to a body that looked, still. The stench of chlorine filled the air as I tried to account for her scantily clad body. Ripples spread across the surface of the water, and this small observation made me spring into action. I jumped in the pool and pulled her out. Her underwear was stuck to her cold skin.  My mind was blank, I couldn’t think of anything, but her breathing. She can’t be gone, she can’t be gone. I pumped her chest violently, aware that I could break a rib, but her life was more important than a rib. I kept pumping and yelling at her to breathe. How could she do this? I kept yelling for her to breathe, getting angrier by the second. How selfish could she be? How fucking selfish? I needed her, we had things to talk about. I could’ve made it better.

A cough. I stopped and looked at her as she coughed water out of her lungs. Her body looked weak as it sucked the air into its lungs. I wasn’t pleased yet, I needed to see her eyes and hear her voice. She opened them and looked confused.

“Why are you crying?” she croaked.

I don’t know where they came from, but tears were falling. She almost died, and if I didn’t come over, she would have been dead. I almost lost her.

Again.

******

Sasha was distant for as long as I could remember. That’s just the way she was and I accepted it. In fact I welcomed it; all the other women demanded more. I wasn’t complaining, but they just demanded more. More coaxing, soft murmurs, and reassuring touches, but Sasha, was a different story. It took me two weeks to finally touch her once we became friends, and it wasn’t even a big deal, just a slight nudge after she made a funny comment. I don’t even think she noticed. But I did, my arm deliberately reaching over to connect with hers, terrified she would respond poorly to the touch. Nothing from her.  Sasha wasn’t fazed by me, I could tell that immediately. I knew when a woman was fazed and when she wanted me, but Sasha was hard as hell to read. I could look her in those mysterious brown eyes and still not know what the fuck she was thinking. The other ones? Their voice gave them away, or a hitch of breath. I always knew what they wanted, what they needed, and I always knew when I was going to break them.

 Her strength was admirable. Guys mentioned her on campus saying how she was this pretty dark-skin girl with a decent body and she was supposedly an orphan. She was fly, chill, and funny they would say.  The orphan story changed each time I heard it. First her mother left her in a supermarket, then a church, and the last one I heard was a school. It wasn’t until years into our friendship, that I found out it was a coffee shop.

The guys were right, she was pretty. But, it was the type of pretty you didn’t see until you looked at her long enough, because it was easy to miss. Not because it wasn’t there, but because a glance didn’t give you the depth of her beauty. Zana said she noticed right away, but Zana been friends with her forever.  Sasha. I used to stare at her when she wasn’t looking, waiting for her to watch TV, or read a book. It was then that I could stare without being disturbed. Her long eyelashes would flutter as she devoured each page quickly, but calmly. Her lips would turn upwards as she identified with the characters. Her pitch black waist length hair would be revealed for moments before she twisted the strands back into its rightful place at the nape of her neck.  The girl was just a force, the others were too, but it was different. Sasha carried her pain, her sadness, and her dignity differently.

Her mother left her in a coffee shop, so it only made sense that the last time I saw her, she left me in a coffee shop.

Death filled body. Those words haunted me the most after she left. She said them with such a soft pain. I didn’t know it was possible to have that much pain exit one’s body so softly. In the weeks following that meeting, the words death filled body kept repeating in my head. I didn’t know what that felt like, to look at your body, feel death, and have it inhabit you.  

I told her she was mourning before she realized herself, but I didn’t know what that entailed. I didn’t want to be around for it. See the others would demand that of me, demand me to be there while they cried, or plead for me in their own ways. But, she wasn’t sad because of me. That was new. Sasha didn’t ask me to stick around after she lost the baby. She didn’t ask me to stay up with her while she cried and because Sasha held pain in a way I never saw before, I led myself to believe she was fine. Sasha was still Sasha. She spoke to me in that voice, still ragged on my choices, and still never fully told me what she was thinking. I thought pain was loud and violent. I thought it was like the moments I got so upset I would hit a piece of furniture and the pain in my hand validated my hurt. Usually I asked her what she was thinking, but the weeks following the loss, I didn’t ask. I was afraid that if I asked, she would tell me the truth. She would tell me that she stayed up three consecutive weeks avoiding sleep because she dreamt about the baby. She would tell me that seeing a baby outside made her sad, but also gave her relief. She would tell me she was confused. She would tell me that the last time she truly slept well was in that bed with me. I didn’t need that. I needed to believe she was fine and okay. Because if I dealt with her sadness, I would have realized I too was upset.

*This is a short fictional piece of work. Thank you for reading. 

*Photo taken by me