Baby Girl Read online

  “What's the point?” I whisper, my voice shaking as I slip the ring off my finger and set in on the windowsill. I can't wear it anymore; it feels like it's burning my skin, searing my flesh from my bones. The light catches on the tiny diamond and casts prisms over my face. “I just don't see the point without Codrick …”

  “I got you, ma 'tit fille,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to my cheek. I barely feel it. There's too much pain inside of me, too much hurt. It feels like nothing good, nothing positive, nothing pleasurable will ever touch my heart again. “I got you, and we'll get through this together. If you need to, you lean on me, you hear?”

  Closing my eyes, I push up from the bed and feel my head spin. I've had barely any water, haven't touched any food for days. I don't care if I never eat again. I could starve to death and it wouldn't even hurt because I don't care. My life … is nothing now.

  Nothing.

  Pushing off of the bed, I stumble and Phoenix is right there to catch me before I fall.

  “You want me to run a shower for you, cher?” he asks, but I shake my head. I don't care if I smell, if I look like shit. None of that matters.

  As I pass by my desk, I can see the acceptance letter for NYU where Codrick, Phoenix and I were planning to go after graduation. Codrick and I got in, but Phoenix didn't. We'd decided as a group that we'd all go together anyway. The thought of being split up … hurt too much.

  Now, fate has made that choice for us, torn my soul in half and left me a broken fragment of a human being.

  “Da funeral's in about two hours,” Phoenix says tiredly from behind me. Shoving his sweats down my hips, I sit on the toilet and pee. I don't care if he's looking. I don't care about anything anymore.

  Gentleman that he is, he turns away and leans his back against the wall.

  “Take me there,” I say tiredly. “Take me now and we'll wait.”

  With my eyes staring blankly at the gray-blue wall in front of me, I try to decide if I really have the courage to kill myself. Because it's the most dichotomous truth in the whole world: taking one's life shows both extraordinary amounts of bravery and infinite levels of cowardice.

  A sob bubbles out of my throat and I lean forward, putting my forehead on my naked knees. As good as that darkness would feel as it closed around me, I know in my heart that I can't leave my parents or my sisters … that … I won't leave Phoenix.

  His soft sobs haunt my mind like specters, and I imagine that if I died today, the day of his best friend's funeral, that he might not make it either.

  But … dead … and gone can be two different things.

  That letter floats in the forefront of my mind. It's an escape. Escape. I can run from all of this.

  Suddenly, my skin feels itchy and the urge to run hits like a tsunami.

  After the funeral … I'm going to pack up my stuff and leave.

  And I'm never—never—going to come back.

  The cemetery is the worst place in the world.

  I hate it.

  “I don't want to go over there,” I tell Phoenix, sitting on a bench two rows down from the Landry family tomb. All the crypts here are aboveground—they have to be because of the marshy land and the high water table—with big strips of grass between the graves.

  The funeral is taking place now; I can hear the sermon from here. But I don't make any move to get up and neither does Phoenix. What's the point? Codrick is dead, and he's never coming back. I just don't think I can stand to see his mother sobbing anymore, talking about how God must've needed another angel in heaven.

  I don't believe any of that shit.

  If God really does send teenage boys to their deaths on the side of the road, roses clutched in hand, rain falling from the sky in fat, cold drops … then really, he's just the second face of the devil.

  “You don't gotta do anything you don't want,” Phoenix says, sounding tired and worn-out. I've never seen him like this before, not even on days where his dad gets drunk and pushes him around. He looks like a shell. It's pretty on the outside but on the inside … there's nothing but a hollow core where something used to live.

  Rocking forward, I choke back another sob. I'm not going to cry anymore. I'm not going to shed a single tear ever again. Because after this, there won't be a thing left that's worth crying over. I've decided that for the sake of the people in my life, I'm going to drop this shell in the ocean and let the waves carry it off. I won't crush it or destroy it; I'll just let it float away.

  It's the best I can do.

  And I assure myself that if I ever drift so far that they can't see me anymore … maybe I'll end it then.

  “He loved your more than he loved himself, you know dat, you?” Phoenix asks softly, but I can't look at him. Instead, I stare blankly ahead, at a patch of brown grass amongst all the green. Dead and lifeless. Shriveled. Destroyed.

  “I know,” I whisper, but that thought doesn't bring me any comfort.

  Codrick loved me more than the world, and I loved him right back.

  That didn't stop him from dying.

  That didn't stop him from bleeding to death on the side of the road. Or hell, maybe he died on impact? I don't know. I don't care to ask questions or find out. Because dead is dead.

  It's the one irreversible truth in this world.

  Before, it was my greatest fear, losing Codrick. And now, death is my greatest wish. It's the only thing bringing me comfort, knowing that someday I will die and be able to join him.

  I've gone from upbeat to morbid in less than a week.

  “I love you, too, you know?” Phoenix says, and I get the feeling he's reaching out to me, seeking something. He needs comfort, too, I know that, but I'm just not sure if I'm strong enough to give it to him. Turning on the bench, I stare at him, at the dark shadows under his eyes and the pain in his gray gaze. “I love you so much, Baby Girl,” he says … and … something inside of me snaps. Cracks right in half. Breaks.

  My eyes widen and my heart starts to pound.

  I love you, Baby Girl.

  The last words Codrick ever said to me.

  “Don't,” I say, standing up and backing away. My voice is trembling so bad that it doesn't even sound like me anymore. It cracks and breaks, shatters like glass and tears me apart from the inside out. “Don't say that,” I growl, tripping over the edge of a tombstone and falling hard on the raised cement grave.

  Phoenix comes toward me to help, but I slap his hand away, my eyes so wet with tears that he's nothing but a blur in the sunshine.

  “Don't say what?” Phoenix asks, dropping his hand and falling to his knees on the grass in front of me. I swipe away the tears I refuse to shed, channeling some of my pain into anger that Phoenix doesn't deserve.

  “Baby Girl! Don't say those words ever again,” I snarl out, scrambling to my feet, breathing so hard that everything around me flickers white, my vision shattering as I struggle against a sudden lightheadedness. “That's his name for me,” I spit as rebel tears sting my eyes, desperate to get out. “You're trying to replace him! He can't be replaced! Stop trying!”

  “I would never,” Phoenix starts, but I'm turning and running away from him.

  Running from him when I should be sprinting towards him. He's in pain, too; he's hurting, too.

  I know that, but …

  I find my mother and dig her keys from her purse, probably drawing the attention of everyone at the funeral, but there's not a single part of me that cares. Heading over to her car, I climb inside and see Phoenix watching me from the grassy knoll next to the gravel road. His gray eyes penetrate into the very deepest parts of my soul, but I'm too broken inside now. I hurt too much.

  “I love you,” I tell him and Codrick both, and then I start the car and head home, burn my prom dress, and take off for NYC.

  I promise myself I'll never go back.

  But not all promises can be kept.

  And sometimes … it's for the better.

  One year later …

  I shouldn
't have come back here.

  That's my first thought when I park the car in the driveway and open the door. I don't even have to get out before I know I've made a mistake. Heart pounding, I put one foot on the gravel driveway, staring at the toe of my gray suede boot. A single raindrop falls, and then another, like tears from a weepy sky.

  “Fuck,” I curse, grabbing my duffel bag off the passenger seat and climbing out of the car. I slam the door behind me and take off running for the front steps, flying up them and into the—relative—safety of the porch. I say relative because there are holes everywhere, drip-drip-dripping into rusted metal coffee cans.

  There's an awkward moment where I just stand there, staring at the wreath on the front door, its green tinsel arms threaded through with Christmas lights that don't work anymore. Do I knock? Do I go right in? I spent my whole life in this house. In fact, I've only spent four hundred and twelve days with a different address.

  Nineteen years of life … and only one of them away from this place and I don't know if I should go in or if I should knock or …

  The door swings inward before I get a chance to make that decision, my mother's gently lined face grinning out at me.

  “Come on in, darlin'!” she says with far too much enthusiasm. Four hundred and twelve days with a different address and I haven't seen her in … four hundred and twelve days. My mom pushes the screen door out toward me and I know I should smile back, but I haven't smiled in four hundred and sixteen days.

  I'm not about to start now.

  “Hey Mom,” I say, slipping inside to the warm smell of freshly baked cornbread and collard greens with bacon, the murmur of boiling oil from the fryer and the distant mumble of the living room TV.

  Stepping back into that house … is like stepping into a time warp.

  My throat gets tight and my vision goes hazy for a moment; the bag drops from my fingers as I struggle to control a wave of emotion.

  “You okay, honey?” Mom asks, but … I'm not okay.

  I haven't been okay for four hundred and sixteen days.

  As I stand there, my vision swims and I rock back and forth on my feet for a moment.

  “Yeah, I'm fine,” I say, blinking away the pain and the memories. There's a giant lump still caught in my throat, and I'm finding it ridiculously hard to breathe, but … I'll survive. I think. I mean, I've made it this long, why not just keep going? “When are we going to go see Dad?” I ask, because that's why I'm here, to visit my father in the hospital.

  He had a minor heart attack … and also, I have a paper due on grief so … why not kill two birds with one stone? My psychiatrist thinks it's a brilliant idea. Standing here now, it feels like the worst idea I've ever had in my life.

  “As soon as your sisters get here,” Mom says, wiping her hands on her apron and watching me with a honey-brown gaze rife with sympathy. I hate that, that look that says there's a reason to feel sorry for me. All it does is remind me how things are supposed to be, how they should've turned out.

  “I married my high school sweetheart. Nobody believed in us, but your daddy and me … Oh, honey, I know you and Codrick are gonna make it together. You've got that special something that you just don't see every day. I can feel it.”

  “Do I have time for a shower?” I ask, because I drove all the way down here, New York City to fucking Donaldsonville, Louisiana and I stink. I stopped one time—just once—and slept in a crappy motel, washed my hair, changed my clothes. But just once. If I made anymore stops than that, I would've turned around and gone right back.

  I used to be a small-town girl—okay, a sassy small-town girl—but now … the anonymity of New York City suits me better. It's easier to push the feelings back there, let them be crushed under the buzzing weight of humanity. There are so many people loving and hating and hurting and crying that it makes my feelings seem less significant.

  Seem.

  They only seem that way. I know my feelings are big enough to encompass the whole world, drown it in my grief and carry everything else away.

  I just don't let them.

  “Sure thing! Fresh towels are in the hall closet like always! Oh, and we set up the den for you, darlin'. Just throw your things in there.” She moves into the kitchen as I haul my bag's strap up to my shoulder and start down the narrow hallway in the back of the house. While the outside looks pretty worse for wear—a sign of my father's struggling health—the inside is as homey and comfortable as it ever was. My mother is an incredible homemaker.

  I move across the new wood floors in the hall—there used to be carpet—and find myself pausing next to a door I really don't want to pause at.

  Before I can stop myself, my hand reaches out on impulse, feeling the familiar knob beneath my palm, the metal worn away from countless twists, countless moments frozen in time. I shove the door inward and … there's a room with freshly painted lavender walls, an elliptical machine, and a table pressed against the right wall with a sewing machine on top of it.

  My bed is gone; my dresser is gone; all the things he gave me are gone.

  “Mom,” I ask, and my voice cracks slightly before I get it under control, turning back down the hallway and into the kitchen. She's standing over the stove with her back to me, dark brown hair gathered in a loose, messy bun.

  They haven't gotten rid of the table. The same fucking table is here.

  I stare at the yellow legs and try not to feel like I'm going to throw up.

  “Mom, where are all my things?”

  She pauses with a glass pan of cornbread in her mitt covered hand, glancing back at me with a stray tendril of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. Even though it's raining outside, it's hot as hell in here.

  “We got rid of it all like you asked—”

  I cut her off with a sharp exhale.

  “Not the big things, like the bed and stuff. The little stuff. Where is all the little stuff?”

  Mom's face softens and for a moment, I'm terrified she's going to bring it up.

  It.

  We don't even have to have a name for that night, prom night. It's just … it. That's all it deserves. Nothing more.

  “They're in plastic bins, sealed airtight and stacked neatly in the rafters of the barn. Your dad even covered them with a tarp last year when we had that awful storm. They're perfectly safe.” She set the cornbread on the counter, took off the mitt, and turned to look at me straight on. “Did you want me to help you load the bins into your car?”

  “No,” I say, because while I want them safe … I do not want them anywhere near me. If I even see one of those bins, I'll open it and I'll start going through his letters and seeing his pictures and all the careful walls I've spent four hundred and sixteen days building up will crumble to dust beneath my feet. “But thank you.”

  I turn and head back down the hall, ignoring the open door.

  My bedroom no longer looks like my bedroom, and the carpet with all the familiar stains—the spot where he stepped on a tube of black paint, the melted fibers from that time I dropped a lit match, the frayed corner where Phoenix used to hide his cigarettes from my mom—is gone. The wood floors make it seem so different, the new paint colors help. But the window is the same, and it looks out at the same scenery, and I can barely even stand it.

  I keep walking and find the den at the end of the hall, moving down two steps and into the sunken room that used to be the garage. You can hardly tell anymore—my dad did a good job with the remodel, but it sits a little lower and thankfully, seems to be a little cooler than the rest of the house.

  In typical fashion, Mom's already fixed up the pull-out couch bed with blankets and pillows. I toss my duffel bag onto it, dig out some fresh clothes, and head for the shower.

  I'm proud of myself for making it through the first fifteen minutes without crying.

  Well, I haven't cried for … four hundred and twelve days so I guess that's not saying much. I just thought coming back here would stir it all up again … I just pray that I'm wr
ong about that.

  Phoenix stops by while I'm in the shower.

  I know he's here as soon as I set foot into the hallway, a towel wrapped around my naked body. Phoenix's voice is low and easy and sensual, like he's holding out a hand and inviting you to the bedroom even when he's just asking you out for lunch.

  He was Codrick's best friend; he was mine.

  Now, he's a stranger. We haven't talked since the funeral, not even once. Oh, he's tried. Texts and emails and messages on social media. He wasn't pushy, just persistent. At one point, I finally gave in and sent him a reply.

  Listen Phoenix, any strings I have that tie me to the past, they trip and tangle. They hang me and I start to choke. I'm sorry, but I just can't.

  That was six months ago; we haven't spoken since.

  “Fuck,” I curse, moving into the den and closing the door behind me.

  My towel drops to the floor and I start digging around in my suitcase for something to wear, something nice. I know my dad likes to see me dressed up and I never do, not anymore. I used to be feminine and girly, always in pink with bright lipstick and big earrings and high heels.

  I prefer sweats and loose tanks nowadays with boots or sneakers, anything that I can use to transition from a long day of class and studying and head straight to the gym. But my dad is sick and … if anything happens to him, I need to make sure that his last image of me makes him smile.

  The door behind me opens and then Phoenix is just there, his hand tightening on the doorknob as I glance over my shoulder, wet strands of brunette hair sliding across my skin.

  “Hey,” I say, but I don't rush to cover up and Phoenix doesn't rush to leave.

  I turn back to my bag and try to ignore the sudden tightening of my throat, the nervous twist in my belly. It's been six months since I last messaged him, but … four hundred and twelve days since I saw him.