Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“Oh, it’s you.” A smile illuminates her plump face. “What you doin’ here this late, Vee Tee? Y’all outta milk again?”
“Help” is all I manage to get out, my voice choked with tears. “Mama fell and Daddy…” I can’t sort out my thoughts long enough to explain any more. “Call 911!”
“Nine-one-one?” Aunt Roz straightens and walks out to the porch. “You say Bernadette fell?”
“Your phone,” I gasp, bent over with my hands on my knees. “He broke the phones. Call 911.”
“Okay. Just hold on.” She disappears for a few seconds, but is back and on her way past me and down the steps with a cell phone pressed to her ear. “Hello, yes. It’s an emergency.”
We take off running down the long path back to my house. She gives the operator our address, barely able to push the words out we’re running so fast.
“What’s the emergency?” I hear the operator saying.
We round the corner and screech to a halt in my front yard. Flames lick along the roof of the house, consuming the weathered wood. The windows are lit red like demon’s eyes and the front door gapes open, the mouth to hell.
Daddy’s sitting on the grass, bent over with Mama cradled in his arms. His sobs sound like a wounded animal and tears twist down his tortured face.
“Bernie,” he whispers, rocking her. “Bernie, baby, wake up.”
But Mama doesn’t wake up. She’s still as an opossum playing dead.
“What’s your emergency?” I hear the operator ask again through the phone.
“F-fire,” Aunt Roz stutters, her eyes fixed on the flames. “It’s a fire and my sister. She fell and hit her head, I think. There’s blood and she…”
Aunt Roz’s voice breaks. She squeezes her eyes shut and covers her mouth. “She ain’t moving.”
“It was in the walls,” Daddy mutters, his forehead pressed to Mama’s. “It was in the walls. I fixed it, Bernie. I fixed it for you, baby.”
The ambulance arrives first. Every time the EMTs try to get near Daddy, he growls and snarls and covers Mama with his body, not letting them close.
“Will, now you need to let them look at her,” Aunt Roz snaps, but there’s so much sympathy in her eyes when she sees him on the grass holding Mama like she’s the last thing tying him to the world.
He carefully lays Mama’s head on the grass and steps away, watching as the EMT workers swoop in to check her.
“No pulse,” one of the guys says, casting a worried glance at his partner.
They continue working on Mama, but the minutes go by, and she still won’t breathe. And the house keeps burning. There’s only one fire truck for our small town, and tonight it seems to be taking its sweet time. The fire truck finally speeds into our driveway, but by now, our tiny house is fully engulfed in flames. The firefighters pull out their hoses, but just as they start to spray, Daddy stands and looks down at Mama.
“Bernie, baby,” he cries. “I’m sorry.”
He looks at me, and for a moment, there he is. My father, the gentlest, sweetest man. His eyes are clear and, as angry and confused as I am, even with this all being his fault, I want to run into his arms.
“Daddy?” I ask in a choked whisper.
It’s a question I think I know the answer to, even though I never get to ask. Before anyone can stop him, Daddy takes off toward the house.
“Daddy, no!”
I run after him, but Aunt Roz grabs me around the waist and snatches me up.
He doesn’t turn at the sound of my voice. Doesn’t hesitate at the threshold of a raging inferno.
He runs straight inside like the flames are open arms.
Movement Three
“What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.”
—Nina Simone, I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone
NINETEEN
Verity
Twenty-Three Years Old—2016
“Verity, open your eyes.”
Dr. Palmer’s soothing professional tone has guided me out of nightmares before. Some waking and some buried in my subconscious, but none as painful as what I just relived.
I blink open slowly, allowing the light back in; allowing in the present. Shaking off the shadows of the past, I take in the spacious office decorated in cool tones of icy green and blue. I’m not that little girl standing outside chilled, an indifferent moon strung up in a scar-pocked sky, watching my life and all I love burn. Instead I sit in the serenity of a Brooklyn spring day, sunshine pouring in through wide windows with curtains drawn back. Diplomas and family photos paper the walls of my therapist’s office, evidence of success and happiness I’m sometimes not sure I’ll ever attain.
“That was a lot,” Dr. Palmer says, her brows knit, the concern shining from her dark eyes. “How are you feeling?”