by L. D. Davis
There was a light knock on my door a few minutes later. I suspected it was Daisy, coming to ask me for the hundredth time if I was hungry, or if she could get me anything, or to entice me to get up and come out into the other room. I didn’t feel like doing any of that, so I didn’t answer her the first time she knocked. The second time the knocking came, I sighed and answered.
“Come in,” I said, not even bothering to look away from the window.
The door opened, and when a footfall too heavy to be Daisy’s sounded, I still didn’t look, thinking it was my brother or Cort. It wasn’t until he moved past me to take a seat on the bed that I snapped out of my daze and turned my head.
“Hi,” he said quietly when our eyes met.
My heart fluttered.
I gawked at him, my shock written all over my battered face. His eyebrows rose as if to say, “Aren’t you going to say hello?”
I was suddenly aware of the still-bald spot on my head where the surgeons had gone in to stop the bleeding in my brain. I also became aware of my wrinkled, two-day old clothes, and every bruise and cut on my body.
“Hi,” I finally responded. “What are you doing here?” I hadn’t meant to, but the question had sounded like an accusation.
“I came to see you,” he answered quietly. His brown eyes wandered over my face, seemed to get stuck on that patch in my stringy hair, and drifted down and over the rest of my body. “How are you, Darla?”
I hated that question. I’d heard that question thousands of times since I’d woken up in the hospital. I got hit by a damn truck minutes on the same day my world had already been tilted sideways by the men I loved. How was I supposed to fucking feel?
“I’m fine,” I lied and turned my eyes back to the window. There wasn’t much out there. Children’s toys, laundry hanging on a clothesline, and a large shed for all of my dad’s tools and equipment. Beyond the yard, though, past the houses that were behind ours on another road, were the mountains. Mountains I wished I could climb and find myself in a whole other world on the other side.
Connor was quiet for a long time. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him looking down at his hands which were loosely linked together and hanging between his legs. Every so often, he looked up at me. I felt his eyes zeroing in on my broken leg and my shaved head.
“I’m sorry you had to come back here,” he finally spoke, his voice gentle. “I know you wouldn’t want to be here if you had a choice.”
“I got your flowers,” I said abruptly without looking at him. “And your…kind words.” The words were only a breath away from sounding like a sneer.
I heard his sigh. “I didn’t know what to say. I felt like nothing I could have said would have made the situation any better. I’m here now, Darla.”
I looked at him. “And still, there ain’t nothin you can say that can make the situation any better.”
Just before I again set my eyes back on the mountains, I saw the flicker of pain in his eyes, on his face.
I didn’t care. Why should I? He’d had weeks to come see me or to even call me and he didn’t. Not once. Not even my near-death experience had been enough for him to forgive me. He couldn’t put our differences aside when it counted most. He wasn’t there for me when I’d needed him. I didn’t understand why he had come. What was it that he expected from me?
After a minute of watching me, Connor finally got to his feet. He stopped just beside my chair. I wasn’t sure why until I felt his lips on my cheek. I was a little startled, but I didn’t move. I sat absolutely still, barely breathing.
“That’s from my mom and dad,” he said softly, close to my face. When I felt his whisper soft kiss on the ugly scar on my head, I did stop breathing. He whispered in my ear, “And that’s from me.”
He left without another word. I looked over my shoulder at the closed bedroom door. I heard a brief, murmured conversation between him and Daisy before the screen door slammed shut. A moment after that Connor’s truck rumbled to life and he left.
I turned back to my window. What was left of my fast-beating heart sank. I lied. I did care. But like so many other things, it didn’t matter.
I reached for that darkness inside of me, and it took me into its arms and swallowed me whole.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Days went by. Weeks. Before I knew it, September was about to come to an end. I had been back in Virginia for about seven weeks. Not much had changed. I only went out when I had physical therapy or some other medical appointment. I stayed in my bedroom at my window most days, from the time I rose in the early afternoon until it was too dark to see anything but my own reflection.
I only spoke when spoken to, and I didn’t have much to say. Sometimes Kenzie brought Thomas over for a visit. I found the will to talk to Caleb when he came to my room every day after school, and Daddy always brought Caroline in with him in the evenings when he got done work. I spent a little bit of time with Perry’s two little ones sometimes, too, but I wasn’t the sister and Auntie Darla they’d once known. I didn’t laugh or tickle them or play. I mostly just forced smiles and waited for their parents to retrieve them.
Connor came every week. I heard his arrival, heard him chat with Daisy and Daddy and play with the kids, but he didn’t come see me. Fine. Whatever. I didn’t want to be seen anyway.
Another lie.
I only showered a couple times a week, usually after my mama or Daisy insisted on it. My hair was limp and tangled most days. My clothes hung on me, too big for my shrinking frame. Every night I took a sleeping pill and slept like the dead until the next day, when I’d start all over again, doing nothing with my time, nothing with my life.
No one needed to tell me that I was suffering from depression. I knew it, and I just didn’t care. I didn’t care if I got better or not. What was there to get better for? My big plans of traveling the world were made virtually impossible because of the accident. Even though I was able to put some weight on my leg, moving about was still difficult. It would be months before I was anything resembling normal again—if I’d ever be normal again.
My injuries also kept me from baking for a time, and standing too long still wasn’t something I could do, but I’d lost the desire to go into the kitchen and create. That passion for baking and food that had burned through my bones had fizzled out. I didn’t even have that going for me anymore.
So, I sat at my window. Day in and day out. And watched the world go on without me in it.
One morning in early October, I was awoken by my bedroom door opening and slamming against the wall. I jolted and looked toward the door with my heart beating too fast and too hard. I blinked. And blinked again at the form standing just inside my room.
“Get up,” Cherry said, without a greeting. I hadn’t seen her since I’d left Philly, and I hadn’t planned on seeing her anytime in the near future, yet there she stood.
“What are you doing here?” I asked groggily, still too stunned to even try to sit up. Daisy, my mom, and sister were crowded behind her in the hallway.
“I came to your little honky-tonk town for its prime vacation spots and the overly friendly and accommodating natives,” she said dryly, and then snapped, “Why the hell do you think I came here? Levántate!”
Even as I began to push myself up in bed, Cherry ripped away my blankets.
“What the hell, Cherry?” I griped as she marched over to the windows and opened the curtains.
“Enough of this,” she said, as she began going through my drawers. “Enough of this bullshit. No más!”
She threw a clean shirt and a fresh pair of panties on the bed, before going to the next drawer.
I sat on the edge of the bed, watching her with confusion and growing irritation. “What are you talking about?”
She produced a pair of pants and put them with the other clothes.
“You’ve been sitting in this stinky-ass room feeling sorry for yourself for too long, Darla.”
I glanced at my family in the hallway.
None of the women looked away. They all looked as determined as Cherry. I looked back at my friend.
“So, what? I ain’t hurting nobody sitting in this room.”
She glared at me. “Hueles a culo! You smell bad, and you look like shit. You’re hurting everyone who has a sense of smell within this rinky-dink town, and pretty soon people are going to start gouging out their own eyeballs after they look at you.” She shook her head as her eyes moved over me. “Have you seen yourself? Have you even looked in a mirror in the past few months? You don’t even look like you anymore.”
“Because I’m not me anymore,” I said bitterly. “The person I was before July don’t exist anymore.”
She rolled her eyes and put her hands on her full hips. “Oh, cry me a river. Eat a Zoloft already and get over yourself.”
I felt straight-up anger for the first time in months as I glowered at my friend. “Fuck you, Maria. I don’t need you here to try to make me feel better.”
Cherry got in my face, something she’d never done before. We’d had heated arguments before, but we’d never come close to getting physical.
“I have told you many times over the years,” she hissed. “I am not here to make you feel better. I am here to tell you about yourself. And I am telling you that you are being pathetic and selfish. And you look and smell like hell. You are going to get up. You are going to shower—with soap, and wash your nasty hair. Then you are going to put clothes on and leave this house for the whole day.”
“You can’t make me do any damn thing I don’t want to,” I shouted at her. Then I looked at Mama, Daisy, and Kenzie, still hovering in the hall. “And why the hell y’all standing there?”
“Get up,” Cherry said impatiently. “Get up now or I will make you get up.”
My eyes burned into her. “Fuck. You.”
She sighed, and rolled her eyes to the ceiling as she whispered something in Spanish. Before I understood what was happening, Cherry had grabbed me by the front of my shirt and hauled me to my feet.
I yelped with surprise and from the sudden pain of the unexpected weight on my leg. Suddenly, there was more than one pair of hands on me, pulling and pushing me toward the open door. It was abundantly clear I wasn’t going to get my way. They weren’t going to let me return to bed or go sit in my chair. Four strong-willed women surrounded me, and I was small and weak after weeks of slowly wasting away. So, I let them corral me into the bathroom across the hall.
“Do I need to also throw you into the tub and wash you?” Cherry asked threateningly as Daisy turned on the water.
“I can do it myself,” I said through gritted teeth as I glared at her.
“I’m not so sure that you can.”
I screamed as she reached for the hem of my T-Shirt and began to lift it. I lost my balance trying to fight her off of me and fell back against the vanity, but managed to stay on my feet.
“Stop!” I screamed at her. I screamed it again, but she kept going and no one came to my aid as Cherry stripped my shirt from my body.
I shook with fury as I crossed my arms over my bra. “I told you to stop!” I shrieked. I wanted to hit her, to slap her in her face.
“You stop!” she roared in a rage I’d never heard from her before. “You stop this dying shit! Because that’s exactly what you’re doing in there! Waiting to die! You’re so selfish, Darla! What about what you’re doing? To the people who love you, that have to watch you slowly kill yourself? What do you think it will do to McKenzie to lose a sister? What do you think it will do to your parents to lose a daughter? What do you think it will do to me to lose my best friend? The girl who has become more of a sister to me than my real sisters? You didn’t die in that accident. You didn’t die in the hospital. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you sit in that room and die now!”
I hadn’t cried since the day I woke up and saw my mom in my hospital room, and those were only a few tears. I didn’t cry when Cade and I ended. I didn’t cry on my way back to Craigsville when I realized my life was going in the wrong direction. But Cherry’s words made something crack in me. A wall that I had built up around my heart cracked, and began to crumble at an alarming rate. I tried hard to blink back the tears and to hold it all in, but the wall was gone. There was nothing to stop the flood of emotions. The dam was broken.
The first sob broke free, then another one followed that one. The tears that slid down my cheeks were big and fat. Finally, I gave it up and cried. Cried hard. Cried my damn heart out.
Cherry wrapped her arms around me. I held onto her and wept on her shoulder, my body shaking with sobs.
“Pobrecita,” she crooned, rubbing my back. “Poor thing. Now that you understand that you are una estúpida, you’ve taken the first step in getting better. Knowing you’re a twat is the first step in recovery.”
I laughed and cried simultaneously. Cherry hugged me for a moment longer and then stepped back.
“I love you and all, but it’s kinda weird hugging you in your bra in a steamy bathroom. We’ll wait for you in the living room. Shout if you need help.”
One by one, Daisy, McKenzie, and finally my mom came in and hugged me, even in my bra in the steamy bathroom. Mama held on to me the longest as she cried softly.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I whispered.
She finally pulled back and touched my face. “Don’t be sorry, Darla. Be better.”
Cherry was lingering in the hall by the door as my mom passed by her. She gave me a small smile and started to close the door.
“Cher,” I said before it could close all the way. She stopped and looked at me with her gorgeous eyes that were brimming with unshed tears. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome.”
I stayed in the shower for a long time, until the water ran cool. I washed and scrubbed until my skin felt new again, until I felt new again. I watched some—not all—but enough of my sorrows go down the drain.
Chapter Fifty-Three
My leg hadn’t been doing as well as it should have been because I hadn’t put much effort into getting better. After Cherry’s unexpected visit, however, I began to really try. I began to push myself hard. It was painful, and it was difficult, but I didn’t stop.
I did the required exercises daily. I ate better and chucked out the rest of the sleeping pills. I even showered daily, most of the time. My bedroom was no longer my hiding hole. I started spending more time out of it than in it. At first, I just hung out in the living room or the kitchen, but after I had become more mobile, I went outside for short walks or went to Perry’s or Kenzie’s.
That darkness that had almost killed me wasn’t entirely gone. I especially felt it on some days when I stared at myself in the mirror too long and saw that patch on my head and the scar from the staples. Although hair had begun to grow over most of the area again, it was slow going and grew unevenly.
One morning, as I stared in the mirror feeling that darkness stirring, I got an idea. I hobbled out into the kitchen and found Daisy. Not that she was hard to find. I only had to follow the racket of a metal spoon hitting a pot. Caroline sat on the floor banging on the thing like a drum.
“Can you take me somewhere?”
When I told her where I wanted to go and why, she grinned and said, “Your daddy is gonna have a coronary. Let’s do it.”
A couple hours later I sat in the salon chair admiring my new haircut. I had taken a big leap and got that whole side of my head cut off and shaved down. It was a style I had seen many times in the city. I hadn’t had the guts for such a style back then, but I was surprised by how much I loved it. It was different than everyone else in town, stylish, and it looked damn good on me.
“I want one, too!” Daisy cried and passed me Caroline so fast that I almost dropped the poor child.
“Daddy will have a stroke,” I warned as she sat down in the chair I had just vacated.
She waved a dismissive hand. “He’ll calm down when I tell him I’m pregnant again.”
; My mouth dropped open. “You’re pregnant again?” Then I cringed. “Ew. You and my daddy been bumpin’ privates.”
She laughed. I smiled and looked down at Caroline. “Looks like you gonna be somebody’s big sister, too.”
When Daddy came home that evening, he did have a coronary, a stroke, and gave birth to a full grown damn cow.
“Y’all must have lost your god damned minds!” he shouted, looking from me to his wife. “What the hell is wrong with y’all? People gonna talk and think both of ya are on the powder.”
“I like it,” Mama said, touching her own blonde hair. “I wonder if I can get somethin’ like it.”
Daddy whirled on her. “I thought you’d have more sense than that, Genna.”
“You old thing,” she said in reproof. “Maybe you need a new haircut, too, or maybe you need to see a proctologist about removing that stick out ya ass. Come on, Caleb,” she said, taking my brother’s hand and hefting Caroline on her hip. “Let’s see if we can’t find a cookie to steal before supper.”
“It’s bad enough that my daughter did it,” Daddy said, turning back to Daisy. “But you! You’re my wife, and you can’t just—”
Daisy, who was young enough to be his daughter and looked like it, put a loving hand on his thick chest and smiled up at him like a school girl in love.
“I’m sure it will have mostly grown back by the time the baby comes,” she cooed.
Daddy’s face crumpled in confusion. A moment later, his eyebrows lifted and his mouth opened.
“You’re havin’ another baby?” he asked, sounding very hopeful.
“Yes, we are.”
Just as he took her in her arms to no doubt kiss her, I slipped out the front door, leaving the happy couple to their moment of joy.
Chapter Fifty-Four
McKenzie didn’t live that far from my dad’s, especially if I cut across a few properties to get there. The walk was hard. It hurt, but I didn’t just lay down in the grass in the back of the Jansen’s and die. I kept going, but I was very relieved to finally reach her back door.
