Craving Constellations

by Nicole Jacquelyn

  I woke up the next morning to Dragon’s hands all over my body as he slid into me from behind. The night before had been all sweaty, hard, and breathless, but this was almost the opposite. It was lazy and drowsy as we barely moved, rocking against each other. As I came, my body straightened, almost severing our connection, until Dragon pushed hard against my upper back, bending me forward and off the pillows. By the time he was finished, my head was almost completely hanging off the side of the bed, my hair pushed forward and covering most of my face.

  I didn’t want to move. Morning sex was awesome. It was the best way to wake up, but with Trix gone, I just wanted to sleep in a little longer and pretend that I didn’t have to face the day. I lay there like a limp noodle for a couple of minutes while we caught our breath until Dragon dragged me up next to him in bed.

  “Haven’t talked about it…because I don’t care either way…but you gonna get pregnant if we keep going at it like we do?”

  Well, that sure as shit woke me up. “I don’t think so. After I had Trix, I never got pregnant. I never got on birth control afterward, but nothing ever happened. I guess it could though. Will you pick up some condoms today?” I answered him, picking at the sheets with my fingers, unable to meet his eyes.

  “After being with you, nothing between us, I’m not wearin’ a fuckin’ condom.”

  “Well, I’ll try and get to the doctor this week then. But you’re not getting any until I do. We’ve played Russian roulette a little too much as it is.” I shook my head at him.

  “You think so?” he asked me with a smile on his face as he quickly rolled us over, so he was lying between my thighs. “You think you’re gonna hold out on me? You got a headache tonight, baby?”

  “I’m serious, Dragon! We can’t—”

  My protests were cut off as he pushed back inside me, and I let out a low groan. I wasn’t ready for him yet, but the sticky wetness from our earlier encounter was enough to smooth his way a little. Once he was planted deep inside me, he held still until I felt my body softening around him. As he started to move, he also started to talk, but I only caught half of what he was saying.

  “Gonna give me a son…fuckin’ condoms…whenever I want, however I want…beg me to fuck you…mine.”

  And it was that last word that pushed me over the edge.

  After we were done, Dragon got out of bed while I dozed. He had some errands to run, so he went to get ready, and he called Casper to sit outside the house. I figured Vera would call before she brought Trix over, so I still had time to sleep some more. Sleeping past nine in the morning felt decadent, and I didn’t want to give it up. I finally fell back into a deep sleep and didn’t wake up for hours.

  When I woke up, I looked at the clock and jumped out of bed when I realized it was almost noon. I was surprised I’d slept so long and equally surprised that Vera and Trix hadn’t shown up or called yet. The house was silent as I got dressed, and it gave me an eerie feeling that I couldn’t shake. I was almost afraid to walk out of my bedroom, which was silly. I knew Dragon had places to be. Casper was outside, so I wasn’t there alone. But I couldn’t shake the feeling. I threw on a baggy sweatshirt before opening the door to my room and walking out. The house was already warm, but I was cold all the way to the bone, and I needed a little protection.

  When I went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, I almost screamed when I saw Dragon sitting at the table. He was looking at his hands sitting on top of a piece of paper, and I couldn’t see his expression, but I was relieved he was there. I laughed lightly to myself as I walked toward him, but the feeling of foreboding didn’t leave me.

  “Hey, honey. I thought you had errands? Did you already leave and come back?” I asked as I walked toward the coffee pot sitting on the counter.

  My back was to him as he spoke, and when I heard him, the dread in the pit of my belly intensified. His voice was deep, so deep it was almost guttural. He spoke in low but precise tones that I’d never heard from him before, every single word sounding as if it were a challenge to form.

  “Sit. Down. Brenna.”

  I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t want to face whatever it was that had him so angry that he wasn’t even yelling. The tone of his voice reminded me of Tony’s before the beatings, and it took all I had not to vomit all over the countertop.

  I slowly turned around, a fight-or-flight response surging through my body. I wasn’t afraid of him, not really, but the tone of his voice and rigidity of his body brought all of my old instincts to the forefront. When I was finally facing him head-on, he moved his hands and carefully unfolded the paper lying on the table. I glanced at the paper and felt my face drain of blood as black spots danced in my vision.

  “Something didn’t look right when I pulled this out. Club’s attorney needed it, so I went through your boxes. Took me a minute to figure out what looked different. Want to explain why this says Trix was a twin?”

  I stood there, staring at him stupidly, while my mind raced. I didn’t know what to say or how to explain. The word twin had completely shut down my body, my muscles seized, and I had a hard time catching my breath. I hadn’t used that word in more than four years, and it brought back a rush of memories that I’d tried so hard to keep locked in a little chamber of my heart, only to be felt and wallowed in once a year.

  He lost his patience with my silence. I knew he would. I knew he was waiting for an explanation. He was waiting for me to tell him it wasn’t true, that there had been a mistake. He wanted me to tell him that he hadn’t had another child that he would never know.

  “Sit. Down. Brenna!” he screamed at me, slamming his hand so hard on the tabletop that the legs rattled against the floor.

  My body jolted, and half a second later, I spun on my heel and raced toward the bedroom, anxious to get a door between us. I needed a barrier that would hide the look on his face and would protect me and delay this conversation.

  The chair screeched behind him, and I could hear the thumping sounds of him jumping over the table as he chased me. I got to the hallway before his body hit my back, and my chest and head slammed into the wall with a cry. He spun me around by my arm and gripped both my biceps in his big hands while he shook me.

  “Fuckin’ explain, Brenna! You fuckin’ explain that shit right now!”

  I didn’t notice I was crying until I felt my nose start running into my mouth. I was gasping in pain and terror as he shook me, and it took me a minute to realize he wasn’t going to stop until I started talking. I could feel the skin around my cheekbone tightening as it swelled where it hit the wall, and every breath I took came out in a shuddering gasp.

  “He died.”

  “Who died?” He jerked me again, still screaming.

  “MY SON! MY SON DIED!” I screamed back in his face, my fear becoming overshadowed by anger at this man.

  How dare he bring this up to me? How dare he make me relive the absolute worst moment of my entire life? How dare he think that he has any right to my memories, to my anguish?

  He dropped my arms as if burned and searched my face with bewildered eyes. I didn’t know what expression was showing on my face, but his face had gone pale at my scream.

  “They were early.” It was almost as simple and as heartbreaking as that. “That happens with twins…a lot. They didn’t have a lot of room in there, and I didn’t have the easiest pregnancy anyway. I was constantly fucking sick! I threw up every single day until I gave birth, and some days afterward.” I shook my head, looking at the floor and trying to find the words I needed.

  I didn’t know how to talk about this. How do you describe the loss of a child? You don’t. There was no explanation; there was no answer.

  “His lungs hadn’t developed. He wasn’t ready,” I sobbed. “Trix wasn’t either, but she was bigger. Stronger. He was here for a week, and then he was gone. I was in so much fucking pain. I barely got the chance to hold him. I never even got the chance to breastfeed him.”

  By that time, I was
screeching, and my throat was getting raw. My hands were in my hair as I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet. I was so caught up in my own misery that I hadn’t seen Dragon’s. There wasn’t room for his. My own pain made me want to curl up on the floor in the hallway. I wanted to smash things and hit someone and tear my hair out. When I brought Trix home from the hospital, I’d pushed anything I couldn’t deal with to the back of my mind. I had no help, no one to lean on, no time or space to grieve. It was the first time I’d felt the full magnitude of my loss since I’d held him for the last time in the hospital, and I’d wondered vaguely if that was what it felt like to lose your mind.

  Dragon braced himself with one arm against the wall, his body hunched the way it had been when he came home beaten to a pulp. “Are you telling me that our son lay dying in a hospital for an entire week, and you didn’t try to contact me?”

  “Yes.” My answer was almost defiant.

  I hadn’t called him; I’d done it on my own.

  At my calm answer, he swung the arm hanging at his side in a wide arc and slammed the back of it against my swollen cheekbone, knocking me to the floor.

  “You fucking cunt!” he screamed, looking down at me as I curled in on myself, wrapping my arms around my head as I sobbed. “You fucking, fucking, fucking cunt.”

  At the change in his voice, I looked up through my arms and saw the tears rolling down his face, unchecked. I wanted to wrap my arms around him. I wanted to make this better. I wanted to console him and let him console me and do this together. But I couldn’t. He didn’t want me to touch him. It was all such a fucking mess, a boiling pot of emotion. I hated him, and I loved him at the same time, but mostly, I just wanted to be able to take away the agony I saw on his face.

  I lay there on the floor as I watched him grab his cut off the back of the couch and slip it on. He hurriedly grabbed his keys, slipped on his boots, and walked around the living room.

  Before he reached the door, he turned back toward me. “What was his name?”

  “I didn’t know your real name,” I whispered back, my voice raw and thick with tears.

  He just stood there by the front door, staring at me, waiting for my answer.

  “His name was Draco,” I finally answered.

  Then, I watched him turn and punch the wall twice, putting huge holes in the drywall, before he left and slammed the door behind him.

  I crawled on my hands and knees into the bedroom, sobbing and shaking, until I made it to the edge of the bed. I didn’t have the energy to climb up, so I just pulled the comforter toward me, dragging it down to wrap around myself, as I lay, crying on the floor.

  Eventually, I stopped crying and just lay there, staring at the baseboards in the hallway, my mind finally going blank when I couldn’t take any more.

  That was where Casper found me hours later.

  I didn’t sleep. I just laid there, the last five years playing and replaying in my mind. What I hadn’t told Dragon was the agony of falling down the slick carpeted stairs in Tony’s parents’ house. I hadn’t told him how I’d crawled to the phone and called an ambulance myself. That I’d laid on the floor until they got to me and how they had broken down the front door to get to me because, at that point, I was in too much pain to get to the door to let them in. I didn’t tell him about the guilt I had about walking on carpeted stairs in nothing but my socks. If I would have just put on shoes, I wouldn’t have slipped, and our child wouldn’t have been born too early to survive.

  I hadn’t told him about how scared I was when they loaded me into the ambulance, when they moved around me using medical terms I’d never heard, but instinctually, I knew they were bad. I hadn’t told him how when we’d reached the hospital, I’d told them Tony’s phone number, so they could call him, but he never came. I’d been out of my mind with fear when they took me directly to the labor and delivery floor instead of keeping me in the emergency room.

  I hadn’t told him that my doctor was the only person in the sea of faces I’d known. I’d used her as a talisman as they’d stripped me down and got me ready for a C-section. I’d stared at her mouth as she spoke to me, but I hadn’t heard a word she’d said, and eventually, they put a mask over my face, and I didn’t see anything more.

  I hadn’t told him how I’d begged and pleaded with the nurses to go see my children on a different floor of the hospital, how they’d told me I had to wait. I didn’t explain my escape from the labor and delivery floor to the upstairs nursery. The nurses had eventually given up on trying to keep me in bed, and after that first trip, I’d had a nice orderly who came to my room with a wheelchair whenever I’d asked, day or night.

  I hadn’t had a chance to explain how alike our children were or how terrified I was for both of them. That when I’d looked at them I couldn’t see any difference in the frailty of their bodies even though I knew Trix was thriving and Draco was not. About how I’d only held him twice, and each time a nurse said he had to go back in his bed, I’d plotted murder. I didn’t have a chance to explain how thin their skin had been, how tiny their ears and fingernails. How Trix’s eyes had looked brown from the very beginning, but Draco’s were that slate blue color that eventually turned into something else.

  I hadn’t had a chance to explain how badly I’d wanted my pop. How I’d never let myself cry until that final day because I knew once I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. I hadn’t had a chance to tell him that Tony visited me only once in the hospital. Me—not the kids. And

  I’d never forgiven him.

  I hadn’t told him how badly I’d needed him. How I’d wanted him to show up without me having to call him. How I’d waffled back and forth about calling him and eventually came to this conclusion: I’d never see him again. He would never know that he had any children. He would never know the absolute gut-wrenching, chest-hollowing, full-body grief that I would feel. He would never feel it. As much as I needed him, as much as I wanted him to come and save us, I had to give him the peace of never knowing. So, that was what I did.

  When I heard someone come in the front door, I didn’t have it in me to get up off the floor. I hoped Vera wouldn’t just let Trix barge in here if they were back. Dragon must have called her earlier, or she would have been here hours ago.

  I heard the thick stomp of motorcycle boots coming toward me, and I didn’t care. I was done. I had nothing left to give.

  “Brenna, what the fuck happened?” Casper asked me as I looked up into his pretty blue eyes. He crouched down beside me and slid his arms under my body, lifting me gently. “Grease! Get in here,” he called toward the living room as he walked back that way.

  I’d known Grease for a very long time. He was a partner in crime when I was a kid. Though, once he started being interested in girls, that all changed. But I knew him. To his bones, I knew him. Though I hadn’t seen him in five years, I knew the look on his face when he caught a glimpse of mine—fury.

  “Give her to me, brother,” he rumbled as he took me away from poor Casper.

  The kid was probably wondering what the hell was going on.

  “Call Poet and Vera and get ’em over here.”

  “I’m okay,” I whispered as he sat me at the kitchen table and tilted my chin up.

  “Baby, you’re not okay. You got one hell of a shiner. I’ll get some ice for it,” he told me as he kissed the top of my head and headed to the fridge.

  I was freezing. The comforter was still wrapped around me, but I couldn’t get warm even though I could feel the sweat sticking my hair to the back of my neck. I wasn’t looking forward to having the frozen peas he pulled out of the freezer anywhere near me.

  “You gonna tell me what happened? Like to know why I’m killing a man,” he told me as he sat in a chair, facing me. His knees surrounded mine as he reached up and held the peas wrapped in a kitchen towel against my face.

  “Don’t do anything. This is between him and me. It’s none of your business.”

  “You think I’m gonna l
et this go? Fuck that. You got bruises anywhere else?” he asked me as he tried to unwrap the blanket.

  “Quit it! No, I don’t have bruises anywhere else. For God’s sake, he smacked me once. That’s it! Then, he took off.” I pulled the comforter back around my shoulders.

  “The fuck happened, Brenna? Dragon’s been walking on fuckin’ clouds the last couple of days even though he just got the shit kicked out of him less than a week ago. I was assuming that was your doin’. But now…” He shook his head.

  “Is Casper calling my pop and Vera?” At his nod, I nodded back. “I think we better wait until they get here before I explain. I’m not doing it more than once.”

  I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I was so exhausted that I didn’t know how much longer I could stay upright at the kitchen table. I made Grease follow me into the living room, but even though there was room on the couch for both of us, he dragged a kitchen chair with him and swung it around to straddle it backward.

  I lay curled in the corner of the couch, my face resting on the bag of peas, until Vera and Pop showed up within minutes of each other. The expressions on the faces of Pop and Vera couldn’t have been more opposite. Vera looked at me with a sort of resigned pity. It was the look of a woman who had seen her fair share of swollen cheekbones and tear-drowned eyes. It was a look of commiseration.

  My pop’s face looked like I imagined the wrath of God would. His eyes were narrowed, his lips were thin, and his hands were tapping against the sides of his legs as if playing an imaginary piano. I had only seen his hands look like that one time before—when I was eleven and a rival gang dared to breach the front gate and killed one of the recruits.

  Grease spoke up, breaking the silence, as we all just looked at each other. “Still the fingers, Poet. Let’s hear her out before we kill him.”

  “Son, you think I’m gonna let you do shit? You’re outta your mind,” he replied. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, he continued, “He’s mine.”