Breathing Black

by Piper Payne

  We quietly went back to what we were doing. While sorting through moving boxes, we tried to sort through our temperamental thoughts. “I hate this. And I hate him for coming into our new story!” June said, throwing a book at me, interrupting the silence.

  I let the book hit me then got up and kissed the top of her head. I didn’t blame her for being upset; I felt selfish for even trying to contemplate what to do. I took my wine glass and blanket onto our balcony so I could sit and look up into the night sky to get some clarity. It had never been hard for me to shut off my feelings; I did it all the time. I would just have to try harder. I didn’t know how long I sat out there, but trying to think about all the ways I could avoid Landon only made me hate my subconscious even more for taking me down memory lane.

  I remember his warm breath that smelled like sticky saliva and stale coffee, I remember the way his rough fingertips snagged on my nightgown, I remember sitting on top of my shoes in the closet thinking one day he might have a daughter and she’ll never know he made a little girl wish she was dead.

  “I hope that everyone has turned in their anonymous short story. This assignment will be the determining factor if you pass or fail my class,” Mr. Wallace said assertively, slowly pacing in front of the chalkboard in his penny loafers and wool professor’s coat. “If you fail, I will not sign off on your English credit that you need to graduate.”

  The classroom full of seniors remained silent. No whining, protests, or complaints because no one dared to mess with his kind of crazy. He was the only teacher from high school that I knew I’d have reoccurring nightmares about.

  “Today we will mix it up a little. An important part about becoming a writer is accepting criticism of your work and also being able to really explore and appreciate other writing styles and genres. Now that all of you have turned in your assignment, I will be re-assigning it to someone else in the class for them to read and review.”

  I thought I just had an out of body experience because I could have sworn he said for someone else to READ AND REVIEW! My hysteria was confirmed as he started walking around the classroom passing out the collected stack of papers. “Friday you will each stand in front of the class with the anonymous short story that you’ve been assigned. The objective is to summarize what you’ve read and then share it with us. Be critical yet fair, unbiased yet responsive to your feelings from the written word.”

  I couldn’t do anything but watch the clock that mocked me above the classroom door while Mr. Wallace leisurely walked down each row of desks with my painful and disgusting words in his hands. The sound of the clock’s ticking was trampled by the thumping of my increasing heart rate. Eventually the bell would ring and save me. Eventually the bell would ring and I could run away from my fate.

  I sat in the very back of the classroom, gripping the flesh inside my wrist until my knuckles turned white. Jonas, a gothic dressed boy with black fingernail polish that everyone pretended not to see sat to my right and on the opposite side sat a girl, Katie, who’s invisible to everyone but me; but that was only because I was trying to be more invisible than her. That was the whole point. I wanted to be invisible. I didn’t mind my teacher reading my short story; he was already two strikes away from being mentally insane. He once did an impromptu poem about a dead, rotting raccoon that he’d scraped off the road and brought into class. The raccoon sat on his desk for an entire week. And he gave it a name.

  But now I regret my secret attempt to share something personal. I regret thinking that my journal was an intelligent piece for my short story. I started replaying the words I rewrote on the lined notebook paper. Oh. My. God. It didn’t matter that there was still thirty minutes left of class, if I didn’t get out of there right this second I was going to have a meltdown in front of everyone. The actual panic started when I kept picturing myself having an attack in front of everyone I’d spent months hiding from. Staring. Judging. Laughing. Knowing.

  Sweat beaded on my skin as the beginning of my uncontrolled misery started to take place. My delusional mind had always taken a simple breeze and turned it into a tornado. My throat tightened as my lungs began its repetitious punishment. I crammed everything into my bag and barged out the classroom door.

  Once I was outside, I collapsed between an overflowing garbage can and the building. I planned on hiding there until I either died or made it through the passing storm constricting my lungs. Waiting for death was excruciating, especially when it never came.

  I didn’t want to be the girl they found dead, lying next to the high school garbage can, so I was actually okay with not dying that day. But as Friday approached I didn’t know how I was going to handle being in class while someone talked openly about the poison inside of me, my words and pain coming out of their mouth. It could always be claimed as fiction and no one really knew who wrote it. If they narrowed it down there were at least eight girls in my class so those were good odds. Plus no one even knew my name so how could anyone think, I bet it’s Larkin. I thought about skipping class but after my last noticeable evacuation of the building I couldn’t risk bringing more attention to myself.

  Friday arrived and as I walked into the classroom and got to my desk, I buried myself a little more into my large gray sweatshirt and sank down into my seat. The only thing I was grateful for in that moment was that I never got a short story to read because I ran out of class before he could assign one to me.

  The presentations started and as each person stood up, my heart was jack hammering out of my ribcage. Of course the universe hated me, making me wait the entire class period in agony. Mine was the very last one and I realized the universe hated me even more when he had been assigned to read it.

  “Okay, Landon, it’s your turn. What’s the title of your anonymous short story?” Landon stood up and walked to the front of the class holding my assignment in his hands. He looked nervous as he unrolled the worn papers, shuffling his gray Converse shoes on the ground.

  “It’s called Broken.” He glanced over at his girlfriend Ashley and smiled with such adoration I wanted to vomit. It’d been months since I’d left him standing on the football field awaiting my execution from Ashley, but the only noise she made in my direction was to glare daggers at me. This was my only class with either of them, and after I ran off the football field I became invisible to Landon just like I always had been before.

  “Start off by telling us what it’s about.” Mr. Wallace flicked his hand in the air as he tried to rush Landon along. He was seated with the students, and in between his interruptions he took notes on each presentation.

  “Well … it’s mostly about waiting.” Landon lifted his chin a little higher, trying to replicate the confidence everyone was used to seeing from him. “Waiting for moments that make all the bad ones hurt less, waiting for someone to save you until you realize that no one is coming and you have to save yourself, waiting for the never-ending hurt to stop, and waiting until you can finally breathe again.” He scrunched his eyebrows and looked at Mr. Wallace with frustration. “I can’t just blurt out what happened; it doesn’t do the story any justice because you lose the emotion and connection to the character.” He started twisting his watch with one hand, a habit he did when he was deep in thought.

  “That’s the point, Mr. Black, you’re supposed to try to get all that out by just using your words without us having to read it. Continue please,” he said, annoyed.

  At this point I was at stage three of another panic attack. As much as I wanted and needed Landon to stop, a small part of me craved more. Like it would be the last time our lives really connected and he would actually see a part of me again.

  Landon sighed and looked down at the papers in his hands, “A girl lost her hope, like it was a tangible thing she just let go of. Suffering at the hands of others in the most atrocious ways, she broke. No, that’s not the right word …” He shook his head, dissatisfied. “She’s not broken. That’s what she thinks, but it’s not true. She’s a survivor, but she doesn�
��t even realize it. She doesn’t even realize her resilience and strength. She’s completely alone and … I’m quoting the character here, “ready to give back the life she’d been given.” He flipped through the pages, finding the one he was looking for and folded the rest over. When he was searching I could see yellow highlighted areas throughout.

  He began to retell my story. “She heard his slow, calculated footsteps getting closer and closer to her room. She was already curled inside her closet hiding from him, plucking the feathers out of a pillow one by one as she clung to it. The seconds ticked by. A hand slowly twisted the brass doorknob, letting light from the hallway creep inside her dark bedroom then vanishing again when the door was shut. The tightness in her chest had come back, almost strangling her to the point she had always wished for. She hoped death would take her before he did. As his footsteps got closer, she realized this had been a game to him. It started out when her mom would pass out after shooting up, but tonight he dared to try it while she was awake sitting in the other room.”

  Landon rolled up the papers and continued. “This girl is braver than anyone I think I’ll ever meet.” He scuffed his shoes again on the floor. “She gets away that night. She made a choice to not let it happen to her. The really sad part is that she struggles to accept it, and at times she almost wished she didn’t get away. She couldn’t understand why she was spared but not others. When she ran, she ran past her mother who just looked up at her, and instead of helping her naked and battered daughter, she went back to tightening the belt around her arm.” He stopped and sighed, rubbing at his arm. “When I read this, all I kept thinking about is how insignificant my problems are compared to this girl’s. It made me feel fortunate to have all that I do and to value the opportunities in life that I’ve been given.” Shame-filled, he lowered and shook his head. “It made me want to find this girl and save her from herself and everyone that’s hurt her. I want to make her see that she’s not broken … she’s just beautifully flawed.”

  “Times up, Landon.” Mr. Wallace sat there drumming his fingers into his desk, completely disinterested.

  The bell rang immediately after Landon finished, but all I could do was sit there frozen to my chair. I sat there as everyone gathered their things. I sat there until I was the last student in the classroom. I sat there until Mr. Wallace shut off the lights and locked the door, not even realizing I was still sitting in the back corner of the room. I sat there until every last drop of tears left my body.

  “Larkin.” June nudged me awake and knelt down beside me. I’d fallen asleep outside on our balcony and according to my frozen nose and ears I’d been out here for a while.

  “I’ve been thinking …” She exhaled, rubbing her eyes, flaking her mascara. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if you really are starting to like him again, and have really thought this through, I’ll support you in whatever decision you make. EVEN if I think you’re insane.” I pulled back the blanket and she climbed onto the chair with me, resting her head on my shoulder. Comforting me sweetly with her baby powder scent, her slightly taller frame fit around mine perfectly. “We’ve come so far, Larkin. We promised we’d find happiness. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “I’ve been scared shitless since the moment I first saw him again. I feel like he’s either going to destroy me or set me free.”

  “Yeah,” she said, tracing the tattoo on my wrist softly with her fingers, “I guess we’ll find out.”

  The next day I walked into our station and on my desk sat an extravagant gold-wrapped present. I found the tag and flipped it open.

  I pulled off the bow, opening the lid to find replacements to some of my belongings that Landon had ruined the morning he almost ran me over: To Kill a Mockingbird, except this replacement was a signed first edition, a gray vintage Chanel dress with matching platform pump heels, and a new plastic lunch box to use instead of a brown paper bag. I instantly started laughing when Max walked in.

  “Good to see at least someone is happy this morning,” he said as he brushed past me—uptight and bitchy, which meant his date with dull Daniel didn’t go very well last night. I’d ask him about it but it was too early to care about things like vertebras and the boney thingy that connects into the joint thingy. You know, things you pretend to care about when your friend is trying to date a chiropractor.

  “What’s all this?” He snorted with amusement.

  “This…” I held up the box, tipping it to show him the contents “…is what Landon just gave me.”

  “Seriously?” He rolled his eyes in annoyance, a dramatic full range of motion. “I really have no clue when it comes to dating if this is the caliber of shit I should be giving my dates,” he said, taking his glasses off to stressfully pinch the bridge of his nose.

  “Who the hell does he think he is giving me Chanel? I would never wear that. He ruined an outfit I found at a consignment store for seven dollars,” I said, pushing away the box.

  Max rummaged through it, looking up at me with his eyebrows arched as he pulled a new iPhone out. “I didn’t know he ruined your phone.”

  “He didn’t!” I said, grabbing it from him. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Why would he give me a phone? That doesn’t make any sense.

  There was a note attached:

  Meet me at Echo Sushi Bar Friday night at 7:00 p.m.

  Max read the note over my shoulder. “This guy’s been doing his research; he knows your favorite restaurant. Are you going to go?”

  “I have no idea.” And I truly didn’t.

  As Friday grew closer, my anxiety grew as well. I’d spent days debating if I should go or not. It was like a tennis match in my head. On one side there was my rational brain and unfortunately the other side was controlled by a decade-old teen fantasy. By 6:00 p.m. on Friday night I’d spent three hours worrying over my outfit, hair, and makeup. I tried on at least a dozen outfits and decided on some black boots with black lace stockings and a long sleeved fitted dress. I wanted to look nice but not overdo myself.

  Before I got dressed, I went into the bathroom one last time to reapply my lip gloss and give myself a pep talk in the mirror. For a moment I pictured myself as a child watching my mom getting ready for her dates. I would always sit on top of the toilet lid and study her as she meticulously applied her face while balancing a cigarette on her lips. “Remember, Larkin, less is more. That applies to makeup and clothes. You’ll always have control if you control what’s in their pants.” She’d laugh and roll her eyes at me as I stared at her in innocent and naïve confusion. She’d lean back over the sink to apply her mascara in the mirror, letting the ash from her cigarette fall where it may. “Little Bird, go grab Mommy’s razor blade out of the tin. I need to make some pretty powder for my nose.”

  The memories of my past were the biggest triggers to my pain. They’d wait for me to be reminded of them; it could be a simple smell, touch, word, or place. But once that memory had been triggered, I relived each agonizing second of it. Each time I took a trip down memory lane I could feel myself being dragged down the mountain I’d been climbing with bloody teeth and nails.

  I learned that you couldn’t overcome a memory because you couldn’t change a story once it had been told. It had already stained and branded your mind and soul. The only thing you could wish for was time. Time didn’t heal painful memories, it just helped them fade. Some called it forgetting; I called it peace. Sadly, there were many memories I knew time would never free me of. I pretended it was the universe’s cruel way of making sure I never forgot how far I’d come.

  I remembered the exact moment I foolishly thought I could finally let go and forget it all. It was the day my mom showed up on June’s doorstep a few weeks before our high school graduation. She was a needle away from meth hysteria as she demanded and screamed for Walter Ellis, June’s father, to answer the door.

  For me it was nothing new. I’d dealt with situations like this my whole life. It was just a different day, different
man, different house. I knew my mom had found someone new. Aside from the motel keys in the trash and hickeys, she’d actually gotten clean enough that she wasn’t passed out every time I got home from work or school.

  It’d been a while since I’d seen her last; disappearing for days, even weeks at a time wasn’t unusual. The day before she showed up on June’s porch she’d been suspiciously calling me asking about our financial information. Not like I would tell her the truth. Scamming people, even me, out of money was her forte, and I barely felt bad anymore for the poor sucker she slept with who thought she was worth a single dime for a blow job.

  June’s father detained her in his office until I could get there to pick her up. “This is the first and last time I can help you with her, Larkin,” Walter said quietly as he answered the door. “I suggest the both of you get out of town before she does more damage.” He looked over his shoulder and quit talking as Robert appeared from the hallway. My stomach retched and I knew why I hadn’t been able to get ahold of June; she was locked up in her room hiding.

  I realized that day if I didn’t leave, this would forever be my fucked-up life. Making excuses, cleaning up her mistakes, and hanging my head in disgrace because I was her daughter. I’d become completely numb and accepting of every ounce of pain my mom bestowed upon me. I was so accustomed to it that I flatlined with emotion. I took care of us and dealt with every repercussion because it was a habitual routine. Taking care of Nancy was like breathing. I did it on instinct even if I struggled at it and didn’t want to, and I had no idea how she was going to survive once I left. Lately I was overcome with guilt and wavering in my decision to run away and leave.