How to Be Brave(58)

choking on air

the blast

the force

fills you so powerfully your lungs fill and fill and fill.

There is no exhale.

Inflated, you are still conscious but you cannot breathe out—not on your own— there is only oxygen.

Too much of anything can kill,

even life force.

It’s like moving through the sun.

There is only gas, vapor, moving air,

light and more light.

There is nothing else.

*

Your heart:

I can’t see it as anything but broken. I travel down a tunnel to a time when you were a child, five years old, maybe your birthday, maybe the morning, when you first woke up. You were open and expectant and smiling. Your mother, who I never met, was awake, maybe cooking or maybe cleaning or maybe sitting in a chair waiting for you, and you walked into the kitchen, where she greeted you with everything inside her heart, her arms wide open for your first morning embrace. You settled into this love; it filled you. Your heart was full.

*

Once upon a time, your heart was wrangled from your chest cavity, disconnected from your body, placed on a table, and tinkered with. I remember that day. I felt you there on the bed, feeling nothing, knowing everything. Your heart was not your own. As the earth spun, hurtled, carried you through space, they moved the space that was your body, they moved you out of your body. The soul does not live in the heart, and breaking ribs do not release the soul. It is a heart, a pump; it moves oxygen through thin wires. The soul is in the air. The soul is in the skin. The soul breathes and exhales every minute. That day, the day they ripped it out of your chest, your soul was still there, not inside you, but everywhere. I felt it.

At the end, it was bruised.

At the end, it was empty—the body, the heart, the mind.

At the end, we had to let you go.


We had to.

And I’ll never be sorry enough.


Evelyn,

Can you hear me?

*

Dad comes home with dinner—I’m guessing French dips from the smell. He sets the bag on the dining room table. I put down my book and walk over to peek in the bag. I was right. “Thanks for bringing home food,” I say.

Dad doesn’t look at me or say you’re welcome or even ask me if I’ve heard anything about Evelyn. He just goes into the bathroom. It’s like I’m a nonentity to him.

When he comes back out, I say it again. “Thanks for bringing home dinner.”

He sits down at the table, picks up a magazine.

“Evelyn’s still in a coma.”

He doesn’t look at me.

“Her numbers are good, but they won’t know for sure until she wakes up.”

He still doesn’t look at me.

“Dad, put down the magazine and talk to me.”

He looks up. “What do you want me to say? What do you have to say about all this?”

“Dad, I don’t know. I just—”

“What were you thinking? What have you been doing all this time? I thought I knew you—”

“Dad, you do know me. I’m standing right here—”

“But you did not think, Georgia. You have to think about what others would say. What do you think they are saying, that you hang out with people like this?”

“Dad, what are you even talking about? I don’t care what other people are saying. I don’t have that many people, anyway.”

“But your family.” He’s yelling now, not making any sense. “What about your family? You know what they say: It is better to lose an eye than to lose a good name.”

“Dad, enough.” I sit down at the table. “Can we just talk, like for real, you know?”

…

“Dad.”

…

“Dad, I’m almost eighteen. I’m going to college soon. Would you talk to me? For real.”

…

“Dad!” I yell. “I’m not a little girl anymore. Just talk to me already!”

I take a deep breath and lower my voice. “Here’s the thing. I was trying things, that’s all. And I’m allowed to try things. I wasn’t being stupid—I mean, not that stupid. Not like what Evelyn did.

“But you—you can’t put all this on me. I mean, where have you been this past year? Why do you care all of a sudden? Why weren’t you caring all along?”

My dad starts to cry, really quietly, which is weird. I’ve only seen him cry once, on that very last day when we had to disconnect Mom from the wires, when they injected her with morphine.

He didn’t cry at the wake. He didn’t cry at the funeral.

And I guess I should stop talking. I guess that’s enough.

But it’s not.

I need to say it all.

“You should have been there for me. You should have been asking how I was doing. You should have been listening and watching. And—” I have to say it, finally. I’m shaking and now I’m crying, too, and I almost can’t say it, but then I do. “You should have made the decision to take her off the machines. You should have been the one to let her die.”

He looks at me. “Oh, koúkla mou…”

“Not me. Not me, Dad.”

There. I said it.

Finally.