Freshwater(36)

Look, I was a hungry shade, nothing more. I latched onto the men, and their energy felt like sticky fruit sliding between my fingers, and when we were done, I was still hungry. And after the next time, I was still hungry. And after the one after that one, I was still hungry. I would have drowned them all. I would have inched slowly over their bodies, dipped my fingers inside their throats and ripped out sounds. I filled their beds with secrets. Ada was right—I found pleasure in evil. I did many things in hunger that could be misconstrued.





Chapter Fourteen


Ebe onye dara, ka chi ya kwat?r? ya.




As?ghara

As far as I’m concerned, I have been loyal, both to Ada and the brothersisters. When Ada tried to look for help, I did many things to stop it because she was mine, but believe me, I never wanted her to feel alone. After she tried to kill me and failed, Ada gave up. I didn’t enjoy winning that fight. There’s no delight in watching her crumble—that’s only fun when it happens to other people. Saint Vincent and I tried to make a home for Ada in her mind, and that meant something, at least to me. You don’t know what it’s like to share a life and a body, to watch the days and months and years drag by, the people who came in and revolved out, to watch Ada try and get away from us, to see her fail, to see the way she came to love us better, eventually.

I even finally allowed Ada to see her therapists, since she was being so stubborn about it. I remember one session with a middle-aged woman who had gray streaks in her hair. Ada was sitting there, rubbing the back of her left hand with her right one, tracing the tendon that led to her middle finger, running her fingertips lightly over it until she felt it roll under and across. This was something she did often, just to remind herself that she had a physical body. She was also talking to herself in her head, and I could hear the forced calm that she was injecting into her voice.

“It’s okay, baby, you’re fine. It’s only an hour, then we can go. We’re fine, baby, it’s okay.”

The woman with the streaked hair was talking, but Ada had stopped listening. I looked around the office, wondering how many times we’d been here. I didn’t always follow what Ada had been up to, so things easily slipped by me when I wasn’t paying attention.

“Do you have any questions?” the woman asked. “Comments? Concerns?”

“None,” said Ada.

The therapist made a note, her pen scratching quietly. “How do you feel about your future?” she asked.

Without thinking, Ada let the truth slip out. “Indifferent.”

The therapist’s face sharpened. “Could you elaborate on that a bit more? When you think about the future, exactly what emotions come up for you?”

Ada shrugged. “Indifference.”

The therapist continued pushing, and as she spoke, Ada kept blanking out midway through the woman’s sentences, then returning. The therapist asked the same things over and over, rephrasing them as if Ada wouldn’t notice. But it didn’t matter how many ways she twisted the questions, Ada had no answers.

“What about As?ghara?” the woman asked, and suddenly I was paying all the attention I had in the world.

“How the fuck does she know my name?” I hissed at Ada, but she ignored me.

“Are there any more of them?” continued the therapist, and I watched Ada with my breath held. I could tell that she didn’t want to lie. She’d already lied once, when the woman asked what the suicide plan was, which even Ada knew was a truly stupid question. Why would anyone give away a suicide plan—so it could be stopped? What nonsense.

But I could see that Ada was actually considering telling this woman, this complete fucking stranger, about Saint Vincent. I reached out across all the marble and pushed a thousand spikes into it. The pain would reach Ada, whether she tried to ignore me or not.

“We don’t talk about Vincent,” I reminded her. “Better keep your fucking mouth shut.”

“I’m not comfortable discussing that,” Ada answered obediently, and the therapist let it go.

For the rest of the session, Ada drew imaginary lines on her temple, pressing her index finger into the skin, the pressure holding her together. She traced her eyebrows and tried to find words to tell the therapist about the things I had done to her mind. But I choked up the words and made them rot in her throat—there would be no screaming for help.

When Ada finally left the office, I waited until her feet hit the stone steps outside before I started shouting.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing in there?”

“Calm down,” Ada said. “We’re fine. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay! Why did you have to go and talk to that woman?”

“I was having trouble focusing at school, As?ghara, don’t you remember? I just wanted to get it checked out.”

“But that’s not what she was talking about in there. She knew my name! What have you been telling her?”

“Nothing! Nothing much. She asked a few questions.”

I shook my head. The damage was already done; all I could do was manage it from here. “Well, you don’t need to go back,” I told Ada.

She frowned. “The therapist said that sometimes it’s going to feel like I don’t need the help. She said I should ignore that feeling.”