I was lying in a puddle in the street.
Get up, you pathetic idiot.
No one is going to save you. No one.
You must figure out a way to save yourself.
I pulled myself to my feet, limping from the alley, making my way home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The rain continued to fall, coming down in sterling sheets, outside the window and within my soul. The colors I’d managed to find even in this gray new place all bled away like one of those impressionist paintings left in the watery weather, leaving no picture at all, leaving nothing but a blank canvas in its wake. Empty. Wiped away. I didn’t change my clothes. I didn’t wash my face. I sat in the same spot on my couch for twenty-four hours, staring at the shadows of the raindrops on my wall. Darkness descended, and then morning light arose. My mind drifted . . . back . . . back . . . I was on Sundara, lying in the courtyard under the persimmon tree ripe with sweetly scented fruit. I heard the chirping of the birds and felt the dry desert air move over my heated skin. I smelled the rich and bitter almond oil, and I tasted flowered honey on my tongue. I drifted, only realizing I was crying when the tears hit the exposed skin of my chest and slid slowly between my breasts.
Who am I?
I didn’t know. Perhaps I never really had. I’d been defined by others. An act in a sideshow written by someone else. All my life.
I drank water only when I could no longer ignore my thirst. I forced myself to eat, pieces of plain bread that balled into glue on my tongue so I gagged and just barely managed to swallow it down.
The phone rang and rang but I ignored it. Dawson. I couldn’t face him. I still smelled like Zakai. And work. I’d be fired of course, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Nothing mattered.
Someone knocked, over and over, but I didn’t answer.
The police came, threatening to break down my door. I opened it and told them I was fine.
The phone continued to ring.
Sometime later, a siren broke me from my trance and brought me from the desert, careening over miles of sand, spinning me across the ocean and through the city streets, plunking me solidly onto my couch where I sat stunned and confused, the taste of sugared dates still on my tongue. I turned my head to see the blue flashing lights of an ambulance speed by outside. Off to some emergency. Other people’s lives were filled with hardship too. I wasn’t the only one. There were a million dots of color in this world, creating pictures I’d never see.
I stood, shuffling to the balcony where I opened the doors wide and breathed in the cool springtime air, so different than the balmy breeze flowing through my mind. The tears fell faster, rolling down my cheeks and chilling in the coolness. I sat down on a deck chair and put my face in my hands, the pain radiating through me in ever-rising waves.
Was this it? All the pain I’d been spared on Sundara because others had taken it on their shoulders on my behalf? All the heartache and anger I hadn’t felt then had finally come home to roost? I hadn’t been spared at all. The inevitable had simply been delayed. Bertha had felt this pain. Ahmad had felt this pain. Zakai had only felt anger.
Perhaps his heartache had been delayed as well.
But I couldn’t think of Zakai. It hurt far too much. And though we might both be hurting, we were going to have to do it separately. We would not heal each other. We would only slice one another with the jagged edges of where we’d broken in two.
I sat with my mourning, allowing it to thrash me upon its rocky shores. I felt battered and crushed and far too tender for what life had given me.
Someday, Ahmad had told me, you won’t feel that your softness is an asset. But it is.
What do I do with it, Ahmad?
A ray of sunshine broke through the clouds, making me squint and turn my head backward in the direction of my living room. When I opened my eyes, I was staring at my desk. I paused, as the outline of an idea began to take form. As cloudy as the sky above and just as out of reach. But maybe . . . After a few minutes I stood, picking up the laptop and bringing it back outside. I opened a document and I began to write.
Once we were starlight . . .
I let my mind roam free, my fingers flying as I twisted reality with fantasy as had been the case for most of my life. I saw that now. It was easy for me. It always had been. I wrote of endless crystal sand and billowing coral skies. I wrote of goddesses with hearts of fire and princes with obsidian eyes. The sun rose and the sun set again and still I wrote, page after page after page until my wrists hurt and my back ached.