SHORT STORIES

Lacerations 

Isabel’s back lay against the grey waiting room couch. With her left hand, she tapped its wooden frame in sync with the ticking of the analog clock above till she was bored. She looked up and read the time.

“2:07pm.”

She sighed softly and turned her head to the large, brown door of Room 1483. Isabel closed her eyes and repeated the image of her mother’s smile when she visited two days ago. The two had spent three hours watching reruns of Jeopardy on Isabel’s laptop while eating dinner. Her mother’s intake was supposed to be the next morning to determine whether she could be granted a temporary dispatch and allow the two to spend Christmas at home for the first time in five years. Isabel got a call around 2am the same night, informing her about her mother’s suicide attempt two hours after she left.

“GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME! LET ME GO YOU BALD BASTARD! LET ME THE FUCK GO!”

Isabel opened her eyes and lifted her head up slightly to see a couple of security guards and nurses trying to restrain one of the patients. Isabel lay back and closed her eyes again, focusing her attention on the clock’s ticking. After a couple of minutes and the slight pop of needle injections, the hallways of Sinai Medical Center Psychological Rehabilitation Ward returned to its normal silence.

The ward was located in the old part of the hospital where the agnostic church used to be. An anonymous donation to the hospital that came two years into her mother’s admittance changed the layout of the ward. The walls were re-decorated from dirty, white cement walls to a deep red faux brick pattern. White fluorescent lights hung along the ceiling and illuminated the neutral toned nature-themed art along the walls. Down the hall was a newly installed recreation room, decorated with a TV, weekly announcements and activities pinned on the beige bulletin board, card games and a rotating twenty-four-hour security guard.

“Ms. Lewis?” Isabel opened her eyes and noticed her mother’s door opened slightly. She moved her head to the left and saw one of her mother’s nurses, standing in front of her.

“Um, hi, I’m sorry.” Isabel said as she sat up.

“No problem. You’re free to go in now.”

“Thank you.” Isabel said. The nurse flashed Isabel a quick smile and left her standing alone in front of the door. Isabel stared at the door and felt herself grow dizzy as she recalled her mother’s first suicide attempt. Isabel was about to leave on a college tour with her high school classmates. She checked the glove compartment in her car to make sure she had her list of questions she had for Columbia’s and New York University’s Joint Film Studies/History Department Program. While checking, Isabel realized she left her wallet with her driver’s license and state ID in her room. She turned off the car and ran into the house, knowing it would take thirty seconds to find her wallet and two minutes for her to leave the house with her mom showering her in “don’t forget me” kisses. She opened the door to discover her mother on her knees with a mixture of antidepressants and pain medications spilled out over the ground. Isabels slowly crawled on the floor and held her mother in her arms; their shared sobs overpowered the voicemail Isabel’s high school counselor had left to confirm her attendance for the trip. Her mother fell asleep two hours later on their living room couch. A second suicide attempt three days later officially admitted her mother to Sinai Medical Center and Isabel’s withdraw from Saint Brooks High School.

Isabel pulled herself out of her thoughts, took a deep breath and knocked on the door three times.

“You can come in.” Her mother said beyond the door.

Isabel entered the room and found her mother sitting fully erect in the mahogany, wooden chair they made when Isabel was 8. Isabel always sat on the floor of their old house’s garage and admired her mother’s expert craftsmanship. The chair took two weeks to make, due to the girls’ frequent ice-cream trips, naps and dance parties they had to the newest pop songs that played on the radio. They often found themselves in laughing fits, falling over with tears in their eyes. Isabel’s mother, whose eyes were once a bright blue, now sat dull and grey with fresh tear stains across her cheek in that mahogany chair.

“Hi mom.” Isabel’s voice barely overpowered the ticking of the brown clock over her mother’s bed.

“Can I grab a chair?” She asked. Her mother looked at the chair next to her desk and turned back to Isabel and nodded. Isabel gently closed the door behind her and grabbed the chair and sat next to her mother. Her mother wiped away her tears, slightly exposing the fresh lacerations on her wrist. Isabel ignored the twinge in her stomach over the scars and pulled her laptop out from her bag. 

“I brought my laptop today. I downloaded some more Jeopardy episodes while I was at work.” Isabel’s mother gave her a soft smile and nodded. Isabel searched her email to find the video files when a large scream echoed from across the hall startled her. Isabel stood up from the chair to open the door and check, but her mother raised her hand.

“Relax, it’s just Barry.” Isabel turned to her mother, still standing up and her eyebrows raised in surprise. 

“You know him?”

“Yeah, he lives three doors down. He’s a pretty nice guy when he’s not having delusional episodes.” She said casually. “He’s been here for about three days.”

Isabel sat back down with her laptop on her lap. “How did you meet him?”

“In the recreation room. His five-year-old daughter was with him. She was so cute.” Her mother smiled at the thought. “Her favorite color is green. Wasn’t your favorite color green when you were a kid? No? It was yellow wasn’t it? That’s why dad painted your whole room yellow.” Her mother’s fingers began tracing the old scars along her wrist.

“If I was delusional as Barry, I would’ve thought I went back in time and was raising you all over again. She’s smart just like you. She loves reading.” Isabel somberly smiled.

“She said she can’t wait to finish pre-k so she can be a doctor. Kids these days.” Her mother stared at the door and traced the fresh cuts on her wrists.

“Brave and bright at so young. So much ahead of her.” Isabel watched her mother’s soft smile fade and her voice drop to a whisper. Isabel clutched her laptop to her chest, recalling the day her mom found out she dropped out of high school. Isabel had picked up her signed withdraw form from her high school before she visited her mother. Isabel went to use the bathroom and when she came back out, she saw her brown tote bag on the floor and her mother holding the withdraw form in her hand. The two stared at each other and her mom opened up her mouth but closed it quickly. Isabel always wanted to know what her mother was about to say to her but not knowing made the transition away from school easy for the both of them.

Isabel glanced down to her mother’s wrist, gasping at the blood that began dripping onto her mother’s hospital gown.

“Mom, holy shit!” She swiftly placed her laptop on the ground and dropped down to her mother’s side. Her mom was unaware that her daughter had moved from her chair until she felt Isabel’s hand on her wrist.

“Hey, hey, hey be careful. You’re bleeding.” Isabel said softly. Isabel’s mother raised her head in confusion. She blinked her eyes and looked down to see the reopened wound and looked up at Isabel, shocked at her own numbness. Her left pinky finger only slightly spasmed to the salty liquid that dripped on top of her vein.

“Mo-“Isabel began to speak but her mother got up from the chair and walked to the doorway of her bathroom. Isabel remained on the floor and heard her mother’s soft footsteps over the black tiles of her room and then the slam of her bathroom door. Isabel stood up from the ground and looked closely underneath the door; her mom had not turned on the light. Isabel walked over to the bathroom door and clicked on the switch from the outside. A couple seconds later, she could hear the flickering static of the light bulb in the room and took a mental note to put in a work order to fix the light before it went out. Isabel turned around to see if she needed to fix anything else in the room and only then noticed the state that her mother’s room had turned to.

Her mother’s bed was still unmade from Isabel’s visit two days prior. The golden lamp on her nightstand broken, pieces of the lightbulb scattered near her desk. On top of her desk was the unopened the brown journal and black gel she bought her mother last month. The transparent packaging protected the journal from the now dried up blood-stained glass. Isabel looked back at her mother’s mahogany rocking chair. The left arm of the chair originally had Isabel and her mother’s signature on the chair; her mother’s signature was now scratched off as well. 

Isabel turned back to her mother’s nightstand and looked at the picture frame with her and her mother. It was Isabel’s 8th grade graduation. Her mother ordered chicken and waffles with a banana-almond smoothie with whipped cream; that was her classic order. Isabel wasn’t particularly hungry that day, but she enjoyed every single fry that she ate and the ones she threw at her mother, laughing at their attempts to catch it in their mouth. They stayed up the rest of the night together watching Jeopardy, playing board games and with her mother’s makeup kit. Isabel fell fast asleep when her mom returned with a face towel to wash of Isabel’s makeup. She carried Isabel back to her room and kissed her daughter’s forehead. Isabel’s mother walked back to her room and turned off her bedroom lights. She slept on the creases of the bedsheets where Isabel had slept and decorated the plain white sheets with her tears.

The bathroom door opened to Isabel’s mother standing underneath the flickering, grey fluorescent light. Her mother sat on her bed with her arms crossed over her stomach, her head face down at the black tiles of her room. Isabel found herself in the same position after her father’s funeral when she was six. The muted yellow wallpaper and white lilies that danced along the room had only added her bleakness. Her mom had walked into her room and sat next to her grieving daughter. Isabel rested her head on her mother’s shoulder, unaware of her mother’s own grief. Her mother held her hand and silently took on Isabel’s pain, pushing her own misery aside until it could no longer be shielded by daily doses of antidepressants. 

Ping. Isabel took out her phone and saw the email notification with the subject line: Instructions for GED Examination at Waller Prep Community Center. Isabel placed her phone in her back pocket to cover up the loud “beep” sound it made when she deleted an email. Isabel sat down on the bed next to her mom. Her blood-stained fingers held her mother’s hand and silently took in the fifteen years of pain her mother bravely hid from her.

A Swim Class in November

In order to complete my freshman year of high school, I had to pass a mandatory health class. I remember answering every question on our final exam and felt very confident in my answers. Though I forgot most of the questions from that gruesome two-hour test, there was always one question that stood out to me to this day: ‘How does puberty affect girls and boys differently?’ The question seemed straightforward and I simply explained that women experience menstruation; they can now become pregnant and may experience mood swings and other behavioral and physical changes—nothing too out of the ordinary. I turned in my test and at the time, I didn’t think I needed to add anything more to my answer. 

Summer came along and I spent most of my time catching up on the books I couldn’t finish during the school year, sleepovers at my friend’s house and week-long TV binges. Summer seemed fairly repetitive, so it decided to throw me a curveball. My dad got a new job at a law firm that brought my family from our tiny town in Normal, Illinois to Chicago. I said goodbye to my friends at Daley High School and in a matter of days, began my sophomore year at Jolibois College Prep in its honors program. As much as I missed the smell of Mrs. Maroon’s twenty-year-old perfume during 5th period math class, Jolibois felt like the right fit for me. It was weird being in an honors program though. I always felt separated from the entire student body. The only time I got the chance to interact with everyone was during lunch or the “regular” classes that I had to take. 

Driver’s Ed/Swimming was listed for second period, following AP Statistics and Trigonometry. Swimming would happen in November and we spent the first two months learning Driver’s Ed with Mr. Payne. Mr. Payne was one of those teachers who clearly cared about his students, but probably took three shots of whiskey before teaching. For the first 30 minutes of class, we learned all of the basics of driver’s safety and sometimes went out to practice in our school’s parking lot. The last 20 minutes was always left for us to hangout and is where I met Amy Saldago. 

Amy joined the honors program at the end of last year after being moved up from regulars. She was 5’7 and her straight black hair reached the bottom of her bra strap. She had a very structured jawline, red-rosy cheeks and deep blue eyes that you couldn’t help but wonder if they were contacts. She was the girl in high school who would spend two hours on her makeup and pick out her outfits the night before but was also ranked in the top 5% of our class. Gym class was where Amy got to hang out with her non-honors friends and she always made sure to include me in their conversations. All of the non-honors kids seemed to know every secret about all of the teachers in Jolibois, from cheating scandals to drinking problems. I, on the other hand, only knew a fraction of things that were happening in Jolibois. I never made friends outside of my kids in my honors program; and maybe that’s why I didn’t know better. 

Two months passed and by the 2nd week of November, it was time to start our swim unit. The night before, my mother put my hair in tight cornrows to make sure the silicon swim cap would protect my hair from the chlorine of my high school’s swimming pool. We went to the bathroom so she could show me in the mirror how to put on the cap. Though it took a couple tries, the cap finally cupped my head with a firm grip. 

The first time I entered the locker room, I expected a room with forty different stalls, each for one girl. Instead, it was a large open room with thirty-year-old showers stacked in the middle of the room and a row of red lockers along the walls. It was a safe environment and I didn’t feel scared while in there, but I forgot to shave the night before and felt more comfortable being alone. I waited to hear the slamming of the door of our locker room that connected to the swimming pool before I started to change. 

I placed the cap on my head in the same manner my mother taught me, believing that it would never slip off. My blue bathing suit glided up my legs, slowly caressing the stretch marks along my inner right thigh, stretching to match the extra volume I carried on my fifteen-year-old body. The straps dug into my shoulder just enough for my small breasts to be lifted and held in place by the suit. The swimsuit reminded me of the corsets that my mother wore underneath her dresses. Though instead of sucking me in, I felt that my swimsuit only accentuated every crinkle of fat along my mid-section and wrapping my arms over my waist felt safer to me. I looked in the mirror once more, opened the locker room door and joined the rest of my classmates in the pool. 

Everyone was sitting on the bleachers. Amy was sitting next to her non-honors friends near the locker room door. I sat alone on the opposite end of the bleachers, closer to the shallow end of the pool and a twenty second walk from the locker room door. The boy’s locker room door opened, and we all expected Mr. Payne to come out. Instead, another teacher came out and I could faintly hear one of my female classmate’s gasp when they saw him. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I simply thought they were just surprised that the man that walked out wasn’t Mr. Payne. His name was Mr. Fenwick and he was going to go be our swim teacher for the next five weeks. Mr. Fenwick was much older than Mr. Payne. He had a beer belly and a scruffy-like beard with small little grey hairs. He wasn’t completely bald but if you didn’t pay close attention, the tiny strands of grey hair were very unnoticeable. His voice was raspy and coarse, not enough for him to be a chain smoker but combined with his age, though it was fairly probable that he smoked a couple cigarettes in his lifetime. As he took attendance, he came up to every single person and asked them whether they knew how to swim. Most of the people in my class did and over time, the once still and silent pool was disturbed by the sounds of my classmates jumping around in the bright blue chlorine surface and boisterous conversations that took place. I couldn’t help but smile at my friends doing various tricks and how quickly they were able to move from one side to the pool to the other. I wondered if by the end of our five-week unit I would be able to do the same. Mr. Fenwick came up to me and stared at my name on his clipboard. 

“And you are? Af-, Afuwa? Af-?” He stuttered over my name a couple times and by the 5th time, I’d figured he wasn’t going to get it and was best to stop him in his tracks. 

“Afia.” I corrected him. 

“Interesting. Does it have a meaning or anything?” 

“Yeah, it means Friday in my language, since that was the day I was born.”

“Where are you from?”

I always dreaded this question.

“Oh, I’m from a suburb in Illinois! I moved here two months ago so I’m pretty new to Jolibois.” I explained. I was hoping he would move on. I didn’t want to go into detail about my parent’s background because it always led to thirty more follow up questions.

“Oh, but like, where are you from? Like, actually? You sorta have an accent.” 

“Oh, right yeah, my family’s from Ghana.”

“Ghana, huh?” He repeated

“Yup.” 

“It’s an exotic name. I like it.” He smiled and licked his lips slightly.

I never heard of the word “exotic” in that context until that moment. I had interpreted his words at the time to mean “foreign” and “unique”, since those were descriptors I had heard in the past about my name. It didn’t seem to mean much more in that moment. 

The conversation on my name dropped off and Mr. Fenwick asked me if I knew how to swim. I shook my head no and he pointed me to the staircase on the shallow end of the pool to join the rest of the beginners. My parents never taught me how to swim and though I wasn’t completely afraid of water, I was still very much scared of drowning. I took in a deep breath and made my way towards the staircase, still holding my hands around my waist. Suddenly, I felt his hand touch the upper part of my back as I swiftly turned around, now with only one hand clutching my stomach and the other feeling where his hand once was. 

“You looked nervous.”

“Huh?” I was nervous but I didn’t think I was making it obvious.

“Your hands. Um, they were shaking.” He told me.

“Oh? I didn’t realize it.” I still have no memory of ever dropping my hands down at any point though maybe I was nervous that I wasn’t paying attention. But Mr. Fenwick was. 

“Well you have nothing to be worried about so just relax”. He said what I later realized was a deceptively assuring tone. Gliding my hands down my back to return to its original spot on my stomach, I stopped at the stairs leading into the pool and stared at the empty white chair across from me. I had seen enough movies to know that it was the lifeguard chair, though I was unsure why it was empty and asked Mr. Fenwick where the lifeguard was. 

“Oh yeah, he’s not in today.”

“Shouldn’t he be here?” 

My hand started moving back to the spot on my back again.

“It’s only the first day and I’m also here to supervise.” 

Turning my head away from him, I took one last look at that empty white chair and took my first step into the pool. I had assumed that because it was November and snowy, the pool would be kept at a reasonable temperature. My foot touched the top of the water and sent a chill up my spin that told otherwise. I slowly brought the rest of my body into the pool cursing at Jolibois for making this a graduation requirement. The cold water brushed first against my thigh, then, it slowly cupped the curves along my body and stopped at the crook of my collar bone. Turning to my left, Amy gave me a soft smile before swimming over to me. Amy knew how to swim and I wasn’t sure why she was on the beginners’ side of the pool, probably because she didn’t want to mess up her makeup; but I was glad that she was there. She held out her hand and I knew she wanted me to come deeper into the pool. 

“I’ll be right next to you.” She said.

I took her hand and followed her into the water more. The rest of class seemed to go by quicker than I realized. I watched Amy swim around, and we kept making jokes laughing about the statistics test we’d fail the previous week. I eventually leaned up against the edge of the pool, closing my eyes and felt as if I was beginning to learn how to float. It was peace. I felt a sense of stability. I didn’t let go the railing, but if I had, maybe I would have learned not be scared of water and maybe I would have floated for the first time in my life. I could faintly hear Mr. Fenwick instructing and correcting students on their swim form. Suddenly, Amy’s laugh dwindled into silence and I opened my eyes, connecting directly with Mr. Fenwick. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been starting or if he was, but I easily observed his eyes moving up and down before he flashed a smile and turned back to coaching. 

I wasn’t sure what to make of that moment. My feet touched the bottom of the pool floor and my hands returned to its sacred position over my stomach, though I felt like I wanted to cover more. Amy looked at me with a face I hadn’t recognized before, but she seemed so aware as if she’d given this face before, either for someone else or for herself. I pushed the moment aside and proceeded to continue my conversation with Amy. 

Just as we were talking about our plans for the rest of the day, the sounds of students chatting about the dread of high school and the splashes of students running swim relays began to cease. My eyes would meet my teacher’s again, only this time, he was in the pool, walking around and checking on students. Mr. Fenwick took off his shirt and had on basketball shorts that were too big on him. He had multiple grey hairs in between his pecs and around his areolas’. Mr. Fenwick took a quick glance at my male classmates before turning his attention to the hoard of fifteen and sixteen-year-old girls in my gym class. Though I couldn’t pick up what was happening, Amy grabbing my hand should have been a signal for me to follow her out of the pool with her. Instead, I noticed that my swim cap was slipping off my head and I stared at my reflection in the pool to fix it, and found a second face that joined mine. I looked up to see Mr. Fenwick staring at me again. By then, all of my classmates had left the pool, leaving me alone with Mr. Fenwick. I overheard the whispers of “oh my God” and “what the fuck” from my female classmates in particular and that should have been an indication that something was not right, and I needed to leave. But I didn’t. I didn’t feel a big sense of urgency because I didn’t know any better. I was fifteen and I thought that he was doing his job.

“You seemed to be doing well with floating. Let’s try it again but without the railing.” He flashed his yellow teeth and he moved his eyes up and down once again, only this time he seemed to be distracted by something below the water. 

“Is there something in the water?” I asked worriedly. His eyes popped back up.

“No, not at all, I was…um, simply making sure you had enough space.” He stuttered over his words a couple times as if he was distracted by something. I looked around the area and thought that there was enough space. Until I noticed the distance between my teachers’ bulge and my hips grow smaller and I slowly realized why his words began to twist. I remembered the warmth of his hand that laid against my back almost forty minutes ago and the heat from the moment seemed to reappear. The icy cold feeling of the pool returned with it as well. Stuttering once more, he instructed me to fall onto my back and float. 

“But I don’t know how yet.” I replied nervously. 

“I was watching you earlier.” 

The heat on my back grew stronger.

“Yeah, but I was on the edge of the pool?” 

My parents had raised to always listen to figures of authority. If my mom heard the way that I was talking to him, she would’ve grounded me for being disrespectful. If my mom knew what he was going to do to me, however, maybe my disrespectful tone would have been warranted. 

“Yes, you were. Let’s try the same thing now right here. Lay back.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m right here to help you.” He gave a small smile, attempting to reassure me, though his eyes did not seem to connect with mine. It seemed as if he was assuring himself. I adjusted my swim cap to make sure it stayed tight. I already knew that it was stable but touching the cap and feeling the presence of my mother’s hand gave me a sense of security. Once I fell onto my back, my seventy-two-year old gym teacher showed me the part of the answer I didn’t include in my freshman year health class final, as he grabbed my ass in that blue chlorine pool. 

The next thirty seconds of that moment became very blurry in my memory over the past four years. I knew that I somehow climbed out of the pool after I almost drowned and ran straight into the locker room. I remember squeezing the door handle as if I was keeping the monsters from underneath my bed in my closest. I attempted to catch my breath before I felt someone touch my shoulder. I quickly jolted them off and cornered myself against the locker room doors as I thought Mr. Fenwick was back to finish what he started. But it was Amy. She bent down to sit next to me. It took me a second to realize that she had already changed back to her clothes. She pulled her sweater down to cover the palm of her left hand that wiped the tears I didn’t realize was falling from my eyes. Her right hand held mine and I made sure that I didn’t let go this time. In my senior year of high school, Amy revealed to me that Mr. Fenwick had sexually assaulted her the same way he did to me in her freshman year of high school. He had a history of this, though none of the administrators ever did anything about it. It was only then that I understood the whispers of my female classmates, the reason why everyone left the pool and the face that she gave me when we saw him staring at me. It was fear. 

The day next day, the lifeguard was not there again and neither was Mr. Fenwick. Mr. Gates, one of the other gym teachers, subbed for our class and told us that we could not swim until the lifeguard was in. Gym teachers were not permitted to get into the pool with students. My classmates sat down in the gymnasium to gossip, study for tests or finish the homework they never started. 

As for me, I started thinking about that empty white chair again and the sound of the locker room door slamming behind me as I left in Mr. Fenwick in the stillness of the pool with my swim cap next to him. I never got it back and I wondered how many other girls never got their caps back as well.