There are video clips of multiways of synchronized jumpers. I feel like God watching from above. It’s a dance in the air. A colorful snowflake falling to earth. I’m in awe. And confusion. I’m watching superheroes. Do these people know how special they are? How dynamically alive and rare they are?
One jump is filmed from the ground. I hear Dom behind the camera, talking to someone next to him, excited anticipation and pride evident in his voice. One by one, parachutes burst open. The camera zooms out, then in, trying to focus on a dot of color hurtling toward the ground.
Falling so fast.
Falling.
Then, my father’s voice: “Open, baby. Open, goddamn it. Jesus, Ryan, don’t do this to me . . . open the damn chute.” Hearing such anguish fills my eyes with tears. “I love you, Ryan, please . . .”
He’s never said that to me.
My eyes are glued to the screen. There is no way that chute is going to open. I know who I’m watching, and somewhere inside, the memory is there, but it’s like watching a movie of my own death.
Her death.
My whole body vibrates in terrified anticipation as she plummets toward packed dirt. My hands cover my mouth. I’m pleading with her now, like her father, to please pull. I want to look away, but I can’t.
I’m watching my life flash before my eyes.
In an exhalation of color, the chute gusts open just in time to catch her before she tumbles to the sandy ground. Dom yells out and runs, the desert floor bouncing by onscreen. I dread what he’s about to see, until I realize the camera has stopped moving and is pointed at the smiling face of the girl who haunts me in every reflection. She’s holding something toward the camera.
“The penny, bitches!”
For the first time, I really see what everyone else sees. No wonder they miss the old Ryan. No wonder they want her back. That Ryan was larger than life. I’ve tried to be that Ryan, but it’s like she’s died in me. She deserves to live on. I don’t know whose side I’m on anymore: mine, or . . . mine?
In a daze, I wander to Gran’s empty room. It smells like her: warm skin, strange medicinal creams, cigar smoke. Magic.
I feel her.
Her soft, aged skin in the bath water. Her wrinkled hands, limber only on the piano. Her blind eyes, which saw through me. She was magic. I’m so privileged to have known her.
I realize I can’t think of her proper name. This baffles me. How can I not remember my grandmother’s name?
The Obeah religion Gran practiced was a lot of the “dark water” my mother spoke about. Unknowable, mysterious. She probably made much of it up. I think Gran was her own religion. Her philosophy of life and death rings true, though.
Live with integrity. Die with integrity.
If you don’t do one right, you can never do the other right.
Wishing I could use magic to rectify things, I finger the objects of her altar. Placed around a creamy hand-spun bowl are a shell filled with cigar ashes, feathers from various birds that look like they died in a fiery crash, and four flat, smooth stones that feel as solid as vows when I press them into my palm.
I light a half-burned stick of incense and walk to the freestanding antique mirror that’s in the corner of the room, between two windows. Smoke curls up into the air behind me.
I lean toward the mirror. The old glass ripples my image. Flecks of black paint shadow the glint in the glass. Shafts of moonlight slice through the night air and land at my feet. I’m so tired, my heart is sagging against restraints in my chest.
She’s been chasing me for weeks, filling my head with strange words and memories. I’m ready to be done with our battle. I’m exhausted. I want to step into the light with Gran. My palms press against the cool glass of the mirror as I stare into myself, willing Death to come. Closer and closer, I inch my face to my reflection, until my forehead knocks against itself.
This feels familiar, this pressing my face against the glass, this longing to merge with something larger than myself.
This is how we found each other.
I whisper against my own lips, “Come and get me.”
Twenty-Seven
NOTHING HAPPENS. This is more startling, now that I’ve requested her presence, than seeing her face would be. I pull back, angry.
“Did you hear me? I give up! Come for me!”
The glass vibrates under my fists. “I don’t want to live this life anymore. Do what you’re going to do and quit playing with me.” A sob escapes. “I give up.” I’m angry at myself for thinking it, saying it, but it’s true. Everything is wrong. Everything.
I saw who I used to be. Like everyone else, I’m mourning the spark of that person. I’m not her. I’ll never be her.
Death is after me, speaks to me, watches me. She took Gran. Who will be next if I don’t let her win? Why not submit?
Death always gets her way in the end.
Twenty-Eight
THE SHADOW OF Gran’s head indents her pillow.