Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self - By Danielle Evans Page 0,22

Maybe I would have been better off staying in the Everglades. Lots of snakes there, but most of them are harmless. Sometimes seeing one would startle me, and I would think of you.”

I closed my eyes. I thought about all the things I’d accumulated since I’d last seen Allison, and how absolutely useless they seemed right now.

“Maybe you just need to start over someplace new,” I said. “Get away from all of this. You could stay with me for a while when they let you out.”

She parted her lips a little, like she was going to laugh, but she didn’t. I tried to picture it in my head: the look on Jason’s face when I told him I was bringing home a suicidal white woman who had almost killed me once; Jason and I converting the study into a bedroom for her, getting a piano, her getting settled in Connecticut. I imagined our kids growing up together, the way she and I had thought we would.

“Maybe I’d like that,” she said finally. “I never thought of you getting married without me. Remember, we were going to be each other’s bridesmaid?”

“I remember,” I said. “I was going to pick mint green dresses, because that was your favorite color, and you were going to pick orange, because it was mine. Jason’s sister is being a pain in the neck and doesn’t want to wear the dress I picked out. You should be a bridesmaid instead. I’d even change the color for you.”

“You would,” she said. “But I just wanted to see you. I just wanted you to see me. Take care of yourself. I really am glad you’re happy.”

I looked at the clock again, then back at Allison. It had been an hour; I was ready to go, though still uneasy about why I’d been sent for in the first place. I reached for her hand and squeezed it by way of good-bye. She didn’t ask me to stay. I felt like somebody ought to stop me from walking out, like there was a rule that you couldn’t leave behind such palpable need.

In the waiting room, my grandmother still sat. I was struck by how open she looked, the way her grief pulled her out of herself the way most people’s tucks them in. I felt bigger than her for the first time in my life, but I couldn’t feel good about it. I thought of saying something to her, but I didn’t know where to start, how to explain who I was now, or what she’d had to do with it.

“I hear you’re really something these days,” she said when I stopped in front of her. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” I said, before I had time to regret it. I turned my back to leave, waited for her to say something else. I only heard her breathing.

My mother was still in the car outside. When I knocked on the window to be let in, she jumped, then seemed relieved to see it was me.

“I’m sorry you had to do that,” she said as I got in the car. “You’re a better person than I’d be, in your shoes.”

“I’m not,” I said. “It wasn’t a big deal. It was a long time ago.”

“ ‘A long time ago’—Tara, we almost lost you. Maybe you don’t remember, but to me it’s like yesterday. Like yesterday.”

“How could you possibly remember?” I said. “You weren’t there.”

The tone of my own voice surprised me. My mother looked stung and I was sorry, but not sorry enough to apologize. She bit back tears.

“Tara, don’t. I mean, not now. Look, I wanted you to have your own life and me to have mine. I made a mistake, putting you there that summer. But I loved you, you always knew I loved you?”

I didn’t think she meant for it to be a question, so I didn’t answer her directly.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

I looked out the window, watching people at a park through the glass. I thought of saying a lot of things that I didn’t. I didn’t tell her how badly I had wanted her back, not just that summer, but all the years before it; how those days she had lain beside me in the hospital bed, for once mine and mine alone, were among the best of my childhood. I didn’t tell her that every time I took note of the scar on my elbow, I thought she ought to thank me for giving her the way out