without thinking of him. The man-shaped impression that he slinks into, getting smaller and smaller with each passing day. At least he’s got a shirt on—actually, it looks like he’s wearing two—so there’s that. He’s awake, his gaze flicking briefly to me, then back to the television. I look at him while pretending that I’m not. I search for clues that he’s the hitting kind and finally decide that he is, but not with Ma. Right now he’d be too slow to get a grip on her, anyway.
“You ever been to Diego Martin?” I ask.
“I was there last year.” Then he blinks, as if to clear something from his eyes. Some kind of fog. “Why?”
“That’s where my dad was from.”
It’s the second time I’ve brought Dad up in front of him. He tenses. “So what?”
“Nothing. Just…what were you doing there?”
He kisses his teeth like Ma, which is meant to put me in my place without actually having to think up the right words, and turns up the volume on the television, as if the sound of a cricket match could drown out the sound of my question.
When I come back into the living room an hour later, he looks at me like he’s never seen me before. It’s the dumb expression that gives me courage. “You figure out the answer to my question yet?”
He blinks some more, but this time it’s like he’s trying to figure out who I am. Sitting there on our couch as though I’m the intruder. Whoever this man is, he’s not the Ravi who had the strength to knock a container of protein powder from my hand, to put his finger in my face and threaten me.
“Why did you break the lock on our back door, Ravi? Did you come here that night to try to hurt Dad?”
For a moment it seems like he’s going to answer me, like I’ve somehow gotten past this thickness that’s blurring his vision, but he’s gripped by something that my questions can’t even penetrate. His guilt seeps into the silence of the room.
Who was that shadow slipping into the trees the night Dad died?
Why did Ravi have Dad’s phone in his bag? Did Dad drop it and he just picked it up?
Who attacked Dad in Trinidad?
(I hated him, so why can’t I let him go?)
It’s dark now, the night spilling in through our open window. I watch him as he falls deeper into whatever void he slips through, in a state that I know somehow is dreamless. A dreamless, gaping void that he gets lost to all the time now, for some reason. Maybe when the crates fell on him it made a hole inside him. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t bother to turn on lights, because he’s alright with the darkness pulling itself over him, covering him, keeping him locked inside himself.
But it doesn’t explain why I’m sitting in the dark across from him, in the brand new leather armchair Ma bought last week.
I can stay here forever.
I fall asleep and when I wake up, I feel a presence in the darkness. Standing just inside the living room, a body that’s like a wisp, a ghost turning solid in almost unbearable increments.
Real, and frightening.
Long strands of hair falling down its back. Fingers opening and closing into fists. Nails sharp. The creature is looking at Ravi and I can feel the malevolence roll off it in waves of electricity. It’s what jolted me awake, what holds me silent. This feeling of hatred.
But I’m not silent enough.
I must have made some sound, some loosening of breath, some shift of my body. The creature turns to me. My mother shines through its eyes. “Baby,” it says, sounding like Ma but not really. The voice that comes at me in the dark is smooth like honey, the Trinidadian lilt like music, like rain on galvanized roofing, like a place that is at once far away and much too close. “Baby, what are you doing up?”
“Ma?” I croak. My throat is dust.
“I’m here, baby,” she says, putting her hands on my shoulders, helping me to my feet. “Come, let’s get you to bed.”
She leads me up the stairs and into my bedroom. Her hands plucking at me, rough skin passing over mine. I’m so tired I’m almost asleep on my feet, so she tucks me in as though I’m a child again and I feel that maybe I am because I let her. I let her pull the blankets over me. I let