Mimi

Mimi

Fourth floor

A scream tears through the apartment.

“He’s dead. He’s dead—you’ve fucking killed him.”

I let go of my mother’s arm.

The storm in my head is growing louder, louder. It’s a swarm of bees . . . then like being crashed underwater by the waves, now like standing in the middle of a hurricane. But it still isn’t loud enough to shut out the thoughts that are beginning to seep in. The memories.

I remember blood. So much blood.

You know how when you’re a kid you can’t sleep because you’re afraid of the monsters under the bed? What happens if you start to suspect that the monster might be you? Where do you hide?

It’s like the memories have been kept behind a locked door in my mind. I have been able to see the door. I have known it’s there, and I have known that there is something terrible behind it. Something I don’t want to see—ever. But now the door is opening, the memories flooding out.

The iron stink of the blood. The wooden floor slippery with it. And in my hand, my canvas-cutting knife.

I remember them pushing me into the shower. Maman . . . someone else, too, maybe. Washing me down. The blood running dilute and pink into the drain, swirling around my toes. I was shivering all over; I couldn’t stop. But not because the shower was cold; it was hot, scalding. There was a deep coldness inside me.

I remember Maman holding me like she did when I was a little girl. And even though I was so angry with her, so confused, all I wanted, suddenly, was to cling to her. To be that little girl again.

“Maman,” I said. “I’m frightened. What happened?”

“Shh.” She stroked my hair. “It’s OK,” she told me. “I’m not going to let anything happen. I’ll protect you. Just let me take care of all of this. You aren’t going to get into any trouble. It was his fault. You did what had to be done. What I wasn’t brave enough to do myself. We had to get rid of him.”

“What do you mean?” I searched her face, trying to understand. “Maman, what do you mean?”

She looked closely at me then. Stared hard into my eyes. Then she nodded, tightly. “You don’t remember. Yes, yes, it’s best like that.”

Later, there was something crusted under my fingernails, a reddish-brown rust color. I scrubbed at it with a toothbrush in the bathroom until my nail beds started bleeding. I didn’t care about the pain; I just wanted to be rid of whatever it was. But that was the only thing that seemed real. The rest of it was like a dream.

And then she arrived here. And the next morning she came to the door. She knocked and knocked until I had to open it. Then she said those terrible words:

“My brother—Ben . . . he’s . . . well, he’s kind of disappeared.”

That was when I realized it could have been real, after all.

I think it might have been me. I think I might have killed him.