“No.” I shake my head, stand, and back away a few feet, putting space between me and these traitors. These selfish traitors who were supposed to be mine, not each other’s. “When?”
“The first time,” Terry says. “We—”
“The first time?” I hurl the words at her, outrage and pain wrestling for dominance in my heart. “How many . . . how long . . . What have you done, Terry?”
I turn wet eyes, blurred with tears and burning with anger, to Brandon. “What have you done?” I ask him, too, unsure who I hate most right now. Who has hurt me the most.
“You weren’t ready,” Brandon’s voice is defensive and laced with blame. “I told you it’s hard for a guy to wait, but you . . . you weren’t ready.”
He was older and all his friends were having sex with their girls, but I wouldn’t be rushed. He begged, telling me how tough it was for guys to go without. I felt guilty and he felt frustrated, but we got through it. He waited until I was ready, and it was worth it. It was good—at least, I’d thought so. I never suspected he cheated. And with my sister?
“That was almost two years ago, Brand,” I shout. “You’ve been fucking Terry since my junior year?”
Terry’s eyes, widened with panic, shoot to the living room entrance. “Shhhh! Jesus, Neev. You want the whole neighborhood to hear?”
“Really, T? That’s your main concern? I’m pretty sure everybody’ll know soon enough. Unless you plan to—”
“It was one time,” Brandon interrupts, eyes pleading. “The summer before we . . . before you and me started doing it. It was an accident. I told her it could never happen again, and it didn’t.”
“I’m not great at science,” I say, sarcasm pushing its way through the pain. “But it must have happened again if she’s just now turning up pregnant two years later.”
Their guilty quiet following my words suffocates even the faintest hope for a miracle. For the impossibility that it had only been once, which is bad enough, but to think they would do it again. That he’d do it when I thought we were happy. That she’d do it when she’s my sister and she knew. She knew how much I loved Brandon. How could she not have known, and how could she do this to me?
“It’s only been the last few weeks,” Terry admits, tears slipping from the corners of her eyes. “You gotta believe that I never—”
“I ain’t gotta believe nothing,” I spit at her.
“You’ve been rehearsing so much for the play,” Brandon says.
“So again it’s my fault?” A derisive laugh leaps out. “I have to rehearse after school for a play a few days a week and you can’t keep your dick away from my sister?”
“Neev, damn!” Terry shoots to her feet, a scowl marring the smooth prettiness of her face. “Keep your voice down.”
We’re all standing now, the tension triangulating between the three of us. I’ve wrapped myself in anger, but the protective layers are fraying, and pain, sharper and heavier than I think I can take, pounds in my temples and thunders behind my ribs. My knees wobble and my head spins.
I could faint.
I rack my brain for a play where a character faints, and all I can come up with is Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and that’s such a bad example. This is the last thing I should be thinking about while my life burns to the ground in my living room, but somehow it refocuses me.
I still have the stage.
Here I was considering staying, giving up my scholarship, possibly my dream of performing someday on Broadway, for him. For this. There’s an acceptance letter in my desk drawer to a great theater program. My ticket out of here. My passport out of what has become hell. Rutgers can pay for a fresh start, far away from here; from them. From this wicked we staring at me with lying, tear-drenched eyes.
It feels like they’ve taken everything, but they haven’t. I have a lot.
I have opportunity.
A weird calm falls over me. It doesn’t dull the throbbing, pulsing pain in my chest, or ease the churning nausea in my stomach—I’ll throw up when I make it to my room—but it does give me the strength to do what needs to be done.
Leave.
Quote
“Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life.”
* * *
-- Art Blakey, Renowned Drummer
1
Canon (Present Day)
I blink when the lights come up in the Walter Reade Theatre, brightness assaulting my eyes after nearly two hours spent sitting in the dark. The packed room seems to draw a collective breath and then release it as thunderous applause. And then they stand. I’m sure some folks stay seated, but I only see a roomful of people standing, clapping for the documentary I poured the last three years of my life into. Warmth crawls up my neck and over my face. I will myself not to squirm in the director’s chair set center stage. It’s not my first time screening a documentary at the New York Film Festival, but I’ll never get used to the attention. I’m much more at home behind the camera than in front of an audience. I’m like Mama in that way.