THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU think you have time. When you’re in high school, every minute before graduation feels like hours as you wait for your real life to start. But that’s not the case for me. I look into my future and all I see is a brick wall.
I haven’t talked to Fay in weeks, hoping he’ll move on, dreading the day he will. We rode to Bible study together a few times before he left for the spring break trip. And one time he came over to binge-watch reruns of House, but I had a coughing fit and we had to call the EMTs and it was too much. Not for him. For me.
He keeps calling but I don’t pick up. He texts but I don’t reply. At first it was just questions asking how I’m doing or what I’m doing. Now he just checks in with updates about what he’s doing and how much he misses me. He’s written a few letters, too. I read them under the covers with a flashlight, afraid that even the fluorescent beams of my bedroom lights might bear witness to my cowardice.
Aabidah’s sensible gray Camry rolls to a stop in front of a squat cement building way past the county line. It’s attached to what looks like a dilapidated dollhouse. Gravel pops like ’hood Fourth of July as Aabidah and I let our eyes settle onto the grim facade in front of us. I scrunch my nose up so bad that I have to readjust my oxygen line. My sister notices immediately.
“Don’t do that, T. I asked around. She’s supposed to be the best.”
“According to who? Backwoods Weekly? Meth and Homemade Biscuits Times?” I joke.
Aabidah rolls her eyes and opens the car door; the scent of diesel fuel and honeysuckle wafts in on a hot breeze. Dolly’s Mirror is a dive bar—I can tell that much from the yellowed and cracking road sign out front. Couple that with the SUV-sized American flag whipping above our heads and Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” spilling out from the screen door and you’ve got my country nightmare come to life. Aabidah opens the door for me and pulls my oxygen tank out so I won’t have to lift it. I hoist myself out of the car, though. I need that little bit of agency, the tiniest morsel of control over my body.
“Ten dollars for your future. That’s a steal!” I wheeze, letting the sarcasm sweeten the sight of me straining for air and wincing with every step. My birthday’s coming up. I’ll be eighteen. It’s supposed to be great. I’m supposed to be excited about going off to college, getting to vote, being an almost grown-up. I should be planning an all-out bash with my friends, but I haven’t seen anyone outside church since the Valentine’s dance two months ago. And they say Tauruses are supposed to be devoted and responsible. Hardly. Too many doctors’ appointments, too many hospital visits. Pity overload for the one girl in a hundred thousand who came out on the other side of a pandemic with the lungs of an eighty-year-old. But hey, there’s hope; there’s.…
“What’s her name?”
“Rose,” Aabidah says as her eyes go wide at the Confederate-flag doormat.
“We’re already here, Aabidah. We might as well go in,” I mumble.
Her head moves from side to side, searching, like all Black people do in a new place, seeking out another Black face. We don’t find one, but we do see something that simultaneously surprises and reassures me: a child. A little girl about ten years old is pouring a beer into a frosted glass for a man in a pristine Carolina Gamecocks hat and matching T-shirt.
“Readings in the back! Put your ten dollars in the jar at the end of the bar,” she announces without looking up. So much for Southern hospitality.
The jukebox switches to “Jolene,” and somebody in one of the corner booths starts singing along… badly. When we walk through the curtain that separates the front area from the back room, the crooner is cut off mid-verse. Silence swallows us so completely that the squeak in the wheels of my oxygen tank echoes through the hallway. I nudge my sister forward with my elbow. She stumbles a bit but puts one foot in front of the other. This was her idea, after all.
The smell of sage mixed with boiled peanuts, briny and sharp, hits me as Aabidah knocks tentatively on the doorframe of the only open room in the hall.
“Y’all come on in. Take a seat on those cushions. I’ll be right with you,” a woman’s voice says through the beaded curtain. We make our way in and sit down, taking in everything around us: the candlelight and tapestry-covered walls. A literal shrine to Dolly Parton is in one corner, complete with burning incense and a fish tank with two goldfish swimming lazily in and out of a tiny church.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Aabidah says, nearly chickening out.
“Suddenly scared she might be the real deal after all?” I ask.
“No. It’s just… this place is… I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling. Why are you so calm, church girl?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m out of options, I guess.”
Aabidah stopped going to the church after Mama died. I worry about what she’ll have left if… when something happens to me. Sour bile rises up in my throat. I swallow it back down and then it starts, the bone-rattling coughing fit I’ve been trying to avoid for the last hour.
The psychic, a thick white girl in a beautiful form-fitting white linen shorts set, rushes over and shoves a steaming cup of mystery into my hands as I try and fail to catch my breath. My sister nearly knocks the thing to the floor as she tries to pry it out of my grasp.
“That won’t help!” Aabidah grunts through her teeth, and pulls a handkerchief from her purse—one of Nana’s old ones—and pushes it into my palm to catch the bloody phlegm.
“It’s not for drinking. Sweetheart, put this cup under your chin and see if you can calm yourself enough to let the fumes get in your nose.” She taps the cup with a blood-red coffin-shaped acrylic nail. “You’ll have to pull that tube out, though.” She holds up her hand and gives us a small wave. “I’m Rose,” she says, and smiles.
“Like hell,” Aabidah says as she struggles to open the sterile plastic bag holding my oxygen mask so I can get more air.
It feels like my chest is packed with hot rocks, but you know what, why not? It is almost my birthday. Ripping off my oxygen tube is the closest thrill I’ll get for the foreseeable future. I pull the tubing back, settle myself enough to attempt to breathe in, hold the cup under my chin, and inhale. I don’t expect anything, really. I’ve given up on expectations. But when I draw in a deep breath, it’s the first full unhindered breath I’ve taken in nearly a year. It’s clean and minty, energizing and cooling, and a tear falls from my eye before I have a chance to catch myself.
“Feels nice, don’t it?” Rose says as she turns the knob down on her boiling peanuts and settles on an embroidered cushion in front of us. She’s covered in floral tattoos from neck to ankle, and her fifties-style red hair is tied up in one of those dollar-store handkerchiefs you see gang members wear in movies from the nineties. A Boyz-n-the-Hood-but-make-it-fashion sort of vibe.
I take another deep breath in. This time the cooling sensation flows from my lungs down to the pit of my stomach. Goose bumps erupt on my skin, and it starts to feel like I’m floating.
“Are you okay?” Aabidah asks, but she sounds far away. I turn to look at her and it’s like she’s at the far end of a tunnel, or I’m looking up at her from the bottom of a well. Shit, it’s happening again.
“What’s wrong with her?” Aabidah asks Rose, the urgency in her voice muffling it into a desperate whisper.
“She’s fine. She’ll be back soon,” Rose says calmly, winking as she drops a pillow behind me just in case I teeter.
I try to grab on to something before I fall, but there’s nothing to grab on to when you’re falling into your own mind.