I STARE AT THE CLOCK on the wall as the seconds tick by loudly in my hospital room. I’m lucky. At least that’s what they tell me. There was a malfunction on a plane, or possibly a terrorist attack; they’re still investigating. But whatever it was, it nearly leveled Columbia Metropolitan Airport. No survivors, save for me and one other person.
Ms. Collins says it was front-page news in the State for two weeks, which is supposed to be impressive. I try to act impressed, but feeling anything makes my chest hurt. I have two broken ribs, a sprained wrist, three toe fractures, a punctured lung, and “more bruises than you can shake a stick at,” as she likes to say, and that’s on top of my traumatic brain injury. It’s what’s causing the amnesia. It’s also why my instinct is to call her Ms. Collins instead of Auntie O. I don’t remember that she’s my auntie. I don’t remember anything before two weeks ago, when I woke up in excruciating pain.
It’s a miracle. The FBI, CIA, state police, and all the other alphabet people don’t believe in miracles, so there is an investigation.
I turn the picture of my sister, Aabidah, over in my hand a few times before I place it back on the side table. I’ve been staring at it, trying to remember the beloved sister I’ve lost, but I keep coming up with nothing. A part of me doesn’t want to remember. I think I’d rather avoid the grief. Then I wonder if the grief is better than this emptiness.
A soft knock on the door interrupts the murmuring voices of some entertainment program on the comm… no, the television screen.
“Tamar? You have a visitor,” my nurse says.
Behind her, a smiling, tawny-skinned woman with a bouquet of flowers and a large paper bag walks into the room and waves at Auntie O before coming closer. She knows me. Her smile is infectious, so I smile back, but there’s this niggling sense that somebody’s playing a trick on me—a paranoia, like someone is standing right behind me, waiting to pounce.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asks.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. My son, Fayard—we call him Fay—he doesn’t remember me either. I’m Silvana Daniels. Lord knows I did work a lot, but not enough for my only son to forget all about me.” Her laugh is dry and humorless, but she doesn’t stop smiling. I can sense the barely contained tears behind her eyes.
“That was an amnesia joke,” she adds.
“Oh,” I reply, unsure of just how to respond.
“I wanted to come by and bring you a few of your favorite things. The doctors say it might help jog your memory.”
She pushes my empty breakfast tray to the side and lays the flowers on one of the plastic chairs.
“Ranunculus. Fay always said they were your favorite. There are Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in there. I froze them last night and ziplocked them in ice so they should still be nice and cold. Also, I went to Sandy’s and got you two chili dogs with extra mustard for lunch, and then there’s this.”
She pulls out a gray metallic box with black square buttons and dials from the bag and sets it on the bedside table.
“Ta-da!” she says.
“What is it?”
“It’s your beat machine. It arrived at the house a few days after the accident. You must have mailed it the day you went to the airport.”
I turn the thing over on my lap with my good hand. It’s not heavy, but not insubstantial, either. The large buttons light up once she plugs it in. “Is it a weapon?”
Auntie O laughs from her perch in the corner, but she doesn’t look up from her Bible.
“Nooooo, you make music with it,” Ms. Daniels says.
She presses one of the glowing buttons and a rhythm spills out. She presses two more in succession and it makes a sound; she presses two more together to add even more sounds.
“You try.”
I press the keys. One, then all of them. She’s right. It does jog my memory, but in some other place inside me. I’ve done this before. I know it because I tap out a rhythm, save it, and lace it over another without even knowing what to call what I’m doing. I feel possessed.
“Well, it looks like you’re gonna do just fine.” Ms. Daniels studies me for a moment. “Wow! You look so good,” she says.
“Really?” I say, my eyes lingering on the casts I’m sporting, but I can’t help but notice the look passed between her and Ms. Collins.
“Eating everything they put in front of her. Put on twenty pounds, just like that. All that scar tissue? Gone. Damnedest thing they ever saw,” Auntie O pipes in. Ms. Daniels shakes her head as if all this new information is too much.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to send Fay over here tomorrow to, uh… hang out with you. Maybe being together will help. Maybe it’ll even be fun. Would that be all right?”
“Yes. I mean, yes, ma’am,” I say, remembering at the last minute to add the honorific. Just because I’m in the hospital doesn’t mean I should forget my manners.
“Great!” she says sunnily.
I don’t notice her leave. I continue to play, letting the rhythms pour out of me by muscle memory.
Fayard’s mother forgets to close the door, so I can see the parade of people walk by as I work. Parents, grandparents, nurses, doctors, other patients on crutches, in wheelchairs, hobbling by, leaning on rolling IV stands or pulling oxygen tanks. They’re all fine, background noise, but it’s the men in the black suits who disrupt the flow—brassy, discordant notes that stand out. They all have names like colors, Mr. Black, Mr. White, and they share the same face on different bodies, asking questions I don’t know the answers to.
I find a backbeat and play with a few chords. Bass. I’m in a bass mood, I realize, as I filter through the options on the machine. I think I’ve got something brooding and erratic, something to illustrate this moment, when Mr. Black comes in.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Collins. Tamar. I’m Mr. Green.”
Auntie O and I nod in greeting. Auntie’s got her large purse clutched on her lap and a scrutinizing eye to add to her greeting. I don’t even have that.
“I met a Mr. Black,” I say.
“Ah, yes. He’s my colleague. We work in the same department. We wanted to see if you remembered anything yet?”
“Today is the same as yesterday,” I say. My eyes fall back to my beat machine, and I hold my body tighter. It seems colder in the room with him here.
“I wanted to show you some photos. May I?” he says.
I let him slide the pictures across the tray that swings over my bed as I continue to play. There are ones of a girl—me, in a BLACK LIVES MATTER T-shirt. I’m smiling next to another girl holding a sign that says ABOLISH ICE.
“This is you and your sister,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Do you remember attending this protest at the airport last year?”
“Sir, I don’t remember last month.”
“Fair enough. It was a protest against changes to the administration’s immigration policy. We have some propaganda we uncovered, and I must say the language is a bit coarse.”
He hands the paper to Auntie O, and she has to pull out her reading glasses and hold them up to her face to get a good look. She takes a minute but then she laughs, a short cough/chuckle that flies out of her throat. “This is an essay for her Current Affairs class in high school. She got an A-minus, I see. Not your best work, Tamar.”
“I’ll try harder next time,” I say flatly.
Mr. Green slides another photo over to me. Me and a boy. He’s kissing my cheek, his eyes cutting to the camera. It’s a night shot with blurred circular lights in the background. I’m eating something covered in powdered sugar. Another image. It’s the same guy in a hooded sweatshirt; he’s got both middle fingers pointed to the sky and a scowl on his face, but he can’t hide the warmth in his eyes, no matter how much of a front he’s putting on. He’s got a stack of cash held up to his ear like a phone. He’s with a bunch of other guys who are doing the same thing. Next picture. The same group of guys, but they’ve got their fingers twisted in a weird configuration. Another looks like a passport photo.
“Does this jog your memory? How about this one that looks like a mug shot.”
“Looks like a driver’s license photo,” Auntie O says.
I shrug. “Fayard, right?”
“So you do remember?”
“No. His mother just left, and he’s the only person who survived the crash with me, so I’m assuming you would be interested in him too. You haven’t shown me any pictures of Auntie O, or any class pictures. I’m not dumb.”
“No, you’re not, and you don’t seem to be the kind of girl to get swept up with the wrong crowd, either. I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I’ll leave these with you to help jog your memory. You’re a very lucky girl, Tamar. I wouldn’t want you to squander any second chances.”
He pauses. “Last thing.” He drops a brochure on top of the pictures.
“It’s a pretty good program. The one you were looking into. Try not to give up on the girl you used to be too quickly?”
“Okay,” I say, and give him a sarcastic thumbs-up, hoping he’ll leave.
I press the button to cue up a trumpet and blare it loud and long for Mr. Green as he walks out.
Auntie O sucks her teeth and gets up from her perch to pick up the photos.
“Wrong crowd, huh? Fay’s in a Morehouse sweatshirt in this one. Probably ’cause it was cold. Does he look like a suspect to you? Please. I know this game.”
She brings the photo with all the guys together closer to her face.
“Fayard and his robotics team. They were state champions, two years in a row. See, number two and the other hand a number one. Dumbass. Probably thought it was gang signs. Baby, people like him see what they want to see. You’re hittin’ this world brand-new again. I don’t want you soaking up any of that crap about so-called dangerous Black boys from those Crayola men, you hear me? And if you want to keep protesting, you do that. World changes ’cause kids like you and Fay change it.”
I nod and drop the horns. My mind isn’t the only thing that’s trying to play tricks on me. I pick through the paper bag Fayard’s mom left and inhale the two chili dogs, then top them off with the candy cups. They’re so delicious I groan.
“Nothin’ like a Sandy’s dog. I’m surprised you didn’t lick the wrapping. Didn’t mind those onions on the dogs, did you?” Auntie O asks.
“No? Why?”
“You used to hate onions. Used to gag on ’em. Hmmm.”
She regards me with a scrutinizing eye, like I’m a cake she’s not sure is done yet.
“Do you want to try a few things? See if there’s other foods you might like?”
I nod, appreciative of the goodwill. But as soon as she leaves, I get another unwelcome visitor.
I need a break.
My therapist, Dr. Gupta, is a petite lady with small wide-set eyes, almond-colored skin, and shoulder-dusting earrings. She’s painted her toenails bright red today, and she keeps tucking and untucking them in her sandals. I wonder if she likes her job. She looks like the kind of person who prefers solitude and appreciates the nuances between Lady Grey and chamomile tea.
“How have you been sleeping?” she asks politely.
I nod my head from side to side. “I’m on meds,” I say apprehensively.
I don’t really trust anyone just yet, least of all this therapist. One wrong statement and I’m certain they’ll put me on more drugs, or, worse, they’ll write a report giving them carte blanche to do whatever they want to me. No, thanks.
“Any dreams?” she asks. “I’d like you to be honest with me. There is no judgment here. You’ve had a significant amount of trauma inflicted on your body and brain. Some side effects are to be expected.”
“A few.”
“Good dreams or bad?”
“Both.” It’s hard to explain how a boy I’ve never met can make me so happy that I wake up breathless and covered in sweat, and how that same person can make me so angry I wake up breathless and covered in sweat. Do I describe how his eyes dance after we kiss? How I can still smell the hay from the barn we snuck into or smell the smoke from my last nightmare where I died screaming his name? Or the smell of the seawater before I drowned, tossed from a huge wooden boat in the middle of an ocean?
“Do the dreams make sense or are they abstract? What I mean to say is do they seem like memories or are they things that could never happen in real life?”
I swallow hard. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Damn it!
She hands me a tissue.
“I’m here if you’d like to talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. They’re just dreams. I’m there and then I wake up just before I’m about to die. It’s normal to dream about dying when you just survived a near-death experience, right?
What I don’t share is that they don’t feel like dreams, though. They feel like memories. I can’t say that. If I admit that, I’m sure there will be consequences.
“Is it every night?”
I nod.
“I’m going to write you an antianxiety prescription, okay? It will help you sleep a little better than some of your other medications. The next time I see you, I’d like to hear more about those dreams. There’s a notepad in your side-table drawer. It might help if you wrote down what you dreamed of as soon as you wake so you don’t forget.”
She pats my hand with hers.
As soon as the door closes, I take out the notepad and I write.