Sage woke all at once with the sensation that a bomb was about to explode in her mouth. As if all the sounds she was so accustomed to holding in her mouth had come together and were now swinging back and forth like a wrecking ball. She needed Verdi. Needed for her to help with her sounds so that they could settle back down in her mouth. She covered her face with the down comforter and breathed gasping breaths because she was afraid of the feeling in her mouth. She wanted to get out of the bed and go look for Verdi but Verdi had seemed so mean all that day and especially when she’d put her to bed and told her to be still, don’t dare move, she’d spank her if she got up out of that bed. And the air around Verdi had mixed with even more startling colors like black and turquoise and silver that fought with each other and screeched and Sage had put her hands to her ears and made herself go fast asleep as soon as Verdi left the room.
But now she was wide-awake in Verdi’s bedroom with this new sensation that was so hard in her mouth. She thought that if she could give it a color then maybe it wouldn’t frighten her so. But this feeling had no color, like the sound she could hear in Verdi’s bathroom now had no color. A slapping sound that reminded her of the sound described by the boy who’d had to leave her school because he’d started a fire at his house, but while he went to her school once told Sage how he’d whipped his pet frog to death. “I just slapped hin and slapped hin till hin eyes almost jumped outta hin head, and hin tongue was all bloody and just hanging out,” and then he’d slapped his own skin imitating the sound he’d made. And Sage had been so horrified and mesmerized at the same time and now she associated that slapping sound with death, and despite what Verdi said she jumped out of the bed.
Verdi was already tied up, had one end of the chenille belt in her mouth to tighten it, she’d never shot herself up before, Johnson had always been there to do this part so it was taking her a long time and she was concentrating and sweating as she rubbed her finger up and down her vein and slapped at her arm to make a good vein emerge. She was so fixated on finding the right vein that she didn’t hear the door creak open, didn’t see Sage standing there, her head tilted, looking at Verdi as if she’d just stumbled upon a fascinating oddity. Didn’t even hear Sage as she kicked the door to get Verdi’s attention to try to let her know that a wrecking ball was swinging in her mouth. Nor did she hear her when she pushed the ball out, finally and there was a great explosion in her mouth, her brain and she let it out, the accumulation of sounds just burst then.
“Veerrdi,” Sage said in a husky voice that should come maybe from an adolescent boy who’s trying to sound grown.
And maybe if Verdi had already shot up once or twice in the recent past, and had reacquainted her physiology with the rush, and the nod, she would have yelled at Sage to get the fuck out; unable to accept any barrier between this point and her high, she would have shoved Sage out of the bathroom and locked the door. But she hadn’t done it yet, it had been twenty years since she’d tasted this brand of heaven and hell. So since she traced her vein now with a level of forgetfulness about how good and bad it could be, she looked up at Sage, in amazement, her heart stopped at what she thought she heard. She ran to Sage with her arm still tied. Grabbed her and stooped to her level, her eyes spilling out tears she said, “Sage, do that again, please do that again for Verdi.”
And Sage looked at Verdi and suddenly this new voice felt less frightening with Verdi standing there, her hands gently squeezing the tops of her arms, it seemed to Sage now that maybe this voice could feel as natural as the laughter that always reverberated through her head. She took in a deep breath of air like Verdi had been teaching her to do, she pushed her lower lip slightly under her two front teeth, she curled the front of her tongue, she pulled her breath up from her stomach, from her bowel even she wanted to please Verdi so. “Verdi,” she said again. “Verdi, Verdi, Verdi.” And then she could barely hear her own voice as Verdi pulled her against her and cried in her ear, “Thank You, Jesus! Thank You, Lord! Sage! Sage! Thank you, thank you, Sage.”