This was how people broke down prisoners of war, Melissa thought. They stripped their hostage of every human necessity and then, ever so gradually, doled out morsels of kindness in the form of basic luxuries. A little food. A little water. A light over a toilet.
There was a cost to these gifts, Melissa knew. She had to be good. She couldn’t scream herself hoarse as she had been doing. She couldn’t make a mess of her meals or piss on the floor, as had happened a bit earlier.
There’d been no helping that. Like most people, she relieved herself after waking. Her bladder was trained to expel its contents minutes after she got up in the morning. She couldn’t have held it, even if she, supposedly, hadn’t been trapped that long.
Time was relative. In the dark, it became elastic, stretching the hours, vibrating with tension. Her argument had resonated with her captor, which she would call It from now on. Names belonged to human beings. Killing something with a name was hard. Melissa was determined not to hesitate if she got the chance.
It had opened an unseen door and turned on the bathroom light, revealing a sink, the unpainted space where a mirror had once hung, and a solitary stall. She sat in there now, clothed bottom atop the toilet seat, her need to urinate previously satiated on the hardwood floor. A toilet paper holder had gleamed from the wall, beckoning like a knife. She’d managed to pry it loose and had been using it to bang on the faucet. Her goal was to break the pipe and perhaps cause a flood, something that would need to be addressed, hopefully by someone other than It.
She’d been hitting the thing for what seemed like hours. Breaking the pipe no longer seemed possible. The noise, however, might attract attention.
Of course, any sound could also draw It back to revoke her bathroom privileges. It liked to punish, Melissa thought. It had already said that she wouldn’t be getting dinner, given that she’d refused to eat the prior offering, “irrationally” claiming fear of poison. Such thoughts were ridiculous, It had insisted. The goal wasn’t to kill her. She was here simply to “settle down” so that they could have a discussion about how things needed to be going forward. What they should do.
Melissa had overplayed her hand. She’d demanded to be let out, insisting that she couldn’t believe anything while locked up in whatever godforsaken space It had trapped her inside. As a result, It had left, promising to return when she’d calmed down and was more ready for rational conversation. It would clean up the urine then, too, so the smell wouldn’t attract rats.
The threat could not have been more clear.
Her arm was tired from the repetitive motion of drumming on the faucet. She stopped and sat back on the toilet seat, thinking of her next move, tearing up as one failed to materialize. In her head, she heard a voice telling her that she had a purpose, that life wasn’t over. She just needed to give herself time.
The advice came from a memory. She and Imani had been at the local swim club, watching their first graders dolphin kick while a swim coach explained in a thick Russian accent the necessity of a good butterfly. Years later, Ava had told her that she hadn’t understood all the animal analogies and had partially believed that she might metamorphosize if she only kicked hard enough. Melissa had found the revelation both hilarious and heartwarming. There was something wonderful about being so new to the world that magic seemed not only possible, but also everywhere.
That day, though, she hadn’t had much faith in anything, let alone transformation. Imani had been nursing Jay in public, unaware of how painful it was for Melissa to glimpse his little mouth latched on to her dark nipple, of the hot rush of liquid that filled Melissa’s own breasts at the sight. Her baby had been too small to suckle. Too tiny to do anything but die. Melissa had still been tearing up unexpectedly, even though seven months had passed since she’d lost her child—even though she’d been mourning for longer than she’d been pregnant.
Imani had seen something on her face and asked what was wrong. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Melissa had explained. “I mean, I know I’m supposed to take care of Ava, but other than that, what? Work? Nobody wants a postpartum actress twenty pounds overweight. I’d had all these plans for the next few years of my life, and they’d all involved being a mom to a baby. But that’s not going to happen.”
Melissa had said similar things to other people in her life. Her sister. Friends from past theater productions. Her gynecologist. All had suggested ways to solve her problem: adoption, fostering, surrogacy, medical advances that might repair her broken uterus. She didn’t need to keep mourning, they’d subtly suggested. Replacing a baby was eminently possible.
Imani hadn’t given her such solutions. Instead, she’d silently waited for Jay to de-latch and then passed over her contented, sleepy six-month-old. “You have so much to give,” she’d said. “You’ll find new ways. I believe in you.”
Melissa was surprised to find the memory brought fresh tears. She’d cried so much, off and on, that she’d believed all her emotion spent. But the wetness on her face was real, as was the melancholy that came with it.
Hollywood liked to show how fraught friendships between women could be. It dwelled on the competition, the sexual jealousy. It depicted female companionship as existing to attract male attention or being in a state of uneasy truce brought about by solid male relationships.
But Tinseltown was wrong. Women were designed to bond with one another, to build one another up so that they could all share in collective power. Imani had known that. Her friend had never acted intimidated by her fame or tried to one-up her by bragging at times when Melissa had been feeling low. Imani had been a listening ear and a sounding board, and all she’d asked in return was the same respect, secrecy, and attempt at wise counsel.
Her friendship had been real and deep, Melissa told herself. Imani loved her. Surely, she wouldn’t simply let her disappear.