In this dream, Jasmine asks why I’m not wearing the necklace. We look in the car for it before it appears in front of us, hanging from the mirror, the black stone glinting and sparkling in the sun. “There it is,” she says, taking it off the mirror and bringing it to her lips. She speaks to it under her breath. Puts a spell on it with me sitting there watching. She hands it to me, and I hold it close. “It’ll help keep you safe. The baby too.” She rubs my belly and says, “She’s going to be a little witch. The first of our children. She’ll be a badass.”
“How do you know she’ll be a witch?”
Jasmine laughs and leans over to kiss my cheek. “Everyone knows, silly.”
But my stomach deflates before my eyes. I scream. “It’s gone. The baby is gone.”
“What are you talking about?” Jasmine says. “What baby?”
I touch my flattened stomach. “It was here, and now it’s gone.”
“Inez.” Jasmine leans and looks at me close. “Wake up. There’s no baby.”
I shake my head again and again and sink into my seat. I sink so deep the car disappears from under me and I’m sinking into an ocean. Deeper. Deeper. The water burns my throat. I forget how to swim. I scream for Jasmine, and air bubbles climb while my body descends—so low I panic in pitch black, trying to see my fingers in front of me. Until a green light brightens the dark spaces. Clinging jellyfish spread their tentacles. I stop struggling. I give over to drowning to watch them draw in water and push it out. But then they force themselves forward, toward me.
Over the top of me, in between my legs, their jelly bodies slide over the bare skin of my arms, burning my flesh as they wrap and go, wrap and go. I feel the stings all at once and not at all. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain, the numbness. The darkness behind my lids is green. I let the water take me. Until suddenly, I’m lifted up out of it and floating on my back. Jasmine’s face looks like it’s part of the moon as she stares down at me.
“It’s time to wake up, Inez.” She kisses my temple. “It’s over. Wake up.”
I’m on the floor when I do. My whole body aches. I roll, groan, search for sting marks on my skin with freezing fingers. And then I hear a whisper. Inez. Sweet Inez.
I scoot back on the rug, try to grab my bedsheets and stand. The voice isn’t Jasmine’s. Inez, it says, closer this time, but then the crystal warms under my nightgown, heating the cold parts of me, and the door to my room swings open.
Mami comes in and switches on my light. “Mija, did you fall off the bed?” She helps me up. She can tell it hurts. Her face contorts. “Oh. You’re bleeding.”
I touch my nightgown and my fingers come back wet. Mami talks in the background, something about pads and cleaning the stain on the carpet. She pushes me into the bathroom. “Your period’s early, no? You said you had it two weeks ago.” She opens the cabinet and gets me a jumbo-sized pad and two facecloths, then leaves to go get me a fresh change of clothes. But she’s out there awhile. She must be cleaning blood from my carpet before the stain sets.
The next morning, I’m in the bathroom when Mili knocks at the door. I know it’s her before I peek through to make sure. When she’s inside, I throw my arms around her.
“Thank you,” I say. “There’s so much blood.”
We seem like the same height today, as if something inside me really did curl in on itself and wither away like the spider. She pulls back to wipe the tears from my face, and hers is wet with them too. I bleed through another pair of pants, and it gushes as I lean against her. I apologize over and over.
“Shh,” she says. “Undress. Let’s make you better.” She runs the bath. The water is hot, but I sink right in. She kneels beside the tub and cleans my face with a rag.
“It hurts,” I tell her. “It hurts so much.”
She kisses my forehead and quiets me down as the water in the tub starts to turn pink.
“Close your eyes,” Miliani says. “I’m here. Rest your eyes.”