PART ONE
Brayburn lady coming for you
ONE
ROXY BRAYBURN AND A BROKEN HEART
1974
Dear Mama,
Losing Lucas has embittered me to the world, to every couple on the beach, Elle, Santa Maria, and even you. You’ve had twenty years with Daddy. Why didn’t I get that with mine? I expected to live with Lucas and Mayhem and maybe a whole bunch of babies for the rest of my life. But then Lucas jumped off the cliffs like he was late for an appointment. You know what that means.
I can’t look at Elle after what she did, and if I have to fight this battle, cleanse my Brayburn blood, I have to do it away from here, where I can’t hear the water whisper, where I can’t feel its pull on my heart, never mind my body. I been thinking, Mama, Santa Maria is just like us, like Brayburns. It seems like a good, safe place for some free love and a party on the beach, but once you peel back the first layer, you realize it’s a lie, and what’s underneath is rotting and dirty. Spoiled, like meat that’s been sitting out too long.
I know what you’re thinking: I’ll be a Brayburn wherever I go, and so will Mayhem. You’re thinking that being born a Brayburn is a gift, that your grandma Julianna blessed us. I wish I had never known anything about it. I wish I was normal, and there was no Millie the cat, no birds, no cave, and most of all, no water. Even more than that, I don’t want to see, because that is the worst thing. I want to make myself blind like the rest. I want to be whole, and Brayburns are thorns.
I love you, Mama, and I’m sorry to do this to you. I know how much you and Daddy live for Mayhem, and I know how much you care for me. This will hurt you, but I don’t want to be at the mercy of my lineage, and I don’t want it for my daughter, either. I want both of us to be free. Since Elle can’t have babies, we might be able to end it all if we go away. Don’t worry, Santa Maria will survive, like every place on earth. It doesn’t need us.
I keep going back there, standing right at the edge of the cliff, looking down. I will fall if I stay. And Mayhem? Well, you’ve seen how curious she is, how determined she is when she wants something. Fate is umbilical for her.
Don’t blame yourself. You did your best for me. I’m going to do the same for Mayhem.
You understand, don’t you?
I love you,
Roxy
TWO
TELL THE TRUTH
1987
All I ever do anymore is swim. I like how the world is muffled underwater.
I float.
Last night, I woke up and Lyle was standing over me, darkened and backlit by the hallway, so at first I thought he was a demon, come for me. Roxy tensed, held on to me a little tighter.
This is how it goes.
Since their fight two days ago, he’s feeling bad, or maybe he’s just smart enough to stay away. That won’t last long. Then he’ll start giving her stuff and being sweet to me, which will make me want to vomit all the time. Then, after a period of contrition and seduction, he’ll get comfortable and drunk and mad and then he’ll do it again. Last time, she couldn’t walk for days. It used to take a while to come around to the hitting part again, but lately he loops fast.
I’ve been to the cops.
Well, the station. I haven’t gone in yet. I don’t know what I would say.
“My stepdad is a creep who’s always in a corner, watching.” (big dimpled smile)
“My stepdad has an arsenal in the workshed. Might want to check that out.” (finger guns)
“My stepdad looks at the odometer when my mom leaves the house. He won’t let her shower alone. He won’t let her work.”
“I think my stepdad is going to kill us someday, maybe soon. Maybe that’s why he was in my doorway, watching. Can you do something about that?”
What would they say? They’ve all seen him at my swim meets, cheering, hugging me when I win. They’ve seen him show up to chaperone dances where I stand at the side, alone. They don’t know the way I recoil when he touches me, that I cringe as he glides across a dance floor, and that at home he never dares come so close.
I don’t know how they don’t smell the steamy sickness coming off him.
Dear Lyle,
At night, when I’m holding on to my mother because she’s trying to get away from you so she can have a few hours of peace, I think about ways you might die. I’d love to stab you, to pull your dreamy blue eyes from your head. I’d love to hear you scream, to see you beg for your life and then take it from you anyway. You’re a plague and a pestilence, and the way you carry your manliness like it’s a permission slip from God to act like you rule everything and everyone in your path, like you can do whatever you want—well, I think the guillotine is a good option. I’d love to watch your head roll across the grass.
I wish you were the kind of drunk that passes out. I wish I had the guts to get your handgun and blow your brains against the wall while you were sleeping. I would never feel sorry a day in my life.
You did that to me. You turned me into a person who hates, one who dreams of ways to die. Roxy is the only thing keeping me here. Protecting her from you. I often wonder who I would be without you. Maybe I would be in love, somewhere beautiful, dreaming about the future, instead of struggling to make it through the day, worrying every time I step out the door to go to school or practice that when I come home, my mother won’t be there anymore. She’ll have disappeared.
You did this to us. Everything is your fault.
Sincerely and with hate,
Mayhem
Roxy doesn’t cry. Neither of us do. We don’t talk about it, even to each other, like if we never say it out loud, it will stop. We just lie there, awake, except where our bodies warm each other. And of course I’m always worried about Roxy and her stomach and her achy bones that never go away. The doctor can’t find a reason, so she lives like that, taking pills to ease the pain. All the pain.
I always go back to the pool, to swimming. Underwater is the only time I’m safe. Seems like I may never have a person wrap himself around me, care about me the way I think is possible for some.
The water is the closest I get.
Copyright © 2020 by Estelle Laure.