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PART I: DARK & STORMY
2 ounces dark rum
3 ounces ginger beer
½ ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
Ice
Fill a tall glass with ice. Add the dark rum, ginger beer and squeeze the lime juice. Stir until all the ingredients are combined. You can add a lime wheel to garnish.
1
Saona
“A fucking second honeymoon. That was Mom’s bright idea after I told her David’s been cheating on me with a skank near Hunts Point." I gasp for air I don’t find.The walls are not closing in on me. The walls are not closing in on me. The walls are not…
"Saona, you have to breathe." My sister’s no longer pleading, she’s demanding, but I’m too far gone. I either rant or die.
"She's a fucking skank-bag stripper, Sierra. And I found them. I went there, to that murder-death-kill motel, and she opened the door with her tits half out. He was sitting on the bed with his pants undone and cheap lipstick was smeared on his dumb mouth. The asshole had the nerve to say, ‘It's not what you're thinking, Saona.’ Not what I’m thinking my ass. Then, I had the bright idea to call our mother and she says all marriages go through tough times and maybe a second honeymoon would help. On a fucking boat. Why did I flipping call her?”
I'm gasping again and tapping on the nightstand next to my hotel bed, trying to hone in on what the emergency room doctor told me a month ago about spacing my breaths and tethering to objects and smells. All I do is wheeze.
"Drop the phone on the nightstand, put it on speaker and lay your hands flat on your thighs. Breathe with me. Come on. One. Two. Three."
We go through the exercise several times until the air begins to flow freely into my lungs. Thank God she remembers the instructions.
"You're okay," Sierra coos in the voice she uses on my niece and nephew. The voice I hadn't known she had in her until she became a mom. It's soft and gooey and reassuring and the opposite of everything we grew up with.
"I'm sorry," I blurt out.
"For what? For being human? It's about fucking time. I never heard you cuss this much your entire life. You hold shit inside all the time but swearing is good for the soul."
I cough out a laugh and my chest loosens a little more. "Only you would think that. This is so ghetto. You know how much I hate being a mess."
"You're handling shit. It’s good you're not here right now. You need space."
“But I'm back tomorrow." The trip to Baltimore was a godsend. And to think of how much I bitched about having to be away from my home?What a joke.
"Yeah, but a lot can change in one night."
"Who even are you? Since when do you see silver linings?" I sit back against the pillows on the bed, stretching my legs out and my arms up. The breaths are flowing freer now.
"Not going to lie, my inner self wants to grab a knife and stab David, but I want to be there for you, like you were there for me when Edwin was fucking that bitch near Van Cortland. I hate that you know what being cheated on feels like."
Flashes of anger threaten my newly-found breath. My brother-in-law cheated on my sister while she was pregnant with their first child. But he had supposedly gotten himself together.
"Are you going to tell me to stay with David?"
"No, but I won't tell you to leave him. This decision is only yours. Mom can't be involved because she'll push you to be the good Catholic wife and stay."
Like she did with you. "How did you do it? How did you stay with him?”
I've asked my sister a million times and never gotten an answer.
"When you're on the other side of this, whatever you decide to do, you and I will have a long conversation over some Brugal and coke— Oh, hell to the no.” Sierra’s tone shifts to murderous and she’s no longer talking to me. “What the fuck is this bitch-ass doing here? After what you did to my sister, you can't come fucking chill at my house."
Heat shoots up my neck and spreads over my face.David is at my sister’s place.
