The place is adorned in color, kindergarten classroom amounts of color: ocean of reds and blues and every shade of earth. I’ve never seen so many blankets and drapes and knickknacks. They’ve got tablecloths and hand-stitched embroideries on the walls. There’s a bed in each corner of the room and then a doorway that leads to another room with two more beds in it, plus a refrigerator. The bathroom connects to that room and I can smell the scent of soap that I’m almost sure they made because it smells just like some of the things Alé infuses her weed with.
The beds ain’t even really beds: more like couches they converted into these magical dreamlands. The pillows scream to be touched, but more than that, they scream to be stared at: images of people mid-story. Family fables caught in stitching. It’s something I wish I knew how to do, turn art into something I lay my head on.
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
Alé mumbles a thank-you like she’s embarrassed to occupy something this perfect, but all her focus is on me.
“What happened?” she asks.
“They been following me and when Marcus and Cole were there, I guess they jumped at the chance to fuck with me. Busted them with pounds of shit and guns and God knows what else.”
Alé walks fully into the room and over to one of the beds. This one is blue all over, has pillows with pictures of children on them. She calls me over to her and I sit. This must be Alé’s bed, the cushions she lays her head on. She sweats into these sheets every night, picks at loose threads on these pillows. Of course this is hers: baby of the family, blue.
“You okay?” She looks at me, takes all of me in.
“No.” I lean into her, let her have a little of my weight. “It’s all my fault and I can’t change none of it.” I wonder if Mama felt this too.
“We gonna get you out of this. And Marcus too, we gonna figure it out.”
“Okay.” There’s nothing else to say, no promises to make, no solutions to find.
“He probably ain’t been processed yet, but when he is, he’ll call. Or we will.” She pulls me closer to her. “For now, I got something to show you.”
Alé leans down and reaches under the bed, pulling out jars. Weed jars. I laugh at how hard it has become to remember when this would be normal, another day for us. She opens two of the jars and starts grinding, then rolling.
“Here?” I ask, looking at the door like her mama might walk in at any moment.
She chuckles at me. “Don’t worry, ain’t nobody coming. Anyway, Mama smoked a wood with me last week.”
I think of her mama, try to imagine her high and hysterical, but all I can picture is her delicate fingers braiding Alé’s hair and the creases that built in her forehead after Clara disappeared.
Alé opens the window beside her bed and it jingles the bell on her dream catcher. I want to reach out, hold it, hold all Alé’s dreams in my palms.
She lights the first joint, passes it to me.
“I call this one Chava,” she says.
I take it between my fingers and rest it in my lips, breathe in. It tastes like honey and mint, like consuming a stroll on the water. The smoke comes out in a perfect stream and I cough myself into a high. She’s already lit the other joint and we switch. I breathe this one in and I’m immediately struck with its familiarity: Sunday Shoes. Lavender. Funeral day and clothes with holes we mourn like they are the body.
When the high hits, every guard I’ve kept raised these past months falls and I feel the creases of my neck filling in tears, Alé watching me as I cry in front of her for the first time in years.
“I’m so sorry, Ki,” she whispers.
I try to swallow the urge to fully sob, but it escapes me anyway and I feel like an aching woman, like I’m old and wrinkling and my back hurts and there is no room in life for me to feel anything and yet here I am, overcome. Unraveling. Alé rubbing my back, between my shoulder blades.
“I just wanted a family. I just wanted something to work, something that was mine.”
“I know, Kiara. I know.”
I lean back into Alé’s chest, fully in the bed now. We lie there until my sobs slow and both joints are gone and we’re in a daze, arms and legs intertwining, forgetting that our skin is meant to be lonely. Every inch of the bed is solace, smooth, and smells like every dream I wish I had the space to have. Smells like Alé, like weed and never having to worry about the eyes. Feels like the warmth, the one that sends my entire body into a frenzy. And maybe the story we remember will be our sleep and maybe it will be her mouth on mine and maybe it will be her leaving, me waking up alone and not quite sure what was real.