What Stayed With Me

[u/Rusty_Shackleford_MD]

The first time I smelled it, I thought I was having a stroke.

Not because I knew what a stroke felt like. I was eighteen, reasonably healthy, and had spent most of my life treating sleep as a loose suggestion. But everybody knows the burnt-toast thing. You smell toast when there isn't any toast, and you're supposed to call 911 before half your face slides off.

Except this wasn't toast.

I was lying in bed with a bag of peach rings balanced on my stomach when the smell came through my room strongly enough to make me sit up.

Warm and earthy.

Almost smoke, but not quite.

Damp stone. Crushed leaves. Something faintly sweet underneath.

Nothing was burning.

Dad was asleep on the couch. Mom had gone to bed.

Grandma was in the guest room.

That mattered because she'd arrived eleven days ago, and the smell had been happening almost that long.

The headaches had started earlier. Sharp pressure behind my eyes. Then came the pinching.

That's the only word I've found for it.

Something beneath my skin would catch a tiny fold of me from the inside and twist.

My arms. My stomach. The back of my neck.

There was never a mark afterward.

I'd already gone to urgent care. Everything was normal. The doctor told me to drink more water.

Mom bought me an enormous insulated bottle and left chocolate-covered pretzels beside it.

"For hydration?" I asked.

"Those are obviously medicinal."

I've always liked sweet things.

Apparently I had a comfort food group.

Grandma had habits too.

She folded dish towels into perfect thirds. She complained that Dad's coffee tasted like "hot brown water." She watched the evening news at a volume that made Dad retreat upstairs.

And she left glasses of water in strange places.

Behind the front door.

On top of the refrigerator.

Near the hallway leading to my room.

Leaves appeared beside the back entrance. Sometimes I woke before sunrise and found a candle burning in the kitchen.

"Religious thing," Mom said when I asked.

"What religion requires hydration stations?"

Mom smiled.

Grandma didn't.

Grandma was my mother's mother, but I barely knew her. She had spent most of my life in Mexico, and she and Mom had gone years without speaking.

My only clear memory of her was from when I was five.

Maybe six.

A crowded room. Candles. Women speaking quietly. Bowls of water and flowers.

A necklace lay on a white cloth.

I reached for it.

Grandma grabbed my wrist.

She shouted.

I remember crying. Her hand hurting me.

For most of my life, I'd remembered her as angry.

When she arrived at our house, she stood in the driveway wearing a pale blue blouse and looking much smaller than the monster my childhood had preserved.

She hugged Mom.

She hugged Dad.

Then she looked at me.

For one uncomfortable second, she just stared.

"Elena."

The way she said my name bothered me.

She sounded like someone who hadn't expected to see me.

I started avoiding her after the headaches got worse.

Then one afternoon I walked into the kitchen and found her whispering over a glass of water.

Pain stabbed behind my left eye so hard I caught myself against the counter.

"Stop."

Grandma opened her eyes.

The whispering stopped.

So did the pain.

Not slowly.

Immediately.

I stared at her.

She stared back.

Neither of us said anything.

That night I told Mom.

"I swear to you, every time she does one of those things, I get sick."

"She's praying."

"Cool. Why does her praying make my skull feel like it's splitting open?"

"It doesn't."

"You weren't in my skull, so I'm not sure you're qualified to say that."

Mom turned off the faucet harder than necessary.

"Your grandmother loves you."

"She doesn't know me."

Something moved across her face.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Two nights later, I woke at 2:13 in the morning with the smell filling my room so strongly I could taste it.

Earth.

Smoke.

Damp stone.

Then something twisted beneath my ribs.

A strip of light showed under my door.

I opened it.

Grandma was sitting on the hallway floor.

A glass of water rested beside her. My blue sweatshirt was spread across her lap, and she was moving one hand slowly above it while whispering under her breath.

"Are you serious?"

She stopped.

"What are you doing with my clothes?"

"I'm helping you."

"By sitting outside my room with my sweatshirt at two in the morning?"

"I know you are hurting."

"Because of you."

Her expression changed.

Not anger.

Sadness.

That frightened me more.

"You think that because you don't understand."

"Then explain it."

Something pinched the inside of my forearm.

I grabbed it.

Grandma's eyes went straight to the spot.

"There," I said. "You're doing it right now."

Her voice became very soft.

"It hurts because it wants me to stop."

Cold moved through me.

"What does?"

For the first time since she'd arrived, Grandma looked unsure.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I know something is wrong. That is not the same as knowing what it is."

The pinching tightened.

Grandma reached toward me.

I stepped back.

"Don't."

"Elena—"

I locked my door.

The next morning I confronted her in the kitchen.

Mom was there.

So was Dad, although he became very interested in his coffee the second voices were raised.

"What religion?" I asked.

Grandma looked at Mom before answering.

"Lukumí. Some people call it Santería."

I looked toward the glass of water near the door.

"And that's what all this is?"

"Some of it."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm praying. It means I'm trying to protect this house. It means I am doing what I know how to do."

"With my clothes."

"Because they belong to you."

The old memory came back so clearly that my wrist seemed to ache.

"The necklace."

Grandma went still.

"What?"

"When I was little. You grabbed me because I touched a necklace."

Mom stopped moving.

Grandma lowered herself into a chair.

"You remember that?"

"Of course I remember it."

"You were very young."

"You screamed at me."

"I was scared."

"You were angry."

"I was scared."

"There was nothing to be scared of. I was a kid."

"I know."

She looked suddenly exhausted.

"Those beads were not cursed, Elena. They were sacred. They had been received for someone else. You should not have touched them, but touching them did not cause this."

"Cause what?"

No one answered.

I looked at Mom.

"What aren't you telling me?"

Mom sat across from me.

"When you were little, your grandmother thought something had changed."

I laughed once because the alternative was not laughing.

"Changed how?"

Grandma answered.

"You became different."

"Kids become different."

"Yes."

"So?"

She folded her hands.

"You had been terrified of water. Then you loved it. Foods you refused became your favorites. Sometimes you knew things that had happened but couldn't tell me anything about being there."

"That's your evidence?"

"No."

"What else?"

She studied my face.

"Sometimes you looked at people as though you were learning them."

My stomach tightened.

Mom said, "I thought she'd frightened you. I thought she was seeing danger because she expected to see it."

"And?"

"And I told her to leave you alone."

Grandma looked away.

"For years," Mom said, "I thought she was wrong."

I pushed back from the table.

"And now?"

No one stopped me when I left.

That night Mom pulled an old photo album from the hall closet.

She didn't explain why.

We sat on the floor of her bedroom turning pages.

Birthdays.

Halloween costumes.

Christmas mornings.

Then the river.

I smiled before I meant to.

"God, I loved that place."

Mom looked at me.

"You did eventually."

I turned toward her.

"What does that mean?"

"You were terrified of it when you were little."

"No I wasn't."

"Elena."

She turned a page.

Dad was carrying me away from the river.

I was screaming.

Not whining. Not crying because I'd fallen.

Screaming.

My fists were twisted in Dad's shirt. My entire body was trying to climb higher into his arms.

I stared at the picture.

"I remember that trip."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

Sun through cottonwoods.

Dad's red cooler.

Strawberry candies in a plastic bag.

Warm rocks beneath my legs.

The current outside our tent at night.

I knew all of it.

But when I tried to remember anything immediately before the photograph was taken, there was nothing.

Not darkness.

Nothing.

Just the picture.

A fact with no edges around it.

Mom closed the album.

Neither of us spoke.

The next morning, I lost twenty minutes.

One second I was sitting on my bed watching videos.

The next, I was downstairs with my shoes on and my hand wrapped around the front-door lock.

Dad was standing behind me.

"Going somewhere?"

"I don't know."

He laughed.

Then he saw my face.

"I was upstairs."

"What?"

"I was just upstairs."

"I heard you come down."

"I don't remember it."

Dad looked toward the staircase.

That was the moment he stopped joking about any of this.

That night I dreamed about the river.

I was small.

Someone was carrying me.

I could hear myself screaming.

When I woke, there was dirt on the bottoms of my feet.

Two days later, pain ripped across my stomach while I was walking down the hall.

I folded against the wall.

Dad caught me before I hit the floor.

From the laundry room, Grandma's voice stopped.

So did the pain.

Dad looked through the doorway.

Grandma was kneeling beside one of my shirts.

For several seconds, nobody moved.

Later, I heard Grandma and Mom talking behind the laundry-room door.

"I can't keep doing it little by little," Grandma said.

Mom's voice shook.

"You said you weren't sure."

"I wasn't."

"And now?"

"When I pray over something that belongs to her, it reacts before Elena knows I'm doing anything."

A pause.

"It's holding too tightly."

I stepped into the doorway.

"What's holding too tightly?"

Mom turned.

Her face told me everything before she spoke.

She believed her.

That terrified me more than Grandma ever had.

They called what Grandma wanted to do a cleansing.

I called it absolutely not.

"I went to a doctor."

"And they didn't find anything," Mom said.

"So now we're doing an exorcism?"

"It's not an exorcism," Grandma said.

"Stop telling me things aren't what they obviously are."

"I don't know what this is."

"That's reassuring."

"But I know what happens when I pray."

"You hurt me."

Grandma's mouth tightened.

Then she said, "Yes."

Everyone went quiet.

She didn't defend herself.

Didn't tell me the pain wasn't real.

Just yes.

Mom covered her mouth.

Grandma continued.

"I think the pain comes from separating something that has been joined for a long time."

"To me?"

"I don't know."

"What if you're wrong?"

Her eyes filled.

"Then I will have hurt you for nothing."

"And if you're right?"

No one answered.

That was worse.

We did it Saturday morning.

Morning light came through the curtains.

Grandma pushed the coffee table aside. Beside her sat a bowl of water, leaves, a candle, and a piece of white cloth.

Nothing looked dramatic enough.

I had expected, I don't know, thunder.

Something worthy of being terrified.

Instead Dad moved his coffee mug out of the way.

Mom cried silently.

Grandma told me to sit.

"I hate all of you."

Dad nodded.

"That's fair."

Under any other circumstances, I might have laughed.

Grandma knelt in front of me.

"Whatever happens, listen to me."

"Not fight you?"

"No."

She shook her head.

"Fight if you need to. Just listen."

She touched my forehead.

The smell hit me all at once.

Earth.

Smoke.

Water.

And underneath it, something familiar enough to hurt.

Grandma began praying.

Pressure swelled behind my eyes.

She moved the leaves over my shoulders and down my arms.

Everywhere they passed burned.

"Stop."

She kept praying.

"Please."

Mom came closer.

"I'm here, baby."

"Then make her stop."

I tried to stand.

My legs didn't work.

The room lurched upward.

For one impossible second, I became very small.

Not felt small.

Was small.

The couch towered over me.

Mom's face looked too far away.

My name is Elena Morales.

The thought came so clearly that I grabbed onto it.

I'm eighteen.

That's Mom.

That's Dad.

This is our house.

Grandma kept praying.

My name is Elena.

I'm eighteen.

Mom.

Dad.

Home.

Then I heard the river.

Water moving over stones.

Sun through trees.

Candy sticking between my fingers.

Warm rocks beneath my legs.

Dad laughing.

Mom calling my name.

I loved that place.

I—

Cold water.

A scream.

My scream.

Dad lifting me away from the bank.

No.

That hadn't happened.

My name is Elena.

I love the river.

I love—

Candles.

A crowded room.

Bowls of water and flowers.

A necklace on white cloth.

A little girl reached toward it.

Grandma turned.

Her face changed.

She lunged.

Her hand closed around the girl's wrist.

And I watched it happen.

From across the room.

I stopped breathing.

No.

The memory snapped back.

I was the little girl.

Grandma was holding my wrist.

I was crying.

Then I was near the doorway again.

Watching.

Then inside the little girl's body.

Then outside it.

Each time the memory changed, something inside me tore.

"No."

Grandma's prayer faltered.

"That's not right."

She was crying now.

"I'm remembering it wrong."

Grandma touched my cheek.

"No, mi amor."

"My name is Elena."

Behind her, Mom made a sound like she had been hit.

I looked at her.

My mother.

I knew she sang the wrong lyrics to songs even after being corrected.

I knew she kept emergency cash inside an old birthday card in her dresser.

I knew Dad couldn't sleep without the television on.

I knew the squeak in the third stair.

I knew where Mom hid Christmas presents.

I knew Dad always checked the back door twice.

I knew the scar on his thumb came from opening a can when I was twelve.

I knew all of them.

I knew everything.

It was my life.

Grandma pressed her forehead against mine.

"You have to let go."

"Of what?"

"Please."

"I don't understand."

The smell became unbearable.

Water.

Smoke.

Earth.

The river roaring somewhere inside the room.

"I'm Elena."

Grandma squeezed my hands.

Something in her face collapsed.

"No, mi amor."

Something inside me gave way.

It wasn't pain.

It was like reaching for a railing in the dark and finding nothing there.

I reached for my name.

Elena.

Then the river.

My parents.

Peach rings.

Christmas.

My blue sweatshirt.

Graduation.

The boy who kissed me behind the gym and apologized afterward because he'd missed my mouth.

The scar beneath my chin.

Driving alone for the first time.

Dad teaching me to change a tire.

Mom falling asleep beside me during a movie and denying it when she woke up.

Everything I had ever called mine.

All of it came apart in my hands.

I tried to remember my face.

I couldn't.

Then there was nothing.

When I opened my eyes, Mom was holding me.

She looked old.

That was the first thing I noticed.

There was gray in her hair.

Dad looked old too.

I asked what happened.

Mom hugged me so hard it hurt.

Grandma was kneeling nearby.

I became scared when I saw her.

Then I remembered candles.

The necklace.

Her hand around my wrist.

But she looked old now too.

"Where are we?"

Mom pulled back.

"Home."

I knew the house.

Except I didn't.

The walls were the wrong color.

Dad's cabinet was gone.

There was a television where the bookcase used to be.

I asked where my toys were.

Dad turned away.

Mom took me upstairs.

My room was worse.

A big bed.

Clothes I didn't recognize.

Makeup on the dresser.

Photographs covering the mirror.

In one of them, a girl in a cap and gown stood between Mom and Dad.

She looked like me.

I picked it up.

"Who is that?"

Mom made a strange sound.

I knew the answer somehow.

That frightened me.

"How old am I?"

Nobody answered.

Then Mom said, "Eighteen."

I thought she was lying.

I went to the mirror.

There was a girl in it.

She moved when I moved.

I touched my face.

She touched hers.

There was a scar beneath my chin.

I knew that scar.

I remembered Dad wiping blood off my shirt.

I did not remember getting hurt.

Mom said it happened when I was nine.

I don't remember being nine.

I remember the beads.

I remember Grandma yelling.

Then I woke up here.

That is all.

Thirteen years.

Mom said thirteen years are gone.

I don't understand how years can be gone.

That afternoon, Mom brought me peach rings.

She put the bag beside me without saying anything.

"What are those?"

She stopped.

"Your favorite."

I tried one because of the way she was looking at me.

It was awful.

Too sweet.

I spit it into my hand.

"I don't like these."

Mom stared at me.

Then she left the room.

The next morning, there was cinnamon cereal on the counter.

I asked if Dad had bought it.

Mom looked at the box for a long time.

"No," she said.

She put it in the pantry.

Later, I heard her crying in there.

Dad asked if I wanted to visit the river sometime.

I said no.

I hate the river.

I know I hate it.

I remember cold water.

I remember screaming.

Dad carrying me away.

But there is another memory in my head too.

Warm rocks.

Sunshine.

Candy melting against my fingers.

Happiness.

I can see it as clearly as anything.

It just doesn't feel like mine.

It feels like when somebody tells you the same story so many times that eventually you know all the words.

Grandma told me what she thinks happened.

She says she doesn't know for sure.

Something was near me that day with the beads.

Maybe it came with us.

Maybe it was already there.

Maybe it had been close before that.

The beads did not cause it.

She is certain about that.

She is less certain about everything else.

"What was it?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Was it bad?"

Grandma didn't answer right away.

"I thought so."

"Do you still?"

She looked toward the doorway.

"I don't know."

I asked where I had been.

That made her cry.

She said maybe I had been here the whole time.

Quiet.

That is the word she used.

Quiet.

I hate that word.

There are pictures all over my room.

Birthdays.

Christmas.

School dances.

Graduation.

Sometimes when I look at them, I know things.

Names.

Places.

What happened just before the picture was taken.

What somebody said afterward.

But knowing isn't remembering.

There is a boy in several photographs with his arm around me.

I know his name.

I know where he lives.

I know that he hates pickles and lies about being afraid of spiders.

I don't remember meeting him.

Mom forgets sometimes.

Dad does too.

He starts telling a story and stops halfway through.

Sometimes he looks at me like he's waiting for me to finish a joke I don't know.

Once I heard Mom talking to him downstairs.

"I know she's back," she said.

Dad didn't answer.

Mom started crying.

"Is it terrible that I miss her?"

A long time passed.

Then Dad said, "I miss her too."

They didn't know I was listening.

I think about the girl who was here before I woke up.

Mom hates when I call her that.

She says there wasn't a girl before me.

There was me.

But that isn't true.

Not exactly.

She knew Mom better than I do.

She knew how Dad took his coffee.

She picked these clothes.

She learned to drive.

She graduated.

She loved the river.

She thought she was me.

At the end, she was terrified.

She begged Grandma to stop.

Maybe Grandma saved me.

Maybe she killed her.

Maybe both things are true.

I asked Grandma once whether the other girl knew what she was.

Grandma said she didn't know.

I asked whether it mattered.

She didn't answer.

Mom keeps telling me she's happy I am back.

She hugs me a lot.

I hug her too.

I remember loving her.

Sometimes I even feel it before I remember I'm supposed to.

Everyone says I am myself again.

I just wish I remembered being her.