Reading with Rasta: Prophet’s Lamentation
Prophet’s Lamentation by Robert Creekmore. Chapter one.
“Even after your enemies’ defeat, they are still with you.”
Those are Nate’s words. I hear them whenever I wake up screaming and fighting in the middle of the night. Tiffany has similar episodes.
How do you build an ordinary life when you’re not, well, ordinary? Terror and fury molded me for eleven years. That abruptly ended with the death of Vernon Proffit and his acolytes. Sure, there was a period of celebration following. After vengeance, the anger never completely subsides. Don’t interpret that as regret; some motherfuckers need killing.
What bothers me is that before I fed Vernon to the Atlantic Ocean, the screams that woke me were my own as I relived trauma.
The abilities my guide, Mara, gifted me are still intact, but I choose to shut myself off from them. However, now something new comes pulsing forth from the ground that I have no control over. I’m stirred from sleep by the horrors others are experiencing. They cry out for help, but I don’t know how to save them. Mostly, they’re abused young people. Their voices drive me mad. If I could only find them, maybe I could stop their suffering. Last night, it was a young man named Vincent. I couldn’t see where he was. I could only hear him wail in pain as he experienced abject hopelessness.
But I attempt to tarry forward.
Today, I should be happy. It’s July twentieth, two-thousand-six; my twenty-seventh birthday as Naomi Pace. Legally, as Hannah Sillman, I’m thirty-four and will turn thirty-five on Christmas day. That birthday is celebrated more ominously, as the real Hannah rests with her mother, Milly, under an old oak tree high up in the hills of Yancey County. Her father, Al, gifted me with this new life by giving me her identity for my eighteenth birthday. He was more of a father than my own, Amos, who beat me mercilessly when he found out that I was in love with Tiffany. I still am. Their hate and violence couldn’t destroy that.
I won. Why am I still so sad? Why do I disregard my own life, feeling guilty about those I couldn’t save, like Charles? He died during our escape. There was nothing I could do. I know that, logically, but I can’t convince my heart of it. It eats at me with each heartbeat, saying, ‘you could have done more.’ It does so now, at four-thirty in the morning. I’m sitting up in bed with no one to speak with. I don’t dare wake my beautiful bride, Tiffany, as she sleeps soundly next to me.
After completing my Ph.D. in marine biology, I took a job with North Carolina Fish and Wildlife. It lasted a year. I simply lost interest one day, walked out, and never returned. I ran my own dive business for six months afterward but found myself feeling listless about that as well. I don’t need the money. I was seeking a normal life.
Tonight, our friends Nate and Herschel are coming down from Little Washington to our house on Wrightsville Beach. We are supposed to celebrate my birthday at Spectrum in downtown Wilmington.
I’m done trying to sleep. All I can see of Tiffany are her red curls as she sleeps on her left side, rolled up in the covers like a burrito.
Gently, I rise from the right-hand side of the bed, which is closest to the door. I dress in a black t-shirt and pajama pants. I leave my feet bare and tiptoe across our new seafoam green carpet. I open the door and exit quietly. There’s a large picture window to the left outside our bedroom that faces the sound side of Wrightsville Beach. At the moment, all I can see are the lights from the boat docks framed by darkness, and my reflection. I still keep my blond hair very short. I don’t feel that I look any different than I ever have, even though I’m a year older today. My outside is still fit and strong, but the interior of my mind feels like a sunworn, faux leather car seat.
There’s a loveseat and chair-and-a-half positioned in front of the window. Past the furniture, in the far corner of the room, is a black spiral staircase that leads upstairs. An open floor plan takes me to a kitchen whose counter goes along the wall to my left. There’s a square island in the center. To the right of it is a large bathroom that also connects to our bedroom.
I boil water in a black electric kettle, impatient for physics to catch up with my desires. My coffee is made in a Pyrex French press. Caffeine in hand, I ascend the spiral staircase deliberately. When I reach the top, I see the cream-colored sectional facing the wall to my left, which has a large flat-screen television attached to it. In front of it sits a glass-top coffee table. Beyond the couch is a pool table in the center of the room, and a bar behind that. There’s a guest room to my right. Along the same wall is a bathroom, and in the far-right corner is Tiffany’s office, where she writes, draws, and does calligraphy.
Holding my coffee cup with my left hand, I slide the glass door to the second-story deck open with my right. I sit in one of our two rocking chairs and look out onto the water just as the day stirs from its slumber. Across the bay, fishing charters and dive boat crews are already up, prepping their vessels.
After rescuing Tiffany and bringing her back here, we spent a lot of time out on the water. Learning to maneuver the boat gave Tiff something to focus her energy on during recovery. She’s a natural. Out there, it was just the two of us surrounded by quiet. There wasn’t a lot of talking during the first month. We sat, looked out onto the blue, and held hands, just being together after so long. When the time came, I told her everything that had happened to me. I could tell Tiffany was skeptical at first, especially about Mara. A silent, ominous bodyguard appearing from nowhere seems like a delusion. But the day we left Vernon on the rotting whale carcass, out at sea, Tiff saw Mara transfer the light I carry in my chest to me. That’s why Tiffany didn’t question my sanity when I asked her if she can hear the strangers’ voices in her sleep. She only hears hers and mine, and the terrors wrought upon them in our past.
Since shuttering my dive venture, I’ve done as I have today; slept very little, drank a lot of coffee, and stared at the water. Everyone else dashes around me, going places and having a purpose.
While seeking one, I asked Tiffany to let me call on those who hurt her while we were apart. She told me no. I never agreed, but I’ve followed her wishes so far.
I pour two more cups of coffee over the next hour and a half. Right before six in the morning, I start the kettle again to make a cup for Tiff. She’s taking a summer writing course at UNC-W that meets from eight to twelve on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
I place Tiffany’s cup on her bedside table.
“Coffee,” I say quietly.
She groans.
“Did you sleep at all, baby?” she asks.
“No. I don’t want to hear them.”
“Your body will eventually force you to sleep.”
“I’m not like other people.”
“You’re not that different,” she says softly.”
“You know that’s not true, Tiff.”
She sighs in begrudging agreement.
“How can I sleep? There are so many. Their cries vibrate through the ground and into my ears.”
“Even if you knew who they were, you can’t stop it all.”
“I know,” I say, frustrated, then turn and walk out the door to drink even more coffee and stare.
I’m not walking away because I’m angry at her, rather, the truth breaks my heart. Being inside makes me claustrophobic and I need to breathe.
Tiffany dons her robe and joins me, taking a seat in the rocking chair to my left.
“After I leave, I want you to go to bed. It’s your birthday. You should enjoy yourself this evening instead of sitting in the corner delirious from lack of sleep.”
“I don’t know how to enjoy myself anymore,” I reply.
Tiffany kisses my cheek and goes about her morning routine.
As she prepares to leave the house, I admire how beautiful she looks in her black dress with white polka dots and adorable red glasses.
She kisses me on the lips and says, “I love you,” before walking about the front door.
“I love you too,” I respond.
I do as Tiffany instructs, and take myself to bed. It feels as though my head passes through the pillow and into oblivion.