Page 7 of The Final Cut

Instead, he lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my palm, right over the blood and the shaking and the useless grief I can’t keep inside my own skin.

“I know, Little Ghost,” he says against my hand. “I know.”

I swallow and look back at Cal.

The ambulance screams through Lasalle Street, or maybe Magazine, or maybe some other road I will never be able to name later. New Orleans blurs red and white beyond the small windows. The siren rises and falls over us. The medic calls ahead again. Cal’s hand stays loose in mine.

I count his breaths.

One.

Two.

Three.

Not because counting will save him. Not because love is medicine. I know better. I know all the ways bodies fail no matter how badly someone needs them to stay.

I count because I need something to do besides beg.

Four.

Five.

Cal’s eyes stay closed. I lean close enough that my forehead almost touches the rail of the stretcher.

“Please,” I whisper. “Please, Dad.”

The word comes out before I can stop it.

Dad.

Deacon’s fingers tighten around mine.

The monitor keeps beeping.

The ambulance keeps moving.

And I sit between the man who gave me a life after blood and the man who helped hide me inside it, praying to a God I’m not sure I believe in that this time, the sirens are fast enough.

DELIA

AGE 10

I called her Nana today.

She stopped eating like I had put something rotten on the table.

“I am not a nana,” she told me. “Nanas rock babies and knit blankets. I am la jefa.”

Mother looked down at her plate. I wanted her to say something. Anything.

She didn’t.

So I said yes, ma’am, because I’m old enough to know the difference between correction and survival.

I am ten years old.

That’s old enough for both of those things.