Rising

Lisa was dreaming when the bedroom door—the one Daddy always said he was going to fix, but never got around to—squeaked open. In her dream, a pure ivory ballerina had been dancing with a smiling nutcracker who had dribbled blood. The image was still playing before Lisa’s bleary eyes as Jacqueline twirled into the room. She brought with her the smell of orchids and Momma making dinner downstairs.

“What are you doing sleeping on a Friday afternoon?” Jacqueline said, landing from her twirl at the end of Lisa’s bed.

“I had a dream,” Lisa said.

Jacqueline pursed her lips, little dimples budding in her fat cheeks. “You ain’t got time to be dreaming. It’s summer.”

“Haven’t got time,” Lisa corrected in a mumble.

“Whatever, Fancy College Gal.” Jacqueline leaped from the bed and cha-cha-ed to her vanity as Lisa stretched away her dream.

Summer had barely got its foot in the door and already Lisa missed college. She missed the men and women professors with their shaggy hair and big ideas. She missed her dorm room; decorated with paper Chinese dragons, posters of Jim Morrison and glossy photographs of ancient ruins. She missed the days when they walked barefoot on the lush grass, blind to the sign that said, “Keep off.” But more than that, Lisa missed the sleep she had had. At college, she could block out the unheeded visions. But, at home they always overtook her in a torrent of purple fog.

It first happened when she was four. Lisa had been playing in the company of the family’s fat black tomcat, Scooter. She fell asleep and dreamed Scooter broke Momma’s living room lamp. An hour later, he did.

When she was eight, she had dreamed she was her grandmother. Lisa was dusting, but her chest ached and she lay on the couch (only for a moment) to take a nap. But the pain continued to knife through her chest and the room refused to stop dancing around her. She was only able to lie on the couch as the hurt branched out until it was all she could feel. Then . . . nothing at all.

The next day, Momma had told Lisa and Jacqueline their grandmother was dead—a heart attack. Jacqueline cried, but Lisa sat stony faced. She never said a word about her dreams. Whether she played hide-and-go-seek, cheered at high school basketball games or joked with friends at the park, she was haunted by her silent companions. Lisa never knew why, but at college, she was safe from them. But even then the visions still lingered in the lacuna between insanity and reality, waiting.

“What is that smell?” Lisa said.

Jacqueline spun from the mirror. “It’s Charmed, the new scent this season. It’s been selling like crazy at the counter. You like?”

Lisa covered her nose. “It’s too strong. Could be good if I were trying to cripple someone’s olfactory organ.”

“Well, excuse me if I like to feel pretty. We can’t all be liberated women who burn our brassieres and smell like garbage trucks. Isn’t that what you gals do in college when you aren’t protesting war?”

Lisa rolled over, a clear sign she was tired of her sister. When she was younger, Lisa often retreated from life in the musty pages of a book. The characters always felt more tangible to her than real people. She remembered reading of Gulliver surrounded by a city of little people with little minds. Lisa felt like Gulliver. She thought too about the Oracle of Delphi. In Greek Mythology, the Oracle told the future and was never wrong. There were those who tried to change the future, but all succumbed to the Oracle’s predictions. The future was forever.

Above Lisa’s thoughts of mythology, Jacqueline continued to chatter. “I am so thrilled, Lis. I’m going dancing tonight at the club. It’s my third date this month. And guess what?” She paused.

Lisa rolled back over. Jacqueline was watching her, eyebrows raised. “He’s black.”

“So?” Lisa asked. She could not hide the scorn in her voice. A black date was the same as a white or brown or yellow one. “What does it matter if he’s black?”

Jacqueline blushed and fluttered her hands as she replied, “It doesn’t matter, I know. But, it was so great. I was letting a lady sample Charmed and he was watching me. I asked him if he wanted a spritz and he said he was just looking at my pretty eyes, that they were so beautiful he had lost track of time. My heart jumped right into my throat. I smiled at him. Then he smiled at me. He had the prettiest smile,” Jacqueline giggled, “It was so exciting.” She suddenly grew pensive. Her eyes on her loafers, she twisted one lock of auburn hair. A dreamier voice lilted, “I’ve never done it before.”

Done what?” Lisa asked.

Jacqueline’s eyes grew wider and wider until they were gleaming globes of amber. “I ain’t never kissed a nigger,” she whispered.

Kissed a nigger. Kissed a nigger. The rough words tumbled in Lisa’s head like marbles. “Haven’t ever,” she breathed.

Jacqueline squealed, “I have to be ready in thirty minutes!” She salsa-ed to the closest.

As Jacqueline ballroom danced with her wardrobe, she sang robustly, if slightly off-key. Lisa hummed the familiar tunes and stared at the blossoming cracks in the ceiling. In them she saw the naïve smile of the ballerina. Lisa felt her fingers tingling, but she dismissed it with a roll of her shoulders.


The only thing which ended Jacqueline’s preening and petting in front of her vanity was the chiming of the doorbell.

“You have to come see him, Lisa,” Jacqueline implored.

“I’ve seen a black man before,” Lisa retorted.

“Please.”

Jacqueline knotted a paisley scarf around her neck and bunny-hopped downstairs, Lisa following like a torpid specter. As she descended the staircase, she could feel a lavender wash lapping at the edge of her subconscious. With effort, she held it back.

Lisa’s father stood before the open door, his bald head reflecting the hall light and his green tattered slippers barely clinging to his feet. He was a veteran, skin bombared by scars, with a spine as straight as a flagpole. One of his many plaid flannel shirts hung loosely over his pants, the ends frayed. In a gruff voice, he was interrogating a figure on the porch.

“Jackie? Are you sure you didn’t come for Lisa?”

Lisa saw the tall man framed by sunset in her parent’s doorway. A white smile, cleaner than a bleached shirt, cut a slit across his midnight face. His shoulders were broader than her father’s and straighter. He wore a stiff navy suit coat. In his hands, the man held a bouquet of white carnations. Lisa noticed his fingertips. They were baby pink.

“Gerald,” Jacqueline cried as she alighted on the shag carpet, “Come in. Daddy, let him in.”

Her father reluctantly shuffled out of the doorway as Gerald eased into the house. The old man lurked beside the shadowed wall and scowled at the interloper’s pressed clothes as Jacqueline received the carnations with an exclamation of, “For me?”

Jacqueline touched Gerald’s elbow. “This is my father,” she said.

The scowl had worked its way into every crease of the old man’s countenance. The steely eyes had not strayed from Gerald’s clothes—he would not look at the boy’s face—and his nostrils worked like bellows as he struggled to take wheezing breaths.

Gerald held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, sir,” he said.

Lisa’s father huffed and kept his body militarily rigid, his arms straight at his side. Gerald’s hand sunk like a deflating balloon. Jacqueline bit her lip and looked at the empty place where a handshake should have been.

The hallway seemed to creak with tension. As she watched the scene, Lisa heard the roaring of purple, thunder striking in the distance. If she kept still, she could control it, but Jacqueline was twisting her hands and Lisa’s father was drawing his lips apart for attack. The lightning flashed. She slipped in and wrapped one of Gerald’s pink tipped hands in two of hers. “I’m Lisa, Jacqueline’s sister. It’s so nice to meet you.”

Gerald smiled and Lisa felt the wave break. Images churned around her. She was drowning in a tsunami of purple.

She watched from behind the stage curtain as the nutcracker danced with the ballerina. The music swelled. Ogres came and dragged the ballerina away and smashed the nutcracker to a million red and gold pieces.

A pool of blood grew at her feet and soaked her ankles. It was warm and rising. She gasped as the blood caressed her fingertips.

Another lightning flash. She was choking, her legs dangling three feet from the ground. The night was black and muggy. Car headlights pierced the darkness and illuminated a horrifying scene. Her sister was screaming. Jacqueline’s yellow dancing dress was muddy, her face blotchy. The things Jacqueline screamed were not real words, but raw cries of wild desperation. Yet they were drowned out by the men—boys—that circled Lisa. They were barely recognizable as human. Their clothes were dotted with blood—Lisa’s blood—and their faces were sanguine. Along with their manic threats and curses, the boys flung saliva and dirt.

“Thought you could get away with it.”

“You thought she’d like it.”

“Ain’t no goddamn nigger going to kiss a white woman.”

Jacqueline’s voice was raspy now. She had collapsed beside a truck, sobbing and screaming. If Lisa was free she would rip into those bastards and tear their hearts with her bare hands. But she couldn’t get down from the tree. She couldn’t even breathe.

“You dead nigger.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Lisa,” Gerald said. He released her hand.

Jacqueline slid her arm around Gerald’s, but they did not yet move to leave.

“Why don’t you stay for supper?” Lisa asked. She was chugging air.

Jacqueline scowled and Gerald grinned politely. Lisa could see blood dripping from his pores. She tried not to scream.

“Momma always cooks too much. She wouldn’t mind.”

“Lisa. No,” her father growled. His brown eyes were dangerously red. He scuffed into the kitchen, his words still throbbing in the air.

Jacqueline smiled nervously and pulled Gerald toward the door. “Jay’s starts the good songs at seven. We’ll be late,” she crooned to him.

Lisa felt the rope around her neck, the braid cutting through her flesh. One word clamored up her throat. It pounded at her lips, demanding freedom. But as the door slammed behind the happy couple the word died in her mouth, a sour taste the only trace left on the tip of her tongue.

Stop.