James Jenkins: The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

The barrio had always been good to me, but growing up, I felt that we had nothing to offer each other, that my calling lay elsewhere. I wasn’t built for a small town. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, only that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be here.

I look away, willing a change in subject. She is still staring at me when I look back.

‘What’s it to you?’ I ask, meeting her gaze.

‘Nothing,’ she mumbles. ‘Just making conversation.’

‘Dr. Vera is coming by tomorrow,’ I say. ‘He says he may know what’s making you sick.’

Anne smirks. ‘We all know what’s making me sick.’

‘No, we don’t.’

‘Yes, we do. Everyone does, even though they won’t say it.’

‘This isn’t some ancient family curse, Anne.’

She looks hurt. ‘It isn’t a curse.’

‘I’m sorry.’

We don’t talk the whole night after.

I really like Dr. Vera. He’s smart and funny and really enjoys his work, even if it sometimes means trekking through the forest to see out-­of-­the-­way patients like Anne. He grew up in the barrio. He’s older, old enough that by the time we were kids he had gone off to med school, so we weren’t familiar enough to call him by his first name when he returned.

He’d been here a couple of times before I arrived, administering tests, trying to get Anne to take medicine, trying to tell her that there shouldn’t be anything wrong with her, that it’s all in her head. He doesn’t understand it, how she can be ill. All her vital signs are normal; there is nothing wrong with her. He does not understand how a perfectly healthy person can be wasting away in front of him, coughing hard, throwing up black bile. He wants to study her, publish her case in a journal. He knows none of us will let him.

He speaks to me outside the hut. The birds watch us, watch him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He is confused. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. If only she’d let herself be checked into a – ’

‘We both know they won’t be able to find anything, either,’ I say.

He nods, numb. I wonder what kind of a doctor he is, unable to grasp the idea that someone is going to die from something no one understands. He struggles to say something. I wait until he finally finds the words.

‘It’s true what they say about her family,’ he says. ‘Only back then, it was her aunt. I was about seven when I caught a fever. My parents brought me here – to her. I don’t remember what she did. I should be dead. That’s why I became a doctor. I want to do what she did. I want to thank her by saving lives.’ He looks at me. ‘And now Anne is sick, and I can’t save her.’

It is easy to make someone’s pain about yourself. You feel helpless, you internalize their discomfort, make it your drama. You are stealing their thunder; suddenly, you have a venue to attract the attention you did not know you were seeking. I understand Dr. Vera’s frustration, but I also think that he should have known better.

I am very careful not to make Anne’s pain mine. I am very particular about making sure that my pain is my own, and I have to remind myself that whatever frustration I feel is nothing compared to Anne’s. I have to remind myself that I am not the one who is dying. I have to remind myself that this is not my story. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, when I wake suddenly, either from a dream or the sound of an errant bird or from a flash of blind fear, I wonder if really, this is a story about me, too.

It is not hard to care for Anne when she’s in a good mood. And I know she tries to be, for the most part, for my sake. But sometimes, she can be difficult. Sometimes, most of the time, she wants me to leave.

‘Bitch,’ she says one day, throwing her plate across the room, fish and rice flying.

‘Stop it,’ I say. We are not fighting. We are not fighting.

‘You left when I told you not to. Why are you here now? Because you feel guilty? I don’t need your charity.’

I clean up her mess. I do not say anything.

‘Why are you here?’ she asks.

I do not answer, not because I don’t want to engage her, but because I don’t know the answer to that myself.

The birds are particularly noisy the morning I call Tim. Even he can hear them on the other end of the line, a cacophony of shrills and shrieks, of caws and calls.

‘What the hell is going on there?’ he asks through a choppy signal.

‘It’s the birds,’ I say. Tim knows all about the birds. ‘They’re crazy today. I don’t know why.’

‘When are you coming home?’

The question makes me feel guilty. There I was, in the middle of a life I had left behind a long time ago, while the life I had wanted, the life I had made for myself, was put on hold. A crow dive-­bombs me before I can answer. I duck instinctively, almost dropping my phone. The bird calls become louder, more agitated, until it feels like they encompass the whole forest.

‘I’ll call you as soon as I can,’ I scream into the phone. ‘I love you.’

I barely finish the sentence when another bird comes for me, and I have to run into the safety of the hut.

I close the door, waking Anne with my short, loud gasps. She looks more pained than usual. Her skin has taken on a pallor just this side of gray. Her eyes have lost their sheen. She looks weak, spent. Outside, the birds continue their assault, calling at each other, attacking the hut, engaging in aerial warfare.

She looks at me. I take her in my arms. We hold on tightly to each other until the clamor dies down.

We don’t fall asleep, even after the birds calm down. It is comfortable, holding Anne and being held by her. It had taken us a while to get back to this level of familiarity, the week I had been here starting out with our just staring at each other; then a hand carelessly alighting on an arm, to be pulled away self-­consciously at first, but to stay on with a soft squeeze later. And then we were holding hands again, running fingers through each other’s hair, holding each other through the night. This time, when she puts her head on my shoulder, I let her. When she presses her lips to my cheek, I do not pull away. Sometimes, I kiss her back. While it is true that the dying get away with many things, I believe that the ones who know they will be left behind take many liberties as well.

I don’t know how long it has been since the birds stopped, how long it has been since the only thing we can hear is the sound of our breath, and underneath, the thud of our heartbeats. Anne is warm against me. She hugs me, pulling me in tight before letting her arms go slightly limp, her hands slowly, deliberately, sliding up and down my back. I rest my head on her clavicle, snuggling close. There’s a small rumble in my belly. Idly, I think that I would like a snack. But this, I like this more. I tilt my head up. Our eyes meet, and then our lips, and it is the most delicious thing in the world. We move slowly, but with a feverishness running underneath, the years of holding back behind us, unbelieving, wanting things to move faster, wanting this first moment to last forever. I take her nightshirt off and kiss her breasts. She does the same to me. We fuck, both of us afraid to say anything, both of us worried that this might not be real. When morning wakes us, we are wrapped around each other, naked, and happy.

Things seem easier after that. We stop arguing, almost. We laugh more. Anne regains some color, though the cough is still there, and she still throws up sometimes. But now I can hold her hand and squeeze it and kiss her, and she can kiss me back and play with my hair and snake her hand up my shirt to touch my breasts and I can, in turn, dip my hand inside her underwear and then we are fucking again, sometimes loudly, sometimes in silence, sometimes schoolgirl giggly. We baptize her hut with our juices, our laughter, our love. Times like this, Anne does not seem sick at all. Times like this, when she is whispering my name, asking me to go faster, slower, deeper, I wonder what it would have been like if I hadn’t left the barrio, what our life would have been like together. But, in the wee hours of the morning, when I am awake and Anne is sleeping, I tell myself I know the answer to that question: no matter what I would have chosen in the past, it would always end like this, here in this hut, with Anne dying.