like it was nothing.
Just us,
#TeamMerc,
in our own little galaxy.
That night
my brain was
a place
where memories
went to
die.
Wanna know why?
Because what good
was a night of fun
if you could remember
all of it?
Memory morphed
into a repetitious
play of
hide-and-seek,
flashes of my greedy ass
trying every food passed my way.
Every drink color poured
red, brown, clear
equal parts burning
and delicious.
The dance floor
where me and Dali
and Merc and
even tight-faced Marissa let loose.
Hands on shoulders
Waist
Back
Ass
A smiling Dali—damn, she looked so good that night—
that gleam that’s stayed
with me since the day we first met.
The clicking of a clock,
vibrations of more texts
I didn’t know existed.
3:11 a.m.
Shak: I can’t sleep. You’re not returning my calls. Something ain’t right.
4:28 a.m.
Shak: Y’all leave me with no choice.
8:21 a.m.
Here’s what I also didn’t remember …
How I got back to the studio
and woke up in …
that bed
that blood
that sun.
I didn’t need it.
Sipped in one breath,
held it there,
deep,
deep,
deep,
let it swell,
blocked out the noise
of New York City streets
ten floors beneath cracked windows.
Begged my feet,
to find the floor,
knees vs. gravity,
a battle of epic proportions.
Thoughts replaced breath.
Why were my …
pants gone,
shirt off,
bra still on,
panties … with a pad inside?
Fingers gripped on satin sheets,
cocooned my exposed parts,
Door thrown open,
feet flew beneath
the buzzzzz of flickering lights.
Hands frantically
pulled at each door,
locked-locked-locked some more
winding cracks in the concrete floor,
led the way
until I reached the studio,
busted through,
my last piece of strength
dried out
soon after I screamed in F sharp.
Dali caught me
midfall, pulled me close,
sat me on the leather couch.
“Tranquila, Denver! Calm down!”
Her fingers navigated
swollen coils of my hair.
“SOMETHING HAPPENED TO ME!”
My voice, soprano-heavy.
up.
Chills. up,
Ran up,
Heat.
Descended down,
down,
down …
(there.)
Merc, Marissa,
ran in the studio.
Water bottle in his hand,
pill bottle in hers.
“You okay, baby gurl?”
Merc touched my forehead,
skull like thunder rumbling in dark skies.
I pulled away, head spinning,
raised my voice once more.
“Why did I wake up like this?”
“You drank too much last night, Denver,” Marissa said,
pressing two pills against my dry, cracked lips.
“And you got your period, like really bad,” Dali whispered.
That quiets me … freezes me.
Still.
Technically, it was that time of the month.
but … BUT never before
had my period felt like
someone took a drill,
pushed it through my insides,
all the way up to my esophagus,
clicked the ON button …
And forgot to turn it O F F.
Merc sat on the edge of the couch,
his eyes meeting mine.
But I couldn’t look at him,
looking at me … looking
like that.
But then he grabbed my hand,
warmth pulsing through,
and I did.
“I found you crying, bleeding, drunk as hell.
So I woke Say Say and Marissa up to help.”
Merc’s eyes turned glossy. Were those tears?
“I was so scared for you, baby gurl.”
“You were out of it, muchacha.
I’m the one who got you undressed.
(I even put a pad on for you.)”
Marissa chimed in.
“And I washed your clothes.
You got a real one right there, Denver.
That’s a ride-or-die if I ever seen one.”
A single tear welled,
swelled in my left eye, ocean blue,
fell down the earth of my cheek,
until it reached the corner of my lips
where it disappeared,
taking the foggy memory
of the night with it.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
I grew up with four sisters. Trust me. I seen worse.
Maybe next time a little less turn-up?”
I wanted to believe Merc,
the doubt fading
because of his words
and Marissa’s.
But more importantly, Dali’s.
“We gotta get outta here, Denver.
Give me your keys.
Go back to the room and change.
I’ll drive us home.”
It took me
a second or ten to
ground myself in the space
of the room I slept in.
Bed in the middle,
pillows, comforter
a visual definition of chaos at best.
Equipment lined the walls
microphones,
keyboards,
guitars,
tripod,
and on the floor,
a dusty, old-school
Panasonic camcorder.
I put my clothes on,
as fast as my hands would allow.
A tap at the door.
Marissa.
My phone in her hand.
“Didn’t want you to forget this.”
Soon as I turned it on,
I saw it.
A new text from Shak.
July 8, 9:13 a.m.
Two words, no explanation:
I’m sorry.
But I didn’t even have
the energy to respond.
as Dali navigated
New York City streets
and tree-covered Pocono Mountains,
every now and again
grazing the palm of her hand
against the highways of
my cheek-neck-chest.
“Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
Her words, a whispered stitch,
healing, weaving
from toes to follicle
(and hidden parts in between).
Behind closed eyes,
I replayed the night in my head,
Dali’s promise of
nothinghappenednothinghappened
on repeat.
Maybe it was the music,
a sample of the new song we recorded
last night that blocked it out,
made it real …
A low and slow ballad,
equal parts
Whitney and Mariah.
Just me and Dali,
battling it out,
singing as if
tomorrow the world would end.
It almost hurt to
not hear Shak’s
soul-filled tenor on the track.
A broken, empty,
missing piece of the puzzle.
That hollow feeling that
something
I wasn’t right.
On any given day
I could almost always find
the curve of our driveway empty.
Your car eternally parked in the garage
since you were rarely home, Papi.
Ma was always at work
and my black Civic
propped right in front of the red double doors.
That morning though
it wasn’t empty.
Four cars
lined up
and I recognized them all.
when I unlocked the front door?
Y’all.
Propped on the couch,
equal distances
of personal space
in between.
You.
Ma.
Tía Esme.
Pastor Brown.
Grandma Brown.
Shak.
Shit.
The first thing we heard?
Ma’s voice, like a dragon
unleashing fire.
I could always count
on that woman to get the party started.
“Where have you been?” Arms crossed, left foot tapping.
“At the Falls,” I said, “then brunch.”
“Walmart after that,” Dali added.
“And last night?”
Ma’s question hovered in the air.
“¡Y dinos la verdad!” Tía Esme’s finger pointed straight at Dali.
Boy, when Dali’s mom sided with mine,
it was a WRAP!
They wanted the truth?
Well, the truth about a lie is
once planted,
the seed—
stubborn as the day is long—
will grow
whether you watered it or not.
Red veins piercing through
brown cheeks,
Shak spoke before
Dali or I could get the words out.
“When you guys didn’t return my texts or calls,
I got nervous that something happened to you.”
(Something did.)
I wanted to say that,
but the words tasted like lies
on my tongue.
I felt the heat steamroll off Dali
as she leaned forward,
and spat out,
“You’re being paranoid!”
I inhaled,
Dali did the opposite.
“We went out,” I said,
legs struggling against gravity.
“With that there famous singer
who asked Shakira for neked photos?” Pastor Brown said.
Something about hearing
Shak’s grandfather utter the word naked
made me want
to fling myself in boiling water.
Dali sucked her teeth.
“Shak, maybe you heard wrong.
Merc wouldn’t do that.”
“Who is this Merc anyway?”
Papi, your voice was
equal parts mad and oblivious.
“A musician, Papi.
People say he’s a genius.”
But you shut me down
with a wave of the hand
and that same old eye roll.
Pastor Brown pulled Shak’s cell phone
out his blazer pocket,
swiped up, and clicked
P
L
A
Y
“Once in Your Life”
filtered in,
in all of its
bass-thumping
booty-poppin’
thot glory.
If Dali’s eyes
were lasers,
Shak woulda been
laid out
flat on the floor.
“TURN THAT DEVIL MUSIC OFF!”
Grandma Brown yelled,
hands clutched on white pearls.
I saw the tears build up
before they fell down Shak’s face.
Felt the sting of my own rising, too.
“It’s a good thing Shak told us,
lest we never woulda
found out what you girls been hidin’ for weeks.”
Pastor Brown passed Shak’s phone
to Ma, Papi, Tía Esme.
The truth on full display,
a trail of texts
going back to the
very day I plotted this whole
get-famous-or-die-trying
thing.
if the second I tried
to use them to explain,
you and Ma told me to SHUT UP?
What good were ears
if the only words
that came from your mouths
were sung in the key of:
NO
CAN’T
& FORBIDDEN?
What good were tears
if they weren’t enough
to stop what came next?
Accusations:
“Your daughters are bad influences
for our Shakira!”
And then, a battle
of epic proportions
old-school vs. new-school
churchgoing, Bible-thumping pastors
vs.
three overworked parents
who hadn’t seen the inside of a church
since …
glued on wooden floors
a scratch of the throat
followed by a truth bomb,
loud enough to slice through raised voices:
“Dali, Denver, I’m sorry, but
I can’t sing with you anymore.”
And just like that
Shak’s grandparents
rose up from the couch
each hand
locked in hers,
Bibles gripped
firm in the other.
Noses pointed to the heavens,
they ignored our
PleaseShakPlease
sobbing,
wilting,
broken
cries,
And then …
they dragged her ass straight out the front door.
Which left
me and Dali with
YOU GUYS.
“I’d like a meeting with this so-called singer.
TUH-DAY!”
Ma didn’t care about those tears,
my swollen-up eyes.
Neither did you, Papi.
“That’s not how Merc operates.
We need to trust him and his process.
He’s the professional after all!”
(NOT Y’ALL!)
I didn’t say that last bit though.
Tía Esme came in,
like soft rain
after a violent storm.
“¿Y cuánto saben de este hombre, Dalisay?”
“We know enough that he could change our lives.
We could make albums …
have enough money to get a house.
Not live like we do. Get our papers in order.
Bring abuela and Tío here with us.”
That last bit shifted Tía Esme’s whole spirit.
She hadn’t been home in eight years—
We had become her family.
It wasn�
��t that she didn’t want to go to Santo Domingo.
It was just the risk of never being allowed back was too great.
And the money?
Never enough to do enough.
1. Driving privileges temporarily suspended
(because punishments were still a thing even though I was turning eighteen soon)
2. A promise that me and Dali would never mess up like that again
3. A special meeting with Merc … ASAP!
Why?
Because
according to Ma …
Teenagers ain’t
got no
business doing
business with
a grown
ass MAN
!!! !!!
It didn’t matter
that I, myself,
was almost grown.
Almost.
got no better,
long after Dali
and Tía Esme left.
Behind the closed double doors
of your master suite,
television volume on full blast,
but not enough to mask
the crashing of objects,
name calling,
screaming voices
hungry with blame.
And behind my own,
there simply
weren’t enough
scalding showers,
maxi pads,
and Midol
in the world
to empty
that feeling that rose up
inside of me.
All over again.
there lived a girl
racked with pain,
drilled down to the bone
who suddenly felt
her body was no longer her own.
A hymn in the key of what-da-fuq-was-wrong-with-me
by Denver Lee Lafleur
On the bi-leveled roof
of the big, big house
on Winding Brook Road,
I sat beneath a black sky
full of gleaming stars.
A freshly rolled blunt
placed between my lips,
I made a promise
I’d never drink that much again.
I inhaled the earthy, smoky,
herbal essence,
let it glide
lowwww
slowwwwww
all up and through
whatever shards of me
the night before left behind.
You didn’t see me
on the roof that night, Papi.
Didn’t see me seeing you
barrel out the front door,