The Book of Sara: Mark IV - The Naming

Abigail was not on the roll at Hazelwood West. A corner table made a name for her anyway. Five sat there because no other table would keep them. Deanna held the head. Jared and Tim made a religion of the joke. Lisa drew the room from the edge. Sara sat in a hoodie drawn tight, present as a weight.

Abigail asked to sit. She watched Sara. They called her Witchy Woman for the bare feet and the black dress. She had not come to be numbered. She had come to see which of them still owned their own fire.

At the lockers Deanna put the blade up. Abigail did not rise to it. Sara keeps a fire, she said. Buried. Hers. No house owns it. At the back exit she told Sara she did not have to carry a farmed hour as if it were her name. Sara fled. Deanna offered the parking-lot loyalty. Not small. Not enough. Under a streetlamp Abigail watched the corner take her, and gave the wind one word. Soon.

The house on the walk home had stopped. A dead woman’s name. A record on the shelf. A clock that would not move. Sara answered both names because refusing the wrong one made the walls smaller. Abigail did not fix the house. She came so Sara would not be the only one who knew what the song cost, and left a leather book on the table. Sara did not open it.

Lunch is the next room. The book is still closed.

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1.  Lunch under the dead white light. The table in its usual countries: Jared with the tray, Tim hunting a joke, Lisa in the corner already drawing the room, Deanna at the head with the blade across her knees.

2.  Abigail sat beside Sara, not across. The small change was a door. Jared raised an eyebrow and went back to the pizza. Tim started a line about the food and felt it die in his mouth. Lisa’s pencil paused, then went on. Deanna’s eyes did not leave the space between them.

3.  Abigail spoke into the clatter as if it were a chapel.

4.  “You did not deserve the song.”

5.  Sara’s fork stopped. Fear first, then the old lie. “What are you talking about?”

6.  “I see the night on you. You don't have to carry it as if it were a secret you invented.”

7.  Tears came up and she beat them back. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know what it’s like.”

8.  “I don't know his house from the inside. I know a body used as a grave. You are not the grave.”

9.  Sara shook her head. Hands shaking in her lap. “I’m not strong. I’m nothing.”

10.  Abigail’s hand found her arm. Light. A weight that did not take. “You are flesh that still belongs to itself. ‘The Nothing’ is his name for you. It is not yours.”

11.  Sara almost pulled away. She did not. That was the moment Deanna could not bear.

12.  Chair scrape. Blade up. “Alright. That’s enough. What is this? You barely even know her.”

13.  “I am not prying,” Abigail said. “I am naming.”

14.  Deanna laughed once, no humor in it. “Naming. You’re in her head. Stop messing with her.”

15.  Sara’s face went hot. Embarrassment and a fury that had nowhere to sit. “Deanna, stop.”

16.  She stood. Tray abandoned. The exit. Deanna hesitated one breath, table-leader, afraid of the empty chair, then followed.

17.  Lisa watched them go over the top of the pad. She did not follow. She drew the scrape of the chair and the fork still lying where Sara had left it. That was her place. The reader stays with her for that breath, then goes out into the cold.

18.  Autumn on the steps. Deanna caught Sara’s arm the way a country catches a border.

19.  “I’m just trying to help.”

20.  “Then stop.” Sara’s voice broke on it. “Stop protecting me from everything. You don’t understand.”

21.  “What don’t I understand? That she’s in your head? That she wants to be your savior?”

22.  “She is not my savior.” The force surprised her. “She is there. She sees what I can’t put in your mouth. I cannot put it in your mouth.”

23.  Deanna’s arms crossed. Hurt wearing the old authority. “Then talk to me. I’ve always been here. Why not me?”

24.  “Because it is not simple. Because Abigail gets it without me having to build it again in the air between us. Try to understand that. I am not asking you to love her.”

25.  Deanna let the breath out. The throne cracked and did not fall. “I don’t trust her. If she is actually helping you, I will try. For you.”

26.  “That’s all I’m asking.”

27.  “Alright. But I’m watching her.”

28.  They walked back in. The tension did not die. It changed key. Lisa’s pencil took the two of them coming through the doors as if they had gone to war and returned with a treaty written in pencil.

29.  That night Sara opened the leather book. The first page did not say she was a light in the dark. It said: the flesh they named empty is still an altar. No house owns it. No song owns it. Find the name that is yours and keep it.

30.  She slept with the book open. The record in the other room stayed on the shelf.

31.  Praise be to the sovereign flesh.

32.  Let the hunger go unfarmed.

End of Mark IV.