chapter
3
September 2010
My wounds could not be healed. The therapist had not been able to do it. My best friend, Yvonne, had not been able to do it. Nor could my beloved Clark.
Nothing could bring me out of the black hole of grief.
I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d uttered a word. Death had a way of silencing people. And I had been comfortable settling into the pit of despair. The only voice I’d been able to find was the one praying for God to take me in my sleep. If I wasn’t such a coward, I would’ve downed a bottle of pills and given God some assistance.
“Look, you have to move past this.”
Yvonne’s voice shook me out of my self-induced trance. My best friend since middle school had been by my side almost as much as Clark. Only unlike his, Yvonne’s tone had changed from concern to exasperation.
“It has been six months, Savannah,” Yvonne said, reaching up to tie her long, curly hair into a ponytail, like she needed to get comfortable to knock some sense into me. “I know this is hard, but you’ve got to come back. You’ve got to shake off this grief.”
How do you shake off grief? I screamed inside. How do you get rid of the never-ending sound of your mother’s cry that haunts you? A cry that she emitted as she lay dying in your arms from an accident that you caused?
Who gets over that?
A text. A stupid text about a story I was trying to scoop the competition on. A text that just couldn’t wait and had killed my mother, my unborn child, and my future children . . . and left me to deal with the aftermath.
No, I had no interest in coming back from that. I was going to stay in my fallen state forever.
Yvonne scooted next to me on the sofa—my permanent place of residence since I’d come home after six weeks in the hospital and rehab to heal a broken leg.
I’d merely broken my leg.
The deaths of my mother and baby had broken my heart. And yet I got to come home.
The guilt had driven me into an abyss of darkness. There was no light in my life. I was cloaked in grief, and it permeated everything I did. Or didn’t do. The weight of knowing I’d killed my mother, my child, and my womb had left me unable to function, and the sofa had become my refuge. I spent my days and nights in alternate states of depression, tears, and sadness. Now, as Yvonne wiped tears that constantly appeared without warning, I wondered if I’d ever see light again.
“Sweetie, I want to help you,” she said, her expression a mixture of worry and irritation. “We all want to help. But you have to open up and let us in.”
I pulled the afghan more tightly around me. I’d vowed that all I’d do for the rest of my life was exactly what I’d been doing for the past four months—sit on this sofa and wait to die.
“Clark lost his child. He can’t lose you, too.” Yvonne then said what she always said. “He’s a good guy, one of the best. But there’s only so much any man can take when his wife shuts him out. You have to come back—for Clark. Before he leaves,” she added.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
The sight of Clark standing in the entryway, the sunlight capturing his profile, showering him with the aura of a Wakandan king, made my heart flutter. I loved my husband so much, but love wasn’t enough to save me.
Clark walked over to the sofa, sat on the other side of me, and took my hand.
“No matter how long it takes, I’m going to love my wife and help her past this pain.” He lifted my chin and gazed into my eyes as he continued. “I’m going to do whatever it takes. We will deal with this grief together. The Lord heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
I snuggled into his embrace. Though I wasn’t responding, I heard his prayer. It was how he ended every night as he tucked me into my spot on the sofa. Clark was the religious one in our marriage. He’d been raised in one of those Sunday-through-Sunday churchgoing Baptist homes. The foundation his mother and grandmother had laid ran deep. I was more spiritual than religious. But ever since I’d overheard his mother complaining that we were unequally yoked, back when we first started dating, I’d tried to channel my husband’s faith.
It had worked, too. I had happily opened the door to religion. But now—after this—I’d slammed that bad boy shut.
“I’m gonna go,” Yvonne said. “I gotta go check on my parents. You know my mom hasn’t been feeling well. And my hypochondriac sister has diagnosed her based off something she read on the Internet.” She leaned over and kissed me on top of my head, then squeezed Clark’s hand. “Thank you so much. I’m so glad she has you.”
I nestled closer to my husband, my back resting against his chest. As I watched Yvonne leave, Clark’s hands instinctively went to my stomach and I tensed. I hated for him to touch the home of the child we would never know.
As if reading my thoughts, he whispered, “You know it’s not your fault. I don’t blame you.”
How could he not? The crushed metal from my car had pierced my amniotic sac—and my womb—ensuring that he would never have the children he so desperately wanted.
“We are going to get through this together,” he said, holding me tighter. “I’m here for you till death do us part.”
I didn’t realize I was crying as I sat on the edge of the hotel bed. At the time, I’d felt that Clark deserved so much more than what I had been giving him. He had suffered through my grief and loved me out of it. It had taken another six weeks, but his love had given me a will to live.
I slapped my face as I wiped the tears brought on by that memory. I was supposed to be angry, vengeful. Why was I thinking about the good part of my marriage? All of that had been ruined because Clark slept with another woman. So much for his religion.
I snarled at the book, before slamming it shut.
This Bible was bringing back things I didn’t want to remember. All I wanted to think about was how the two people I cared about most had broken my heart.
The Lord heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
“Ugh,” I groaned, tossing the Bible on the bed as I stood. An eerie feeling swept over me as the book fell open again . . . and back to Psalm 147:3.
I looked around the room as if some supernatural force was at play. My eyes drifted back to the book—and the tattered pages. The pages fluttered, despite the fact that there was no breeze.
“No,” I said, picking the book up and slamming it shut again, before setting it on the desk. My mind was playing tricks on me. The gin and Cokes had taken their toll.
This book had stopped me from sleeping with a stranger, but that’s it. Nothing more. If God was in this equation, He would’ve stopped Clark like He’d stopped me.