When Dora spoke, Steve had to strain his ears to hear. He sank down next to her.
"I didn't know," she whispered.
She started twisting the corner of the sheet again.
Where to begin? Dora was looking at him like she was a desperate passenger on a sinking ship and he was the last lifeboat left. Steve placed his hand over hers, carefully. Dora didn't pull away. Instead, she took a gulp of air, making a loud hiccup sound.
"What happened to us?" She asked.
Steve sighed and shut his eyes for a moment before he said, "We grew up. We got married. We had children. We built a life together."
She did not respond for the longest time and a static silence filled his ears. "I didn't know." Dora's voice was hushed, reverent and young. "Barbara told me you were their dad." She glanced at him again, her lips making a squiggly shape, something unfathomable in her eyes as she stared at him in quiet astonishment.
Her admission to such walloping ignorance was like a punch to the gut—their dad. Like the children had nothing to do with her, some kids who were part of a family Dora could no longer recollect.
"And if you had known I was their father?"
Her eyes slid in his direction. He could see confusion but also something else, a faint pulse of a deeper emotion that was still alive under all the fear and uncertainty. She rested her temple against her kneecap. "I would have asked for you when I was at the clinic," she said. "It's just," she looked up at him again, this time her eyes roving over his features, the uncertainty growing. "It's just so weird that you're old and I'm old, and we have these kids, and I'm with… with a gay woman."
"Typically, it takes both people of a same-sex couple to be gay," Steve said, a smile twitching at his lips.
Dora gazed at him. "I'm not gay," she said flatly. "Dora's gay. But I'm not."
"What?"
She sniffed and looked away.
"You talk about yourself as if you're two different people." He tried to find a smile, some humor in the remark.
"I am. That's what the therapist told me at the clinic. That I have something called dissociative identity disorder."
"So not amnesia?"
She met his gaze again. "I have that, too. But," Dora pulled her hand away and flexed her fingers. "I don't know her."
"Who?"
"Dora."
Steve straightened his posture, Barbara's words swirled around in his mind. Mom has gone away. Inside she's sixteen. The thought that came next was so jolting that Steve felt stupefied at the epiphany. It is not Dora who is sixteen again because Dora did not exist when he and Serene were teenagers. And if Serene is not Dora, then who is Dora exactly? And where has Serene been hiding?
26
Serene - March 1990
Ahe was big for his age. His name meant soft breeze, but he was more like a hurricane. At ten, he looked twelve, maybe even thirteen. He was one of the cousins come to stay at Kanani's for an indefinite duration of time. His mother, according to Kanani, was a crackhead. The first time Ahe gave Cedar a hard time, Kanani, her brothers and Serene set him straight, let him know that he was Serene's little brother, so hands off. Cedar suffered from asthma and was bony, his shoulder blades winging out from his narrow back. His skin was too white––it burned in the sun rather than browned, his small upturned nose scarred and perpetually peeling from constant sunburns. Ramani and Aarav didn't believe in using “toxic” sunscreen, so Serene had found an old Oakland A’s baseball cap at the thrift store one day and bought it for Cedar as a form of protection from the elements. It sat like a bowl on his head, too big, but he loved the cap and wore it all the time.
Serene found Ahe assaulting her brother near a patch of blackberry bramble by the gulch that led to an open field. Kids often played by the gulch, and it was also where small-time drug deals sometimes went down. She noticed the hat lying on the ground before she caught sight of the boys. Cedar, forced to his knees, pinned by Ahe's hand on his neck. Cedar's friend, Jake pulling at Ahe's arm. The smaller boy was no match for Ahe's thick stout frame. He stood over Cedar, forcing his face inch by inch toward the ground. No one was around to stop the bully. Kanani's brothers weren't home. Jake's mom, oblivious to the fact that the boys were no longer under her roof, was busy watering her vegetable beds at the back of her large backyard.
"Ey, Ahe!" Serene yelled, catching his attention. He grinned and gave Cedar's butt a swift hard kick, sending him pitching forward, skimming the dirt with his face.
She found a stone without really looking, it seemed, and sent it flying fast and hard at Ahe's face, catching him in the mouth. Before he could think to do anything about the rock suddenly whizzing at his head like a bullet, it split both top and bottom lips open. It took out one of his front teeth, sending a spurt of blood shooting out and down his chin and neck. His eyes widened as he brought his hands to his face, a look of momentary confusion at the blood and then fear as he saw Serene bearing down on him. He only managed to clear a yard in his flimsy slippers, no match for the speed she had with bare feet. Serene flew at him and
