Her Name in the Sky

by Kelly Quindlen

And Hannah, standing in the kitchen with Wally, looks over to Baker and feels drawn to her by a force so powerful, so lovely, that she can almost see it shimmering in the air between them.

“You’re the best thing that’s ever been.”

It’s so potent that it almost hurts, the way it feels to eat a morsel of food after a long period of starvation.

And it’s magic, it’s sacred ritual, it’s God.

Then she leaves the bathroom, and Hannah’s left sitting on the tub with her heart in her throat.

But Hannah—we have to take ownership for our words. Words are powerful. They can be devastating.

and by the end of the day Hannah couldn’t remember what life had been like before her.

and then they start kissing. And it’s exactly as she remembered: a series of motions, a mouth pushing against a mouth, a tongue sliding against a tongue, and that desperate voice, somewhere in the depths of her heart, wailing in panic.

By the time she reaches the top of the stairs, her throat is thick with unexpected tears.

Still, she pushes it down inside of her, buries it as far as it can go, suffocates it in the space between her stomach and her heart. She tells herself that she is stronger, that she can fight it, that she has control. That no one has to know.

Hannah looks at the sun until it blinds her. Then she looks back to Clay, but she can no longer see him through the imprint of the sun on her eyes.

Please. Please can you make it stop hurting it hurts so badly. I don’t want it. It hurts and I don’t want it. I’m trying to make it go away. Please, just make it go away, just make it go away.

She feels it in her stomach, in her heart, and in that mysterious cavity at the base of her torso, propelling her to keep going, to kiss this girl until some unnamed need is filled.

Please make it go away. Please just let me be normal. Please just let me find this funny, like they do.

She thinks of Baker’s lungs, working somewhere inside of her to keep her breathing—to keep her here with Hannah—and of her heart, pumping blood throughout her body and, most mysterious, keeping her deepest secrets nestled within her.

Baker looks at her with desperate eyes, lit only by the brightness of the moon. “Do you think we’re wrong?”

They kiss each other beautifully but brokenly, each kiss imparting wishes and prayers and shame, their tears mixing on each other’s mouths, and in a startling moment of clarity Hannah feels God there with her, pounding in her heart, flowing through her body and blood, but whether in jubilation or admonition, she doesn’t know.

And then Hannah has learned the oldest secret on earth, has connected herself to the long human story, has taken her place in the pattern of human unions.

Something in the room, some invisible line between them, has broken. Hannah can almost see it: a vine that had once connected them, had once wrapped them together, now lies, butchered, on the floor.

She lies there, bleeding into the sky, until the sky starts to bleed red with morning.