Phantom Limb

by Lucinda Berry

It had been over a year, and I still hadn’t told her about Thomas.

Living with Mother was harder on her than it was on me.

nothing could separate us.

Telling Emily about Thomas would be the first step of separation between us.

Things would never be the same between Emily and me.

We were a team and couldn’t have endured our childhood without each other.

How did they survive? The truth was simple—we had each other.

I didn’t know how we’d done it, but we had. We were still doing it, and I didn’t know how to bring someone else into our world.

I couldn’t live this way anymore. I needed help.

It took a year before we were able to sleep through the night without accidents.

We were physical and affectionate with each other, but recoiled from anyone else’s touch.

I loved when Emily stroked my back, but Dalila’s rubbing made my skin itch like bugs were underneath it.

Emily and I had some wounds no amount of love would erase.

It might have helped them work with us if we’d told them what Mother’s special friends made us do to them, but we never told. Never.

We spoke to no one about it, not even each other.

She had a way of looking right into you as if she could see into your insides.

“It’s okay to love someone other than Emily. You know that, don’t you? It’s okay to let go.”

Emily and I were like two bodies who shared one soul, and I didn’t know how you were supposed to give up your soul.

I’d just have to prove to Emily that I’d still take care of her even with Thomas in my life.

Lisa knew Emily as well as anyone besides me.

They didn’t like to talk about Emily anymore and had quit asking me about her.

I’d never known why she didn’t get rid of us or give us up when we were born.

None of her decisions made sense, and I couldn’t expect her decision to keep us to be any different.

If he was going to meet her, he had to be prepared for what he was getting himself into.

You just never know which Emily you’re going to get.”

I never talked about Emily with anyone, and I’d just told someone her secret. In our twenty years, I’d never betrayed her.

I’d always been cynical about falling in love, because I was afraid I wasn’t capable of it, and it was exhilarating to discover I was.

It gave me the courage to tell Emily about our relationship and I didn’t even need Lisa’s help to do it.

Her emptiness scared me. I could handle her emotional intensity, but her nothingness was frightening.

She looked like little Emmie. Lately it felt like each day she aged backward.

She hated taking the bus alone. Always had. Even when she was acting normal.

“She said you were crazy and that I just didn’t know it yet. She told me you were really great at pretending to be fine and I had to be a fool if I believed you were normal.

she kept saying she felt like it was her duty to warn me about you because she knew you’d hurt me.

I’ve had the exact same life. We’ve been the same damn person.

She was dead, and I had killed her.

I’m in a hospital, and Emily is dead.

All I wanted was Emily, and she was gone.

I wanted to die with her.

Without Emily, the cord that connected me to the world was severed. I couldn’t live without her.

“You were not responsible for Emily’s death, Elizabeth,” Dalila said.

Emily and I were each other’s life support.

My purpose in life was to take care of her and keep her safe. It always had been.

she gave me a purpose for living. She defined me, gave me the role I had to play.

I didn’t know how to exist without her.

She’d taken her life, and with it, she’d taken away my reason for living.

I wasn’t going to trust him. Not in seventy-two hours or any other number of hours for that matter,

Why did they keep saying my name every time they talked to me? What was the reason for it?

I had a hard time with people who’d had easy lives trying to pretend they could help people who hadn’t.

I wanted to be buried next to her, and if I killed myself as soon as I got released, then they’d be able to do a funeral for us both at the same time. It was the only thing that mattered to me right now.

Waking up wasn’t an option. I’d woken up last time. I wasn’t doing it again.