Page 18 of We Were Liars

IF I GOOGLE traumatic brain injury , most websites tell me selective amnesia is a consequence. When there’s damage to the brain, it’s not uncommon for a patient to forget stuff. She will be unable to piece together a coherent story of the trauma.

But I don’t want people to know I’m like this. Still like this, after all the appointments and scans and medicines.

I don’t want to be labeled with a disability. I don’t want more drugs. I don’t want doctors or concerned teachers. God knows, I’ve had enough doctors.

What I remember, from the summer of the accident:

Falling in love with Gat at the Red Gate kitchen door.

His beach rose for Raquel and my wine-soaked night, spinning in anger.

Acting normal. Making ice cream. Playing tennis.

The triple-decker s’mores and Gat’s anger when we told him to shut up.

Night swimming.

Kissing Gat in the attic.

Hearing the Cracker Jack story and helping Granddad down the stairs.

The tire swing, the basement, the perimeter. Gat and I in one another’s arms.

Gat seeing me bleed. Asking me questions. Dressing my wounds.

I don’t remember much else.

I can see Mirren’s hand, her chipped gold nail polish, holding a jug of gas for the motorboats.

Mummy, her face tight, asking, “The black pearls?”

Johnny’s feet, running down the stairs from Clairmont to the boathouse.

Granddad, holding on to a tree, his face lit by the glow of a bonfire.

And all four of us Liars, laughing so hard we felt dizzy and sick. But what was so funny?

What was it and where were we?

I do not know.

I used to ask Mummy when I didn’t remember the rest of summer fifteen.

My forgetfulness frightened me. I’d suggest stopping my meds, or trying new meds, or seeing a different physician.

I’d beg to know what I’d forgotten. Then one day in late fall—the fall I spent undergoing tests for death-sentence illnesses—Mummy began to cry.

“You ask me over and over. You never remember what I say.”

“I’m sorry.”

She poured herself a glass of wine as she talked. “You began asking me the day you woke in the hospital. ‘What happened? What happened?’ I told you the truth, Cadence, I always did, and you’d repeat it back to me. But the next day you’d ask again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“You still ask me almost every day.”

It is true, I have no memory of my accident. I don’t remember what happened before and after. I don’t remember my doctor’s visits. I knew they must have happened, because of course they happened—and here I am with a diagnosis and medications—but nearly all my medical treatment is a blank.

I looked at Mummy. At her infuriatingly concerned face, her leaking eyes, the tipsy slackness of her mouth. “You have to stop asking,” she said. “The doctors think it’s better if you remember on your own, anyway.”

I made her tell me one last time, and I wrote down her answers so I could look back at them when I wanted to. That’s why I can tell you about the night-swimming accident, the rocks, the hypothermia, respiratory difficulty, and the unconfirmed traumatic brain injury.

I never asked her anything again. There’s a lot I don’t understand, but this way she stays pretty sober.