Breathe

CW: Suicide, transphobia, female genital mutilation

Delilah found her little sister’s body an hour after she’d hanged herself. Unable to accept what her eyes saw, Delilah somehow got Cheri to the floor and began CPR, talking to Cheri as though everything was fine.

“We’re going to be late. The studio opens in thirty minutes. Wake up, lazybones. I made you coffee.” The rising sun peeked through the apartment windows and gave Cheri’s mottled skin a golden glow. The morning birds sang.

“Hey Siri, call 9-1-1!” Delilah compressed Cheri’s chest five times. “C’mon baby girl. Don’t do this to me.” She puffed air into Cheri’s lungs with enough force that Cheri’s ribcage moved, as though Delilah were God herself and could blow life into a body.

She continued chest compressions, which forced the air out of Cheri’s lungs. “Breathe, baby girl! I will never forgive you if you don’t breathe.” But Cheri had already breathed her last, and there was nothing to be done about it.

The rest of Delilah’s morning passed in a blur of first responders and flashing lights. Delilah’s best friend, Matteo, substitute taught her morning yoga classes at the studio she owned. After the ambulance and police vehicles left, she walked to the studio in a daze and taught her afternoon and evening classes as though her life hadn’t been irrevocably destroyed in a single moment.

Then she walked back to the tiny two-bedroom apartment she and Cheri had decorated with fairy lights, scarves, and little statues of Buddha. She lit a candle and filled the living room with the scent of apple cinnamon. It was August, but Cheri loved fall the most. They had a trip planned to the Great Smoky Mountains in October to see the leaves.

Delilah sat on the sofa and thought about canceling their cabin reservation. She didn’t budge, though. She didn’t cry or do anything at all. She stared at her hands until Matteo knocked on her door and informed her he was staying the night.

After she let him in, Matteo disappeared into the galley kitchen. When he returned several minutes later, he handed her a cup of hibiscus tea. “I won’t make you eat, but you need to drink. This will lower your blood pressure, and you need the fluids.” Besides substitute teaching yoga, Matteo worked as a nurse at the hospital. He’d called in sick for his evening shift to be with Delilah.

“Thank you.” She sipped her tea, staring with unseeing eyes out the window. “There were red dots on Cheri’s cheeks. They looked like freckles.”

“Ruptured blood vessels. Try not to think about it.” Matteo scooted next to her and opened his arms. “Come here. Let me hold you.”

She leaned into him. “I wish it had been me.”

He squeezed her, enveloping her petite shoulders. He was a bear of a man, and she often felt like a child in his arms when he hugged her. “I’m glad you’re still here, Delulu. I couldn’t live without you.”

“And I can’t live without Cheri,” she whispered. The tears still didn’t come, but she struggled to breathe normally. It felt like a fist wrapped around her throat while a boulder crushed her chest. She gasped, sucking in air faster and faster, her lungs burning.

Matteo rubbed her back. “I know it hurts, but I need you to breathe. Slow down, please, and breathe with me.” He coached her through several inhales and exhales.

The pressure on her chest eased a little. She gripped her teacup with both hands, head bowed. “I think I need to talk about it.”

Matteo’s hand slid around her back in lazy, comforting circles. “Let it out, sweetheart.”

She sipped her lukewarm tea, but it did nothing to loosen the lump in her throat. Her stomach growled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

“Cheri loved cornflakes,” Delilah murmured. She turned and stared at the bar-height counter marking the edge of the small kitchen. She could see Cheri’s pale limbs draped over the stool as she ate her bowls of cereal.

“What are we going to do today?” Cheri asked while chewing. During the Covid lockdowns, they’d done little more than devour Netflix for weeks.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Delilah glanced up from her laptop, where she’d been reading the morning news. “Governor DeSantis is reopening gyms starting Monday. I’m not sure how we can comply with social distancing, but I can’t stay closed. The PPP loan is only a few thousand dollars, if I ever get it. I know it’s risky to start holding in-person classes again, but I’m also relieved because I’m worried about paying rent next month.”

Cheri grunted. “I’d rather stay locked down and watch more Tiger King. Way better than school.”

“You’re the kid, so you don’t get to decide.” Delilah poked her baby sister in the side, making her squirm. “Anyway, I don’t want to live off of Great Value cornflakes for every meal.”

Cheri shoveled a heaping spoonful into her mouth and grinned. “I like them.”

“That’s because you add a ton of sugar. Must be nice having a teenager’s metabolism.”

“Don’t hate because I’m young and beautiful.” Cheri batted her eyelashes, then shut the lid on Delilah’s laptop. “You’ve got a few years left before you’re an old hag, but if you keep frowning like that, you’re gonna get wrinkles.”

“I’m only thirty!” Delilah gasped in faux shock, pressing her hand to her heart. “Anyway, I can’t help but worry. It’s not like owning a yoga studio is making me rich, but we rely on it to pay the bills.”

Cheri rolled her eyes. “Work can wait. It’s Saturday! Let’s listen to Tori Amos and dance around the living room in our pajamas.”

“You always want to listen to Tori Amos.”

“Because she’s my goddess! The way she plays the piano …” Cheri swiped on her phone until the opening notes of “Cornflake Girl” played. “I’m a cornflake girl,” she said, laughing as she ate more cereal.

“No. You’re not.” Delilah tapped her sister’s nose. “A cornflake girl is a woman who betrays other women.”

“Like a pick-me?” Cheri scrunched her face as she listened to the lyrics. “I actually have no idea what this song is about.”

“It’s about female genital mutilation.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s when girls have their clitoris surgically removed to prevent sexual gratification. Sometimes parts of their vaginas are stitched closed, too. It’s also called female circumcision.”

Cheri’s hazel eyes widened. “That’s a thing?”

“Yup. It happens to millions of girls every year. The song is about how other women, like mothers and sisters, stand by or even participate, and how that’s a betrayal.”

“I’ve literally never heard that before. Why do I hear constantly about what I choose to do with my genitals, and nothing about what happens to millions of girls’ genitals without their consent? That’s insane!”

Delilah smiled sadly. “It tells you a lot about the unspoken relative value of a penis versus a vagina, doesn’t it?”

Matteo nudged Delilah and she realized she’d been staring at the counter with her mouth gaping for several long seconds.

“Come back to me, Delulu. Drink your tea.”

She blinked away the memory and stared at the magenta liquid. “I didn’t know Cheri was in so much pain. She was only twenty. She had her whole life ahead of her. Why didn’t she come to me? I was supposed to keep her safe, and I failed.”

Delilah had raised Cheri since she was fourteen, when she came out as transgender. Their parents struggled to accept it, and Cheri kept running away. During the lockdown, everyone decided it best if Cheri moved into Delilah’s rundown Orlando apartment.

Delilah had thought she’d been doing okay as a surrogate mother. Apparently not.

“You can’t blame yourself. Cheri wouldn’t want that.” Matteo nudged her cup again. “Drink.”

Delilah glanced at the man whom she considered her soul-brother. She felt like she might die, and Matteo was life support in human form. He kept his expression calm as he soothed her, but the little crease between his perfectly shaped eyebrows betrayed his grief. He’d spent a lot of time with Cheri, introducing her to other queer people and helping her process her identity. He loved Cheri, too.

Matteo hid his pain to focus on supporting Delilah through hers, which made her feel guilty.

“Mom blamed me when I called her this morning. She told me this happened because I wouldn’t treat Cheri’s mental illness.” Her teacup wobbled in her trembling fingers. She set it on the coffee table before she dropped it.

“Mom of course deadnamed her and insisted we use her birth name in the obituary. We argued, and”—Delilah heaved a bone-weary sigh—“I just can’t deal with my family. They should have a say in the funeral, of course. But Cheri’s spirit deserves a respectful send-off, and that means honoring her as she truly was, not how they wanted her to be.”

Matteo shook his head. “Unless you plan to exclude them, you’re going to have to tolerate their behavior. It’s not fair, and it’s not right, but I’m sure Cheri’s spirit will understand.”

Delilah chewed her lip. She hated this. She hated everything about it. “I have so much to do. It’s overwhelming, and they aren’t helpful. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for her funeral, and I can’t ask them to pay or it’ll be all wrong for Cheri.”

Matteo hummed a sympathetic noise.

“I can sell her car, I guess. I also have to figure out her bank accounts, and notify the community college, and box up all her stuff. I have to pick out an outfit for her burial, and you know how much she hates my fashion sense.” A wave of panic washed over her.

Matteo rubbed circles on her back again, calming her. “You know I’ll help you with that—the outfit, and the rest, too.”

She smiled weakly. “Thank God I have a gay best friend.”

“I got you.”

“My family will want to dress her in a suit. Maybe we skip the wake.” She leaned forward and retrieved her laptop from the coffee table, opening the lid. “Cheri once told me she wanted to be buried at the root of a tree so her body could give back to the earth. I don’t know how to do that and the police were no help. They told me to pick a funeral home and ask the funeral director.” She typed “how to get buried under a tree” into her search bar.

“Delilah, stop.” Matteo pulled her tight against his side again. “Don’t worry about planning the funeral right now. We can figure that out tomorrow. All you need to do tonight is close the studio, cancel classes for a few days, and drink some fluids so I don’t have to give you an IV.”

With a curt nod, Delilah opened the program to email her customers and freeze reservations on her website. As she waited for the software to load, a news notification slid into view from the upper right-hand corner.

BREAKING: At Orlando Rally, Conner Demands Return to Traditional American Values

“Ugh, that woman.” Matteo wrinkled his nose and curled his lip. “No amount of Botox, or makeup, or bleach can hide her ugliness. After the rally yesterday, we had a huge spike in violent assaults in the ER—gay and trans bashing. It’s getting scary out there.”

Morbid curiosity getting the better of her, Delilah clicked on the banner. The news article opened in her browser. At the top of the page was an embedded video of Christiana Conner speaking to a crowd from a stage in a football field, her voluminous blonde extensions cascading over her shoulders.

Delilah pressed play.

“The leftwing gender-bending agenda being pushed on our boys is child abuse,” Conner told a cheering crowd. “We must put a stop to so-called ‘gender-affirming’ doctors who are castrating our boys! It’s sick!” Christiana squinted her disgust, her icy pupils stark within the frame of thick false lashes.

“And we must protect our girls!” she bellowed. “No more boys in the girls’ bathrooms! No more boys in girls’ sports!”

Shouts of praise rose from the crowd. “Yes!” And, “Amen!”

“These people are deranged,” Matteo muttered.

The video transitioned to a journalist standing on a street lined with police vehicles and nightclubs. “Hours after Conner’s rally, violent protests broke out on Church Street and Orange Avenue, long famous as the center for Orlando’s nightlife. Dozens of people were arrested or injured.”

Shaky phone video played, showing people fighting, punching, and screaming as the police arrived.

“A man punched me in the face,” said a woman around Cheri’s age to the journalist, her swollen nose alternating red and blue from the police car nearby. “He called me a man. He thought I was trans because I support trans rights”—she pointed to her blood-spattered pink and blue T-shirt—“but I’m actually not. These people are too stupid to be in charge of deciding who is a man or a woman.”

The camera returned to the journalist. “When reached for comment, Conner had this to say …”

A reporter stuck a microphone in Christiana’s face as she walked into a swanky hotel. “I had nothing to do with the actions of individuals in Orlando last night.” She stopped and turned to face the camera, bright lights haloing her cloud of hair. “But I think it goes to show you that Americans will no longer be intimidated into silence. This is the foreseeable consequence of the left’s decades-long bullying—”

Matteo reached onto Delilah’s lap and pressed her trackpad, closing the browser. “You don’t need to watch this. Email your students and I’ll run you a bath.”

Nodding, her lip trembling, Delilah clicked on her email program.

“Do you want bubbles? Essential oils? I brought this new blend for stress relief …”

Delilah barely heard Matteo because the tears finally came. They squeezed out of her eyes like water through a cracked dam. The fissure widened until the wall burst under the pressure; Delilah sobbed so explosively she doubled over. And then she screamed.

“Delilah!” Matteo’s voice sounded far away. “Delilah! You need to breathe!”

Her vision blackened in the corners, narrowing into a tunnel, and she couldn’t see. She hyperventilated.

“Delilah!”

She gasped, sucking air into her constricted lungs. “Cheri … Cheri emailed me!” Delilah wailed, collapsing face-first onto Matteo’s lap, her computer crashing to the floor.

The email had read simply, “How can I be a woman in a world full of cornflake girls?”