I know the answer. I've always known it, known it in my bones. But saying it out loud feels like ripping open a wound that never healed, that's been festering forever.
"Guilt," I say finally, the word heavy on my tongue. "I was trying to numb the guilt. To drown it. To make it stop screaming at me every night."
"For what?"
"For what happened. For getting us separated. For failing to protect you. For—" My voice cracks and I have to stop, swallow hard against the tightness in my throat. "For everything. For all of it."
"Jay, that wasn't your fault," Ivan says immediately.
"Yes, it was." The words come out too loud in the small room, bouncing off the walls. "It was my fault, Ivan. All of it. I'm the one who stole those cans of beans from the pantry. Not you. Me. I took them in case we needed them later and I was so stupid, so careless—I didn't even hide the evidence. And Henderson knew. He knew I did it, but he made you takeoff your shirt anyway because he knew it would hurt me more to watch than to get hit myself. He made you take the punishment for something I did."
"I remember."
"And I couldn't—" I'm on my feet now, unable to sit still, pacing the small space between the bed and the door. "I couldn't just stand there and watch him hurt you for something that was my fault. Or for something that was your fault. I couldn't let you take eight lashes, ten lashes, however many he was going to give you. I couldn't watch the belt come down on your back over and over while you tried so hard not to cry. I just couldn't do it anymore. So, I grabbed him. I shoved him away from you. And he broke my arm against the kitchen counter and everything went to hell and we got separated and it was all because of me. Because I couldn't keep my fucking head down. Because I couldn't just let it happen."
"You wanted to stand there and watch him beat me?"
"No. God, no. But if I had—if I'd just stayed still, maybe if I'd let him finish—we wouldn't have gotten separated. You'd still have been hurt, but at least we'd have been together. It would've been bad but you would've healed, right?"
"No, then I would've been hurt worse," Ivan says, standing up now too. "Henderson wasn't going to stop. You've seen what he was like when he was that drunk, when he was that angry. He wasn't going to give me eight lashes and call it done. He was going to keep going until he got tired, until his arm got sore, until he felt like he'd made his point. He broke your arm! What do you think would've happened to me if you hadn't stepped in?"
He walks toward me, closing the distance between us, and puts a hand on my arm, stopping my frantic pacing. "Jay, look at me."
I don't want to. I don't want to see the disappointment in his eyes, the blame I've been carrying for years finally confirmed as justified. But I look anyway, because I can't refuse him anything.
There's no blame in his eyes. Just sadness.
"You didn't cause what happened," he says. "Henderson caused what happened. He was the adult. He was supposed to protect us, to take careof us, and instead he hurt us. He was the one who decided to punish a kid for three cans of beans. Three cans of food that cost maybe two dollars total. He was the one who used his belt on us, who broke your arm, who made our lives hell. That was him. Not you. Never you."
"But if I hadn't stolen the beans—" I try to argue, try to hold onto the guilt that's become so familiar.
"Then he would have found some other reason," Ivan interrupts. "It was never about the beans that day. Don't you get it? People like Henderson don't need a real reason. They just need an excuse. If it hadn't been the beans, it would have been something else. A dish left in the sink. A light left on. Looking at him wrong. Existing. That's how people like him operate. He wanted to hurt us because he was evil. And that's it."
"But if I hadn't intervened—"
"You saved me, Jay. You stepped in when no one else ever had in my entire life. When no one else ever would. That's not something to feel guilty about. That's something to be proud of."
"They separated us," I whisper. "Because of what I did, we got separated."
"We got separated because the system is broken," Ivan says. "Because they saw your broken arm and instead of putting Henderson in jail where he belonged, they shuffled us around like furniture. Moved us to different placements without asking what we wanted, without caring that we needed each other. That's not on you. That's on every single adult who was supposed to protect us and didn't. That's on the social workers and the judges and the system that treats kids like we're disposable."
I'm shaking now. I don't know when I started, but I am. My whole body is trembling like I'm standing in a freezing wind. I've carried this guilt, let it eat at me like acid, let it convince me that everything that went wrong was my fault. That I was the problem. That I ruined everything.
And Ivan is standing here telling me it wasn't. That I didn't fail. That I'm not the monster I've believed I am.
"I spent so long blaming myself," I whisper. "Every day. Every night. I'd lie awake in shelters, in my car, in this room, thinking about what I could have done differently. If I hadn't stolen the food. If I hadn't fought back.If I'd been smarter. If I'd found a way to be perfect enough that Henderson didn't hurt us. If I'd been good enough to keep you."
"Stop." Ivan's hands come up to cup my face, his palms warm against my cheeks, forcing me to look at him. "Stop it right now. You were a kid, trying to protect another kid in a situation no child should ever be in. You did the best you could with what you had. And what you had was nothing. No support, no help, no adults who gave a damn about whether we lived or died."
"Ivan—"
"I'm not done," he says. "You want to know what I thought about all those years? You want to know what kept me going when things got bad? I thought about you. I thought about how you stood up for me when no one else in my entire life ever did. I thought about how you put yourself between me and Henderson even though you knew what would happen, even though you knew it would cost you. I thought about how you broke your arm protecting me, and instead of blaming me for it, instead of saying it was my fault, the last thing you said to me was 'remember my name.' You gave me something to hold onto. You gave me hope. You gave me a reason to keep going when I wanted to give up."
"I was supposed to find you. I promised. I said I would find you, and I couldn't."
"I know," Ivan says. "We were both searching for each other, and the system kept us apart. That's not your failure. That's not my failure. That's just what happened. And it was awful. And we lost time. But we're here now. We found each other. And I need you to stop carrying this guilt like it's something you deserve, like it's a burden you have to bear alone. We've got to get past what happened to us. We have to!"
"I don't know how," I whisper. "I don't know how to let it go. It's been part of me for so long."
