At Night I Believe in God

Art by Parisa Karami

i.

It’s two a.m. and a storm gathers a few miles off the interstate. There’s no thunder, not yet, but herons abandon the sky and road signs quiver at the whim of the wind.

It’s a long way, Florida to Virginia. We’re somewhere in the Carolinas, now, and my rescue lab in the backseat whines, just once. He’s polite in that way. He doesn’t fear the storm, doesn’t even seem to notice it.

I take the next exit.

At the rest stop, there is one orange light in the middle of all things, North Star nestled in the rafters between the restrooms. It haloes humming snack machines that sleep standing up. My dog sniffs the grass, dips his hips, surveys what surrounds him—picnic benches, empty lot, car ticking with heat—then settles on me.

Good boy, I say. I stretch my legs until my knees pop.

The storm silvers with lightning. You get used to storms when you grow up in Florida. Morning ones, finger-taps on your window, ponds alive with silent diamonds. Warm, autumnal ones that taste like pennies. Angry ones that split the trees.

In the car, I tilt my seat back as far as it can go. Knees knocked together, hands under my cheek like a prayer. Leaves skitter across the lot like a family of vermin. The storm is minutes away now, a pall of smokey-rain, a steady hum-drum heartbeat on pavement. My dog circles in the backseat, trying to find comfort. He turns and turns and turns.

ii.

When the rest of the house sleeps, dad and I solve puzzles. He picks out the edge pieces; I sort them by color. We could do this all night without saying a word. We only ever solve nature puzzles—a sun-washed sea turtle, a family of apes. We cover the dining table in our mosaic, our very own Earth, where ants are the size of polar bears and sharks swim next to birds in sunset sky.

Tonight I say I’m too tired. I lay in bed and listen to his socks shuffle against the tile. He sifts the litter in the laundry room; he fills the coffee grinds for morning; at the computer, he clicks, clicks, clicks on Solitaire, and I imagine his face washed in almost-lunar screen light.

Around three, a gentle knock drums through my bedroom.

Come see this, he whispers.

Outside, the air is thick and warm with summer, the retention pond chirping with frog-song. We stand behind the pool and face the house. Above my parents’ bedroom window where inside, mom’s sleeping body has not yet registered our absence, a shadow of barred feathers settles on the roof. It’s too dark out to tell what kind—Great Horned, Barn, Eastern Screech—any of which larger than I’d imagined. Back inside, dad will search his Audubon book until he finds the species, even if it takes until morning. The owl tips forward, readies for flight. We hold our breath. It peers over the pond, eyes eclipsed, and erupts in a curtain of plumage, our roof just a pitstop on its way between worlds. It follows the sound of skittering mice feet or a thrumming, knuckle-sized heart.

iii.

It’s just past midnight when my friend says she often thinks about dying. The coast is ours and the moon forces through overcast sky. We’ve been here all day, skin salty, hair in wind-knots. We lay in the sand with hands folded neat below our ribs.

Don’t say that, friend number two says.

Friend one lifts her thumbs, says nothing.

There isn’t much life here. Flashlights bob so far down the coast they could be lightning bugs. An albatross sleeps on a wooden post in the water, beak tucked carefully under its wing.

Friend one sits up, sand clinging to her body like a second skin. She stares at a lightless cargo ship breaking the horizon.

It’s friend number two’s idea to go swimming.

Warm ocean churns against our bodies. It ebbs us one way, then nudges another, like a bunch of formless, purring cats. There’s a storm out there, still days away. You can tell by the way it charges the water, stirs it all up. We’re neck-deep in moonlit froth. We laugh primitive laughs that you’d never let slip around a boy, skinned-open ones that only the subtle fear of sharks or lightning strikes or riptides could conjure.

It's not all the time, friend one says. I barely hear her over the waves.

Friend two points at the beach. A nebulous, burning glow moves in our direction. The flashlights become fire-twirlers. A handful of bodies take shape, alight by burning staffs and hoops. They swathe everything in orange—the sand, the sky, the surface of the water. We splash and wave and holler at the ones who turn around each other, tracing fiery designs into the night.

iv.

I love a boy with insomnia. I wouldn’t know this about him, not at first. Not until we would live together and I’d wake at five a.m. to pages flipping next to my head. He reads the Bible when I sleep.

We’re still strangers the first night we spend together. Friends of friends who have staggered to sleep in other rooms. I didn’t want to walk home in the rain; he didn’t want to go home at all. The room is so dark we can’t see each other. The couch creaks under our weight as we fit against each other’s bodies. I worry about my sharp edges, the weight of my breath, the smell of my hair.

We whisper about waterfalls, moms, music even though I don’t like talking about music. We both believe in ghosts; we both believe we’ve seen them. At some point the rain stops and streetlight puddles through the window and gives us our dimensions back.

I wouldn’t know that in two months we’d move in together, or that in six we’d get married in the chapel down the road, or that in fourteen we’d move to the other coast, the one where there are no fire-twirlers or old friends, but where storms still taste the same.

Around six a.m. the first beads of dew gather on parked cars, grass spines, and eaves. It’s still dark out, but a hazy band of pink hovers over the trees outside the window. I wouldn’t know that this wouldn’t be our last night together. He asks me, just as a wisp of sunlight pricks through the trees, if I believe in God.

I pretend not to hear.

He waits for me to answer.

I don’t think so, I say.

But when our friends stir in the bedrooms and morning light climbs the walls, I pray silently to whatever will listen: Slow down, slow down, slow down.

about the author

Brooke Parry Castro is a writer and student at the University of South Florida where she spends most of her time swatting away mosquitos. Her short stories have appeared in White Wall Review, 101 Words, and others. You can find her at www.brookeparry.com.

about the artist

Parisa Karami is an artist living in Brooklyn with her family. She has various ongoing projects such as Reyna De La Tierra and Cinema Scenes. Recent works can be seen on media outlets such as McSweeney’s. For more information you can visit www.parisakarami.com