The Golden Gate Bridge is not made of real gold. That much, I know. Maybe everyone knows that. Maybe everyone knows a thousand things I don’t, but the world seems to be keeping secrets from me. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember where I came from. One moment, I was nowhere, the next I was here, on the walkway of the Golden Gate in the dark.
Metal railings are cold in the depths of the night, especially when it’s raining. I can’t feel the rain. Maybe other people can, or maybe this is just another thing no one ever explained to me – how to be in the world, how to feel it properly.
A jogger runs past.
“Excuse me!” I call out to him.
He doesn’t turn around. A woman in a purple coat speed-walks by.
“Miss!” I call out to her. She doesn’t bat an eye. Pellets of ice fall through my body from the sky. No passerby turns their eyes to look at me. With nothing better to do, I walk the length of the bridge alone. I tread lightly, my footsteps silent. I jump as a car honks next to me. Nobody stops to ask me if I’m okay. Nobody even notices.
The city of San Francisco looks cold and uninviting tonight. Across the water, the lights of Sausalito flicker dimly. Fog snakes between buildings like it’s alive. Water drips from the tops of buildings, windshield wipers echo as cars splash through puddles. It smells of the bay. An empty trolley clangs down the road in the distance. I’m not wet, nor am I cold, or anything else. I suppose I should be, but my mind doesn’t linger on it too long.
Hours pass. Or maybe only minutes. I wander down streets I don’t recognize. One is called Clay, the next, Sansome. I arrive in a little downtown area I’ve never been before: Chinatown. There is a San Francisco Giants flag hanging in a window. The buildings are made of red and white slabs and bricks. TVs glow in shop windows, and I stop to watch.
I don’t know how, but I recognize the girl on the screen. Her name is Braisie. She’s 26 – born on February 14, a Valentine’s baby. She loves fireworks but hates loud noises. She dislikes coffee and anything bitter. She loves raspberry iced tea and cats. She has a little sister whom she adores. She has a mom and a dad, as people do. She’s from Sausalito. I know the way her laugh shapes in her throat. I know she loves wearing mismatched socks, because life is too short for symmetry. But why is she on the news?
Woman found drowned in Golden Gate Strait, the headlines read.
“Did’ya hear about that?” a passerby asks his companion, pointing to the TV.
“Heard she jumped off the bridge this morn’,” his friend responds. “Poor girl.”
“Poor girl indeed.”
The world suddenly feels like it’s spinning. I don’t know how I know who Braisie is, but the fact that she’s dead haunts me in a way I can’t bear. Braisie, Braisie, Braisie. Where do I know that name from?
I keep walking. A cat strides by on the street. I kneel down, but it ignores me. Something flickers in my mind – an orange cat lying in the sun. I think I recognize the cat, but I can’t figure out where. Maybe someone else’s dream.
More things flicker through my mind as I continue walking down Sansome Street. The bricks remind me of a house, up in Sausalito. Inside the house, an empty medicine cabinet. Where are the pills?
Pills.
Braisie took pills.
Then I remember it.
Standing on the edge of the Golden Gate, the sunrise in front of me on the horizon line. Tears running down my face, the world blurry. My hands gripping the railing, knuckles white. The sound of gulls crying overhead, as if they knew I hadn’t taken my pills in weeks. I just wanted to feel normal.
I thought I could fly. That’s what I had told myself; if I could fly, the world would finally show me what it had been hiding from me. But gravity wasn’t hiding anything.
Jumping was the last thing I remember. I suppose crashing into the frigid water had been the last thing I ever did.
I am not lost, and I have a story.
My name is Braisie. And I couldn’t fly.
