Mathilda Savitch
Victor Lodato
A fiercely funny and touching debut novel about a girl with a sharp and mischievous voice of her own – and her quest to discover the truth about her sister’s death‘I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not? Dull is dull is dull is my life. Like now, it’s night, not yet time for bed but too late to be outside, and the two of them reading reading reading with their eyes moving like the lights inside a copy machine. When I was helping put the dishes in the washer tonight, I broke a plate. I said sorry Ma it slipped. But it didn’t slip, that’s how I am sometimes, and I want to be worse. Awful is easy if you make it your one and only.’Fear doesn't come naturally to Mathilda Savitch. She prefers to look right at the things nobody else can bring themselves to mention: for example, the fact that her beloved older sister is dead, pushed in front of a train by a man who is still on the loose. Still, after a year of spying and provocations, she's no closer to the truth about her sister's death than the day it happened. When Mathilda finally cracks her email password, a secret life opens up, one that swiftly draws her into a world of clouded motives and strange emotion. Somewhere in it lies the key to waking her family up from their dream of grief. To cross into that underworld and see what her sister saw, she has to risk everything that matters to her.Mathilda Savitch is furiously funny, awkward and tender; a compelling page-turner, and the debut of an extraordinary novelistic talent.
Mathilda Savitch
Victor Lodato
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#uebd5b9de-904c-5ac9-b2dc-3c0dc0dda8e5)
Title Page (#u010d4d4f-b94a-5b60-95ba-4a865fb4c876)
PART ONE (#uda7fb180-2223-5f48-a6cf-9baa302071d9)
1 (#uba861142-dc40-5a41-badf-63a21cefb733)
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PART TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
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PART THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
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PART FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE (#ulink_78801080-70a3-5275-bdd4-41bf6d24dde1)
1 (#ulink_a7b246fc-deea-5d10-a564-9691c9f7493f)
I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not? Dull is dull is dull is my life. Like now, it’s night, not yet time for bed but too late to be outside, and the two of them reading reading reading with their eyes moving like the lights inside a copy machine. When I was helping put the dishes in the washer tonight, I broke a plate. I said sorry Ma it slipped. But it didn’t slip, that’s how I am sometimes, and I want to be worse.
I’ve hurt things, the boys showed me this. Pulling legs off spiders and such. Kevin Ryder next door and his friends, they let me come into their fort. But that was years ago, I was a child, it didn’t matter if I was a boy or a girl. It would be against the law to go into their fort now I suppose. The law of my mother. Why don’t you stay home? she says. Be careful out there, every time I walk out the door. But is it just words I wonder, how much does she really care? Who is she really thinking about when she thinks about me? I have my suspicions. And anyway, do the boys even have a fort anymore? It was probably all destroyed a long time ago. It was a fort in the woods made from sticks and blankets and leaves. Things like that don’t last forever.
And besides, now I know things about my body I didn’t know back then. It’s not the innocence of yesteryear, that’s for sure.
Awful is easy if you make it your one and only. I pinch Luke sometimes. Luke is our dog. You can’t pinch all dogs, some will bite. But Luke is old and he’s a musher, he’s all about love love love and so he’d never bite you. I pet him for a few minutes all nice and cuddly and then all of a sudden I pinch him and he yelps and goes circling around the room looking for the mystery pincher. He doesn’t even suspect me, that’s how blind with love he is. But I suppose if you held a gun to my head—did I love him, didn’t I love him?—I guess I would have to say I loved the stupid dog. He’s been with us forever and he sleeps on my bed.
If you want to know, I was born in this house with this dog and those two, teachers of all things. A blue house. If you look at it from the outside, you’d swear it had a face, the way the windows are. Window eyes, a window nose, and a door for a mouth. Hi house, I say whenever I come home. I’ve said this for as long as I can remember. I have other things I say, better than this, but I don’t tell anyone. I have secrets and I’m going to have more. Once I read a story about a girl who died, and when they opened her up they found a gold locket in her stomach, plus the feathers of a bird. Nobody could understand it. Well, that’s me. That’s my story, except what are they going to find in my stomach, who knows? It’s definitely something to think about.
For a second as I watch them reading, I think Ma and Da have turned to stone. So where is the woman with snakes in her hair, I ask myself. Is it me? Then I see the books moving up and down a little and so I know Ma and Da are breathing thank god. Luke is a big puddle of fur on the carpet, off in dreamland. Out of nowhere he farts and one eye pops open. Oh what’s that? he wonders. Who’s there? Some guard dog, he can’t tell the difference between a fart and a burglar. And he’s too lazy to go investigate. As long as they don’t steal the carpet from under him, what does he care. I can pretty much read his mind. Animal Psychic would be the perfect job for me. The only animals I’m not good at getting inside are birds. Birds are the lunatics of the animal world. Have you ever watched them? Oh my god, they’re insane! Even when they sing I don’t a hundred percent believe them.
I hate how quiet it is. One smelly dog fart and then nothing, you almost think you’ve gone deaf. A person in my position begins to think about things, death even. About death and time and why it is I’m afraid sometimes at night sitting and watching the two of them reading and almost not breathing but for the books moving up and down like something floating on top of the ocean. And is Ma drunk again is the other question, but who’s asking. Shut up and mind your own business, I think. She’s a free man in Paris. Which is a song Ma used to sing when there were songs in the house. Ancient history.
Oh, and infinity! That’s in my head again. That will keep you up all night, the thought of that. Have you tried to do it? Think of infinity? You can’t. It’s worse than the thoughts of birds. You say to yourself: okay, imagine that space ends, the universe ends, and at the very end there’s a wall. But then you go: what’s behind the wall? Even if it were solid it would be a solid wall going on forever, a solid wall into infinity. If I get stuck thinking on this, what I do is pull a few hairs from the top of my head. I pull them out one at a time. It doesn’t hurt. You have to have the fingers of a surgeon, separating the hairs and making sure there’s only one strand between your fingers before you pluck it. You have to concentrate pretty hard on the operation and so it stops you from thinking about other things. It calms you down.
He’s reading a book about China and she’s reading the selected prose of Ezra Pound, that’s the long and the short of it. She’s got her shoes off and he’s got them on. Venus and Mars, if you ask me. And I’m the Earth, though they don’t even know it.
When I get a little bunch of hairs what I usually do is flush some of them down the toilet and then the rest I keep in a jar. I know this is dangerous because if someone found the hair they could use it to make a doll of me and then I would be under their power forever. If they burned the doll I would die, I would disappear. Infinity.
“What are you doing?” Ma says. “Stop picking at yourself.” She crosses her legs. “Don’t you have something to read?”
Books again. I could scream. I mean, I like books just fine but I don’t want to make a career out of it. “I’m just thinking,” I tell her.
She says I’m making her nervous staring at her like that, why don’t I go to bed.
Ma was beautiful once, before I knew her. She’s got pictures to prove it. She was a beauty nonpareil, my Da says. Now she looks like she’s been crying, but it’s just the reading, and the writing too. Grading papers all the time and scribbling her notes. If she cries I don’t know anything about it, I’m not the person to ask about that. If she wanted to cry I wouldn’t hold it against her. She has plenty of reasons.
“What are you writing?” I said to her once. “The great novel,” said she. I didn’t know she was joking. For a long time I thought maybe she really was writing the great novel and I wondered what sort of part I had in it.
“Go upstairs,” she says. “Your hair could use a wash, when was the last time you washed it?”
She likes to embarrass me in front of my father, who has managed to keep his beauty, who knows how. He doesn’t care if I have dirty hair or not but still, you don’t want to be pointed out as a grease-ball in front of someone like him. Impeccable is what he is, like a cat.
“I washed it yesterday,” I say.
Ma turns to me and does that slitty thing with her eyes, which means you’re a big fat liar, Mathilda.
“Good night Da,” I say, running up the stairs.
“Good night,” he says, “sweet dreams.” This is his standard but it’s still nice to hear it. At least it’s something.
“And wash that hair” is the tail of Ma’s voice following me up the stairs.
Ma is funny, she either says nothing or else she has to get in the last word. You never know which Ma to expect and I can’t decide which one is worse. Lately it’s mostly been the silent Ma. Tomorrow I’m going to break another plate. It’s already planned.
In my room I look in the mirror. It’s amazing how you have the same face every time. Or is it only a trick? Because of course you’re changing, your face and everything. Every second that goes by you’re someone else. It’s unstoppable. The clock ticks, everything is normal, but there’s a feeling of suspense in your stomach. What will happen, who will you become? Sometimes I wish time would speed up so that I could have the face of my future now.
After the mirror I line up a few papers and books on my desk so that they’re even with the edge. I also make sure not one thing touches another thing and that everything is equal distance apart. It’s only an approximation, I don’t use a ruler or anything. I’ve been doing it for about a year now, the lining up of things. It’s like plucking the hair. Basically it’s magic against infinity.
When Da comes in my room I’m sitting on the bed. Maybe I’ve been here for an hour, who knows.
“I meant to take a shower,” I say. “I forgot.”
He sits next to me and he tries to look at me, except he’s not so good at it anymore. His eyes go wobbly, almost like he’s afraid of me. He used to pet my hair, but that was practically a million years ago, when I was a baby. Still, it’s a nice moment, just the two of us sitting next to each other. But then all of a sudden she’s there, sticking her head in the door.
“I know,” I say, without her having to say anything. I know, Ma.
“Are you okay?” she says. But it’s not even a real question. I wish it was but it’s not.
Da gets up to go and he pats my dirty hair and I suppose I should be ashamed, but what do I care about anything anyway. That’s part of being awful, not caring. And then what’s part of it too is the thought that suddenly jumps into my head. The thought that it could be a person’s own mother who might make a doll with her daughter’s hair and throw it into a fire. She’d watch the flames eat it up and then she’d dance off to bed laughing and having sex and bleeding little drops of perfume all over the sheets as if there was nothing to it. I wouldn’t put it past her.
But don’t get me wrong. I love her. This is another one of my secrets.
The thing is, I can’t love her, not in the real world. Because this would be degrading to me. To love someone who despises you, and she just might. You should see her eyes on me sometimes. Plus she’s not even a mother anymore, she’s just a planet with a face. Da at least has hands.
“Good night Ma,” I say. “Good night Da.” And they just leave me like that and they don’t make two bones about it. Walk out, whoosh, and where do they go? All I know is I’m not tired and I’m not taking a lousy shower and I’m not reading a stupid book for school about the King and Queen of Spain. I’m just going to sit on this bed and if I want to pull a few hairs from my head I will, and no one can stop me.
Six hairs. Brown, but when I look close I can see it’s almost red where it comes out of my head. Like the hair of another person. Like another person inside me, and she’s just starting to squirm her way out like a sprout. This is not in the least bit frightening. I’ve actually been expecting her.
I know you can’t see anything from where you are.
You just have to believe me.
2 (#ulink_930dddec-5d8e-5e63-b7d7-e7e18feecd46)
School started again a week ago and I’m very happy to report that Anna McDougal, my best friend, is in my class. Overall it’s an interesting mix of people this year. No one but Anna has any relevance to the story of my life, but a list is always a good thing. I’ll give it to you with thumbnails.
Libby Harris has a disastrous mole on the tip of her nose. A shame really because she’s very quiet and nice. Her father is a lawyer and so she’ll probably have plastic surgery eventually.
Sal Verazzo is pretty much the fattest person in the school. Black hair, possibly shoe polish. Thinks he’s a rock star. Completely deranged.
Sue Fleishman is tall and has curly hair. She doesn’t walk, she sort of slides across the floor like she’s wearing slippers. A stupid way to move but the boys drool over her.
Barbara Bradley always has snacks. She’s allowed to eat them during class. Supposedly she has a disease.
Jack Delaney is an admirer of mine, but we’ve never spoken. He has a shirt with a rude monkey on it. Sex addict or will be.
Mimi Brockton is crippled! I’m always watching her, I can’t get enough of her. Red hair. I know I’m not supposed to say crippled, but it’s really the best word.
Donna Lavora has thrown up several times since she’s come to this school. Will not do well in life.
Max Overmeyer looks like he lives in a shack. Doesn’t smell right. Probably a victim of poverty.
Eyad Tayssir has perfect white teeth but you hardly ever see them. He’s not a big smiler. Middle Eastern, I’m not sure exactly what country.
Mary Quintas supposedly has a great singing talent but I’ve heard better. She wants to be snob sisters with me but I’m not interested.
Lonnie Tyson still thinks he’s going to be an astronaut. Good muscles.
Carol Benton is the worst. Conceited, big breasted, and loud. Unattractive but worshipped by men. Doesn’t like me apparently.
Bruce Sellars is funny and I hear he knows magic. I’ve seen him speaking to Carol Benton unfortunately.
Chris Bibb, known as Dribble, came back to school with a tan. It doesn’t make sense on him.
The lovely Anna McDougal of course. With whom I have an important but stormy relationship. More on this later.
Kelly Graber has bad teeth. I suspect she’s unloved. Good at sports.
Lisa Mead eats liverwurst. Every day!
Lucas London is very pale but I don’t think albino. When he talks his hands shake. He’s like a lamb. He’s so small you almost want to carry him.
Avi Gosh is the one person smarter than me. He has the eyes of a girl, but he’s very confident. Rich. Sometimes wears sandals.
I’m probably forgetting a few people but if I am there’s probably a reason. Some people are like ghosts, you can’t capture them, or if you do it’s nothing but a blur.
But really it’s amazing to be around so many different kinds of people every day. Sometimes I watch them and it’s like Animal Planet. Everyone’s alive and hungry and sometimes Sal Verazzo is so crazy to tell a story that spit starts flying out of his mouth. And in the morning just before class begins, when everyone’s talking at the same time, it’s like a radio caught between stations. But not two stations, more like a hundred. You can’t make heads or tails of what anyone’s saying. It doesn’t even sound like English, it sounds like bubbles coming up out of boiling mud. If I listen too long, it starts to bother me. It’s probably what hell sounds like. I saw hell once in a movie, and it was pretty incomprehensible. I had to turn it off.
3 (#ulink_bfae13b1-fcf9-5e57-a8e5-2fe49dc87910)
I have a sister who died. Did I tell you this already? I did but you don’t remember, you didn’t understand the code.
My sister’s name was Helene. Helene and Mathilda. Everyone always said we were the opposite of each other. Night and Day was the famous expression. I’m the younger one, but it still feels backwards that Helene died first.
She died a year ago, but in my mind sometimes it’s five minutes. In the morning sometimes it hasn’t even happened yet. For a second I’m confused, but then it all comes back. It happens again.
She was sixteen at the end. Practically seventeen, just a few months to go. But sometimes, the way she dressed, you’d think she was even older. Plus she had an excellent way of moving. A person who didn’t know her might think she was showing off, but the truth is she just had a natural sway to her. And then add to that her legs. They went from here to Las Vegas, which is how Ma once described the length of them.
Some of the memories I have of Helene are from the beginning of my life, when I was a baby. Ma looks at me like I’m crazy when I tell her I remember the day Helene was carrying me, and then she started running and she climbed over a fence with me still in her arms.
“What fence?” my mother says.
“A white fence,” I say.
When I say this my father puts his hand on my arm. “Stop,” he says. Lately that’s getting to be his favorite word.
I think about Helene a lot, but basically I’m not allowed to talk about her. To Ma and Da, I mean. Not that this is a rule. It’s more like a law, I suppose.
The other memory I have is Helene and I are in a hole and it’s dark and wet. Somehow we’re upside down. I remember water getting in my mouth. Maybe we’re in a well is my first thought.
“You never fell in a well,” Ma says.
“What about a grave,” I say, “or a ditch? People fall in holes all the time,” I say.
Ma goes white like I’m the vampire of questions. My beautiful Da looks at me and I stop.
The thing is, Helene died from a train. That’s the problem. She didn’t jump, a man pushed her. We don’t know who this man was and the police say, at this point, we probably never will.
I wasn’t there when it happened. Neither were Ma and Da. Why she was at the train station is still a big question. A boyfriend is what I think. Helene had lots of them, sometimes even boys from other schools in other towns. She was pretty popular. She had red hair, it was the most amazing hair in the world.
It happened on a Wednesday, which is such an ordinary day. It happened in the middle of the afternoon. A man pushed Helene in front of a train, it’s unbelievable. I always think it’s a mistake. But then it proves to be correct.
Do you believe in curses? That there can be a curse on a person or on a bunch of people at the same time, like a family curse? How will we all die? I wonder. And when?
Helene was going to be a singer. She was a singer. There are recordings. Da made them on his old tape recorder. No one can listen to them now, they’re the most dangerous thing in the world. On one of the tapes it’s Da singing some stupid song with Helene. Both of them are laughing as much as singing. If you listened to it now, it would be Da singing with a ghost. The laughing would kill you.
Ma says the recordings are lost but I know where she keeps them. Plus, I have things hidden too. In my room, under my bed, I have some of Helene’s school notebooks. I have letters and drawings and birthday cards. I also have some e-mails she printed out. And there’s tons of stuff still left in her room. A person, even a sixteen-year-old, leaves a lot of stuff behind. For a long time I couldn’t look at any of it, but then I realized there might be clues. I’ve started to spend more time in H’s room, but only when I’m alone in the house. It’s a better room than mine and I wouldn’t mind living there. Ma would never allow it though. Sometimes I leave the door to H’s room open, even though I know it irritates her.
I remember once, when I was little, I was looking out H’s window and I saw a hummingbird. Come quick, I said, but by the time Helene came over it was gone. Maybe it’ll come back, she said, and we both stayed by the window for almost a minute, waiting. I guess we didn’t have anything better to do. When I think of the two of us standing there, waiting for that stupid bird, it drives me crazy for some reason. I feel like screaming.
Why does a person push another person in front of a train? Does it have a meaning for the person, the pusher? The explanation of most people is madman. The voices of demons telling him to do it. But how did he get away is my question. It doesn’t make sense. Two men at the train station said they tried to grab him but he slipped away. He just pushed her and then he took off. The police say it happens all the time.
In my mind it’s almost as if the man disappeared after he did it. Like he had one job on Earth. To kill Helene. And after that there was nothing left for him to do but vanish.
I hate him. The feeling is tremendous. I’ve never felt anything like it. If we knew who the man was he’d be in jail. We could go to the jail and ask him questions. Ma and Da wouldn’t but I would. I would be all over him. Even if it was the voices of demons I would pull the demons out of him and make them explain. I would use every bit of my magic.
Next Thursday it will be the day Helene died all over again. It’ll be exactly one year. I marked it in my calendar like this: H.S.S.H. Which is Helene’s initials the right way and then backwards. If you stare at the letters it’s almost like someone telling you to be quiet. Ma and Da haven’t said anything about the big day. I want H.S.S.H. to be a day we’ll all remember. If Ma and Da think I’m going to ignore it, they’ve got another thing coming.
The thing is, Helene was supposed to live forever. That’s just the kind of person she was. You always felt she had some secret power that was going to make her immortal. I wish I could describe to you the color of her hair but there’s nothing to compare it to.
If the man was caught he’d probably be electrocuted. But electricity doesn’t kill demons as far as I know.
People say the hair was like pennies, but it was better than that.
And she smelled like lemons. When I said this out loud once, Ma looked away, but Da said he had to agree. He whispered in my ear. He said I was right. He said it was lemons all the way.
4 (#ulink_44d7dfb4-ebc9-5651-a03e-aea6d277151f)
I said to my friend Anna how I want to be awful and Anna said, “What about your soul?”
“What about it?” I said. “Why should I care about my soul?”
“If I even have one,” I added, “and nobody knows for sure.”
“It can’t be proved,” I said. It made me a little mad that Anna brought up the subject of souls, considering everything she knows about me.
“And if it is real,” I said, “where is it?” Stuck up inside me like a baby all white and pudgy like a piece of dough? And what does it do anyway except stay inside you for your whole life and then it’s not born until you’re dead.
I said all this to Anna and she didn’t have an answer. But it got her thinking. I could tell by the way her face (which for the record is quite beautiful) went ugly with wrinkles. It’s hard for Anna to think, for her it’s like climbing a mountain. She’s in the remedial reading group, as well as slow math.
Finally, after a minute, Anna’s face came back and she said, “But the baby is you, Mattie, your soul is you, there’s no difference.”
And then she said she didn’t think it was at all like a piece of dough but more like a silk dress in the shape of your body, your head and your hands and your feet and everything.
“And see-through,” she says. When she says things like this you realize what a child she is. Religion has a way of making people into idiots is what my father says.
“If it’s see-through,” I say, “does that mean I can see your titties?”
“No,” Anna says, the total nun now. “The dress is on the inside,” she says, “and so who could look through it, no one but god.”
If Anna gets too smart I might have to stick pins in the head of a doll lumped up into the shape of her. If you added brains to Anna’s beauty it would be unbearable.
And by the way, Anna doesn’t even have titties. She basically has two anthills on her chest.
“Don’t you want to live forever?” she says.
“Heaven and everything,” she says. “A person like you has to believe in heaven, don’t you Mattie?”
I had started up Anna’s thinking engine and now she wouldn’t shut up. Plus I didn’t like where she was going with this conversation. Trying to get me to talk about private things.
Personally, I don’t believe in god. I never had any lessons in him like Anna. She got a bunch of information from her family and from Sunday school. I have my own beliefs, self-invented. What I believe is that there are people watching us, I don’t know who they are, they didn’t give me their names. The watchers I call them. They could be anyone. Who’s to say if they’re even human.
Anna kept talking but I just stopped listening and stared into the blue magic of her eyes. Anna has eyes, not everyone has them. Most people just have holes in their faces, it’s just biological, like pigs or fish. Plain ordinary eyes that don’t mean very much. Anna’s eyes are from outer space, they’re not animal and they’re not human either. I could kiss Anna sometimes she’s so beautiful. Blonde hair too. I only want beautiful friends, even though I’m not beautiful myself. My mother says I’m handsome. I look sort of like a baby horse. Striking is what I am.
I’m looking at Anna going on about her soul, but in my head was still that word. Awful. Awful Awful Awful Awful. Lufwa, if you write it backwards. I figure this out in my head and then I say, “Anna, shut up, listen. From now on,” I say, “I want you to call me Lufwa.”
Does she understand? Of course not.
“Why?” she says. “What does it mean?”
“Just do it,” I say. “Okay?”
“But what does it mean?” she says again.
If only she could have figured it out, that would have been the perfection of the moment. In my fantasy, the light-bulb goes on in her head and her face just starts beaming from the miracle of understanding. Lufwa, she’d say, winking at me with her magic eyes. Lufwa.
And by the way I’m not a lesbo. I’ve been told I have an “artistic temperament” which means I have thoughts all over the place and not to be concerned, Mr. and Mrs. Savitch, who are my parents. The doctor who said this was old and looked like a tree and he’s famous at the college where my parents teach and so they had to believe him. My parents have tried to become famous too, but they haven’t gotten very far. They’ve written one book apiece (academic not creative), but neither book made much of a splash. Both of them meant to write a second book, but they never did. Apparently they had a lot of hopes and dreams back in the old days.
When my parents took me to see the Tree, I didn’t say much. I kept what they call a low profile.
“Is she an only child?” the Tree asked.
Da said nothing and Ma said, “What about medication?”
The concern was over my tip-top magical thoughts. And because of the nightmares.
“It sounds French,” Anna says.
“What does?” I say.
“That word,” Anna says. “What you said to call you.”
“It doesn’t sound French,” I say. “Don’t be stupid.”
Anna sulks when I say this.
“Well it doesn’t sound English,” she says.
“It’s not English,” I say. “There’s more languages in the world than just French and English.”
“What language is it then?” she asks.
I can’t even answer her when she gets like this. “It’s probably not even a real language,” she says.
“Probably not,” I say. “You’ll never know.”
There is so little imagination in the world. A person like me is basically alone. If I want to live in the same world as other people I have to make a special effort.
I take Anna’s hand. It confuses her because she thinks we’re having an argument.
“What?” she says. She doesn’t trust me.
“Nothing,” I say. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” she says.
“Good,” I say. I’m looking at her dead in the eye.
“Just say it, okay?”
“Please,” I say.
She closes her eyes. There is a pause a person could die in.
“Lufwa,” she says.
When she says it I have to laugh.
“Oh my god,” I say, “it does sound French.”
Anna opens her eyes and smiles like someone’s given her second prize.
“I told you,” she says.
“Lufwa,” I say. Suddenly I am the king of France. “La fois,” I say. “La fois!”
We are both laughing now and it’s almost like being a child again. Anna is only eight months younger than me but sometimes she’s like a magnet pulling me backwards. It is the glorious past of childhood and no one is ever going to die. It doesn’t even matter that Anna is a little slow. And really she’s not much slower than most people.
And besides, very few people have eyes from outer space, and it doesn’t matter if these people are smart or not. Angels, I bet, are not smart. I bet angels are dumb. But it’s not even relevant, the smartness of angels. The point of angels, as far as I understand, is something even greater than smartness. Supposedly it has more to do with brilliance. Which is light beyond anything we can understand. Like diamonds everywhere, in every bit of the air, and colors you wouldn’t even have names for.
Anna stops laughing and wipes the tears from her cheeks.
“I have to go home,” she says.
It is the completely wrong thing to say.
Because we are standing in that place where two people could stand forever, staring into each other’s eyes. And how often does that happen? And will it ever happen again?
5 (#ulink_aa374ea3-64be-57d8-8120-0fbe64abfa24)
At school today, first thing, I was told to go to Ms. Olivera’s office. She’s the principal of the penitentiary but you wouldn’t know it from the way she dresses. Beads and bracelets and scarves in her hair. She really should be out on the street selling incense.
“Look at me,” Ms. Olivera says.
I only look at the lips.
“How have you been doing lately?” the lips say.
Oh brother, I think, now we’re going to have to go through the whole story of my life, when all she really wants to know is why I slapped Carol Benton in the face yesterday. Which I did without really meaning to do it. It actually surprised me when it turned out to be a real slap and not just the thought of a slap.
“Why are you so angry?” O says. Who does she think she is, the Tree?
“I’m not angry,” I say. I wonder if she’s recording me.
“You slapped someone, Mathilda. That’s an act of anger,” the lips say.
The truth is, Carol Benton is the kind of person who inspires violence. Just the bigness of her face. And more than once I’ve seen her whispering with her friends and then they look at me. What’s the big secret? As if everyone doesn’t already know.
“Mathilda,” O says. “Mathilda. Are you listening to me?”
“I’m giving you a chance here,” she says, and she reaches for my hand like a pervert. I pull away and pretend I have an itch.
“Is everything okay at home?” she says. The same old questions.
“How are your mother and father doing?”
“Is your mother doing a little better?”
“Fine,” I say.
O looks at me with her X-ray eyes but I don’t let her in. I don’t know that I can trust her. I’d like to tell her how it’s been almost one year, and how I still haven’t seen my mother cry in the way mothers are supposed to cry after the death of a child. Ever since Helene died it’s like Ma’s joined the army. Is that normal? I’d like to ask.
“Can I use your bathroom please?” I say.
O nods and I get up and go through the door.
O has her own private bathroom. It’s not as clean as it should be. There’s a hair in the sink. I pick it up with a piece of toilet paper and put it in my pocket, just in case. On a little shelf there’s some air freshener, plus a tin of mints and a candy bar. Who keeps food in the bathroom? Disgusting, if you ask me.
Interesting as well is a bathtub filled with potted plants. All leaves, no flowers. Jungly. I pretty much have to force myself not to make the sounds of monkeys and tropical birds.
I flush the toilet so as not to arouse suspicion. I open the medicine cabinet. Inside there’s a hairbrush, lipstick, a bottle of pills, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. I take the pills, which are called Exhilla, and I put them in my pocket. According to the commercial, Exhilla helps you get through your day with a lot less worry. But the thing is, I remember last year, right after the explosion at the opera house in New York that killed a lot of bigwigs including a senator, Ms. O gave a special talk to the whole school and by the end of it she was crying into her scarves.
When I come out of the bathroom, O is smiling. As far as I can tell it’s not a lie.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I won’t do it again,” I say. And I ask her to please not tell my parents.
“You have to ignore people,” Ms. Olivera says. “You can’t let them get under your skin.”
It’s a sad smile. Like my father’s.
“You’re a smart girl,” she says. She stands up and I’m afraid she’s going to try and touch me again.
“Go to class,” she says.
“Yes,” I say, but I don’t move. I don’t move for about ten years. At least that’s the feeling. Time is funny lately, nothing to do with clocks.
After school Anna and I decide to go to Mool’s for a soda and curly fries. Walking there Anna doesn’t bring up Carol Benton, which is a big relief. Instead she asks me what I think of the boys this year in our class.
“Not for me,” I say.
“No one?” she says. Obviously she must have her own eye on someone.
Anna and I haven’t started with boys yet, not professionally anyway. But I have noticed that Anna is becoming a bit of a flirt. She has this new thing she does with her hair, a kind of a toss. It’s pretty impressive actually. If there’s one way Anna’s ahead of me it’s in this department. Flirting isn’t a brain thing, it’s an animal thing. But so is slapping people, I guess. And so if I can slap people I should be able to flirt with them. Probably I should give it some attention. I’ve learned a few things from Helene’s e-mails, most of which are from boys. The language gets pretty explicit sometimes. I can’t believe she printed them out, considering the possibility of Ma finding them. I’m adding bravery to the list of Helene’s virtues.
When you think about your body you barely know where to begin. Even just the words for it. Your bum is your bottom is your butt. Is your ass if you want to get crude about it. There’s a ton of expressions for everything down there. Your vaj is your cooz is your crack. Or your cunt if you’re really in the mood or you’re a slut or if someone’s trying to insult you. Boys have more words for theirs than girls, according to my calculations. Penis and pole and peter and prick, but it’s not just Ps. You also have dong and cock and stormtrooper and willy and sausage and you could go on and on if you had all day. Breasts and tits and knockers and boobs and if you’re an old lady you have a bosom, which is hysterical. If I ever say bosom to Anna she nearly pees her pants.
Once, a long time ago, I saw my father come out of the shower and he was naked. Ma was in the bathroom with him. I saw my Da’s thing and it looked like a carrot pulled out of the ground with all its roots and hairs sticking to it. I thought of it inside my mother, like putting a carrot back into the ground, back into the dirt. A woman is a garden, they say. I used to think flowers but now I think vegetables.
“Lonnie’s not bad,” Anna says.
“The astronaut?” I say. “He doesn’t want to be an astronaut anymore,” Anna says. “That was like three years ago.” She grabs my arm and drags me into Mool’s. Nobody’s there but us and we take the booth in the corner, which is our favorite.
“What’ll it be?” Mool says, even though he knows it’s always curly fries and cokes. He comes over to us, practically dancing from the pleasure of our company. Mool is the happiest old person I’ve ever met. Old people are funny, they’re either lizards or birds. Mool is a bird. When he drops the basket of fries into the oil, he goes squawk squawk, he can’t help himself.
To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind living at Mool’s. I wonder if there’s a Mrs. Mool hiding in the back. I’ve never seen her. Maybe she’s the reason for his happiness. Maybe they have the kind of love that lasts forever. Did you ever read “The Gift of the Magi”? Picture that couple about fifty years down the road, that would be Mool and his wife.
“Do you want to sleep over this weekend?” Anna says. This is another one of Anna’s skills. Mind reader.
Anna’s house isn’t as happy as Mool’s restaurant but it’s not unhappy, it has its charms. “Yes,” I say, “I would love to.” And suddenly I’m feeling so good that I think to tell Anna about H.S.S.H., but for some reason it won’t come out of my mouth. Maybe I’ll tell her tomorrow. Timing is everything, they say. I want Helene’s anniversary to be a special day. Who knows, maybe I’ll throw a surprise party for Ma and Da, just to wake them up. Ma and Da need a slap in the face even worse than Carol Benton.
Mool brings over the fries and suddenly I want to kiss him. I want to throw my arms around him and give him the smooch to end all smooches. I know it’s out of character but the thing is, it’s probably better to save my awfulness for the people who deserve it. It’ll just get stronger and stronger like the venom inside snakes. You don’t want to waste it on the wrong person.
6 (#ulink_c0fe65ec-2f7d-5be4-8dcc-eceff0a1cddb)
When I got home from school, Ma was in the kitchen staring out the window. She had on her Chinese robe with the bridges and the dragons.
“What are you looking at?” I said.
There was a pecan ring on the table. Ma had already eaten a good chunk of it. Ma’s always been skinny and I want her to stay that way. Fat wouldn’t make sense on her, she doesn’t have the bones for it. Plus fat people are liars, have you noticed that? They hide things.
“What are you doing?” I say. She was just standing there.
“Pecan ring,” I say. “From Kroner’s?”
“You want a piece?” she says.
I tell her no, even though I’d love a piece. Pecan rings from Kroner’s are pretty amazing. My plan is to eat it later when she’s passed out.
I sit at the table and wait to see what happens. It takes about two hours but then finally Ma comes over to me.
“Your hair’s getting long,” she says, and she touches it. The feeling is electricity, warm, and maybe it wouldn’t have felt half bad if Ma’s lousy hands weren’t shaking. Plus the kitchen smells like cigarettes, which is her old habit back again.
I pick a nut off the ring, but I don’t eat it. I examine it like a scientist until Ma moves away. Suddenly all I can hear is the humming of the refrigerator. It’s like the sound track to infinity. I get up and whack the stupid thing. Ma flinches a little, it’s almost funny.
“Your father and I are going to the theater next week,” she says suddenly out of left field. The two of them never go out anymore, so it’s a little suspicious.
“What day are you going?” I ask her.
“Wednesday,” she says.
Which is the day before. The day before H.S.S.H.
“Is it a special occasion?” I say. Maybe Ma and Da have the day marked in their calendars as well, maybe I’ve underestimated them.
Ma makes a disgusted face and backhands an invisible fly. “Someone gave your father the tickets,” she says.
I ask her if I can come but she says they only have two seats.
“Can’t you buy another one?” I say.
“You wouldn’t like the play,” she says.
I ask what’s the name of it and she tells me, “The Moons of Pluto.” She says it like it’s the worst title in the world.
“I want to go,” I say.
I bet Ma doesn’t even remember that planets used to be one of my big obsessions. I used to have the whole solar system up on my ceiling. Glow-in-the-dark stars as well.
“I want to go,” I say again, but Ma doesn’t answer me. She probably wants me to beg, but I’m not in the mood. I’ll do the begging routine later with Da.
“I’m sleeping over at Anna’s this weekend,” I say.
“You’re not the only person with plans,” I tell her.
Ma just nods. She’s at the window again. I don’t know what she’s looking at. Is it trees she’s interested in now?
The silence again, I’m telling you, you can’t imagine it. All of a sudden I wish I hadn’t punched the stupid refrigerator. It’s the perfect moment for some refrigerator screaming.
Before I know what I’m doing I’m eating the pecan ring. I sort of make a pig of myself. I eat more than I mean to. Ma’s still turned away from me, and when she breathes it makes the dragon on her back look like he’s getting ready to shoot a big load of fire. I wish I knew what was inside her head. For some reason my ESP doesn’t work when it comes to Ma. I keep counting the breaths of the dragon and when I hear Da’s car, it’s music to my ears.
Ma moves over to the stove, pretending to be normal. She stirs something in a pot. Dinner, I suppose, though she hasn’t been too creative lately. Lately she’s the one-pot wonder. Throw everything in and hope for the best.
The front door opens. Luke barks from somewhere in the house.
“We’re in the kitchen,” I say, careful not to shout. But then I can’t help myself, I say it again and this time I shout. “We’re in the kitchen, Da.”
Just get him in here is my thought. Save me from the dragon.
Once or twice I’ve heard my mother and father having relations in their bedroom, but not in a while. Ma sounds like an owl and Da sounds like a sheep. When Helene and I were kids, we would catch them kissing in every part of the house. Da gave Ma the kind of kisses that linger, and afterwards she looked like someone who’d just had a bath. Recently Da has been trying to put his hands on her again but she’s not too interested. He makes jokes and tries to touch her but he mostly misses. Ma’s pretty fast when she wants to be.
Every night after dinner Da takes a walk with Luke. “Anybody coming?” he always says. My standard excuse is homework, and Ma is Ma. Other than work she hardly ever leaves the house. Lately she doesn’t even answer him. But my Da can’t help asking, he’s always been the optimist in the family. He’s definitely the one who could save the world, but will Ma let him is the question. Maybe she wants everything to come down in fire.
Tonight when Da asked if anyone was coming, I said yes. Ma looked at me like I was an impostor.
“What?” I say to her. “I used to walk Luke all the time when I was little.” I wanted her to know that some people can do more than just sit around and smoke cigarettes. A person can wake up if she wants to.
“Get your coat then,” Da said. He didn’t seem terribly excited by my company. It struck me that maybe he goes somewhere private on his walks and now that I was coming he wouldn’t be able to go there. Or maybe it was just his private thoughts I’d be interrupting.
We only walked around the neighborhood, it wasn’t anything special. A few people waved at us and we waved back. Luke barked at some dogs. One house still had a bring back our troops sign on the lawn and I couldn’t even remember if we still had troops over there. I guess we always have troops somewhere, due to the fact that it’s an age of terror. And then the funny thing was, I completely blanked out as to where “over there” was. Helene would know, she was very political for a person her age. Ma and Da used to be political too, they were big marchers once upon a time. But I guess they’re more selfish now. Death does that to people apparently.
When Da bent down to scoop up Luke’s poo I noticed a tiny bald spot on the top of his head. I realized I wasn’t exactly sure how old my Da was. I know he’s not too old but a bald spot, even a tiny one, is definitely a sign of time passing. I tried to picture my Da bald but I had to stop because it was like a monster movie in my head.
Luke stopped to smell something and Da and I waited. We were like two strangers at a bus stop. Finally I kicked Luke, not hard, just a love tap. “Get a move on,” I said.
“Be nice,” Da said, and so I gave Luke a make-up smooch right on his nose, which made his butt wiggle. And then I wiggled my butt the same way and Da laughed. When a plane flew by overhead Luke barked. It was dark up there and the plane’s lights were on. It’s still something that scares me. I wouldn’t mind if I never saw an airplane again my whole life. In our history book, there’s a picture of the burning towers. I was only a kid when it happened, but they don’t let you forget stuff like that.
I wondered what Ma was doing, if she was already in bed, safe and sound. I could picture her under the covers, naked. And I could picture Da slipping in later like a mouse. Ma sleeps on the left and Da sleeps on the right, and on both sides of their bed there’s a little cabinet. On top of each is a lamp for them to read by. And then there’s the inside of the cabinet for their personal stuff. When you’re married you can’t hide things under your bed anymore because the bed is shared property.
In Da’s cabinet there are books and also some photographs from a trip we all took to Concordia Farms to pick pumpkins. And every now and then there’s a magazine of perversion in there, mostly about breasts. Pretty much the women are alone and when they touch themselves they look like they’re in pain. Sometimes the women look right at you. Some of them look insane. In Ma’s cabinet are cigarettes and notebooks and sometimes a bottle. I don’t know why they don’t put locks on their stupid cabinets to keep people from snooping.
When people came to see the display of Helene in her coffin, they didn’t see Helene because the coffin was closed. Locked. I wonder who had the key. Apparently Ma and Da got to look at her before they closed it but I wasn’t invited. Supposedly her body was pretty bad. I don’t know if it was or it wasn’t. Everyone went up to the stupid box as if Helene was inside. But I wasn’t convinced. Death is a joke almost. You can’t honestly believe it.
Ma wore red lipstick to the funeral because that’s the only color she has. I sat next to her and she kept saying the same thing over and over again, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Oh god oh god oh god it could have been. But probably not, because she doesn’t even believe in him. Capital Him.
It’s funny, it didn’t even rain the day of the funeral. Nothing was right about it. Da’s brother made a speech but he barely knew his lines, he kept looking at a piece of paper. I’m telling you, the whole day was completely unbelievable. I know what funerals look like from movies, and Helene’s was a total sham. If it rains on H.S.S.H. I’ll be happy.
Well, not happy exactly. I’ll just have the feeling someone’s been listening. One of the watchers maybe. Rain is the least they could give me. I’m not asking for a miracle, just a little lightning, a few cracks of thunder. Is that too much to ask?
7 (#ulink_2c2587ad-e786-59d6-b03e-2fd9568a3a5a)
This morning, after breakfast, I went outside to smoke a cigarette. It was from my mother’s stash, which she keeps in various hiding places around the house. Ma doesn’t smoke anymore, that’s the story we’re supposed to believe. The lie of the universe, one of many. Ma doesn’t drink either, if you want to have the whole blanket over your head.
The cigarette is extra long. I decide not to light it, Ma will smell it. It’s just as good to hold it in your hand. I haven’t actually smoked a cigarette yet but I’m going to at some point, and how you hold it is significant. My way, I’ve decided, will be to hold it between my forefinger and my thumb, like a man. When you hold it like this you have a kind of power.
The family next door, the Ryders, are having a new swimming pool put in. I don’t know what was wrong with the old one. There’s a bulldozer going, the noise is amazing. When the sun comes through the dust, it’s weird, like poison gas.
On a hill above the pool is a white gazebo. It belongs to the Ryders but they let me have a birthday party there once. When I was ten. I wore a blue dress with yellow ribbons on it. The gazebo doesn’t have any walls, just columns and a roof, and with the dust from the bulldozer blowing through it, it’s like a postcard from Ancient Greece. I hope they’re not going to knock that down too.
Kevin Ryder is by his back door watching the destruction. I go over toward the fence to make him notice me, but he doesn’t. Kevin’s brother was one of Helene’s lovers, by the way. They used to make out in the gazebo.
“Kevin!” I practically have to shout to get his attention.
We both move a little closer to the fence.
“Do you have a light?” I ask him.
He puts his hand up to his ear. I can’t hear you.
I tap the cigarette against my mouth to make him understand.
Kevin looks confused. He shakes his head. He’s wearing a big silver chain around his neck and his hair is blue. It’s a completely different person from when he was little. He also has black fingernails. But his face is still the face of a baby, even though he’s probably thirteen already. I wonder what his mother thinks of his hair. She probably fainted when she saw it. God, I’d love to make Ma faint. Just once, just to teach her a lesson. But the truth is people don’t faint as much as they used to. In the old days people fainted all the time.
Suddenly the bulldozer stops, it’s like a waterfall of silence. Kevin and I stand under the roar of it.
“You smoke?” he says. “You’re allowed to smoke?”
“Oh yeah,” I say, “just not in the house.”
Kevin nods his head, maybe he’s underestimated me.
“What did you do to your hair?” I say.
“I’m not gonna keep it,” he says.
I tell him I like it.
“I don’t know,” he says. He turns away from me and looks at the destruction again. He starts to play with the chain around his neck.
“I have to get going,” he says.
I ask him does he want to go up and hang out in the gazebo. I fake puff on my cigarette. He just stares at me.
“Come on,” I say, “like the old days.”
“I can’t,” he says, “I have homework.”
Homework? I think. A boy with blue hair should not have to do homework.
“How’s your brother?” I say.
Kevin nods his head and then looks at his boots. I wonder is he afraid of me. A lot of people are funny around us, Ma and Da and me. They don’t want to get too close to the curse of the Savitches.
I have a letter from Kevin’s brother under my bed, an e-mail he sent to my sister.
“Does he have a new girlfriend?” I say.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” Kevin says.
I fake puff on the cigarette and blow the invisible smoke in Kevin’s face.
“See you Mathilda,” he says, and then he walks away like a cowboy.
I want to fuck you, is one of the things in the letter.
Also, I am in love with you.
Isn’t language amazing? I can’t get over it. Sometimes you can just say things and it’s like a bomb that blows all your clothes off and suddenly there you are naked. I don’t know if it’s disgusting or beautiful.
The bulldozer comes back to life and when I look up at it I see there’s a man inside. I didn’t even notice him before. He’s in a little cage, like a rat or an astronaut. When I look at him he winks at me.
I turn away but I can feel his eyes still on me. Probably because I’m wearing a skirt. I throw the cigarette on the ground and crush it with my foot. I swoosh my foot back and forth three times. It’s the classic way to put out cigarettes. Watch people if you don’t believe me.
A lot of Helene’s boyfriends looked the same. They had dark hair. They were skinny but they had shoulders. Mostly tall, pale skin. They never carried books. They swaggered. You would have to say they were good-looking.
Helene wasn’t a saint. Have I given you that impression? She definitely had a body. It’s weird to think a dead person is the same person who once had a lot of desire. It’s weird because you don’t want to think too much about the bodies of dead people.
The last few months before the train she was always back from school later than usual and at night she pretty much always came home past her curfew. She had ways of sneaking in and out. She was clever. She knew how to get into bars just from wearing the right shirt and from the way she moved. The funny thing is, she still got all her homework done and passed every test at school. I think that’s why Ma and Da couldn’t say much about what she did at night, they couldn’t really prove it was hurting her. Besides, no one could ever say no to Helene. Imagine the beauty of Anna and add to that a brain.
Sexy and brainy, that’s the best combination. That was Helene for sure, and I bet Ma was like that once too. The librarian who takes off her glasses and lets down her hair. She wears a white blouse buttoned to the neck but suddenly she undoes it a little and it’s devastating. You see her in a whole new light as she makes herself comfortable on the bed. Even her voice goes deeper.
Ma and Da used to be great sleepers and so it was always me who woke up if there was a creak when Helene snuck out. One night around three in the morning she climbed into my bed. When I clicked on the lamp, I saw she was still in her dress and her face looked blurry like someone had tried to erase it. And her mouth was like the mouth of a little kid when they eat too much jelly. I asked her what was the matter and she said, nothing, go back to sleep. I kept looking at her though because I was pretty sure she wanted to tell me something. She kept staring right back at me and finally she sort of smiled and said, salagadoola mechika boola, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, which is the magic song from Cinderella. The lyrics don’t make a whole lot of sense but for a long time it was my favorite song in the world. Helene was hugging me so tight that I didn’t think I’d be able to fall back asleep, but I did. I think the words of that song do something to you, especially late at night when you’re in bed with your sister and suddenly she loves you. Which wasn’t always the case.
Sometimes Helene seemed mad at all of us and we hadn’t even done anything. Other times it was fits of crying. She was very emotional. Her and Ma used to get into some big fights. For some reason Ma didn’t like it when Helene fell in love, which she did quite often. I guess Ma didn’t want Helene running off and ruining her life. “I’m not you,” Helene yelled at her once, and Ma yelled right back, “Yes you are!” The fighting used to scare me, but when I think of it now I’d give them both Academy Awards. In my mind the fights are like a beautiful movie I wish I could watch again. Sometimes Helene would end up crying in Ma’s arms. And every once in a while I’d catch them on the couch downstairs, whispering to each other and laughing. Half the time they’d go mute when I walked into the room. It used to drive me crazy. What did they think I was, a spy trying to get at their secrets? “Come here,” Ma would say, “sit with us,” and of course I would, but it always felt like a test. I used to try to come up with something really funny just to impress them.
When I have a fit now, Ma just walks away. She won’t fight back like she did with Helene. Sometimes my fits are real, sometimes I make them up, but I don’t think Ma can tell the difference. The nightmares were real, the first few months, but it was always Da that came into my room. I still have bad dreams every once in a while, but my parents don’t know because I don’t cry out for them anymore. The Tree taught me how to breathe when I wake up from a bad dream, and how to train my thoughts. When you learn things like this, you can pretty much get along by yourself. You don’t need other people waiting on you hand and foot.
I spend a lot of time in H’s room. Sometimes I picture myself sleeping in there and Ma comes to the door and sees me under the covers and for a second she doesn’t know it’s me. She thinks it’s you-know-who. If that ever really happened, I wouldn’t say boo or anything, I wouldn’t want to give her a heart attack. I’d just lie there and keep the covers over my head and let Ma sort it out for herself.
A few weeks after Helene died, there was a night Ma and Da and I were having dinner and the phone rang. Except it didn’t come from the kitchen, it came from upstairs. It was the phone in Helene’s bedroom. Her princess line, as Ma called it. It rang like twenty times but nobody moved. The next day Ma had it disconnected. Did you ever see the movie where that grown woman goes back in time to the house she grew up in and the telephone rings and it’s the woman’s grandmother calling? And the two of them talk about nothing special but you can see the woman is crying because in the future where she came from the grandmother is dead. Movies can do stuff like that, that’s why they’re so important. Movies don’t have a problem with time and space. They’re not as restrictive as real life.
Even H’s cell phone is dead because it was crushed by the train. Apparently it was given to Ma and Da in a plastic bag. At least I have the love letters, if you can call them that. Based on my calculations there were about ten boys Helene was involved with. Not all at the same time of course, but in the last few years. Most of them I can picture because they’ve been to the house. But the most interesting one is a boy I’ve never seen, the boy of the last six months. He writes in full sentences and they’re good sentences too in my opinion. Louis is his name. LDM@blueforest.com. I’m almost a little in love with him and I don’t even know who he is. I can’t find a single Louis in H’s yearbooks so he’s probably from another school. He’s a bit of a sad sack in his messages, but he also has a sense of humor. I’m really quite fond of him.
I keep thinking to write him from my own e-mail but I’ve never done it. The funny thing is, H’s e-mail is still alive. Ma and Da set up Helene and me on the same account. When I sign on I always see H’s screen name right above mine, but I can’t get her mail because I don’t know the password. I’ve tried about a million words. I haven’t given up, though. I still make lists of words in my spare time.
Helene’s screen name is HeyGirl. I’m MattieSays. We’re both at mindfield.com. If you ever want to find us, that’s probably the best way to do it.
8 (#ulink_df691c9b-f0e3-5d8a-8eda-0fbbf10007be)
Anna and I are sitting in her living room. The TV is on but we’re barely watching it. Anna’s trying to get a splinter out of her finger and I’m making a tattoo of a snake on her ankle with a blue ballpoint.
“Don’t press so hard,” she says.
Helene used to draw tattoos on me. One time she made a masterpiece of red lips on the side of my shoulder. For a while I was really crazy about tattoos and I made Helene do a new one on me every week. Mostly we did it in secret because Ma worried about blood poisoning. But once, in the summertime, I was sunbathing on the lawn and she drew a giant flower right on my stomach, with the petals coming straight out of my belly button. When she was finished she sealed it with a kiss. “You’re a rock star,” she said, and I pretty much believed her.
The snake I’m doing on Anna is coming out pretty crappy and I consider turning it into an octopus. On television a man is having a conversation with a deaf boy. The boy is doing signs with his hands and grunting. Anna sighs and changes the channel with the clicker. She goes past a hundred things until she gets to the plastic surgery. At first I don’t even know what it is, for a second I think it’s a cooking show.
“Look,” Anna says, but I’m already looking. A doctor is pulling a loose piece of someone’s face, you can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman.
“Gross,” Anna says, but she doesn’t change the channel. “Oh my god,” she says. An assistant to the surgeon is sucking up blood with a tube. I get a funny feeling in my stomach. I used to be able to watch gross-outs but lately it’s not so appealing.
“I’m going upstairs,” I say.
Anna doesn’t move, she can’t take her eyes off the stupid television.
I really can’t stand it when other people have control over the clicker. No one ever watches what you want to watch. And then they always shut the TV off at the wrong moment. When I’m watching TV by myself my rule is to shut it off only after something good has happened, or when the last words you hear are not going to hurt you. You don’t want to shut it off in the middle of two people having an argument or someone saying pig or death or my car broke down. You want to make sure the last words are something like that would be great or world of your dreams or magically delicious.
When you go up the stairs in Anna’s house, you pass all these pictures of gardens painted by Anna’s mother. The flowers are good but the people are just blobs in the distance, they don’t even have faces. The blobs are standing under trees or sitting down to blobby picnics. Why even paint people if you’re not going to give them some character?
Anna’s bedroom is the perfect room of a girl, pink and white and fluffy. Everything is in its place. It’s easy to imagine people visiting this room in a hundred years. It would be like a museum. the bedroom of a girl would be the exhibit. This would be in the future when people sleep in pods and live forever. But I bet the room would still make them jealous. A huge bumblebee is knocking on the window. I kick off my shoes and sprawl on the bed.
“What are you doing up there?” Anna shouts. “Are you coming down?”
“No,” I say, “you come up here.”
I arrange myself on the bed like pornography but when Anna sees me she doesn’t get it.
“Why are you lying like that?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say, and I close my legs.
The bumblebee is still doing a number on the window, bonking its head. You have to feel sorry for animals like that, you really do.
Anna comes and sits next to me on the bed. She tilts her head like a doll. Suddenly she’s my nurse. She pushes the hair out of my face. Around us on the bed are pillows shaped like hearts. It really is another world.
You’re probably wondering how a person like me could have a friend like Anna. Why am I not surrounded by other brains? Why would Anna choose me is your question. But it’s not even the right question.
Beauty is not the boss. The mind is. The truth is, I chose Anna.
The beginning of Anna and me is historical. The place is the pool club at Randolph Park. The time is only five months ago.
I was sitting on a chaise longue, reading a novel. The Straw Hotel. It wasn’t on the summer reading list, I found it at a garage sale. The story concerns a woman with amnesia who might also be a killer, I won’t say in case you ever want to read it. Highly recommended.
Anyway, Anna was in the pool. She had on a yellow bathing suit. She was treading water and talking to another girl. I think it was Cheryl List but the other girl isn’t important. The two of them are whispering and laughing. Their hair is perfectly dry.
Standing at the side of the pool there’s a group of boys, also whispering. There’s a lot of intrigue at the pool club if you’re into that sort of thing.
This was the first time I noticed Anna’s eyes. They were like something you wanted to steal.
Suddenly one of the boys, Michael “Bigtooth” Flatmore, jumps in the water. His jump splashes Anna and so she splashes him back. Then Michael moves toward Anna and he dunks her. He lets her up for air and then he dunks her again. He has complete control over her, it’s disgusting. For sure, Michael is in love with Anna but all he can think to do is push her underwater. That’s how boys are. Probably he’s sexually frustrated.
Anna is gulping for air. Cheryl List doesn’t even help. When I jump in the water, Michael Flatmore turns and I pull him away from Anna. I call him a fucking idiot, even though that’s not an expression in my vocabulary. It just comes out of me. By accident I scratch his face. Anna is coughing and I lead her over to the edge. I was suddenly madder than I’d ever been in my whole life.
“Fucking idiot,” I scream back to Michael. The fat lifeguard finally wakes up and blows his silver whistle. “Keep it down,” he says.
I help Anna out of the pool. I ask if she’s okay, and she nods. But I can tell she’s suspicious of me. Why am I helping her? She can’t figure it out.
Michael Flatmore is out of the pool now. He walks past us. He’s completely humiliated. There’s even a little bit of blood on his face.
Anna and I stand there dripping for a long time.
“Do you want to get something to eat?” she finally says. “At the snack bar?”
In The Straw Hotel, Beatrice, the woman with amnesia, will only eat fruit.
“Let’s have smoothies,” I say.
“I’ll be right back,” Anna says. She goes into the bathroom and I wonder if she’s really going to come back out again. I can see Cheryl List on the other side of the pool talking to Michael Flatmore. Unbelievable. I’m still dripping and it almost looks like I’m peeing. Suddenly I think maybe someone is playing a trick on me. I start to feel sick. This still wasn’t the best time for me, as you can imagine.
But Anna did come out of the bathroom. Her wet hair was parted and combed. She even smiled at me. When I think of that day it was like Anna just appeared. Someone had to, and it was her.
When I sleep at Anna’s I always sleep in her bed. It’s huge. The sheets smell like milk. Hours after the bumblebee that’s where we were again, talking with the lights out. I noticed there was a lot of moonlight coming in the window, there was a nice patch of it on the carpet. We were talking about fall projects at school but neither of us were coming up with any brilliant ideas. I suggested we take off our clothes and lie in the moonlight.
“For fall projects?” Anna said. She gets confused if you change the subject too quickly.
“No,” I said, “just for tonight.”
“Why?” she said.
But I didn’t really have a reason.
“I’m not stripping,” she said. But she laughed.
“Nymphs do it,” I said.
“Do what?” she said.
“Bathe in the moonlight,” I said.
Anna’s eyes were glowing in the dark. “I don’t even know what nymphs are,” she said.
I told her that nymphs were beautiful young girls that live in the woods. “Spirits,” I said.
She said she didn’t want to be a ghost and I told her they weren’t ghosts exactly. I mentioned how they were related to the Greek gods.
“Are they immortal?” she said. Boy, did she know how to irritate me.
“Sometimes,” I said, “not always.”
“Most of them live for a long time,” I explained, “unless they have an argument with one of the gods. And they never lose their beauty or grow old,” I told her.
I also said that a woman’s breasts were born to live in the moonlight. I was really hamming it up until I had Anna blushing and laughing. I knew she wanted to do it.
“Just for a minute,” she said.
So we did it. We took off our tops and settled down on the floor, on our backs. We made ourselves cozy in the little box of moonlight.
“I don’t think the door’s locked,” Anna said. She started to get up but I grabbed her hand.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “no one can get in. And if they do,” I said, “they’ll be punished for looking at us.”
“Only the animals can look at us,” I said. And in fact Anna’s cat was doing just that. Staring at us from the bed.
The moonlight was coming in the window and it was almost like something definite. It wasn’t just empty air, it had fingers, it attached itself to our bodies. I noticed how Anna’s skin was a lot whiter than mine but I tried not to look because I didn’t want to make her nervous.
I told her how one day it wasn’t going to be just moonlight all over us.
“I know,” she said. “I think about it sometimes.”
“I think about it almost as if they were already on top of me,” she said.
Once I tried to get Luke to lie on my stomach to see what it would feel like. I don’t mean sex. I wasn’t naked or anything. I just wanted to understand the weight of another person. But it didn’t work. Luke just put his head on my stomach and then I petted him until we fell asleep.
“It’s going to hurt,” Anna said.
“Probably,” I said.
All of a sudden we burst out laughing. Then it was quiet for a while, except for my heart which was going about a mile a minute.
“What do you think of Kevin Ryder?” I said.
“Guukh,” Anna said. “Horrible.”
“Why?” I said.
She looked at me like I was off my rocker. “The clothes,” she said. “The hair.”
“Who does he think he is?” she said. “The devil?”
“He’s pretty nice,” I said.
Anna just shrugged and yawned. She was getting pretty comfortable on the floor, and so I peeked at her belly again. Boy, I couldn’t get over the whiteness of it. It looked like it was dusted with powder. It really did.
The heat was blasting in the house but I could feel the chill of moonlight on my skin like the invisible fingers of aliens. Plus other things, also invisible, passed between Anna’s body and mine. I bet I could have become pregnant with something that came off of her, some of that white powder. The alien fingers were moving it back and forth between us like bees.
If I could only put the white belly and the blue hair together, I’d have the most beautiful monster in the world.
Suddenly I noticed Anna was crying. It wasn’t sobbing, it was just quiet lines down her face. I looked at her and she looked at me.
This is happening, I think. Anna is crying. For some reason it made me happy.
“I don’t know,” Anna says to herself.
“I’m bleeding,” she says.
I don’t understand, and then she touches her stomach. “It started this morning.”
I ask her if it’s her first time and she says, “yes.”
She wipes her eyes.
“Maybe we should do some homework,” she says. “I don’t feel like sleeping yet.”
She stands up and puts her shirt back on. She gets her books and brings them to the moonlight. It’s the same world we’ve been living in, but different now. Everything starts to glow. The cat sees it. He sees the miracle. He comes over and rubs himself against Anna’s leg. Anna opens a book and inside is a picture of a bird, as well as the bones of a bird.
Awful, I say to myself. Lufwa.
Anna puts the book between us and we begin to do our homework inside the miracle. We’re in no rush. We have all the time in the world. We’re like the secretaries of god.
The first time I bled I thought I was going to die. I also cried.
When I first found out about Helene I didn’t cry right away. I was too busy noticing how many people were screaming in outer space and wondering why I had never heard them before.
There are a lot of worlds we don’t even know about.
In the moonlight I remember thinking: Anna bleeds today. In four days H.S.S.H.
9 (#ulink_a04baa18-456a-514c-b876-a5d93ed9a8a3)
Today I tried all the planets. Plus I tried about a hundred new Spanish words because it’s a language she studied in school. There’s still a Spanish dictionary in her room. And the planets probably popped into my mind because of the play. The Moons of Pluto. Tonight’s the big night, my big date with Ma and Da. Yesterday I had a terrific fit, with tears and everything, and Da called to get an extra ticket.
But as for the planets and the Spanish, nothing worked. Incorrect password, it said every time. After a while I started to feel like a criminal. Finally I moved on to the Bhagavad Gita for some inspiration. Do you know that book? I remember the day Helene bought it. We were coming out of Greenways Market with Ma, and a lady in colored sheets came up to us in the parking lot. I guess she was some sort of religious book dealer. Ma said no thank you but Helene wanted to take a look. Helene was pretty generous when it came to people in parking lots. Plus the book only cost five dollars and it had full-color illustrations. So I tried Krishna, Sanjaya, Arjuna, plus a bunch of other interesting names. Incorrect password, down the line.
Have you ever seen a picture of Krishna? He has blue skin and he was actually born that way, it’s not a dye-job. Sometimes he has two arms, sometimes four. He wears a gold crown with a peacock feather at the top. He’s fairly attractive, in a foreign sort of way. In the introduction to the Bhagavad Gita there’s a whole history of his life. When he was young he hung out with the cows and the milkmaids and he was quite the prankster. Once he stole a bunch of cheese and stuffed it in his cheeks, but when his mother pried open his mouth she didn’t see the cheese, she saw the whole universe. She nearly pooped her pants. That’s not a verbatim quote, the poop part. I just thought to modernize it for you a little bit, give it a little more pep. I bet I could be an excellent translator if I wanted. The job is basically pretending you’re a foreigner, but in your own language.
When Da saw me later with the book, he asked me what I was doing with it. I told him I was just looking at the pictures. Da’s not too keen on religious books. Plus it probably reminds him of you-know-who. The day she bought it she had it with her at the dinner table and she read all of us a passage. I was able to find the sentence because it’s one she underlined. When Arjuna saw many of his friends and relatives in the opposing army, he became overwhelmed, confused, and filled with compassion. The scraggly pencil line under the sentence is so pale it makes you want to cry. I’ve been carrying the little book around the house for hours, like it’s an expensive purse that goes perfectly with my outfit. Ma hasn’t noticed yet, or if she has she’s biting her lip.
I don’t know what I want exactly.
I guess in some ways I’d like to see her. A lot of people have seen the dead, it’s pretty well documented. One of the main ways they come back is in dreams. For some reason people used to see them a lot more in the old days. Supposedly poor people see them more than rich people. And old people more than young. Dogs supposedly see them all the time. I read a whole bunch of information on the Internet.
Sometimes when you see dead people they’ll want to give you something, but if it’s a piece of food you’re not supposed to eat it. Even if they try to give you money, don’t take it is the general rule. Because stuff from the land of the dead can be poison or it can bring you bad luck. You might suddenly be sucked into another world and you’d never be able to come back. If Helene wanted to give me an apple or a dollar bill, I would definitely take it. I wouldn’t hesitate.
But I’ve never seen Helene. She hasn’t come in a dream, not once, not in the right way, in one piece. She hasn’t ever stood under a tree in the backyard or under a streetlight at night. She hasn’t appeared in the house, floating down the hallway and tempting me to follow her. The only person who ever comes in a dream is the man who pushed her, but he doesn’t even have a face. Sometimes it’s just dreams of trains.
One of the things I wonder is: Do the dead want us to be dead too, or do they want us to be alive? Sometimes I wonder if Helene is jealous of me. Is she mad at me, does she wish we could swap places? And then I wonder does she even have a mind to think of me at all. Is there anything left of her out there? I’m glad I have the letters and the e-mails and the drawings. But the password is the most important thing, it’s like a locked door and behind it might be ghosts. Maybe it’s just old-fashioned ghosts that try to give you apples. Modern ghosts probably have new ways of doing things. They wouldn’t be against getting through to you electronically.
I also think Helene could be playing with me. The last year she was alive she ignored me all the time, so it could be the same game she’s up to now. But after a person is dead they should be different. After a person is dead they should be full of love and compassion. They shouldn’t be so cold.
Like for instance, Helene never let me wear her clothes. She had some pretty nice things. Tomorrow, I’ve decided, I’m going to wear one of her dresses. It’s part of my plan. The dress probably won’t fit perfectly but it doesn’t matter. I could almost be Helene if I wanted to. It might take a bit of work but so what. It’s an interesting idea. What would Ma think of that, if Helene suddenly showed up in the living room?
Tomorrow is the big day. One year exactly.
It’s funny, in a few years I’ll actually be older than Helene. Unless the dead grow old too. I don’t know how that works exactly. I remember a long time ago Ma used to have an ATM card with a secret code. Sometimes she let Helene and me punch in the numbers when we were at the grocery store or the bank. Ma made us promise not to ever tell anyone the magic numbers. And she told us a clever way to remember them. When Helene is twenty-six, she said, I’ll be forty-six.
2646
I wonder if Ma still has the card. If she does, she needs to change the code.
1646, for example. Ma could really put whatever age she wanted on her side and she’d never have to worry about doing the math for Helene. Even if the dead grow old in outer space, on Earth they stop where they stopped. Period, end of story. On Earth she’ll always be sixteen.
Dear Helene,
Sunday would be good for me, after 4. I have something for you, you’ll laugh when you see it. Working on a new song, I could use your help, it’s a fucking mess ahhhhhh. Let me know about Sunday.
Love, Louis
Helene had some ingenious hiding places for her letters and e-mails. I only found the ones from Louis a few months ago. Most of them were folded up and shoved inside a secret zipper compartment in the belly of a stuffed bear. I think I’m the only person who’s ever seen them. Not even the police noticed them when they came to the house and rudely went through H’s room like she was the criminal.
I keep the letters in the basement now, which is basically no-man’s land since Helene died. Ma and Da never go down there. It’s where Helene used to practice her singing when she didn’t want to be disturbed. Sometimes, if she was singing loud and you were in the kitchen, you could hear her voice come right up through the floor.
And I guess she sang with Louis. Which sort of breaks your heart if you think about it too much. Which I don’t!
I’ve been trying to call Anna for about an hour but there’s no answer. I wanted her opinion on what to wear to the play tonight. In the end I just called Kevin Ryder because I had to call someone. My heart was racing for some reason. Reading the love letters always puts me in a funny mood.
Kevin and I didn’t have much to say to each other. I asked him if he still had his hair.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“The blue,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s permanent,” and I asked him if his mother fainted.
“Practically,” he said.
We both laughed a little, which was nice.
“I’ve been thinking of changing my hair too,” I say.
“Maybe a different color,” I tell him.
I ask him can he recommend a good hair colorer.
“You can do it yourself,” he informs me.
I ask if maybe he can show me sometime, and he says, “sure.”
“It’s chemicals,” he says.
“I’m not afraid of chemicals,” I say.
“Don’t go blue,” he says.
“No,” I say, “I wouldn’t.”
“That’s your color,” I tell him.
Sometimes I know just what to say to people.
“Blue wouldn’t look good on me anyway,” I say.
“You could go black,” he says.
Black. Just the word gives me a heart attack.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I say.
And then that’s pretty much the end of the conversation.
“I have to go,” I say.
I don’t tell him I’m going to the theater with my parents. I don’t want to give him the wrong impression. Like I’m some kind of baby afraid to be alone in the house.
I want him to think of me as the girl with black hair, even though that’s not exactly the color I was thinking of. Red is more like it. But if I did red, I’d probably get struck by lightning. The watchers might not be too pleased. Or, who knows, maybe they’d be ecstatic. One thing I can tell you is they would definitely notice it, that’s for sure. Look at her, little miss redhead, we better keep our eye on that one. I can practically hear them already.
10 (#ulink_320b27bb-0b5a-54bb-b1ab-013f28754dad)
The play had absolutely nothing to do with space, nothing to do with planets. It was all about Joe and Judy Moon and their mentally retarded daughter who live—guess where? Pluto, Missouri. Which is not even a real place.
The play was definitely not my cup of tea. You believed everything but it was boring. You kept hoping the mentally retarded girl could secretly fly or read people’s minds, but this wasn’t the case. She was just retarded, and she hardly had any lines. What a role for an actor, it was mostly about drooling.
Ma wore a black dress with silver flowers on it. I forgot what a wonder she can be when she tries. She put her hair up and let a few snakes of it fall down the back of her neck. Da wore a black suit that made him look like a millionaire. It could have been the two of them before I existed.
I just wore jeans and a sweater. I’m saving the fashion fireworks for tomorrow. I’ve already chosen Helene’s dress. My dress. Hopefully I’ll be feeling better by then. My stom-ach’s still a little funny from everything that happened at that stupid play. My head’s not too great either. What a night, I’m telling you. Odious. Odious with cherries on top.
Our seats were good but at a bad play good seats are the last thing you want. It’s like death row. Da sat on the aisle and Ma sat next to him and then me. At one point Da took Ma’s hand. It was the sad part of the play when Judy Moon is talking about her life before Joe, when she was a professional ice skater. The signs outside the theater said “funny and touching,” but I didn’t laugh once. Da laughed exactly three times but only through his nose.
What was interesting was thinking about how these people were not really Joe and Judy Moon. They weren’t married in real life because in real life they were actors. In real life his name was William Miller and her name was Cynthia Callis. I kept feeling sorry for them except I didn’t know who I was feeling sorry for, Joe and Judy or William and Cynthia.
At intermission Ma ran into the bathroom. Da and I waited in the lobby. He had a glass of wine and I had a juice and a cookie.
“What do you think?” Da said.
“I thought it was supposed to be funny,” I said.
“It’s a different kind of funny,” Da said.
“What kind?” I asked him. But he didn’t answer me. He sipped his wine and looked up at the paintings on the ceiling.
“How about that?” he said. He sort of got lost up there.
Lately I’ve noticed Da is starting to disappear. He’s basically following Ma, but where is she even going?
“How’s your cookie?” he said.
“Awful,” I said.
I glanced around at the snazzy crowd in the lobby and I thought about the people who died at the opera last year. Drinking wine and eating cookies just like us. Da kept looking toward the bathroom. He looked nervous.
“She’s been in there a long time, huh?” He said it like maybe he wanted help.
I asked him did he want me to go get her. And just then the lights went on and off a few times, which means get back to your seat.
“You go and sit down,” Da said.
I just stood there. For some reason I felt like the three of us should stick together.
“Go on,” Da said. “That way you can tell us what happened if we miss anything. You know where our seats are, right?”
I nodded and then I just left him standing there with the glass of wine glowing in his hand. I didn’t look back. I’m superstitious about looking back at someone when you’re walking away from them, on account of that story about the musician who messes everything up when he’s walking out of the underworld. He gets the chance of a lifetime, but he’s twitchy and he blows it.
In the theater the curtain was closed but you could feel people breathing behind it. When I got to my seat the woman next to me looked over and smiled. “Are you having a nice time, honey?”
She was old and smelled like potpourri.
“Yes,” I said.
“I love that little girl,” she said. “Breaks your heart.”
“Do you think it’s funny?” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said. “The mother’s a card.”
I said to the old lady how I didn’t hear her laughing and she said she was laughing inside. Which I thought was an interesting comment. She patted her chest to show me where the secret laughter was hiding. And then the lights went down and she said, “Shhh,” as if I was the one who started the stupid conversation.
When the curtain parted it was a completely different world. The living room had vanished and the whole stage was white. You couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be the North Pole or heaven or were they just trying to blind us. The light was crazy bright.
Lucy Moon was onstage all by herself. Lucy was the daughter. She just stood there and for a long time nothing happened. It was like a mistake. Then finally Lucy started to make sounds. Half animal and half baby. I thought maybe this was supposed to be the funny part. I looked at the old lady next to me and she had her hand over her mouth and her eyes were all buggy.
When I looked back at the stage it had started to snow. It was fake snow but somehow even better than real snow. It was pretty amazing actually. Lucy Moon looked to her right and then to her left and then all of a sudden she screamed. It was the cry of the wild.
When Lucy stopped screaming she looked out into the audience. She looked right at me. I was in the third row, pretty close. “Help me,” she said. I didn’t like the sound of that. I turned around but I couldn’t see Ma or Da anywhere. When I looked back at the stage Lucy was still staring at me.
“I want to go home,” she said. But retarded-like. She was practically crying.
I could feel the heat moving up my neck.
I turned to the old lady. She made a gesture like I should get up and do something.
“It’s a play,” I said.
I had no idea what the hell was happening, it was like I was dreaming.
The old lady put her mouth by my ear. “Audience participation,” she said.
Lucy was holding out her hand toward me.
“I don’t know the lines,” I said. My neck was really burning. Even my throat was on fire.
“Be a good sport,” the old lady said. And she pushed me a little.
I looked at Lucy and I shook my head. Everybody was staring at me. I could feel the cookie moving around in my stomach. Finally Lucy turned to someone else thank god, a man in a red shirt. He got up from his seat and climbed the stairs toward the stage. The old lady clicked her tongue at me. Fuck you, I said. Except I didn’t say it for real. I said it inside ha ha like her stupid laughter.
And I don’t even know what the man in the red shirt did for Lucy because I’d turned to look for Ma and Da again. But the next thing I knew the snow had stopped and Lucy was kissing the man’s cheek. Thank you, she said. Dank you. I watched the man go back to his seat, smiling and brushing the fake snow from his shoulders like he was some kind of hero. And when I looked back at the stage all the furniture was there again, I don’t know how they did it. And there was Lucy, safe and sound, smack in the middle of her living room. And then Joe and Judy entered like nothing had happened and the stupid chitchat started up again.
That’s when I threw up on Ma’s empty seat. I kept my head down in case it happened again. I felt a tap on my shoulder. But it wasn’t them. It was the old lady.
“Here,” she said. She was trying to pass me a hanky.
“Wipe the seat,” she said.
When I sat back up I didn’t watch any more of the play. I closed my eyes and counted. My face felt like it was melting. When it was finally over I ran down the aisle while everyone was clapping. I realized I still had the old lady’s hanky and I threw it on the ground. Ma and Da were by the back door and I wanted to grab onto them but I just stormed past them.
“Hey hey,” Da said, “slow down.”
I ran outside. It had turned cold and the wind was snapping some flags.
“They wouldn’t let us back in,” Da said.
I looked at Ma.
“You didn’t see it?” I said. It made me crazy that she might not have seen the snow or the screaming or how I got sick on her seat.
“We watched it from the back,” Da said.
“You can’t just disappear,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Ma said.
Da asked me what was wrong.
“I don’t feel well,” I said.
Ma touched my forehead but it didn’t mean anything. She didn’t keep her hand there for more than a second.
“You don’t have a fever,” she said.
“How would you know?” I shouted.
Da coughed. “I’ll get the car,” he said.
I stared at Ma as hard as I could.
“I thought it was going to be about space,” I said.
Ma laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
My old feelings came back and I hated her stronger than ever.
“The acting was good,” Ma said.
“Drool school,” I said.
Ma was half-smiling but I could see how fake it was. Cynthia Callis would have done a much better job. Ma’s dress was flapping in the wind and I thought, just fly away if that’s what you want.
“What did you say?” Ma said.
“Nothing,” I said. I felt like the streetlights were punching me in the face.
“Here,” Ma said, and she put her sweater over my shoulders.
“I’m not cold,” I said. But I was freezing.
I could seehow scared Ma was that I might start screaming. The way I used to scream the first few months, when I woke up from the dreams. In some ways, I thought, I have Ma in the palm of my hand. I imagined breaking her in a million pieces. I wanted to put my fingers around her throat and make her start singing.
“Here comes your father,” she said.
Da came around with the car and I ran over to it. I lay down on the back seat and wrapped Ma’s sweater around my head, which meant, Keep Out, Private Property.
No one said anything the whole way home. Ma’s sweater had perfume on it, the kind I love that smells like powder, but tonight it just made me sicker. I thought I heard Ma and Da whispering at one point but when I poked my head out of the sweater I realized it was just the radio. Da had put it on real low. It was the voices of strangers.
I have to get out of here, I thought. I started crying but I swallowed it.
“What are you eating?” Ma said.
That’s when I stopped breathing. I made myself into a dead person.
But then I had to breathe again, I couldn’t help myself.
When we were pulling into the driveway I saw Da’s eyes in the mirror. I guess he saw me as well. We looked at each other for a second, and with the mirror between us it was almost like the truth was coming out.
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