Torn Away

by Jennifer Brown

  Curiosity kicked in and despite myself, I turned to see what “this” was. She reached around the doorframe and held out a phone.

  “I thought you might want to call your friends. I’m sure you’re wondering what’s happening back at home.” She waggled the phone in the air. “You can talk as long as you need to. We don’t mind.”

  I did want to call my friends, actually. Even though I had already talked to everyone that morning—everyone except Kolby, that was—and even though Dani’s mom had sold me out to Ronnie, I still wanted to talk to someone familiar. But if I took that phone from my grandmother, if I made that concession, she would think I wanted to be here. So I went back to staring at the photo silently and refused to look again until she had backed out of the doorway and shut the door behind her.

  I’d purposely missed dinner. Had even crawled into bed and closed my eyes when she knocked, knowing she’d leave me alone if she thought I was asleep.

  But I was starving, so when I stopped hearing the voices of the TV and the strip of living room light blinked out under my doorway, I crept to the kitchen. I froze when I found my grandfather sitting at the kitchen table, with only the light fixture above the table illuminating him. I noticed a traditional solitaire game laid out in front of him. He was missing an obvious black seven, red six.

  “Patty left you a plate in the refrigerator,” he said when I walked in. “Pot roast. She makes the best in the world.”

  I didn’t answer. I contemplated going back to my room. But I was so hungry, and pot roast sounded too good to be true.

  I padded over to the refrigerator and found the plate, ripped off the plastic wrap, and heated the food in the microwave.

  “We ask that you don’t eat outside of the kitchen,” he said, still not looking up from his game. He’d found the red six but had gotten stuck again.

  The microwave beeped and I sheepishly took my plate to the table, after first pulling open every drawer in the kitchen to find silverware. He didn’t try to help me find it, and I was oddly grateful for his lack of effort. I sat on the end opposite my grandfather, keeping my eyes straight down on the plate.

  He softly cursed and I heard him gather up the cards and shuffle them.

  “She’s grieving, too,” he said, breaking the silence between us. I paused, then resumed chewing, still facing the pot roast, which was so tender it melted in my mouth. I hadn’t had anything this good to eat since the tornado. “Even though we hadn’t heard from Chrissy in sixteen years, your grandmother still hoped every day your mom would come around. So she’s grieving. She feels like it’s been sixteen years wasted.” He paused, the slapping sound of cards on the Formica telling me he was laying out a new hand of solitaire for himself. “We both do,” he added. “We didn’t even know about your half sister.”

  “Sister,” I said, before I could stop myself. I felt my face flush with heat over having spoken.

  “I stand corrected,” he said in a very matter-of-fact voice. Slap. Slap. “Your sister.”

  I scraped the last bit of mashed potatoes onto my fork and licked it off, wishing I had another plateful. I got up and took my plate to the sink, rinsed it, placed it in the dishwasher, and poked through cabinets until I found one with drinking glasses. I filled a glass with tap water and took a big swallow. Everything felt too normal, too much like home. But this house wasn’t home for me. I wouldn’t let it be. Maybe this was what Mom meant by the oppression being contagious here. Maybe I’d already caught it.

  “Anyway,” my grandfather said, as if he’d never stopped talking, though it had been several minutes since he’d last spoken, “you might find that you can help each other out, your grandma and you.”

  I blinked at him, trying to convey my doubt with silence. He got stuck again and started flipping through the deck. He hadn’t moved the ace of hearts up to the top, which would have freed up a whole slot of cards. But I didn’t tell him that.

  I walked to my bedroom and crawled back into bed, my stomach full, my eyes heavy.

  I was asleep seconds after my head hit the pillow.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  When I got back to the bedroom after my shower the next morning, I found that my cell service had been turned off. I held the phone in my hand for a long moment and stared at it. I had expected it would be shut off at some point, but there was something so depressing and final about it. Like my last grasp on my old life had let go.

  My grandmother had left a plate of Pop-Tarts on the dresser, along with a glass of apple juice. I wolfed it all down and sat on my bed, wondering what to do next.

  I was well rested and my stomach was full. I didn’t want to watch TV, mostly because there was no TV in my bedroom, and I didn’t want to risk running into my grandparents in the living room. But I was getting bored and lonely with no entertainment, and though I wanted to make the statement that these people were to be loathed by me, I knew eventually I would have to come out and talk. I had nowhere else to go. Even I could admit, it wasn’t reasonable to believe I could live with my grandparents for the next year or more and not ever talk to them.

  I grabbed the phone my grandmother had left on the dresser the day before and headed outside, where a striped patio swing looked out over an eager garden. I sat down, sinking my bare toes into the thick grass. I called Dani first.

  “Do you hate me?” she asked.

  “No. I wish you would have warned me, but I don’t hate you.”

  She whispered into the phone. “It’s my mom. She thinks you’re going to have a mental breakdown or something, and she doesn’t want to have to be the one to handle it. Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you going to have a mental breakdown? I mean, your mom died.”

  “I know she died, Dani,” I said, trying to shake the irritation. Why on earth would her mom pull away from me if she thought I needed help? My mom had been right—Dani’s parents thought like lawyers. “And I don’t think so. I mean, I’m not sure. What does a mental breakdown feel like?”

  “I don’t know. Like you’re going to lose it? I think I would be losing it if I were you.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. I was feeling a too-familiar anger welling up inside me. I’d never been an angry kind of person, and it didn’t make sense why it kept coming back. I was sad, not angry. I was scared and lonely, but I didn’t understand why I felt so mad. Being mad all the time did sort of make me feel like I was losing it. “I guess,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters.”

  “Not to your mom.”

  “Come on, Jersey. That’s not fair. My mom’s got a lot going on right now, too.”

  Really? I wanted to scream into the phone. Like what? Did some shingles get damaged? Did she have to go without her blow-dryer for a whole week? Did the poor baby break a nail picking up a board in her driveway? How on earth did she possibly manage? Instead, I concentrated on my breathing, trying to will away the fury.

  “Hello?” Dani said.

  “I’m here.”

  “Hey, um, not to change the subject, but I heard something about Kolby.”

  I let go of the bridge of my nose and sat up straighter. “What?”

  “It’s probably just a rumor, but someone said he got this weird infection in his arm.”

  “Yeah. He did. I tried to call him a couple times. He was in the hospital over in Milton.”

  There was a pause. “I heard it was pretty serious is all.”

  “How serious?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But something in her voice told me she did know; she just didn’t want to say. I needed to talk to Kolby myself.

  “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back,” I said.

  “Okay, but about my mom? Don’t be mad.”

  Just let it go, my brain seethed. Let it go. “Yeah, it’s all right. I’m not,” I said. “I’m going to try to call Kolby again.”
/>   “Call me back when you know what’s up,” she said. “Everybody’s wondering.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I hung up and immediately dialed Kolby’s cell, pacing back and forth through the grass, kicking up swarms of tiny flying bugs.

  “Hello?” Still not Kolby.

  “Tracy? It’s Jersey. Is Kolby there?”

  “Um. Jersey? Yeah, he’s here, but um… hang on.”

  It seemed like it took a long time, but when the phone was finally picked up again, it was Kolby on the other end.

  “Hey,” he said. He sounded bleary. “Are you back in Elizabeth?”

  “No. I’m in Waverly with my grandparents. But what’s going on with you? Is it serious?”

  “It’s fine. I got an infection in the cut on my arm. It’s some fungus spelled with about a thousand letters. The doctor said something about it being common after natural disasters.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  He cleared his throat, his voice craggy and clotted. “I guess it damaged a lot of tissue. Real gross-out stuff. Looked like something out of a comic book. I half expected a bionic arm to pop out.” He laughed weakly.

  “But it’s healed now, right?”

  “Sort of. They had to do a skin graft.” He chuckled. “They took skin off my butt and put it on my arm.”

  I stopped pacing. “Wait. You had surgery?”

  “Yeah. But I’m getting out of here soon. I have to relax for a while, make sure it heals up and stuff. Not a big deal.”

  “Sounds like a pretty big deal,” I said. Kolby, who played baseball in the street all summer long, who skateboarded and pushed his sister on swings and pulled his mother out through their basement window on the day of the tornado, had to have surgery? Because of a cut? How was this possible?

  He yawned loudly. “So I should probably go. The pain meds are kicking in, and you never know what I’m gonna say on those. I might profess my deep abiding love for your toe lint, no joke.” I could hear the smile in his voice, but I couldn’t match it. It seemed like the hurt would never stop coming. I felt shaken, frail.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me know when you get out of the hospital. Take care of yourself. I mean it.”

  “You keep being bossy like that, and I’ll be forced to touch you with my butt-arm.” He yawned again.

  “I’m being serious, Kolby,” I said, though I couldn’t help smiling a little. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Aw, Jers, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you miss me a little.”

  I closed my eyes. “More than you could ever know,” I said.

  After hanging up, I stood in the middle of my grandparents’ backyard, barefoot and shivering. The phone dropped from my hand and landed in the grass, but I made no move to pick it up. I was shaking so hard my fingers couldn’t hold the telephone. Maybe Dani’s mom was right—maybe I was losing it and I was too far gone to even know. Maybe this was what losing it felt like.

  “Jersey?” my grandmother’s voice sounded from the sliding glass door.

  I turned slowly. “Huh?” Speaking, without even meaning to.

  “We’re headed to the grocery store. Why don’t you come along?”

  I nodded. Despite myself, I freaking nodded. Sure, the grocery store, why not? My whole stupid world is falling apart, so why not the freaking grocery store, right? Because grocery stores, those are normal and those are sane and those might make me normal and sane.

  Half an hour later, I found myself trudging down the cereal aisle, the bread aisle, passing the canned goods and the pasta. My grandparents chattered as if this were the most exciting day of their lives, reading labels and pointing at sale tags and asking, asking, asking me so many questions, until I felt like my brain might explode.

  “Jersey, do you eat biscuits and gravy? Your grandfather makes wonderful biscuits and gravy, Jersey.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Jersey, what kind of deodorant do you wear, honey? What kind of shampoo, Jersey? Do you need a razor, Jersey, a hairbrush, Jersey, do you like these protein bars, do you drink a lot of milk, do you like oranges, Jersey, Jersey, Jersey?”

  “Yeah. Okay. That’s fine. No. I don’t know.”

  My grandmother stopped and talked to no less than ten other people, gave them all the same spiel: This is our granddaughter, Jersey. I’m sure you heard about the tornado up in Elizabeth. Such a sad, sad thing. Yes, we lost our only daughter. It’s very traumatic for all of us, but we’re muddling through, aren’t we, Jersey?

  And then would come the introductions, as if we were at some stupid cocktail party: Jersey, this is Anna, this is Mary, this is Mrs. Donohue. Her son is a marine, her daughter teaches English at the community college, she used to babysit your mother, can you believe it?

  To all observers, we were a reunited family on the mend. My grandparents, the saints, had taken in a sullen, sunken-eyed, purple-haired granddaughter they didn’t even know and were helping her rebuild her life. We shopped together. It was so cute.

  I wanted to vomit.

  I wanted to scream and run out into the parking lot and hurl cans of green beans through the windows. I wanted to bash the headlights out of Anna the marine-mother’s car. I wanted to lie down on the cool tile and press my cheek against it, fall asleep, cry, rage, rampage, hurt things, hurt myself.

  But instead, I nodded. I answered questions.

  Because I had no other choice.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Waverly mall could hardly be called a mall. It was mostly two department stores, with a couple food stands placed here and there, and almost no people. My grandmother led me around the clothing racks, asking questions about sizes and taste, herding me into fitting rooms with armloads of shirts and shorts and bras. I tried them all on dutifully, but within moments of leaving the fitting room I couldn’t even be sure if I’d been in there at all. I didn’t remember what anything looked like on me, and I didn’t care.

  I stuffed my feet into shoes and picked up shiny, glinting earrings and carried around shopping bags, while my grandmother ran a never-ending monologue about clothes and the changing nature of fashion. She asked me questions, so many questions it made my ears throb. Do you like to wear shorts, Jersey? Oh, Jersey, what do you think of this shirt, aren’t the hearts cute? Jersey, try this one on. I think that’ll look great on you, Jersey. What kinds of things did you wear at home, Jersey? I wanted to plug my ears, to slap my palms over them and start chanting la-la-la to drown her out.

  At my other grandparents’ house, I’d been able to shut myself down, bit by solitary bit. But here it was impossible. I felt under a microscope, heated by a spotlight, poked and prodded and analyzed. Day after mind-numbingly normal day, my grandparents dragged me places, talked to me, showed me things, introduced me to people, made me participate, even though doing so meant I felt like an open sore, too roughed over to ever develop a protective scab. I began to feel like an exposed nerve.

  “You hungry for lunch, Jersey?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said, that same mechanical response I’d been giving her all day long.

  “You like nachos?”

  “Okay.”

  I sat at a food court table, surrounded by shopping bags full of things I couldn’t remember choosing, much less caring about, while my grandmother ordered a plate of nachos to share. She came back and we ate mostly in silence.

  Finally, as I picked up the last nacho, she said, “How would you like to go to church with me on Sunday, Jersey?”

  I paused, the nacho dripping most of its ingredients back onto the tray. “No.”

  She tipped her head sideways. “But there are so many kids there your age. I thought you might like to get to know some of them before school starts in the fall.”

  I felt a headache begin to pang on the side of my head. I didn’t even want to think about school—about starting senior year as a new kid.

  “No,” I said, dropp
ing the nacho and wiping my hands on a napkin.

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” Because I’m tired of everything being new. Because I just want something familiar. Because making new friends might mean getting rid of old ones. Because I can’t think when you keep saying my name like that. “Because I’ve never been to church.”

  She frowned. “You mean Christine didn’t ever take you?”

  I shook my head, trying to look self-righteous about it, as if my mom had a great reason not to take me to church and how dare she, my grandmother, the woman who hadn’t even known my mom for over a decade, question it.

  She pressed her lips into a tight line. “Well, that surprises me. She loved church. She came to church every Sunday before she got mixed up with that Clay Cameron. I’d have thought once he left her, she’d go back to her church home.”

  “Her home was with me,” I said. “She didn’t need church.”

  We ate in silence for a few moments, me trying to picture Mom in a church. It was getting so hard to remember her with all these new versions coming at me every time I turned around. Clay’s version, my grandparents’ version, my version—they were getting muddy, competing, blurring her memory. It felt like trying to recall someone I’d never met.

  “Would you be willing to try it once?” my grandmother asked. “If you hate it, you’ll never have to go back. But it was very important to your mother at one time. You can see where she grew up.”

  I rolled my eyes, but my resolve was weakening. I imagined walking into a stuffy church and hating it, feeling looked down upon by everyone inside. I imagined myself tipping my head back and railing at God—How could you? How could you do this to me?

  But I could also see me walking in there and feeling enveloped by Mom, by Mom’s past, a past I didn’t know about. I could see me learning about her there.

  “Will I be going to the same high school she did?” I asked, trying to buy myself time to think.

  “Yes.” My grandmother wiped her mouth, letting me change the subject. “Waverly Senior. You guys are the Tigers.”