The Other Half of Happy

by Rebecca Balcarcel

  But he still won’t look me in the eyes.

  We sit around a big table and everyone gets quiet. We all look at Aunt Jess. I think we’re waiting for a prayer.

  “Let’s make this ecumenical,” Aunt Jess says. Her friends seem to know this word. “You know, include everyone’s spiritual path.” So Mom says a Christian prayer. “Heavenly Father, we thank you for your many blessings, especially the love of friends and family near and far. May your love spread around this table and around the world. Amen.” Aunt Jess raises her hands, closes her eyes, and chants “Om” loudly, three times, sending good energy into the universe and to every soul.

  Dad quotes a Mayan prayer: “From the center, from the source, which is everywhere at once, may everything be known as the light of love.”

  Grandma would have liked it all. Mom and Aunt Jess said she was stronger by the time they left. Next year, everything will be back to normal.

  After we eat, Aunt Jess calls everyone into the living room. “I have a game for us!”

  “Scattergories? Apples to Apples?” Mom guesses.

  “Nope. Pho-Doh! I invented it. It uses photos and Play-Doh. Get it? Pho and dough.” Crazy games are so Aunt Jess.

  She brings out a stack of family photos and lays them out in a grid. “Bring me that basket, would you, Qui?” I lug it to the coffee table and find it’s full of Play-Doh canisters. “Teams guess which photo the sculptor is creating,” she explains. “You get three minutes!”

  She’s on my team and shapes the Play-Doh into fingers dripping from a flat surface. “Conan’s Pizza!” I shout, thinking it looks like melting cheese. She keeps making fingers. “Mama’s Pizza?” The timer is close to running out as she adds some stumpy fingers coming up from the bottom. Those aren’t cheese, they’re stalagmites! “Inner Space Cavern!” We fist-bump, and I put the photo of us at the cave in my team’s stack. When a photo of me on Dad’s shoulders comes up, he looks away, but I don’t. He used to let me be myself. That’s the real me in the picture, and it’s the real me sitting here, too. He’s the one who moved the goalposts.

  As we play, Memito takes the Play-Doh and makes balls out of four different colors. When he smooshes them together, I try to stop him, but Aunt Jess says mixing the colors is part of his “creative process” and doesn’t mind. Of course, he yells when he realizes his hands are coated with Play-Doh dusties and stickies, but he seems to have come around to the idea by the time Mom carries him to the sink to rinse.

  The day feels empty without Grandma, like a living room missing its couch, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. And she’s recovering, I remind myself. She’ll be even better by the time I get there. When I check my phone, I see she’s sent a string of different-colored hearts.

  On Sunday morning, I bundle up and walk to the grocery store to buy an envelope and stamp. I slip the form inside the envelope and drop it in the mailbox in the parking lot. It’ll go out tomorrow. Once Grandma signs it, they’ll have to let me board the bus. I bet Dad won’t even mind that I’m not in Guatemala. He’ll be glad because I won’t embarrass him.

  I unzip my coat and hang it on the hook in the entryway. “I’m back from my walk,” I call. Mom meets me with damp cheeks and a hug.

  “What is it?”

  She pulls back and looks me straight in the eyes. “I’m so sorry, Qui. I wish there were a good way to say this.” Fear squeezes my heart, and I swear it stops. “This morning, Grandma didn’t respond when the nurse rang the doorbell. A neighbor let the nurse in the house, and . . . Grandma passed away in her sleep last night.”

  Died? I don’t cry. It doesn’t seem real. For some reason, the first thing I think is She won’t get my letter. “You said she was better.”

  Mom nods, tears standing in her eyes.

  “I thought she was better, Mom,” I repeat, not sure how this news can be true.

  Mom hugs me again and leads me to the living room. Dad’s there with his head in his hands. Slowly, bits of loss float down. No more homemade cinnamon rolls. No more canoeing on spring break. My mind bumps against no-mores for what feels like hours. We sit in the living room in silence, except for Memito’s little chirps as he rocks in a big plastic rocking fish from Aunt Jess. My thoughts rock back and forth, too, between believing it and not believing it, thinking of happy times and remembering all over again that she’s gone. Dad puts his arm around me and actually talks. “She loved you so much.”

  I want to thank him. I want to say, It feels so good to have you love me again, even for a minute, but I don’t trust my voice. In my room, I take out my sea turtle bracelet. Tears pool in my eyes. Did she know how much I loved her? Will I ever be as brave as she was? Will I remember all her wisdom? I sit on my bed, clutch the bracelet, and let the tears fall.

  Evening darkens the windows before I realize: Guatemala. I’ll have to go to Guatemala. I wince as I think how selfish I am. Legitimate sadness is what I should be feeling—all the conversations we’ll never have and the hugs I’ll never give her. But legit sadness mixes with selfish sadness—the form she can’t sign, the bus I can’t take, the plane I’ll have to board. My head spins, and I guess I zombie-walk through changing into jammies and brushing my teeth. I don’t remember any of it.

  At some point, I text Zuri and Jayden to let them know. Before long, they each call, but I can’t bring myself to answer. As night shrouds the house, Mom and Dad appear at my bedside. We say a prayer together and send our love to Grandma, but I don’t feel any better. I go back to crying. I don’t remember falling asleep.

  I wake up to a bright bedroom. Mom has let me sleep late. No school for me today, I guess.

  “I made pancakes,” she says. Grandma’s breakfast.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Between flipping pancakes, she adds items to a list on the counter. “So many details,” she says, sighing. Instead of tears, she pours out pencil marks. I can’t believe she’s in planning and tactical mode after only one day. Maybe she’s tired of crying.

  I take a pancake, but I can’t eat more than half. The syrup turns sour in my mouth. Memito eats two. He doesn’t understand why today is different from every day before it.

  Mom and Dad spend all day on their phones. I hear them tell the story to different people, sniffling each time. Mom talks to Aunt Jess three times, first to plan a memorial service, later to schedule some legal thing, and again to plan how to pack up Grandma’s house in Florida. I wander from my room to the kitchen and back. Not even my phone tempts me. I can’t bring myself to care what the rest of the world is doing.

  Finally I carry the step stool to my room and close the door. I position it under the manatee poster and step up. The bus ticket pulls out easily from between the ceiling and the poster. I hold it, stare at it. This little piece of paper would have taken me to Grandma. To her wise eyes and adventurous soul at 10:35 p.m. on December 19.

  I rip the ticket in pieces and drop them in my trash can. There goes that idea. What a waste. Hopefully no one will ever ask to see the huipil.

  I tramp to the backyard, where the grass has turned brown for the winter. I kick Memito’s red ball against the brick wall of the house.

  The ball bounces back to me, and I kick it again. Each time it comes back, I kick harder. I kick over and over. I kick the doorbell that went unanswered in Florida. I kick the phone that brought the news. I kick the tears. I kick the cancer. I kick until I am nothing but a kicker, my ears filled with my own pumping blood and the bam, bam of ball on wall. Bam!

  On flattened leaves, the ball sits at my feet. It’s stubbornly unaffected; completely undented; a round, permanent fact. I give it one more kick, then wander to the swing. I’m hoping to be alone and pump hard into the air, but Dad brings Memito to the door and calls, “Can you watch him, Quijana?”

  Before I can answer, Dad disappears into the house. I sigh. Is it wrong to want a day off from being a big sister? Memito runs to the swing and pulls on the chains. “My turn,” I tell him. “I’m swingi
ng. Go to your sandbox.” He pulls at my fingers, trying to uncurl them from the chain. “Look, there’s your ball.” I point. He pushes on my back and grunts. “Okay, fine.” I get up, and he goes stomach-first onto the swing. Is this what life really is, one thing after another being taken away? I sit on the concrete square by the back door until Memito’s ready to go in.

  Mom talks through supper. Cremation arrangements in Florida. A meeting at the bank. Moving companies, flights, storage. When she’s finally out of words, Dad says, “Kimberly,” and her poise gives way. They stand and hold each other. I come to join them, hoping Dad can love me right now. We’re a triple hug. Mom’s and Dad’s hands are warm weights on my shoulders. Not heavy enough to still my heart’s shuddering, but solid enough to hold me close.

  FOR GRANDMA’S MEMORIAL SERVICE, I zip myself into a dress. Under Memito’s chubby chin, I re-clip a bow tie every time he rips it off.

  Finally, Mom says, “It’s okay. Leave it off.” She smiles at Memito, but her tears start. “Today’s not a good makeup day,” she laughs, wiping her eyes. “I’ll cry it off before we even get there.” Seeing Mom cry in dress-up clothes makes the world melt a little.

  It’s a weekday, but it feels like an un-day, a day in an alternate time line. I’m not in school; Dad’s not at the radio station; Memito didn’t get dropped off at preschool. Mom is dabbing her eyes in the front seat of the car instead of teaching a class.

  We drive down a street I recognize to a building I don’t. “When did this get here?” I ask. A wood-sided chapel has materialized next to the bank we use. I must’ve passed it in the car and on the school bus a hundred times, even walked by it as Mom pushed Memito in a stroller. I never saw it before.

  Aunt Jess greets us in the foyer. “Oh, Kimmy,” she says, hugging my mother. The two sisters look into each other’s eyes, seeming to send silent messages they both understand. Aunt Jess kisses me on the cheek, then my father. Her lip is quivering, but she keeps her tears in check. I can tell she’s trying to be strong.

  Tía Lencha is here, too, with Tío Pancho, Raúl, Mirabel, and Crista, all dressed in church clothes. Raúl pulls at his collar, but the girls envelop me in their arms. “Quijana, you must be heartbroken!” Their tears wet my shoulder, and I feel bad that I’m not crying. But for some reason, I can’t. Maybe I’m all cried out.

  I remember something Dad told me about Guatemala. When someone dies, wailing women follow the casket to the graveyard, sobbing loudly. When the departed spirit hears the wailing, it understands that it’s on the other side. I guess that explains why Tía Lencha is wringing Mom’s hand, choking out loud words between tears, sobbing and waving her Kleenex. “Pobrecitos!”

  Dad keeps blinking tears, too. He told me to expect this, saying, “We express openly.”

  Only I am wooden. Only I seem to be watching this moment instead of living it. I feel less Carrillo-like than ever. I can’t stop touching my sea turtle bracelet to make sure it’s there.

  Ushers hand each of us a carnation as we step into a plush-carpeted room. Grandma’s death blooms into reality when I see a picture of her at the front, and I grip Mom’s hand. Grandma’s body is being cremated in Florida, but the large photo makes it seem like she’s here and not anywhere at the same time. “Death will be a great adventure,” she’d said. I almost expect the photo to wink. I lay the carnation against my cheek, its silky petals reminding me of the bird feathers Grandma and I used to find on our walks and take home to look up.

  I grip my bracelet. Finally, tears blur my vision. Out of nowhere, Mom hands me a Kleenex. I think of questions I should have asked Grandma. What do I pack for a weeklong hike? Why do manatees do barrel rolls? How did you know you were in love? I think of all the reasons I need her. To tell me about my mom as a kid. To show me the ocean’s secrets. To show me how to make life an adventure. What will I do without her?

  The mournful organ music holds my hand and twists my heart. I look down at my brother, who’s drawing on a Magna Doodle. I’m glad he’s occupied and not crying. He’s the only person here who doesn’t know she’s gone. Or maybe he’s the one who has it all figured out. Just stay in your own Tinkertoy world where nothing can hurt you.

  Then again, he’ll never know Grandma Miller, never paddle her canoe among the manatees. I should be thankful for all the years I had with her, I know; I should be glad I’m luckier than Memito.

  But a stone sits on my heart. When I was little, I thought I wanted to grow up; now I wish I could unknow things. I wish I could slide the Magna Doodle’s eraser bar and redraw this whole year.

  Mom squeezes my shoulder. “It’s time,” she says, and we take our carnations to the front. Each person lays a flower in front of Grandma’s picture. I place my flower and look into Grandma’s eyes. Her gaze radiates wisdom and love and every good thing I can think of. She wants me to be happy, I know. But I’m not sure happiness will ever be the same.

  I linger at her picture until Mom leads me away by the hand.

  As I walk back to the pew, the sight of Raúl sitting between his parents makes me frown. He looks so comfortable, a knee touching one parent, an elbow touching the other. Anyone can see that he belongs to both of them. The whole family looks like a matched set. Eyes and hair the same color. Spanish on their tongues. Heat behind my eyes turns from tears to anger—not at them, but at us. They should go to Guatemala, not us. My family looks like furniture bought at a thrift store. Dad and me darker, Mom and Memito lighter. Spanish a fabric we ran out of.

  Without Grandma Miller, I’ll be shoved onto a plane. Yanked out of my country. Dropped into a boiling pot of trilled r’s. Grandma, why did you leave me?

  Aunt Jess hugs me once more before we go. “Quijana, I’m so glad we all have each other. I want you to visit more, okay?”

  “That’d be great,” I say automatically, not feeling it much, but trying to look appreciative.

  “When spring break comes, I’ll take you to my favorite places in Fort Worth—Spiral Diner, Sundance Square, the Kimbell Art Museum. We’ll have ice cream, okay? I know it won’t be the same as Florida. . . .”

  “I’d love it, Aunt Jess.” This time I mean it. I understand. With a little surge of panic, I hug her again. We have to enjoy each other while we can.

  At home, I’m looking forward to being alone. What I’d really like to do is play the guitar or take a long walk with Jayden. Both impossible. “Can I go out and swing?” I ask Mom. I imagine singing to myself out there, letting part of me slip into the sky. But before she can say yes, neighbors arrive, hands full of casseroles and cobblers and pots that plug into the wall. We say “thank you” so many times that I run out of sincerity.

  It’s not until late that night that I discover I’m hungry. I serve myself some pizza and peach cobbler, and it’s good. Good enough. But the torn place inside aches worse than ever.

  I WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT thinking of ways to stay home from Guatemala—tie myself to Aunt Jess’s red oak tree, lock my bedroom door and refuse to come out. Dreams take over, and I run up and down aisles of the Latino grocery store, finding no exit. The back wall becomes an ocean where I see Grandma standing on the back of a whale. She gets smaller and smaller as the whale swims out to sea.

  When I wake, my heart is pumping fast. School, I remind myself. Just make it through the day.

  Memito is on the dining room floor when I walk in for breakfast. He’s turned his Tonka truck upside down again, and is spinning one wheel round and round. “Time to eat, m’ijo,” Mom says. He stares at the wheel, giving it a spin every time it slows down. “Toast?” He keeps his eyes on the wheels. “Memito?” Mom brings the plate down to his level. “Aren’t you hungry?” Mom moves the plate into his line of vision, and this breaks the spell. He climbs into his booster chair. Relieved, I eat, too.

  I never thought I’d be thankful for our bus driver, Ms. Franklin, but her “No drawing on the foggy windows today!” reminds me that I’m still in Bur Oak, Texas, and not just in Gri
ef, and not in Guatemala yet. Still, when the bus pulls up to the school building, I stay slumped against the window till the last student steps off. Ms. Franklin looks at me in her oversized rearview mirror as I trudge to the front. “Glad you’re back, Quijana. Were you sick all three days?” I shake my head and step off into the cold.

  “You okay, Quijana?” Señora Francés asks. Some of my teachers know about Grandma because Mom called the school.

  “Mm-hm.”

  She says something else, but I’m thinking about last night, the crying I heard through the bedroom door after supper. My mother without her mother. How will she ever fill that hole? How will I? On top of that, Dad still seems distant. He hugged me yesterday, but he’s not playful or crazy with me at all—no winks or hair tousles or random songs. When I broke his guitar, I broke something between us, too.

  The only thing I’m looking forward to is seeing Jayden and Zuri.

  “Quijana,” Zuri says, giving me a hug.

  “My QuiQui,” says Jayden, hugging me, too.

  The cafeteria is an ocean of noise. As we sit down at our usual table, I try to tune in to Zuri’s voice. “I took pictures of my notes from yesterday’s class. I’ll send them to you.”

  “Want some chocolate?” Jayden lifts his lunch sack. “I could share.”

  Notes and chocolate feel like those umbrellas they put in grown-up cocktails, papery and pretty and useless in a downpour. But I know my friends are trying to help. They don’t know what else to say. I don’t really either. “Thanks, guys.” Everyone eats in silence. The chocolate actually does perk me up.

  “So in other news,” I say, spinning my apple like a top. “I tore up the bus ticket.”

  “Oh, no. That was so much money! And the huipil,” Zuri says.

  “I know. I feel terrible that I, like, wasted it, sold it for nothing. Or sold it at all.”

  “And it was so beautiful,” Zuri says.

  “Man.” Jayden shakes his head.