* * *
• • •
I sleep for so long that when I wake up, the small bedroom is dark again. Below me, the girl named Sarah snores gently in her bunk.
I climb down the bunk ladder and walk to the cloud bathroom, pee, wash my hands, brush my teeth.
It feels like it takes a million years to do all those things. It feels like it takes a million years to squeeze the toothpaste onto the red toothbrush, lift the brush to my mouth. I can’t even look at the hollow girl in the mirror; my head is too heavy.
The house is very still except for the whir of a ceiling fan in one of the rooms. I stand in the hallway, listening, my heart pounding.
Maybe LaLa is a secret drunkard, and she’ll burst from her room, hairbrush in hand, ready to punish me for leaving my bed in the middle of the night. Maybe, like Georgia, she has lists, secret lists I haven’t seen yet.
I tense, waiting. Drunkard—that’s another word I learned in Lit class last semester, along with malt-worms. Falstaff and Prince Henry and a face like “Lucifer’s privy-kitchen.”
But LaLa doesn’t come flying from her room, face ablaze. Her door stays shut, and the house stays quiet. Maybe there are no Georgias here.
In the kitchen, a note on the yellow table that says, Tiger, food in the fridge. Please eat. We have some things to do tomorrow. I crumple it up.
The refrigerator is blissfully unpadlocked and stuffed with food. Butter on a clear dish. Flats of tortillas. Grapes in a bag. Jars of sauces. This is more food in one refrigerator than I’ve ever seen, except for at Cake’s house, and if this was any other time, I’d go to town on all of it. But not now.
I wonder if I will ever be hungry again.
There’s an old-fashioned phone on the wall, the kind with glowing push-buttons that make noise each time you press them, like beep-beep-BOOP.
I want to hurt something. Someone. I want to slam the refrigerator door shut over and over and shatter the pert glass jars of sauce inside.
I grab the phone, and before I know it, I’m calling Kai Henderson.
I waited six damn months to kiss Kai Henderson. I waited practically my whole life to kiss anyone, for that matter, and he could not even stay in the hospital with me. He left me there, and drove away in his mother’s car.
On that day six months ago in Bio, when I fell hard for him? I even went home and wrote it down: 10:46 a.m. in Room 11C, Bio lab, November 13th, Kai Henderson made me feel warm and weak. I didn’t know how else to put it, and I folded that piece of paper up a zillion times until it was just a small, tight square, and hid it in the secret compartment of my jewelry box.
Kai never seemed like some of the guys at Eugene Field who deliberately bumped me in the hallway, trying to get a squeeze on my breasts. He actually listened to Cake during band rehearsals, instead of the other guys she’d tried out, who talked over her and sighed loudly and quit in a huff.
We’d never even held hands before the kiss at Thunder Park Elementary. He’d only ever dated one other girl, Ellen Untermeyer, and that was way back in the eighth grade, when all of us were just amoebas with braces and pimples.
In the playground at Thunder Park Elementary, I learned you could kiss someone for a billion hours and they would still turn around and leave you alone in a hospital, your mouth still warm from kissing.
The jewelry box where I hid that note plays “Für Elise” and the netting on the ballerina’s skirt is torn, but I still like petting it sometimes, because it’s so delicate and pretty, and I guess that’s just another goddamn thing I’ll never see again.
The clock on LaLa’s kitchen wall says 4:15 a.m. I listen to the brrring, brrring, brrring on the other end of the phone. My bones shake, electric with meanness. I can hold on all night until he answers. I have nowhere else to go.
Kai’s voice is sleepy. “Hello? Who is this?”
I say, as coldly as I can, “The heart really is like a beautiful and weird engine, Kai.”
There’s silence on the line. Then he says, slowly, “Tiger? Where are you?”
“You just left me there.”
“Tiger—”
“It’s funny that I started liking you right when we started working on hearts in class, you know? I think that’s irony, now. Is that irony? I’m not sure. I’m not really thinking clearly right now, you know? Anyway, is it ironic? Because I think you broke my heart. And what sucks the most? Is that you broke it right after it had just been broken in the worst possible way, you know? Like, you stomped on the pieces and made them even smaller. I mean, who does that?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t…”
His meek voice makes me even angrier. “All you had to do was stay. Just stay. Was that so hard? Do you even know where I am?”
I’m in a bad and mean place. I keep talking and the things I tell him make him cry.
Like: maybe he should have been the one to die, not my mother.
I want to hurt everyone right now. I want to break things so the world looks like how I feel inside: splintered into a million bloody and sharp pieces.
Kai Henderson hangs up on me.
I slide the phone back into the cradle. Through the window, the sun is rising in great pinkish waves over the sky.
Back in the bedroom, I clamber up to my bunk and wait, staring at the ceiling, my chest heaving up and down, up and down. I remember my phone and dig beneath my pillow for it.
I look at the text I sent myself the night my mom died.
My mother has now been dead for 3,294 minutes.
I can’t be this way. I can’t stay this way. I can’t be this way. I can’t stay this way.
I watch the seconds tick by on my phone’s stopwatch, still running, until my eyes blur.
“Are you there?”
I whisper it, even though I’m sure Sarah won’t wake up.
“Please do something. Show me. Anything.”
But the only answer I get is silence.
3 days, 10 hours, 9 minutes
ALL THE WAY DOWN the hall, I can hear the little boy and the skinny girl fighting at breakfast. LaLa scolds them and they get quiet. Where is the other boy, the one LaLa said was older?
My jaw feels sore, like I was grinding my teeth in my sleep. How long have I been sleeping this time? What day is it? I check my phone.
My mother has been dead for 4,929 minutes.
I guess…I should go to school? 4,929 minutes ago was a Monday, wasn’t it? It’s hard to remember now. Sarah’s dresser drawer is open, her plain cotton underwear, plain cotton T-shirts spilling out. Who buys her clothes now that she’s here? Where does the money come from?
Such plain clothes. Little kids, they should have fun stuff. Sequined owls or something. Baseballs on their skirts if they want them. Jeans. My mother never liked me in jeans. She always said pants for girls were designed in a sexist way.
I finger the lace sleeve of the dress. I hardly even notice it now. It’s like I’ve grown a new skin.
I text Cake.
Don’t know what to do.
OMG I’m so glad it’s you. I was so worried yesterday when you didn’t answer. Are you okay? Where are you?
I don’t know. Some house. A lady. LaLa. Some kids.
LaLa? Sweet name. Are they all cool?
I stare at my phone.
I’m not sure that’s at the top of my list of priorities right now, but yes, I guess.
Sorry. I miss you.
I miss you.
I’ve never had a pair of jeans, I type.
That’s a weird thing to say, but…I think you’re right. You aren’t missing anything, tho. They never fit right anyway.
Then, Are you okay?
My heart surges with anger. How can I be okay? There isn’t any okay anymore. What a stupid question. I almost type that, but I stop myself,
and feel guilty, and take a deep breath, then, just:
NO. I’M NOT. REMEMBER??
Right. Sorry. I’m sorry!
Am I supposed to go to school? I don’t know what to do.
I think probably you don’t have to go. I miss you.
I type, I miss her, too, and then walk down the hall quickly, before I start crying again.
In the kitchen, they all stop eating and stare at me. I hold my phone to my chest.
There are oranges in a blue bowl, and a box of cereal, and a jug of milk on the table.
“Are you hungry?” LaLa asks.
Sarah has splotches of milk on her lips. My stomach twitches, remembering Georgia and the sour milk.
Sarah says, “It’s good, and you can eat as much as you want, right? Even thirds! LaLa?”
The boy says, “Yeah. The last place I was at, they kept a lock on the fridge and there was a paper, too, that said what you could eat and how much. Like, just half an apple for breakfast, or one glass of soda for lunch.”
Maybe the boy was at Georgia’s, too. And who gives little kids soda for lunch?
Sarah nods vigorously. “One lady I had counted the food in the cabinets every night, and if something was missing, she’d make you sit all night at the table until you confessed.”
LaLa says, “That’s enough. Eat.”
She rubs the boy’s shoulder. “You can have whatever you want, Tiger. I can make you eggs and toast if you don’t want cereal.”
“I don’t know how to get to school from here,” I say. “Can someone take me? Is it a school day?”
I don’t know what days are supposed to be anymore. What I’m supposed to be doing. Because a mom tells you that, usually.
Get up. Eat. Pack your backpack. Brush your hair. Do you have homework? Stop texting and do your math. Should we have pizza for dinner? Look at you, you’re getting so beautiful. Why are you so grumpy? Am I not allowed to call my own daughter beautiful?
Behind my back, I twist my fingers together, hard, where LaLa can’t see. The pain helps keep my tears in.
LaLa’s hair is wound in a big, braided bun on top of her head, like some exotic pastry. “Don’t worry about school, Tiger. We’ve got some other things to take care of. I’m going to drive the munchkins to school and then I’ll be back.” She starts putting lunchboxes in backpacks.
The little boy sticks out his tongue at me, so I stick out mine. He scowls.
When they leave, I peel an orange, press a wet wedge to my lips.
Nothing. It tastes like nothing.
Under the sink in the cloud-door bathroom, I find tampons and pads. Towers of toilet paper. De-licer. Band-Aids. Bags of brand-new toothbrushes. Hair picks and combs and barrettes and hair oils and creams. I drink some water from a Tweety Bird paper cup. Brush my teeth. Spit out the toothpaste, rinse the sink. I’m following the routine in my head, all the stuff I’m supposed to do, but it feels like someone else is doing all these things and I’m just watching her from a distance.
I inspect LaLa’s bedroom. She has a batik sheet spread across the wall over her bed, which is a thin futon on the floor. A record player. Lots of records on a shelf. A tiny table with candles on it. On the wall above the table she’s pinned dozens of photographs of kids. All different colors, sizes. Some smiling. Some not. I wonder if I know any of them. Maybe I do, and I just never realized it, because I only ever really hang out with Cake, and Kai, and some of the guys at The Pit, and my mom.
My life was small, but it was mine, and now it’s gone.
The other bedroom is the older boy’s, the one who isn’t here.
The first thing I see in there is a huge, dark poster. The face of a man, half-hidden, his dark skin floating from dark shadows. John Coltrane, it says. A Love Supreme. Another poster: KISS. Makeup, wild black hair. Probably Cake’s dad would love these posters. They have a virtual record store they run out of their house, with loads of records and CDs and posters and memorabilia in a special room.
The blue bedspread is messy with earbuds and headphones and paperbacks, science fiction-y things with purple aliens and flying saucers on the covers. An electric guitar is in the corner. The floor is littered with boots and socks and flannel shirts and boxers, which makes me look away, embarrassed to see his underwear.
My room at home looks like this, too: stuff everywhere, piles of my mom’s old records and CDs, underwear and bras on the floor. My mom always says, “This room is a veritable pigsty.” She has to nag me to do laundry in the little shed behind our house.
I would do the laundry forever, all the time, if I could get her back.
I leave the boy’s room, shutting the door tightly.
In the kitchen, I sit back down at the table, listen to the silence, which isn’t really silence at all, because there are little things making noise that you never really notice. The hum of the refrigerator. The clock hands moving gently. A drip from the kitchen faucet.
Everything is happening outside of me and sounds very far away.
I pick at my cuticles until they turn pink and bleed. When the front door opens, I swipe them on my dress before Lala can see. The bloodstain from my lip on Tuesday, when I was at Georgia’s, has dried to a pinkish streak on my sleeve.
“I’m back.” LaLa looks at me curiously. “What did you do while I was gone?”
“Nothing.”
LaLa’s voice is gentle. “Tiger, would you like to change out of your dress? We have some appointments today. You might want to wear something else for them.”
I blink. “This dress is fine. Where are we going, exactly?”
LaLa fills up a travel mug with coffee from the pot. It smells good. I’m so exhausted, and I want some, but I don’t ask.
She sips from the mug. Her skirt today is long and brown and loose and she’s wearing a pink tank top. “We have to go to the funeral home in Sierra Vista to make arrangements. For your mom. That woman, your friend’s mother, Rhonda. She’ll be there to help us. You.”
My heart falls all the way down my body, past my knees, through my feet and toes and exits my body. Arrangements.
The girl-bug in the jar can barely breathe. She covers her face with her wings.
* * *
• • •
LaLa’s old brown Volvo is hot and she apologizes for the broken air conditioning. She plays some Eastern music, the kind people listen to while they meditate, or get a massage. I suppose it’s meant to be soothing, but the plucky strings and all that humming make me feel angry and sad, all at once, so I jam my thumb against her iPod and turn the music off.
LaLa doesn’t say anything.
Rhonda’s waiting for us inside the funeral home. The lobby’s so quiet I can hear the soles of my Vans squish against the soft blue carpet.
Rhonda’s eyes are red. She wraps me in a giant hug. “Tiger, sweetie, this is going to be hard, okay? Do the best you can.”
Do the best you can.
Like this is a spelling bee and not a meeting about burying my mom.
The three of us sit in a room across from a man with pale, thinning hair and a turquoise bolo tie. He pushes brochures and papers at LaLa and Rhonda, who inspect them and ask questions I don’t really understand. The air conditioner makes the sweat from being in LaLa’s hot car dry on my body in a particularly itchy way.
LaLa tells Rhonda, “We need to make sure Tiger understands everything today. They haven’t been able to find her an advocate yet, so I’m going to do my best.”
I guess we are all supposed to do our best today.
Rhonda answers sharply, “Of course. I know that. She’s like my own daughter.”
I know Rhonda is trying to be nice, but the “daughter” part…it stings. And…are they arguing about me? What is that about?
Now the three adults are staring at me, but I don’t
quite understand what they want me to do. I’ve noticed that since I became a teenager, adults respond to you in one of two ways: they wait for you to make the decision, like you should be happy they’re allowing you a choice they’re probably going to change anyway, or they just make the damn decision themselves because they don’t trust you.
Right now, I can’t quite tell what direction they’re leaning in.
“Tiger.” Rhonda’s voice is soft. “Tiger, a few of the parents have gotten together and we’re going to help out with the cost of the arrangements. So, we need you to take a look at these and let us know your thoughts.” She nudges a heavy binder across the table to me.
The balding man taps the binder. “We have several options for all kinds of needs. Do you know what our deceased would have wanted?”
Our deceased. “She wasn’t yours. You didn’t know her.”
“Of course.” His face gets very pink. “My apologies. That was crass.”
The binder is full of photographs of mahogany caskets and oak caskets, large, opulent steel caskets with puffy satin bedding inside, and plain caskets that just look like refrigerator boxes. Everything seems very expensive. Where is this money going to come from? I flip the pages, getting queasier and queasier as I see how much everything costs. As I think about who goes in these things.
There are caskets with monogrammed initials and caskets with slots for photographs on the side and on the top. There are caskets made of poplar and bamboo. There are even double caskets, which means two people died together and will be buried together. There are caskets tiny enough for babies, with plump velvet pillows, and when I see those, my heart sinks in a way that feels hopeless and permanent. I push the binder away.
Rhonda asks, “Do you like any of those? We could do a simpler one, I think.”
She points. “Like here. This?”
I try to imagine my mother inside that plain pine box, the lid closed, flat on her back.
That is the cheapest one in the whole binder. Four hundred and seventy-five dollars plus tax. More for bedding.
How to Make Friends with the Dark Page 9