Cake and I look at each other.
“She did?” I say slowly.
Mr. Gonzalez nods. “Oh, yes, a few times a week. She’d stop the book bus on her way back. You were probably in school.”
The book bus. What a funny way to put it. She drove the county library Bookmobile to nursing homes and houses way, way out in the desert, all by themselves with just dirt and sky around them. I went with her a few times, when I was little, but it was kind of boring, listening to her talk to very old people who lived in one-room houses about the new Danielle Steel she had in, or a nine-hundred-page biography of some British lord.
And then we’d visit the horses, which was fine. But I never knew she went without me. And often?
I wonder what other things my mother did without me. Who she talked to. What she…thought about things.
Suddenly, I wonder if my mother was lonely, and the thousand bricks on my chest become a million bricks, and I can’t breathe.
Mr. Gonzalez says, “You’re a very brave girl, Grace.”
As he walks away, Cake whispers, “It’s almost over. I think. You can do this, Tig. I know you can.”
People come in waves. I can barely talk to them, I’m so overwhelmed.
There are some Eugene Field teachers here, like Laizure from Bio, who half slaps, half pats me on the upper arm, and Betty Bales, the Woodshop lady with the giant mole on her cheek, who always yells at me for not cleaning up the shavings on the floor. Betty Bales says, “I brought the casserole, over there. Black beans and potatoes. You just slice off a little square and warm it up and you’ll be good to go, dear.”
Betty Bales shrugs, her eyes filling up. “Or you can eat it cold, too. It’s really up to you.”
It occurs to me that Betty Bales might actually like me, to cook for me and come here, and so I start to wonder why she’s always yelling at me about those shavings. They’re just shavings. I mean, in the whole scheme of the world, they’re just stupid wood shavings on the floor.
The school counselor, Walrus Jackson, is here. He’s super big and used to play football at the U of A until he got hurt. Now he teaches history and hands tissues to crying kids in his office and tries to figure out who TP’d the mesquite trees on the front lawn of Eugene Field.
Cake says, “Hey, Mr. Jackson.”
“Hello, Cake.”
I wait for it. Usually, when he sees me, he says, “Hey, when are we going to start our own zoo?” You know, because Tiger and Walrus, duh.
But he doesn’t say that today. Instead, he says, “Hello, Tiger. I am so very, very sorry about your mother. She was a wonderful person.”
And his eyes are so nice when he says this, and his voice so soft, I can barely see him for all the tears.
“You can come talk to me anytime, okay, Tiger? About anything. My door is always open. You can even call me if you need to.”
He hands me a small card. It has his name on it, and his school phone number and email. I swallow hard. What would I even say? I miss my mom, Mr. Jackson. Bring her back, please.
“Thanks.” I squeeze the card in my fist.
“Be good, Cake,” he says, flashing a smile at Cake, before he heads over to talk to Mr. Gonzalez, who’s trying to balance a bowl of posole and a bottle of Fanta along with his cowboy hat.
People keep asking, Do you need anything? They say, This is so awful. They say, She’s in a better place, and that makes me angry, because what does that make her place with me? Horrible?
Adults all look alike after a while. Bland and worn out.
The room has gotten kind of eerily quiet. People are disappearing into a door at the back of the room. Cake takes my hand.
Oh.
That’s where she is.
Waiting.
Cake is watching Karen-the-social-worker on the chair by the wall, texting. She whispers, “You should be with us! This so sucks, Tig. My mom is calling everyone she can, trying to get you to stay with us.”
“I can’t,” I say matter-of-factly. “I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to anyone. Well, the state, I guess.” I don’t even really understand what that means. I kind of picture a piece of paper with my name on it in big black block letters being passed around by a bunch of serious-looking people and finally somebody stamps the paper Orphan, slides the paper in a drawer, and closes the drawer.
My eyes keep drifting back to the door at the end of the room.
Cake’s mom appears in front of me, wringing a tissue in her fingers. “It’s time for you, Tiger.”
She means the door. The one where my mother is.
Cake says, “I’ll come with, Tig.”
But I say, “No.”
My feet are like lead. My feet are like bricks. My feet are like cement blocks dragging along the floor. I can feel everyone’s eyes on my back. What do they think about my weird dress? What will they say later about the crazy girl who wore a dirty, wrinkled, bloodstained old dress to her mother’s viewing? In the corner, Kelsey Cameron is taking a picture of her plate of food.
#funeralgrub #orphaneats #sadjello
Maybe I’ll turn into one of those mad girls from the Gothic novels I devoured all last, hot summer, the fan above my bed in my room whirring the hours away. I spent hours in a T-shirt and underwear, reading, my mother napping on the couch in the front room. In the hot months of June and July, we tried to go out in the Jellymobile in the mornings, before the small truck got too hot and close inside. Then we’d come home and eat cold pinto beans and slices of cucumber, and she would nap, and I would read and read, the storms and dark weather in the books cooling me off.
Those girls wandered cliffs in heavy dresses and moaned a lot. Their faces flushed scarlet when the man they loved was near. They turned ghostly when love was ripped from them.
Those girls never seemed to have mothers, either. They wandered endlessly, thirsty for love and comfort, with wind-tangled, wet hair and mournful coughs.
Maybe that’s going to be my future.
I pause at the door. My heart beats so fiercely I can feel it in my throat. I think if there were not thirty people behind me, watching me, I would turn and run, because I don’t want this moment to happen.
There are tall yellow and white flowers in vases in the room. Who ordered them? Or are there just always flowers in the room? My mom would know exactly what kind of flowers they are. Our backyard is filled with sunflowers and daises pushing up against the coyote fence. Aloe vera and herbs and tomatoes and carrots lined up in pots and tidy beds.
She’s in the middle of the room, in the plain pine box Rhonda asked for, on a kind of stand. The plain box is just for the viewing, because my mom will be cremated later, and then her ashes put into the white box with the dragon on it.
Do they wipe out the plain pine casket after, or vacuum it or something, and save it for the next person with no money? Do they burn the box, too?
There are just too many details involved in dying. And the after. Maybe both. My head is spinning.
It’s strange to see her again, and scary, because she’s really, really gone. It’s not a joke, or a nightmare, or a bad dream. There’s no portal. It’s all right here.
I have never heard anything this quiet in my life. My hands are shaking so badly I clasp them together.
She’s here, but she’s not. She looks like she’s sleeping, but in a very formal way.
I’m trembling so hard my teeth are clacking together.
Someone gelled my mom’s hair and combed it back. She would have hated that. She liked her hair spiky and messy. I tousle her hair, but carefully, like she’s a doll.
Her skin is cool, and not warm and soft, like I remember, but waxy, and firm.
Someone painted her nails with clear, glossy polish. The star earrings look nice. A little bit of the hem on her dress has ridden up, so I
tug it down gently, and wonder who chose this dress, because it’s too short and, well, not formal enough for death.
I feel like my mom should not be going to the afterlife with bare legs. It’s like she’s on her way to the Stop N Shop for some chips and dip. It must have been Cake. She and her mom must have gone back to my house and picked out the earrings and the dress.
“I didn’t pick the dress, just so you know,” I tell her.
Nothing.
“Open your eyes, Mommy,” I say softly.
She doesn’t.
“Why did you leave me?”
No answer.
“What am I going to do without you?” My voice cracks, and then my tears are dripping on her dress. I want to stay in this room with her forever, but I know I can’t.
I put my head on her chest. It’s a surprise and not a surprise there’s no heartbeat inside her body. I breathe her in, deeply, trying to locate her smell, that nice and earthy thing, but it isn’t there anymore.
She smells like hair gel and nail polish and something almost bleach-like.
I wrap my arms around her anyway.
A whole canyon forms in me then, immense and desolate.
And even though I know I’ll never get an answer, I whisper it anyway, my words burying themselves against the flimsy cotton of her summer dress.
Please don’t leave me.
Please don’t leave me. Please come back.
Please.
I crack into so many pieces they will never fit back together, not ever.
The girl-bug in the jar folds her wings over her eyes. She doesn’t want to watch.
In a little while, Rhonda and Cake come into the room and take me away.
5 days, 22 hours, 22 minutes
KAREN DRIVES ME BACK to LaLa’s after the viewing, stacks of Tupperwared food next to me in the backseat.
“That was a lot to deal with today,” she says, looking at me in the rearview mirror.
I stare at her. “You think?”
She frowns. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I’m not too good at death.”
“Like I’m an expert?” I say sharply.
She turns on the radio. Country music. The twang cuts into my ears.
We pull into LaLa’s dirt driveway. Karen gets out of the car and takes a stack of Tupperware in her arms. I start walking to the house, lugging lukewarm black bean casserole and strawberry Jell-O and bags of Santitas.
“Tiger,” Karen says. I turn around.
“I’m sorry, there’s no good way or time to tell you this, but I’ve found a placement for you, a more permanent one, I hope, in Sierra Vista. Three foster kids, two parents.”
My heart plummets. “How many times am I going to be moving from now on?”
She shakes her head. “I’m hoping this will be it for a little while, though I really can’t say. There are just so many factors involved. They’re prepping for you now, and we’ll drive out on Monday morning.”
Two days away. My heart spikes with fear, but then just as quickly quiets down. I’ve had praying weirdos, locked refrigerators, kids who paw through my suitcase, and my mom is dead. It’s not going to ever get any worse than that.
“Okay, then, well, whatever, I guess. I don’t care. I just don’t care.”
At the doorway of LaLa’s house, I pause. Am I supposed to ring the doorbell or walk right in? I mean, I don’t live here. I’m just a stupid visitor.
A visitor in someone else’s life. One kid in a long line of kids who’ll stand on this step with a stupid broken heart and a stupid, sad story.
I’m going to be a visitor forever now.
I stab the doorbell with my finger.
LaLa looks surprised when she opens the door. “Tiger. Honey. Come in. You don’t have to wait outside.”
I shove the food in her arms and walk straight to the bedroom, where I climb to the top bunk and promptly fall asleep. When I wake up, my dress is still damp from tears and sweat, and it’s dark, and late, and LaLa’s whispering with someone in the kitchen. I hang my head off the bunk to see around the bedroom door, which is slightly open.
LaLa murmurs, “Are you all right? Is there anything you want to tell me?”
The voice that answers is hoarse and tired. “Nah. It was the same old same old. He didn’t do anything.”
It’s the older boy, the one she said was away in Phoenix.
He mumbles something I don’t quite catch.
LaLa answers, “She’s in her room. She had a hard day. The viewing was today.”
The boy says something I can’t understand. Why do boys always sound like they have rocks in their mouths?
Then LaLa says, “There’s tons of food in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
“Can I go in the backyard? Then I’ll go to bed, I promise. I’m tired, I swear. I just need to chill and stretch out after the drive. My back is super sore.”
I roll back as they come down the hall. The light clicks off. The screen door to the backyard opens and closes.
I climb down the bunk ladder. I don’t know why I’m going outside, except that teenagers are chemically drawn to other teenagers, and when another one appears, we’re compelled to huddle together, like a pack of angsty and acned lemmings.
I’ve only seen the backyard once, through a window, because I’ve pretty much stayed in the bedroom all this time, but as I open the screen door, I suck my breath in.
LaLa’s backyard is the desert, with lawn chairs and kid toys scattered near the house and then…darkness and the shapes of mesquite trees and prickly pears, whose flat pads always make me think of spiky ping-pong paddles. The moon rests in the sky like a perfect white paper plate, gentle and still.
I wish I could walk straight through the desert and take it in my hands.
The boy doesn’t turn around. He’s stretched out on a jelly lounger, and as I get closer, I can see the white cords streaming from his ears underneath a mess of long, thick hair. He’s wearing an army jacket with a KISS patch. Maybe he’s a regular shopper at Ted’s Threads, too.
And I smell pot.
I thump him on the shoulder and he startles, dropping the joint onto his lap. He tamps it out between his fingers, drags the buds out of his ears.
“What was that for? Are you trying to give me a heart attack or something?” He has eyes like a deer’s, wide and brown.
“You aren’t supposed to be doing drugs out here. Won’t LaLa kick you out?”
“What are you, like a Goody Two-shoes or something?”
I blink.
Well, yes. Sad, but true. I’ve never had alcohol, much less smoked pot, or done anything beyond kiss for a billion hours at Thunder Park, and look how that turned out.
As Cake once told me: “You live a pristine, still-in-the-plastic-box kind of life, Tiger Tolliver.”
Kids at The Pit smoke pot, and do other things during their parties, but not me. Mom always said that sort of stuff is no good, and that it turns you into a different person, and if you do those things long enough, pretty soon you’ll get too far away from who you used to be, and it’ll be hard to find your way back. To tell the truth, that’s always kind of scared me. Not being able to find my way back to something.
“Don’t worry about it,” the boy says. “LaLa’s cool.”
He gets up kind of slowly, which makes me wonder how stoned he might be. He goes and gets me a jelly lounger.
He has a weird tilt to his walk, like someone bent him to the right and forgot to bend him back.
“Have a seat.” He plops the jelly lounger down. Does he grimace a little? It’s not that heavy.
“I already know your name. Tiger! That’s a pretty cool name. I’m Thaddeus. Thaddeus Roach.”
I lower myself onto the jelly. It’s nice to lean back, and to bre
athe, and look up at the stars, which I feel like we always forget to do, you know? Even me, on my bed in my old room in my old house, scrolling my phone or reading a book about characters who look at the sky, instead of actually going out and looking at the sky myself.
“That sucks about your mom.”
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the sharp knife that runs down my spine when people say they are sorry. Or that it sucks. I’m sorry to hear about your mom. I must have heard that a thousand times today.
“Are your parents alive?” I ask. I’m not sure exactly how this foster thing works. We can’t all be orphans. Maybe some of us were abandoned?
“My mom is, but not my real dad. She’s remarried now. They’re both kind of like the walking dead, to tell you the truth. Drugs and stuff, which is why I’m here. This is my fourteenth home.”
Fourteenth home. I guess I’m going to meet a lot of kids like Thaddeus from now on, kids stitched together with unmatched thread, trying their best not to fray.
He points to the sky. His fingernails are painted pink. “Can you see?” he asks. “There. That kind of hazy mass.”
I squint. Constellations have never been my strong suit.
Thaddeus starts talking about nebulas and clusters and black holes. He tells me black holes suck everything in, that they’re basically vacuum cleaners in space. And once something is in, it can’t get out.
“You still have a chance—I mean the object has a chance—to get away, while it’s on the edge, just before the hole. But how long? Nobody really knows how long it takes to get sucked in. A blip? A nanosecond? Time in space isn’t like it is down here.”
“What’s with the nails?” I ask. “Kind of a demure look for a member of the KISS Army.”
“Oh.” He holds his hands up, palms against the sky with its quivering white stars. “These. I was visiting my little sister in Phoenix. She likes to play nail salon.”
I want to ask why his little sister is there and he’s here, and what the deal is with his zombie mom and zombie stepdad, but I don’t. I feel heavy enough right now, and a little selfish with my own pain, and I’m also kind of afraid of what the answer might be.
How to Make Friends with the Dark Page 11