I haven’t played in any of the games or been to volleyball practice since the night of the accident. Carole says Nikki’s left several messages for me, urging me to get back to it. She even stopped by after school one day and talked to me about starting easy, just with practices. I don’t remember any of that, either.
It’s strange, like maybe I’ve been abducted by space aliens or something, like those people in Nebraska. Maybe they left a zombie-like substitute in my earthly place, and they just now returned me to earth. Before they brought me back, they gave me an amnesia drug, so I can’t remember anything about their world, or the time I’ve been with them. Back when we were laughing about space alien stories, I never actually believed any of it, but then I didn’t believe I’d turn into a homeless orphan either.
Now that I’m back from wherever I’ve been, and I’m becoming more . . . conscious . . . the absence of my dad, and Grams, and Casper, the horrible accident—that’s a constant ache with me all the time. But at least I’m noticing the details of everyday life again.
I met with each of my teachers to work out a plan for getting caught up. I’ve already checked off four assignments of missed homework in English and three in Government. It’s not much in comparison to all that’s missing, but it’s a start.
I plan to tackle the Spanish catch-up plan next week. I’m in Spanish IV, but I got there partly because Jason was always around to help me. His grandparents on his dad’s side of the family are from Mexico and they used to all live together, so Jason learned Spanish early on. Plus, being a year ahead of me, and smarter, he learns all the grammar stuff before I do. That’s the hard part. The verb conjugations, pronominal declensions, and things that give me a headache just to think about. Of course, even if Jason was still here I wouldn’t ask him to come over and help me. What if he noticed what I most want to keep hidden?
Anyway, all of my teachers are being amazingly nice—even Mr. Klaus, my math teacher. He’s got to be the most rigid, demanding teacher in the whole school, but now he’s like, “Take all the time you need.” “Skip the test until you’re ready to take it. No hurry.” That’s so not Mr. Klaus.
In a way, it bothers me how nice everyone’s being. Like I’m the famous, sudden orphan and that’s all people think about when they see me. Like they’re being unnaturally nice. Whatever. At least I’ve got a “catch-up” plan now. I’m determined to stay focused, so I can graduate on time, with my friends, on the Hamilton High stage, like I’ve always dreamed of doing.
I haven’t told anyone about this, but sometimes, when catching up seems completely and totally overwhelming, and all I want is to blow it all off, I talk to my dad about it. I mean, I don’t exactly talk out loud. I don’t want people thinking I’m crazy. I just talk to him in my head. And in my head, he talks back. He gives me one of his pep talks about how important school is, and how awesome I am. Even if it’s in my head, it’s his voice. I listen. Then I get back to work.
Here’s something I don’t talk about to Dad or to anyone else. Not out loud. Not in my head. After all of those weeks of not remembering, after my time with the aliens, or whatever, well . . . I guess the amnesia drug works as well for doctor’s appointments as for everything else.
Yesterday, when Danni and her mom were at the market and Hannah was watching TV, I called Planned Parenthood to reschedule the termination procedure. The nurse told me it wasn’t that simple. I have to wait a week to see a doctor again, and I may be past the cut-off date for termination. And all the time I’m getting bigger and bigger. Those little flutter kicks I was noticing just before my scheduled appointment?? Those are like elephant kicks now.
Yesterday, when Danni and I were walking to the bus stop, I was carrying my notebook in front of my belly, like I always do now. But I swear, one of those elephant kicks connected with my notebook and nearly sent it flying. I’m surprised Danni didn’t notice. Lucky for me, it was one of those times when she was busy talking about Jason, and how he’ll probably be home for Thanksgiving, and how she’s been reading everything ever written by Luis Rodriguez, so she can impress him, and on and on and on. Danni’s eyes still sort of glaze over whenever she talks about Jason, even if she doesn’t talk about him as much as she used to.
“It’s hard to maintain a relationship when you’re a thousand miles apart,” she’d told me yesterday. Like they had a relationship when she and Jason lived in the same town?
Grams used to have a whole bunch of old-fashioned favorite sayings, like “That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” or “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” I know what she would have said about Danni’s relationship remark: “Wishful thinking doesn’t make it true.”
I know that. No matter how hard I wish my dad and Grams were still alive, or I hadn’t done what I did with Jason, or I weren’t pregnant, 1 can’t make those wishes come true. Except maybe . . . just maybe . . . I can undo the pregnancy thing. At this stage, though, it will take a lot more than a wish.
Chapter
7
I know I’ve got to get better organized if I’m serious about passing all of my classes. After dinner I go into Danni’s room and dump everything out of my backpack onto “my” bed. It’s horrible, going through stuff that hasn’t been touched for so long. There’s Dad’s wallet, and a stack of his business cards he gave me to hand out at the Hamilton High job fair. And Grams’ neatly organized purse.
I take a twenty from Dad’s wallet. It’s about time I quit mooching off of Danni for lunch money. I fold the twenty neatly into thirds and tuck it into the check-out pocket of Ordinary People. Ever since someone stole my picture money from a compartment in my backpack, back in the ninth grade, I’ve kept fives and over in book card pockets. No one ever thinks to look there.
The wallet and Grams’ purse I tuck under my sweatshirts in the top drawer of Danni’s chest of drawers, the one she has emptied out for me. Maybe this weekend I should use some of Grams’ and Dad’s money to buy some new, bigger tops. I’m running out of clothes that are baggy enough to hide things. I don’t want to spend much money on that stuff, though, because I won’t need baggy things much longer.
I go back to the pile of things on the bed—my cell phone, useless without the charger, which I suppose is in storage. And there’s my pregnancy termination appointment from before, and my temporary Medi-Cal card. Crumpled homework papers, a half-eaten, now-rotten apple wrapped in a paper towel, and a maxi-pad. Talk about wishful thinking! Also, there’s Grams’ hairbrush and her small can of hairspray.
I pick up the brush, remembering. One of the few things Grams couldn’t do very well was fix her hair. It was never matted, or tangled, or dirty, like with some blind people. But there was this one spot at the back of her head that would stick straight up if it wasn’t brushed down and sprayed at just the right angle. She used to ask me to help her with that one, stubborn spot. She could feel it sticking up, but she couldn’t always fix it. Even if Grams was old, like in her sixties, and she couldn’t see how she looked, it was still important to her to look good.
A few days before the accident, Grams and I had gone shopping. She needed help finding the right colors and sizes of things, and she didn’t like to depend on sales clerks. She’d tried on a turtleneck sweater and decided to buy it, but before she left the dressing room she asked me to fix her mussed up hair. She’d handed me the brush and the hairspray she always carried in her purse, and I’d flattened down that one spot.
“Done,” I’d said, and Grams and Casper went to pay for the sweater. I tossed the brush and hairspray into my backpack and forgot about it.
Now, dropping the brush onto the pile of things to throw away, I notice a strand of grey hair shimmering in the light. I pick the brush up again and pull the hair from between the bristles. Other strands are buried in the brush, mostly grey with a few brown, the way Grams’ hair was.
Carefully, I remove all of the hair and hold the strands to the ligh
t, examining them for color, and texture, wondering if they were from the unruly batch at the top of her head, or if they were from the hair that curled softly at the sides of her face. I roll the hair into a tight, tiny, almost invisible, ball. I clutch it in my fist, wanting it to grow to the length and weight of Rapunzel’s braids, to become a heavy, substantial essence of Grams.
Tears gather in my eyes, then slide down my cheeks. More tears. A flood of tears. And I think that’s all that’s left of the substance of Grams. Or Dad. Or Casper. Tears and more tears.
I’m still crying, rocking back and forth, with my fist clutched tight over my chest, when Danni comes into the room.
“What’s wrong?”
I can only shake my head and keep crying.
Danni leaves the room and comes back with a box of tissue. I wipe my eyes, my cheeks, and my nose, but the tears don’t stop.
“You’ve been doing so much better,” Danni says. “What is it?”
I open the palm of my hand to show her the hair but there’s not enough for her to notice. I point at the tiny speck in the palm of my hand but she still doesn’t get it.
Then as quickly and with as much force as the tears came, laughter takes over. I look at the speck in the palm of my hand—a hairball. I’m hoping to replace my grandmother with a hairball. She didn’t even like cats. Now I can’t stop laughing. Rocking and laughing. Gasping and giggling.
“I don’t get it,” Danni says. “What’s so funny?”
“So funny . . . so funny . . .” I manage to choke out, “So funny I didn’t forget to laugh,” which gets me going again.
Danni sits looking at me like I’m crazy. Maybe I am.
“Are you okay?”
All I can do is shake my head no and keep laughing.
Danni gives me another long look.
“Fine, then,” she says. “Don’t tell me.”
She gets up from the bed and goes out of the room, leaving me to laugh-cry-laugh-cry, and to wonder if the aliens gave me a drug that’s messed with more than my memory.
Finally, exhausted and embarrassed, I wrap Grams’ tiny hairball in a tissue and carefully place it inside the plastic zip bag in the back of my notebook, next to my heart-rock. The zip bag in the front of my notebook is jammed with pens, pencils, Wite-Out®, erasers, loose change and a few sticks of gum. It’s an opaque gray, cluttered with bits of lead and eraser dust and the grime of constant use. But the back zip bag, holding only the rock and tissue-wrapped hair, is still clean and transparent.
In bed, propped against two pillows, I turn to page one of Ordinary People, the book the rest of the class is nearly finished with.
When Mr. Mosier and I were working out a plan for me to catch up in English, he’d said, “You can choose a different novel if you’d like. This one’s about a tragic death, and the effect it has on remaining family members. It might not be a good time for you to read it.”
“It’s okay,” I’d told him.
“I can help you find something more cheerful,” he’d offered.
“I’ll read this.”
No way was I eager to read a story of a tragic death. But I didn’t like the idea of special treatment, either.
By the time Danni comes to bed I’ve read enough to know that the dad was an orphan. The kid, Conrad, is a mental case, but also kind of funny. The mom is so uptight she makes Carole look like some kind of Woodstock hippie.
I close the book and turn out the reading lamp.
“I’m sorry I was so weird.”
“It’s okay,” Danni says, not very convincingly.
I try to explain about my crying-laughing fit, but nothing comes out in a way that makes sense.
Danni sighs. “I just wish things could be . . . remember how we used to laugh all the time?”
“I was laughing tonight.”
“Not like that! You know what I mean.”
“I guess things don’t seem as funny as they used to,” I say.
After a long silence, Danni says, “It must be so horrible to be you,” which doesn’t exactly make me feel any better.
“For more than a month I’ve been leading you from home to school and class to class and home again, like I was . . . I don’t know . . . like I was Casper. And then that day when you smiled, and when we all prayed, I thought . . .”
Danni pauses and I wonder if she’s going to cry.
“ . . . I thought you were going to be my friend again. Like you used to be.”
“I am your friend. I’ll always be your friend,” I tell her.
“I mean my funny friend. And my friend who wants to help me with Jason, and who plays volleyball like no one else in the world, and who gets me to play volleyball like a champion, too, because we know all of each other’s moves and tricks and set-ups, and my friend who listens to me and talks to me and . . .”
“I’m your friend,” I repeat. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be like I used to be or not, but I’m still your friend.”
I try to explain about feeling like I’m in storage, but that doesn’t come out right, either.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “I feel so guilty now because you’ve been through so much! You’ve lost everything! And here I am wishing you’d get over it and start having fun. Really, I’m sorry for being such a selfish witch.”
“Don’t say that. You’ve totally stood by me,” I say. “I wouldn’t even have a place to live if it wasn’t for you and your family.”
“I feel so helpless, though. I don’t know how to help, or what to say . . .”
Danni gets up and comes across to sit on the edge of my bed. I scoot over to make room, and turn on my side. The big illuminated clock on the table between the two beds casts a dim glow on Danni’s face. Here in the almost dark, with her worried look, I’m reminded of how she looked back in the second grade, when she had to carry a disciplinary note home to her parents. I think about how we’ve been sister-friends for such a long time. I guess Danni may be thinking the same thing.
“Pinky sister-friends forever?” she says.
“Pinky sister-friends forever,” I say, linking my pinky with hers.
“Danni . . .”
For a moment I think I can tell her, my for-always sister-friend, that I’m pregnant, and worse, that Jason’s the guy.
“Danni . . .”
She watches me, waiting. The words are there, all backed up in my throat, but they won’t come out. Then in the late-night stillness of the room, I get a powerful elephant kick. It seems like it’s aimed right at Danni’s leg but I don’t think it actually reached her.
“I’m sleepy.” Danni says, getting back in her own bed.
I drop off to sleep replaying the moment when I might have told Danni everything, imagining what would have come next. After I’d spit out the blocked up words, then what? I do remember how angry she was when I went out to dinner with Jason. Pregnant with him? She’d be angry to infinity and back.
We hardly talk at breakfast. It seems like Danni’s watching me, but pretending not to. Maybe it’s because of all we said to each other last night and she’s just being thoughtful. Or . . . maybe . . . she noticed the elephant kick?
I’m just getting out of the shower when Carole gives a quick knock on the door and comes in.
“Sorry,” she says, “I just need to . . .”
I pull the towel around my belly, fast.
“Autumn . . .”
I reposition the towel, wishing it were beach-towel size.
Carole looks me up and down.
“Are you pregnant?”
I nod, keeping my eyes focused on a spot on the floor.
She takes my face between her hands and raises it until we’re eye to eye.
“Were you raped?” she whispers.
I shake my head no.
“What happened?”
I look away.
“Who’s the father? Is he planning to marry you?”
I
step away from her, again shaking my head.
“I don’t want to get married.”
I can feel her eyes on my face, my barely covered belly and boobs. I can’t look at her.
“Blessed Jesus,” she says, still in a whisper. “Lord help us.”
I stand, still feeling her eyes on me. The room is so quiet I hear every breath, hers and mine.
“Well . . . get dressed. I’ll take Danni and Hannah to school and then we can talk.”
“But . . . I’m already way behind in first period . . .”
“This is more important than first period class. I’ll tell Dannielle you’re not feeling well, which I suppose is the truth.”
When Carole returns she calls me into the kitchen. She fixes us both a cup of hot chocolate and we sit across from each other at the table.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Does Dannielle know you’re pregnant?”
“No one knows.”
“I want to know how this happened.”
“I made a mistake,” I say.
Carole looks away from me, toward the window. Moments later, when she looks back, I see tears. She shakes her head slowly, back and forth, then breathes a deep sigh.
“When your mother died way back when you and Dannielle were in kindergarten, I promised myself I’d do whatever I could for you. Remember how you ate dinner with us practically every night that first year after your mother died? And when I packed Dannielle’s lunch for school I just automatically packed one for you, too?”
I nod.
“I’ve loved you as if you were my own daughter. You know that, don’t you?”
Again I nod.
“If it were only me and Donald, you could stay with us, but we’ve got to consider Hannah and Dannielle, too.”
I shift in the kitchen chair, trying to get comfortable, wondering what Carole’s getting at. She reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers.
No More Sad Goodbyes Page 6