Thank you! He is so vapid! Please never return to him again. What about Etta??
I also explain how I royally screwed that up forever.
Whyyyy, she responds, plus sad emoji sobbing face.
There are other bisexual fish in the bisexual sea, I tell her.
But she was so cute and so funny. Sadface and clownface and sadface.
Yeah, I know, Marisol. I know.
I dull my thoughts with TV. There’s a laugh-track-heavy show on about twentysomething people experiencing romantic mishaps in New York City. Ruby comes out in her penguin pj’s, ostensibly for a glass of water, and sits on the couch with me in friendly silence as she gulps it down. I offer her half my blanket, and she silently accepts.
“I don’t think you’re going to try to kill yourself again,” Ruby says. “Not now, anyway.”
“Thank you?” I say.
The line between compliment and insult is so thin with Ruby Tuesday Smith.
On-screen, two of the characters kiss and the audience woo-hoos. Ruby watches with a placid stare, takes her last sip of water. She puts her hand on my hand for a moment, her eyes ever so slightly magnified behind her glasses.
“You’re not alone,” she says. “You’re never alone.” She gets up. “No one is. Over ten thousand species of microbes occupy our bodies.”
And with that, she heads to bed.
“But I’m the crazy one,” I tell the muted TV.
I turn the sound back on. It’s a commercial for the medication I was prescribed. The woman on the commercial goes from having unbrushed hair and not leaving her bed to happy, hanging laundry in the sunshine, in a matter of a minute. Meanwhile, a man rattles off an alarming list of side effects. It makes me mad that they sell it on people the same way they sell soda. It makes me mad people make money off sadness. It makes me mad that people have such sadness. It makes me sad it makes me mad.
Back at my mom’s this weekend, my mom comes in and ruffles my hair and pulls tarot cards with me. I get the Star card—a woman crouched over a pond, one vase pouring water into the blue pond, another vase pouring water on the land. There are yellow stars around her. Mom puts on her reading glasses and reads from her phone. “The Star means you have gone and passed through a terrible life challenge. You have managed to go through this without losing your hope.”
I begin to cry and she holds me tight. I close my eyes and go back to a place where I am small, where I can disappear into the comfort of my mother’s arms. I think of the way she looked that night in the hospital after the pills, unrecognizable, frenzied. How different we both were then. How much I love her love, but even weightier—how much her trust means to me. How it helps me build faith in myself, to know that trust is there.
I might be too much. I’m always too much. But there is such a thing as unconditional love.
The next day, in what is possibly more shocking than me trying to end my life with pills or tackle a girl at graduation, Ruby is suspended from her gifted-and-talented summer school program.
“What?” I yell into my phone when Mom explains.
“I am speechless,” Mom yells back. “I have no words. I have nothing to say.”
I don’t have time to explain irony to her, so I just repeat, “What?”
“My pepper spray from my purse?” Mom asks. “Ruby stole it. She brought it to school. Apparently some girls threatened to ‘jump’ her. She sprayed it in their direction and one of the girls got it in her eyes.”
“What?” I say again.
“Are you broken?” Mom asks, annoyed.
“Basically.”
“Well, we’re on our way home. See you soon.”
I’m eating cereal at the table looking at a catalog of hunting gear sent to Levi. I don’t know why he has a hunting gear catalog. We don’t hunt. We shop at Whole Foods. Anyway, I wait there with my empty bowl of cereal until I see Mom pull up in Levi’s truck with Ruby staring out the window still as a bespectacled tween mannequin. They come inside in an icy silence that is clearly minutes deep and Ruby marches straight to her room.
“I don’t know what the hell got into her!” Mom scream-whispers to me.
I pour more cereal. This conversation requires more cereal.
“She stole my pepper spray,” Mom says to me, sitting at the table.
“You bought it for protection,” I remind her.
“It’s considered a weapon. One she technically discharged. She could get expelled.”
“Why did she do it?”
Chewbacca comes in and slobbers all over Mom’s lap. She pets his head absentmindedly, the stinky beast.
“Cindy’s in a new group of mean girls,” Mom says. “Apparently they’ve been picking on Ruby for months. I am in shock. I talked to someone in the district office and they said that while the vice president recommended expulsion, I could appeal, which I will. I have to go visit the district office with Ruby and she has to be willing to write a formal apology. Right now she refuses. Stubborn girl. I can’t believe this. Ruby’s a straight-A student!”
Guilt flutters in me. The text I saw . . . I should have said something.
“Mom,” I say. “I saw a text on her phone awhile ago.”
“Whose phone?”
“Ruby’s.”
“Go on.”
“It was . . . a threat. Someone sent her a threat.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” she roars.
“Whoa, maybe because I figured you’d get like this.”
“What the fuck, Journey?” Mom says.
“Geez, potty mouth,” I say, pushing my dish away. “I was trying to help.”
“By doing nothing?”
“Mom, she’s thirteen. She has to figure her own social life out. How was I supposed to know she was going to steal your pepper spray? Maybe you shouldn’t keep weapons in your purse—”
“It’s for protection. It’s not a weapon. You know how I feel about guns.”
I push the hunting catalog toward her. She takes one look at it, gets up, and throws it in the recycling. More potty mouth ensues. Levi calls her phone, his special jingle that is a cow mooing. She reaches peak potty mouth. That’s it, I’m retreating to my room.
“I want you to talk to her,” Mom says, taking the phone from her ear.
“She hates me.”
“She does not. You’re her big sister.”
“Yeah, exemplary screwup.”
“Do you just say this crap for reaction, Journey? You’re not a screwup. I didn’t raise my girls to beat up on themselves. You’re a warrior. Now go talk to your sister.”
Warrior? I try not to let her comment affect my face, but I am savoring that word as I turn into the hallway. My mom doesn’t shower compliments on people. Her expectations are high. Her opinions are typically low.
I knock on the “DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE” sign on Ruby’s door. She’s playing the YesNoMaybe album. It’s sweet. It softens me. I might be getting ready to leave home and she might be turning into a juvenile delinquent but some things remain the same.
“I am knocking,” I yell, knocking louder.
The music gets turned down ever so slightly.
“I am not accepting company at the moment, Mother,” she replies.
She calls Mom “Mother” when they’re on the outs and talks in this affected, faux British accent.
“It’s not Mother,” I answer. “It is I, Journey, eldest sister of the house. I come in peace.”
The door opens a sliver. Her eyes are bloodshot behind her glasses, although there are no traces of tears or emotion on her face. She lets me in. I take a seat on her bed, which is covered in clothes. They are all black. There’s an open suitcase on the floor. It’s a Hello Kitty suitcase, a relic from years ago, when she was a single-digit sweetie pie.
“I am running away,” she tells me.
“Interesting,” I say. “Where are you going to run to?”
“Iceland,” she says.
“Because of the microbes?
”
“No,” she says, clearly offended. “Because of the Icelandic horses.”
Random as this sounds, back when she was rocking Hello Kitty gear, she was also obsessed with horses. Horses were her microbes back then. She rode horses, she had horse pictures on her wall, she begged Mom to buy a horse. Then it passed. I haven’t heard her talk about horses in years.
“How are you getting to Iceland?” I ask.
She holds up her passport. “I have savings, too.”
“Ruby,” I sigh.
I sit next to her.
“Did you really think pepper spray was going to fix everything?”
“I just wanted to wave it around and make Cindy pee her pants. I wasn’t planning to use it. That thing went off without my meaning to, I swear.”
“You realize what a mess you’re in, right?”
“Whatever. You’re in messes all the time. Who cares?”
I move on, not flinching. “I never got expelled.”
“I never tried to kill myself. Do I get a cookie?”
Ouch. Seriously, I’m trying not to be hurt, but Ruby’s got retorts like a scalpel.
“When did you become such a bitter little girl?” I ask.
“When I stopped being a little girl,” she says.
Suddenly, in a complete break, she begins to cry. She removes her glasses and puts her face in her hands. I have not seen Ruby Tuesday Smith cry since . . . maybe since our parents announced they were splitting up. I put my arms around her and ache with her. I put my cheek on her greasy, bruise-colored hair.
“I just feel so much,” she says.
I know what she means. I know how she hurts. I know, Ruby.
“Same,” I say.
“Everything sucks,” she says. “No one at school likes me. I am an actual pariah. Cindy is so mean to me—and I loved her like a sister. I don’t understand.”
I’m not going to say some dumb cliché like “this too shall pass” or “it gets better,” even though those dumb clichés exist for a reason. Instead I hug her and let her be miserable.
“Ruby,” I tell her. “I don’t know much. I’m a mess. You know I am. But look—at least I’m still here. Intact. I haven’t burned anything to the ground.”
“Congratulations?” she says, wiping her eyes.
“No, I mean . . . I know what it’s like to have cripplingly big feelings. To feel rejected from the people you expected to love you with lifelong fervor.” My voice gets momentarily stuck in my throat as I see Jonah there in my mind, and he dissolves, engulfed by the ocean in me. “Those people who don’t love you in your entirety—for the you you are today, for the whole-picture you—you don’t need them. It hurts to know that. But you don’t need Cindy. And even your screwups . . . they can turn out to be the most amazing gifts.”
My eyes blur over and I have to pause a moment to will the tears away. It works. I swallow. Ruby leans her head on my shoulder.
“I went through hell,” I tell her. “Now it’s your turn.”
“I’m sorry now,” she says, sobbing once, then swallowing it back. “I was just so mad.”
“We’re going to appeal, we’re going to get you back in school, don’t worry.” I take her glasses off, clean them with my shirt, put them back on her face. “You need to be willing to write an apology, and it’ll all blow over. Okay?”
“Okay,” she repeats.
We sit not speaking, YesNoMaybe whining over the speakers about a girl with red lips and mad hips. I think of Etta, although the thought of her seems too dignified for this poppy crap we’re listening to. These lyrics, man. Once I thought they were Shakespeare. Past self, get some damn taste.
“If you could communicate one thing to your future self, what would it be?” I ask Ruby.
She thinks for a long time, chewing her hair, a habit I haven’t seen since she was Stevie’s age.
“I would ask, have scientists found a way to study microbial dark matter?” she asks.
This is not what I was looking for. But her face has lit up. That’s all that matters, right? A little light escaping the darkness.
I take drivers’ training and education and practice driving up and down the hill and on the freeway, breathing through near panic attacks, willfully forgetting the fiery crash. I, human pizza slice, dance with passion and am promised a twenty-five-cent raise and a promotion to busser. I pretend to be a grown-up and go view three apartments, nodding as the property managers show me the laundry rooms and the closets as if I know what I’m doing. I spend a lot of time alone reading poetry. Stacks of books from the library that smell like an intoxicating cocktail of ink, paper, and plastic. I write. I exercise. I go weeks without thinking of suicide, except to think, Wow, look at me not thinking of suicide. What a champ.
The hotline is done, and though I regret how it ended, I accept it now. It was what it was. Soon I’m going to start volunteering at a literacy program through city college instead, tutor ESL students. Training starts in August. So, I’m not done doing good.
JD and I still text sometimes. I never explained to them what happened, I made some excuse to save face about being too busy, but I’m flattered to know I’m apparently missed. A woman named Bethany who brings a footbath to shift and has a very loud voice has replaced me in our crew, and it sounds like she’s not exactly beloved by all. JD and I keep talking about hanging out soon, maybe meeting up for tea with Beatriz and Lydia, but you know how it is with best-laid plans.
That’s why, on August 1, a Sunday morning, a morning at Dad’s when I am gleefully packing my room (I got an apartment! A complex around the corner from Etta’s place, actually. But we won’t think about that. No, that door has closed), I’m surprised to see JD’s calling. We never talk on the phone, text only, and never on Sunday mornings. This is some kind of breach of our relationship’s unspoken rules. I answer the phone as I chuck the last of my ten thousand shoes into a box with a spirited, “Yelllllo?”
“Journey,” JD says. “If you’re not—well, sit your ass down.”
“What’s up?” I ask, correcting my tone.
“You sitting?”
“I’m sitting. Smelling salts in hand,” I joke.
Because I’m nervous and you know how I get when I’m nervous.
“Lydia had a complete breakdown last week and was fired from the hotline,” JD says.
“Our Lydia?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean ‘breakdown’?”
“She started screaming and cussing out Davis. Then she threw the phone and it broke the window. Beatriz and I didn’t even know what to do. Lydia threatened to hurt herself. Then she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital that night after it all happened—that’s what I heard.”
I’m so stunned I have no response. Lydia, with her knitting and her acerbic wit and her good advice. Her heart-wrenching poems and her FaceTime calls with her dog and her weird green sludge teas. Her perfect, sarcastic kindness. The veteran, the mentor, the longest-lasting volunteer the hotline ever had. I can’t picture her losing it like that.
“Lydia from the hotline?” I clarify.
“Yes.”
I seem to have momentarily lost the ability to locate words.
“Maybe I shouldn’t’ve called,” JD goes on. “I just thought you’d wanna know. It was—so out of character for her. Scared the crap out of me.”
My jaw has dropped, imagining this scene. Poor Lydia. Threatening to hurt herself? We were hotline volunteers! Lydia is a grandmother. She has gone through the darkness, emerged, and aged another generation. My heart cracks, like the delicate egg it is, thinking that someone as together as Lydia could have an episode like that out of nowhere and lose her hotline job and end up in a psych hospital. It makes no sense. I cannot compute.
“Have you talked to her since?” I ask.
“I checked in with her yesterday, yeah. She’s back home now. She said she’s been in a lot of pain lately, because of her back. And Camus died. I guess
it all pushed her over the edge.”
“Camus!” I say, my eyes watering. “Oh no. She loves that dog so much.”
“Yeah, so . . . I don’t know why I called . . . maybe give her a call or shoot her an email or something when you get the chance. She could use support right now.”
“Thank you,” I tell JD. “No—I appreciate it. I’ll . . . I’ll reach out.”
I hang up. It’s absolutely unbelievable that that woman, who I shared so many hours with, who counseled me and decompressed with me, who read poetry with me and gave me advice, who gave her own love and advice to strangers, for free, for absolutely nothing in return—could snap. I picture her screaming into the phone and breaking a window but it seems so ridiculous. Really? Really, Lydia?
I look in the mirror. If Lydia could break the fuck down at sixty-whatever years old . . . a grown-up . . . a mother, a grandmother . . . how in hell is there hope for me? And how selfish am I, to think of myself, to make this about me?
This is why my packing comes to a standstill and I lie on my bed in my piles of unpacked clothes.
This is why I crash, hard, back to earth with a sadness so big it should make a supersonic sound. But it doesn’t. In fact, it sounds like nothing at all.
Dear future self,
At some point, years past this, when you build up your death wish sobriety and walk to the furthest point away from your biggest mistake, is there a chance you would be willing to throw it all away again?
Dear future self, then what is all this for?
I’ve heard that suicide can be contagious, spreading through families and communities like viruses. There are copycat suicides and suicides inspired by irresponsible fiction. Even I was sucked into the fantasy of it when I tried, thinking it would be so exquisite, like an Ophelia painting, like a Sylvia Plath poem, O romantic death.
Even though I know now the ugly sick reality—the desperate, vomitous, embarrassing, regrettable reality—I find myself distracted by the thought of Lydia’s breakdown after I learn the news. I reach out and send her an email asking if she needs anything and hear nothing back. I try to imagine the dark place she got sucked back into—was she in danger of trying to kill herself? Is that why she checked herself into the hospital? Is that what I’m going to be like if I make it to her age—still struggling with the same bullshit? I barely know Lydia, really, and it’s dumb for me to be so preoccupied with her situation; I don’t know the names of her children and grandchildren, or her age, her middle name, her address, or whether or not a potential suicide attempt was any part of her breakdown. But I am preoccupied. She haunts me during my driving lessons and my work days. She sits with me as I pick out cheap furniture at the thrift store with Marisol. I tell Marisol, lump in my throat, that I feel like Lydia’s breakdown is seeing a depressing version of my future self.
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