How to Live on the Edge

by Sarah Lynn Scheerger

  I shift my focus, and before I know it, I’m skimming Saff’s entry. I force myself to stop—I promised myself I wouldn’t. Unless maybe Saff wants me to read them. Maybe she knows I’m taking the journal and she’s leaving them for me specifically. Might be a stretch. But possible.

  I peek again. Impulse control has never been my strong point.

  Things nobody tells you when you lose a mom —Saffron

  How you’ll forget her face.

  And her voice.

  And her smell.

  How not having her will become your normal,

  And how you won’t even miss her

  (As awful as that sounds)

  Because you don’t know what to miss.

  How you’ll find yourself looking

  For replacement mother figures.

  Without realizing it.

  Your teachers at school, your auntie,

  Even your big sister.

  But no one will measure up

  To what you think you want.

  Which is, you know, ridiculous.

  Because you don’t know

  What you want in the first place.

  Which sort of works out just fine . . .

  Unless something jogs your memory,

  Making you remember what you lost on some visceral level,

  Which, obviously, sucks.

  Saff is such a trip. Here she is, totally embracing this whole reconnect-to-Mom game, making me feel like I’m a bad daughter because I’m not all gangbusters about this journal. But when I read what she wrote, she sounds every bit as conflicted as I am. Like, sure it’s great to have these fragments of our mother, but they’re stirring everything up again. We’re both caught like fish on a hook, and we’re getting reeled in.

  We’re going to keep watching these videos. And probably keep reading these entries. We feel compelled to. How can I both hate it and love it in the same moment?

  Chapter 9

  “Just what is going on in here?” I say in a pseudo-parent voice. I’ve come to investigate a suspicious cascade of laughter from Saffron’s room. “You sound like hyenas. Could you be any louder?”

  “Oh we could. Much louder,” Saff’s best friend, Vanessa, deadpans. She can only hold it for a moment before both she and Saffron start cracking up again. They’re staring at Saff’s phone.

  Vanessa happens to be my favorite of Saffron’s friends because she gets my humor. Some of Saff’s other friends are so polite that I can’t tell with they’re thinking. Plus I think I scare them.

  Vanessa goes on, “My mission for tonight is to get your sister to relax. We’ve got a physics exam tomorrow and we’re totally ready! So what does this girl want to do? Study more! I mean, I’m all for setting the curve—and you know we will”—she high fives my sister—“but a few cute animal videos are the only thing I’m interested in studying right now.”

  “Ah, in that case, don’t let me interrupt you.”

  “Too late,” says Saff. She sticks out her tongue.

  I whip out my phone and aim it at her. “Oo, hold still. That’ll make a great photo. Really captures your cheery personality.”

  “Leave, Cayenne,” Saff says, swatting in my direction, even though she’s too far away to even come close to reaching me. “You’re crushing our endorphins.”

  “Begging your pardon, milady.” I bob a fake curtsey. “I just came in here to ask if you wanted to stop by Alicia’s tomorrow.” I think I do a convincing job of dropping this casually. It’s been two weeks since we watched Mom’s first video and I’m kind of surprised that Saff hasn’t brought it up yet.

  “Oh. Sure.” She looks like she wants to ask me a follow-up question, but Vanessa is shooing me away, so I flash a thumbs up and leave—the considerate sister that I am.

  I can still hear them talking from out in the hallway, though.

  “No, seriously, I think it’s sweet the way she teases you,” Vanessa says. “Chris used to be like that with me, and you know what a jerk he can be these days.”

  “Yeah, your sibling situation officially sucks more than mine,” Saff admits. I choose to take this as a compliment.

  ✱✱✱

  Saff and I are sitting on the porch, smelling Micah’s burnt popcorn, hearing the rumblings of his conversation with Alicia in the other room, and watching our second video from Mom.

  “So, sweets . . . do you know where I am?” She must be standing behind the camera, because I can’t see her. “It’s our secret garden. Do you remember?”

  With some visible effort, she shifts the camera upward, and I glimpse a tree trunk. Four jean legs hang down, bare feet dangling, the soles of our feet dirty. The camera inches upward, and I can hear Mom breathing more heavily. I wonder how sick she’s gotten by this point. Not bad enough to be housebound apparently. And then I see us, perched on a branch, staring at the sky.

  “Wow. We’re up pretty high,” I say.

  “I’d never let Missy and Maggie climb up to that branch,” Saff says, pressing pause.

  “I would,” I retort, but truthfully I’m not sure. If one of them came home with a broken bone, Luke would never forgive me. “Why are you stopping the video?”

  “Let’s pause it when we want to talk.”

  “Works for me.” I wait. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  “Nothing. Just didn’t want to miss anything.” Saff smiles and un-pauses it. Clearly the “pause” button is her way of keeping me from interrupting.

  “This was my thinking spot. I came here at first when I was pregnant. The world around me was getting louder and louder—not literally, just, there were so many interruptions to my ability to think. So I came here and found quiet. After you were born, Cay, I brought you here to nurse and sometimes to sleep. I’d stash my journal or my book in the diaper bag, set you up on a blanket so you could gaze at the leaves rustling in the sky . . . and I’d just sit here and be. Just BE. I hope you both haven’t lost the ability to be alone with your thoughts.”

  Neither Saff nor I say anything. I guess I think the best when I’m driving alone. Sometimes I’ve gotten halfway to Axel’s house before I realize I forgot to turn on any music.

  “Today’s gift is my secret garden. I come here to connect to nature when I can. Not so often anymore.” Her voice tightens. “Do you remember this spot? Can you find it? Let me show you a few landmarks you can use to rediscover this place.”

  The camera tips forward, slamming me with a falling sensation. The lens narrows in on a patch of dandelions. All of a sudden, a memory hits me, of a time before I knew that dandelions were weeds. I remember plucking them from the ground, talking to them like they were little people, with skinny green bodies and wispy heads, dancing in the wind. I remember watching how their fuzzy heads shifted shape with the breeze, how I pursed my lips and blew. How I made a wish and watched the hairs break free and sail away.

  I press pause on the video. “Do you remember blowing dandelions?” I whisper to Saff.

  “I do. I think we blew hundreds of them at once.”

  “We’re probably responsible for half the weeds in the county.”

  I start the video again. I hear shuffling, and the camera shakes as she moves around. “Earthquake!” I joke, but Saff doesn’t laugh. She stares at the screen, mesmerized. There’s a gray blob in the top right-hand corner. It comes into focus slowly. “What is that? A UFO? Maybe we were abducted by aliens.”

  “It’s the water tower. But that’s a terrible clue, because you can see it for miles.”

  The camera moves again. Mom’s voice, hoarse: “Cayenne, here, take my camera. Can you point it toward the swings?”

  My four-year-old face, smudged with dirt along the length of my nose, and serious eyes poke over the branch. “Okie, Mama.”

  Something catches in my throat. I pause the video for a moment and study myself. “Look at me, Saff.”

  “I know.”

  “It makes me want to cry, but I don’t know why.”

&nb
sp; “It’s your expression, Cay. There’s something about your expression that’s so sad.”

  “It’s my eyes.” They seem old and tired. “And my mouth, I think.” My lips lie flat, like someone has ironed them. “I must have known.”

  “That she was dying?”

  “Yeah. I must’ve known. Why else would I look so sad?” I stand up and peer into one of Alicia’s decorative mirrors. “That’s not how I look now, is it?” I square off and stare straight ahead at myself.

  “No, now you just look pissed.”

  “Shut up.”

  Un-pause.

  The camera shifts again, rapidly, and I have to turn away. All that movement makes me dizzy. “How bizarre is it that I’m watching myself and I have no memory of this at all?” The camera zooms in toward a swing set, but beyond that I glimpse a webbed climbing structure. “Wait! Look at that! We called it the Spider Web Park.”

  “Oh yeah!” Saff grabs onto my arm. “Remember how I couldn’t climb to the top and you helped me? You kept saying ‘Don’t look down, one foot at a time.’ You were a good sister to me, Cay.”

  I can’t help but notice that she speaks in past tense.

  Suddenly, a little kid screams, and the screen blurs as if it’s falling, and then thud it hits the ground camera-up. All we can see is an umbrella of leaves with bits of sun and sky poking through.

  “Hold on, Cay! I’ll grab you.” Mom’s voice, stronger now.

  “I’m okay, Mama.” My voice trembling. “I can fall, it’s not that far. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I can reach you, baby.”

  “But I don’t want to break you!”

  “Cayenne, don’t break Mama!” Saff’s tinny voice, full of lisps and slurs.

  “Wow. Did I really talk like that?”

  “What do you think you got all that speech therapy for?”

  Sobbing. Little kid sobbing.

  “Oh my god. I remember this, Saff. I remember hanging on to that branch and crying.” I remember the way the tree branch splintered into my hands, the way my arms ached, and the uncontrollable sobs that kept bursting from my body. “I won’t be able to hold on for long.”

  “Ma-ma . . . m-move . . . b-ba-ack!”

  “Watch out, Mama!” Saff yells.

  Even though we can’t see anything but the canopy of leaves above, I remember what happened next. How I held on as long as I possibly could, how my fingers loosened, how I dropped what felt like a mile, but was probably only about six feet. How my mother stepped back, respecting my wishes, allowing me to crash onto the leaves below. How I sprained my ankle in the fall, and how Mom cried harder during the x-ray than I did.

  We hear the crash as I slam down, the crackling of leaves, and the sound of whimpering.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m o-kay.” My speech is halting, like I’m trying hard to hold it together.

  “You didn’t break Mama,” Saff says. “Good job, Cay.”

  And Mom’s shaky voice. “You sure are a tough cookie. Spicy and tough and sharp as a tack. Watch out, world, here come the Silk sisters!”

  She must notice the camera there in the leaves then, because she peers down into the lens, her cheeks thin and her bald head exposed. There’s something beautiful in her fragility. Before she got sick, my mom was a head-turner—but in this moment, with her eyes full of emotion, she seems lovelier than ever. Even without her hair and with a conspicuously flat chest. From what Tee says, she never got breast reconstruction because she was too sick for any additional physical stress.

  She takes a deep breath and speaks directly into the camera: “It breaks my heart that I can’t be there to catch you when you fall. Today”—she wipes a tear—“or in the future. I hope you can keep landing on your feet.” Click.

  Chapter 10

  Saff convinces me to spend the afternoon at the secret garden, lounging on a blanket and eating salted almonds. We sit in silence, except for the almonds crunching and the shrieks of nearby children. She’s been entirely too serious since Tee’s announcement about the surgery, and I decide it’s my sisterly duty to break her out of her somber shell.

  On the way home, I drag her to the grocery store to do some shopping for the boob-voyage party, since Tee has put us in charge of the tit-tacular festivities.

  I yank a cart from the stack. “What kind of budget do we have to work with?”

  “Luke gave me four hundred smackeroos,” Saff replies.

  Luke’s usually tighter with cash. “I guess he wants us to go all out, huh?” I push off and hop onto the cart with both feet, taking a little ride.

  Saff quickens her pace to keep up with me, shooting me a how-old-are-you? look. “Yeah. I think he’s messed up over this whole mastectomy thing. God, that’s an ugly word. Mastectomy. Ugh.”

  “Yup.” I know Luke wants Tee to do it from a practical standpoint, but I wonder how he feels about it. They’ve been married for ten years, but assuming she escapes the Silk die-young curse, they could have like sixty more years together. “Not only is she losing her breasts, but he’s losing her breasts too.”

  “They’re not his! He doesn’t own them,” Saff snaps at me.

  “God, Saff. I’m not suggesting that. But I’m guessing he’s enjoyed them over the years.”

  “That is way too gross to even think about.” Saff gags. “Plus, you realize you’re objectifying her by talking about her breasts like that, right?”

  Guess it’s time for another round of Saffron-Criticizes-Everything-I-Say. “Well, you can’t deny that this decision is impacting him too.”

  “The only reason it should is because his wife will be in pain.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple.” But secretly I wonder if she’s right. Maybe whatever Luke feels shouldn’t be an issue. Like Saff said, it’s not his body. This reminds me of how I felt when I turned Axel down the other day. Like somehow it was my responsibility to make sure he was satisfied. What is that about?

  The cart is fast approaching a curb, so I step off. “Listen, Saff, I’m not trying to argue here. Let’s have fun with this—both with the party prep and the actual event. Maybe we can hire a manicurist for the party, and we can all get chi-chi’s on our toenails? Luke included.”

  Saffron sighs. “How about the breast cancer ribbon? That might be less alarming.”

  “We could give people a choice. Honkers or ribbons.”

  “Let’s make a list of what we’ll need,” Saff says as the automatic doors slide open to welcome us. “We should only buy nonperishable stuff today. We can do another shopping trip the week of the party.”

  I shiver involuntarily as we enter. Damn, they keep this place cold. “Do you think they carry a BOOBY piñata?”

  Saffron looks around as if to see if anyone is staring. “I’m going to start counting the number of times you say that word. The twins are more mature than you.”

  “That word?” I pick up two oranges and flip them around so the navels face outward in my hand. Oranges are quite bosom-esque. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I think you just like saying it for the shock factor. I prefer breast.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a boob!”

  “Can I point out that you just used a symbol of womanhood to insult me?”

  “Sheesh! I can’t even have a conversation without you analyzing my every word!”

  I set my orange back down on the pile—carefully, of course, so I don’t set off a cascade of rolling produce. I turn away from her and walk backward, letting her push the cart while I pull out my phone. “I’m going to google it. ‘Goodbye to boobies party ideas.’ Oh oops, I misspelled booby.” Every time I say “booby,” I speak it extra loud. An older gentleman glances up from examining apples for bruises. “Ooh, pin the tail on the honker?”

  Saff sighs, shifting her gaze to the old guy and then back to me. “You’re too much.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, taking life seriousl
y?” Saff snaps, but a moment later she softens. “I guess I should be grateful for your enthusiasm.”

  Satisfied with my victory, I steer the cart away from the produce section. Saff follows me. “I saw this stupid video online,” she says, “where these ladies had balloons taped to their butts and people had to run up and try to pop the balloons without using their hands . . . and it wound up looking really wrong.” She cups her hand over her mouth as if she wants to hold back her idea but then releases it. “What if we gave everyone balloon breasts and they have to pop them without using hands? They’d have to hug and squeeze.”

  “Creative! And we could come up with some fun way to use Tee’s old bras. We could make them into slingshots or a hat, or pin them up on her walls.”

  “Yeah but she’s going to have fake breasts. She’ll still need bras.”

  “Maybe not, maybe they’ll be rock solid.”

  Saff rolls her eyes. “Honestly the reconstructive surgery seems almost more of a hassle than the mastectomy. Aunt Tee told me it’ll take hours. Plus the implants have to be replaced at some point, it’s not like she can just put them in once and be done.”

  So they’ve been talking about this without me. That’s fine. I guess. “Why would anyone not do the reconstruction, though? Unless they were super sick and weak like Mom was. They’d have to walk around boobless.”

  “I mean . . . lots of reasons,” says Saff, looking at me like she’s not sure whether I’m being serious. “It’s cosmetic, not health-related, so I’m sure some women prefer not to spend the extra money on it. And I’m sure there are ways they could, you know, pad themselves out when they’re in public if they don’t want to get judged.”

  She puts a subtle emphasis on the last word, like I’m the one who would judge these hypothetical boobless women for their flat chests. I’m still trying to think of a clever enough retort when she moves on.

  “Besides, it’s not like we have to have breasts. Except for breastfeeding, what’s the point of them, really? They make running harder, they’re sore when we’re on our periods. Sure they look nice, but we only think that because society has made us believe it. What if we’d never been subjected to that message?”