Turtle under Ice

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Turtle under Ice Page 4

by Juleah del Rosario


  into the goal.

  I remember seeing their tiny hands gripping the fence

  during the semifinals, noses peering through,

  and wondering if they realized that this wasn’t normal.

  People didn’t show up to watch soccer.

  People didn’t show up to watch

  high school women play anything.

  But during the semifinals, the stands were packed.

  I overheard the owner of the diner on Main Street

  seated on the bleacher in front of me explain

  to the owner of the hardware store about offsides.

  A group of senior guys had brought cardboard cutouts

  of players’ faces. My sister’s head bobbled around.

  Out of the woodwork, everyone who ever wanted to feel

  like they could be worthy of something

  showed up to the games.

  Because we all wanted to see for ourselves

  what it could be like to be so good at something

  that other people noticed.

  Maribel and Dad showed up looking flustered.

  The half was just about to end.

  “I can’t believe we’re late. The appointment ran over.”

  Maribel rubbed her belly, the small

  noticeable bump starting to show.

  She leaned over to me as we watched the team

  jog off the field and huddle around the coach.

  “It’s a girl,” Maribel leaned over and said.

  It was this type of world that I wanted a sister to grow up in.

  One that could celebrate her accomplishments

  not because she was a girl but because she was worthy.

  But I wasn’t the one on the field.

  I wasn’t the one with the cardboard cutout of my face.

  I wasn’t doing anything to create a type of future

  that I wanted for a future sister,

  because I wasn’t doing anything

  to create a type of future that I wanted for myself.

  I had no clue what to do.

  A whistle blew and the second half started.

  I watched the game descend into a slog of possession.

  The crowd was rapt with every play.

  Every corner. Every turnover.

  I watched Row go after the ball.

  Targeting a player. Legs pounding against the field,

  and I saw something that I didn’t know how to have.

  But even there, surrounded by hundreds of people,

  all chanting Row’s name, I couldn’t help

  but drift away and think about Mom.

  How she would be so proud of Row.

  She would have loved to be here, to see someone just like her.

  Someone who could attack life the way she did.

  But what would she say about me?

  The daughter in the stands who doesn’t

  have any real hobbies or talents to speak of.

  The daughter who is supposed to grow up and be something

  but has no idea what that something is

  or how to find it and pursue it

  the way that Row pursues a player.

  The daughter who can’t seem to let go of her mother.

  The daughter who still wishes that she could be held forever.

  Row

  Ten minutes later

  Kennedy texts again.

  Do you want

  to build a

  snowmaaaan?

  I am not

  your Elsa,

  I text back.

  Well, then,

  ask your sister.

  Row

  I type and delete

  and type again

  and let the words

  sit on the screen

  like turtles on a log

  sunning themselves

  in springtime.

  Ariana’s not here.

  Ariana

  I once saw Row talking to Rory from Studio Art;

  Busy, the girl who invited me to her house in seventh grade,

  the girl with the magazines and a friendship I thought

  that maybe I could have had; and Paola,

  the girl that everyone thought was Row’s older sister,

  because they’re both brown and play soccer,

  and except for the whole different-parents,

  different-last-name thing, people still assume that they are.

  Row and I haven’t been at the same school together

  since California. Since before Mom died.

  We haven’t had to occupy the same halls,

  interact with the same people.

  Row hasn’t had to see me, in my world,

  and now she was here, and it was her world.

  It was like suddenly my sister was different.

  Not my little sister. But one of them.

  One of the normal, well-adjusted girls

  who could walk down the hall

  every day and talk to people.

  One of the girls who had a lunch table to sit at,

  friends who texted her, a whole team of people

  who called out her number down the hall.

  I didn’t recognize her.

  I didn’t recognize myself.

  It was senior year and I didn’t even have

  a regular table to sit at in the cafeteria.

  Like all the years before I snuck bites of food

  in the library during lunch while doing homework,

  and for all these years it has been fine. I even liked it.

  But I watched Row talk to Busy, Rory, and Paola.

  I didn’t want her to know that after all these years

  I hadn’t moved on. I hadn’t found my place

  in this world like she had. I hadn’t figured out

  who I was, and it scared me. Because someday

  I needed to leave, and what was I supposed to do

  with an entire future?

  What would Row say if she found out

  I wasn’t a good model to follow? I wasn’t

  a sister who would pave the way. That she

  didn’t have a mother or an older sister around to guide her.

  I didn’t want her to see me, so

  I slipped around the corner and disappeared.

  Row

  Why would anyone

  go outside in this weather?

  Kennedy texts back.

  There’s, like, seven inches of snow

  and it’s fifteen degrees out at best.

  I look out the window again

  and see ice crystals swirl into snowdrifts.

  Where is she?

  I try to push aside the feeling

  of being left behind.

  So, you wanna come over here?

  I text. I feel a small pang of guilt

  immediately after pushing send.

  Like I’m trying to replace

  Ariana with Kennedy.

  I don’t know.

  Maybe I am.

  Maybe I should.

  You heard me, right?

  Why on earth would I want

  to trudge through this weather

  and hang out at your house?

  Because we’re friends.

  Then I drop in an emoji

  of two girls dancing.

  Ariana

  The bus stops at the next station an hour later.

  A kid about eight sits down next to me, while his mother

  and baby sister take empty seats a few rows forward.

  “I’m Edward,” the kid says, unprompted,

  pulling out a stack of books.

  Volumes about animals. “What’s your favorite animal?”

  I don’t answer. I try to tune him out by pulling down

  my knit hat and resting my head against the window.

  But he keeps talking, and asks me again,

  “What’s your favorite animal?”

  “A jellyfish,” I finally a
nswer, because

  when I think about jellyfish, I think about silence.

  “Whoa. That’s cool.” Edward flips

  to a page in his animal encyclopedia.

  “Did you know that there are certain

  kinds of jellyfish that can live forever?”

  He starts to read an entry.

  “ ‘Once the immortal jellyfish reaches adulthood,

  it transforms back into its original juvenile state.’ ”

  “I hate to break it to you, kid,

  but nothing lives forever.”

  Row

  Kennedy stands inside our front door

  twenty minutes later,

  unraveling the layers

  of clothes wrapped around her.

  The snow on Kennedy’s boots

  begins melting

  on the tile floor,

  yet I still feel cold

  standing here

  in wool socks.

  “For real. It’s a blizzard out there,

  and my mom is less than thrilled

  about me leaving the house,

  but I said that I was worried

  about you guys.”

  She’s looking around the kitchen

  and starting to notice that no one

  has turned on any lights

  this morning.

  She notices

  the recycle bin overflowing

  with milk cartons

  and yogurt containers

  that no one has touched

  in three days.

  “Um. No offense,”

  Kennedy begins,

  “but it feels a little

  like a cesspool

  of sadness in here,

  and something is

  literally rotting.”

  It’s like she can see

  all of our emotions

  out on display.

  I don’t want to

  have to explain to her

  right now what’s going on.

  I don’t want to share

  with her about Maribel,

  or the baby, or about how it feels

  when grief seeps back

  under your skin,

  like a roof that leaks

  one drop at a time.

  Instead, I wish I just had

  the foresight to clean.

  Ariana

  The bus rumbles into the college town of Loganville,

  and there’s a line of students clutching to-go cups

  and overnight bags for the city.

  In the distance, grounds crews with snow shovels

  and vehicles outfitted with plows scrape away

  ice and snow on tree-lined walkways in front of red brick dorms.

  This is exactly how college looks in the glossy catalogs

  that Maribel had sent to our house. I get it.

  It’s like the perfect interlude in a song. Like sun breaks

  after a long spell of rain. Like the day after it snows,

  and even though it’s freezing, you wouldn’t trade anything

  for the way the world glistens, untouched.

  But it’s like I have an aversion to this level of a stylized future.

  Everyone with their Bean boots and quilted totes.

  “I think you’ll be surprised to find people

  who you relate to,” Maribel once said to me.

  She held out a stack of brochures.

  “They may have different life experiences,

  but there’s something about lying around a dorm room

  and bonding, the collective hardship of challenging classes,

  the shared yearning to be someone better,” she said.

  How can it be better? How can it be so perfect?

  The experiences of our lives cannot be reversed.

  “It’s not about the best school. Private or public.

  In state or out of state. Two-year or four-year.

  It’s about who you show up as

  during your college experience.”

  A girl stands alone, waiting to board. Checking her phone.

  In the distance, across the quad, I see a group of brown girls

  in sweatpants and bundled in oversize jackets.

  Laughing. I wonder what is so funny. I wonder

  what it feels like to laugh so hard that your breath

  looks like clouds coming out of your mouth.

  I want to believe Maribel, because maybe she is right.

  Because she at least knows what it’s like. She’s Filipina,

  like Dad. She’s brown, like us. She knows what it means

  to be and have been a young brown woman,

  to exist in our skin.

  She knows how to believe in a future.

  She knows how to make one.

  I want to believe, because Mom isn’t here,

  and Maribel is trying.

  Row

  “Are you going to help?”

  Kennedy empties

  an overflowing recycle bin.

  I follow her into the garage,

  where she dumps the contents

  into a large blue canister.

  Someone,

  someday,

  will have to haul

  the recycle bin

  out to the street.

  Preferably after

  someone,

  someday,

  shovels the driveway,

  but I didn’t want it to be me,

  the only member of this household

  who is around to notice

  the chores to be done.

  Besides, Dad was the one

  who loved shoveling snow.

  It must be an adult thing.

  The satisfaction

  of clearing the way

  for the inhabitants

  of a home.

  Of providing something

  as small as a pathway

  out to the rest of the world.

  Excavating trenches

  in a battle against

  Mother Nature.

  Except for the imprints

  left behind

  by Kennedy’s snow boots,

  no one has cleared a pathway

  to the street.

  No one scraped the driveway bare.

  No one has ventured outside

  since the snow started falling,

  except my sister

  who left at some point

  in the middle of the night

  when the snow fell the hardest

  and her longing to escape

  overwhelmed her.

  Ariana

  A girl with a guitar case strapped to her back runs for the bus.

  Someone is trailing behind. I hunker down low in my seat.

  But as soon as she enters the bus, she sees me.

  “Ariana?” She stops a few rows ahead of me,

  holding up a line of passengers behind.

  “Hey. Alex.” Of course. After all these months.

  Alex gets on my bus. After all these months

  of trying to forget her.

  Alex looks a little flustered too. Like she’s not quite sure

  she wants to see me either, but someone brushes her bag.

  She glances over her shoulder and points to the girl behind her.

  “This is my roommate,” Alex says.

  Her roommate looks normal. The way a well-adjusted

  college girl might look. Clothes draped over her body

  in effortless layers. Skin that is hydrated and blemish free.

  She probably uses toner. She probably knows why

  one is supposed to use toner.

  “We should grab those seats,” the roommate says,

  pointing to the remaining pair toward the back.

  There are so many things to say to Alex.

  Even the small things like, how are you?

  How’s the band? How’s college and life and your future?

  Maybe she wants me t
o ask her one of those questions.

  Any question. Because she lingers a moment longer.

  “Okay, sure. It was good seeing you, Ariana.”

  The bus shifts into gear. Alex wavers down the aisle, and I watch

  as she finds her seat and pulls a muffin out from a jacket pocket

  and starts eating, spilling crumbs onto the floor.

  Row

  “So, is Ariana just gone?

  Or like Gone Girl gone?”

  Kennedy asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Should I be worried?”

  Kennedy says, but she’s already worried.

  I don’t know why people always think

  that worrying will resolve anything.

  Like when Mom died,

  our parents’ friends

  were always like,

  “We are so worried about you girls.”

  Ariana would respond,

  “What good does that do?

  She’s not coming back.”

  That always shut people up.

  “Something’s not right, Row.”

 

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