Turtle under Ice

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Turtle under Ice Page 10

by Juleah del Rosario


  Why can’t I just feel the feelings that I have?

  I try to shift around in my seat, but the painting

  leaves me no room, and I feel confined like a sleeping bag,

  shoved into a stuff sack.

  Edward reaches under his seat for his backpack.

  The slow whine of every zipper opening and closing,

  sounds like a cacophony of desperate people crying.

  The crinkle of plastic. The chewing. The smell

  of bodies perspiring all around me.

  I don’t know anything about Edward.

  Whether he has a good family, a good home.

  I don’t know why he or any of us is here on this bus.

  What desperate situation drew us to leave in a snowstorm?

  To put our lives in the hands of a driver?

  To be protected only by a sign posted up front

  that reads, YOUR SAFETY IS OUR NUMBER ONE CONCERN.

  Because is it?

  Edward stuffs a whole handful of fruit snacks

  into his mouth. “Do you want to know

  the one thing in this world I can’t live without?”

  Edward is bouncing in his seat.

  “Not really,” I say.

  “It’s my sister,” he says, and continues.

  Chewing. Bouncing. Talking.

  Edward turns to me. “What’s the one thing in the world

  you can’t live without?”

  I sigh. I look out the window. “Breathing,” I say.

  Edward inhales and exhales and scrunches up his face.

  “Why?”

  “Because we literally can’t live without breathing.”

  The weight of the painting grows on my legs.

  I lift it and try to put it on the floor. But then

  my legs have nowhere to stretch, so I just hold

  it in the palms of my hands. Hovering above my knees.

  Edward stops chewing. “But why?”

  “Why do we breathe? I don’t know.

  So that we can live.”

  “But why?” Edward is bouncing again.

  “Because if we don’t live, we die,” I say.

  Edward stops bouncing.

  “Everyone?” I hear him say, but I’m distracted

  by the scene outside. The long shadows from tall buildings.

  Garbage trucks and taxicabs. Stoplights and storefronts

  and humans walking around with their phones.

  “Yeah, everyone dies,” I say, without thinking.

  “Even my sister,” Edward says so quietly

  that maybe he didn’t intend for me to hear.

  But I heard him. I heard the pain, the grieving.

  I heard him say something with his kid heart

  that I once felt in mine.

  It aches so deep. The pain so real. Rising upward. Rising higher.

  Until it surfaces. Finally given a chance to breathe.

  “Yep. She’ll die too.”

  The words escape. I can’t haul them back.

  I can’t swallow hard enough to unsay them.

  The pain comes out so flippant.

  So callous. Biting. With lots of sharp teeth.

  I look over at Edward.

  He’s frozen. There’s a wad of fruit snack stuck in his cheek.

  He’s staring blankly at the seat in front of us.

  Eyes so wide. Too wide.

  “I didn’t…” But I stop. I don’t have any idea what to say

  to fix this. I watch his tiny body crumple.

  I watch what the words I said do to his face.

  His muscles are too weak. Too unprepared to hold it all in.

  He starts crying, and it breaks me.

  The bus is rumbling through the city in spurts and jolts,

  but Edward jumps out of his seat and is running up the aisle,

  swaying back and forth with the twists

  and turns of the city streets.

  Everyone is looking at him. Everyone is looking at me.

  His mother is yelling at him to stop.

  The bus driver is yelling at him to stay in his seat.

  But he continues to scream and cry.

  Finally, Alex reaches her arms into the aisle

  and catches Edward as he tries to run past.

  Alex picks up Edward as he’s kicking and screaming

  and delivers him back into the lap of his mother.

  Row

  I’ve had more ankle sprains

  than is reasonable for someone my age.

  Overuse.

  Understretching.

  Weak ankles.

  Not enough icing.

  If only we could tend to our grief

  the way we tend to our injuries:

  the physical therapy,

  the ice packs.

  If only there were doctors

  who were trained in this type of healing,

  the ones who could tell you

  that you’d be back on the field

  in two weeks, as long as you follow

  their regimen.

  But there is no healing process

  when irreversible things happen,

  like mothers dying.

  No way to heal

  things that can never be undone.

  Ariana

  As soon as we arrive in the city, I gather my things,

  the painting stuffed under my arm,

  and try to get off that bus as fast as I can.

  But Edward’s mother stops me. “What is wrong with you?”

  What kind of person makes an eight-year-old cry?”

  I look at the floor. Caked in dirt that came from our shoes.

  Rings of salt from the roads. “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s sick,” Edward’s mother says, pointing at the baby,

  “and you just told my son that his sister is going to die?”

  “I didn’t know,” I say. Edward’s face peeks out

  from behind his mother. He doesn’t know the question

  to ask, but I can see in his eyes that he’s saying,

  Why did you hurt me?

  “I’m really sorry, Edward,” I tell him. He doesn’t react.

  Just keeps staring at me with longing eyes. Wanting to know

  when it will all stop hurting.

  I try again. “I hurt you. That’s not right. I’m sorry.”

  Edward gives me an almost imperceptible nod.

  It’s still not okay. His life might not be okay.

  His sister might die. Tomorrow or in eighty years,

  and it will still never be okay.

  Edward’s mother grabs hold of his hand and hauls

  her children away. They disappear into the bus station.

  Into the flurry of people and hustle

  moving in every direction.

  Row

  It’s frankly pretty challenging

  to hobble through the snow

  with a sprained ankle,

  so by the time I end up on the doorstep,

  I feel hot, throbbing pain inside my snow boot.

  Kennedy answers with her little brother, Lincoln,

  wrapped around her like a full-grown sloth.

  “Hey,” she says. She’s trying to be nice

  in front of Lincoln. But her expression

  is tired. Annoyed. Unsurprised.

  “I think I sprained my ankle.”

  “Again?”

  “It hurts,” I say.

  Kennedy cocks her head,

  like she’s searching my face

  for the words she wants me to say.

  But I don’t know how to tell her.

  Lincoln slides off,

  scrambling away

  into the depths

  of the house.

  “My mom isn’t here,”

  Kennedy says.

  “She had to take an extra shift

  at the hospital because of the weather.”

  I swallow, but my
throat is dry.

  “That’s okay.”

  Kennedy doesn’t move.

  Hand still holding the door.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Row?”

  I didn’t want to tell anyone.

  It felt too precious, too fragile.

  The sense of hope. The possibility of love.

  My words come out so cautious.

  Like footsteps on the ice.

  “Maybe if we didn’t love her as much.

  Maybe if we didn’t stake all of our

  hopes and dreams on her,

  she would have lived.

  “But she died, Kennedy.”

  Ariana

  Outside the bus, Alex is waiting. “Seriously, Ariana.

  He was such a sweet kid. Maybe a little annoying. But really?”

  I want to let go. I want to explore life and be a better person.

  I want to chase after life like my little sister out on the field.

  I want to be whoever it is I am supposed to be.

  Of course I do.

  But I can’t be this. Who I just was five minutes ago.

  A person who could cause such pain to a kid like Edward.

  I nod back at her. “I know. It’s not okay.”

  We are so different. In our pain. In our grief.

  But Alex doesn’t see my pain. The hurt, not from grief,

  but from us. A friendship I wanted—I needed—

  that never happened.

  She doesn’t recognize the way pain, which we both possess,

  wants to mirror itself on someone else. On me. On strangers.

  Maybe Alex could only see me as the girl with the dead mother

  because that’s all I could see of myself. But I wanted

  to at least try to be someone more. Someone with multitudes.

  “I thought that our friendship would help me move on.

  But sometimes, the way you dismissed the way I felt,

  even today, it hurt,” I say.

  Alex looks like she wants to say something,

  but her roommate wanders back to us.

  “We need to go,” her roommate says.

  “I’m so much more than the girl who lost her mother,”

  I say. “I wish you could have seen that.”

  Alex looks like the girl that I sometimes saw.

  The girl whose hand trembled as she tried

  to scatter her brother’s ashes. The girl who wanted,

  even on the hottest days, to wrap herself

  in a ratty old sweatshirt because maybe

  it still held on to the scent of her brother.

  But she was also the girl up onstage,

  who could command a crowd, close her eyes,

  and take us all somewhere with her songs.

  She shifted the guitar case strapped to her back.

  “I’m sorry, Ariana. Maybe it is true. I only saw you

  as my friend who understood the experience of loss.”

  Her roommate looks at her watch

  and whispers again, “We really have to go.”

  Alex nods.

  Even though our relationship never became

  the kind of friendship with layers like sedimentary rock,

  I still appreciated what Alex brought to my life,

  the complexity of who she could be,

  the idea that I didn’t have to be one thing either.

  Before she heads for the subway, I call out,

  “Play the one about ghosts tonight, okay?”

  Alex looks confused at first. Then her face softens.

  “We always do.”

  Row

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,”

  I say quietly.

  “It was a girl?”

  I nod.

  “It must hurt.”

  I nod.

  Kennedy opens the door

  wider. Warm air

  touches my face.

  Inside I see

  there are plates

  and dirty dishes.

  Piles of mail.

  Snow boots

  and streaks of mud.

  Plastic trucks

  and picture books

  scattered about the floor.

  “I can probably figure out

  how to wrap your ankle

  by googling it or something,”

  Kennedy says.

  I hobble inside.

  Kennedy disappears

  into the kitchen and returns

  a few minutes later

  with an elastic bandage wrap

  tucked under her arm

  and two mugs of cocoa.

  We both blow on our mugs,

  cooling the surface.

  It tastes like campfires,

  and cabins,

  and friendship bracelets.

  It tastes like French braids

  and flashlights

  and sleepovers.

  Kennedy is still quiet.

  “Do you believe

  in ghosts?” I say finally.

  She hesitates for a moment.

  Really considering the question.

  “I think so? My mom does

  for sure. She says her mother

  comes to visit her.” Kennedy pauses,

  then continues. “At the most

  inopportune moments. Like when

  she’s sitting on the toilet

  and stuff like that.”

  I snort and almost spill

  the cocoa. “Weird.”

  “Yep,” Kennedy says.

  She hesitates.

  “Why? Do you?”

  I set the mug down

  on the coffee table

  and fiddle with the wrap,

  tightening and retightening

  the bandage. Then,

  after a while,

  I nod.

  “She’s there with me

  when I play.”

  “Your mom?” Kennedy.

  I nod. “My soccer-playing

  ghost mom.”

  Kennedy takes another sip of cocoa,

  and I don’t need her

  to do anything more

  than be here

  and listen.

  Row

  After we finish our hot chocolate,

  Kennedy hesitates. “I found her.”

  “Ariana?”

  Kennedy nods.

  “How?”

  She hands me

  a piece of paper.

  I recognize the format.

  It’s a transcript

  printed on our school’s

  distinctive

  watermarked blue paper.

  “It was underneath

  the sonogram,”

  Kennedy says.

  My sister’s grades

  look like a Scrabble hand.

  Too many consonants.

  Not enough vowels.

  I read a handwritten note.

  Ariana, please consider my offer to show

  your work at the gallery exhibition on Saturday.

  “I did some legit sleuthing.”

  Kennedy smiles.

  “You should have seen me.

  It was pretty dope.

  Called up some contacts.

  Followed some leads.”

  I hand the transcript back.

  “She went to the city,” Kennedy says.

  Ariana

  “There’s a spot on the wall over there,” a girl with red and pink

  and orange hair says. “A few people couldn’t make it.

  Because of the snow.”

  She hands me a sheet of instructions.

  “This your first show?”

  I nod. It’s my first time feeling so exposed, I want to tell her.

  “Mine too,” she says, then sort of falters. “I’m a little nervous

  about my parents seeing my work.”

  She points to a sculpture that is loud and angry and beautiful.

  Broken green and
brown bottles.

  Shards of glass. Arranged in a way

  like an overflowing garden fountain.

  All jutting out, wanting to stab you.

  “They’re making me put caution tape around it,” she says.

  “Probably best no one dies tonight,” I reply.

  The girl with multicolored hair grins so wide. “Touché.”

  Row

  “There’s still time to make it down there.”

  Kennedy glances at her watch.

  “I looked at the bus schedule.

  One leaves in half an hour.”

  “I said hurtful things to Ariana,” I say.

  “I implied that something is wrong

  with her. Like as a person. Like her feelings

  were something other than human emotion.”

  Kennedy stops and contemplates for a minute.

  “Maybe you need to see her

  not as your sister, Row.

 

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