Blank

by Trina St. Jean

  Mother comes up behind me and puts her arm around my shoulder. She has a funny grin on her face, like she is about to burst out either laughing or crying.

  I did it. I found my room. And when I glance around, there’s nothing surprising: it’s all sweet and innocent. There’s a collage of photos covering half of one wall, mostly of the Pink Posse members making funny faces. A poster on the wall shows a monkey in a suit, grinning. His speech bubble reads I’m going bananas! The bedspread is a light-green-and-yellow paisley pattern, and the desk in the corner has a stack of books on it. A cell phone in a hot-pink case sits on top.

  It could be a set for a movie, something completely designed and contrived to look like the room of a stereotypical, non-rebellious girl in her mid teens. I’m disappointed. Where are the clues to who this Girl was exactly, to what made her tick?

  “What’s with the frogs?” I ask, and the grin on my mother’s face melts away.

  “You collect them. You have since you were little.”

  “You had a real one for a while,” Stephen adds. “An African toad. It lived in an aquarium.”

  I pick up a ceramic frog wearing a baseball cap and blow the dust off. “And what happened to it?”

  “It died,” Father says.

  “How?”

  An odd look crosses Father’s face, and he glances at Mother. “You and Stephen took it outside and it ran away.”

  “We found it later in the bison pen,” Stephen confesses. “Flat as a pancake.”

  I’m dying to say it. Oh, the irony. But I bite my tongue and put down the frog.

  “Mind if I stay in here awhile? Alone?”

  Mother nods, then herds Stephen toward the door. “Of course. It’s your room.”

  When the door clicks shut behind them, I pace slowly around the room. I’m looking, but I’m hardly seeing. I sit down on the edge of the bed, close my eyes and let myself fall ever so slowly backward. Breathe, I tell myself. Breathe in the Girl’s air, her space, her life. My muscles relax, and I feel my body sinking deeper, deeper into the paisley. If I lie here long enough, I wonder, will her soul slip back into this empty shell I’m walking around in? Maybe something like in movies, when spirits slide right into someone’s body, making their heads flip back and their eyes roll upward?

  But that doesn’t happen. I lie there, numb, and observe the ceiling, letting the feeling of emptiness sink in to every part of me. I stay like that until a knock on the door snaps me out of my trance.

  “Dinnertime,” Stephen says.

  My head is foggy as we gather around the table and nibble at pieces of homemade Hawaiian pizza. The kitchen is homey, with hanging plants in one corner and colorful ceramic bowls lining the tops of the cabinets. We have banana splits for dessert, in celebration of my return, and after we’ve cleaned up Father suggests a walk outside.

  It all feels surreal, like it’s happening to someone else, as I step outside with them, my Family, and take it all in. I am watching a squirrel zip from branch to branch in the pine trees when I feel something bump against my leg. I reach down without looking, and my hand meets soft fur. “Hey, old girl. How ya doing? Did you miss me, Ginger?”

  I lean down to pet her, a beautiful golden retriever, and my eyes meet Mother’s. She’s a few feet away, on the steps, and when I see the expression of surprise in her eyes, it hits me: I knew the dog. No one told me her name. I didn’t even see her, but I knew she was there.

  “Of course Ginger missed you,” Mother says, her voice soft. “We all did.”

  We make our way down the driveway, my parents, little brother, the dog and I. Stephen and Father chat about hummingbirds and putting up the feeders soon, but Mother is quiet.

  I can imagine what she’s thinking: How is it that our daughter remembers the dog but doesn’t remember us?

  Solidarity

  When night comes and it’s time for bed, there are hugs and goodnights and way more love than at the hospital. I am alone in my room now, and even though I’m tired, my mind doesn’t want to rest. The questions I should have asked Super Doc linger in my mind. When will we know if my life has been completely erased? When am I officially a Lost Cause?

  But I can’t wait forever for things to come back to me. There are clues all around, now that I’m in the Girl’s space. It’s up to me to dig deeper. I start with her cell phone. The screen lights up with a photo of Megan and me, faces stuck close together, eyes crossed. I click on the speech-bubble icon, and there’s a long list of texts. The last one came from Megan at 11:32 PM a little over a month ago—April 25, the day before the Very Bad Day—and says, Nighty nighty. No worries, we’ll ace the test.

  My hands find their way, without my having to think, until Facebook is open. The profile photo of the Girl is taken from the side, hair covering part of her face. I check out the Girl’s wall and find her last post, also on April 25: it’s a photo of a bright turquoise-and-yellow flower. A quote is scrawled underneath in old-fashioned cursive: And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —Anaïs Nin.

  A link under the image says The HedgeGod @thehedgegod on Twitter, which leads to an account with an adorable hedgehog floating in the clouds. The HedgeGod, it says, dispenses quills and quips on the eternal questions of the mind and heart. The quote the HedgeGod has most recently dispensed is Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. —Dr. Seuss.

  The HedgeGod and his crappy words of wisdom annoy me, so I return to Facebook. I scroll further down the wall, skimming over the posts of videos, photos of funny animals, goofy kids and beautiful scenery, and more quotes. I scan faster, until my eyes water and an ache builds in my temples. Then I shut off the phone and toss it back on the desk. So much there, but nothing that tells me more about the Girl than that she was good at clicking the Share button. Super Doc said it would take time, I remind myself. And I need rest. Lights out. I lie flat on my back on the too-soft bed.

  Strange sounds drift into the dark room: a creak, a groan, an electric hum. No nurse will peek in the door to say goodnight; I will not hear the phone ring down the hall at the desk. The only light in this room comes not from the hallway, but from the half-moon outside the window. Everything is so new, so strange. I am in the Girl’s space now.

  My eyes roam over every fuzzy shape I can make out in the moonlit room: the tiny frog figurines, the stuffed chair in the corner, even the lumps in the blanket where my knees are. I throw the covers off and get out of bed.

  I pay a visit to the Girl in the Mirror.

  “What do you think of this place?” I whisper. She surveys me with glassy eyes, her lips tightly pursed. Maybe she’s annoyed at me for snooping in her cell phone. Or angry that I don’t love this place like she does, am not embracing what must be for her a place filled with a lifetime of happy moments.

  I lean back and we stare at each other, our arms crossed.

  “It doesn’t seem too bad,” I say. “Except for those dumb frogs.”

  I’m being an ass, and I don’t know why. Jealousy maybe? She doesn’t react with anger like I think she will. Her eyes glisten with sadness, and her tightly crossed arms relax to her sides. And then she surprises me. She speaks.

  “I feel alone.” It is so quiet I barely hear it, but a sharp pain rises in my chest, as if someone has clenched my heart in their fist. Alone. I’m here with the people she longs to be with. But I still feel alone, like her. No one is a winner here.

  “Well,” I say, “at least we have one thing in common.”

  I think maybe I will get a smile, but, no, it doesn’t work. She reaches up and clicks off the light, and there is nothing but darkness around us both.

  Nostalgia

  My first morning at home is uneventful. I sleep in until 11:30 am; Mother offers to warm up some pancakes, but I choose to eat a bowl of Honeycombs. Father is outside, and when he comes in for lunch, Mother announces that Stephen has something to show us all.

  But Ste
phen does not look enthused. “Do I have to?” he says. Mother gives him one of her steely looks, so he sighs. “Fine.”

  Mother, Father and I settle into the couch while Stephen hooks a laptop to the back of the TV.

  “It’s a slide show,” Mother explains. “About our family. He made it for school.”

  Father dims the lights, Stephen clicks something on the computer, and the title Grenier Family appears across the screen. Classical music drifts out of the speakers.

  The first photo is of Mother as a child, her grin revealing two missing front teeth. Mother groans and acts embarrassed. All I can think is Oh, she used to smile. Then comes Father, maybe around Stephen’s age, riding a horse. A cowboy hat twice the size of his head slides down over his ears. The classical music fades, and the perky beat of a pop song begins. The screen fills with a shot of Father with a funky beard, kissing Mother on the cheek. She’s got long flowing hair and a gaga look on her face.

  “Stephen! Where’d you get that one?” Mother squeals, obviously delighted.

  “I have my sources,” he says.

  A few more photos of the parents’ dating days, set to “Moves Like Jagger,” and we arrive at the wedding pics. Father reaches for Mother’s hand. She is pretty in her white lace dress, and he’s dashing in a tux, except maybe for the oversized blue bow tie.

  Then there’s a photo of a white house, Mother and Father sitting on the front steps.

  “Where’s that?” I say.

  “That’s where we lived before we moved here,” Father says. “In the city.”

  “The city?” I say. “Seriously?”

  He laughs, but Mother has a funny look in her eyes. “Yes,” he says, “we lived there until right before Stephen was born. Before we decided to come out here and experience country living at its finest.”

  “Your father wanted to get back to his roots,” Mother says. She’s smiling, but there’s a hint of something in her voice. Bitterness maybe?

  Stephen clicks again, and now a photo of a chubby-cheeked baby fills the screen. A caption on the screen announces: Watch out, world! Here comes Jessica. I am propped up between two pillows on a couch, a tuft of hair sticking straight out of the top of my head.

  “Awww,” Father says. “I remember that one. That was Easter. Your mother made you that dress.”

  The outfit has fuzzy pink pompoms dangling from the neckline.

  “Made with love,” Mother says.

  Father chuckles. “And a little cursing thrown in for good measure.” Mother doesn’t take her eyes off the screen, her arms crossed in front of her like she is hugging herself—or the memory. I picture her young like in these photos, long hair hanging in her eyes, sitting at a sewing machine, concentrating on a tiny dress. Maybe I was sleeping in my crib in the next room as she tried to finish it, late at night, in time for Easter dinner. How she wanted her little angel to be perfect in that dress. And how perfect I was in her eyes.

  “Okay, okay, move it along now,” I say. Stephen clicks to the next shot: me, elephant legs and double chin, taking a bath in the kitchen sink. Then on and on, more of Baby Me. I lose the big cheeks and get longer hair, and then another caption appears: And the handsome little devil arrives. And there’s Baby Stephen, leaner than Baby Jessica, with big round eyes.

  “Chip off the old block,” Father says.

  Mother has shorter hair in the pictures, but the glow in her face is as bright as when she held her firstborn. “It feels like yesterday,” she says.

  We speed ahead through Stephen’s babyhood, and in almost every shot I am hovering nearby, the protective—or jealous?—big sister. Then there are shots of us playing together. I am pulling him in a wooden sled; we’re wearing giant sombreros and playing maracas; we’re all standing in front of a tent.

  “That’s the time the tent blew away,” Stephen says. “Remember? We were chasing it around in the middle of the rain?”

  “We?” Father shouts, laughing. “You were crying in Mom’s arms because you were scared of the thunder! Right, Jess?” He turns to me, a huge grin on his face, and for a fraction of a second I can see in his eyes that he actually expects me to get in on it, to tease Stephen with him. I struggle to think of something light to say, something not to wreck the mood, because even if I don’t remember, I like hearing them talk about it. But before I can, the grin slides away and his cheeks redden. “Or maybe that was another time. Yeah, I think that was near Vancouver somewhere.”

  “Yeah, the trip to Vancouver—” I begin, because there was a photo from that trip on the bulletin board in the hospital, but Stephen pushes his remote and the next picture grabs my attention. Father and I are standing in front of a fence, and a huge bison peers through the barbed wire to our left. The hump on his neck is covered in thick, dark fur, and his horns have curved tips. This, I’m guessing, is the infamous Ramses.

  “Whoa,” I say. “He’s no cuddly toy.”

  “Stephen!” Mother protests. Stephen is watching me carefully, like he either feels bad about his choice of photo or is checking my reaction. Or both.

  “No worries,” I say. “It’s not as if it’s going to give me flashbacks or anything.”

  Stephen turns his gaze back to the TV and switches to a new photo.

  Mother sighs. “Thank you.”

  On the screen, Father and I are riding a big green tractor. Then there’s the young me, bottle-feeding a bison calf. “That’s baby Ramses, believe it or not. You loved the farm from the very beginning,” Father says. “Like it was in your blood. Not exactly in your mother’s though.”

  He looks over at Mother and winks, but she does not look amused.

  Then there are photos of us carving pumpkins and roasting marshmallows and with baskets of chocolate eggs. The last photo to appear on the screen is the one of us on the beach, the very first photo Mother and Father showed me when I woke up from the Big Sleep.

  “Happy times,” Father says.

  Mother stands up suddenly, her cheeks flushed. “Thanks, Stephen,” she says softly. “That was beautiful.” She touches the top of my head as she goes by on her way up the stairs. I hear her bedroom door close.

  Father and I sit there, watching Stephen unhook the cables. And I wonder if Mother is thinking the same thing I am: things might be different if we had never moved out here to the farm.

  Pandora’s Box

  It’s Monday, and Stephen is back at school. I sleep late again, and when Mother takes out the vacuum after my breakfast, I sneak back upstairs to explore my room more thoroughly. I refuse to become a lost cause.

  I turn on the Girl’s cell phone again and dig deeper, to older texts. They are mostly from Megan, with some from the other Pink Posse girls and, occasionally, from Mother.

  Don’t forget 2 bring those earrings

  Can I get a ride home from Cybil’s?

  Did u hear about Kaylie & Brendan? They broke up!!!! OMG!

  A lot of everyday stuff and lots of things I can’t fully decipher. I didn’t exactly expect there to be texts detailing the Girl’s thoughts on life, love and happiness. But I can’t stop the sinking feeling that I’m getting nowhere.

  Next I try Facebook, going more slowly through the posts I skimmed earlier: first the quote about the bud, then a video of a dog imitating a siren, then a surreal photo of a blond model in a flowing white dress and a red scarf, lying across the back of a tiger. From a few weeks of posts, I conclude that the Girl liked motivational sayings, funny little kids and animals, and artsy photos. She put occasional posts on her wall, like Yumalicious, Mom’s making cream puffs and What’s with zombies? Don’t they know they’re not cool anymore?

  I sigh and click off the phone. I grab one of the photo albums off the shelf above the desk and flip through the pages, but all I get is Mother, Father and Stephen doing ordinary things and pics of friends at school. One page of the album holds shots of the bison being loaded out of a truck into chutes. The next few pages display my birthday party: Kerry, Cybil and Megan
wear silly party hats, sticking their tongues out.

  In one shot, Megan’s face is covered in icing, and I’m holding a smashed cupcake. Our mouths are wide-open in laughter. I don’t feel the tiniest flicker of connection to any of these moments, only festering irritation. When I reach the last page, I slam the book down on the desk.

  These pointless snapshots give me no sense of who Jessie was, of the way she saw life. It’s not the Girl’s fault that her photos are so meaningless. But anger is building in my chest, and it needs to go somewhere.

  I don’t always have to be good, do I?

  I kick my closet door, hard. Pain shoots from my foot to my knee, and I bite my finger to keep from yelling. I must be demented, because despite the throbbing, booting something that way felt strangely satisfying.

  “Jessica?” Mother’s voice carries from behind the door. “You all right in there?”

  I shake my leg to soften the pain. “Fine,” I call. “Just whacked my knee.”

  “I have something for you,” she says. The door pops open, and I glance over at the closet. The dent is too small to notice.

  A plastic bag dangles from Mother’s hand. “I’ve been debating whether to give you this for weeks. Since you woke up. I think it’s time.”

  She takes a breath and reaches into the bag, pulling out a Nike shoebox. She cradles it close to her, like she doesn’t want to let it go, but finally plunks it down on the desk and places her two hands firmly on the cover.

  “I found this after the accident,” she says, “when you were still in a coma. I was hanging out in here, because I missed you, I guess, and saw it poking out from under the bed.”

  A few images pop into my head: a homemade bomb, wrapped in green and red wires, ticking away; a sandwich bag full of white powder. But the Girl seemed too goody-two-shoes to be hiding any terrible secrets.

  “There are some papers in there, some notebooks too. I want you to know that I didn’t read any of it, not one line.” She looks straight into my eyes, and her voice softens. “Even though I was tempted, I have to admit. When you were in the coma and I didn’t know if we’d ever get you back.” It’s the first time Mother’s admitted out loud that I nearly died, like maybe now that I’m home and the danger is past, she can say it. And the way she’s looking at me, so intensely, the need she has for me, her daughter, pulls at me.