34 Pieces of You

by Carmen Rodrigues

  Her smile grew. “Thanks. What’s your name?”

  “Sarah,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  She shoved more blond hairs from her eyes. “I’m Ellie, and that,” she said, glancing back at her house, “is Jake.”

  * * *

  A few hours later, Jess twirled around the basement, her blue-and-yellow skirt blending into one big rainbow that made me feel dizzy and happy at the same time. The party had started thirty minutes earlier, but still there was no sign of Ellie or Jake.

  Jess stopped spinning long enough to tighten her pigtails and stare suspiciously at the crowded basement. “Did Mom say you could have this many guests?”

  I gave her a look. Popularity at Smith Middle didn’t come with a little sister attached, especially one who acted like a goody-goody. “Jess, come on. It’s totally lame for you to be here. And Mom already told you. Okay?”

  The doorbell rang. Jess’s head shot up. Mom had specifically asked her to be the doorman tonight so that she would feel included but be kept occupied upstairs. “But you’ll tell me everything tonight?”

  “Promise.” I nudged her forward. “Go.”

  Alone again, I counted heads, trying hard to ignore the possibility that Jake was about to walk down my stairs. Twenty-seven kids were present. Some of them popular, like Billy Mancuso, who had the best dimpled smile, and Vanessa Gomez, who was probably the prettiest girl in our class, and Tori Levitts, who was her much taller and not-so-pretty best friend.

  It was hard not to wonder why they had come to my party. So far life at Smith Middle had consisted of my randomly walking up to groups of kids and hovering awkwardly, or lurking around campus feeling lonely and embarrassed.

  It was that desperation and my mom’s suggestion that I try harder that led to my having a birthday party. My father said to aim high with the guest list, because why not? So I wrote out seven-teen invitations, inviting the more popular kids, while never actually believing they’d show up. But here they were—along with ten other kids I hadn’t invited—and many had set down colorfully wrapped boxes on the gift table.

  I should have been happy, but I wasn’t. Nobody had really talked to me except, oddly, to ask when Ellie would arrive. Twenty-seven kids in my basement, and I still had zero friends.

  Suddenly the basement door opened. The kitchen light crept down the stairs, pooling around my feet. Above, Jess’s ponytails swung with excitement. “You got more guests!” she sang dramatically.

  Three bodies pushed passed her, the light like bright halos above their heads. Ellie, dressed in tight blue hip-hugging jeans and a perfectly faded Mork & Mindy T-shirt, led the way downstairs. Another kid trailed behind her, a goofy grin on his face. Jake followed, in skinny jeans, a frayed T-shirt that barely fit, and his trademark pout.

  Everyone stopped talking. The music seemed to fade. I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, Jess sang out in that soprano voice of hers, “Mom wants to talk to you! Now!”

  Behind me, a handful of people snickered.

  “Does she always sing everything like that? It’s annoying,” the kid with Ellie sang back, and everyone but Jess, who quickly moved away from the doorway, laughed.

  “She gets really excited,” I said, halfheartedly defending her.

  He handed me a daisy wet with dew. “Happy birthday, Sar-rah,” he said, dragging out my name in a squeaky voice that may have belonged to him or some ironic version of a character he was playing.

  “That’s Tommy,” Ellie said, shoving him. “And this”—Ellie handed me a simple brown box with my name written across the top in bright purple calligraphy—“is from me and Jake.” She nudged her brother with her elbow.

  “Yeah,” Jake muttered. He rubbed the bottom of his eye, smearing some of his kohl eyeliner.

  “What is it?” I asked, shaking the box.

  Ellie’s face lit up. “It’s a Happy Days T-shirt. Jake found it and some other cool stuff”—she pointed to her own T-shirt—“last week on the curb in front of Old Mrs. Sawyer’s house. What a waste. Right?”

  “Oh . . . ,” I said, not quite sure how to react to a gift picked out of a garbage can. I glanced around, and realized everyone was staring at us—Tori going so far as to wave at Jake, who simply averted his eyes.

  “Do you like Happy Days?” Ellie asked.

  “I bet she’s never heard of it,” Tommy scoffed.

  “Who hasn’t?” I said, although I hadn’t, and walked a few feet away to place the box and daisy on the gift table.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Ellie said, following me. She eyed the other kids, smiling indulgently at Tori. “They always do that when we’re around. I forgot to tell you. We’re kind of it.” She picked up the daisy, tucked it behind my ear, and led me back to Jake and Tommy. We formed a circle, me standing stiffly between Jake and Ellie. I noticed I was the same height as him. Clearly, I told myself, a sign from God we were destined to be together.

  “Cool party, I guess.” Ellie looked around the room. “If you like these people.”

  Jess’s singsong voice floated downstairs again. “Now, Sarah!”

  Reluctantly, I headed for the stairs, trying my best to imitate Ellie’s casual stride, knowing that these matters—annoying sisters and overconcerned mothers—would never disturb someone like her. Jess waited for me on the kitchen landing.

  “How’s it going?” she asked, twirling her hair.

  “Do you have to be so annoying?” I snapped, and her face fell.

  “Sarah . . .” Mom sat at the kitchen table, nervously drinking a cup of tea. “Be nice to your sister.”

  “Mom, she’s completely embarrassing me.”

  “I’m not,” Jess said.

  “Yes, you are!”

  “Jess. Sarah.” Mom’s voice was stern. We both quieted down. After a second she said, “Sarah, I know I encouraged you to have this party, but some of these kids are making me uncomfortable.”

  She looked at me like she always did—first with worry, then with disappointment. She began giving me this face when I was seven and convinced Jess she could fly, which left my sister with a small scar above her right eye.

  Mom touched her stomach, which was the size of a basketball, and yawned. “I can’t really go up and down those stairs anymore. They’re too steep, and your father doesn’t want me to do anything that might hurt Mattie.”

  Two nights before, I had overheard my parents discussing what would happen after Mattie was born. Mom wanted to get her tubes tied, but Dad said one day they’d try for a boy. Mom said, “I don’t care if I have a boy, Glenn. I’m done.”

  It was weird to hear my parents argue, and even weirder to think Dad might love us less because we were girls, and maybe me least of all because, technically, I wasn’t even his girl.

  “Have you heard a word I said?” Mom asked now.

  My expression said Of course I heard you, when in fact I had not. “Mom, everyone’s okay downstairs. Nothing’s happening,” I reassured her.

  Mom shook her head. It was a typical Mom move. Sometimes I’d find her in the kitchen, washing dishes, shaking her head at absolutely nobody. “I don’t know, Sarah.” She inhaled sharply, and winced as if the baby had kicked her. “Just be good. Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said sullenly. “Promise.”

  She sighed and gave me a new look, one that said she wanted to tell me a thousand different things but knew that not one of them—her intuitive mom feelings—could be said in a language I might understand.

  Downstairs, Jake leaned next to a propped-open basement window, smoking a cigarette and watching the others like he was watching the Discovery Channel. Nearby, Ellie was being courted by a group of giggling girls, which included Tori and Vanessa. She watched me descend the stairs, waving me over with an empty bottle. “Play?” she asked when I got close enough. I saw Tori and Vanessa exchange a knowing smile.

  “What?”

  Ellie laughed. She walked to the center of the roo
m and placed the bottle on the floor, directly beneath the spinning disco lights. Eventually, she got everyone to form a misshapen circle.

  It wasn’t long before the bottle was spun several times and newly formed couples disappeared into the bathroom, laundry room, and supply closet for seven minutes in heaven.

  When it was Jake’s turn to spin the bottle, I held my breath—willing, wishing, praying, even—as the glass revolved three times before clearly landing on me. Jake shrugged and stood up. I followed him, pressing myself against the wall to let the departing couple pass as we took over the laundry room.

  “Forget something?” he asked. I turned around to twenty-five pairs of eyes watching us.

  “Oh.” I shut the door, and I sat opposite him on the floor. Jake leaned back against the wall. We studied each other for a minute before he spoke.

  “What do you think?” he asked. He leaned forward, and his breath curled around my nostrils, hints of cigarette and peppermint.

  “About . . . ?” The question caught me off guard.

  “About this. Your party.”

  “It’s good,” I said, my voice trembling from the anxiety of being alone in a room with him. “Are you . . . are you having fun?”

  He shrugged, picking at a tear in his T-shirt. The hole grew wider until I could see a sliver of his pale flesh. “I’m not really into crowds,” he said, with a small smile. “But Ellie wanted to come.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, and he said, “I guess I should kiss you. If that’s cool?”

  I nodded, and we locked eyes for a second, my breath caught in my throat. He pulled me to my knees and, with his hands on my hips, slid me toward him until our pelvises touched. Then he studied my face, his eyes slowly moving from the width of my forehead to the dip in my chin.

  Suddenly, his lips were on mine, his tongue gently pushing my mouth open. I closed my eyes, the world spinning around me, until nothing remained but his lips on my lips and his hands firm and warm against my back.

  8.

  It was as simple as telling you how it’s done. Press harder. It’ll hurt at first, but doesn’t everything hurt at first? And didn’t you say you wanted a tattoo one day? That will hurt too. Remember when I taught you to smoke? You coughed and you said your lungs ached. This will ache like that, only more. But you know what I didn’t tell you? The thing that hurts the most is that my mom will never ask me why my arms are bandaged, why my forearms are covered in all this scarred flesh. And the other thing that hurts is that I know I’ll never be able to press the whole way down. That I’ll always be stuck wanting to push through but too afraid to try.

  Jake

  AFTER. NOVEMBER.

  After Mom finishes crying, she asks me to bring her a Valium from her nightstand. The gold curtains are drawn in her bedroom. I remember how Ellie and I hid behind that swell of fabric, quietly playing Go Fish, happy to have outsmarted Mom’s Saturday chore list.

  That was when our father was still around, when Ellie was learning to ride my Spider-Man Big Wheel and I had upgraded to a BMX with training wheels. That was when Mom came home wearing scrubs, the smell of hospital still on her white doctor’s coat, and Dad set his briefcase next to the door, keys on the kitchen counter. That was when Saturdays were for taming our suburban lawn. When Dad, sweat dripping from the tips of his ash-brown hair, massacred the blooming wildflowers that grew around the picket fence Mom had made him install when I was four. That was when Dad asked for my help, and I gathered the colorful buds into a bouquet I gave to Ellie.

  Mom’s room is particularly tidy, an act of an uneasy mind. It’s easy to find the pill bottle on the nightstand. I let it roll down my palm and across my fingertips, then back. I twist the top and, out of habit, survey the contents. The three remaining pills, settled near the bottom, are obscured by the body of a gold key. I know without question this is the key to Ellie’s bedroom.

  “Jake?” Mom calls from the other room. I shove the key into my pocket and shake a Valium into my palm. I stop in the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

  “Here.” I hand her the pill and the water. Then I extend my hand for her empty glass. “You should lie down for a bit. Rest.” I grab an afghan from the armchair, wrap it around her shoulders, and tuck her graying hair behind her ears.

  Mom gazes at the room. Her eyes move past the Ethan Allen furniture she bought with Sargeant after they were married and the 1920s bookcase she inherited from her dad, and stop at the liquor cabinet. She says, “We never said don’t drink. We just said don’t drink too much. And don’t drive when you’re drunk. And don’t be stupid. But we never said don’t do it at all. I guess that was the wrong thing to do. Wasn’t it, Jake?”

  “Oh, Mom.” I sit beside her. I feel weighed down by her guilt, and my guilt too. “Stop it. Stop torturing yourself. Why are you doing this?” I circle my arms around her. Tell myself that in this moment she is safe. “We can sell the place. You can move south to the Carolinas or something. You hate winters. Right?”

  She is sobbing. “I should have never kept those pills in the house. I should have known better . . . with her . . .” She buries her head in the crook of my arm. “You don’t think . . .” And it’s that thought again, the one she’s been trying to express for days. The one we keep wondering about but don’t say out loud.

  “It was an accident,” I reassure her. “You know how she was . . . This time it just got the best of her.” I don’t tell her about the phone call. I don’t tell her it was my fault.

  She says, “I can’t live here anymore.”

  “You don’t have to, Mom. Okay? We’ll figure it out.” I rub her back before settling her down onto the sofa. I crouch beside her, give her my hand. She pulls it to her breastbone and holds on tightly. I stay there until she falls asleep.

  * * *

  Mom once said her father was the stereotypical Irish policeman, a heavy drinker with a heavy hand, but Ellie and I never knew him. He died of a heart attack before Mom finished her last year of medical school. Our grandmother had died of ovarian cancer fifteen years before that, when Mom was just eleven.

  Once, when I was eleven, I told Mom she shouldn’t date. That Dad wouldn’t like it. That he would never come back to us if she kept having boyfriend after boyfriend. She said, “He’s not coming back. And if this is the worst thing I do to you, then you’re lucky. Believe me, you don’t know how bad a parent can be.” And I did believe her. Even then I knew there were worse things a mother could do than have too many boyfriends and drink the weekend away. A mother could die and leave you behind, defenseless in a crazy world.

  After Mom is asleep, I wander the house, thinking about these things—the family histories that shape us from generation to generation—and, eventually, I find myself standing outside Ellie’s bedroom. I take the key from my pocket, unlock the door, and, from the threshold, survey the interior: Ellie’s neatly made bed shoved against the wall. The CDs piled on her desk—a combination of emo, punk, folk, and bluegrass bands. The photos taped to the bookshelf, windowsills, and desk, taken with the Polaroid camera I found Dumpster-diving last year.

  The room smells like vinegar and vanilla-scented candles. I remember that morning, finding Jessie down on her knees, scrubbing the wood floor clean. I wonder why she would do that. But then that thought is gone, taken over by the question Mom and I have been avoiding since the day we lost Ellie. The tension in my jaw returns, and I will myself to think about other things: school, helping Mom contact a Realtor, Sarah . . .

  I stare out the window and think about Sarah. I wonder if she’s doing better. I wonder if I should go to her. I want to tell her everything. I want to let her rub my head until it falls forward in perfect submission. But I can’t. The world has shifted too much, and I don’t know where to go from here.

  9.

  I’m convinced I could stand in the middle of the road and not be hit by a car. I am invisible. I do not exist.

  Jessie

  AFTER. JANUARY.

>   Mrs. Medina calls me to her desk after class. She waits until the room has emptied and the final bell for the next period—her planning period—has sounded before she asks about Sarah. Back when Sarah cared about school, Mrs. Medina was her favorite teacher. It’s the reason why I worked so hard to get into her class.

  “Jess? Did you hear my question?” Mrs. Medina clears her throat and says hesitantly, “Jess? Look at me.”

  “Yeah.” I stare at a balled-up sheet of paper just shy of the garbage can for a few seconds, and then I force my eyes to hers. Her gaze is so reassuring it unnerves me.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re not in trouble.”

  “I know.” I stare at her blankly.

  “Do you?” she asks, but we both know this is a rhetorical question. “Look, Jess, you’re doing a fantastic job given the circumstances, but you’re so quiet in class. You used to talk before . . .”

  The dot-dot-dot is standard speak around me now. When your very popular sister has accidentally overdosed and unenrolled from school, people tend to ask you questions with the dot-dot-dot attached. So the silence that follows isn’t as uncomfortable for me as it is for Mrs. Medina.

  “Jessie, I’m worried about you.” She presses a hand to her neck and pauses to consider her words. “Maybe I should have a conversation with your mom—”

  “No! Please, Mrs. Medina, don’t.”

  Mrs. Medina raises her eyebrows. I’ve never exclaimed anything to her before.

  “It’s just my mom . . .” I stop to take a deep breath. “My mom’s going through a lot, and I don’t want her to worry.”

  This is true. Lately, Mom’s hands are more nervous than ever. I want to take them into my own and say, Please just be still. But I know that won’t help. So I try hard not to add to her stress, by being extra careful with my responsibilities at home and at school.