by Nikki Tate
This Is How the World Responds
I fainted when
it sank in what Hannah had done.
When a girl
steps in front of a bus.
Some people phone
leave messages
I heard what happened
I’m so sorry
If there’s anything I can do...
Do what?
Hand us fresh tissues
when ours are so wet
they shred?
Do what?
Pat our backs, nod sadly
say, Tomorrow’s tomorrow will be
easier.
Or are you thinking of practical
things:
dusting the family photographs
or maybe sorting through my
sister’s clothes
to see if something fits your daughter
because obviously Hannah’s stuff
won’t fit me.
What a shame to waste such pretty
things.
Some bring
food that freezes well
lots of cheese and potato
too many calories
or sweet beyond belief.
Others hide
behind the safe walls
of distance and time.
I heard the news
but thought it best to leave you
alone.
So many people know
our business.
So many forms to sign
payment plans to think about.
How can it cost so much
to put someone in the ground?
Don’t you know that sixteen-year-olds
don’t have burial plans?
What if we can’t pay?
What should we do with her?
Stash her in the basement
until she gets fed up
and moves on?
In the recycling box
a headline
and a photograph:
An ambulance
pulling away from the curb
the empty bus waiting for a
new driver.
I free the newspaper from the blue
plastic box
to save Hannah from strangers
stop her from being shredded.
She must not disappear
with all the other news of the day.
They lean back in their chairs.
“Wow,” Maddy says.
Ebony nods. “That’s a good one. Powerful. All these Hannah poems are powerful.” She takes a swig of coffee. “No offense, but I can’t decide if I wish I’d known her or I’m kind of glad I didn’t.”
How am I supposed to take that? Maybe I should add a couple of lines to the poem.
Then Ebony says, “Get rid of the first two lines. You don’t need them.”
I reread the opening.
I fainted when
it sank in what Hannah had done.
“She’s right,” Maddy says.
The lines disappear with a strike of my pen.
They say Hannah probably had a drinking problem. I think of this every time I pour myself anything stronger than a cup of tea with honey. Her secret drinking was only one of so many secrets. How could we not have known?
Out here on the balcony of my tiny apartment it’s still muggy at two o’clock in the morning.
There’s an empty garden chair beside me. I imagine David sitting there enjoying a beer. If I close my eyes I can almost hear his slow, steady breathing.
David sitting in the empty chair may not be likely, but it is possible. I can’t say the same thing about Hannah. Why do I torture myself by imagining her beside me? I do it all the time. Sometimes Hannah laughs and goofs around and tells terrible jokes the way she used to. Sometimes she tells me about school, her return to riding, some new boyfriend. The details are different every time. It gets harder and harder to picture what might have been. Would she have gone to university to study sports medicine like she’d always planned? Might she have fallen in love and had a baby? Or bought a Great Dane? She always wanted a dog.
“You want to hear a poem, Hannah?” I ask the empty chair. I raise my glass in her direction. “No, this time it isn’t about you. I wrote it a while back, before I left the coast. Yes, it’s about David. Too bad you guys never got along.”
I speak softly, as if I really am confiding in my sister.
Leave him, cut him loose
send him
into his bright future.
Look at me. Twenty-five pounds more
miserable, sucking back the booze
lusting after double chocolate-chip
cookies
Extra Crisp potato chips
whipped cream waffles and bacon
sandwiches.
Look at him, looking at me, thinking
he’s stuck with twenty-five bonus
pounds
of difficult to swallow.
Leave, and we can finish falling
land where we will land
broken or bent.
I’m tired of trying to fit two huge
truths
that I killed her
and that he knows I killed her
into one relationship too small to
hold all that sadness.
And another truth,
He was there too
not answering his phone.
He laughed
when I laughed and said
Not today, Hannah. Today you
won’t take us
away from each other, tear us from
our place in the sun.
The darkness presses close. Splats of warm rain smack my bare arms.
“What do you say to that, Hannah? Is that what you had in mind when you walked away? Did you hate him that much? Did you hate me that much?”
I flinch when a bolt of lightning crackles across the sky.
Dripping wet, I retreat into the apartment and sink onto the mattress. For a long time I listen to the rain punish the world.
Chapter Nine
Everything is poetry. If I am not onstage, I am practicing. I yell the words into the wind down at the lake. I whisper them into my pillow before I fall asleep.
Normal is taking a long shower
loud music cranked so high
it’s louder than the water splashing
but all you hear later is
How about leaving some hot water for the rest of us?
When you can’t be normal anymore
your father pounds on the locked
door
calling your name
calling your name
calling your name
panic stenciled over his heart
not again not again
Answer me or I’m breaking down
this door!
Stepping naked from the shower
skin reddened from the hot water
I reach for the towel on the back of
the shaking door and
yell back, Can’t I have a shower in
peace?
Step back into the steam.
The burning rage of the water
slices over my tender skin.
I want to pull the words
back.
Can’t.
The poems carry me through the aisles at the bookstore. They keep me company on the bus.
I have measured my year in firsts
the first time I came home—after
Hannah died
the scent of hospital in my hair
the first bagel pushed into the toaster
inedible
tossed into the garbage despite a
hollow ache
that grew and grew and grew
and grows even now
I capture thoughts, single words and endless lines in small notebooks. I even write on the inside of my wrist.
the first time I showered
and wondered w
hether to leave
enough hot water
for her
the first time we didn’t buy school
supplies
because she wasn’t here and I
wasn’t going back
the first Halloween without costumes
shutting off the porch light
closing the drapes
and hiding upstairs
my mother and I hushing each other
as if somehow the ghosts could get
inside
and discover our stupid lie.
I shout, weep, bleed the year in poems.
The first Christmas
her birthday
the events getting bigger
before I notice that
Hannah is missing things
she shouldn’t be missing.
The first time it happened
was last summer when
I stopped, mid-sentence
and almost said aloud
Saturday won’t work—
because Hannah won’t be here
won’t be here to attend the funeral.
Back when Hannah was so close to
being here
it seemed impossible she
was really gone.
There’s a huge crowd at Antonio’s when the first poet begins. It’s Sam, an old biker with so many tattoos it looks like he’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt under his leather vest. He’s a regular and does a lot of love poems that rhyme.
When it’s my turn I do the poem about how the world reacts to a suicide. I’ve chopped the first lines and added three others.
New friends are torn between
wanting and not wanting
to have known her.
What will Ebony think? When I join her at the table she smiles.
In the second round I let fly with “She Comes Bearing Gifts.”
My sister had friends
once
lots of them
before she stopped
having friends, that is
long before she stopped
being.
Jackie Lisa Tiffany Brandon
Jordan, Max and Xan
faded away
when she stopped taking their calls
never had them in
never went out.
Until that day
when she met friends for coffee.
How could such an ordinary thing
be so heavy with the thousand hints
we missed?
What we wanted to see was
what she wanted us to see.
She was getting better
she’d turned that corner into the light
right into the coffee shop where
oh, yes, her friends are waiting
because that’s what normal girls do
chat over lattes
hold the foam add the whip
skim mocha soy extra hot.
Sometimes they give each other
gifts, don’t they?
Only for that extraspecial
tell ya anything, hon
never let you go, BFF.
For her, the world
the silver horseshoe earrings from
Nana.
A small gift the least you can do
a thank-you
for being there when it mattered.
Jackie told me they were glad to
hear from Hannah
she seemed more like the old Hannah
the can-I-have-a-bite-of-that?
Hannah
the you’ll-never-believe-what-he-
said Hannah
the Hannah we knew was in there
somewhere, right?
Jackie insisted she should have
known
was closest
knew Hannah best—
Didn’t we all think we knew her
best—
should have known that earrings
were more than earrings
that small gifts in the hands of
someone on the exit ramp
are not small at all?
On the night the relatives start to
arrive
Jackie hands me the earrings.
Nestled in their blue velvet box
like tiny sleeping memories
they curl tight into silver slivers
so sharp they bite through my mask
send
hairline cracks pulsing through
my carefully made-up calm.
Chapter Ten
Round three is brutal. I’m up last and have to listen to everyone else. When it’s my turn I clutch the mic and bring it close to my mouth. Too close. There’s a squeal of feedback.
“Owww!”
“Turn it down!”
Not a good start. I hope the crowd remembers enough of the poem from the last round that this one will make sense. It’s risky to continue a story from one poem to another. Each should stand alone—but these are part of a series and I don’t dare change the plan now.
The relatives arrive
trailed by small bags.
Bump up the stairs
trundle down the hall
into the den
the family room
my room
any room
but her room.
They come in clumps
mother father brother
cousin uncle aunt grandmother
fold their arms around me
because now, after her death
suddenly it’s okay to touch the one who
doesn’t like to hug.
They ask, without asking
What the hell happened here?
Is it true what I read about the
bottle of booze?
Is it true she didn’t look back when
she stepped
out
into the road?
They came because
that’s what happens
when someone dies.
They gather to tell stories
slide trays of food into the fridge
because food poisoning at a time
like this
would be unfortunate.
Who would attend the funeral?
Unspoken questions like
Should there be a funeral?
lurk in the corners
inhabited by God.
Nana’s God
who apparently doesn’t admit
that some of his fallen angels
jumped.
What about the casket? she asks.
Open or closed?
The guest list? How public
do we want to make this thing?
This thing?
Hello?
But how can I say anything
when she sees the blue velvet box
on the kitchen counter
folds her polished fingernails
over its curved lid and
hands shaking
stares as if it might
reveal secrets
only she can understand.
Tears wobble, glassy and fragile
on her lower lids.
I reach out.
Touch her hand.
The next morning I jolt awake. Someone is pounding on my apartment door.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Ebony says when I let her in.
“Easy for you to say.” Last night the judges didn’t like the “Relatives” poem and I didn’t make it into the fourth round.
She grins and holds out a travel mug full of coffee. “This should perk you up.”
“Smells good,” I mumble. Ebony did well last night. She’s third overall in the standings. I’m hovering in and out of fourth place. After last night, I’m out, though not by much.
“If you have a good week, you’ll make it,” she says.
“Maybe.”
“You don’t work today, do you?”
Ebony asks.
&
nbsp; “No.”
“We should do something fun.”
A strand of hair falls into my eyes and I push it away. How can I be so tired?
“Fun? Like what?”
“I don’t know. Hunt for treasure at the thrift store?”
I sigh. “I should try to write.”
“You should try not to write,” she counters. “Even I don’t write all the time. I know, what about—”
The phone rings.
“Sorry—I should—”
“Do you want me to go?” she asks.
“It’s okay,” I say and pick up the phone.
“Hey, Tara—”
“David!”
Ebony’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Hey—it’s been a while.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
God. How awkward can a conversation be? “Where are you?”
“Vancouver, of course. Where else?”
Where else. “So, what’s up?” I ask.
“Not much. You?”
“Work. Slams. Are you still playing soccer?” I know he is. I follow the team online. He’s still one of the best in the league.
“Yeah. I had three scholarship offers for this year.”
“Nice. Are you accepting any of them?”
“South Carolina. Full ride.”
“Wow. Congratulations!” I hope I sound more excited than I feel. South Carolina. That’s a long way from everywhere.
“So, anyway, I mostly wanted to call and say hi—you know, see if you’re doing okay.”
My throat closes and I can’t speak. I turn away from Ebony.
“Tara? You’re doing okay, aren’t you?”
I hear the terror in his voice. It’s what we all feel when someone doesn’t pick up the phone or when a silence goes on for too long. I clear my throat. “Sorry.
I’m—I’m fighting off a cold. I’m fine.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“You?”
“I’m doing okay.”
“Good.” Did we really miss curfews because we couldn’t stop talking? “David, I have to go. My friend’s here and—”
“No problem. I just wanted to say hi.” He sounds relieved.
“Thanks for calling. Talk to you soon.”
We both hang up. We won’t talk again for a long time.
“Aw, honey—come here,” Ebony says, her arms wide. I fall against her, sobbing. She pats my back.
“Oh god—I’m sorry,” I say, gulping back tears.
“No apology needed. Go wash your face. Let’s go to the farmer’s market.”
Grateful not to be in charge, I head into the bathroom to pull myself together.
Chapter Eleven
“Have you ever had Maya’s samosas?”