Goodbye, Sweet Girl

by Kelly Sundberg

  We next looked at a house just outside the downtown area. The walls were smoke-stained, and cobwebs hung off the ceiling fan; when Caleb and I looked at each other, palpable sadness hung in the air between us.

  Soon, though, I found it: an apartment in a two-story brick house, with ivy creeping up the sides. It had large windows and built-in bookshelves. A glass pane was missing from one of the bookshelves, and the carpet was old and stained, but the rent was cheap for Boise, and the location couldn’t have been better. The landlord even said that he would throw in a couch that had been abandoned by the previous tenant. The tenant had reupholstered the couch with bright cotton stripes, and I coveted the wide vintage cushions and artificial cheer. I convinced myself that this first-floor apartment was perfect, but secretly, I was scared. It was old and run-down. It was the kind of apartment that graduate students would enjoy because of the “character,” but not the kind of place where I would feel comfortable having other parents visit for play dates, not the kind of place where I would feel comfortable being a parent myself.

  Cory had promised to help us move, but he didn’t show up on the day, so we did it ourselves. A different friend arrived, and together he and Caleb walked the small amount of furniture that I had—a bed, dresser, desk, and my old couch—from my studio apartment to our new home.

  The friend then made us pasta puttanesca, and we sat on the old couch in the backyard. I had cleaned the studio apartment by myself while Caleb and his friend moved the furniture, and my muscles sank into the couch as though they were one with it. I was so hungry that I lapped up the salty capers, enjoying the late-spring temperatures, and Caleb and his friend made me laugh. I was starting to feel that things would be okay.

  As the night was turning to darkness, Cory arrived. He was drunk. He helped himself to some pasta. He helped himself to a beer. When he was finished with his beer, he crumpled the can and threw it at my feet.

  “Is that where that goes?” I asked.

  He looked directly in my face, then said, “Isn’t that your job?” He licked the tines of his fork and threw that at my feet too. I looked at Caleb, who appeared not to have noticed what Cory had done. Just then Cory stood up and said to Caleb and the other friend, “Let’s go to the Neurolux.”

  Caleb looked at me, and I shrugged, but I was resentful. Caleb left with his friends, and there I was alone, my belly full with pasta, baby, and worry. I remembered another one of Caleb’s friends saying to me, “How did Caleb get you to date him?” I remembered the times that Caleb had disappeared for days. I remembered how horribly he had treated me before he realized that he was in love with me.

  The next day Caleb and I argued. He told me that he had chewed Cory out at the bar, but I wondered why he had left with him in the first place. I started to cry, and my tears enraged him. “Quit crying!” he screamed, then threw a shoe box at me.

  I ran out the back door, then stopped just as I reached my car. Where would I go? I was trying so hard to convince my friends that I was making the right decision that I didn’t want to give them any reasons to believe that I was wrong. I stared at the car door for a long time, wondering what to do. We were getting married in a matter of weeks, and although I told my friends that I knew what I was doing was right, a voice inside me said just the opposite.

  Before we moved to the new apartment, Kelly M. had come over to visit. She sat next to me on my couch, her hands clenched together in her lap, and said, “I was talking to Caleb’s professor in his MFA program, and he doesn’t think that you should marry Caleb. He doesn’t think that Caleb is who he pretends to be.” She looked into my eyes, the late-evening sunlight filtering in through the blinds casting stripes across her face. I didn’t want to hear this.

  “I don’t think that you should marry him,” she said. “You can raise this baby on your own. I know that you can.”

  I knew that she was coming to me out of love, but by then I had worked so hard to convince myself that I was making the right decision that I couldn’t even consider changing my mind.

  Caleb was so sweet, so tender. No one had ever held me like him. No one had ever said the things that he said.

  You are the most beautiful woman I know. You are so smart. You are so sweet. You are so much more to me than all of the other women I’ve been with. I wish that I had never been with anyone else, so that you could be the only woman I’ve ever touched. If I had known that you were in the world, I would have saved myself for you.

  I would have laughed had a friend reported this kind of love talk, but when I stood next to Caleb, and he tucked my head underneath his and said, “Your head fits perfectly underneath mine. It’s like our bodies were made to be together,” I believed him.

  To a woman who had been hurt so many times, love like that was utterly uncommon. His words were a balm; they made me feel safe. No one else had ever loved me like that. No else ever would again.

  He also said, “All of the other women I’ve dated have been bitches,” and I believed that too. I thought that meant I was special.

  I LOOKED BACK at Kelly M. “I need you to support me,” I told her. “I need you to have my back.”

  “Okay,” she said, giving me a hug. “If that’s what you need, then that’s what I’ll do. You know that I love you. I support you no matter what.”

  I TURNED AROUND and went back into the apartment, where Caleb took me into his arms and held me tightly.

  “I was wrong,” he said. “I won’t do it again.”

  I believed him. I had no other choice.

  A FEW DAYS later, after the phone service was turned on in our apartment, there was no dial tone. When the repairman from the phone company opened the box, he discovered the problem. The wires had been cut, and they hung loose like tattered veins.

  Later that day, standing over the sink in the dimly lit bathroom, I pulled the chain hanging down above the mirror to turn on the light. Immediately, a current shot through my body, not painful but an uncomfortable zap. The light buzzed and flared. The pads of my thumb and forefinger were covered with tiny black, beaded burns, the smell of burned skin nauseating. I backed out of the bathroom with my hands over my belly, hoping that the baby was okay. I wondered if I should see a doctor, but my mother reassured me that I was probably fine.

  When the landlord came to fix the wires, he shook his head, telling me there had been an “incident” with the last tenant, an immigrant from Holland who had “lost his mind a little.” I didn’t want to ask if this was code for suicide. Soon I noticed evidence everywhere of the man’s illness. In the bathroom, the wallpaper had been torn down in fits, and in its place, wrapping paper was stapled helter-skelter to cover. I couldn’t fathom how I had missed so many signs of his darkness. The kewpie-doll wrapping paper seemed to stare at me. The figures had wide eyes, shuttered eyelids, perfectly formed curls, and limbs that were bound to their plastic bodies with glue.

  ONCE WE HAD fully moved in, I lay on the brightly striped couch that I had coveted when I toured the apartment. I had never committed to anything in my life, but now my belly blossomed outward, the most final of all commitments. I was miserable. I didn’t wear pregnancy well. I was nauseous most of the time, taking long naps every afternoon, and although I had always been very active, I didn’t want to exercise. Many of my friends had quit coming around. None of them had children, and they weren’t interested in children or in people expecting children.

  One of them told me that Caleb and I were “breeders.”

  LONELINESS TOOK ROOT. I saw the ivy climbing the brick exterior of the house and felt choked by it while my hands caressed my taut belly. We had our first sonogram, and the baby’s heart beat so fast that I looked at the doctor in alarm. She laughed. “That’s completely normal,” she said, but that thumpa-thump made me realize that my body was now a home. I knew that I couldn’t run away from what was taking place inside me, or from what was taking place outside me.

  I’D ALREADY SPENT a lot of time running away. At four
years old, I ran away from a babysitter while my parents were on a date. I crouched in an empty lot filled with sagebrush behind our house and watched as the babysitter drove by slowly, calling out my name through the car window. The second time, I was eight. I filled my red nylon backpack with toys and left. Running away turned out to be easy; I simply left the yard. And even though I kept looking behind, no one came chasing after me, so I continued walking. Sweat dripped down my spine underneath the pack, so I took it off and shifted it in my arms, eventually choosing to drag it by one strap. I had just turned a corner when Wade, Danny’s older brother, came riding his bike after me. He skidded to a stop, spraying gravel onto my shoes.

  “Your dad told me to tell you to come home,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said, handing him my pack. “Will you carry this?”

  When I arrived back at the house, my red backpack was waiting on the steps for me. My father had been kneeling at the garden, yanking carrots from the soil. He barely looked up, “Where were you?” he asked.

  In the sixth grade, I ran away for real. My mother and I had been in a huge fight. “I hate you!” I screamed.

  “You’re ungrateful!” she screamed back. “When I was your age, I didn’t even have a mom.”

  I shut up then, but didn’t tell her what I was really thinking: I wish that I didn’t have a mom.

  This particular fight was on day three of her night shifts. When she got home, she asked me multiple times to take my laundry out of the dryer, but I was immersed in a book and ignored her. She burst into my room screaming that I never listened to her, grabbed my book, threw it away, and then dragged me to the dryer by my hair. I was scared of her when she was like that, but I never told her that. I told her I hated her instead.

  Later that night, I had my friend Jamie leave a bag of food on her back porch, and then I snuck out my window at night, retrieved the food, and hiked into the mountains above our house. I couldn’t tell how far I had walked in the dark. I hadn’t carried a flashlight, but I could hear the creek gurgling beside me, so I had a basic idea of where I was headed.

  I didn’t have a plan, but the Idaho mountains were filled with abandoned homesteads and cabins, so I hoped to find one to stay in. Soon I grew tired and decided to sleep. I laid my sleeping bag out in the dirt and crawled into it, using my backpack as a pillow, the dark sky hanging above me, stars glittering through the clouds. By then I was scared of the darkness, but I was more scared of going back. I knew that I would be in trouble. Then, in the distance, I heard branches breaking, and I saw lights swirling in the darkness. Voices called out, and I recognized one; it was BJ, my parents’ best friend from church and my English teacher. Her panicked voice cried out, “Kelly.” She’d been a trained singer, and her voice echoed in chords. A chorus of voices arose. Kelly. Kelly. Kelly. The voices grew closer, but I didn’t move or make a sound until the flashlights disappeared.

  The next morning, I awoke to sunlight and a growling stomach. When I ripped open the bag, I found corn chips, three cans of soup, and no can opener. I knew I had to go home.

  When I arrived on the stoop, my mom opened the door, face drawn and puffy. She didn’t hug me or say anything. She just tossed some clothes at me. “You’re going to school.”

  At school, the principal, a gentle old man, came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “I heard you gave everyone quite a scare there, kiddo,” he said.

  I scrunched my eyes, trying not to cry, furious at myself for my embarrassment.

  “Hey,” he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “You know we all love you, right?”

  I looked back at him and nodded. “Sure,” I said. “I know.” But I was lying.

  I RAN AWAY again after dropping out of college one semester in. I’m not sure exactly why. I had wanted to go to a small liberal arts college in Ohio, but my parents convinced me to go to the University of Montana, close to home. I spent my days sleeping in my dorm room, tormented by feelings of inadequacy. Shy and anxious, I didn’t know how to take care of myself. I didn’t turn in assignments, even when I had completed them, because I was convinced they would be imperfect, and I was resentful that I wasn’t at the school I had wanted to attend.

  I yearned for something bigger than the valley where I had been raised, and I wanted to redeem myself for my failed semester. I got a refund from the University of Montana, and I took that refund and decided to go to Europe with a friend. I didn’t even tell my parents. Our relationship was nonexistent by then. They had to find out from someone else, but once they did, in spite of their anger, they drove me to the airport, and later, when I called my mother from a pay phone in Rome and told her that I was out of money, she said that they would wire me some. A motorcycle drove by, and as the driver catcalled me, I heard the panic in my mother’s voice when she cried out from across the ocean, Are you all right?

  AFTER I RETURNED from Europe, I went home and lived with my parents. We all pretended that nothing had happened, and soon a friend living in Portland, Oregon, convinced me to move there. I had a couple thousand dollars that I had saved up from summer jobs, and I had never lived for long in a real city and was intrigued.

  When I told my parents about my move, they thought it was a terrible idea, but they were defeated. By then I was on a daily dose of antianxiety medication. The pills didn’t change much for me, but the constant lurching and fluttering anxiety in my stomach that had kept me from eating or sleeping for days abated. I stopped lying in bed shaking at night and digging my fingernails into my forearms to calm the trembling, but I still found it hard to make decisions. I fought the impulse to run away, but I knew that I needed change, and running away was the only option I could think of.

  IN PORTLAND, I found a job in a downtown department store, then answered a classified ad in the Willamette Week: “Roommate Wanted. Creative household in old Victorian. Northwest Portland, off 23rd. Only $300 a month, utilities included.” Northwest Twenty-Third was the hippest street in Portland at the time, packed with ethnic restaurants, coffee shops, and vintage clothing stores. I called and asked for a time to take the tour. The raspy female voice on the other end of the line was decisive. Any time.

  HER NAME WAS Liza, and she showed me around the house. She was in her late twenties, with reddish-pink dyed hair. She wore fishnet tights, black vinyl boots, and a black miniskirt that just barely covered her butt cheeks, along with a tiny tank top that she oozed out of. Her voice had the huskiness of a smoker, and the house reeked of menthol cigarettes, but she assured me there would be no smoking in my room. My room. I thrilled at the sound. Already mine.

  Smoke and dust clung to the drapes and furniture, and the hardwood floors seemed to slope at inappropriate angles that straightened out suddenly when I blinked, as if they knew I was watching. The living room was shaded, but when Liza pulled back the heavy drapes, light tumbled through the beveled glass of a deep bay window and sprawled lazily across the floor. Rainy Portland can be a dark place, but this light delighted me.

  Liza and I climbed the heavy wooden stairs, and I palmed the original mahogany banister until we reached the landing, then the bathroom. There was a claw-foot tub with no showerhead and an inky reddish-brown stain that darkened near the drain. When I looked at the toilet, menstrual blood floated in the water. Liza’s eyes followed my gaze, and she flushed, apologizing.

  “There’s no shower right now,” she said. “But I’m going to have the landlord put one in this weekend.”

  When Liza opened the door to my room, I saw a bright open window with the branches of a tree draped outside. There wasn’t much of a view, but the leaves let in just enough light to illuminate the room.

  “Can I paint it?” I asked.

  Liza shrugged. “Sure, you can do whatever you want.”

  I smiled, “Great, I’ll take it. Can I move in immediately?”

  Liza’s mouth gaped, surprised. “Really?” she said.

  I SOON DISCOVERED that Liza and her boyfriend were trying to quit heroin
. Liza’s best friend had recently overdosed and died on the same stairs that I climbed every day. Chad fared a bit better than Liza. His construction job kept him busy, but Liza was home alone, and she was getting itchy.

  She’d taken to drinking 40s of malt liquor, and they built up on the back porch, skyscrapers of bottles piled in front of the kitchen window. The dim Portland sun peeked through the varying shades of glass and refracted into the kitchen, leaving a prismatic rainbow on the dirty floor.

  WHILE LIZA DRANK downstairs, I hid and read on the air mattress in my room upstairs. Once, two women were yelling at each other in the apartment across the driveway. I lifted my head and watched them argue through the open window. Loneliness gnawed at my chest; it was the grandest fight I had ever seen—screaming, throwing, and embracing. I felt so alone. I would have given anything to have someone to fight like that with. I couldn’t look away. One of the women headed toward the door, and the other fell to her knees, sobbing.

  “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. Please.”

  The woman stopped at the door. She turned around and started to walk back toward her lover. When she got close to the window, she looked up suddenly, peering through the window. I was caught.

  “What are you looking at?” she screamed into the space between us. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

  SOON I STARTED visiting with Liza on the couch in the evenings, when I got home from work. The filthy couch was horrifying, but I sat down anyway, trying to inhabit as little space as possible. Liza was going out of her mind trying not to use, and my company comforted her. She was lonely and never left the house. But she had stories to tell. So I listened, while she talked and swigged 40s of malt liquor. Courtney Love had lived in the house. “Courtney was a real bitch,” Liza said. “She treated us all like shit, then she left without paying her rent. She’s only famous because of Kurt Cobain. There was nothing special about her at all.”

  I didn’t know if the story was true, but it fascinated me nonetheless. Kurt Cobain had killed himself only three years earlier, and I had grieved like a sixteen-year-old—driving by myself at night, stopping to sit by the Salmon River on a sandy bank, watching the dark water rush by, and wondering why life seemed to hurt so much.