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For the broken hearts,
& punched-out souls,
& grief-hollowed bones,
& muddled minds,
In the darkest hours,
Fighting for the light.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Hello, dear reader.
I think it should be known that, while Six Goodbyes is a work of fiction, I share the many characteristics, fears, and pains, in both the delicacy of Dew, and the confused ferocity in Naima. Please let this brief note serve as a trigger warning in regards to mental illness; self-care is of the utmost importance. And while I hope Six Goodbyes provides insight for those who don’t empathize, or comfort for those that do, I also understand everyone reacts differently.
Dew’s social anxiety is something I, and many others, struggle with. We carry on with our days and pretend it’s not as hard as it feels inside. Others can’t quite see how much it hurts but we so wish they could. Naima is the most visceral interpretation of all of my diagnosed disorders combined. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and related tics, her intrusive thoughts, her utterly devastating and isolating depression, her generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), which makes her so closed off from the world, and her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from losing the biggest portion of her identity—those are all pieces of me. Very big pieces. They don’t define me, but it would be misleading if I didn’t admit they sometimes, mostly do. I’m imperfectly complicated like Naima. And though I’ve written extensively on both my mental illnesses and living biracial, between two worlds—never enough of one or the other; always only half of something and never whole or satiated—I often still feel misunderstood. Hopefully Dew and Naima’s stories will provide a little insight as to what it’s like inside their heads, and inside mine.
Both Dew and Naima want to hold on to the roots that have grounded them in their familiar, safe spaces. But once their metaphorical trees are cut, and all the leaves shielding them from their pains have fallen and faded away, not even photosynthesis could bring them back to life. Those roots, Naima and Dew feel, will die off, and everything they had in their lives before will, too. There are many of you out there who feel the exact same way, but I assure you, Dew and Naima will find their way—they will grow new roots that flourish—and you, my darlings, will, too.
Thank you for reading, and may Six Goodbyes serve as permission to speak your truths—the good and the painful.
Here’s to another six airplanes for you to wish upon.
ANATOMY OF THE FLOAT PHASE
When someone like Staff Sergeant Raymond K. Rodriguez leaves to fight for their country, the rest of you wait, counting down the days until the next arrival, and the next leave—because there’s little breathing in between. You check the empty mailbox, hold your phones like bulletproof vests, and bargain with whoever you pray to that your fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers don’t come home in a box. No one wants to be in the FLOAT phase—Fallen Loved Ones Awaiting Transfer. Not knowing when the body of your loved one will arrive on American soil wrapped in ice. So you can release that pang you’ve been holding on to, only to replace it with a new one. So you can stop pacing in fear, and hold on to something else: acceptance.
When you’re in a military family with an active service member, death becomes something you prepare for. You talk about tradition, honor, dignity, and death at the dinner table. A black sedan becomes a symbol of someone’s sacrifice. If one drives near, grieving begins before you know who to grieve for. But the thing is, Naima Rodriguez has been grieving as long as she can remember, because she’s never gotten over being left in the first place. That’s the thing about absence—it sinks into your skin, clinging to the bone until it’s so much a part of you, you can no longer tell where it ends and you begin.
You are the FLOAT phase.
Only the dead have seen the End of War.
The rest of us carry it inside.
—PLATO
I hate everything about mascots.
Show your face already.
—NAIMA RODRIGUEZ
Dad
cell
May 3 at 7:33 PM
Transcription Beta
“Guess who’s getting ready to come home and take you to Ivy Springs? That’s right, Ima. It’s happening. It’s finally happening. Don’t tell Nell. I want to surprise her.”
Email Draft (Unsent)
To
___________________________________________
Subject
___________________________________________
I’m holding my breath
Until you’re standing in front of me
Because we’ve danced this song
So many times before
And I no longer trust
You’ll do what you
Promise.
Just in case,
I’ll count the hexagons.
NAIMA
Nell is a dingy yoga mat; the sweaty barrier between total chill-status and my shit reality (aka, my annoying stepmom and ruiner of all moments) (trust me on this).
“JJ and Kam aren’t going to believe how much you’ve grown since the funeral,” she says on our long-ass 794-mile drive from Albany, Georgia, to Ivy Springs, Indiana. She tap tap taps her long, pointed fingernails against the steering wheel to the beat of whatever imaginary song she’s playing in her head. Probably something disco or hair band. The radio is silent, always silent, when we ride together, but the second she speaks with that high-pitched nasally voice I loathe, I regret this necessity. I concentrate harder on the objects we pass so I can properly pinch my toes between them.
Tap my nose. Tap my nose. Tap my nose.
Tap my nose. Tap my nose.
Tap my nose.
Click my tongue. Click my tongue. Click my tongue.
Click my tongue. Click my tongue.
Click my tongue.
Flick my thumbnail. Flick my thumbnail.
Flick my thumbnail.
Flick my thumbnail. Flick my thumbnail.
Flick my thumbnail.
Flick.
Flick.
FLICK.
I continue with my sequence the length of the drive. Nell hates it, but I hate when she wears fingerless gloves in the summer, so we’re even. Without my boring-ass stepbrother, Christian, to be my talk block—the dull cushion of conversation between Nell and me—(he left two days ago on a death star/plane to see his dad in NYC), the “spacious” SUV feels like I’ve been placed at a dinner table in a vast canyon and right across from me is literally the only woman I don’t want to meet for dinner. Like, why can’t I eat with the Queen of England or Oprah? I’m bound by my father’s love for Nell, or whatever, but now he’s gone, and I’m climbing the hell out of the canyon before she wants to talk about how big my naturally tousled hair is (a perfect mess), period cycles (semi-regular, FYI), sexually transmitted diseases (don’t have a
single one, thanks), or worse—my feelings (happily buried!). Ugh. GTFO.
The failing engine’s hum, where the metal scrapes and churns with a whir, competes with Nell’s increased tapping. I’ve missed too many objects, my toes rapidly pinching and releasing, to make up for what’s been lost. But it’s too late. My mind shifts automatically to a neon sign flashing WARNING! There’s always a consequence to messing up the sequence. Always.
Counting is to time what the final voicemail Dad left is to the sound of my heart cracking open; a message I can’t listen to. It’ll become entombed in history, in me. My finger lingers over my phone and quickly retreats, knowing there’s nothing he could’ve said to make this pain less. Nothing can make him less gone.
I look out the window to where my dreary-eyed reflection stares blankly back at me; Nell glides over the double yellow lines into oncoming traffic, violently overcorrecting just before we would have been hit by a semi. The sound of his horn echoes through the high-topped Tennessee mountains. Three thousand two hundred eighty-seven people die in car accidents every day. I Googled it. After I Googled it, I looked at pictures. And after I looked at pictures I went through the sequence. Car accident. Fatalities. My legs smashed up to my chest. Nell crushed into the hood.
“Sorry,” she says; her voice rattles. “Make sure Ray’s okay back there.”
I turn to investigate the vase-shaped metal urn surrounded by layers of sloppily folded sheets (Nell did that) and one perfectly situated hexagon quilt (that’s all me). The sun’s gleam hits U.S. Marine Corp just so, and I’m reminded again that he’s gone. Gone.
“It’s fine,” I say, refusing to call that pile of ashes “Dad,” or “he.” The urn arrived several days ago in a twenty-four-hour priority package. Nell saying, “No reason to waste time getting him home,” and I was like, “What’s that?” and she was all “Your dad, silly,” and I was like, “Huh?” and she asked me if I wanted a banana-kale protein shake after she “got him situated.” A big hell no. I immediately dove into a Ziploc ration of Lucky Charms marshmallows to dull the pain of conversing with someone so exhausting.
After he was transported in ice from Afghanistan to Dover, after they sorted and processed his things, after he was cremated, after the police and state troopers closed down the streets to honor him as we drove him through, after we had the memorial service, after we were handed the folded flag with a bullet shell casing tucked inside, after they spoke of his medals, and after Christian and I sat in disbelief beneath a weeping willow tree for three hours, Nell finally decided the ashes should go to his hometown in Indiana, after all. I didn’t think she’d cave, but after one talk with my grandma, JJ, she did. If anyone could turn a donkey into a unicorn, it’s JJ (or so she says). And so, it was decided—Dad, I mean It, was going home a unicorn.
“Let’s stop for some grub,” Nell says, wide-eyed. “Hungry?”
“Grub,” rhymes with “nub,” which she is. “No.”
“Let’s at least stretch our legs. Still a few hours to go.”
“Fine. But no travel yoga this time.”
She pulls off to a rest area a few miles ahead, exiting the car. I crack a window and wait while she hikes a leg to the top of the trunk, bending forward with an “oh, that’s tight.” After, she says, “Going to the potty. BRB.”
I flash a thumbs-up and slink deep into the warmth of my seat, hiding from the stare of perverts and families. My foot kicks my bag on the floor mat, knocking my prescription bottle to its side. Dr. Rose, my therapist in Ft. Hood, said sometimes starting over is the only way to stop looking back. But what about when the past is all you have left of someone?
My gaze pushes forward to the vending machines. Dad and I stopped at this very place on our way to Indiana without basic Nell. He’d grab a cold can of Coke and toss me a bag of trail mix to sort into piles. If I close my eyes, it almost feels like he’s here—not a pile of ashes buckled tight into the backseat. We’d play a game of Would You Rather to see who could come up with the worst/most messed-up scenarios (I usually won).
Would you rather wear Nell’s unwashed yoga pants every day for a month?
Or call an urn full of ashes “Dad”?
Sometimes, he’d pre-sort the trail mix,
Leaving me the best parts (the candy-coated chocolate).
I am one-of-a-kind
Magic, Dad would say.
But he was, too.
A unicorn, I think.
Definitely not a donkey.
The more I think on it,
Maybe JJ could turn Nell
Into a unicorn,
Too,
But no magic is that strong.
Dad
cell
June 1 at 9:04 AM
Transcription Beta
“Open the door.”
Sent Email
No Subject
___________________________________________
Naima
to Dad
If I open it,
Will you really be there
Or just a memory
From the last time?
Nevermind.
I see you,
The ghost
Outside my window.
<3
In today’s forecast, sunshine early morning will give way to late-day thunderstorms. I love the smell of rain. It’s the aroma of being alive.
August Moon and the Paper Hearts—the band my parents opened for—advise we speak kindly to strangers through song. I’d like to think that’s what my parents would’ve said, too. I can still see my mother’s chestnut eyes soft as she hums. From the tired bones in her feet after long shifts at the glass-making factory (after the band split apart), to the graying curls that sprang into action when the beat hit her ears, she’s frozen in time; a whimsical ballerina, twirling inside a glass globe to a tune only she and I can hear.
“Let the music move your soul,” she’d tell me. “Let it carry you into the clouds, my darling.”
She’d grab my hand, hers papered by the rough gloves she was required to wear during her shifts, guiding me by the glittering moondust, while Dad watched on from the old twill rocker, threads carved around his boxy frame. Our feet stepped along invisible squares against the floor, round and round, until the world vanished beneath us. We floated.
“You got that boy spoiled, Momma,” Dad would tell her.
“Don’t you know it,” she’d reply, pulling me closer.
That was when the universe built itself around the three of us; vibrant wildflowers, dipped in my mother’s favorite verb: “love.” I wish I could remember the smell of her better. I wish I could remember what Dad would say. When I lose my breath in the thick of human oceans and panic, I wish harder.
My second set of parents, Stella and Thomas, are kind to me. Stella’s eyes remind me of my mother’s—two infinity pools, giving the illusion of boundless compassion—while Thomas’s laugh is an eerily mirrored version of my father’s. Sometimes, when Thomas finds himself amused, I catch myself thinking Dad is here. I can almost see him holding his bass guitar, doubled over from a joke he’d heard.
My sister, Faith, hasn’t settled into this family yet, even after a year of fostering. She cries, punches her bed pillow—sometimes Stella; sometimes Thomas. Her wailing is incessant, scratchy, and raw. Sometimes I sit outside her door and silently cry with her. When you’re taken from your birth parents, it doesn’t matter how wonderful your new, adoptive, or temporary, foster parents are. They can be every warm hug you’ve needed, but if you’re holding tight to the feeling of being home, you may find comfort in the cold, dark night instead. I did at first. After all the months with us, Faith is realizing the Brickmans are her home now, but she’s still fighting to stay warm on her own, hoping her parents would somehow return.
“You can never know someone’s pain or happiness until you’ve stepped inside their shoes,” my mother would say.
“What if their shoes don’t
fit?” I’d ask. “If our lives are too different?”
“Find a connection; something similar enough that all the differences bounce off the table completely, like Ping-Pong balls. If we look past things that divide us, humanity will find a way to shine through.”
No one should step inside my shoes unless they’re prepared to understand the kind of grief that’s whole-body and constant. It’s quiet but deep. The same way Earth orbits the sun every hour of every day of every year, I miss my parents, and Faith misses hers.
Stella and Thomas try. They’ve searched our shoe collection. They’ve tried them on. And, just as Cinderella found her magic fit, they’ve managed to find a pair that fits in some way. Of the hundreds of thousands of kids in foster care, they placed an inquiry about me, they went through the classes and orientation for me, they did the home study for me—they adopted me. Same for Faith, however different our circumstances.
It makes no matter that Stella and Thomas couldn’t conceive naturally. The foster and adoption process stole chunks of time they’ll never retrieve, for a “special needs” boy—due to my age, “minority group,” and “emotional trauma”—long past diapers and bottles and baby powder–scented snuggles. It was financially and emotionally draining for all of us involved, with no guarantee I would welcome them or they could love me the way my parents did. I didn’t embrace them at first. I quite liked my previous foster family but they felt me only temporary. The Brickmans embraced me without hesitation, with a permanent kind of promise. It’s the same kindness my parents would endorse. They gave me a home, a family, and a place I belong. And so, to every stranger along my path, I will be kind, too. Even—especially—the ones who’d prefer I didn’t.
“Those are the souls who need compassion most,” Mom would say. “The ones broken by the world, angry and afraid of trusting. You must remind them that they are not alone. Nothing can be lost in trying. Remember that always, my darling.”
Six Goodbyes We Never Said Page 1