Wintergirls

by Laurie Halse Anderson

  Maybe we’ll run away to South America after the funeral and raise goats.

  Cassie grows braver every night, coming sooner, staying longer, freaking me out more and more. Once her coffin is tucked into the ground and the magic prayers are said and flowers are laid on top of her, she’ll go to sleep forever.

  But I need to get some sleep. I pop a sleeping pill and tiptoe down the stairs in my robe for a mug of chamomile tea.

  The movie has finished and Jennifer and Dad are talking quietly, the Weather Channel droning in the background. I pause at the corner of the kitchen, listening for kissing sounds. I hate walking in on them when they’re making out.

  I peek around the corner. No kissing. Just talking, each of them occupying a corner of the couch with pillows in between.

  Husband: You’re overreacting. She’s a little stressed, but she’s trying.

  Wife: She doesn’t look good.

  Husband: You see the scales every week.

  Wife: I wish she’d go in for a checkup. Have some blood work.

  Husband: We can only suggest it. To be honest, pushing the issue might make things worse.

  Wife: Chloe wants her to move back in.

  Husband, picking up remote and adjusting flames of fireplace: Not just visit for a night?

  Wife: She’s afraid Lia is out of control again. I agree. A couple months with her mom might help get her back on track.

  Husband: You were the one who convinced me to let her move in. You can’t change your mind just because she’s hit a rough patch. What are you going to do when Emma goes through this? Send her to Chloe’s house, too?

  Wife: Don’t be ridiculous. Emma and Lia are very different people.

  Husband: She had pizza with friends tonight. She’s fine. You and Chloe are blowing this out of proportion. Now, what time do we have to get up in the morning?

  Cassie is waiting for me upstairs. She heard everything.

  I try to ignore her, but every time I turn around, she materializes in front of my eyes. We slide into the computer and scroll through the chorus.

  im bulimic have been for six years recently tried to

  recover gained a lot of weight now im slipping back

  and cant stand the weight any longer

  what does everyone think is the least amount of days

  you could lose 25 pounds?

  i try to keep calorie intake under 500.

  anything more is unacceptable.

  Mucho Love! stay strong <333

  i am so disgustingly, horribly fat. Today i went for a 2

  hour run and starved myself till dinner where i ate

  like a pig. Sometimes i feel so fucking helpless.

  i am on a HIGH here. i think i might finally be

  getting pretty good at this! to those of you

  who are having a tough time right now, big hugs.

  you can do anything if you try hard enough!

  When the house is asleep, I turn off the music and light a candle. Cassie sits on the windowsill and watches as I draw three razor lines, perfectly straight, on my right hip.

  Now it matches the left.

  030.00

  On my way to pick up Elijah Saturday morning, I stop at a store to buy a map and a compass. The GPS is on my Christmas list, in ink. What I really need is a crystal ball, but nobody sells them around here.

  I open up the compass box as soon as I’m in the car. The compass is defective. No matter how I hold it, the little needle spins and spins around the dial without stopping.

  I want my money back.

  Elijah spends more time talking about his plans to drive south after Christmas than navigating. We get lost right after leaving the motel and waste time driving on roads that aren’t on the map. When we finally pull in between the stone griffins at the entrance to Mountain View Cemetery, we’re late.

  A thin man in a long black coat and a black cowboy hat points me to a small parking lot. My car is the third one there.

  I get out, wishing I had worn sweatpants, because the air smells like snow. I tug at the hem of my dress and shiver. This girl looked almost pretty in the mirror this morning: clean hair, decent makeup, antique silver earrings, a spider-gray short-sleeved dress (size zero) that fluttered just above her knees, and killer high heels. I forgot about it being thirty-seven degrees out.

  “You sure we’re in the right place?” Elijah asks as we close the doors.

  The man with the hat walks over to us. “If you folks hustle, you might make it up there before the graveside service begins.”

  “Up where?” I ask.

  “Up that hill,” he says, pointing to a steep road. “The Parrish service is at the top. You’ll have to walk. All the parking spaces up there are filled. Good day.” He gives the tiniest of bows and walks back to his position at the gate.

  “I’ll never make it in these,” I say, pointing to my shoes. “I can barely walk to the bathroom in them.”

  “So why’d you wear them?” Elijah asks. He’s wearing dark jeans, work boots, the shirt and tie he wore to the wake, and a camouflage jacket. His earring is a solid black plug.

  “They look good.”

  “No, they don’t,” he says. “If they hurt you, they’re hideous.” He hunches over slightly and bends his knees. “Come on,” he says. “Jump on my back.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll carry you up there. I mean, it’ll probably kill me, but I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”

  “That’s not necessary.” I open the trunk of my car and root around until I find a pair of old high-top sneakers, dingy white and covered in blue-ink flowers drawn during History class. “I’ll wear these.”

  I sit on the bumper, take off the heels, and put on the sneakers, which smell like they’ve been cooking in a trunk full of garbage for a year or so, but they make my toes happy.

  I stand up. “Sophisticated, huh?”

  Elijah takes in the sneakers, the dress, and the fact that I’m shivering. He takes off his jacket and gives it to me. “Don’t even think about arguing.”

  His jacket is heavy with the heat from his body and smells like gasoline and boy. “Thanks.”

  “Now,” he says, eyeing me up and down a second time. “Now you look good.”

  031.00

  I don’t feel good by the time we make it to the top. The fresh cuts in my hip are aching and I’m certain one of them has opened up and is bleeding. Every step closer to Cassie makes me colder and weaker. It’s affecting Elijah, too. He walks with his head down and hands shoved in his pockets.

  The crest of the hill is covered with hundreds of black-backed beetles gathered for the carrion feast: kids from school, teachers, the parents who show up at everything. The members of the stage crew are grouped in threes and fours. The soccer team is one solid block, most wearing their team jackets. I don’t see my mother anywhere.

  “How close do you want to be?” Elijah quietly asks me.

  “As close as we can get.”

  He sighs. “Okay. Follow me.”

  We make our way through the crowd toward the white pavilion tent. Cassie’s parents and other relatives sit inside on plastic chairs, listening to the minister, who stands with one hand on Mr. Parrish’s shoulder.

  The coffin is covered with a thick blanket of pale pink roses. It’s resting on a metal brace like a hot cookie sheet cooling on a rack. Strips of fake grass are supposed to hide the brace, but the wind has peeled them away.

  I stand on my tiptoes. If we were closer, we could see to the bottom of the hole.

  Cassie’s parents can. The mouth of the grave is inches away from their feet.

  A beehive-shaped pile of dirt is mounded behind the tent, waiting for the end of the service. The grave diggers will dump the dirt in the hole to keep Cassie from floating to the surface and running away.

  The mountains to the north have disappeared under a snowstorm. Down here the wind screams over the rows of thunder-colored headstones. I close my eyes.

&nb
sp; Cassie’s pet mouse, Pinky, died the summer before fourth grade. She cried so hard I thought we were going to have to call an ambulance, or at least my mom. I helped her downstairs. Her mother was off somewhere, and her dad was in charge, watching the Red Sox play the Yankees. He told Cassie to stop crying. He’d put the corpse in the trash after the game.

  Cassie held it together until we got back to her room, then she threw herself on her bed and wailed, “I don’t want to put him in the trash.”

  “We won’t,” I said. “We’ll give him a proper funeral.”

  I used a spatula to lift Pinky out of his cage and lay him on Cassie’s favorite blue bandanna. I rolled him up like a mousy burrito and tied it with yarn. I told Cassie she should carry him, but when she touched the bandanna she shrieked. I put on oven mitts and carried Pinky to the side yard. Cassie followed with a little shovel.

  The easiest place to dig was in the middle of her mom’s rose garden. We took turns scraping away the new mulch and digging a hole between two bushes, one marked Mordent Blush, the other Nearly Wild, each sign handwritten with a calligraphy pen.

  I faked a little Latin and chanted most of the Lord’s Prayer. Cassie added long “ooooommmms” that she claimed was Chinese. (Her parents encouraged her to explore other cultures.) While she omed, I laid Pinky in the hole and covered him with dirt.

  “Sure hope a dog doesn’t dig him up,” I said.

  Her face crumpled.

  “Hang on.”

  I ran across the street and grabbed a plastic bucket of beach stones from my room. We laid the stones on the grave, spread mulch on top, and chanted a couple more prayers. We stood, holding hands, eyes closed, and swore that we would never, ever forget our special Pinky.

  The summer after that one, her mom’s Nearly Wild won the Greater Manchester Rose Grower Association’s grand prize. The newspaper did a full-color spread on the garden and the Parrishes threw a party to celebrate.

  The preacher stands at the head of the coffin and puts out his arms to call down the gods. He thanks everyone for coming, and then his voice drops and it’s impossible to hear him. A few more late stragglers rush up the hill, trying to move quickly without being seen. One of them is a tall woman in boots and a long mink coat, her yellow hair pulled back in a flawless French braid, prescription sunglasses that she doesn’t need because the clouds are black and low.

  My mother.

  I move behind Elijah. “Block the wind for me, okay?”

  “What?” he asks. “Sure.”

  I count to ten, then peek out around his shoulder. She’s standing at the edge of the crowd, just past the soccer team, nodding and half smiling at the people around her.

  Some guy walks up to the preacher and whispers in his ear, maybe explaining that no one can hear a word the guys says because of the wind blowing.

  The preacher nods and shouts, “Let us pray!”

  I lean my forehead against Elijah’s sturdy back.

  The day we buried Nanna Marrigan, I walked behind my mother through the cemetery, her hand shooting out from time to time to warn me about tripping on exposed roots. I was thirteen. We passed under dying oaks, sharp-eyed crows pacing on their branches, and by teenage angels frozen in marble, cobwebs strung from their heads to their thin shoulders.

  Nanna was waiting in her coffin, next to the fresh hole dug at the back of the cemetery, where they planted the new dead. She had picked out the coffin and the hymns and the prayers. She demanded that people contribute to the library instead of sending flowers.

  The minister gave us little booklets so we could follow along, but I didn’t take one. My mother cried without crumpling up her face because Nanna didn’t like it when people made a spectacle of themselves in public. I was so stunned by the sight of the tears streaming down her cheeks I missed most of the service.

  The grave diggers lifted my grandmother’s coffin as if it were filled with feathers. As they lowered it into the ground, the wind blew and ghostshadows unfolded and folded themselves like butterflies on the ground. The marble girls whispered and the ghostshadows snuck inside and hid behind my ribs. . . .

  I open my eyes. The minister is still quoting his Bible. Elijah’s face is tilted up to the sky, perfectly calm. Mira from school is sobbing, her father’s arm around her shoulders. My mother has her head bowed, her lips moving. I wish I knew what she prays for.

  Mrs. Parrish leans against her husband. He lays his cheek on the top of her head, his arms and hands holding her tight so she doesn’t jump in. The rose petals on the coffin flutter in the wind. A few are ripped off and sucked straight up into the sky.

  The rest of the mourners shiver as the storm slides down from the north. Restless clouds of ghosts swirl paths from grave to sticky grave.

  “Amen!” the minister shouts into the wind.

  032.00

  Game over.

  The man in black hollers that we’re all invited back to the family’s home to continue the celebration of Cassie’s life and find strength in one another. As Cassie’s parents walk away from the tent, my mother approaches them and says something. They take turns hugging her, Mom patting them gently on the back.

  “Funerals suck,” Elijah says to me. “Next time we bet, we’re playing poker. Ready to go?”

  “Not quite,” I say. “I want to watch them cover her up.”

  He chews the inside of his cheek. “I’ll wait for you at the car. The dead people are weirding me out.”

  “Lia!” The wind almost blows her voice away, but not quite.

  Damn. She saw me.

  I step behind Elijah. “Don’t move.” He tries to turn around but I poke him in the ribs. “I mean it.”

  “What’s going on?” he asks. “Who are you hiding from?”

  “My mother.”

  He starts to turn around again. “Why?”

  I grab his shirt to keep him from moving. “Just don’t let her see me.”

  I huddle against his back, my face behind the curtain of my hair. Car doors are opening and shutting, engines turning over, tires crunching on the gravel.

  “Why not?” he asks.

  . . . The second time they admitted me,

  . . . the second time they locked me up, I was bad, bad, bad. My parental units were frowny mad, mad, mad. Dead, rotting daughters leave a bad smell that won’t come out no matter how hard the cleaning lady scrubs. My parents bounced the blame back and forth, bouncing Lia bean, sick starving Lia bean, what is wrong with her, it’s all your faultfaultfault.

  My mother wanted to be the boss, wanted to be Dr. Marrigan instead of Sick Lia’s Mom. That didn’t work. The clinic docs dug a moat around me and said she could not swim across it, she had to wait until she was invited to cross the drawbridge. After that, she missed a couple of family therapy sessions. She tried to explain why, but my ears were stuffed with bread and pasta and milk shakes.

  I limped alongside the other rag-doll girls. One had a plastic door cut in her belly so she could dump the food in without using her mouth. When she got angry, she would puke the food out the belly door, slam it shut, and lock herself.

  I had to shave my furry legs in front of a nurse so I didn’t accidentally open a vein. When I was a pink, hairless mouse, she took away the razor. I curled up in a matchbox filled with sawdust and covered my face with my cold rope tail. The shrinks dug into their bag of tricks and doled out new pills, my crazy candies, baby blue and nap-time gray.

  They experimented on me for weeks. 089.00. 090.60. 093.00. 095.00. They stuffed the Lia-piñata with melted cheese and bread crumbs. 099.00. 103.00. 104.00. 105.00. 106.00. They released me at 108.00 with a three-ring slut-red binder that held all of my lessons: meal plans, follow-up appointments,affirmations to keep away the nasty thoughts.

  I refused to return to the house of my mother. If I was such a difficult child, such a pain in her neck, then I’d find someplace else to live. She tried to talk me out of it, but I pulled up the drawbridge, locked it with iron bars, and posted an arm
ed guard.

  The doctors gave Dad and Jennifer a black slippery bag filled with jingle-bell bottles of crazy seeds, perfect mini-castanets, shooka, shooka, shooka.

  Elijah cracks his knuckles. “Why don’t you want to see your mom?”

  “Do you like your parents?” I ask.

  “Love my mom. Dad beat the crap out of me, then kicked me out.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hang on,” he says. “We need to spin left a little.” He twists slightly to keep his body between me and the eyes of my mother.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Is she looking this way?”

  “She was, but then two ladies holding umbrellas tackled her. Now they’re bashing her in the face with their purses. Why don’t you want to see her? Did she burn your dolls in a sacrificial fire? Read your e-mail?”

  “She wants to run my life,” I explain.

  “What a bitch. It’s like she thinks she’s your mother or something.”

  “She’s a psychopath,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

  “Psychopaths can’t afford fur coats.”

  “This one can. What is she doing now?”

  “Her head is spinning three hundred and sixty degrees and she’s spewing frogs,” he says.

  “What are you—?” I poke my head out around his shoulder.

  She is standing only three graves away. “Lia?” she calls.

  “Lia?” Elijah echoes.

  He steps to the side and takes away my hiding place.

  I step on the closest grave—Fanny Lott, 1881-1924—hoping the earth will collapse under me. It doesn’t.