I gave Amanda her Bible back at lunch.
—Did you find it to be helpful? she asked.
—I did, I said. Thank you very much.
She hugged it to her chest and nodded at her knees.
—I’m glad that it gave you peace, she said.
After she left, Twang said, Did she make you read Job?
—She did, I said.
—Jesus, that’s the worst fucking one, she said.
—What’s the best one, then?
—Ecclesiastes, she said.
—Really?
—No, she said. I’ve never read it. I just like the word, and I’ve heard Amanda talk about it before.
• • •
It wasn’t just that I was missing her. I was missing a good death. She’d done such a bad job at dying. I thought of how, when I was little, I would watch Wile E. Coyote flatten himself over and over again under the weight of a botched scheme. He would stand in a puddle of deepening shadow and then look up at the last minute, eyes as big as sunflowers, but he never managed to move in time. Then he would appear in a new scene, completely resurrected, looking grumpy but intact all the same.
• • •
The Rosewood complex had sagging rooftops and ballsy raccoons. I parked in a spot that threatened to tow me. Kyra answered the door looking raw.
—She just went down, she said.
But then the baby wailed in protest from the other room.
—Short nap, I said.
I followed Kyra into the bedroom. The baby was quavering a vacillating little cry. I could see it stirring through the bars.
—Shh, Kyra said. It’s time to meet your auntie Deirdre.
—Deedee, I said. Kids can’t say my name.
—It’s not like she’s going to say it today anyway, Kyra snapped.
She lifted the baby from its crib.
—Meet Mona, she said, and there she was, peering at me, imperious and sullen. Her eyes were heavy lidded and her face was stretched, but there was no mistaking her.
—Oh, God, I said.
—I know, Kyra said. She takes your breath away.
• • •
The problem with grief is that it works inside of me like twine: sometimes it holds, and I can go about my day without its intrusion. But often, it takes nothing to make it unravel, and I am too distracted by the fray of it to do anything but chase her down before I mythologize her into what she wasn’t.
• • •
—Monarch Orthodontics, a woman lisped.
—I’m looking for Dr. Glen, I said.
—May I ask who’s calling?
—Her sister, I said.
—Hold on.
There was no hold music. The receptionist clunked the phone and I heard muttering in the background. It was almost closing time there. Dr. Glen was done with patients for the day. The line clicked.
—Candace? said Dr. Glen.
—No, I said.
I could visualize this woman so clearly. It was six thirty. She had taken out her contacts and put on frumpy reading glasses once her patients were gone. She was scribbling notes in a patient’s file—little Kevin Wahler was lying about how frequently he slept with his retainer. The bite didn’t lie. She sighed.
—I’m sorry, she said. My receptionist said you were my sister. I must have picked up the wrong line.
—It’s fine, I said.
—Bear with me and I’ll transfer you back.
—No! I said. Not yet.
Surely, I thought, if a shred of her was there now, she would hear me, she would know my desperation and listen.
—What can I help you with? Dr. Glen said.
—Why did you decide to be a dentist? I asked.
—Pardon me?
—What made you choose to be a dentist?
—Orthodontist, she said. Is this for a school thing?
—No, I said.
There was a pause. Dr. Glen was assessing. She was leaning back in her desk chair, chewing on a pen cap, thinking fast about how to get me off the phone. But she was a nice lady. She wasn’t going to hang up on me, not right away.
—I became an orthodontist because I wanted to help people, she said, blithely, gently, as if she were talking to a classroom of third graders.
—That can’t be why.
—Why can’t it?
—It’s too prosaic.
—How old are you? she asked me.
—Twenty-one.
—You are too young to think that helping people isn’t a good reason to do something. Are you in college? Isn’t college all about idealism?
—I’m a little depressed, I said.
—At least you know you are, she said. Lots of people are and don’t know.
We were quiet again. I shivered.
—Is this one of those things where I need to call a suicide hotline? she said.
—No, I said.
—That’s good. I used to be depressed, she said.
—Over what?
—The mechanism doesn’t matter. The diagnosis does, she said.
—I’m sorry. That was rude of me to ask.
—When people have a bite that doesn’t work it’s called a malocclusion. Do you know what occlusion usually means?
—Yes.
—Define it.
—All right, I don’t, I said.
—Isn’t it funny how our egos are so precious that we can’t even tell the truth to strangers? she said.
I broke the spell. She was going to impart some sort of grand lesson about malocclusion but I’d ruined it. It was late, she was tired, and she was talking to a liar.
—I’m going to let you go, she said. I’m sorry you’re depressed. It gets better.
—Wait—
—I can’t help you, dear, she said.
• • •
I couldn’t picture her face on my own anymore. I’d recognize her if I saw a photo, but if I was drifting off to sleep I could only remember the details. The ugly Picasso tattoo. The little spot by her ankles that she’d always miss shaving. The bend in her right ring finger.
I found one of her old T-shirts pushed to the back of my closet. I picked it up and inhaled greedily but couldn’t find her smell. She was gone.
• • •
I wrote it down, all of it, how she looked before: the black hair, the brown eyes, how she wore too many green shirts and not enough yellow, which was her color, how she was mean and spiteful and funny and tender. How she looked when I found her. I wrote it down and made it mine and then turned the page backward. It was a flipbook story. Over and over I brought her back and killed her, trying to find an answer in the syntax, trying to find a way to give her a better ending.
But not every memory could be transcribed. The sneaky ones were insidious, especially if I was unfocused or drowsy, and soon they were misshapen so that in one we were smoking on the patio in winter and in another we were standing in the stairwell in red initiation robes and in others I couldn’t see her hands anymore, or her eyes, and in this one she was raking with me, the air suspended in orange, the geese lazy and roosting, and the trees floated overhead, trunkless, like clouds. We stuffed piles into bags like thieves in a heist, stealing our own landscape, and she stared at me in the strange orange of my memory, telling me to wave at the man in the window, a fully realized person, an unfinished ghost.
21
Margot at Coda
-MARGOT-
April 2008
Got antsy. Took some Molly but it was slow to roll in. Pissy in the meantime. Then D got called into work when Jade called out. Who the fuck is Jade. Told D to stop, admit she loves the attention there. Don’t say it’s for the money anymore. Called her a masochistic antifeminist. Told her not to go but she went all the same. Told her to go fuck off and she said right back at you. She couldn’t slam the door; the others would know. But if she could, if she could’ve she would’ve.
D gone for the night, now, at a party as a literal slab, tits out a
nd men and women eating off of her. Hot plate.
Packed the bubbler and felt, not less angry, but better. Not so furious, just pissed. Still antsy/zooming. Foot jiggling against other foot on the bed, watching it do its own thing, no brainwaves to help it go. In the mirror, across the room, reverse me peered. Small and bewitchy if I tilted the chin and widened the eyes. The bedroom has low light: pupils are huge and eyes are shining. Wished Kyra wasn’t gone; had moved her out the month before when she’d gotten herself knocked up. Kyra would have been good for a night like this, would roll with me and then disappear with a guy and I could walk home blitzed enough to not be pissed at D. Ruby too lazy to go anywhere. Twyla too edgy, staring at corners earlier in the day, told her to cut back on the coke, but she lied and said she hadn’t done any.
Called J.R. instead. An easy pickup. Met him down at Coda, in the black light basement, the bass so loud it sucks the air out of the room, no cover charge for me, fifteen dollars for him. Satisfying. Shot of coffee-flavored rum sinking in the root of my tongue. From then on, swallow first, taste later.
J.R.: Handsome, only sort of white. Makes me nostalgic for places I’ve never been. Tahiti. Senegal. Has slim ankles and skinny, weirdly long feet, as if everything’s been stretched at the joint.
Then it hits, and I am reacquainted with the pulsating thunk of the bass that somehow manages to make me feel more important than I am, I love to put my hand on my collarbone and feel the vibrato, I am just a conductor for sound, I love the way the DJ leans into his board. Skirt on my legs feels like tiny hands petting my thighs. All of us on the dance floor are wearing Glow Sticks with connectors that transform into neon pink halos over our skulls, the air is warm and sticky with the breath of my people, some of the halos cracked and exploded in our fingers, wiped on shirts, all of us neon-gorgeous. J.R. is more beautiful than ever now, his teeth are brilliant under the black light, his mouth funnels into my ear and he offers to take me to the balcony so we can see this mass of humanity from above and I don’t want to go, I don’t want to leave my brethren but I also can’t wait to see the other corners of this world awash with so much light. Edge of distress: to know that it is physically impossible for me to be every place at once: every bathroom stall; every street called Martin Luther King Boulevard; every gyno, palm reader, financial planner; every segment of space, though parts of me are knit through there, the gorgeous unravel of thread.
Above, looking down: the DJ demands that we throw our hands up in the air and so we do and I wave alone from the balcony, and they aren’t looking at me but I know they’re waving at me, for me, too. J.R. says, What did you take, and I say Molly and he says all right. He owl-eyes me. Who is your mother? I ask. He doesn’t understand. She’s Filipina, he says, but he doesn’t get it, I want to know her, cosmically. I tell him she must be so proud. He is amazing, little Filipino boy, now a professor at a big university in America. I can’t believe I’m with a foreigner, and he says, but I’m not foreign, I’m a citizen, a real citizen. It’s important for me to merge with him here, I know, and we are all citizens, which I say. And he calls me ignorant, and I agree. We’re all ignorant! Then he is gone but he is always with me and I am always with him, with all of us.
In the bathroom, peeing is a relief unlike anything I’ve ever known and it lasts forever, and the seat is cool on the backs of my legs, my face feels perfect in my palms, elbows on knees, all of my skeleton is relaxed on the toilet and God did I say peeing is a relief unlike anything I’ve ever known and it lasts forever? I meet a beautiful girl by the sinks. She has a piercing floating above her lip and her eyeliner is so exact and perfect and I ask her to do mine and she does, her hands on my face like my mom’s, so warm, so gentle. My reflection in the tampon dispenser is full Cleopatra eye of Horus face of knowledge and I don’t know how I pulled it off but I did and I know it and so does God. Beautiful Girl says Are you rolling Hun and I say yes and she says Are you thirsty Hun and I say no and she says Take this and gives me a tablet from her bag and I am amazed by her bag, Mary Poppins with eyeliner and medicine and I tell her that and she laughs and tells me to swallow water from the tap. Phrases in church that never made sense now have new meaning, and all are in the bathroom: The ceiling is our firmament of heaven. My face is light from light. Beautiful Poppins Girl is inestimable love.
Then my legs are moving like I’m crushing grapes on the dance floor. How many hours have I been there I want to ask but there is no time for question marks. Guy on the floor comes up behind me and grinds so I turn around, cannot be angry, he feels right, I am a fishing rod, unspooling, lure sunk, he is caught, it isn’t his fault.
There is always a thing you want that will ruin you. But is ruin so bad, because Mrs. Latham said in eleventh grade A.P. Latin it just means to fall and people jump from planes all of the time, they have to jump, to reconnect with their land, to see it for what it is.
There is always a thing you want that will ruin you, I say to the guy on the floor and he says What and I repeat it: there is always a thing you want that will ruin you. Okay, he says, and there is no need to say more.
He brings me drinks that I don’t count because counting feels obscene and man-made and it eats at the majesty of his human goodness.
I wake up in a cab in the center of town, guy is next to me, hand on my leg, feels fantastic but it is enough, I have to go, I say, and he says Where, and driver says C’mon already, and the window is down, outside it is gorgeous, cooing cold night, I open the door and reconnect with my earth, not far from the house now.
Pressing hands into the back of my eyes is in itself a tremendous experience, tiny fireworks made for me by my own brain, the geometry of them reminds me of the real thing, real fireworks. Bona fide. Fourth of July with my parents, grass ticking through the sheet one blade at a time, toenails speckled with old polish, Mom and Dad illuminated by the explosions, so loud the pows roll to the back of my skull and out again through my eyes. Other kids cry at the noise but I lean into it and Dad calls me the pyro princess, tells Mom to keep me away from the matches.
Thought of all the times long ago when I had been aimless and had nowhere to walk, where I had turned on the TV to drown out my own thoughts, where I had been afraid if a car radio did not work because I would have to think by myself if there had not been some sort of entertainment and distraction and that is a human thing, isn’t it, a real thing, it is not original to feel that way and that is a relief. My heart is fast, then slow, then fast, working for me, a good heart. Good heart. Palm on chest. At the house, all quiet, my sisters—my sisters!—either out or sleeping. My room, astounding space, where love is made. Not ready to sleep yet. Take another Molly to stay awake. D still out. Will wait for her to come home. So much to share with her, so much to tell. Take Xanax to slow the good heart. Perfect alchemy, a balance to keep me awake and calm and wise like a priestess, and I will hold her cat-shaped face in mine, lie beside her tall, long body, touch her pale hair and tell her she is part of me, I am part of her, jealousy is a construct and none of this is real. Lie on the floor
Will wait for
Ruin, to fall
Dawn will come, flare of orange on the line, stars blotted out by the rising sun but they are still there, they are mine and ours,
Can see the stars through the ceiling,
vault, fingertip touching God,
neon halos
D will come
tiny choke, tugging for breath
forgetting the breath
grass ticking through one blade at a—
pulling for air now, none found
inestimable love
struggle and can’t, struggle and can’t. a portion of me knows what is happening, is frantic, one hand grabbing at the carpet on the floor, if I could just clutch one thing I could stay—
light from light
other portion says, This Is So Fucking Stupid! starts to laugh without air
so stupid! on this floor! in this shirt?
there is alwa
ys a thing you want that will ruin you
D will come
how absurd it is to
eat ashes
pay dues
kiss men
take oaths
starve
pluck
sweep
hide love under covers, what for?
firmament of heaven
grass tickling my feet,
not afraid to—
grab at the closest neon halo
before it cracks and leaves a stain
22
Group
-EVA, BROWNIE-
July 2012
Ricki called me out of Room One and told me someone was there in the lobby for me, and I went hot, convinced that I was getting served with papers over the car I’d hit last week and driven away from. Maybe there’d been a camera in the lot, I don’t know. And instead there was Brownie. Down the hall, I knew, the exam I’d left was turning into a euth. I could feel it through the building, heard the wife’s voice when Dr. Blasser went to get the Telazol and Euthasol from the safe in the back.
Three years later and I couldn’t remember Brownie’s real name, hadn’t followed any of my pledges online, hadn’t gone to their graduations, and still here she was, Brownie, who somehow had known I was working at the vet in Hadley, who wasn’t calling me Pledge Mistress anymore, but called me by my name, without asking my permission.
We talked. She still had the stammer. I don’t know if it was always there or if I was the one who nicked her speech. It was possible I still had that impact on her. Even in scrubs, even out of the house.
When did I get off, Brownie wanted to know, and I told her late, so she insisted on taking me to lunch. I made her wait. The couple, crying, left exam Room One and were shepherded through the lobby by Dr. Blasser. Their cocker spaniel lay on a stained towel on the table. I got the blue bag and cut the vet wrap off its leg, pulled the cath, slid it into the bag, knotted it, and attached the red tag, big letters, group. I took my time carrying it to the freezer out back. I took my time washing my hands. Back in the lobby, I found Brownie and Ricki, chatting about the Kardashians, no stammer.
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