“It’ll be okay. I’ve got you.” She sounded panicked though, and that made me panic even more.
I felt a blast of cold air when she brought me outside and placed me on the front lawn. She put her hands on my shoulders and bent down to look me directly in the eyes. “Stay here, Beth. Do not move. I’m going to run back in and get your sister and your dad. I’ll be right back. I love you, Beth. Stay right here, baby.”
Watching her go back inside our burning house, I felt tears slide down my cheeks. I was overwhelmed with fear and confusion. I didn’t like being outside by myself in the middle of the night. I glanced behind me and then back at the house where I could now see giant flames lapping out the windows on the lower left side where the kitchen and living room were located. I hugged my arms around myself and stared up at the second floor, the cold air seeping through my thin pajamas. Fire truck sirens sounded in the distance.
A minute later I saw my mother and sister and a short-lived relief swept through my tiny body. She ran down the front steps and when she got to me, I asked, “Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s trying to find Buster. Grace was now standing next to me. “I need to help your dad. You girls stay right here. Grace, do not move, okay baby? Stay with your sister. I will be right back, I promise. It’s going to be okay.”
Grace nodded, and I stood there unable to utter a single word. I didn’t want her to go back in there. I didn’t want her to leave us alone. Grace hugged me against her side. “It’ll be okay,” she said to me with a cry stuck in her throat. “It’ll be okay.”
It wasn’t though, and it never would be again. Even my nine year old brain knew that. Seconds went by…then minutes and still no sign of Mommy and Daddy…or Buster. The fire trucks pulled up in front of our house and men began grabbing the fire hoses and rushing towards the flames that now engulfed the entire house.
“You girls okay? Is there anyone inside?” a fireman asked.
“Our parents are still inside!” Grace shouted. “They were trying to find our dog.”
Several firemen ran toward the house and another fireman led us towards the street beside one of the fire trucks. “We need you girls to stay right here. Okay?” He didn’t wait for us to answer before he, too, ran towards the flames.
More minutes ticked by. Neighbors came outside their homes and Ms. Bradley, our ninety-three year old neighbor, brought a quilt out and wrapped it around Grace and me while she tried to offer words of comfort and encouragement.
“They’ll get them out,” she told us over and over again, patting my hands. “They’ll get them out.”
“They didn’t did they?” Hayden asked as I tried to blink away the memory.
I swallowed the grapefruit sized lump in my throat. “No. Not alive anyway.”
“I’m so sorry,” Hayden whispered.
“I wish I could tell you that was the worst of it.” Looking down, I saw the bottled water Hayden had bought for me. I unscrewed the cap and took a drink, hoping I could dislodge the ache that was crawling up my throat. It didn’t work. The ache was there to stay. “Their deaths left me with only my sister, Grace. She was two years older than me. I can remember following her around. Everywhere she went… I went. I idolized her. I always thought she was so pretty and so perfect. I have no idea why since most siblings fight like cats and dogs, but for whatever reasons, we got each other.”
I stopped talking so I could catch my breath. My lungs felt weighed down, too heavy to function. I allowed myself a minute to breathe.
“Anyway,” I said, finding my voice again, “the saddest day of my life was the day of my parents’ funeral. It was bad enough that I had to say goodbye to my mom and dad. What made this day drastically worse was that I was forced to say goodbye to my sister too.”
Grace held my hand, and for a long time we sat watching while men threw dirt onto the caskets after they were lowered into the ground.
“Do you think they’re in heaven, Grace?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“How do you know for sure?” I asked while wiping my nose with my sleeve.
“It’s not something I can prove,” Grace said. “I just feel it.”
We stood there a while longer until Ms. Bradley came up behind us. “Come on girls. It’s time to go now.” We had been staying with her for the past two days. She was old and frail and didn’t drive anymore, so her son had driven us to the funeral. After he drove us back to her house, I was sitting on the couch with Grace when Ms. Bradley set a sandwich for both of us on the coffee table.
“Eat, little ones,” she said.
I ate a couple of bites and Grace did too. Neither one of us felt much like eating though. Ms. Bradley sat with us, eating her own sandwich. When she was finished she said, “Girls, in a few minutes we are going to have a visitor. A nice lady is coming to take you to your new home.”
Our new home.
I hadn’t let myself think where that would be. I didn’t want to. The only thing I did know was that we couldn’t stay with Ms. Bradley. She was barely able to take care of herself. I was nervous and felt sick to my stomach. Who would we live with? Would they love us? Would they be nice?
We didn’t have to wait long before someone rang the doorbell. A much younger lady than Ms. Bradley stood on the other side of the door. She introduced herself to us as Ms. Collier. “Girls, I work for the state. I’m here to take you to–”
“You’re here to take us to our new home,” Grace said. “We know. Ms. Bradley told us.”
Ms. Collier gave us a sad smile. “I have two nice families who would love for you girls to stay with them.”
“Two?” Grace asked. “Why two families?”
“Well, Grace, you will stay with one family, and Beth will stay with another.”
“I want to stay with Grace.”
“Yeah!” Grace said, pulling me into her side. “Me and Beth, we have to stay together.”
“I’m sorry,” Ms. Collier said. “I tried to find one family that could take both of you. Unfortunately, this is our only option at this time.”
Ms. Collier’s face became a watery blur. “You can’t take me away from my sister. You ca-can’t!” I held onto to Grace with everything I had. “Don’t take her away from me! Please!”
Ms. Collier looked down and then at Ms. Bradley. When she brought her attention back to us she said, “I’m so sorry. I tried–”
“Try again,” Grace begged, interrupting her. “Ms. Bradley will let us stay here until you can find one family for us, won’t you Ms. Bradley? We aren’t any trouble, we can sweep and cook and take care of ourselves…” Ms. Bradley put her arms protectively around us and for a moment I thought she was going to let us stay.
Then another lady who had come with Ms. Collier and hadn’t introduced herself yet approached Grace and took her by the hand. “I know this is hard, but it’s time to say goodbye to Beth. We have a bit of a drive to make, so we need to get going.”
Grace began kicking and pulling away. The lady held her tighter. “Don’t! Let me go!” Grace shrieked. I bolted from Ms. Bradley’s side and grabbed Grace’s hand. Ms. Collier came up behind me and put her hands on my arms breaking my grasp on Grace’s hand.
“Don’t take her away from me!” I screamed. When I broke loose from Ms. Collier, I ran towards Grace again and held on. “Don’t take her away from me, please!” I sobbed.
Ms. Collier and the other lady pried us apart again and I saw the look of resignation in Grace’s eyes. She stopped fighting after a minute, realizing this was happening whether we wanted it to or not. More calmly she said, “I’ll go with you. Just, let me give my sister a hug. Please. Let me hug my sister.”
I stood in the middle of the room, crying into my hands, feeling like I might drown from all the tears, and then I felt my sister’s arms wrap around me. She whispered, “I’ll find you. I promise.”
I dropped my hands, squeezed her in a hug, and pinched my eyes shut. I wanted this nightmare to end. “Don’t leave me, Grace. I’m
so scared, I don’t want you to leave me too.”
“I don’t want to leave you.” She pulled back and held my cheeks. “I’ll find you and until I do remember how much I love you. Always remember I love you. No matter what, Beth, we are always sisters and I will never stop looking for you.”
The other lady took Grace by the hand and I watched her walk out Ms. Bradley’s front door, down the porch steps, and get into the back seat of a car that was waiting by the curb. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to be able to be a big girl and not disobey the adults in the room. But I wanted my sister more. I ran out the front door, my legs pumping as fast as they could, desperate to get to Grace.
By the time I got to the curb the car was pulling away. I chased the car down the street until I could run no more, and fell to my knees. Ms. Collier had caught up with me and knelt beside me, doing her best to comfort me while attempting to hold back her own tears. When I looked up I saw Grace, her hand pressed against the glass, and tears streaming down her face. She mouthed the words…I love you.
Hayden stroked my hair tenderly. I couldn’t look at him, though. I kept laser-like focus on the willow in front of me.
“I never saw her again,” I said so quietly I could barely hear my own words. The wind blew through the soft foliage and I closed my eyes, wishing I could latch on to it somehow and float away on the breeze.
“You didn’t have any other relatives? Anyone else who could take you both in? No aunts, uncles, grandparents?”
“No. Both our parents were only children and our grandparents on both sides were no longer living. We had no one else. My foster parents adopted me later on, so I guess I was lucky in that respect. I didn’t get bounced around from one foster home to the next. They were good to me, so I can’t complain about that either. But I always wondered what happened to Grace and that wore on me more than I realized.”
“My God. I’m so sorry, Beth. I wish you had told me this before.” After a minute, Hayden asked, “Have you tried to find her, your sister?”
“I did, I tried, and then I realized that I didn’t even know where to start. My last name is different now so hers would be too, if she were adopted. I never found her using our family name. I knew that she wouldn’t know how to find me either if she ever went looking.” I wiped a tear that had fallen. “I’ve lost her forever. Knowing that I’ll never see her again makes my heart hurt. I’m angry and sad all the time, Hayden. All the time. It’s always there, under the surface. I’ve lived with this ache for so long already, and I have a lifetime of this hurt left.”
“Baby,” Hayden whispered, “I would give anything if I could find her for you.”
I allowed myself a quick glance in his direction, and the pain in his eyes reflected my own. “I would give anything if you could find her too.”
We sat silently, neither of us knowing what to say. And maybe there was nothing to say. I know Hayden wanted to hold me…to touch me…comfort me. I saw it in the way he looked at me, and I desperately needed his comfort, but I had already told him this much, and I needed to keep going. I told him how I saw Jack in the park earlier and how he had used me to get back with his girlfriend. I explained how that tripped the memory of me overhearing my best friend tell his friends that I was too fat to date.
“I was so hurt, Hayden. I felt like the biggest fool on the planet, and the butt of everyone’s jokes. You wanted to know when the bulimia started,” I said, observing him cautiously. “That was the first day I made myself throw up. I stopped feeling anything after that and the only time I felt something was when I binged and purged. After that, it was a way to rid myself of everything I hated about my life.”
Hayden shifted in his seat, leaned forward, and laid his forehead on the steering wheel. I stopped talking, wondering if he was going to be sick. He looked like he might.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” he said, not looking up. “It’s…” he paused. “I’m fine. Keep talking.”
“No.”
He raised his head. “No?”
“You said the word fine was stricken from our vocabulary. What’s the matter? Am I making you sick? Are you…disappointed in me?”
“Of course not. No, I’m not disappointed in you, Beth.”
“Then what is it?”
He leaned back and his eyes lingered on the roof of the cab before he closed them and breathed out. “I want to smash something. I’m sitting here listening to you talk about losing your parents and your sister, how some dipshit used you, how some punk kid made you feel like…” Hayden squeezed both of his hands into tight fists and stared out his driver’s side window. Very quietly he said, “I wish I had known you then. I wish…” he paused again, and slowly turned his head towards me. “I wish I could reverse time, so I could have been there for you. I would have been there for you, Beth. If I had known you, I would have been there, and you wouldn’t have had to feel like you were anything less than beautiful, because I would have told you every day how beautiful you are.” He touched my face, so tenderly. It appeared he wanted to say more, but he drew his hand back.
“I’m okay, keep talking,” he said. “I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
“You sure you want to hear this?”
“I’m sure. I want to know it all.”
“Why?”
He gently brushed the hair off my forehead. “Because… I want to know how you came to be the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.”
A tear slid down my cheek. I have never felt beautiful – ever. Hayden made me feel beautiful, though, and right here, in this moment, I actually contemplated not continuing because I wondered if Hayden would see me differently after this. But he’d been begging me to confide in him, so I wanted to give him that. I took a fortifying breath and soldiered on.
“The bulimia became a compulsion, or rather, a way of surviving, like whiskey to an alcoholic. I needed it. Before it took over my life, I had pulled away from my friends… from everyone, including my adoptive parents. Part of me blamed them for not having my sister when I needed her the most. Like…why didn’t they take us both? Why allow sisters to be separated? I never understood that, and I needed someone to blame for the way I was feeling. I put all the blame on them. At the time I felt justified. I needed my sister and I was forced to live without her.
“I put a Keep Out sign over my heart and boarded it up. For a while, it was easy to do. I cared about no one and even less about myself. I was numb for a good chunk of my life. The day I graduated high school was the day I left their home. I haven’t been back since. At first, it was because I still blamed them for not having my sister in my life. Then, I was too embarrassed to go back…to look them in the eye…knowing what I had become. I couldn’t do it. I was ashamed on so many levels. I still can’t do it, even now.” I swiped the angry tears from my face and let out a shaky breath. “Looking back now, I realize I also projected the blame I felt towards my mother and father onto them. I mean, I couldn’t yell at a grave for leaving my sister and me on the lawn so a dog could be saved. Who does that?” I said with a raised voice. “Who puts their dog ahead of their children? Mom left us standing there! Dad never even left the house! Did my mother not even think what would happen to us if she didn’t come back? She was there…safe…and she wouldn’t have died if she had stayed with us!”
Hayden remained quiet while I let out a slow breath and my eyes drifted back towards the weeping willow. “I wish I could tell you that I’m not this pathetic, but I pretty much am.”
“You’re not pathetic,” Hayden said. “You’re wounded.”
“Lily was wounded, and she’s not a head case.”
“You of all people should understand you can’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives or minds. Everyone is struggling with something. Some are better at hiding it than others. And we both know Lily had to fight demons too, love.”
“You’re right.” I let out a frustrated sigh. “You’re right.
I’m… I don’t know.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “God, how do I explain this?” I brought my hands down and rubbed them over my jeans. “I didn’t know that shutting people out of my life all those years ago would make me a prisoner inside myself. After a few years, I wanted to feel something…to know that I was alive, you know?” From the corner of my eye I could see Hayden nodding. “When I boarded myself up, I trapped myself with a disease that wouldn’t let me break free. I wanted to experience life again, but I felt guilty. I mean, my parents burned to death in a fire, my sister was missing, at least in the sense that I didn’t know where she was, or if she was even okay. I had no way of knowing. What if she needed me? What if she ended up with a family who abused her? The not knowing paralyzed me. I couldn’t move forward, I couldn’t go back, so I didn’t move at all, until I invented a girl who could – so to speak. I told myself I could fake it until I make it. So, that’s what I did. I made myself a mask and went out into the world. I moved away from the town I grew up in, got a job at Sal’s Diner and I went about making people believe that I was a normal, happy person. But I was a phony and a fake and I hated myself for it.
“Then I met Lily and I knew that she wasn’t like me. She was herself. I instantly liked her, although after meeting her, I wasn’t sure if she was really sad or really shy. I now know it was a bit of both. She was my first real friend in years. Getting to know her was good for me. Even though I couldn’t completely open myself up to her, the extent that I did was real and true, really me.” My smile grew bigger. “Then after meeting Cooper, and seeing how he was with her, I liked him instantly, too. Soon, slivers of light began seeping in through the cracks the more I got to know them, and I was feeling better about myself. Having real friends for the first time in forever gave me a reason to fight my disease for once. I was the best version of myself during that time. I hadn’t stopped completely, but I was better. So yeah, I was doing well, for me.”
My smile faded. This was the part that made me sad, angry, and bitter all over again. “Then that guy, Jack, had been coming into the diner, flirting with me and stuff. Every day for a week he did that. And because I had allowed myself to open up a bit and I was in a better place mentally, it felt good. Like, really, really good. After he stood me up on our second date, I was back to feeling like the fat girl who wasn’t good enough for anyone.”
Skin Deep Page 10
