“It’s too cold to hold a book. You spy on everybody?”
I jumped back when she laughed. She sounded like a donkey, and I couldn’t believe such a big noise came out of such a small girl.
“I haven’t been spying. I live on the other side of the wall and a few blocks over. I just notice things.”
“Like?”
“Like your face.”
I pulled my hair down over the scar. For those few minutes I’d forgotten about it.
“You don’t have to hide it. Were you in an accident?”
I nodded. “Three years ago. In Albuquerque.”
I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone where we’d come from, and now I’d told this weird girl who’d been spying on us.
“That’s too bad,” she said. “By the way, my name is Mo.”
I was shocked she didn’t ask any more questions about the accident.
“Mo’s a boy’s name,” I said.
“Short for Maureen. It’s an old lady name, but my mom said I should like it because it’s my grandmother’s name. What’s yours?”
“Arlie,” I said, giving away a second secret I shouldn’t have.
“That’s a nickname. What’s your real name?”
“Arlene.”
“That’s an old lady name too. What are the chances?” She gave another donkey laugh.
“You know, I could bring you the homework assignments I get at school,” Mo said. “Then if you ever go back, you won’t be behind. How old are you?”
“I’m eleven,” I said. “Today.”
I’d tried to wake up Mom this morning, to remind her she promised we’d go to the movies to celebrate. She rolled over and said I was wrong, that my birthday was next month.
“Oh, happy birthday!” Mo squealed this time instead of making the donkey noise. “Then we’re both in the sixth grade.”
I took her word for it.
“What are you doing to celebrate?” she asked. “Did you open your present yet?”
“I’m saving my present to open tonight after we go out for pizza,” I lied. There’d be no movie or pizza or presents. I just wanted someone to know it really was my birthday.
She looked over my shoulder. “You can go back inside now. They’re gone.”
I turned to look. Three men got into a dark blue van and left. If Mo had been watching us for a while, she knew more than Mom would like her to know.
When I turned back to her, she was already skipping toward the wall. The wind drowned out her words, but it sounded like she was singing “Happy Birthday.”
Later, I plopped onto the bed to read. Mom was lying on her side, talking to herself like she normally did when her visitors left. I couldn’t make out her words, but I rarely could. Her legs and arms jerked, but I’d stopped worrying about that a long time ago. I folded the bedspread over her like a burrito, partly to keep her warm and partly because I didn’t want to look at her.
It was after 8 p.m. when I heard a knock on the door. Even though Mom told me never to answer the door, I asked her if I could. She didn’t respond so I took a chance.
I left the chain on and opened the door slowly. No one was there. My eyes moved to the doormat. On it sat a cardboard bakery box from the City Market grocery store directly across the street. I could see through the clear plastic lid to the pink rose decorations on a round cake. The writing on top said: Happy Birthday, Arlene.
I ate nearly half of the chocolate cake even though I couldn’t enjoy it. A funny metal taste filled my mouth, and I only felt the cake crumbs and the greasy frosting. I couldn’t remember what chocolate even tasted like.
Mo was right to call me a liar. Whenever Mom asked me if I could smell anything, I still said no when I really could. I smelled and tasted our old apartment. I smelled and tasted the explosion.
CHAPTER 4
For the last two weeks, I dreamed every night of a never-ending wall of stainless-steel doors, the top row accessible only with a rolling ladder like those found in libraries and bookstores. Behind each door, the dead waited their turn to be drained of blood, washed and clothed by a stranger, laid in a satin-lined casket, and grieved over by tearful loved ones.
In the dream, the room always glowed with a bluish light whose source wasn’t apparent. My bare feet ached from the cold of the cement floor, and my white breath fogged my vision. I’d hear Mom screaming for me to let her out, but I didn’t know which door to open. When I opened the wrong door, Lloyd’s decaying corpse reached for me with bony arms draped in bits of muscle and skin. Sometimes his icy hand wrapped around my throat.
Those few times that I cried out in my sleep, my foster mom would wake and come into my room. She’d say, “Your mama isn’t in the mortuary. She’s in heaven with God and the angels.”
I didn’t tell Tammy about Lloyd’s recurring role in my nightmares. But I truly appreciated the comfort she tried to give me on those black nights. The despair I felt came from the fact that Tammy couldn’t provide proof of her version of the afterlife. How could she be so certain Mom was in a better place? No matter what Tammy said, Mom was indeed at the mortuary. She’d been waiting behind her steel door for twenty-one days, locked in an ice-cold holding pattern until next of kin could be found. Next of kin with the means to pay for the burial, that is.
The day after Mom died, I’d met with a social worker. She’d explained that after all avenues were exhausted, Mom would be buried in the indigent portion of the cemetery in a numbered grave paid for by the county. She whispered the word “indigent” as if it meant something profane instead of just poor. Now that they’d found my uncle, he’d foot the bill. I hoped he had enough money to pay for a nice headstone too, instead of the numbered metal plate the social worker had described.
“Mama Tammy said it’s vulgar you picked out a red dress for your mom to be buried in.”
My foster sister, Jess, sat at the end of my twin bed even though hers was just two feet away. At seven, she was just a myna bird, repeating everything anyone else said.
“She said your friend Maureen is a bad influence.” Jess picked her nose and wiped her finger on my bedspread without bothering to inspect it first. I made a mental note to throw the spread in the washing machine later.
“Mo didn’t choose the dress. I did.”
“Mama Tammy still doesn’t like it.”
“Shut up, okay?” I was dangerously close to knocking her off the bed or throwing her out into the hallway.
“You can’t tell me to shut up. You’re not my mother.” Her whine grated like fingers on a chalkboard.
“You don’t have a mother. That’s why you live with Tammy.”
Jess was still in that honeymoon phase of foster care, where kids think their foster parents will adopt them and they’d all live happily ever after. She’d soon find out that no one really wants strays after they’re no longer cute and cuddly toddlers.
Jess’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not a nice person.”
I should’ve apologized—and would have if she’d started crying—but I couldn’t be bothered. I needed to dress. Not knowing how cold it’d be at the cemetery or how long a graveside service would last, I chose a slouchy sweater and scarf, and black jeans tucked into boots.
“That’s not very dressy,” she said.
I ignored her and pulled my duffel bag from the closet. I hadn’t bothered to unpack it when I got placed in Tammy’s temporary care. Mom had taught me to keep few possessions and to always be prepared for a fast getaway. Besides, the foster home wasn’t home. Having two drawers in a dresser to call my own didn’t make it so, nor did sitting around a dinner table, holding hands and saying grace with other parentless children.
“So, you’re going to live with your uncle?”
“Appears so.”
“Hope he’s as nice as Mama Tammy.”
I really didn’t care. As long as he was nicer than Lloyd and as long as he could get me out of here.
Greenmount Cemetery occupied a small mesa ove
rlooking downtown Durango. The winding road, typically slick with ice and snow this time of year, was clear. The afternoon sun shone through the trees, casting long shadows. The one cemetery I’d seen in Albuquerque was a wide-open lawn with a grid of headstones and an occasional urn of fake flowers. Greenmount’s residents had thick-trunked cedars and pines to shield their graves. I liked the idea of Mom having these evergreen sentinels watching over her since I couldn’t anymore.
Tammy and I weren’t the first to arrive. A man I assumed was the preacher stood by the grave site, a prayer book in his hands. A cemetery worker stood farther back, huddled against a tree. Carol, my case manager from social services, hadn’t arrived yet. And neither had my uncle, even though he’d assured Carol he’d be here.
Mom’s casket and a large square of green artificial turf concealed the hole in the ground where she’d be placed. I don’t know why I’d expected a perfectly rectangular dirt pit like those on TV shows where the bad guys made some dude dig his own grave.
“You must be Arlie. I’m Reverend Knox from First Presbyterian. I’m sorry for your loss.” The lanky minister held out his gloved hand, so I shook it to be polite. His nose and ears were redder than Mom’s dress. No one told me how he’d been chosen to perform the service, but then again, I’d never asked. It didn’t matter. Mom hadn’t been religious. I remembered she mentioned going to Sunday school as a kid, but she never specified a denomination. Funny that she’d mention something like Sunday school but not that she had an older brother.
While my foster mother introduced herself to the minister, Mo huddled close to me. “You okay?” she asked.
“I’ll be okay. How about you?”
Mo had said she lost her best friend when she lost her sister. Attending Mom’s funeral had to dredge up painful memories for her. I didn’t even know where CeeCee was buried in the cemetery. Mo and I had never visited the grave.
“We’ll get through this together,” she said.
I craned my neck to look down the road toward town. The service was about to start and still no sign of my uncle. He probably didn’t make it up from Texas as quickly as he’d hoped. Or maybe he’d decided to skip the funeral altogether and would meet me at the social services office.
“You looking for someone?” Mo asked.
“Nah. Doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Follow me.” Mo grabbed my hand and led me toward the stocky, disheveled guy standing on the other side of the grave site. His unruly red hair stood up in the back. His beard concealed his cheeks and most of his thick neck. He seemed un-fazed by the cold.
“Hi, I’m Mo and this is Arlie.”
I couldn’t understand why my best friend insisted I meet the cemetery worker who would later cover my mom with a ton of black dirt.
“Pleased to meet you both. Especially you, Arlie.” The man kept his hands tucked in the pockets of his faded peacoat. “I’m Frank.”
“Thought so,” Mo mumbled.
My mouth and brain wouldn’t engage so I just stared at him.
“Your uncle,” he clarified.
“Yes … yes … I understand. I just didn’t expect … I mean, you don’t look like my mom.”
A sad grin emerged from behind his ragged beard. He looked only at my eyes, as if trying hard not to stare at my scar. “You look a lot like her. Or at least the way she looked when we were in high school. Luckily she took after our mom instead of our dad.”
My grandparents. “Are they still alive?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Frank said. “But we can talk about that later. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
Once my case manager finally arrived, the minister motioned for us to join him closer to the grave site. I dipped my shoulder away from Tammy, who was trying to put an arm around me. Instead, I looped my arm through Mo’s and listened to the preacher say kind words about a woman he’d never met.
When Reverend Knox was finished, he asked Frank and me if we’d like to say a few words. Frank shook his head no, so I spoke up.
“I’d like to sing something instead, if that’d be okay.”
Mo rubbed my back and then stepped away as if my lungs and grief needed plenty of space.
Before I could start, a familiar car pulled up near the hearse. Mo’s mom. I didn’t know she was coming. Mrs. Mooney was always late for everything, but I didn’t care. She’d been really nice to me over the years, despite what Mo’s dad thought of me. She hurriedly took her place near Mo and blew me a kiss. Perhaps she was here for Mo as much as for me.
The song I’d chosen was “Angel,” which I’d sung to Mom dozens of times over the years. When the voices made it hard for her to sleep, I’d stroke her hair and sing Sarah McLachlan’s sad lyrics that seemed even more appropriate for her funeral.
In the arms of the angel, fly away from here,
From this dark, cold hotel room and the endlessness that you fear.
When I’d finished singing, Tammy and Carol dabbed at their eyes, as if following some funeral playbook.
Mo wrapped an arm around my waist and laid her head on my shoulder, and her mom hugged us both. I didn’t cry. I used to think my tears dried up sometime after the accident when the saltiness of tears stung the burns that were trying to heal. It embarrassed me to think people were waiting for me to show some emotion. Today, I just felt abandoned.
Frank’s eyes were red and glassy, but he didn’t cry outright either. Maybe he was only here because he felt he had to be.
While the minister expressed his condolences to us again, Frank approached the man who’d driven the hearse from the funeral home. He nodded and pointed in my direction. The two of them walked over.
“Miss, your uncle would like permission to open the casket to view his sister. Would that be all right?”
I blinked several times, letting the request sink in. My first reaction was “Hell no,” but I had no good reason to object. Except that I was pissed Frank hadn’t been a part of Mom’s life when she was alive and I didn’t think he deserved to ask anything of me, especially today.
“It’s okay, Arlie. I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.” He flipped up his coat collar against the chill and blew into his hands. That beard didn’t protect him so much after all.
“I guess I don’t mind,” I finally answered.
Frank nodded and mouthed “thank you” before walking away.
“That was kind of you.” Mo’s mother stroked my hair. The move startled me and she dropped her hand quickly.
“Thank you for being here, Mrs. Mooney,” I said. “It means a lot.”
Mo leaned in to her mom. They remained in a silent embrace, probably acknowledging memories of CeeCee’s funeral. Mrs. Mooney whispered something in Mo’s ear and then walked to her car.
I stood next to Mo and we watched her drive off. Mo swiped at tears that remained on her cheeks.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said.
“It never crossed my mind not to be.” She rubbed her mittened hands together.
“Since we’re already here, would you like to visit CeeCee’s grave?”
Mo stiffened. “No, I don’t believe in visiting graves. That’s not my sister in the ground anyway.”
My friend was always asking me to talk about my feelings, even though it was hard to admit her own. Still, we both knew we didn’t have to visit graves to remember the family we’d lost.
“It’s getting colder. Let’s go sit in Tammy’s car,” I suggested.
“Umm … not exactly fond of your foster mom,” Mo said, but she followed me anyway.
The sun had heated the inside of Tammy’s Corolla so I shucked off my coat. Tammy was already in the driver’s seat and asked if I was ready to head to social services. They’d asked for a meeting with my uncle and me to talk about living arrangements. It was just another appointment on this strange day.
“Not just yet,” I said. “Could we wait a bit?”
Mo stood by my door, hugging her arms across her chest. “I�
�m going back for last period. You sure you’re okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “Go to school. Really.”
“Call me later?”
“Sure,” I said.
Mo bent down and kissed my cheek before running to her car.
“Is that girl even old enough to drive?” Tammy asked. “Her parents must have some money to buy her a nice car.”
“It’s a used Honda,” I muttered.
Tammy acted as if she hadn’t heard me and continued to give her opinion on Mo’s directness and overconfidence. She wondered aloud if she should tell Frank about her concerns.
I ignored my foster mother and instead watched as the funeral director opened the lid of the casket and stepped aside. Frank’s back was to me so I couldn’t tell if he was saying his good-byes or crying or just standing there. After a couple of minutes he leaned over and kissed my mother’s forehead. I bit my lip to stop it from trembling.
I’d decided not to view her at the funeral home because I didn’t want the last memory of my mother to be of a made-up, plastic version. I’d made a mistake. Now, my last memory would always be of her dead body on the motel-room bed, surrounded by the drugs she loved more than me.
Frank stepped back from the grave site and spoke to the funeral director again. The man pointed toward a large piece of equipment that looked as if it had been used to dig the grave. Frank shook his head. What did he want now?
After the funeral director nodded, Frank marched briskly toward Tammy’s car so I opened my door again.
“Hey, I’ll be just a few minutes late to our meeting. Don’t start without me.”
He jogged back to the grave and removed his peacoat, tossing it on the ground. A cemetery worker returned from his pickup with a shovel and handed it to Frank. My uncle looked over at me one last time and waved us on. He’d be the one to cover my mom with dirt after all. It helped to soften my horror of leaving her.
I almost asked Tammy if I could stay and help. Perhaps then the nightmares would stop once and for all.
CHAPTER 5
I stayed at Tammy’s for the next month while Frank made arrangements to move to Durango. I’d assumed he would want me to move back to Texas with him, but he said I’d had enough upheaval in my life. He added that he’d always wanted to live in the mountains anyway. I couldn’t tell if he was lying for my benefit, but I didn’t press him. At least that meant Mo and Dora would remain in my life.
Burn Girl Page 3
