Phoenix Rising

by Grant, Cynthia D.

  I’ve been staying up too late. I’ve got bags under my eyes.

  Overnight bags. Get it?

  Hey, dja hear about the woman who had six months to live? She freaks out; she says: “Doc, what can I do?” He tells her to marry a big fat guy and move into a trailer park. “Will that lengthen my life?” the woman asks. “No,” the doctor says, “but it’ll seem longer.”

  When you watch TV at one A.M., your mind fills up with video confetti.

  I am enjoying Christmas vacation. I am glad to be out of school. There’s a history report I’m supposed to be working on.… It’s around the house someplace.

  The Big Bambino called awhile ago, raving about her boyfriend the meathead. He did this hilarious thing on New Year’s Eve; put balloons under his sweater and pretended to be a girl. The man is a comic genius.

  Bloomfield invited me to a New Year’s Eve party but I didn’t want to see him.

  Bloomfield is a mirror reflecting the conspirator in a crime of silence against Helen.

  So I baby-sat for Sara Rose and her brothers. They wanted to stay up and welcome in the new year, but midnight was way too late. So we pretended we were in New York City and pushed ahead the time by three hours. Instant celebration! The kids threw cornflakes into the air and banged pots and pans together.

  Helen sat for them last New Year’s Eve. She was winding down her baby-sitting. She didn’t have time; she was interested in guys. Helen sure was changing. Sometimes I resented her. Especially when she tried to leave me behind. How can the left foot walk without the right? Who has been left behind and who has moved ahead? Does heaven exist? Can you see me, Helen?

  O Helen, why can’t I see you?

  I don’t think I’m going to baby-sit for a while. I really don’t need the money. And lately, when I talk to people, sometimes I feel funny. I can’t look in their eyes and my face gets stiff and hot, and my words tumble out in hopeless clots. Especially with grown-ups but even with kids, who nail you with their lie-detector eyes. That’s why Bambi doesn’t like them. She says they’re pains. When she was little her mom would dump her at the library, then go shopping in San Francisco. Bambi would be there all day. Unfortunately, instead of absorbing literature, she’d do stuff like photocopying her face.

  I want to leave this house. I want to go away. I want to become someone else.

  Does reading Helen’s journal help me or make me feel worse? Sometimes it’s too close to call. It’s as if Helen were talking to me! She sounds so near! If only she could hear me, too. There’s so much I would say. Like: We meant to go to Disneyland again. We didn’t think you’d die so soon. One minute you’re alive and the next, you’re memory. Life is so fragile it scares me, Helen. My heart is so full it might burst. Full of love and fear. Children die every second. Burned or drowned or starved or neglected; stolen and strangled and worse.

  In the country of lost children, are you queen, Helen?

  I want to kill myself so I’ll stop thinking, but I’m too afraid that dying would hurt.

  I have got to get myself together. I think Mom knows I’ve been cutting school. Some mornings she just lets me sleep. Most nights I wrestle dreams and lose.

  Last night Helen and I were at Frontier Village. It looked exactly like it did before it got torn down for a subdivision; with the phony jail and saloon, and the merry-go-round, and the make-believe gunfights at noon.

  The day was sunny and the booths and rides were mobbed by happy children and their parents. Helen and I were having fun. We were playing tag. Then I was it and Helen hid.

  At first it was funny. “Helen? Where are you?” Then I was running through the crowd. People’s faces had changed; their smiles were wreaths of teeth wrapped around their heads.

  I looked everywhere. I couldn’t find Helen.

  The day leaked away. All the people went home. I was alone. Trash was blowing in the wind, down streets that would soon be covered with tract homes as fake as Frontier Village.

  Tonight I tried to tell Lucas about the dream, and he said, “Let’s go hear some music.”

  “Where?”

  “San Carlos.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Lucas looked exasperated. “These guys are really good.”

  “I’m sure they are. I just don’t feel like going.”

  Lucas shook his head and left my room. Then he came back in and shut the door.

  He said, “You know what’s happening, don’t you, Jess. You’re not so dumb that you don’t.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Helen’s dead! Nothing can change that! You’re letting this whole thing swallow you up!”

  I almost started to cry. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “What’re you going to do, hole up in here forever? Take correspondence courses for life? You’re afraid to go out of this goddamn house! You hardly even leave this room! When was the last time you went outside?”

  “I don’t have to answer you!”

  He stepped into the hallway, then looked back at me. “Listen to me, Jessie, you can’t outrun it. You have to face what’s chasing you.”

  “If you’re so smart, how come you’re so screwed up?” I slammed the door on my brother.

  Lucas thundered down the stairs. Moments later, he roared off in his Impala. In the silence that followed I heard my father say to my mother, “What now?”

  I ask myself this question.

  15

  May 15

  I am so glad to be home!

  I could do cartwheels down the street!

  The whole damn world looks good enough to eat!

  It is one of those STUPENDJUS spring days, faultless as a child, one of whom happens to be standing beside me. Let’s see what Sara Rose would like to record for posterity.

  S.R.: “What for?”

  Me: “This is my journal. I’m writing down all the things I’m thinking.”

  S.R.: “Why don’t you just tell them to me?”

  Good point. So I tell her that I’ve never been more content than I am at this moment, on this warm May morning. Sara Rose says: “GOOD!” and barks like a dog, then goes back to stirring the applesauce we’re cooking on her Heather Homemaker Electric Toy Stove, beneath the blooming snowball tree.

  I have been home for about a week now and have never felt better in my life. It’s funny how quickly things can change; one second I’m jumping out the window, the next, I’m admiring the view. I should do what Dad says and stay in the present. I sap (sap’s the word) my strength with worry about what might happen in the future.

  I can only live one day at a time. And this day is as bright as something Sara Rose would color with the crayons she hasn’t eaten.

  Also, I’m feeling very creative, which always does me good. One of my poems (“Leaving Home”) will appear in the yearbook. Ms. Tormey surprised me with that news yesterday. She thinks I did an excellent job on the mythological creatures paper. I chose the phoenix. The bird consumes itself in fire, then rises anew from its ashes. The piece was written from the phoenix’s perspective, just prior to its death/rebirth. Ms. Tormey says my ability to empathize is what makes me such a good writer.

  I’d better get a grip on this brag festival.

  Anyway, I’m really pleased.

  Mom looks a lot better than she did a while back. When I’m sick, she looks how I feel. Sometimes I worry about what will happen to her if anything happens to me. She’ll still have Jessie—but who will Jessie have?

  Nope. I’m not going to think like that. Onward and upward!

  Oh, can you smell that applesauce bubbling? My tastebuds are blooming with longing.

  Or, to be more specific and less poetic: I’m practically drooling.

  Speaking of eating: Bambi & I went out to lunch this week. Talk about a treat! She doesn’t stop talking while she’s chewing (or doing anything else, for that matter), so you get these great Technicolor close-ups of her burger being pummeled to a pulp.… She’d ju
st bought a vat of some industrial-strength complexion cleanser that she claimed would give her a brand new face. Her mom calls any kind of skin cream “beauty goo.” We went over there one time and she was rubbing yogurt into her face; not plain white yogurt, the kind with fruit. Another time—I’ll never forget this—I walked into the bathroom and Mrs. Bordtz was sitting in the empty tub, naked, eating a pomegranate. Bright red juice was all over the place. It looked like the scene of a chainsaw massacre.

  She said, “This way I don’t get the juice on my clothes.”

  God bless the Bordtzes! They make my family look normal by comparison.

  I wrote a song for Lucas. He actually likes it! It actually made him laugh!

  We’ve been getting along so well lately. He’s really been nice, asking how I’m doing and making me tea, etc. We went out and heard some music last night (Jessie sulked ’cause she wasn’t invited. Why can’t he and I do stuff together, just like Jessie and I do?)

  This really neat thing happened at the club. The band asked Lucas to sit in. So he got up and played a couple of songs; rhythm and blues, I guess you’d call it, and everybody clapped like mad. I was so proud! I felt like shouting, “That’s my brother!”

  On the way home we stopped for coffee and I don’t know what came over me; all of a sudden in the middle of nothing, I blurted, “I love you, Lucas. I just want you to know.”

  He almost dropped his coffee mug. He didn’t know where to look. He nodded his head and said, “Thanks. I’m glad.”

  He wanted to say he loves me, too, but he couldn’t. That’s all right.

  Here’s the number one song I wrote for Lucas. (Jessie rates it a distinct number two.)

  She Took Me to the Cleaners of Love

  She was young, just seventeen,

  But she looked like a million in her jeans.

  From that very first night

  It was love at first sight

  When she took me to the cleaners of love.

  Chorus:

  She stole my heart, my tape deck, and my color TV.

  There’s a pain where my wallet used to be.

  Love didn’t come for free, oh no.

  When she took me to the cleaners of love.

  I loved her style and she loved to steal.

  I knew from the start our love was real.

  Everything was all right

  When she turned out the lights

  And took me to the cleaners of love.

  Chorus: She stole my heart, etc.

  O Wanda, Wanda, you took me for a ride,

  And you took my Buick and my credit cards, besides.

  It was love at first sight

  From that very first night

  When you took me to the cleaners of love.

  Lucas has worked up a tune that’s JUST RIGHT and sings it like his tie was caught in an elevator door.

  Sara Rose is handing me a steaming bowl. “Try it, Helen! It’s good!”

  It is better than good. It is sensational. This is how apples should taste on the tree: warm and tart with a cinnamon kiss, a kiss as tender as somebody’s lips—Remember, Helen: Hold onto the present. The present is all there will ever be. The past is a shadow. You cannot catch it.

  And really, who could ask for more than this perfect day, this balloon of a tree rising into the cloudless sky, this darling child beside me, saying, “Do you like it, Helen? Is it good, Helen?” as if my word were the stamp of God’s approval.

  I say, “This applesauce is the best stuff I’ve ever eaten.”

  “In your whole life?”

  “In my whole life.”

  “I know.” Sara Rose beams. “Me, too.”

  16

  I have ascended to the tower. The transition is complete. From my bedroom window I study the world.

  I have not left this house for two weeks.

  Every hour or two (or so it seems), my mother drops by my room to weep, Pop pops by to plead, and Lucas sits on my bed, shaking his head, kind of smiling.

  “What’re you going to do for the rest of your life, Jess? Send out for Chinese food? You have to fight this thing!”

  “I’m sick of fighting,” I say calmly. “I’m even sick of fighting with you.”

  “C’mon.” He stands by the bedroom door, holding out his hand. “I’ll take you for a ride. Wherever you want to go.”

  “I want to see Helen.”

  Saying stuff like that guarantees that he’ll leave me alone. He gallops downstairs and out the front door … now he’s revving the Impala’s engine.

  “You’re blowing it, Jess!” he yells at my window, then peels backward out of the driveway.

  The afternoon sun spills into the room. The house is as still as a photograph.

  It’s three o’clock and school has let out. Children bounce down the sidewalk like rubber balls. Soon Sara Rose will be on the front lawn. Every afternoon she calls:

  “Jess-sie-ee! Jess-sie-ee! Can you come out and play?”

  She calls until I answer. “What is it, Sara?”

  She squinches her eyes to see me. “Can you come out and play?”

  “Sometime soon,” I say.

  “When? Tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Can’t you come to my house?” This is the stubbornest kid.

  “I have to stay here,” I tell her.

  “Is your mom making you stay in your room?”

  “Not exactly.” It’s too hard to explain. “I have to go now, Sara Rose. I’ll see you later.” I closed the window and stepped out of view. For a long time she kept looking up, waiting. Finally she went home.

  Today’s project: Eat more food. My shoulder blades are like skeleton wings. My wrist bones rattle. My face is too thin.

  Food embarrasses me. What’s the point of eating when it comes back out, and what doesn’t is used to build a body that began to wither at birth?

  My body is erasing itself. The smaller I am, the less of me there is to hurt.

  But I can’t bear the horror in my mother’s eyes. “Don’t do this, Jessie. You’re killing me,” she said, when I left the dinner table last night.

  It’s funny how this whole thing started. I didn’t get up one morning and decide that I would never again leave the house.

  It sneaked up on me when I wasn’t looking, like when you’re sitting in your room reading a really good book, and the day slips away and you don’t even notice until it’s too dark to see the page. It reminds me of when I was twelve and we’d rented a cabin on Bass Lake. Every day we’d plunge into the icy water and swim out to a raft, where we’d sun ourselves until we were ready to jump in and cool off.

  This one afternoon Mom stood on the shore, calling, “Come on out, Jessie. You’ve been in the water long enough.” As usual, I ignored her. I was having too much fun to stop.

  The water was so cold I never felt my muscles numb. When I dove off the raft that last time and began to swim toward Mom, I realized I had exhausted my strength. I would never make it back to shore.

  Helen saw me. Helen saved me.

  This house thing crept up on me like that. I’d been having those panic attacks but not all the time; unpredictably. Suddenly, wherever I was, I’d have to leave. I couldn’t breathe. Like that time at the supermarket. Talk about embarrassing. People probably thought I was on drugs.

  I was still going to school. Well, usually. Sometimes Bambi and I would just cruise. Also, the dreams kept me up at night so in the morning I would sleep through the alarm.…

  It’s been gradual, more like wading into quicksand than jumping off the roof.

  My parents have abandoned hope that this is a phase I am going through.

  Last night my father said, “If you’re not going to go to school, you’ll finish your studies at home!” He was angry because he doesn’t know what to do. He’s frightened by the person I’m becoming.

  A crazy person. A certified nut. Like those people who are afraid of fog, or the color red, or dairy p
roducts. One of the joys of having a shrink is that you learn about phobias and neuroses.

  Dr. Shubert says (over the telephone; she refuses to come to the house) that I’m not crazy or neurotic or even long-term phobic. She says that grief is a chronic disease. “It never quite goes away, Jessie. You learn to live with the loss, and go on.” She insists on treating me in her office, and has been holding my appointment time open, in case I decide to appear.

  I’m afraid she’ll be waiting for a long time. Each day that passes is a nail in the front door. I’m safe here (except in case of flood, fire, famine, earthquake, or nuclear war). I’ve got a grocery bag stuffed with newspaper clippings of disasters from around the world; freak accidents of every description: tramplings, electrocutions, raining jet fuel; not to mention the intentional catastrophes: executions, bombings, poisoned candy.

  I am cutting out death and containing it neatly.

  What is happening to me?

  My mother has spread the rumor at school that I’m down with pneumonia and will be back soon. She’s brought all my books and assignments home. When I’m not busy studying, or cataloging calamity, I talk on the phone with Bambi Sue.

  “Geez, Jess,” she bleats for the nine hundredth time, “how can you stand to just sit in that room?”

  “I find it helpful in preparing for my future career. I’m thinking of becoming a nun.”

  “Reeeeeally?” she squeals. “You’re kidding!”

  “You’ve heard about the nuns who pray for peace all the time? I’m joining an order that worries about the future twenty-four hours a day.”

  “You’re kidding. Aren’t you?”

  “Always,” I said. “My life is a complete joke.”

  Phone conversations get boring fast when (like me) you’ve got nothing new to say but (like Bambi) say it anyway. When Helen and I were little we called up boys. Anonymously, of course. We’d say stuff like, “We know somebody who likes you,” that someone being Helen or I.

  The boys would laugh and say, “Who is this, anyway?” until their moms took over the phone and announced, “Young ladies do not call young gentlemen.”

  I’ve got to get out of here. I want to go to Foothill Park. I want to see Helen’s meadow. The rain has grown the hills so green. The flowers will soon go wild. I’d like to climb the hill and lie down in the grass and let the warm breeze bathe my face. I would close my eyes and see Helen again: laughing, healthy, happy, saying, “Jessie, it’s so beautiful here! Let’s never come down.”