by Karen Rivers
Dear Ruby,
Dad says that Buddha says, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” It’s what I mean about how I have to forgive your mom. Being mad at her has been this thing I’ve been carrying around basically forever. It hasn’t done anything but made me tired from carrying it. So now I’m going to put it down. Which is sort of easy, I know that. But also sort of not. Because you can say a thing like, “Oh, I forgive you!” and expect you’ll be lighter, but the thing is that you have to really really really mean it, I think, for it to work. So it lets you go. I’m trying, but it feels like a lie.
It’s just easier to be mad, I guess.
Tell her she can write to me, please?
Yes! We are still coming. I seriously cannot wait to meet you.
Ruth
Dear Nan,
I love you.
You were a wonderful nan even if what you did was pretty terrible. I’m sad that you’ll never meet Ruth and she’ll never meet you.
And I’m angry.
I’ve never felt like this before, like I want to go all the way down to the cemetery and graffiti your headstone. Or kick it over.
I can’t believe you thought that was the right thing to do! Why couldn’t you have believed in Mum, just a little bit? Would that have been so bad?
Because I could have known Ruth forever. We could have been mates at school. We could have had each other. A proper sister. A best friend.
And Nan, I feel like you took that away. Because you didn’t trust that Mum could cope. And she could have, Nan. Maybe not like YOU would’ve done it, but I believe in her. She’s scatty and mad and sometimes completely barmy, but she’s got a heart full of love.
I don’t know if I can forgive you. And you being dead complicates that an awful lot. I don’t know how to be angry with someone who is dead. Do I shout at rainbows now? Is that how it will be? I’m not going to write again. Maybe not ever. Ruth might be able to figure all of this out. She’s practically Buddhist! So she can put down the heavy bit she’s been carrying around! Because it makes sense to her! But it doesn’t make sense to me. And I don’t think I can, Nan.
I don’t know if I want to.
Ruby
Don’t forget that Sophie’s do is a surprise! Don’t include us in your e’s about it because then you’ll wreck everything! I’ve invented a new email addy for this, which is [email protected]. Can you use that?
Chloe
Oh, I just totally bollocksed that, didn’t I? What if S reads the Sent mail? Have deleted previous message from folder.
C
Never mind, she’s just messaged me to say that she didn’t see anything about the surprise, after all! From now on, I’ll ONLY use the new email! Phew! Relief!
C
I just did it again, didn’t I?
I’m making a real hash of everything. But we’ve been Chlophie forever and ever, practically since we were born! Gosh, it would be hard to suddenly just be Chloe, in real life. I don’t think I could do that.
Oh, Ru-Ru, can I borrow your purple dress? That’d be smashing.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I am writing you this letter because
I would like to talk to you about
Please excuse the fact I am writing to you instead of talking to you
I’m sorry, but I
Hi guys!
I’ve printed out Ruby’s last email for you to read. You should probably read it sitting down and with tissues, because it’s sad. I have nothing else to say about it but you should read it, so you know, before we go to England. It’s important.
I know we didn’t get a chance to talk much when you got home from dinner the other day, and then you were both so busy at work, I didn’t want to bug you. (By the way, Caleb had a huge bulging tick in his ear and I dug it out with tweezers and left it on your bathroom counter so you could see how disgusting it was and be proud of me for getting it out without barfing. He’s fine now.)
I love you and I’m sorry if this makes you sad (not the tick, but the email).
I am not mad at Delilah anymore. I thought you should know that. She’s just a person. Jedgar said something a long time ago about how none of this changes me, and you know what? He’s both completely wrong and completely right. It doesn’t change OUR family. It changes me in some ways, but not in important ones. I am still me. And I’m OK.
Love,
Ruth
I’ve just realized how it has to end. Not SHORCA! But the documentary.
OK. How?
I have to forgive her, I guess. Because I’m a leaf on the river and she’s a leaf on the river and that’s all of us, just floating down the river.
All I need is for Delilah to say “Sorry.” Just to say it. And then I THINK I can forgive her. I’ll do it.
Then that’s the end, do you see? It just ends with that.
I think I get it now, why you were acting so weird about Freddie Blue Anderson and flipping out and stuff. It’s like you said, like your own river suddenly turned into Victoria Falls. I wasn’t like-LIKING Freddie Blue anyway. You can talk to a girl without like-liking them, you know. You can even be friends. We’re friends. (And don’t you dare start talking about that thing that happened earlier this summer. That was a lifetime ago.) Anyway, you’re right about the ending. I’m working on SHORCA! now that it makes sense. I can’t sleep. It’s 4:00 in the morning and I’ve been working on it all night. It’s like I can’t think about anything else but making it awesome, which is good, because it saves me from thinking about how my brothers are idiots or about how you went sort of crazy there for a while with that contract and weirdness about FBA, who I don’t actually like-like at all.
I’m not going to show this to you until it’s totally done. You’re going to love me. I mean, it. You’re going to love SHORCA! (Well, it AND me. Ha ha, j/k.) When you get back from England, you can teach me some more of your Buddha stuff. I feel like I might need to get how I’m a leaf on the river and a river with a leaf on it next time Spike switches my lunch out for a dog food sandwich. We don’t even have a dog.
It would be a lot easier to be a river than to be me sometimes, I think.
J.
Dear Nan,
I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean that.
Love,
Ruby
Mum,
I took Peaches for a walk just now. We walked all the way into town and stopped by the library to visit the sculpture of me. I like it a lot better without that box round it. The box was horrid.
Anyway, I tied Peaches up and darted into Starbucks for a cocoa, and when I came out, there was someone just standing there with a tin of paint! Before I could even react, Peaches let out this terrifying growl, somehow untied herself from the post where I’d knotted her leash, and leapt forwards. She was like an animal on a nature programme! A lion leaping on a poor, sick antelope! I didn’t even have to SAY ‘Harry Potter’! She just knew what to do, like she’d been waiting her whole life for exactly this. I didn’t get a look at who it was, because lucky for him, he ran fast.
Mum, do you remember that it’s only two more days till Ruth comes? Did you write her yet? Because you sort of have to. You have to say something before she’s just HERE in our front room with us.
Love,
Ruby
Of course. I’m writing to her now. You run along to Sophie’s do and try to put all this on the back burner, at least for a few hours. Have a smashing time! Can you take Peaches? It’s lovely how the two of you have bonded, and the trainer said that you should try to do everything together for a while, to cement that bond. Do you think she might just lie down quietly in a corner somewhere and not bother anyone?
You know, darling, I think buying Peaches for you is maybe one of the things I did right, after all.
Love,
Mummy
Dear Ruth,
I’m sorry. I know that’s not enough, but it’s my starting point. Ruby says you�
��re a poet. I don’t know what to say or even what I feel, or, goodness knows, what you feel, but I wrote you this.
Two babies, they said.
I held one girl:
pink faced and bawling,
daughtering me.
The other was just an idea.
Nothing to do with
this.
Everything to do with
this.
Blue, they said,
the other one is
the palest blue.
I saw a winter sky,
fading blue to grey
with cold.
The pink girl
screamed, hot
and livid in my
arms.
Inside
me
something
broke
or froze
and I didn’t
hold on to what
was mine.
I didn’t know how
to be what I wasn’t:
Mother
to anyone.
That’s what I wrote, for you. It’s terrible, isn’t it? But I mean it. Poetry is always falling away from me. I think it sounds right, exactly like what I want to say, but it never quite comes out how I mean it. At the same time, I don’t know how to say what I want to say any other way.
I am sorry. Maybe I should have just said that and nothing else, but it doesn’t seem like enough.
I can’t wait to meet you.
Love,
Your Mother
OK, I said that I could forgive her if she said sorry, and she did. I have a note in my email from my very own actual biological mother and it says sorry.
But I don’t forgive her.
I am still mad!
I thought I would stop being mad and forgive her and be peaceful and in the moment and life is suffering and the sky is not the way, the heart is the way, and ALL THAT BUDDHIST STUFF would MAKE SENSE, but it turns out that I’m still feeling totes angry and hurt!
And I think her poem is terrible.
I don’t even want to reply.
Ruth,
It’s the middle of the night. It must be day there. I’ve just got back from Sophie’s birthday bash.
Mum’s asleep. I checked on her right away. Her cheeks were all blotchy, like she’d had a cry, and the laptop was open next to her with the screen saver on. Did she write to you? What did she say? Is everything OK? You’re still coming, right?
The party was amazeog, which is Chlophie’s word, which I always thought was silly, but completely fits this party, because it was their party, so it WAS amazeog! It was really too bad that you weren’t here today instead of Tuesday. You’d have loved it! And you could have met everyone. Soph’s mum had set up this cinema screen in the back garden, where she played some fab films. There were cakes all done up in white (everything was white) and music and silly games like we played when we were little, and a bouncy castle even. Anyone else would have been like, ‘Oh Mum, for goodness’ sake, I’m 15 now’, but Chloe and Sophie thought it was the best thing ever, and so everyone went along with it and it was brill.
The whole night, Chloe kept whispering instructions on how she was going to get even with Hawkster and Angus, but it was terrifically complicated and Fi and I had no idea what she was talking about. It never would have worked, her plan! But luckily, it didn’t have to, because of Peaches.
I had Peaches with me, and all evening, she’d been just lying in the corner, licking her feet, a bit like a really large and frightening cat. People stayed clear of her because she doesn’t look very friendly. Anyway, I was standing at the back, near where Hawkster and Angus were having this fight about whether Harry Potter was a total wazzock or not.
HARRY POTTER.
Well, Peaches leapt right over the table when she heard that name, and Angus yelled, ‘Oi! Run for it! It’s that mad dog again! He’s out to get me! He’s been chasin’ me all afternoon’!
So I grabbed Peaches’s collar and said, ‘Oh, so you were vandalising my mum’s art in the library square’? Peaches was vibrating, she wanted to get to him so badly. I whispered ‘Hermione Granger’ so that he couldn’t hear. Can’t have him knowing the code, but Peaches is smart. She kept growling then let out this most ferocious bark. Made my hair stand up too.
Well, Angus turned purple in the face and set off at a dead sprint, with Hawkster right behind. I shouted after him, ‘Don’t go near that statue again’! I’m pretty sure he won’t. Then both Angus and Hawkster fell into the decorative koi pond when they tried to run across the Japanese bridge! Splashing around like they were drowning, even though the water didn’t go past their knees! Everyone was killing themselves laughing.
Peaches looked very proud of herself, so I gave her an entire piece of cake. She deserved it.
Oh, did I tell you that Fi’s got a sort-of-almost-cousin staying with her? His name is Berk and he looks an awful lot like Nate from STOP, who I just stopped being in love with, just at the party just now. The minute I saw Berk, my stomach felt funny and my face went red. Fi whispered, ‘I knew you’d fancy him’! And I think I might!
It’s silly, I know. I’m not even 13. But when I came home, I was going to sit down and listen to some STOP like I always used to do when I couldn’t sleep, but it’s like whatever I felt for Nate? That wasn’t love at all! And it just flew out of the room, on the feathers of an invisible bird, swooping out the door, never to be seen again.
I just thought I’d tell you.
I am really excited to see you in two days.
Two days, Ruth! Can you even believe it?
WRITE BACK RIGHT AWAY, RUTH QUAYLE.
Love,
Ruby
Not knowing how to feel is like how once,
you went to cross the river and the stones were slippery
and you fell in and the water was at first so cold
you thought you would drown
because no air came
but you didn’t.
You stayed in the water for hours, playing,
until your lips turned blue and your mom made
you come out and your dad built a little fire on the
riverbank to warm you up.
It’s like you want to know everything about everything
and find things out
and know who you are
but at the same time,
you kind of want s’mores
and for your parents to wrap a blanket
around you and tell you stories like you are
just a kid,
still.
But the next day you try again
and this time you get across the river
and you find out things you didn’t know you wanted to know
and when you get back to your parents
you are someone different,
after all because
as it turns out
you are the river.
Ruby,
I am so super happy for you that your party was fun and that you met a boy! That’s great!
Except I’m not really that happy, Ruby. I’m not. I feel mean and like I don’t want to be happy for you, but then I don’t know why I want to be mean to you, but I do, so maybe I shouldn’t write you this email. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything at all. But I don’t know how you can go to a party and talk to a cute boy and do normal, fun things when I’m way over here and your mom wrote me a poem that I don’t really understand and it’s twisted my insides up like a fishtail hair braid. It’s like I get that it’s beautiful but it isn’t what I wanted her to say, but I don’t know what I wanted her to say, and I don’t know how that’s like hair either, so don’t ask. I thought I would forgive her, like Buddha, if she said sorry, but I still don’t feel it! Not really! I still feel all heavy and confused and MAD!
I don’t even want to come. Not anymore. But Mom says that I have to. She says I’ll regret it if I don’t. But I don’t know if I will regret it! I might regret coming. Becaus
e I might say something awful to you or to your mom, because I might be a bad person inside. All this time I’ve been thinking I was a good type of person who could see the good in everyone (except maybe Freddie Blue Anderson), but actually, I’m not. This whole time, I’ve been like a lava flow of red-hot anger, just waiting to bubble up and scald everyone I touch. I’m not Buddhist and peaceful and forgiving and flowing like a river or a leaf or a path or anything, I’m just a regular kid who can’t figure out how not to be sad about all of this forever.
SHE GAVE ME AWAY.
I was going to use that part about lava in a poem but now I won’t bother. You’re probably the only one who reads my Tumblr anyway.
Love,
Ruth
Ruby,
I’m sorry. Ignore my last note completely. Delete it if you haven’t already and never read it again. I’m just mixed up! I don’t know how to feel. Not really. One minute I THINK that I know, and then the next minute, I realize that I’m just completely wrong about all of it.
Anyway, there’s another secret.
Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I go out onto the roof and I lie on my back and look up at the stars. Me and Mom used to lie there for ages and then Dad would come up and point out all the proper names for the constellations and Mom would tease him about being so literal about everything and not being able to imagine what else might be there. So tonight I was lying there and the stars were really amazeballs, and I thought, I should go get Mom and Dad! And we can all lie up here together, like we used to when I was smaller! And it will be great, like old times before any of this happened!
So I scooted across the roof — which is flat, it’s not like I was scaling a slippery peak — and jumped down onto Mom and Dad’s balcony. I could hear them talking and I was just about to knock and surprise them when I heard the words “DO NOT TELL RUTH.”
