by S. Walden
“Ms. Debbie,” she said again, regaining some control. “Why did you have to go away?”
She waited for the answer.
“Why did you go, Ms. Debbie?” Clara asked again. “I’m alone. Beatrice doesn’t like me anymore. She’s afraid of me. And now my mother’s home, and she thinks she’s going to make everything all right.”
Clara stroked the headstone as she spoke.
“But she can’t. She doesn’t know what I’ve done, what I had to do for money.”
She wanted to confess her sins to someone. She tried with God, but he never answered her, so she decided to try with Ms. Debbie instead.
“I had sex with a man for money,” she whispered into the headstone. “I needed money for the property tax. I was desperate and didn’t know what else to do.”
She wiped her runny nose with the back of her gloved hand.
“I thought I could keep doing it until the tax was paid, but I couldn’t go back,” Clara said. “I’ll never go back, and I’m glad for it even though I know we’ll lose our house.”
Clara waited to hear Ms. Debbie’s voice, but there was only the silence of a still winter day.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Debbie,” Clara continued. “Please don’t think I’m a bad person. I want to be good. I just don’t know how to be good and be poor at the same time.”
Clara’s pants were soaked through, so she repositioned herself. She lay on her side, the right side of her face nestled in the snow facing the headstone. She cried out at the sharp pain until her cheek went numb. Then she settled into a constant shiver, curling into herself to try and stay warm. She tried to ignore the dull burning deep within her muscles. She didn’t want to leave Ms. Debbie. She thought if she let the chill sink into her bones, become a part of them, then she would be able to stay all night, lying beside the woman who gave her the silver earrings, the ones Clara now wore.
“I miss you,” she said, her warm tears falling to the ground, cutting deep holes in the snow.
Clara closed her eyes against a bitter wind that swept through the cemetery. She felt the wind drag something out of her, toss it up into the heavens where it disappeared forever. She thought it was part of her soul severed from her, cut out by a god who did not know her but thought to punish her anyway because she didn’t know how to be good and poor at the same time. She breathed in the icy chill, feeling her chest burn, thinking that some people were just better than others.
***
She heard his voice in the distance. It sounded like a dot on the far side of the world, and as it came closer, growing louder and more urgent, it turned into a blaring megaphone. She closed her hands over her ears to block out the noise.
She felt her wet body lifted off the ground, carried to a place warm and soft, and she relaxed on the backseat feeling the blast of heat hit her face.
I must be in heaven, she thought. I made it to heaven!
She felt herself moving and fell asleep promptly, believing that heaven was a warm car that traveled around the world and never stopped.
Something plastic with sharp edges was shoved under her tongue. She wanted to take it out, but her hands wouldn’t cooperate. So she let it stay until someone pulled it out for her.
“Jesus,” she heard her mother say. “A hundred and one.”
“Should we take her to urgent care?” a boy asked. It sounded like Evan.
“Let’s try to get the fever down with ibuprofen first,” Ellen said.
Clara felt Evan pull her up gently, ask her to open her mouth, then deposit four tablets on her tongue.
“Swallow, Clara,” he said putting the glass of water next her lips. She obeyed tasting the metallic of the medicine tablets as they went down.
“I’m going to see if she’ll eat some soup,” Ellen said.
“I’ll feed her,” Evan offered.
“It’s okay,” Ellen said. “I’ll do it,” but she allowed Evan to feed her daughter when Clara shook her head violently refusing to let her mother near her.
Ellen brought Evan the bowl and then hung back in the shadows. She didn’t want to leave Clara.
“Get out,” Clara croaked, refusing to eat anything until her mother was gone.
“Clara,” Evan said soothingly. “Let your mother stay.”
“No,” Clara said, the pain in her throat so great she wanted to rip out her esophagus.
Ellen slunk out of the room, and Clara thought she heard a muffled cry.
Evan looked at his girlfriend and then at the bowl of chicken broth.
“Do you think you can try to eat something?” he asked.
She nodded, and he brought the spoonful of soup to her lips. She drank it, feeling it coat her throat with warmth and take out the stinging burn as it went down.
“Were you going to sleep there all night?” Evan asked, putting the spoon to her lips once more.
Clara shrugged. She didn’t know what he was talking about.
Evan continued to feed her as he spoke.
“Your mother loves you, Clara,” he said. She screwed up her face in a scowl. “She made a terrible mistake leaving you girls. She knows that.”
Clara drank down the soup in silence.
“Remember how you forgave me for saying that stupid thing to you?” Evan asked.
Clara could not remain silent at this.
“Not the same thing,” she whispered, her throat screaming with every word.
“I know it’s not,” Evan said. “But I’m talking about forgiveness, Clara. You forgave me. You have forgiveness in your heart.”
But Clara was unsure of this. She thought that the part of her soul the wind whipped out of her at the gravestone was the part that allowed her to forgive. It was gone. She thought of Beatrice’s betrayal and knew she couldn’t forgive her. She never wanted to see her sister’s face again. She thought of her mother sitting at the table apologizing to them like she simply yelled at them and hadn’t abandoned them for five months with no explanation or money. There was no forgiveness there. She felt her heart sealing up, the anger setting in to reshape her into something cold and impenetrable.
“Why are you on her side?” Clara asked.
“I’m not on her side,” Evan replied. “It’s not about taking sides.”
“The hell it’s not,” Clara spat. “She left us for five months.”
“I know,” Evan said softly. He couldn’t say what he really felt. Relief that Ellen was back and Clara could be a regular teenager again. It was completely selfish, the strong desire in him to want more of Clara, to feel happy that she could now shed all of the responsibilities that had weighed on her so heavily for months, had taken up so much of her time. He could have a normal girlfriend, a normal relationship, and he was elated. She, on the other hand, looked like she wanted to kill somebody.
“You paid her electric bill,” Clara went on. “Did you forget about that?”
Evan brought the spoon to her lips again.
“I’m not saying she’s a good person, Clara,” he said after a time. “But she’s your mother. And she came home. And I know she wants to make it right.”
“You don’t know anything,” Clara replied.
“Yes I do,” Evan argued. “Because your mother told me.”
Clara narrowed her eyes at her boyfriend, and then her face softened. She did not want to fight with Evan. He was the only one she had left. She was no fool; she knew his real intentions in asking her to forgive her mother, to relinquish her role as parent. It was self-serving. It meant that she could have more freedom and time to spend with him. He was so selfish of her, but she couldn’t pretend that it didn’t make her feel good.
She finished the rest of her soup in silence. Evan placed the empty bowl on her nightstand and leaned over to kiss her cheek. She let him. It was still red from lying against the cold wet snow.
“I’m going to come over tomorrow after work to check on you,” he said, and she wanted to beg him to stay. She didn’t want to be alone with her
sister and mother. She didn’t want them helping her and checking in on her and saying nice things to her that made her want to scream at them.
Evan got up from the bed, and she caught his arm.
“Don’t go,” she said hoarsely.
“Clara, I have to,” Evan replied. “I’ll be here tomorrow. I promise,” and he bent down to kiss her softly on the lips, not caring if she was contagious.
***
Clara missed a week of school. She had strep throat. Her mother took her to urgent care on the second day and got her the antibiotics she needed. Clara, in her dizzy vagueness, wondered how her mother paid for it.
Evan visited her every afternoon. He was the only one Clara talked to. Beatrice hung around on the edges of whatever room Clara happened to be in at the moment, wanting desperately to talk to her sister. She knew Clara was mad at her, and she didn’t understand why. Why couldn’t Beatrice be happy that their mother was home?
Just in the short week of Ellen’s return, the house looked better. It was like Ellen was trying to apologize in as many ways as possible. She scrubbed everything from floor to ceiling, disinfecting the entire home, cleaning places that Beatrice and Clara never cleaned because they didn’t know those places existed. There was dinner every night, always something new, and Ellen sat with Beatrice each evening while she completed her homework. Beatrice had never asked Clara to check it, but she shoved every worksheet under her mother’s nose to have her look over. Beatrice was happy. Clara was miserable.
Ellen walked into Clara’s room at the end of the week and sat down on the edge of the bed. Clara glared at her over the top of her book.
“Sweetheart—”
“Don’t call me that,” Clara interrupted.
Ellen took a deep breath. “Clara, I want you to know that I got a job.”
Clara didn’t reply.
“It’s a secretary job at a chiropractor’s office,” she went on. “It’s full time and I have health insurance. For us.” She waited for Clara to respond. Clara kept reading her book.
“I start on Monday. They needed someone straight away,” Ellen said. “So Beatrice will still ride the bus home every day and let herself in until you or I get home. Okay?”
Nothing.
“Okay, Clara?” Ellen insisted.
“Whatever.”
Ellen looked over her daughter for a moment before leaving the room.
Chapter 20
The next few weeks at school were difficult for Clara. It was hard for her to look Evan in the eyes, and when he kissed her, she felt like crying into his mouth. The guilt she felt over that night in January would not go away. She could suppress it for a time, but it always surfaced like a dead body that refused to submerge within the waters of a back river, and her conscience was the killer, terrified of a discovery.
Evan knew the adjustment was not going well for her. She volunteered some information to him, but she mostly changed the subject when he tried to broach it with her. He felt her closing up, an oyster shut up with the pearl inside, and he was afraid that she would stay closed off forever in her confusion, anger and grief.
He also felt selfish. They had not been sexual in a long time, and he was hungry for her body. He wanted her—all of her—and didn’t know how to go about asking. He thought he would offend her, that she would look at him like he was crazy. She had just turned seventeen a few months ago.
He was elated when she agreed to come to his house one afternoon. They sat on the couch in his basement watching television. Clara seemed distracted, and Evan wanted to bring her back into focus. He reached over and gathered her in his arms. She didn’t resist as he pressed his lips to hers. She opened her mouth to him and felt his tongue search her, the familiar tingle in her belly, and the flash of memory—the man in the expensive dark suit looming over her beside the bed. She pushed Evan away and wiped at her mouth.
“Clara, what did I do?” Evan asked. He tried hard not to sound frustrated.
“You didn’t do anything,” she said looking at her lap.
“Then why don’t you want to kiss me anymore?” Evan replied. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed.
“I want to kiss you,” she said quietly.
“You just pushed me away!” Evan exclaimed.
Clara thought for a moment. She could do it now. She could blurt out the truth, let him get angry and call her a whore, and then walk out of the basement and his life like it had all been a dream. Wasn’t it a dream anyway? She always thought at any moment she’d be jarred awake from it, back at school as the shy girl with no friends who sits alone in the cafeteria reading. Maybe she’d like to go back to that girl. It was lonely, but it was safe.
“Clara, please,” Evan pleaded.
“I . . . I want to tell you something,” she said.
“Tell me anything,” Evan replied.
But she couldn’t do it. She was more fearful of telling Evan than she was of losing her virginity to a complete stranger.
“I know I’ve been acting weird lately,” she said finally. “I’m still having issues with my mom being home. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. And I’m sorry.”
Evan took her hand. “It’s okay, Clara.”
She knew it would take great effort, but she had to. She leaned over and kissed her boyfriend. She let him kiss her all afternoon, but the man with the expensive dark suit was in the back of her eyes, watching with a sneer as she pretended to be a good, sweet girl when he knew she was not.
***
Clara suddenly discovered one day at school that she had a friend. She didn’t understand why it took her so long to realize it, but once she did, she didn’t know what to think of it.
Florence. Her lab partner. Florence with the smudgy glasses and stringy hair who always thought it was amazing to see Clara walking down the hall with Evan. She never got used to it, even though Evan and Clara had been together for several months. She blushed harder than Clara when Evan sent a dozen yellow roses to English class for Clara on Valentine’s Day.
“Yellow means friendship,” Clara said trying to dismiss the gesture as no big deal. She had no idea where to put them for the remainder of the day and asked her English teacher if she could keep them in the back of the classroom.
“To remind me what a pathetic love life I have?” Ms. Grady asked, then chuckled. “Of course you can.”
“Whatever, Clara,” Florence said, rolling her eyes. “That boy is head over heels in love with you.”
“He hasn’t said it.”
Florence whipped her head around and pointed to the flowers on the back table.
“What do you think that is?” she asked, and Clara laughed.
Florence started eating lunch with Clara and Evan, and sometimes Chris joined them. It was an odd mixture of people: two confident seniors and two socially awkward juniors.
“You gonna eat those?” Chris asked pointing to Florence’s French fries.
“I eat everything on my tray,” she replied. “I eat everything I possibly can while I’m young because I know it’ll all change when I get older. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll probably be fat, so I’m enjoying food now while I’m stick thin.”
Chris had stopped listening to her and turned to Clara.
“You gonna eat those?” and she shook her head and smiled.
“Is anyone else sick and tired of hearing about prom?” Florence asked. “Why is everyone talking about it already? Isn’t it a little early?”
“I think to get students excited about it,” Evan said.
“I think it’s a waste of money and a waste of time,” Florence replied. She shoved a French fry in her mouth.
“Yeah, and as soon as someone invites you, you won’t think that,” Chris said. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Oh, I have no intentions of being asked,” Florence replied. “But thanks for reminding me that I won’t.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the foursome.
“It’s just a stupid dance,” Chris mumbled and downed the rest of his Coke.
“I know,” Florence said unaffected. “Who are you taking?”
Chris swallowed then replied. “Caroline.”
“Oh, she’s pretty,” Florence said. “She’ll make a pretty date.”
Chris smiled, unsure.
“But these two will be the scene stealers,” she said pointing at Evan and Clara. Clara blushed. Evan hadn’t even asked her yet, and she wished Florence would stop talking.
“And why do you say that?” Evan asked.
Florence looked at him in disbelief. “Really? Try the most awesome story of the school year! Cool guy befriends shy girl and then they start a passionate romance that nobody at school can understand. All the popular girls are jealous, and all the nerds feel vindicated. It should really be a movie.”
Evan laughed. Clara wished that Florence would stop constantly lumping her in with the nerds. She preferred to be a nobody which was an entirely different group of students.
“Who would play Clara in your movie, Florence?” Evan asked.
“You’re asking me?” Florence said. “I don’t know any celebrities. Why doesn’t Clara play Clara?”
“I don’t think you can play yourself in a movie,” Chris interjected.
“John Malkovich did,” Evan replied.
“Who?” Florence asked.
“Yeah, but he can get away with that because he’s famous,” Clara pointed out.
“And she talks,” Chris said teasingly, and Clara grinned. “Say, if you two are going to prom, maybe we could get a limousine or something. Do a double date thing.”
“I’ll let you know, man,” Evan said, but he already knew he had other plans.
That night Evan picked Clara up for a date. They went to the movies and sat in the theatre trying to answer the questions included in the “Before You Watch” pre-movie segment.
“You’ve never seen The Lost Boys?” Clara asked.
“I’ve never even heard of the movie,” Evan said scratching his head.
