One Death, Nine Stories

by Marc Aronson

  The words echoed in Marco’s head as he picked up his pace in the park. The scent of stale beer assaulted his nose. Slog Hill was just around the curve. Cans crunched and crinkled as he panted his way through the tall weeds. He climbed onto the rocks, lay spread-eagled on his back, and stared at the summer clouds.

  Marco hadn’t been on Slog Hill or this rock since he’d sat right there with Kevin, trying to talk him out of a robbery that was probably never gonna happen. Kevin, pulling one last bait and switch.

  A slow exhale escaped Marco’s mouth. A deep breath filled his lungs and lifted his chest.

  “Keep running, Kev.”

  OF COURSE, it isn’t his age that makes me think of Barry. This body is young. Nineteen, the card reads. Kevin Nicholas.

  Suicide, Nadira, Sampson told me. So make him look as good as you can.

  Maybe it’s the color of this body’s hair, the distinct cocoa of his skin. And maybe it’s something more than that. I like to think that when a body is dead it can’t lie anymore and all that is left is the truth. So I make up stories as I am filing the nails of stiff-fingered dead people, putting on foundation or lipstick, or combing their hair. I try to imagine who they were and if they can (or should) be forgiven for what they did in their lives. I want to believe there are good people and bad people and that in the end we all get what we deserve, but the dead always remind us that is not true.

  Sampson wants me to make this body tell a lie. He wants me to make this body, this boy, look the best I can, so that no one will be reminded that he took his own life. What was it, Kevin, that was so terrible you couldn’t go on? Do you wish now you had another chance?

  People don’t realize how much work goes into my job. I am like a plastic surgeon for the dead. I can plump up your lips and smooth out your wrinkles. I just need to get in there before the embalming fluid starts to harden.

  Are you sorry you succeeded?

  Was your pain greater than all others?

  I mean, we all feel pain, don’t we? Well, maybe not all of us.

  Mom?

  Everything I did, I did for you.

  I smoked weed for the first time. I shaved my legs. I shoplifted at a local grocery store when our camp took a field trip into town. I kissed a boy and I let him feel me up. I wanted you to love me, Mom, and if that meant I had to get Barry to want me, well, then, I could do that, too.

  And so with everything I did for the first time, I dreamed about how I would tell you and I dreamed about how proud you would be of me. I was practically glowing with the anticipation of being the daughter you really wanted. Instead of who I was.

  The daughter you didn’t want.

  How funny, I would have told you when you came at the end of that summer to pick me up—that’s nearly ten years ago—how funny that I didn’t want to come here at all. How I resisted and begged you to let me stay home. I was so afraid of losing you. I was so afraid that if I went away for a month, you’d finally decide you didn’t want me anymore and I wouldn’t be there to talk you out of it.

  I am too much trouble, too difficult, a handful. Isn’t that what Barry said about me? A handful? A pill? A pain in the ass? Isn’t that why he hits me, because I am asking for it? “You bet you’ll never do that again”—as he drags me by the hair up the stairs.

  But now look at me, I thought at summer camp a month later. I am one of you. I am nearly twelve years old. It’s not too late. Things can only get better from here on. I can’t wait to tell you about my summer.

  First, I will tell you about Danny, the boy who slipped his hand under my T-shirt as we lay in the grass under the shooting stars. There was nothing there, nothing but small fleshy bumps, less than Caroline Behar had in third grade because she was fat. The other kids would make fun of her behind her back, and to her face, saying she had boobs. When Danny’s fingers were on my belly, it took everything I had not to laugh out loud.

  It tickled. My whole body was rising and tightening with goose pimples. I could feel his skin on my skin, under my shirt, over my chest, touching my nipples and making me want to die laughing.

  But I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew this was what grown-ups did. It was what you and Barry did, and somehow I knew that if I did it, too, you would like me more. Barry would like me more. And you would let me stay with you.

  Barry is dark, but it’s not his skin that’s dark—although he is honey colored, chestnut, cappuccino, mocha tan. It is his face that is dark. His eyes. It is the inside of his eyes. It is the air that moves around him, moves with him. It is the dark that I become when I am near him.

  Stephen likes him. As soon as they met, they were fast friends.

  “Why do I have to go to camp and Stephen doesn’t?” I asked you even though I already knew the answer. You were doing the dishes when you dropped the bomb. You told me you had already talked to Dad and he had agreed to pay for it. Why would you ask Dad for anything? You always talk about horrible he was, how he treated you, how selfish and thoughtless he was. When you got divorced and he moved back to Queens Village to live with his parents, with Gigi and Pops, you made fun of him. You said he’d never get past his past, but when he can pay to send me away for the summer, you call him right up.

  “Maybe if you spent more time worrying about yourself and not your brother, you’d be better off,” you told me. You turned off the hot water and dried your hands on a dish towel.

  “I don’t want to go, Mom. Please, don’t make me.”

  Out of sight, out of mind. They would forget about me if I went away. They would see they didn’t need me, didn’t want me.

  Then, in a softer moment, you went on: “Besides, you might like it there. You’ll make friends. Some people make lifelong friends at sleepaway camp. Then they grow up and say it was the best part of their childhood. I want you to have something I never could.”

  “Please, Mommy. Please.” She didn’t hear me.

  “Besides, all Jewish kids go to summer camp,” she said.

  “You didn’t.” She didn’t answer me.

  But I am not Jewish. I am not black. I am something in between, something that doesn’t belong anywhere.

  I don’t want anything you didn’t have, I want to cry. Just leave him, Mom. Just leave Barry, and it will be the three of us again. You, and me, and Stephen, and maybe Daddy will take us back.

  Danny was younger than me by two months. He had just turned eleven in July and he was smaller than me, but unlike me, he had blond hair and blond-person skin. Danny was young and light, and I don’t know why, but he was kind to me. We sat in the very last row in the bus, close together, talking, while the other campers dove into their temporarily returned smartphones with maniacal focus. Most of the other kids were going to go to the movies or the mall. There was a counselor to accompany each group. For every twelve kids, there was one counselor. Danny and I planned on sneaking away by telling the mall counselor, Amy, that we were going to the movies and telling the movie counselor, Mark, that we wanted to shop at the mall.

  “Fine, Nadira,” Amy said. “Just make sure you let Mark know you are in his group. And while you’re at it, remind him we all need to be back at the bus by nine thirty.” It was that easy.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked Danny. We were free. I was free. I was far away from Barry, from my brother, from my dad, even from you in that moment, but I was all right. The summer night was magic. The sun was already slipping away from the sky, turning the world a yellowish red. The moon was rising like a wondrous gift for all to see but no one to touch and no one to ruin. The sticky August warmth stayed in the air even as shadows overtook the light, and Danny took my hand.

  “Let’s go to the store and get candy,” he said.

  “I don’t have money. Do you?”

  “No,” Danny admitted.

  Neither one of us had the unlimited canteen access that some of the other campers had, to buy envelopes and paper and stamps, candy and drinks, to take out cash for shopping in town. Cell phones
had been returned, but for this field trip only. Danny and I were the only two campers who didn’t have one to begin with.

  Neither Danny nor I had any money. We had each other.

  “I know a way,” Danny told me.

  And Danny explained it to me. He told me how to walk the aisles, how to look and how to sound, how we could work together, one of us talking to the cashier while the other would drop packages of candy into our pockets. It was wrong, and it was scary, and when I had done it, when Danny and I were running down the street as fast as we could, our pockets stuffed with Kit Kats and Sour Patch Kids, I knew I would tell you all about Danny. Maybe not about the stealing, because you wouldn’t like that. And Daddy really wouldn’t like that. A black kid has to be better than everyone else. He can’t even walk out of a deli without his soda in a bag and a receipt in his hand.

  But I did it for you, Mom.

  Danny didn’t know anything about Barry, of course. At camp, we could be anything we wanted, and given enough time—like a whole month—it became true. Barry’s darkness had turned into a dream that I couldn’t remember having. Did he punch me in the stomach when I left my crayons on the floor and Stephen and his friends stepped on them, grinding them into the wood? Or when I left the dog food uncovered in the refrigerator? I couldn’t remember if you had been there watching when I doubled over in pain. I had only the vaguest memory of sitting on the toilet seat, looking up at the unfinished ceiling, the wires, blue and red and yellow, leading off in all sorts of places. Pipes and exposed wood and pink insulation. I couldn’t breathe. No air could get into my lungs. It was only a matter of time before I would die. I looked up into the ceiling that was supposed to be there but wasn’t, and I knew, yes, I was going to die. I was going to die, and if I could have breathed, I would have laughed. I would have laughed because there was nothing left to do.

  But slowly the air came back in, my heart slowed down, and I didn’t die after all, and nothing was very funny, just another part of a confusing dream.

  Danny and I were sweating, panting hard. We rested our hands on our knees and tried to catch our breath. We were far enough away from the grocery store, clutching our bounty. We were safe.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Danny answered. We sat down on the curb to inspect our contraband and then eat it.

  “Well, as long as we are back at the bus by nine thirty.”

  With our bellies full and our teeth stinging from sugar, we lay back down on the grass beside the street and waited for the night to darken and the shooting stars to come out. Where were we? Vermont? Maine? Upstate New York? I don’t remember where the camp was, and I probably didn’t know in the first place. I knew it took hours to get there. Dad drove me up, but we didn’t talk much.

  What would I tell him anyway?

  Dad, I don’t like Mom’s boyfriend. He is dark and bearded. He doesn’t shower, and he smells bad. He smells dark. He smokes a lot of weed, like all the time, like first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Something is wrong. Something is wrong with me, so he hits me and he scares me. But maybe that’s why you left, Dad, without saying anything. So if I tell you and you don’t do anything, that would be worse. If I tell you and you don’t believe me, I could lose you both.

  Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

  Don’t bite the hand.

  Don’t bite.

  So why am I always biting everyone?

  But now it’s all different. Now I’ve shaved my legs and smoked weed with Morgan in Omega Cabin instead of going to arts and crafts. I stole candy from the grocery store and I am in love with Danny, just like you are in love with Barry.

  “Really, the best time to see shooting stars is just before dawn,” Danny told me.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, my dad told me that when we went camping one summer.”

  I was quiet. The grass was wet and cold, but I didn’t move. I think I knew if I stayed quiet, Danny would kiss me.

  “Yeah, it has something to do with our orbital motion through space and being on the tail end of the meteors. That’s what they are, you know? Shooting stars. They’re meteors that are moving faster than we are.” Danny lifted himself onto his elbows.

  “Oh.”

  And Danny leaned over and kissed me.

  We didn’t open our mouths or anything like that, but we kissed. I know it. He rested his body on top of mine, sort of to the side so he wouldn’t hurt me, but so that I would feel his warmth and smell the clean scent of his clothing and the boyish scent of his skin. I let him touch me because it felt good and safe, and because it made me want to laugh.

  “I love you, Nadira,” he told me.

  “I love you, too.”

  “We should probably get going.”

  “We should. Want my last bag of Skittles?”

  “Sure,” Danny said. “We can share.”

  “You’re going to be a woman soon, Nadira,” she told me just before I left for camp. I hadn’t gotten my period yet, and I wouldn’t for another year and a half, but somehow I knew that wasn’t what she was talking about.

  “You’re going to be a very lovely young woman.” She was working on my hair, which wasn’t quite like hers but took a lot of work. I held back my tears as she pulled and twisted. “Barry’s going to notice it, too. I’m going to have to watch out for you, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t want to go. Please, Mom,” I said.

  She kissed the top of my head. It was the last time.

  What did I know? I really have to ask myself. Did I somehow know when I left for camp that I would never see you again? That just before the last day, the director would find me.

  “Is this Nadira Washington?” he would ask Amy or Amber or Austin, or whatever my counselor’s name was.

  “Yeah, this is Nadira.”

  And then the director would turn to me. “Your father called. He says there’s been some problem with your mother driving up here and he wants you to catch a ride back to New York with another family. Do you know Debra Klein?”

  I didn’t, but it would be Debra’s mother and father who would squeeze me and all my stuff—except my pillow—into their SUV and drive us all the way back to New York City. We met my dad, and not you, at the rest stop just off the thruway. He thanked the Kleins and tried to offer them money for their trouble, but I don’t remember if they took it or not, and when we got into his car, my dad told me that I would be living with him now. So he didn’t exactly take us back, but he got stuck with me again.

  You were gone. You took Stephen, because he is not a pill, but not me.

  Now I have this thought and it is so funny, it is so hysterically funny I have to laugh out loud. I know I’m not supposed to really laugh when I am down here. This isn’t exactly the kind of work environment where there is a lot of laughing going on. You never know when clients could be around.

  Not that Sampson would ever fire me. He’s got the hots for me. It’s so obvious, it’s pathetic. But still, it’s disrespectful to be joyful when people are in mourning.

  But imagine, Mom, can you just imagine if this was Barry lying here, naked and dead, and helpless and powerless? I can see the anger coming from his skin and floating harmlessly away into the air. I can see the darkness of his eyes, though they are glued shut and two eye caps are fitted carefully underneath. I look at his hands, and I can envision them balled into fists. But they can’t hurt me now.

  And neither can you.

  I saw you one more time, at the women’s clinic in Queens County. You were there with a friend and didn’t seem to recognize me. But why would you? Five years had passed and you didn’t look much different, but I was sixteen, not eleven. I am a woman now, Mom, a pregnant one, with five hundred dollars in my pocket to pay for my troubles.

  Your friend was shaking and crying, and you seemed pretty occupied with calming her down. You didn’t even notice me, sitting across from you in the waiting room. I knew a little bit abo
ut you, from Stephen when he would come to visit, which wasn’t often. You and Barry split up, and you were with someone else now. A cross-country truck driver, I think I heard. Or a florist, or maybe it was a florist first and then the truck driver, I’m not sure.

  The seats were cozy. There were happy pictures up in the waiting room, but your friend couldn’t stop sobbing. I guessed she was there for the same thing I was. Then, at one point while your friend continued to sob, you looked up and right at me.

  You knew who I was—you must have. But you didn’t say a thing. You turned your eyes away quickly and looked down. How lucky that the nurse came out and called your friend’s name. I watched you hurry away, through the door, into the doctor’s office, without saying a thing.

  So I will say it for you: Nadira, I am so sorry. I was so wrong for letting you go. For leaving you. Please forgive me. It was not your fault. You were never too difficult. Please forgive me for hurting you. You never deserved that. It’s all going to be all right now.

  Now this body is ready to be dressed in the clothes given to us by his family and his wounds will be hidden forever. I have to let the laughter out. I’ve glued his eyes shut, brushed his brows, tweezed any stray hair.

  The last thing I do is slip the dental cups inside Kevin’s cheeks because as his skin shrinks and dehydrates, his mouth can open, and his teeth can show. Never let the teeth show, they taught us in mortuary school. A little superglue is all it takes and his lips are sealed forever.

  Are you sorry you succeeded?

  Was your pain greater than all others?

  I can laugh out loud. I can cry and I can laugh. I can feel pain and I can feel joy. Kevin is lying here dead, and somewhere in the world, you are still walking around, Barry is still walking around and I don’t care anymore.

  Because I walked out of the clinic that day and I stopped wanting you. I stopped waiting for you. I stopped missing you. Forever. I never went through with it. I walked out of that clinic, and I have never looked back.