“I didn’t mean to upset you. Just thought, hell, I don’t know. Heard Nell mention it. And after last summer, well … we worry, is all.”
My eyes scan the lot. “Where is she?” I mumble.
“You’re all we have left of him,” he adds, voice trembling. “I want you to be okay.”
My eyes water as JJ exits the store.
All we have left of him. All we have left of him. All we have left of him. All we have left of him. All we have left of him. All we have left of him.
On the tips of her toes, she balances the boxed cake and several plastic bags against the car’s body—like Nell did the day the Casualty Notification Officer (CNO) told us about Dad. A thousand flashbacks flicker through my memory in bursts.
Groceries.
Cake.
Balloons.
Counting.
Sedan.
Dad.
Gone.
Dad
cell
January 27 at 9:55 PM
Transcription Beta
“One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. That’s how many times I’ve called today. I’m starting to think you don’t want to talk to me. [laughs] That was a bad joke. I’m still hoping to be back for your birthday. Still hoping. Hoping. Guess I’ll count the stars again.”
[lost signal]
Email Draft (Unsent)
To
___________________________________________
Subject
___________________________________________
I wanted to answer
If only long enough
To tell you what happened
At school today
When Georgia Westbrook
Called me a depressing pig
But I didn’t cry
And didn’t kick the back of her knees
Like I imagined.
Instead, I did something you taught me.
I told her “I wish you the best”
And walked away (with my middle finger up tho).
Ivy Springs doctors urge residents to be on the lookout for stray eyelashes—an often underestimated but deadly predator.
“Just a burger, not cooked in butter or oil, lettuce and tomato on the side, no fries, broccoli if you have it,” Stella orders for me.
The waiter scribbles the intricate ask as Faith stumbles over her order of chicken tenders—not from the kids’ menu, the adult menu. All eyes are very much on her vibrantly situated general-store feathers, including the waiter’s.
Thomas holds his hand over his mouth with the slip of a smile shining through. “Does anyone want to talk about Faith’s incredible style?”
Faith’s lips curl.
“I’m serious,” Thomas says. “I love it.”
“We decided, with Faith’s sudden and intense interest in wrestling, it’d be a good idea for her to pursue it,” Stella says. “Dr. Peterson thinks it might help her work through some of her anger and aggression, while fostering confidence. It gives her a healthy, semi-healthy, kind of healthy—maybe not the best kind of healthy, but it’s what we’re working with—outlet.”
She leans into Thomas close enough for me to hear while Faith stares at her phone. “It’s about giving her some control back in her life, so let’s get on board here.”
“Got it,” he whispers. “I can’t wait to see your moves, Faith.”
“Faith, phone away, please,” Stella says.
With a grunt, she does as she’s told and pulls a packet of crackers from Stella’s salad plate to eat.
“What about you, Dew?” he asks. “How was your day?”
“Dr. Peterson said he’s making great strides. And he baked Naima a strawberry cake,” Stella answers. “Isn’t that nice?”
“Lucky girl. Explains the splotches on your arms. You didn’t eat any, did you?”
“No, sir,” I say. “The strawberries exploded a bit. It’s fine.”
“Do you have any Benadryl?” Thomas asks Stella.
Her face quickly flushes to colors of worry. “At home. Do we need to go? We can go.”
“No, it’s okay,” I say. Beneath the table, my fingers secretly scratch the rashes that I’d forgotten. The mention of them sparking more irritation.
“I feel terrible. I didn’t pay enough attention to how bad you look. Does it burn?”
“No.”
“Does it itch?”
“Only slightly.”
She scoots from her chair abruptly and surveys each table’s customers, asking if they might have any allergy medicine. Like a modern-day drug addict. She bothers five tables before a kind woman provides me with an antihistamine tablet.
“Thank you!” Stella cries. She puts the tablet in my palm and urges me on. “If it doesn’t help right away, I’m using the EpiPen and calling an ambulance.”
“I baked the cake hours ago. I’m fine. Really.”
“Don’t bake anything like that without me again. Just in case.” She hovers over my shoulder until I’ve swallowed the pill. As if the minute it’s in my system everything will vanish and I’ll be magically recovered. The waiter returns—everyone’s eyes sewn to my every gesture—and he’s nearly afraid to interrupt our strange silence.
“Your food will be out shortly,” he says.
No one says a word until, out of nowhere, Stella blinks an eyelash from her eye, into her eye. She struggles to fish it out, eyes watering, nose full of snotty discharge. Now she’s the one who could use an antihistamine.
Thomas moves in to help. She waves her hands around from the sting. “Ow, ow, ow!”
When he pulls the eyelash onto his finger, he holds it out and tells her to make a wish. She closes her eyes and blows a little too hard. The lash floats up, and out, straight into Thomas’s eye. Now, Stella works to pull the lash from his eye. They’re both flailing, tears streaming, and for the first time since we’ve been a complete family, Faith and I hold our bellies to contain our laughter. The muscles tense, I’m bent over, nearly crying, in the best way possible.
This is insanity. This is comical. This is our family, a complete pod, however lacking in spaces. And it’s splendid.
NAIMA
“Tried to be as quick as I could,” JJ says, fighting for a breath. For someone who runs marathons, the plight of running in and out of a store quickly for my sake has her winded. “Damn cashier wanted to tell me about this mole she found, and spiraled into why she’s divorced. In her words, it’s ‘because that son of a bitch can’t keep it in his pants.’ If I had to hear that mess, so do you.”
As she glides into her seat with a wink, my bandana pinches at the base of my neck. She settles, seems to feel the tension that morphed after she’d gone. The quiet in the car forces JJ to cut in.
“What happened in here?” she asks.
Kam’s stare is angled out the window.
“Babe?” she pokes. His hand cups his mouth. JJ turns to face me. “Ima, what happened?”
I shrug, and stare at the floor.
“Someone tell me what the hell is going on.” Her voice trembles.
Kam lays a hand on hers. “We miss him.” He’s so quiet; I don’t remember a time his voice barely carried in this way.
Her wide eyes soften with waves of sadness. She pats his hand. “Me, too.”
She turns back to me. “You okay?”
I barely look up, hands folded tightly in my lap so as not to pinch, pull, claw, or scratch. I don’t nod or shrug. I can’t seem to do anything. She watches me struggle for a solid sixty-three seconds, before she nods, eyes welling with tears, and turns forward.
Kam breaks the silence. “Did you tell her about the bench yet?”
“Kameron,” JJ says with a sigh. “Can’t tell you nothin’.”
“What? She should know.”
“It was a damn secret.”
My hands free themselves, letting me pull myself forward into their conversation. “What bench?”
Kam starts to explain, but JJ cuts him off. “Kam designed a bench that’ll be
installed in the community garden next to the cherry blossom tree. It’ll have Ray’s name on it.”
“That’s great,” I say. “Dad would’ve liked that.”
“Nell said you used to sit under a cherry blossom tree for hours in Albany; a willow in Fort Hood, too. We figured maybe … maybe it’s where you prayed, or thought about your future, or talked to yourself about Ray. Maybe this could be where you can talk to him.”
The air escapes my lungs and I audibly gasp. “Nell told you that?”
Kam turns, too, and they smile at each other. JJ takes this one. “She tells us more than you think.”
“Doesn’t sound like anything she’d do.”
JJ quiets and Kam takes over, like the well-oiled machine they’ve always been. “She cares about you. About how Ray being gone affected you, how it affects you now. She was really upset with us for not telling her about last summer. I don’t blame her.”
JJ holds up her phone, illuminating the screen. “She’s been texting me a lot since she left, asking how you are—she didn’t want to bother you.”
“What do you tell her?” I wonder about the letters, if she knows, too. But I can’t bring myself to ask.
“Same thing you would. I say you’d be better if she’d send the flytrap and those damn shoeboxes already.”
By the time we get back to the house, the sky begins its slow decent into darkness. Summer nights in Ivy Springs are like a first kiss: warm, electrifying, and surreal. They meander, enjoying every last taste of the sun’s kiss before finally letting the moon take hold. I couldn’t paint a better picture than what this small village already is. Where every other place I’ve been is watercolored, Ivy Springs is thick, bold strokes that take you aback the moment you arrive and keep doing so until you’ve left the township limits.
I sit on the back stoop. JJ and Kam let Hiccup out to relieve himself, and leave him out here to bark, while they take over the kitchen with the music turned up (probably to drown out Hiccup). They slice the cake and put each piece onto Gi Gi’s antique dessert plates—the ones passed down through generations—and I let Hiccup back inside where he won’t interrupt my lingering thoughts on those letters. He immediately scratches at the door directly behind me until Kam removes him, and puts him elsewhere (thank you).
The time is 8:11 P.M. EST.
I look up to the sky, wondering if Dad can see me from way up there. He used to stand far enough away that he could lift his finger to make it appear like he was holding the moon on the tip of it. He’d say, “Isn’t is beautiful—an entire sky on display just for us?” I’d argue the whole world could see the same thing, and he’d reply, “Maybe you and I are the only ones looking up.” As if the whole galaxy spontaneously generated from nothing, stars twinkling just for our view. “Right here, right now. The constellations shine and stars die, and our moon glows. For us. It’s really something, if you believe.”
I don’t know how he did it, but I believed.
Believe. Believe. Believe. Believe. Believe. Believe.
He’d tell me when he was far off in another country, he’d look up to that sky made for us, and pretend I was looking, too. I lose myself in moonlight and memory, just as a car pulls into the driveway next door. Dad’s voice is interrupted by the voices of the Brickmans. They’re carrying on about someone using a middle finger to wave at someone else. I don’t pull Dew’s voice from them, not that I try.
I crouch down to overhear without being seen, crawling toward the hole in the fence’s slat. When I peer through, I see this beautifully connected group of people. It reminds me of something Mom, Dad, and I could’ve had.
Could’ve.
I don’t remember the last time I felt that happy, free. I long for it, my fingers reaching out, wishing they could spare a dusting of their joy, if I promise not to waste it. I’m staring so hard; I don’t feel the small tears until they find my lips. The salt is all I taste.
As they disappear into their house
I collapse into the grass.
I repeat to myself, six times
My name is Naima Josephine Rodriguez.
I am my mother’s daughter,
I am seventeen years old.
And I miss my father
So much
I could die
Of broken heart syndrome
Here and
Now.
Dad
cell
February 14 at 11:15 AM
Transcription Beta
“Will you be my Valentine? Word has it I’ll be home in May just in time for your birthday. You heard right. I’m coming home. Home. I love you. [cries]”
Email Draft (Unsent)
To
___________________________________________
Subject
___________________________________________
Are you serious?
Are you?
Are you?
Are you?
Are you
Coming home?
Home.
Home.
Home.
Home.
Home.
Home.
At the top of tonight’s top stories, water is sometimes thicker than blood, depending on your water.
Faith confesses having seen me use my middle finger, promising to use it in her wrestling act as she’s having a “conniption.”
“I’ve done no such thing,” I argue. “I’m a gentleman.”
“Did, too,” she says with a snap of the tongue. “During the farmers’ market that first day. You went to scratch your face while talking to that tattooed eyebrow lady when she was mad but used your middle finger. You couldn’t do it to her face so you pretended there was an itch but I saw it.”
I gasp. “No.”
Stella’s laughing. “You can be a little passive-aggressive, Dew. We need to work on expressing your anger in a healthy way. But, to be fair, I know who Faith is talking about and I think I did the same thing.”
“Well, she wasn’t very kind,” I confess with a smirk. “She said my hat was ‘unflattering.’ I wanted to say the same thing about her eyebrows, but I refrained.”
“I knew it!” Faith elbows me like a sister I’ve had my whole life.
Perhaps she is also the fire August Moon speaks of.
After dinner, we pile into the pickup and make our way through town. The windows are down, warm summer air flowing through, and Thomas follows closely behind. In this moment, you could look at me and see past the layers of grief, you could walk in my shoes and be content. In this moment, I hear Mom singing August Moon, how “without the sky, there’d be no moon,” which feels appropriate.
As Stella turns up the radio dial and sings at the top of her lungs, getting Faith to join in, too, I look between them and see a whole new sky. It’s not where I started, and not where I’ll end. But for now, I’m home. Home.
THE BEGINNING OF THE SHOEBOXES
After Naima’s suicide attempt in Fort Hood, one of her therapists suggested a long list of coping mechanisms to replace the ones causing her harm. Naima didn’t quite take to any traditional techniques—group therapy with other military kids, dual sessions with Nell via the Military Spouse Network, meditation, yoga, prayer, grounding, visualization, breathing, journaling, exercise, and use of a worry stone—despite her exhaustive attempts to make use of them. Therapy was not a one-size-fits-all, and because Naima took great pride in embracing all that made her unique, it took great effort to find the thing that could be hers and only hers.
It would come by accident, on a day that involved Nell purchasing a pair of shoes an anxiety-ridden Naima refused to wear, and the arrival of groceries that Christian left on the countertop at a time Naima felt particularly famished. She hadn’t intended to begin a new ritual, but once she’d picked out nearly half the Lucky Charms marshmallows from the box, she needed a place to hide them for when Christian burst through the door. She didn’t want him to catch her doing yet another strange thing she couldn’t expla
in. So she stuffed the marshmallows into Ziploc bags and hid them in the one place no one would find them: the shoebox.
Naima never knew something so absurd could bring her so much fulfillment—particularly when Christian discovered his Lucky Charms was a lifeless box of bland additive cereal, void of marshmallows. That satisfaction, and that alone, is the very reason Naima continued the tradition, eventually finding relief during times of chaos, such as another move, another goodbye, and another loss.
Little did she know that hundreds of miles away, Andrew-Phillip-Diaz-Soon-to-Be-Brickman had his own hurdles to overcome. After the loss of his parents, and no other family to care for him, he’d find himself in foster care, awaiting someone kind enough to take in a boy who’d lost so much of himself he could barely speak. The Brickmans would have to peel Andrew back, layer by layer, uncovering the sweet boy they knew him to be. He wouldn’t find solace in shoeboxes or marshmallows, but in a sheer fascination with the news and how reading a headline might give him authority over his own life—and the life he lost when his parents had floated into the clouds.
NAIMA
As soon as I walk inside, eyes still damp, I’m presented with a small plate. My vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting rests in the center. JJ turns the music up almost as loud as her speakers will allow—loud enough that Hiccup joins in by barking.
A podcast streams in the background, talking of relationships through the ages, and JJ turns to Kam, who’s licking frosting from a fingertip, a smattering dressed over his upper lip, and says, “If Ball State faculty could see you now. What a splendid sight.”
JJ dances across the floor, plate in hand. She takes a bite between moves, and I can’t help but smile. I taste my cake—it’s so good—but refuse to dance. That feels wrong. The urn watches us from the chair, a plate directly in front of it, for it, Dad, to celebrate me. My smile drops. I want to focus on how much it hurts, but JJ and Kam won’t let me.
Kam dances around me, snapping his fingers to the beat. He’s wearing the ankle weights he says will “keep Hiccup from biting,” though, from the bite marks, Hiccup sees them as new toys to chew through. He’s adorned with a hot-pink sweatband around his hairline that reads, Born to Shake What My Momma Gave Me—no doubt one of JJ’s running headbands. It lures another smile from me, and he grins.
Six Goodbyes We Never Said Page 16
