“Don’t really need the money but I like free stuff and judging people from behind a counter.”
“When can you start?”
“Not this exact minute, but, like, tomorrow.”
“Cool bones. Sounds like we have a deal.”
“Awesome Sauce City.”
“Come about an hour before we open for training.” He hands her another stack of papers. “Fill these out, bring your social security card, and an ID if you have one.”
She doesn’t smile, doesn’t really do much of anything. “Welcome aboard,” he says. “You’re about to get Baked and Caffeinated. Get it?”
“Unfortunately.”
I lose my grip on the handle. The broom falls to the floor with a loud crack. I’m now completely, and utterly visible, as if every layer has shed, leaving me here in the nude.
“You okay, Dew?” Violet shouts from somewhere deep in the back room.
“Dew—GD—Brickman works here?” Naima asks with a razor-edged tone.
“You know this fedora-wearing mini-muffin?” Big Foot asks. “Isn’t he Adorbsville dot com? Legally, I’m not supposed to say that because, you know, the Me Too movement and sexual harassment and such, but I’m speaking the truth. He’s a mini-muffin and anyone who says otherwise needs their noodles cooked.”
She doesn’t laugh. Actually, she appears angrier than ever before. As if I’ve ruined a perfectly smooth sweater by tossing it into the dryer.
“I don’t need the job that bad,” she snaps. The bell on the door dings as she storms out.
He turns to me, confused. “I take it she doesn’t like mini-muffins or Adorbsville dot com.”
Violet joins me as I shrug, but I’m beginning to understand: Naima’s problem has nothing to do with love or friendship, and everything to do with her inability to deal with how she might want to be friends with me, too.
NAIMA
On my way out of the dumb bakeshop, I nearly trip over an object—a recorder that looks like Dew’s. I keep ahold of it so JJ can walk it over (’cause I’m not gonna). If it’s trash, that’s where I’ll put it, hoping the sweet raccoons will find it and record their little nose boops and hijinks.
Would you rather boop all the animals or be a sad, lonely soul?
I still have the first saved voicemail from Dad, and I’ve been playing it on repeat while avoiding the last like the plague (side note: if the plague hit, I still wouldn’t listen to the last voicemail).
“Naima … you don’t hate me. I know … I should’ve been home by now.… I’m frustrated, too.… I promise I’ll be back soon. Once you’re settled in Indiana, I’ll call. And honey … I love you. Never forget that.”
When I get back to the house, I replay his words without a care as to how long it takes for me to seal his voice into my subconscious.
Again
and again
and again
and again
and again.
After the sixth time, I remember I’ve also saved a voice memo for hard times where he says, “Butterfly,” but it cuts off. If I’m really a butterfly, Dad, let me fly away to wherever you and Mom are.
If only long enough for me
To say.
I’m sorry.
Despite the tics building inside my bones, I force myself to grab the necessities: six packs of gum, my phone, charger, headphones, a Ziploc of marshmallows, and the stack of letters I’ve yet to open. Is there not a piece of Ivy Springs that Dew is absent from? I don’t want to live next to him, work with him, or take anything—like Dad’s letters or balloon—from him, but there has to be a sacrifice somewhere.
And anyway, Dad would understand if I didn’t stand up to speak at the memorial, he would, he would, he would, he would, he would, he can’t. I dump my balled-up things into a plastic grocery sack pulled from a drawer full of them. The handle nearly breaks when I try to free a single bag from the bulk. There are other groceries—eggs, milk, and various crackers and cans on JJ and Kam’s counter. Instead of putting them away, labels facing out, everything aligned just so, I leave them. There’s no time; never any time.
Time. Time. Time. Time. Time. Time.
My fingers form a devious point at the front of me. These things matter to me because these things I have control over. I will leave that strawberry cake on the table. I will. I will leave it. Right there. With the anthrax-laced ingredients. With the urn watching over. And I’ll avoid JJ and Kam’s questions about where I went, or why I’m not speaking at the memorial. I can’t.
Can’t.
The next day, I’m in the basement staring at the letters when Kam tiptoes down. I barely notice him until he’s right next to me. I could hide everything, again, but don’t.
“Are you going to read them?” he asks, taking a seat where the balloon still hides beneath the covers. “He probably sent them in the hope you’d find comfort.”
“I’m not ready,” I say.
He sighs, dragging it out as if he’s taking the extra time to consider his next move. “I probably wouldn’t be either.” There’s a pause. “I haven’t been able to drink out of my favorite mug. Can’t even seem to help JJ move the damn urn.”
“Maybe he arranged for you to get letters, too.”
“Even if he had, I’d do the same thing you are. It’s too soon to think of the past, a past where he was alive.” He lays a hand on my shoulder. “But I hope you didn’t give Dew a hard time about the balloon. He meant well.”
I chew my bottom lip, fighting my argument back.
He stares at the letters before standing to go. “We love you. I hope you know your dad did, too.”
I tap one foot just to the other side of the floor, and back to the inside. Six times. JJ shouts from the top of the stairs.
“Time to get to the church to help the girls set up.”
Seven.
I start over.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap.
“You coming with us?” she adds.
“I’ll walk down in a bit,” I say.
Presence lingers. “It’ll be okay,” she reassures.
Footsteps finally fade, Kam’s too. Hiccup is, thankfully, crated. I hold my glare on the letters, fingers itching. I take a breath and pull the first from the stack, sliding my nail underneath to open the flap. It suddenly feels as if I’ve waited too long and I can’t read it fast enough. Until his handwriting strikes me dead. Here he is, right there, in that old ink and faded paper. He says he loves me, he misses me, he’s sorry he’s gone. But the part that almost breaks me, as if he knew our intent today:
Go to the church. It’s the only place you’ll find the peace you’ve been looking for.
After a while of staring into the void—at least an hour and eighteen seconds—I grab my grocery bag full of things, and walk in the direction of the church. There’s a fund-raiser in the basement for the Paxton boy—Benny, I think. Last year he was hit and nearly killed by a drunk driver in Clifton, the town over. The Paxtons have been there before, JJ says, but I wouldn’t remember. For me, it’s been a long, long time.
Along the multi-block journey, I think of my fifteenth birthday when Dad, JJ, and Kam drew perfectly pointed arrows in neon chalk on the sidewalk. My feet decide to follow the memory without asking. The arrows alternated in color; a pattern. I couldn’t have known there would be a splendiferous pattern—something my feet could fall into without worry. The small details are important. They matter. Dad knew that.
Pink blue yellow orange.
Pink blue yellow orange.
Pink blue yellow orange.
Pink blue yellow orange.
Pink blue yellow orange.
Pink blue yellow orange.
For once in my life, my clumsy feet paid no attention to the sidewalk cracks or the time or how many windows were on each building or how many objects I passed that required my toes to scrunch. There was lightness, like someone new inhabited my mind. Maybe it was because Dad was alive, so whether I followed the arrows or
not, the universe was intact; constellations still in formation.
When I was young, I thought the church was a castle where the princess of Ivy Springs lived. JJ and Kam would try to bait me inside on Sunday mornings. For a long time, the church bells and sky-length spires frightened me. It never felt like a safe place, one of comfort. It felt, to me, as if the moment I’d step inside, my soul would be sucked out of me. TBH, I still feel this way.
As I walk through the community garden, hand-planted by JJ, Kam, and the urban youth organization they helped establish on the outskirts of Indy, I know I shouldn’t be so consumed with my own grief. This event isn’t about me. I move closer to the church, envisioning the arrows drawing past the roundabout, through City Hall’s paved courtyard path, to a large castle/church on the corner of Market and Franklin Streets. The spires seem to reach the moon. I lift my hand, pretend to stretch as far (and also look stupid AF).
I pause. My breaths shorten into wisps. The sight of the enormous building pains me; the memory pains me. I’ve spent my life avoiding this place, going out of my way not to see it. And here I am, standing at the helm of the only building in Ivy Springs that Kam didn’t build or have a hand in building via his architecture-laced family. The only building that holds both my mother’s and father’s faces both dead and alive.
I have no place here—no right. People are in and out of the big wooden double doors. I turn away so they don’t speak to me. I’m slow up the steps where the imaginary arrows end abruptly, my fingers tapping the doors.
As I stand with my plastic bag at my side, something keeps me from going straight in. Not a breath of wind or physical barrier. My feet have burrowed into the ground. Trying to protect me. But what if I don’t need protecting this time? What if everything I need is just beyond the door? Still, the only real echo of memory I have—something I was way too young to remember, but have been told about all through my life—stands in my way.
Mom’s funeral.
Dad
cell
April 20 at 7:14 AM
Transcription Beta
“I called Principal Maynard. I want you to know, in case anyone gives you any trouble today. I think we should talk about moving schools. He gave me the impression this has been going on longer than you, or Nell, have let on. I wish I could do more, but I can’t if you don’t talk to me. If anyone messes with you again, go straight to the principal. If you won’t tell me, please tell Nell or JJ or Kam. We’re trying to help.”
Email Draft (Unsent)
To
___________________________________________
Subject
___________________________________________
You didn’t help me by calling
The school.
It only made those girls
Come after me
Harder for
Getting them in trouble.
I want to change schools
I want to move in with JJ and Kam
As soon as possible.
Tonight at 8: Boy attempts to fly his plane against the wind, may fail.
I can’t find my mechanical best friend. I’ve been sitting along the hem of my comforter, watching the seconds tick by, retracing my steps. All night, Faith’s voice carried through my wall, shouting phrases and slogans, hoping another might stick. I covered my ears with a pillow, but it offered no consolation. I tried humming Mom’s favorite song, but the words wouldn’t scroll. All I could think about was the recorder. Even as Stella and Thomas prepare to attend a fund-raiser at the church, waiting for me to make my grand entrance beyond my bedroom door, I sit, and I stare, and I think.
I text Violet in haste, positive I’ve erased entire blips of time like a sort of disassociative disorder as a way to cope.
Me: Did you, by chance, happen to see my recorder anywhere?
Violet: Like, the phone you’re texting me from?
I pause, my fingers lingering over the letters. It isn’t the time to explain.
Me: Never mind.
Violet: You want today’s silver lining to help you deal?
Me: Sure.
Violet: Okay—this is my favorite Henry Ford quote so hold it close: “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” Does that make your situation any better?
Me: It actually does. Thank you
Violet:
A knock at the door pulls me from this cycle of time-wasting. I drag myself to the mirror, run my fingers through my hair, and practice my smile until it reads “believable.”
I open the door to see Joelle with a palm opened. “Did you lose something?” My recorder is dirt-covered and wary. “Hiccup tried to bury it in my magnolias. Hope it still works.”
Before I muster a single coherent word, I fall into her, arms wrapped snug around her small waist. “You have no idea how grateful I am.”
She gently rubs the back of my head while shushing, and it reminds me of Mom. I suddenly feel sick with sadness.
She peels me back. “You’re gonna be fine, you hear?” A finger tips my chin. “With or without that thing. I know it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And with Naima,” she hesitates, “give her time.”
When she steps away, I tell myself it’s over, I’m okay. Following the shape of Joelle to her car, I watch from the window. She and Kam slip away, on with their day, and I wonder where Naima slipped to. I glance at the clock. I’m perfectly late. I press Record on my recorder and I feel it. As if tattooed along my fate line.
If the airplane flies against the wind, so will I.
NAIMA
Why did I come? When I release the breath, I halt all other thoughts by shoving the doors wide open. I half expect the angels to sing or birds to fly down around me but I guess that’s not real life? Whatever. When my eyes flutter open, the beauty of the stained glass sets in, warmth of the golden oak pews radiate, and the beam of light, that almost feels as if it were created straight from the heavens, shines just for me. I think about texting Dr. Tao for affirmations (you’re a bad mamma jamma). But like all the other times I think of doing something, I don’t.
I take it all in. I walk slowly down the long aisle, between the passing people. A few ask how I’m doing. I ignore them. JJ is directly to my left, but I avoid even her. Because I have no memories of Mom, every last piece I hold of Dad rushes in. His laugh, his smile. The comfort, strength. The last time he hugged me. The last time he told me to “be brave,” and the last time I ever felt safe in my entire life. I remember it all. I remember. Everything except anything about Mom.
No matter what I do, how I try to fill the empty space of Mom, I’m still empty. How can you miss someone you’ve never known? Being in this place, just like all the times JJ tried to convince me to join her and Kam here, reminds me—not of all I have—of all I’ve lost. And those things are lost because of me. I did that. All of it.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
At my school in Albany, a group of girls who controlled almost the entire grade called me selfish, said everything wasn’t about me. That I was obsessed with making the world stop to see me count or scratch or hop over a divot or talk about the headlines that kept me up all night. Said I wasn’t worth the air I breathe. That no matter what I did, I’d only ever be broken and pathetic. They said it’s why Dad left. They’d known me a total of four weeks and knew this about me. Some of the last thoughts I had about Dad were “stay gone forever.”
So my brain says, Maybe they’re right.
Molecules collide inside me—every last twinge of pain—until they suddenly combust. In front of everyone, right there in the center of the aisle, I fall to my knees, and as the light holds me down, I bellow a shriek louder than any I’ve ever created. It births in the deepest pit of me, and rises, my voice breaking into shards as I release it. People stop hovering over the family they’re meant to hover over and run to me, the selfish one who can’t seem to find her wa
y out of her own bits of broken mind long enough to hover with them.
“Is she hurt?” a woman asks.
“What happened?” another interjects.
JJ pushes through. “I got her.” She shoves my bag out of the way, kneels, and pulls me into the warmth of her. Her arms wrap tightly around my head, so I can’t see all the eyes pressed. I don’t stop my tears; I let them fall fast and hard, right here beneath the giant cross. I cry and I pray and I pray and I cry like I never have in my life. I don’t know if anyone outside of our universe hears me, if it matters, but somewhere in this building, in my heart, maybe Mom and Dad do.
I wish I could be unborn so you can live again, Mom; so you’d never have left and died, Dad.
“I hope she’s okay,” I hear. When I squint my eyes, it’s the faces of the parents we’re here to support. They’re comforting me.
As JJ rocks me, shushing into my ear, Dad’s voice chimes in. On my birthday every year, when we’d have to remember my life is here because of her death, he’d say, “You didn’t kill her. She wouldn’t want you to feel guilty—she’d want you to soar on without her. Butterfly.”
Reverend Mills—the very same who baptized me and my father; the very same who was present when my father was delivered to the Blue County cemetery for his memorial service—rushes in and crouches down. “Can I pray with you?”
I look up, barely holding the sight, and nod. We bow our heads and pray.
My thirteenth birthday, I refused Dad’s letter for the first time because I was mad he’d left again. He tried to tell me how important this would be; that to pray might set me free. No matter how many times Dad told me, I never felt it, never believed him.
Never.
Never.
Never.
Never.
Never.
Never.
I pay no attention to the time, or those surrounding us. I forget this is a carry-in fund-raiser for a boy who almost lost his life. Maybe it’s the way the light hits or the emotion of all before me, but when I open my eyes, just barely, I see something shiny beside JJ’s foot—a penny. Finally, for the first time in seventeen years, I forgive myself for being alive. I love you, Mom. Thank you.
Six Goodbyes We Never Said Page 19
