Grief Girl (5 page)

“Oh, I'm back at school and it's going really well, actually.”

I wonder what happens to Dad when we're not around. What does he go through? He never lets us know.

One nurse told us he cries all day. She said he cries hardest in the bathroom. The nurse knows because she has to take him there. He can't move his legs. Apparently, when he's sitting on the special seat in the shower, she can hear his sobs over the sound of the rushing water. I don't know why she thought we needed to know this.

Dad feels so guilty.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” he sobs over and over again. “It's all my fault. She didn't want to cross the road. She didn't want to go to the fruit stand. She said, ‘No, Ron, let's just get home.' But I got angry and made her.”

I'm not going to cry even though my eyes are getting that hot feeling. I've got to be positive for Dad.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Dad,” I say, but he won't stop crying and apologizing.

He doesn't realize yet that the accident was my fault. I made it happen by thinking it. I only wish I had the courage to tell him.

         

This isn't the first time I've been guilty of killing something.

I killed the pet mouse Julie gave me for my fourteenth birthday.

I forgot to feed it and it died. I was a teenage murderer! Or, if it wasn't on purpose, is it manslaughter? Or should I say
mouse
-slaughter. No, it was outright murder, no matter how I looked at it.

It wouldn't have happened if he'd gotten a bit of cheese every once in a while. But no, I was too busy to think of that. How could I have been so cruel and selfish?

For days after he died, every time I closed my eyes I imagined that little mouse crawling around desperate for food…every day getting weaker and weaker. Oh, how he must have suffered! What a slow and painful death it must have been…and it was going on right in my bedroom! He was dying right before my very eyes—if I'd bothered to look!

I decided I should be made to suffer the way he suffered. I took my punishment into my own hands. I will feel what he felt, I determined; I will feel hunger and thirst and pain. I will become the mouse.

I vowed that from that moment on, no food or drink would pass my lips. If he endured it, then so would I. I had to be made to suffer. It was the only way.

So the next day I got up and went to school without breakfast.

By the time I got there I was dreaming of Big Macs and French fries, but there was no way I was going to give in.

I had to suffer.

“Why aren't you eating?” Julie asked, as I knew she would. She cares. She's not the kind of person who would starve anything.

“Oh, I don't feel so great,” I said. And it was true. I didn't. I couldn't hold out any longer. I got a milk shake. It's a drink, I told myself. Not food.

I lasted two days on milk shakes alone before giving up. I lied to Julie. I couldn't tell her the truth. Instead, I told her the mouse died from some unknown cause.

“I don't know,” I said, “one minute he was okay and the next time I looked he was dead.”

I should be dead instead.

November 1, 1983

M
rs. C-J thinks I should go and look at Mum's body. She hasn't been buried yet because they have to do an autopsy. I can't bear to think of them cutting her open.

“It will help you believe it,” Mrs. C-J says. “You'll be better able to accept it.” Maybe she's right. Maybe I should see Mum's body. I can't seem to grasp that my mother is dead, that her body has no life in it anymore, that she'll never be walking and talking again. She'll never hug me again. Why can't I believe it? I haven't seen her for almost two weeks, and that's never happened. I can't call her on the phone, I can't write her a letter and expect one in return. She's gone and I know it, but at the same time I don't. I can't get my head around it.

Maybe seeing her lying there in a coffin would make it real. But would she be in a coffin yet or on one of those cold metal drawers they pull out of the fridge at the morgue? If I see it, will that be my last memory of her? Will that be all I remember because I'll be so traumatized I won't be able to think of anything else? I'll try to see that rare smile of hers or her small, quiet eyes, and all I'll see is a cold, closed mouth and closed eyes with nothing but death and pain behind them. They said she died instantly and felt no pain. I love that. How do they know? Have they ever died instantly? And did she really die instantly, or is that just something they tell the poor grieving children to comfort them?

“Oh, Erin, that's sick! God, you're melodramatic!” Tracy said when I asked what she thought about going to the morgue.

I'm not going to go. I don't want the nightmares Tracy says I'll have.

I can't even think of Mum in that place.

If only…

I could turn back the clock.

I could go back and stop them leaving home that Sunday.

They had gone to visit Nanny's grave the day before.

Mum had stayed in the car.

Dad weren't so forceful.

They had crossed the road two seconds later or two seconds earlier.

They had crossed a little faster or a little slower.

There had been a crosswalk.

They hadn't been holding hands.

The fruit stand had been closed.

They had kept driving.

The car wouldn't start when they left the cemetery.

They had wasted a few minutes calling me before they left.

The tow truck hadn't been speeding.

The truck had hit them differently.

I had been with them.

I had been a better daughter.

I hadn't thought that thought.

This were a dream.

They say they can fix Dad. Rebuild him. Better, faster, stronger than he was before.

The world's first bionic dad.

Ron Vincent will be that dad.

They're going to put metal pins that look like big fat skewers into his legs.

I work myself up to be happy and bright when I see him. I want to joke about Dad Kebabs, Roasted Ron, Fondue Father, Pierced Parent, Barbecued Big Daddy, but maybe now's not the time to try and cheer him up the old faithful way. Usually you can cheer Dad up with a joke. Not anymore. Dad's legs are crushed. The doctors say the pins might never help, but they've got to give it a try.

“There is a possibility that he'll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life,” the doctor says.

“No, that's not right,”
I want to say.
“This is my big hearty dad you're talking about. You don't know him. He just won't stand for that. I mean he
will
stand. That's my whole point.”

“Anything is possible. We just have to wait and see. Now he's in a lot of pain, so he might not be able to talk long,” the doctor says on his way out. My dad is just one in a long line of patients to him.

It's late, so we have to leave too. This is the worst part. We lift Trent up to kiss Dad goodbye before the three of us walk out and leave him there all alone.

At least Tracy, Trent, and I have each other.

         

I don't feel so alone at school anymore.

I have my friends, but I can't burden them with my problems all the time. Julie's been great. She treats me the same as she always has and listens to me go on and on about how terrible I feel. But I don't want her to get sick of me.

“If you ever need someone to talk to, Erin, I'm here,” my science teacher, Mrs. Stockbridge, told me the other day.

I want so badly to do well in science, so I'm going to study extra hard. Mrs. Stockbridge isn't like the other teachers. She just looks me in the eye and comes right out and says it.

“I can't even begin to imagine how you must feel, Erin. It's just devastating.”

She doesn't tell me she knows how I feel or that “time heals all wounds.”

She doesn't say “Just give it time,” like all the other adults do, because she knows that time is the problem. Everything moves so slowly. The time it's going to take to get through this is what scares me. Don't talk to me about time!

I now spend almost every lunch period with Mrs. Stockbridge. It's the only way I can get through the day. We sit in her classroom at a gray lab table by the Bunsen burners and eat our sandwiches and talk. She hasn't said why, but I can see that she finds life hard too.

         

It's the day of Dad's surgery and all I can think of is the game Operation.

I keep seeing Dad's nose buzz bright red whenever they touch his skin with their metal instruments. I can't get the image out of my head.

I wish Dad's only problem were a charley horse (a white plastic horse) or water on the knee (a little plastic bucket). But this isn't a game.

Tracy and I are in the waiting room. Trent is at home with Ronald, Peter, Gai, and Frances. We sit and stare straight ahead at the reproduction modern art on the walls until Dad's parents arrive. I hate when they come to the hospital; they're so dramatic it's sickening.

“What's happening to our Ronnie?” Grandma shrieks while Grandpa walks behind her picking his nose. Grief sure doesn't stop some people from being their annoying selves.

“Stop yelling, for God's sake! He's being operated on now,” Tracy says.

Grandma frowns. “I've got to talk to someone about this.” And with that, my grandparents walk toward the nursing station.

Tracy and I look at each other and roll our eyes. All they do is make every situation more tense. But at least hating them gives Tracy and me something to bond over.

“He will come out? He won't die in there, will he?” I ask the doctor when he comes to see us. He's dressed in scrubs and ready to operate.

He smiles. “Don't worry. We do this kind of surgery all the time.”

I believe him when he says it's a common operation, but death's common too. People can die when you least expect it. But I can't think like that. I've got to stay positive. I can't have bad thoughts. Bad thoughts make bad things happen.

Stay happy.

When we see Dad hours later, he doesn't seem to be in much pain. He just looks sleepy. It probably helps that Dad's always been really big and strong. I have to admit, though, he doesn't look very strong right now with his white hospital gown and bedpan under the bed. I wonder if he's hiding the pain or if the sadness just numbs everything else.

“How are you feeling, Dad?” I whisper. Why am I whispering? It's weird, but I feel like if I talk loud, my voice will reverberate through the air and the sound waves will hurt his legs.

Sometimes when we visit Dad we just make small talk, which seems really stupid. But you can't talk about death and crushed legs and stuff all the time. Trent helps. He keeps our minds off why we're here. We watch him run around the room, sit “very still, now” on Dad's bed, and just generally act like his cute three-year-old self.

He reminds us all to be strong.

         

Mum's funeral is today and Dad can't go. He's begged the doctors to put him on a stretcher and take him there in an ambulance, but they say he can't be moved. So Dad has to just lie there in the hospital while his wife's funeral takes place. That can't be good for his mental health. Mrs. C-J told me that a funeral is necessary to help you accept that someone has died. How will Dad accept it? I suppose he saw Mum's body lying there on the road, so maybe that's enough for him to know she's dead for sure.

It's weird getting dressed for your mother's funeral.

It's almost like dressing for a party. Then you notice the silence all around you. There's no laughing. No music playing. No mother to call from another room to see how you're doing. Then you remember what you're really dressing for.

You're putting on a pink dress to bury your mother.

It was Mum's favorite, and I'll be damned if I'll wear depressing old black! I'm not some sheep who follows the flock…although right now I kind of feel like the black sheep. No one thinks I'm old enough to know all the details of today.

I'm dressed and ready. I look in the mirror.

It's amazing how good I look. I should look terrible and grief stricken, but I don't. I look so wonderful, people will probably think I didn't really love my mother and this is just another day in the park for me.

Peter comes in. “The cars are here. It's time to leave.” He's been speaking in a hushed tone all morning. They all have. It's driving me crazy and making everything seem worse. It's not like Mum's hovering above us listening. That stuff's for people who need something to believe in.

I don't want to go. I'm in a pink dress and I'm going to my mother's funeral. I look in the mirror again and tell myself to stop being such a wimp.

I still look wonderful.

I go outside into the blaring sun. It's so hot the pebbles on the verandah look like they're boiling.

Tracy is in the street, stepping into one of the shiny black cars with Chris. She didn't want to sit with me. Probably worried I'd be a big crybaby. I think I'm getting on her nerves.

I walk toward the car behind hers. I feel like I'm going to be sick. This kind of car doesn't belong in our happy little cul-de-sac. A fat man in a black suit gives me that “I'm so sorry” smile and opens the back door for me. I feel like a movie star going to the Academy Awards.

I'm so shallow.

It's terrible that Dad can't be here.

Trent is digging in a sandbox at a neighbor's house while our mother is being buried. How bloody ironic!

I get my own shiny black luxury funeral car all to myself. I feel so grown-up all of a sudden. I suppose if there's a time to stop being a kid, this is it. It's so quiet out here. It's as though all the birds and trees know we're going to a funeral. How can they know? How is it that it's so quiet?

Frances taps on the window. “Can I ride with you?”

I know she's only doing it for my sake, and I do kind of like the idea of traveling by myself, but maybe it's for the best.

“Okay, that might be good,” I tell her.

         

We're off.

The car is going very slowly. Why are they dragging this out? I know it's out of respect for the dead and all that, but what's so respectful about taking your time?

So the car drives on and on. We sit in silence. We have a long way to go. Mum always said she wanted to be buried with her mother, and that cemetery is two hours away. I stare out the window. Mum and Dad were driving along this road when the accident happened. I wonder where it happened precisely. Do I want to know?

We finally get to the church. It's a cute little old building made of big chunks of sandstone. I step out onto the grass and walk over to Tracy. She ignores me. It's hot and still and quiet. I think if she looks at me she'll cry and not be able to stop. There's no one standing outside. So we walk into the dark, packed church, Tracy first. I spot the shiny brown coffin at the end of the aisle. It's just sitting there near the altar like an overgrown coffee table with a flowery wedding cake on top.

There's a big, black hole in my chest, and it's growing with every breath I take. My mother's in that box. I can't believe it. It doesn't make sense. How can she have been walking two weeks ago and now be in a box with ugly flowers on top? I was okay until I saw the coffin, I really was. But this is too much. I now have to sit here in the front row and listen to the minister talk with my mother's coffin so close by.

Wouldn't it be funny if she started knocking on the lid?

“Let me out, let me out. I'm not really dead.”

“Oh, whew, Mum, you woke up just in time. The minister was going to start rambling on about God's will and all that garbage. Jump on out and join the party. Everyone's here!”

She doesn't knock and the minister doesn't stop.

The minister talks and talks and keeps looking down at us. I must say it feels pretty special being in the front row. Is that sick of me? Oh well, God can't punish me now. He's already done it. He can't punish me for not listening to the minister either. The minister's a nice man. I know. I've met him before. He performed the ceremony at Ronald's and Peter's weddings. He's nice but boring.

Anyway, how can I listen? Mum is in that box.

She wanted to die first, before any of us. Well, she got her wish.

         

I've got to stop looking at the coffin. It kills me to look, but for some reason I keep turning my head to the right to see it. I'm going to throw up. The colored light shining through the stained-glass windows is making me queasy. And the tears, I can't stop the tears. I'm being quiet about it and I have my back to everyone, being in the front row and all, so I suppose they can't tell. I've just got to make sure my shoulders don't move up and down in that crying way. But if I don't stop crying soon, I think it's going to get worse and I'll start wailing like one of those Italian women in black sack dresses and stockings with black shawls draped over their heads. The ones who throw themselves over the graves and all that. It probably would be good to be Italian right now. At least they don't have to sit quietly and act like it's no big deal. At least they think it's normal to show, really show, what you feel.