In the Image of Grace (2 page)

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Isabelle came and peered into the bathroom as I was
weeping for Elizabeth. She started to scream like a banshee which
drew Clarissa in whom I quickly sent out to call 911. Elizabeth was
pronounced dead by the paramedics who came with hope in saving her.
After Elizabeth was taken away I noticed sitting on the bathroom
sink was a picture from the newspaper. I left it sitting there as I
went to the laundry room to strip off my clothes and grab a bunch
of towels. Somebody had to clean up the bathroom. While I cleaned
up Clarissa and Isabelle were shut up by themselves somewhere in
the house mourning and I was left with the sign of life that
Elizabeth was alive not too long ago.

When I was done cleaning up I took that picture and
went to my room. I placed it on my bed and went and took a shower.
I turned on the water as hot as I could take it and let it run over
my body, where inside pain was welling up. I sat down in the tub
and hugged my legs and wept, hoping the water would wash away my
pain.

……………………………………………………..

We knew her life would end too soon. We just weren’t
prepared for when it actually happened. The three of us stood in
the middle of Elizabeth’s room. It had only been a couple days
since Elizabeth decided to end her life. The same white canopy bed
from when we were younger stood proudly in the middle of it.
Everything was perfectly in place. All the books were lined up
neatly according to height on her shelves and the pillows and
stuffed animals on her bed were perfectly displayed as if the bed
was in a store window. Her room seemed lifeless without her in it,
just as lifeless as she had become. Isabelle, Clarissa and I sat
down on the floor.

I showed them the picture that Elizabeth had left on
the bathroom sink. It was a picture of the four of us standing in a
row from shortest to tallest. It was cut out of the newspaper, a
picture that was taken while our father was receiving a reward for
something. Each of us had long black brown hair, a round face,
almost shaped like the face of a barn owl and an empty look in our
almond shaped eyes. Elizabeth always said we had that look of
emptiness because we had no souls. The pale iridescence of our skin
gave us an almost ethereal quality. We were all dressed the same;
white knee socks, a khaki pleated skirt and a navy corduroy blazer
covering our upper body. The only thing that was different was that
the Clarissa was wearing black Mary Jane’s, where Elizabeth,
Isabelle and I were wearing flats. Underneath the picture the
caption read, “The Schlobohm Children; Clarissa 11, Isabelle 12,
Charlotte 13 and Elizabeth 14.” The picture was a few years old. As
we sat in Elizabeth’s room I was sixteen, Isabelle was fifteen,
Clarissa was fourteen and Elizabeth was no more.

……………………………………..

At Elizabeth’s funeral there was not one face that I
recognized besides the obvious; Isabelle, Clarissa, our father, Mr.
Carl and Ms. Dunderfeltz. We had no relatives that we knew of, so
we didn’t know where all the people came from. When people viewed
her body they politely looked down at her and went on their way.
Clarissa, Isabelle and I stood in the line behind each other.
Clarissa was the first to look upon our dead sister. Clarissa
kissed her fingers and placed them upon Elizabeth’s lips. When
Isabelle went up she started sobbing. Clarissa came and hugged her
shoulders and led her to the side. I don’t know what I felt as I
looked down on Elizabeth, everything perfectly in place like she
had been frozen in time. I wanted to kiss and hug her, but I also
wanted to scream at her for what she had done. It felt like she
left us to fend for ourselves. I longed for her comfort and
guidance and just her mere presence.

I looked over at our father. He was at the root of it
all. Our father stood in the back dressed like he was going to
work. He wore khakis and a white buttoned down shirt with a blazer,
not even a full suit. He didn’t seem to have any feelings over the
death of our sister, his daughter. My sisters and I didn’t even see
him cry, before or after the funeral. He just stood there with a
stoic look on his face. In retrospect nobody seemed overly
emotional or emotional at all. Everybody was wiped clean of any
feeling.

Our father never identified with any religions, so it
seemed odd that a pastor said a few words’. I didn’t know what he
was a pastor of, but he claimed to be one. I didn’t listen until he
asked if anybody wanted to say anything and the place was silent. I
didn’t want to say anything at first because I wasn’t sure if I’d
be able to handle it, but I went up because somebody had to say
something about Elizabeth at her own funeral. I got up from my seat
and went up to the podium that was set up. I cleared my throat and
looked around at all the blank faces staring at me.

“Elizabeth was always there when we needed her. We
could always depend on her. Who are we going to depend on now?” I
couldn’t say anymore. I looked at all the faces watching me. Nobody
even blinked. I walked away from the podium and out the doors and
to the lobby, where sitting on a table with thinly carved legs was
a picture of Elizabeth when she was around eight. She looked very
sad. Her eyes were empty and her mouth was drawn down in a frown.
It was from when our father had a photographer come to the house
and take pictures because for our father picture taking wasn’t
something you went to a photo studio for.

That was the last time a photographer ever came. None
of us were very cooperative. Our father got mad because none of us
would smile. After that for pictures of us we’d rely on an
occasional one that would pop up in a newspaper from some sort of
event for our father. It was always the same picture; we’d just
occasionally get older. We were always standing side by side
according to height, in the same khaki clad outfit as in the
newspaper picture that Elizabeth left for us.

Isabelle and Clarissa came out into the lobby area
with me and we all went outside and stood on the front curb and
waited until it was all over.

………………………………………

A couple days after Elizabeth’s funeral our father
announced that we were going downtown to get new clothes, it was
the first time he took us shopping. At first I thought it was an
odd way to show affection seeing that we have never been shopping
before and he has never shown affection either. It was a Sunday
morning when he told us all to get dressed because we had to go buy
school clothes.

All the clothes that we owned were ones that our
father cataloged ordered and we always matched, wearing what seemed
almost like a uniform. The three of us got dressed in matching
khaki pants, black flats and a navy overcoat and we walked with our
father over to the EL station.

We stood on the EL platform waiting for the train,
shivering from the breeze and extra wind the expressway on either
side yielded. It was about the middle of fall, so it was starting
to get cold and all the leaves were slowly changing colors. The
middle of the horizon past the expressway was speckled in golds,
reds, oranges and what remained of the greens. Above that was an
overcast sky and below laid the city, the tops of all the brick
apartment buildings and farther off in the distance the city
skyline.

There was a crisp clean smell to the air and we stood
in silence. Our father wasn’t one for talking. Whenever we were
around him there was an awkward silence. I don’t think I even heard
a word from him until that morning. The train rattled up and we all
got on. We got off at Washington and went to a department store
called Marshall Prairie’s. Our dad took us to the junior department
and told us to select several outfits each. It was quite
overwhelming. Since we were shut up in the house most the time we
weren’t too up on the fashion trends. I mainly got jeans, sweaters
and tee-shirts, mostly plain in color, but a few stripes here and
there. We also got to get some new shoes and coats.

Many teenage girls I’m sure would have been ecstatic
at the opportunity we had, but it didn’t thrill us all that much.
Our sister just died. We were there with our father who really
didn’t seem to care for us all that much. There were other things I
would have preferred to do. It was that weekend when our father
made the announcement about us going to school.

After Elizabeth’s death we were allotted about a
couple weeks for grievances and we were then expected to bounce
into school, not even a private school; a public school. I only say
that because we had a private tutor. Public school seemed like a
step in the opposite direction. The last time we saw our tutor Mr.
Carl was at Elizabeth’s funeral. He sat in the back wearing a suit
that looked too large on him. We didn’t know for certain why all of
a sudden we were going to school. Perhaps the death of Elizabeth
showed our father that we needed to be socialized.

………………………………………

We stood there, Isabelle, Clarissa and I on the
threshold of real live actual high school. We had the slightest
idea what to expect. We were to arrive to the school’s doorstep by
way of the city bus. The three of us stood perfectly dressed with
our messenger bags at our sides with all the other teenagers hoping
to be delivered to the same location in which we were going. We
were disguised in our brand new school clothes we got from our
downtown trip, trying to look the part of normal happy
teenagers.

I stood at the bus stop in jeans, a plain gray
sweater, with a brown buttoned down coat and over the coat a navy
messenger bag stocked with new notebooks and pens. Some canvas gym
shoes called Buck Baylor’s on my feet. I liked the simplicity the
Bucks had to offer. Isabelle had on pretty much the same thing, but
in varying shades of depression. Clarissa wore color. Somehow the
pink she wore added a nice soft color to her cheeks. None of the
other kids at the bus stop looked very enthused. They all swore
under their breath because the bus was late. There was a cold wind
that kept knocking into my ears making me wish I had worn a hat.
The bus pulled up and screeched to a halt and everybody made a mad
dash to get on.

The three of us waited and then got on. There was
definitely nowhere to sit yet alone barely any room to stand.
Everybody was squished on that bus like sardines in a can. I think
a few of the kids were even splat against the bus’s windows looking
like they were bugs squished on a car’s windshield. The bus sped
down the busy city street cutting off whoever it felt like, every
so often screeching to a halt to force another passenger on. When
we finally got to school the bus doors opened and everybody kind of
fell out on top of each other.

A large dark brick building stood in front of us with
an immense green lawn spreading all around it. It looked like part
of a university and not a high school. The building had many gothic
structures, from the windows and doors to the spires on the roof. A
large cement stadium sat next to the school. Supposedly it had been
used in a couple movies. I didn’t know movies very well, so I
wasn’t able to verify people’s claims. We walked up to the school
where there were pools of students waiting at the entrance doors.
We went in through the main entrance because we had to get our
schedules and such.

In the main office we were given our schedules by a
woman with a nasally voice and given some guidelines and
directions. We were then set off to fend for ourselves. The bell
rang and the hallways sprung to life. In an instant people were
shoving past us to get to their lockers. Clarissa, Isabelle and I
stood in the middle of the main hall in everybody’s way. I was
taking it all in. I was quite pleased with my first impression of
the school. The main hallway and entrance was covered in a dark oak
wood paneling with proud pictures and plaques hanging on the walls.
A glass trophy case was filled with glories from the past. The
front hall had an air of academia and sophistication to it.

The floor had has these colored stripes running up
and down the sides. At one time the school was a very crowded prep
school and I was told that the lines were used for crowd control.
One color meant one direction and so and so forth. It made sense,
but they weren’t used anymore. There was a flourish of teenage
bodies swimming all over the halls. We walked down the main hall
and turned left, where much to my disappointment the hall looked
more like a typical high school hall, but I didn’t have much to go
on. That was the first high school hallway I had ever been in.

Either side of the hall was lined with brown lockers.
There were some pendants up on the wall. Some lockers were open
with kids in them pulling stuff out, some had paper sticking out
the cracks, others had kids leaning on them. Isabelle, Clarissa and
I congregated in a small alcove where there were doors that led
into the girls’ locker room. We looked at our schedules trying to
figure out where to go. Isabelle had to go to history on the third
floor, I had to go to American literature on the second floor and
Clarissa had to go geometry which was also on the second floor.

The day had just begun, but I felt I was enjoying it
already. I liked all the commotion and noise and people everywhere.
It was a far different atmosphere than what I was used to. My
sisters and I parted ways. I found my literature class and
cautiously walked in. There were about six rows of desks lined up
across the classroom. They were the kind that were really chairs
and had a small writing surface attached. I soon found out they
were barely big enough to hold anything. The wall directly across
from the door was lined with windows that went almost up to the
ceiling. Light spilled into the room leaving streaks of yellow
across the old worn wood floor.

I wasn’t sure if I should sit down or not. I didn’t
know if there were assigned seats or what. I was one of the first
people there. There was one other kid sitting in the back corner of
the classroom. He had a baseball hat pulled down over his eyes and
his arms were hugged around his body. I was pretty sure he was
asleep. Somebody else shoved past me and went and sat in the third
row. It was a girl with her hair pulled back in a tight black pony
tail. Her facial features seemed to of been pulled back with her
pony tail making for one taut looking face.