Authors: Carmen Rodrigues
It’s a stupid question, so I give an equally stupid response. “Life is hard, right?”
Dean Schwartz nods vigorously, like I’ve said something wise. He snaps my file shut and clasps his hands together. “Yes, life
is
hard. But we survive. We move forward. I’m sure you’ll be
fine after the summer’s over. Nothing like a little sun and rest to set you straight. And you’d be surprised how time heals most wounds. It’s a cliché because it’s true, you know.” He rises, and because it seems logical, I rise too.
At the door, he pats me awkwardly on the back, nodding his head the way guys do to each other. Then his gaze shifts just a little to the right. He seems elsewhere now, thinking of more pleasant things, like golf carts and wooden tees. Or maybe his thoughts are of what he must do next, the moment after I leave. All I know is that his thoughts are no longer with me.
THREE YEARS BEFORE.
I said, “You’ve got to talk to her, Mom. You’ve got to say something to her.”
Mom sat across from me at the kitchen table, wearing her scrubs and smelling like disinfectant. Several gray strands hung loose from her ponytail. “What do you want me to say, Jake?” Her eyes drooped down to her hands. She rubbed the stem of her wineglass, dipped her finger into the liquid, and pressed the wet tip to the dark wood. “You know how your sister is. She’s different.” She paused, and for a second I thought she wanted to say more, divulge some new piece of information that might help me understand Ellie. But that was not the case. “Sometimes, she
likes attention. A part of her wants to do things to shock us. If I talk to her now, that part will know her antics worked, and she’ll just get more and more dramatic. That’s not what either of us wants. This cutting thing is just the latest stage. It’ll fade.”
“But what if it doesn’t?” I studied her, the dark bags under her eyes, the skin cracking across her palms.
She sighed, took another sip. “We’ve been through this before. The self-tattooing. The nose piercing. The running away. Remember she did that every other night last December? She’s like that. She’s . . .” Again she dipped her finger in wine and pressed it to the table. Two red fingerprints side by side. “She’s still angry and probably incredibly confused. And she won’t go to therapy. And the therapist said that’s because she’s not ready. I tried to force the issue. Remember? But she just got worse. She wouldn’t talk about it.”
“That was before, Mom. She was scared. She’s fourteen now. She’s ready.”
“Yeah?” She stood up, went to the kitchen counter, and grabbed her pack of cigarettes. “Maybe she’s not. Maybe we just need to let it go for now. And maybe you,” she said, turning to me, her eyes hard, “should just leave all of this alone. I know you think you understand what’s going on, but you don’t. You need to trust me, okay? I’m the mom here. When your sister is really
ready for help, she’ll ask.” She grabbed the bottle, tucked it under her arm, and went outside to sit by the pool. I watched her for a while, even though I knew she’d dangle her feet in the water and smoke cigarette after cigarette until her bottle was gone. This was her after-work routine.
Eventually, I went to Ellie’s bedroom. I didn’t know why, exactly. I thought maybe I could talk some sense into her. A part of me expected that her door would be shut and that she wouldn’t open it for me no matter how hard I knocked. But she wasn’t in her room, and when I went into the living room, I found her sitting there in the dark.
She said, “I heard every word. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine. And she’s right, you know. I just want all that to be in the past. Why can’t you let it be in the past, Jake?” She looked at me, tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, but I knew they wouldn’t fall. She’d just stand at the edge of it, somehow able to hold it all in.
I sat down beside her, rolled up the sleeve of her striped shirt, and stared at the cuts on her arm, raised, ridged. Painful, red-puckered skin in different stages of healing. I looked at Ellie, and I knew that my eyes had welled up too. I found it hard to breathe. I said, “This is not fine.”
She looked toward the kitchen. “You heard what she said,
Jake. She wants to forget everything that happened. She wants to make me disappear.”
I reached for her hand, remembering her at age four, when she always wanted to hold mine but I never let her. “I think you’re misunderstanding what she means. She feels like she’s tried with you.”
Ellie laughed. She said, “You know she bought me an extra-long robe to use when Sargeant’s around? She tells me my shirts are revealing when they’re not.”
“That’s not true,” I told her. Ellie often had a way of misconstruing my mother’s words and intentions. “She’s just being protective. She’s just taking precautions—”
“Then why bring Sargeant here at all? Why’d she get married again if she wants to take precautions?”
“She has to move on, Ellie. She has to . . .” I stalled out here. Explaining why our mother always needed to be married was beyond me.
“Why do you always defend her, Jake? Why can’t you ask yourself why
we’re
not enough for her?” Ellie pulled her hand back onto her lap and rolled down her sleeve. “And I’ll tell you something, Jake. I don’t care what she says; she blames me for what happened. I know she does.” She stood. It was obvious she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I could have forced the
issue, but I didn’t. These conversations were just too hard.
She pointed to her arm and said, “I’ll stop. Okay? I won’t do this anymore.” She walked to the hallway and paused. She didn’t turn around, but I heard her say, “I’m sorry, Jake.” Seconds later I heard her music blaring.
Alone again, I returned to the kitchen. I stood at the sliding glass door and watched my mom smoke cigarette after cigarette. I imagined each burning ember was a memory she hoped would disappear.
It
o
nly takes an instant f
o
r me t
o b
e
b
ack there with y
o
u. “
O
h, Ellie, I like t
o
make y
o
u laugh,” y
o
u’d say, and I imagine h
o
w that must have s
o
unded t
o
my m
o
ther in the kitchen, her hands su
b
merged in s
o
apy water as she stared
o
ff int
o
the distance.
B
ut we were in the family r
oo
m. Me, fl
o
ating s
o
mewhere
o
utside my
bo
dy, praying this time w
o
uld
b
e different, hearing the nerv
o
us s
o
und
o
f my laughter until y
o
ur hand f
o
und that place M
o
m calls private. Then the r
oo
m went silent. The
o
nly n
o
ise the s
o
und
o
f y
o
ur heavy
b
reathing. And me, pinned
b
eneath the weight
o
f my fear, eyes glued t
o
the dist
o
rted length
o
f M
o
m’s shad
o
w, spilling int
o
the hallway.
BEFORE. AUGUST.
Thirty minutes after Lola left, I made my way downstairs, past my parents and my sisters still lying on the couch, and through the kitchen door. Outside, I stopped to let the heat wrap around me. It was a balmy night with a light breeze, a full moon hanging low in the dark sky.
I eased my way into the bushes beside the stairs, crouching low until I felt the dirt. I emerged a few minutes later with scraped palms, dirty hands, and Ellie’s sketch pad. I stopped at the foot of the stairs to brush the dirt from my jeans. That’s when I heard Sarah’s voice behind me: “What are you doing?”
I spun around, the sketch pad hidden behind my back. She and Ellie stood a few feet away, watching me.
“Spying, Jess?” Ellie asked, an amused expression on her face. It was the first time she had really spoken to me since we kissed.
“What’s behind your back?” Sarah asked.
“Nothing.” I shuffled backward, felt the stairway just beneath my heel.
Sarah stepped forward, her face scrunching up. “No, you’re hiding something, and why are you dressed like that?”
I looked down. I was still dressed in Lola’s black leotard and leggings.
“Rob a bank?” Ellie asked, and again we made eye contact.
“It’s just something Lola left me . . . for a project.” I took step after step until I reached the door, my hand desperately seeking the knob.
“Jess, you’re freaking me out,” Sarah said. “What’s behind your back?”
“Yeah, weirdo.” Ellie skirted Sarah and hopped up the stairs. She stopped before me, placed her hands on my waist, and whispered, “Let me see, Jess.”
Sarah laughed. “You’re scaring her, Ellie. Look at her face. Just leave it. She can have her secret.”
“Let. Me. Go,” I whispered.
“You don’t want me to let you go.” Ellie’s voice was dangerously
low. “Do you?” She gripped my hips tighter. “Do you?”
I shook my head, because the truth was, I didn’t want her to let me go. Not ever.
“Ellie, come on.” Sarah watched from the grass below, amused. “Let her go. I’m totally going to pee my pants.”
“I will,” Ellie said over her shoulder, “when she shows me what’s in her hands.” She turned to me, her expression serious. “Show me.”
Finally, I found the doorknob. The door swung open, just as Ellie reached for the sketch pad. Our bodies pressed together. I could have stepped back, but instead I held still. She did the same. When she pulled away, the sketch pad was in her hands.
“How did you get this?” Her eyes widened in disbelief.
“I—I don’t know,” I whispered.
“What do you mean, you don’t—”
“Well?” Sarah now stood a step below. She peered over Ellie’s shoulder, but the staircase was too narrow for her to see much of anything. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing,” Ellie said, slightly dazed. She handed the sketch pad back to me and gave me a little shove. “God. Go on, weirdo.” Her voice had somehow resumed its typically bored tone.
I spun around and through the doorway, as Sarah called out after me, “Wait! I wanted to see.”
“It was nothing . . . ,” I heard Ellie say. Her voice lowered, the words a series of mumbles, followed by the faint sound of Sarah’s laughter.
* * *
That night I climbed into bed early, tucking Ellie’s sketch pad beneath my pillow for safekeeping. I listened to my family below—my parents and baby sisters finishing
The NeverEnding Story
, while Sarah and Ellie joked around in the kitchen.
The block was quiet. Old Mrs. Sawyer had turned out her porch light. And Mr. Lumpnick had just walked Molly down the street, stopping to sneak a cigarette by the fire hydrant as she sniffed for scents of friends or nemeses.
When the music for the movie’s final credits rolled, the TV was turned off—Mom herded Mattie and Meg off to bed while Dad went into the kitchen to tell Sarah and Ellie to take it upstairs.
Minutes later, Ellie entered the room alone and found me reading the nearest book. From the bathroom came the definitive gurgle of water running through pipes, and Sarah singing.
“Reading?” Ellie asked, her voice neutral despite our previous encounter.
“Um, yeah.” My plan was to seem busy until Sarah got out of the shower, but I wasn’t exactly convinced this was enough to avoid the inevitable confrontation.
“Interesting?” she said.
“Um, yeah.” The nearest book had been Sarah’s SAT prep book, and so I added, “I want to give myself plenty of time to prepare.”
I heard her unzip her overnight bag.
“So, not interesting?” she said. “You don’t have to stare at the wall, Jess. We’re both girls.”
“I—I was reading my book,” I said, but I lowered it slightly to prove I was perfectly capable of looking at her. She sat on Sarah’s bed now, wearing only a pair of panties. Her nightgown was folded neatly beside her.
I lifted the book up quickly so that it blocked my view of her completely. But the image of her undressed stayed in my head.
A few seconds later she sat down beside me, the heat of her body pressing against my thigh. She was wearing the gown now, the hem just barely covering her upper thigh. She lowered my book and stared at me with intense eyes. “Is what you’re reading or what you just saw more interesting than my journal?” Her voice was cold, the indifference replaced with a quiet anger.
“I . . . I . . .” I looked down, my eyes focusing on a tiny bleach
stain on my blanket. “I’m sorry,” I finally said, my voice unbearably hoarse.
She took the book and set it aside. “Look at me, Jess. Did you break into my house tonight?”
Slowly I raised my eyes to hers, afraid of what I might find. Her mouth was a straight line, but there was a slight quiver in her jaw.