Grief Girl (16 page)

He hangs up and I'm on a roll. I walk back out to the scene of the crime.

“Tracy, don't be so stubborn. Let me help. I can pay for it with extra shifts at Cookie Man.”

“No, Erin, forget it. It's over now.”

“No, it's not, and you know it.”

“What do you mean by that?” she says through gritted teeth.

“I could solve all of this by paying for it, but you won't let me.”

“Yeah, because it will take you weeks to make the money and it needs to be fixed today! I'll deal with it the way I do everything else.”

And with that she walks away.

The window repairman comes and asks how it happened. When I tell him, he laughs. It's funny how something can seem so bad to one person and like no big deal to another. He makes me feel better.

Until I turn and see Tracy standing with her arms folded.

September 1984

S
chool feels so empty without Mrs. Stockbridge.

My other teachers keep their distance from me.
“Wait! Calm down,”
I want to say.
“I don't want you to be my mother.”
It's not like I'm looking for any old mother figure. That would be pathetic. I had a mother, thank you very much! I'm discriminating; I don't get close to just anyone. Mrs. Stockbridge and I clicked. That doesn't mean I'm going to cling to any female of mothering age. Give me some credit, please.

I do advanced modern history, where it's just Julie, me, and the teacher, and things are different now. It used to be that we'd laugh and chat, eat scones and sip tea, but now it's all business. I suppose I don't blame the teachers for pulling away. They don't want to be forced to leave the school.

I miss Mrs. Stockbridge. There's no one to talk to. I hate bothering my friends with all this crap. It's not something they should have to hear.

         

“Why don't you talk to me?” Tracy says one night out of the blue.

We're in the kitchen and she's slamming drawers shut.

Despite the Tracyspeak, this is great. She must finally want to
talk
talk. I knew it would happen sooner or later when I least expected it. Some people just take longer than others.

I'm so happy I don't care how much noise she's making with the cupboards. I know she's only doing that because she's nervous. This will be so good for her. She won't be so angry once she talks about things. She's bottling it all up, Merril says.

“Well? Why don't you talk to me?” she repeats.

“Because you've never wanted to talk before. I've tried,” I say.

“I don't understand why you don't talk to me instead of talking to that bloody science teacher of yours!”

What? This isn't how it's meant to go. I'm frozen to the spot.

“She's not even at my school anymore. Anyway, how do you know about her?”

“I don't know exactly, I just heard it somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Well, you know, you seem so pissed off. I needed to know what was going on with you, so I found your diary and read it.”

I can feel the blood rushing from my cheeks. “You read my diary? How could you?”

Yes, I have a secret diary…. Well, not secret anymore.

“I read it for
you,
” she says.

“Oh yeah, what were you going to do? Actually read it, then talk to me, the way I always beg you to?”
I want to say.
“Oh, you care so much, that's why you read it. That's why you searched all my drawers to find it. If you cared so much, you'd
talk
to me instead of being
angry
with me the whole time. You care? You did it for me? Bullshit!”

I can't believe this is happening.
“You're just nosy and want to know how I feel about you. It's all about you. Tracy, Tracy, Tracy.”

Why can't I say any of this to her? Why am I so scared of her?

“Tracy, why didn't you just ask me what was wrong?” I ask instead. I'm not going to cry. “We could help each other through this. We could be such great sisters if only we talked. Please, Tracy. It's not healthy this way. It's getting ridiculous. No one understands better than us what each of us is feeling.”

Okay, so now I'm crying…just a little.

“You fucking idiot, talking to a fucking stranger about our life!” Tracy spits out. “It's pathetic. You should keep this stuff to yourself.”

“I'm sorry, Tracy, but I needed to talk to someone.”

“You can talk to me!” she snaps.

“Every time I try to talk, you get angry and stop me or walk away.”

“Look, Erin, this is our private business. You think some teacher gives a shit about what you have to say? You think she cares?” She's fuming.

I've never thought about it that way before. She's right. I've been talking to a teacher who probably deep down isn't the slightest bit interested. She probably used to go home to her husband and rave on about this stupid girl who wouldn't leave her alone.

No. Would she?

Oh God. Am I a needy, pathetic loser?

“So you really hate me that much, do you?” Tracy asks, looking angry and hurt.

“It's just a diary,” I mutter. “It doesn't mean anything.”

“Yeah, right,” she says, walking away.

I follow her out to the back room. “Tracy, I don't really mean what's in there. I just get so frustrated that we never talk about Mum and Dad or how we feel or anything.”

“Look, forget about it. I know how you feel now,” she says, not looking at me.

“Tracy, please. I don't want us to go on like this. It's awful. We shouldn't be this way.”

“Forget it, Erin. Just go to your room like you always do.”

I feel terrible that Tracy's seen my diary. Now she's hurt when she didn't have to be. That's the point of a diary, isn't it? To get stuff off your chest that you don't really mean—or if you do mean it, it's stuff you would never tell people because it would hurt them. I hate Tracy sometimes, but I don't want to hurt her. Probably because I do understand her and the way she is. She can be a bitch sometimes, but that's because she's so angry and unhappy. I know she can't help it. She's stuck with me and Trent. Her life is ruined.

         

Everything's going to be different from now on. I can feel it. Tracy and I have just had a breakthrough. Maybe the diary discovery was a good thing.

We were on our way to Auntie Connie's for lunch when we started fighting politely.

“You want me to be your mother, and I'm trying. But I just can't do it,” she says out of nowhere.

I stare at her. “What makes you think that?”

“Because that's what you want.”

“I've never said that. I hate that you try to be a mother to me. It drives me up the wall.”

We're on Auntie Connie's verandah. For once Tracy's almost crying. And now I am, as usual. No great shock there.

“Just be my sister. That's all I want,” I say. Suddenly it all makes sense.

“All this time I thought you wanted me to be Mum.” Her voice cracks. “That's why I get so angry. I just can't do everything.”

“I don't expect you to. I just want you to be my sister!” I tell her. “Tracy, we can be a team.”

We hug. We actually hug. It's awkward, but we actually do it. Tracy and I are touching each other. It feels weird but great. It's a true
Days of Our Lives
moment, except there's no bad music, unless of course you count the Greek music wafting from inside through the white wire-screen door.

“All I want is for us to talk and share stuff the way sisters are supposed to. We can help each other get through this, Tracy.”

We're smiling at each other. It's like something has changed, like things might be different after this. We'll do more things together. We'll be friends. We'll bond, because that's what tragedy ultimately does. It brings people together.

“I'll try. I promise I'll try,” Tracy says.

I smile. “Me too.”

         

It's been a week. It isn't working. She tries to smile and be nice, but it's like she can't help herself when she looks at me. It's like she can't stand to be in the same room as me. What is it about me that makes her look at me that way?

Maybe it's something in her subconscious that she doesn't even know about. Or maybe it's nothing like that. Maybe it's that she still has to sign parental guidance forms for me from school. You're not my mother, Tracy, but you have to pretend to be because I'm a minor. I hate how at school they say, “Take this home and get a parent to sign it.” What about all the little kids in the world who don't have any parents? There are a lot of us, I'm sure. I think I'll ask the school if I can sign my own forms from now on.

Anyway, I'm not giving up. Things don't happen overnight.

         

“Auntie Connie, I don't know what to do.” I've walked up to her house after school to get away from ours. Tracy is angry and I'm not sure why. “No matter what I do, Tracy acts like she hates me.”

“Erin, you have to try and be more understanding. She's under a lot of pressure. She's had to become a parent to you and Trent overnight.”

“But I don't
want
her to be a parent to me!”

Now I'm crying and Trent's just come over and hugged me, which makes me cry more. I brought him with me because he loves going to Auntie Connie's place.

“Why are you sad, Erin?” he asks.

I tell him I hurt my foot, so he bends down and rubs it before running back to Peter's room.

“So what do I do?”

“Try and imagine what it's like for Tracy.”

“But I do…all the time.”

“In a way, you're better off than both Trent and Tracy.”

“How?”

“Well, you don't have the responsibility, and think—you at least had your parents for as long as you did. Trent probably won't have any memories.”

I know what she's saying is true. Merril said the same thing. But at the same time, I'm furious. This isn't a picnic for me, either!

Mum always said I was impatient. Maybe people never change. I sure know I need to.

         

My London style has grown out and I need a haircut. I don't want to ask Tracy, but she'll be hurt if I go to anyone else. And it's not like we can afford a fancy salon anyway.

I'm on the kitchen chair wearing her plastic cape and Trent is sitting on the floor coloring.

“Erin, turn your head to the left.” Before I have a chance she's got my head between her hands, turning it for me.

“Turn right.” Grab!
Snap!

“Put your head down.” Push!

Ouch! Did my nose just touch my chest?

I look down at Trent. He's drawing what looks like me in a cape.

“Move your head to the right”—and if I don't do it quickly enough or far enough—shove!—she does it for me.

We talk about my hairstyle. I tell her what I want.

Tracy tsk-tsks. “Oh, you can't have that. Your hair's too thin. It will just fall flat.”

“Well, what about this?” I say, holding my hair up to show how short I'd go.

“No, your face is too chubby.”

“Well, you know best. Just do what you think.”

So she cuts and I sit there terrified as my head almost gets ripped off. Despite all that, she does do a good job. I have to admit, she is a really great hairdresser. If only she had a better chairside manner.

October 23, 1984

I
t's been twelve months already, so why aren't I over it?

The books say that at three months I'll feel this and at six months that and at eight months this….

Books on grief make it all seem so serenely sad. Like you're walking around in a silent, fluffy cloud of dull pain. But it's not really like that. Grief comes up behind you and hits you over the head. There are no angels playing harps in the background, no soft sunsets or fields of flowers blowing in the breeze.

See that person whose mother or husband or child has just died? They look sad and somber, don't they? Tired? Depressed? Calm? Don't be fooled. On the inside they're probably screaming. You just don't see it.

I feel like I've been skinned alive. All red and moist and raw. One bump and I'll be in agony, unable to do anything. I can't be the only one who feels this.

         

The Five Stages of Grief

1. Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

One, two, three, four, and five, you're there.
Bang! You're cured.

Bang! You're dead
is more like it.

And don't forget, all grievers out there are supposedly the same. Taking the same simple steps, on the same sad timetable. You're not special, just another bereaved.
Bereaved.
What a bullshit roundabout word.

Bereaved: greatly saddened.

Sad? Sad is when you say goodbye at the airport, not at a gravesite.

Books on grief think they cover everything, but they can't even get their own covers right. Pretty white flowers on pale pink and yellow backgrounds, beautiful warm orange sunsets. Why are orphans like Annie, Pippi Long-stocking, and Oliver always singing and having adventurous lives?
Don't forget you're just a drop in the ocean—this too will wash away.
That was on one of our stupid sympathy cards.

The books dance around the issue, gloss over it. They don't tell the brutal, intricate truth. They forget to mention that grief is full of unimaginable terror and horror. They make grief seem soft and gentle. Pastel and breezy.

Grief's not like that. Grief's got balls.

         

I may be imagining things, but I think people at school and my boss at the Cookie Man are becoming impatient with me. It's like when I was on the Shopfront tour. I act really happy, but I think they can tell that there's more, and it annoys them or something.

“Come on, Erin, it's been three months!” “…six months!” “…a whole year!” They've seen too many movies where the parent dies, the kid cries and feels sad for a while, and then life resumes as before and the sun shines brightly.

Grief is different for everyone. Look at Tracy and me. How much more different could we be, and we're grieving for the same people. It's been twelve months and she still won't talk about our parents or the accident.

At least, not to me.

One year, and sometimes I actually feel worse than I did eleven months ago.

         

I've decided to turn my pain into art. I'm going to photograph the five stages of grief using my hands as my subject. Julie's helping me. We're using black-and-white film, for that timeless look.

It's early morning. We're in my now perpetually messy backyard. Oh well, great artists are usually poor and have to work with their crummy surroundings, I tell myself.

“Take my photo, Erin.” Trent has just walked out in his checkered flannel bathrobe and slippers. He looks like a little Hugh Hefner.

I shake my head. But he looks so cute with his long eyelashes and short thick hair that I give in.

“Trent, come inside! It's freezing out there,” Tracy calls a few minutes later from the kitchen window.

I've told Tracy I'm doing a school assignment. She'd think I'm crazy if she knew what I'm really doing.

Trent grins at me and Julie and runs inside.

         

Julie and I are set up for our shoot. I drape red fabric over a kitchen chair to give it a theatrical look. The camera's on a tripod I borrowed from school. I focus the lens on the chair.

“Are you
sure
this isn't stupid?” I ask Julie one last time.

She tucks her brown curls behind her ears. “It's not. Now just shut up and do it.”

I kneel beside the chair and plunk my hand in the seat. I'm holding the phone. Julie is behind the camera. “Yes, that looks good,” she tells me. “That's great. Perfect! A little to the right.”

I clear my throat. “Okay, I'll start with the October twenty-third phone call.”

Frame 1: I'm holding the phone in anticipation.

Frame 2: I'm gripping the phone tightly (you can see by my knuckles).

Frame 3: I've dropped the phone on the chair and my hand is open and tensed like it's saying
aaaaah!

“Do you think that looks like the night of October twenty-third?” I ask Julie. I've told her a bit about it, so I trust her judgment. She nods.

“The next frame should be shock,” I say.

I let myself go, I'm really feeling it. My hand's doing a jittery, spastic movement to represent my shaking that night.

“Now!” I say at the peak of my feeling.

“That's weird, but I think it definitely expresses some kind of pain,” Julie tells me, checking the camera.

“Now the ‘fuck you, up yours' shot. I think I'll just stick up my middle finger, what do you think?”

“That just about says it,” Julie answers, and we both start laughing.

We spend the next couple of hours capturing the stages of grief. Of course, there end up being more than five. You can't put grief into five categories. But I didn't expect more than twenty! If the stages are real, then I'm a very jumbled griever. I've jumped from one to two, back to one, two, up to three, back to two, to three, two, one, two, one, one, two, four, one, three, two, four…but never five. Not yet, anyway.

By the time we're done it's getting dark. Julie and I are so tired we pack up and go inside and make a chocolate cake and eat all the batter before we even get a chance to put it in the oven. We do that a lot these days when she comes over…I suppose because we can.

Yes, there are some advantages to this grief thing.

         

It's two days later and I've got my photos back. When I see the pictures of Trent, I feel like a real photographer. But then I look at the grief photos. They're a joke. I'm a joke. I'm no artist. What was I thinking? They don't express anything. They just look like I placed a dismembered hand on a chair. In my “Shock” picture my stunned hand looks like Thing from
The Addams Family.
In my “Death” shot, I look like a hand model doing a skin-care commercial. My “Suicide” picture is particularly stupid. My limp hand is lying there on the chair, holding an open bottle with pills falling out, like in a tragic movie where the heroine tries to kill herself. It might have worked, except the bottle of pills that are meant to symbolize killing myself are
vitamins
! I didn't realize the label would show in the photograph! I can hear the minister now….
“We are here today to celebrate the life and mourn the passing of our dear sister and friend Erin Vincent, whose young body was riddled with that merciless killer, vitamin C.”

I don't even want to show them to Julie. But of course she asks to see them. We lay them out on my bedspread.

“They're good,” she says, picking one up and studying it.

“Come on, I can tell you're just saying that,” I say, crossing my arms. “You're a terrible liar, Julie.”

She shrugs. “Well, they're unique.”

“That's like telling an ugly person they have a great personality.”

Julie laughs. “Okay, they're weird. But think of all the great artists who were mocked in their own time and when they died everyone loved them.”

“Well, there's something to look forward to,” I say, laughing too. I carefully put the photos back in the envelope.

         

Mrs. C-J has offered to take me to see Mum and Dad. That's how she put it.

“Would you like to go and visit your mum and dad?” she asks.

“They're dead. Remember?”

“You know what I mean. Would you like to visit their grave? I'd be more than happy to take you.”

“It's hours away, you know.”

“That's fine.”

Do I really want to go and see where they're buried now that it's all closed up? Do I want to go back there? People always do; you see it in movies all the time. “Um, I don't know.”

She tells me the offer's always there if I want to take her up on it. And then I decide I will. I ask Tracy if she wants to come, but she says she's never going back there.

Mrs. C-J and I take a day off school. I love that I can do things like this…and with a teacher! I feel kind of special.

She comes to the house to pick me up. Mrs. C-J has brought along shovels and gloves and stuff.

“What's all that for?” I ask. Visions of her making me dig them up so I can really believe they're dead fill my head.

She tells me that people always bring gardening tools to keep their loved ones' graves nice.

“Would you like to get some flowers on the way?” she asks.

“I don't know. Should I?”

“Well, I think it would be nice.”

It feels kind of sappy to me, but we get some anyway at a roadside stand. Kind of like the fruit stand Mum and Dad were crossing to that night, but I keep this to myself.

We drive up to the cemetery and it looks just like it did on the days of the funerals. Dry and sunny.

We get out of the car and pull the gardening tools from the trunk. I know exactly where the graves are, but for some reason I pretend I don't.

“I'm not exactly sure where they are,” I call over my shoulder. I walk in the opposite direction of their graves, which are on the edge of the hill.

“Here they are, Erin!” yells Mrs. C-J. I don't know if yelling in a graveyard is okay, but we're the only ones here in this small country cemetery, so it's probably fine.

“Oh yeah, that's right. I remember now,” I say, trying to act surprised. It's weird that Nanny's grave is next to theirs. Who would've thought you could visit a grave and end up buried beside it two weeks later?

I look, but don't really look, at the headstones, and then Mrs. C-J and I clean up all the weeds and dead flowers. I wonder if anyone else has ever been to visit their graves. I feel nothing.

When we're done, she says, “I'm just going to leave you to have some time to yourself, Erin.”

I shake my head. “That's okay. I don't need it.”

“Still, I think you should, and I need some shade.”

So she walks back to her station wagon and I sit on the edge of the grave. I know I should cry, but all I feel is sick to my stomach. I'm probably supposed to talk to them, but I'm not about to start talking to a rock.

What would I say anyway?
“Hi, how's heaven? Are you in heaven or are you just a bunch of nothing under there? So, Mum and Dad. Why did you leave? It's bad enough for Tracy and me, but what about Trent? How could you?”

If you want to speak to your dead parents, I don't think a cemetery is the place. It's where their bodies are perishing, rotting away, with worms crawling through their eye sockets. Gross. If there's one place in the world where my mother and father aren't, it's here. If they are floating around, I doubt they'd hang around some boring old gray headstone, living it up with all the other decayed bodies. I don't understand this whole graveyard thing. It's just an ugly gray rectangular rock sticking up from the ground, surrounded by a bunch of smaller rocks…and now my stupid yellow flowers. It's awful.

“Well, I know you're not here, but I love you. Bye.”

And we pack up the car and drive away.

I'm not going again. My parents aren't there. It's just rocks with their names on it. That's not them.

         

I've decided there is no God. So why am I opening the Bible? This stupid white leather Bible Mum gave me years ago?

“Oh, thanks, Mum, it's beautiful. I'll read it every day.”

What a big fat liar I was. I tried to read it, but it was a bit boring with all the
thee
s and
thou
s. But still, here I sit. Flipping the gold-edged pages like some loser who can't handle things.

Mrs. C-J mentioned something in scripture class today, and I'm curious. I suppose it's no different than looking in one of my history books about slavery in the United States or foot binding in China. I like to educate myself. I want to make something of my life. You don't experience something as big as your parents' dying and not feel an urge to make something of yourself. I don't want to be one of those kids who have something bad happen and then they go down the tubes and end up in the gutter on drugs with scraggly hair and black circles under their eyes. What would be the point of all this suffering if I end up a big fat nothing?

So
that's
why I'm checking out the Bible. It's just another book, really. It's considered great literature in some circles. Full of great stories: murder, revenge, sex, adultery, brothers killing brothers, women turning into salt…

Anyway, Mrs. C-J said there was something in the Bible I might like.

“Erin, you should take a look at Job—I think it may be of interest to you.”

Job's miserable, but he wasn't always that way. Job had a happy family and a successful business. Then one day Satan says to God, “I'll bet if you take away all his riches, all he has, he won't be faithful to you. He only loves you because his life is so good.” So God says, “I can prove to you how much Job loves me. You do whatever you like to him, make him suffer all you want, and I'll bet he still loves me and not you.”