Grief Girl (8 page)

Every night I like to go in and check that he's still breathing. He's asthmatic, like me. I've learned children's CPR just in case.

I think I'm going to be the first fourteen-year-old in history to die of a heart attack. I can't sleep.

Mum's been dead for more than six weeks and Dad's been dead for two weeks and I still can't get a decent night's sleep. Do teenagers get stomach ulcers? Is this what parents go through? Is this what Mum meant when she said she'd die if anything ever happened to us? No wonder she always looked so exhausted. This protective thing really takes it out of you. I wonder if parents are so stressed out about their children's safety that they sometimes wish they'd never had them. Maybe it's just not worth the trouble.

January 1984

I'
m going back to school again. But this time it's with two dead parents, not one.

I'm going back to school even earlier than people expect me to. I'm not putting that short, ugly, traffic-light green school uniform on again. I've earned that right, haven't I?

I don't want my stupid, fat, tree-trunk legs showing. Tracy's always said that people with legs like mine should wear long pants and skirts, and I trust her judgment on these things.

I'm wearing dark green slouchy men's work pants I got at the thrift store. They're “tough and built to last,” it says on the pocket.

I need a big, baggy, oversized shirt to go with them, but I don't have one. Tracy doesn't either—all her clothes are designed to fit tight, tight, tight—and I'm not about to start wearing Chris's clothes.

I suppose I could wear something of Dad's. Would that be gross? Would a psychiatrist say it's a sign of something more?

If I want to do that, I have to go into their bedroom. The thought of going in there makes me sick, but I have to. I want a shirt and I don't really know why.

I walk down the hall toward their closed, cream-colored door.

I turn the fake gold handle.

The room has a thick air in it. It's like there's a silent echo in here.

When I walk in, it's like in horror movies when a person stands at a door knowing they don't have a choice, they have to walk into the dark room.

“Don't go in there, don't go in there,”
the audience says. But you just know they will.

The sheer cream curtains are closed, and a dull light is coming through them. The bed with the gold bedspread is perfectly made. Like it would be anything else, Erin, you idiot. They're not going to suddenly reappear and have a snooze!

Mum's books are on their wooden bookshelf at the head of the bed. I've always wanted a headboard like it, with a light and bookshelves with frosted glass doors in the middle. Mum's books make me angry.

I'm OK—You're OK.
Easy for you to say, Mum.
How to Look Younger and Live Longer.
Yeah, that worked. Were you actually reading these?

I walk toward their double closet, which runs along the whole of one wall. Mum's crystal face-cream jars and ring holders are already dusty and it's only been two months. It's strange. I can do anything I want in here. I can look at anything. Not many kids get to do that with their parents' room. The dead sure don't get much privacy. I must be sure before I die to get rid of anything that will incriminate me or make me look like an idiot.

I find a shirt in the first drawer I look at. It's one of Dad's favorites. A half white/half gray polo shirt with a thin red line across the front, crossing my chest, my heart…how truly deep and meaningful. Very symbolic. It's nice and big, Dad having been extra large and all. I think he stretched it with his beer gut. A man with a beer gut who didn't drink beer. Strange. Wow, this shirt actually looks good with my pants. I quite like it, not that I thought much of it when Dad wore it.

I'm ready for school. I feel cool. I feel fuck you. I feel like one of the tough girls from school who sit at the back of the bus snarling at all the sissies like me in the front. No one would want to mess with me now. I don't care what happens to me, so just try it, bitches.

         

Everyone at school is looking at me strangely all over again. Another Mrs. C-J school prayer, no doubt. Or are they just admiring my guts at not wearing the school uniform?

They all seem to be looking at me and feeling sorry for me and whispering,
“There's the girl whose parents died. What a poor, sad loser.”

I'm sitting in the playground on the cold metal benches.

“Think you're better than the rest of us?”

It's three tough girls from the grade above me. The heavily tanned “we're so cool we spend our weekends screwing surfer dudes at the beach” type. The type who pinned me and threatened to flush my head down the toilet when I first got to this school.

“What d'ya mean?” I always tend to speak like an uneducated moron when speaking to real-life uneducated morons. It's actually out of fear that they'll think I'm acting superior and punch me in the face.

“What's with ya fancy nails and clothes?”

“I—I just thought they'd look good,” I say. So much for tough and built to last.

“Think you're pretty gorgeous, do ya? Better than the rest of us?” says gum-chewing toughie number one.

“Ya don't know how lucky ya are,” says toughie number two with the big red greasy zit on her left cheek.

Lucky? I thought having dead parents would release me from their trivial bullshit. I thought girls like this would respect me more. Isn't it cool to be a tortured teen?

“Ya don't have to answer to no one now,” number two continues.

Hmmm…it seems not everybody at school got into the groove of the mass prayer session. Some people obviously don't think I needed it. I've hit the jackpot.

“Yeah,” says moron number three. “Ya can do whatever ya want now, ya can come and go as ya please. I wish I didn't have parents that I had to ask permission for stuff. I wish I was in your shoes.”

“Yeah? Well, step right in. I think they'll fit
ya
nicely. They'll be a bit tight and painful at first, and you'll probably get a few blisters, but you'll get used to it.”

I
wish
I said something like that, but of course I didn't. I'm just standing here smiling like an idiot.
Smiling!
Why the hell am I smiling, and why can't I stop? Say something, for God's sake!

“I never thought of it like that. It's not that great, you know.”

Oh, that'll get 'em, Erin. Have some balls! Why can't I yell at them and tell them what I really think? What have I got to lose now? Why don't I tell them that I want to ask my parents' permission, that I want them to care if I come home or not? That soon enough I'll realize that wearing my father's shirt is a pathetic way to hold on to him? That every day after school I have to take three deep breaths before walking inside the house? Why don't I gouge their eyes out with my fabulous new nails? Why don't I tell them that every minute of the day is agony, and no amount of nail polish and no number of parties is going to change that? Why don't I tell them that I live in fear, thinking my brother or sister will die at any moment? Why don't I tell them that going to bed at night is terrifying? That I can't close my eyes without seeing Mum's and Dad's bodies slowly rotting? That every morning when I wake up I have a second or two of forgetting before it all comes crashing back like I've been hit by a car and I have to go through the shock and horror of it all over again—before I've even had breakfast! That for the first time in my miserable, chubby-faced life I have cheekbones and don't want to eat because the thought of food makes me sick? Or that I'm tired and don't have the energy for all this and can't imagine how I'm going to get on with life?

Why do I just smile and walk away?

These bitches who think they're so great. Oh yeah, girls, it's okay to hear you complain about your terrible parents who won't let you stay out as late as you want while I can do anything. I can't even sit through a whole class without wanting to scream and run around the classroom before charging through the window headfirst.

It must be fun to be that stupid.

         

I've lived a more interesting life than this. I just know it.

I'm in history class. It's one of my favorite classes because all my friends are in it. We always get in trouble in history because we can't stop talking and laughing. We're laughing and I feel guilty, like I must not have really loved my parents.

Our cute blond-bobbed teacher, Mrs. Pry, is teaching us about old Russia.

I lived in tsarist Russia. I can feel it.

Every time Mrs. Pry holds up a picture of Tsar Nicholas's palace, inhabited by his regal but greedy family, I see myself standing outside with the rest of the poor angry peasants dressed in beige (God forbid), shouting for better conditions because our lives suck. Hmmm…maybe that's why I have such a deep-seated hatred for beige.

All around me I see what
isn't
in the picture my teacher is showing us: the cobbled streets, the dome-topped buildings that look like colorful ice cream cones. I smell the other stinky peasants…or is that me? Maybe it is me…the current me. I have been wearing Dad's shirt to school and to bed every night and haven't washed it, or my hair, for a while. What's the point?

I love how when it comes to reincarnation everybody says they were once a princess or an emperor, never a low-down poverty-stricken nobody.

A couple of years ago I watched
Doctor Zhivago
with Mum and felt like I'd seen it before. I'm still not sure if it was a rerun or if I really felt a connection to Mother Russia. Maybe Mum's Edgar Cayce books are right. Maybe we do keep being reborn. Maybe Mum was on to something when she said you can come back as a cockroach if you're bad and all that.

I wonder where Mum and Dad are now? Could they be the kittens at the pet shop, the newborn babies I see being pushed in strollers at the mall where I work?

I suppose I'll never know.

Anyway, if they were reborn, Mum would come back as a thin, glamorous movie star, and Dad would be a chef with a restaurant full of regulars who all say “Hi, Ron” as they walk in.

         

Tracy has to quit her full-time job at the hair salon. She has to drive Trent to and from preschool/daycare, so will now only work a half day a week at the salon and do private haircuts in our kitchen.

Chris is helping support us, working at a car body shop. Maybe that's where he takes out a lot of his frustration…hammering away at cars instead of us. Chris never gets angry or impatient. He's so calm. I wonder why a twenty-two-year-old guy would want to put himself in the thick of all this. He really must love Tracy a lot.

I'm working at Cookie Man on Thursday nights and Saturdays and will work full-time during my school breaks. We also get a small family allowance from the government for Trent, so among the four of us we're making almost enough to survive, as long as we're careful.

No new clothes (it's not like we're going anywhere, plus I like wearing Dad's shirt). No fancy food, like ice cream and chocolate (I'm not so into food these days; neither is Trent, and Tracy never was). Lights off when you leave a room (we were supposed to do that when life was normal, but never did). No long showers and no baths (except for Trent, but he's so little he doesn't use much water. Sometimes I put my swimsuit on and bathe with him). And (the only one that bugs me, because I like to have my own) borrowed, not bought, textbooks and novels.

It all runs smoothly. As long as nothing goes wrong.

         

“The fridge has stopped working,” Tracy says on Monday morning after having just done our food shopping the day before. “If this food spoils, we're screwed. We don't have any food money left for another couple of weeks!” She's crying.

It's funny, she can cry for a fridge but not for her parents. I guess the tears are all the same, really. I know she's devastated too, I just wish she'd share it with me.

Chris is quickly on the floor trying to fix the fridge, and Trent brings out a blue plastic toy hammer. It's amazing how he can make us smile at the worst of times. Chris fiddles and Trent knocks his hammer on the fridge door but nothing happens.

“I'm sorry, I've got to leave for work,” Chris says, getting up. “I'll call you when I get there.”

He kisses Tracy and Trent goodbye.

“We'll just have to call Ronald,” Tracy says.

Ronald is the executor of the wills. The wills were written when Nanny was still alive, naming her as the person to take care of us if something happened. Now that she's gone, it's passed on to Ronald.

Tracy was furious when we found out. “I can't believe they didn't change their wills. I should be the one looking after this!”

So Ronald is in charge of the little bit of savings Mum and Dad had after their debts were paid, as well as any money that might come from the possible court case against the driver who hit them. It's all blood money, if you ask me.

“Hi, Ronald. It's me, Tracy…. Good, thanks. Well, actually not really. Our fridge has broken down and it's full of food…. Could you please put some of our money into my account so we can get it fixed before everything defrosts?…Yes, Chris tried to fix it before leaving for work, but it's still broken…. Please, Ronald, all our food is going to be ruined…. What? What do you mean it's not the kind of thing the money is for? If you don't want to think of us, think of Trent, for God's sake! We don't want to lose him…. What if the courts find out we don't have food for him? Grandma and Grandpa will come and take him. Please, Ronald, we won't have any food left and we can't afford to buy more until next month….” She's starting to cry. “So that's it then, you won't give us our own money?
Fine!
”

Tracy slams the phone down.

“Let me talk to him,” I say, grabbing the phone.

“Don't bother, Erin. He won't do it. ‘I'm doing this for your own good,' he said.”

“So what does he expect us to do?” I ask.

“God only knows,” she says.

Our suddenly stupid uncle seems to think that depriving us now will leave us with more for the future. But what the hell kind of future will we have if we don't get through the now part?

It doesn't make sense that he's being stingy with our money. Mum would be furious if she knew. She always said that if someone was tight with money, or obsessed with it, you couldn't trust them. They didn't have giving hearts.