Grief Girl (9 page)

“There's nothing worse than stinginess, in my book…. It says a lot about a person,” Mum often said.

She's right; I'm beginning to notice that the ones with money are always the stingy ones, and the poor people are the ones helping others with the little they have. It's all upside down.

“Maybe we could call a repairman and tell him our situation and he might let us pay later,” I suggest.

“No, that won't work…. Just let me think,” Tracy says in a tone that tells me to be quiet for a minute.

So she thinks, and I go to the broken fridge and look around in the dark for Trent's breakfast. He's now in the living room watching cartoons.

“I don't want to do this,” Tracy says, “but we're going to have to ask someone for a loan to get it fixed before we lose all the food. God, this is so wrong that we have to do this when we have the money, but bloody Ronald won't let us touch it.”

“Who can we go to?” I ask.

Tracy looks miserable. “We'll have to ask Auntie Connie and Uncle Steele.”

“I'll go up and ask,” I say. How much more shame could we possibly feel?

“No, you don't have to do that. I'll go. It's my responsibility.”

“No, it's not, it's
our
responsibility. It's fine. I'll go, I want to,” I say, running into my room to get out of my pajamas and out of the house before she decides to go up herself.

         

I'm walking up the hill to Auntie Connie's place once again. I seem to do this walk a lot. She's sure to be sick of us by now, but we don't know what else to do. I ring the doorbell and she greets me with her usual big open smile and even bigger hug. It's weird coming to this house; it's so full of love, yet there still lingers some of the coldness from that horrible night.

“Hi, Erin, come in, come in.”

I tell her about the fridge and Ronald, and before I even have to humiliate myself by asking, she's got her wallet out.

“We'll pay you back as soon as we can, as soon as we all get paid.”

“There's no need for that,” Auntie Connie says.

“Auntie Connie, I'm not taking it unless you promise you'll let us pay it back!”

Auntie Connie and Uncle Steele own a gas station and act to us like they have all the money in the world, but if that were the case, they'd have a swimming pool.

“There's no need to pay it back, but okay, if you insist.”

“Thank you so much, Auntie Connie, I don't know what we'd do without you.” Now I'm crying like an idiot.

“Don't be silly, we love you so much. It makes us feel good to be able to help. I wish we could do more.”

I don't understand how a neighbor can be more caring than our own family and Mum and Dad's friends. We haven't heard from anyone in weeks.

Who said blood is thicker than water? They obviously had strange blood or didn't know much about water. As I learned in biology, we have a lot more water in our bodies than blood.

I walk back down the hill with two hundred dollars hidden in my hand. I hate the feel of it, but I must think of Trent's little tummy, if nothing else.

“Auntie Connie loaned it to us. She wanted to give it to us, of course!” I tell Tracy, who's sitting at the kitchen table with Trent on her lap and a stack of bills in front of her.

“I know. She just called. God, I hate this. I've called a repair place, they'll be here in an hour.”

“Thank goodness. Well, I'd better get ready for school.”

“Oh, Erin!” Tracy says, looking at the clock. “You'll be late.”

“I don't care,” I say with defiance. I'm late all the time now. They don't bother me about that kind of stuff anymore.

“Let me drive you when I take Trent to school,” Tracy says really kindly.

“Nah, honestly, it's no big deal.”

“Erin, please let me.” She's almost crying again.

“Okay.”

It's strange. Tracy and I get along best when something goes wrong—something outside of ourselves, that is.

I get dressed and Tracy gets Trent ready in his shorts and shirt. We all get in the red Beetle and it feels like family.

At Trent's school, our old school, we walk him to class, me on one side, Tracy on the other, holding his soft little hands. He looks up at us and smiles and we look at each other and do the same. We start swinging him in the air between us, and he giggles uncontrollably. I feel like I'm in a gushy movie, and I hope it never ends. Or at least that there'll be a sequel. We then drive to my school, which is about five minutes away.

“Tracy, this is the wrong gate.”

“Damn it, Erin! Look at the traffic. Can't you just get out here!” she says impatiently.

Me and my big mouth! Why do I always have to spoil things?

I start to say “Good luck with the fridge,” but she drives off before I get the whole sentence out. I don't want to go to school, but I guess I have to. I'm going to give us a future where if a fridge breaks, we can afford to fix it.

         

The next week when Julie is over to do homework with me, we decide to take precautionary measures after we go to the minifridge (which is only big enough for a few beer cans) behind Dad's bar and notice the freezer is iced up.

“Do you think we could fix it?” Julie says.

“I'll go to the garage and get a hammer or something,”

We start chipping away at the ice and I hit metal, and the fridge stops humming.

“Oh shit! Something's wrong. Tracy's going to kill me.”

“I'll tell her,” Julie kindly offers.

“Then she'll just kill you
and
me.”

I go to Tracy, who is in the kitchen cutting a client's hair. She's making more money doing it at home than at the salon.

“Tracy…I'm so sorry, I was just trying to help.”

“What? What did you do?”

I tell her and she just shrugs and says don't worry about it.

This can't be true. Maybe she isn't mad because it's Dad's fridge and she's more angry at him than at me. Or maybe she's trying too, and some days it's easier than others.

When the client goes home and Julie's in my room studying, I ask again, just in case.

“You're really not angry?”

“No, Erin, I'm not! I don't give a damn about Dad's stupid fridge.”

Now seems like the perfect time to ask Tracy something I've been dying to ask.

“Tracy, I know you probably don't want to talk about it, but…what did Dad say to you that time in the hospital before he died?”

Dad had asked me to take Trent for ice cream so he could speak to Tracy alone. At the time she said he just wanted to talk about practical things like money and Trent, but I had a feeling it was something more. Tracy appeared strangely sad after it.

“He cried and cried and said he was sorry for the way he treated me.”

Dad was always horrible to Tracy and she hated him. When he would force us to do things, he would yell at me, but he'd yell louder at her. When it was homework time, I would work in my room, but Dad would force Tracy to sit with him at the dining room table while he berated her for not understanding. She would cry and he would yell and I would sit in my room and cry for her while guiltily feeling relieved it wasn't me.

“How do you feel about him now?” I ask.

“I don't know. But what about you? Don't you remember him kicking the shit out of you? You were about six or seven.”

“No. What do you mean?”

“When you left your bike in the driveway and he ran over it. He stormed in the house and really laid into you. You were lying on the floor watching TV and he started kicking you in the stomach over and over again. It was awful.”

“I sort of remember something like that.”

“Yeah, well, Erin…that was our dad.”

I get home from school and the house needs vacuuming. I promised Tracy before I left this morning that I'd do it when I got home, but I want to do my homework first. I can't fail at school on top of everything else.

I'm almost done writing an essay when I hear Tracy arrive home.

Oh no! I haven't vacuumed yet!

Tracy is in the kitchen clanking and clunking dishes. I run out.

“Did you vacuum?”

“Oh, Tracy. I haven't yet.”

“Fine. I'll do it myself.”

“I'm going to do it. I was just finishing my homework.”

“Just forget it, Erin. I'll do it myself.”

I run to the closet to get the vacuum and she snatches it from me.

“Erin, I asked you to do it and you didn't, so don't worry.”

I tell her I'll do it now, but she won't let me.

“Erin, stop making it worse. Just go back in your room!”

“Please, Tracy. I'm sorry. I'm begging you. Please let me do it. I can do it right now.” I start crying, and that makes her angrier.

“Stop blubbering. Now go away!”

So I sit in my room, with a sick feeling in my stomach, and listen to the sound of the vacuum cleaner. It sounds like what I imagine a hurricane might sound like.

We're all going to see a psychiatrist!

The lawyers want to get us while we're fresh. There's going to be a court case, and they need to know how affected we are.

Even Trent has to go. I hope they don't decide we're unfit to look after him.

I wonder if Tracy and I'll get to lie down on a brown leather couch and look at the ceiling. I don't want to go but am kind of excited at the same time. Secretly I hope the doctor discovers I have insurmountable problems, that I'm a complete loony and I need to keep seeing him. That I'm such a tragic case he'll definitely need me for follow-ups. I quite like the idea of talking to a stranger. Why do I think sick stuff like this? Here's me thinking I'm not really a loony, hoping he'll think I am, when maybe the truth is I am nuts and don't even realize it. Don't they say that crazy people don't know they're crazy? I'm doomed either way. I can't win. Either I am crazy, or I'm sick enough to want to be seen as crazy. Attention-seeking behavior, they call it. How humiliating to be so transparent.

I'm not so excited now we're here. It's just like a regular doctor's office…not dark and brooding and glamorous at all. I thought it would be all wood and leather sofas, but the waiting room walls are white and the metal chairs have gray vinyl cushioning.

Tracy goes in first while Trent and I sit in the dreary waiting room.

After twenty minutes it's my turn. As I go in, Tracy says, “Don't hold back. Say everything,” which is weird coming from her. She's always telling me to shut up about Mum and Dad.

I go into the psychiatrist's tiny, cluttered office. He doesn't even have a couch for me to lie on. I sit in a wooden chair. He's sitting behind his big brown desk that takes up most of the room. I feel like I'm going for a job interview, except that when you go for a job they look at you a lot to see if you're honest and all that. This guy isn't looking at me at all. You'd think he'd be looking for the madness in my eyes or to see if I have any twitches or anything. But no, all I can see is his profile, which isn't a pretty sight…a big red nose and a shiny bald head. The window behind him is closed and the brown curtains are drawn. It's dark and gloomy in here, and everything is casting a dark shadow.

“So tell me how you feel about your parents' dying,” he begins.

I blab away and he writes in his big green book. I must get myself one of those. Then I could write my babble down and be my own psychiatrist. I'm speaking way too fast for him to be able to keep up, the way I always do when I'm nervous.

I try to slow down and breathe between sentences, but the words just keep sprinting out of me. I'm tempted to say something outrageous to catch him off guard, but I'd better not. This is important, the lawyers said. Because my parents weren't at a pedestrian crossing when they were hit, the tow truck driver isn't going to be charged with murder or manslaughter or anything, even though Dad said he was speeding. But Dad's dead now, so what does he know?