Someone I Wanted to Be (30 page)

“Oh my God, we are late!” said Cindy.

I actually reached for her hand, but Cindy hugged herself and tucked her hands into her armpits. I pulled open the door and we looked in. There was an entryway and double doors that opened to a room full of people sitting on folding metal chairs. At the front of the room was a shiny coffin covered with flowers. Pastor Steve was wearing a white-and-purple robe and stood by the coffin. As he talked, he opened and closed his hands as if trying to catch something out of the air.

We tiptoed into the entryway. A guest book with gold-leaf-edged pages was open on a podium. Cindy signed it and handed the pen to me. “You have to sign.”

In my best handwriting, I wrote,
Leah Anne Lobermeir.
I set down the pen. I was alive and I had a name. I followed Cindy into the room full of people. An usher with a tragic frown silently unfolded chairs for us.

I lowered myself onto a chair and made a big squeak. It was so quiet. The air was thick with the smells of flowers, cologne, perfume, toothpaste, and another smell, awful and sweetish.

People shifted in their chairs and softly coughed into their fists. Pastor Steve looked at the ground. There was a long silence. He raised his face and pressed his hands together. “I knew Connie very, very well. I was a witness to her long, courageous battle. . . .”

After that, I only listened to snatches of what Pastor Steve said —“hard to understand” and “we can only trust” and “a better world.” What I was seeing took up all the space inside of me. There was no room left for words. A woman with a strange, bony face lay stiffly in the coffin. She was wearing pink lipstick and a yellow wig.

Kristy’s hair was in a tight braid that hung down her back like a white rope. She sat next to her dad in the front.

Pastor Steve pressed his hands together. “Let us pray.” After the prayer, Mr. Baker stood up to speak, but his big round face turned red and he started to cry. Two older men helped him sit back down. Kristy looked for a second at her dad and then turned back to the coffin. I grabbed Cindy’s hand. She was squeezing a wet tissue.

A couple of ladies, friends of Mrs. Baker, stood up to talk about her. One of them sobbed and could hardly talk, and the second woman made a speech that went on for ten minutes. She didn’t cry but talked slowly with a weird bright smile. I couldn’t hear either of them. It was like watching TV with the sound turned off. I closed my eyes and prayed for the service to be over. Cindy squeezed my hand and let it go.

When I opened my eyes, the crowd crystallized into people I knew. There were teachers from school. Señorita Johnson. Mr. Calvino. The assistant principal, Mr. Widmer, was sitting in the fourth row next to Shannon, who turned around and smiled meaningfully at me. She was still desperate for me to come in for a therapy session.

In the third row, Jason Coulter was sitting with Corinne, her mother, and her stepdad, Derrick. Both Corinne and Jason sat with bowed heads. Their heads tilted at the same angle, and their backs curved together. They were a perfect match and looked like they were engaged and would probably get married and have a baby much earlier than anyone expected, and then I imagined Corinne in divorce court at age twenty-five, though hopefully she’d be a chef by then. Corinne was going to wear a strapless jade-green dress to prom. She showed me pictures on her phone.

Everyone said “Amen” and the service ended. For a minute, no one moved. Then people began to whisper and hobbled to their feet.

Kristy turned around in her chair and stared at me. We acknowledged each other like survivors of a terrible battle, and she looked away.

Within a minute, people surrounded Kristy and her father. Her dad stood up, but Kristy stayed in her chair. The ladies crowded around her, stroked her head, and kissed her cheeks. Kristy sat like a stone princess in the middle of the mob.

I stood up. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

Cindy stiffened and frowned. Her face crinkled up into a thousand tiny lines like paper cuts. The wrinkles had appeared in the last two weeks. “I don’t want you to go outside by yourself.”

“Mom, we’ve talked about this. I’ll be careful. I won’t go anywhere.”

“OK, honey. I just need to speak to Kristy’s father.” She sat up straight but wobbled a little as she stared at the people surrounding Mr. Baker. She reached up and touched her cheek. “We had the same flowers at my mom’s service. My mom, my dad, and Paul all died within the space of five years. My goodness, that was something!”

For a second, I saw a young woman, just a few years older than me, alone in an empty apartment, with a dark-haired toddler playing at her feet.

Without looking at me, she took my hand. Her thumb absentmindedly stroked my fingers, then she squeezed them. “You’re my girl,” she said.

Mr. Calvino turned around and gave me a sad smile.

I was the first person to leave the building. The world was white with sunlight. The sky was a dirty blue.

I walked up the sidewalk. I hadn’t been outside, alone, in a couple of weeks. My heart thumped, and my brain started to fog up with anxiety, but I made myself listen. A thread of wind wound through the trees. A dog’s bark echoed down the empty street. It sounded like a dog barking in a dream.

It felt wonderful to walk, held back only by saggy panty hose. I hadn’t walked in a long time. There was just air and sky. I wasn’t trapped inside a funeral home or a school or an ugly apartment. Cindy would be a while. She’d have to wait in line to hug and console Mr. Baker.

I walked up the hill, looking back every minute to keep sight of the funeral home. I passed a house with Christmas lights feebly blinking around the front window. A ceramic rabbit with floppy ears sat on its hind legs in the weeds. A dead orange Christmas tree strewn with tinsel lay in the side yard. A chain-link dog pen held only a dirty blanket and a knot of rope. There was nobody but me.

At the top of the street was an overlook with a view of the mountain and the town. A few days before, I’d watched a nature show about how mountains were created. Mountains were made up of rocks, just plain old rocks, pushed out of the earth by violent forces.

Down below, Hilton glittered like it was built out of mica. In the east, past all the housing developments, Hilton ended, and the dry yellow plains began. A cloud passed over, and its shadow moved across the neighborhoods.

I stepped off the cracked sidewalk and stood on the dead grass at the edge of the cliff. Wedges of red rock stuck out of the cliff face, and at the bottom there was a slide of dirt. People threw trash down the hill — a mattress, box springs, a high chair, shoes, dead computers, rags of clothes. I could imagine a girl lying there like a giant doll, lip gloss smeared, teardrop necklace lost.

I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, “Hello! Hello! Hello!”

I would climb down in my blue scrubs. I would make sure that she was breathing, then listen to her heart. I’d hold her hand and say, “What’s your name? You’re going to be OK.”

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2016 by Aurelia Wills

Cover photograph copyright © 2016 by Peter Hatter/Trevillion Images (flower)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

First electronic edition 2016

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending

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