Grief
“Jenny come push me.” “OK, Nicaola.” The sun is warm over the playground and filters through the trees in shifting green and gold flecks. There is a tire swing, two swing sets, a climbing gym and a wooden tower with a platform at the top. I'm a percher, I like to perch. I like to find solitary spots, high above ground where I can sit and watch.
It's safe up here. Away from Michael and his gang. They cornered my friend Ellen by the tether-ball pole and teased her until she cried. She swears she's never coming back to school. I don't blame her, school sucks. I'm in the sixth grade, Nicaola however, is a fourth grader. She's my fourth grade partner for this term and I'm responsible for making her lunch and playing with her. She likes to swing, so I'm going to try to push her until she flips right over the bars.
“Pump your legs, Nica.” Nica looks back at me her long black hair flying out behind her,“I am,” she says gleefully. It's easy for me to push her because I'm short, so I don't have to bend over. As she swings back I grab the sides of the swing, pull it up over my head until my feet leave the ground and then throw her as hard as I can. Nica screams “Whoooo, look Angelina I'm flying” Angelina stops and waves, then asks if I can push her too. “Sure,” I say, “No problem.”
I alternate swinging them as high as I possibly can while keeping a watchful eye out for Michael. I've developed a talent for becoming invisible at will. All I have to do is think about being small and unimportant and I just bend attention around me. It's tiring and takes a lot of concentration but it's worth it. I am so confident in my ability to disappear that I feel relaxed in math class, knowing that the teacher won't ever call on me to answer a question. Michael and his gang, Niall, John and Mark are slowly traversing the playground, looking for victims. Just the sight of them makes my blood turn cold. They don't pull their punches.
They corner someone and then call them names, shove them back and forth, spit on them, punch them and when the poor girl, (it's usually a girl) is on the ground crying, they tell her what they'll do to her next time they catch her alone. I've only been that girl once, but once is all it takes to make you small, quiet, and invisible. Nica and Angelina turn to me, saying that they're going to go play on the tire swing. “OK,” I say and wander back to my perching platform. I climb up and sit, looking over the field. My best friend Michelle climbs up next to me.
“Didja hear about what Micheal did to Amy?” she asks excitedly.
“No” I say “What happened?”
“Michelle gives me a conspiratorial look and lowers her voice saying, “They caught Amy walking by the bushes over by the church and shoved her down the hill. They told her she was a bastard because she's adopted and told her she's so ugly, that as a baby, her mom had to feed her with a slingshot.”
I feel sorry for Amy. I know exactly how she feels right now, but part of me is glad that it was her and not me. Part of me thinks that maybe, because they got Amy, they won't go after me. The principal, Mrs Adams, is walking towards us across the field. She's probably out patrolling the playground. All the teachers take turns. She walks up to us with a serious look on her face and says, “Jenny, your parents are coming to pick you up. You need to get your things and wait for them in the counselor's office.
“OK,” I say. Michelle turns to me wide-eyed with fear.
“Is everything OK? What happened?”
I have no idea, but I remember mom saying that we were going to go visit grandma and grandpa this week, so I tell Michelle that it's nothing; we're probably just leaving early because my dad hates driving in traffic. Mom picks me up and doesn't talk much. Dad is driving and his face is an angry mask with narrow slits for lips and eyes. I sit and look out the window practicing being invisible. I think about horses and daydream about taming a flying unicorn and flying off to a magical country where I have the power to control air, water, fire and wishes.
We're driving down the freeway when suddenly mom turns and says to me, “ I have something serious to tell you.” I look at her, waiting. “Grandma called us this morning. Grandpa had a heart attack. He died.” Dad makes a choking noise and swerves on the road a little. Mom turns to him asking if she should drive. He says no, he's fine. I don't know what to say, so I don't say anything. We get to grandma's and there are a ton of people there. I don't know any of them. Everyone is crying. Everyone is trying to comfort grandma. I try to stay out of the way. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I want to go out and play with Scotty, my little brother, but I have to stay inside. I want to read, but I didn't bring a book. No one will let me turn on the TV, so I drift and daydream.
Grandma walks over and squeezes the breath out of me while saying in a choked voice, “Your such a good grandchild. Grandpa was very proud of you, you know that, right?”
I nod while mumbling, “Yes, I know that” but I'm still not really sure what's going on. They said grandpa died, but what does that mean? I just saw him a few weeks ago, we played cards. Grandma asks dad to read grandpa's favorite passage from the bible. Dad tries, but after a sentence or two he starts choking and crying. He sets the bible down, unable to continue. Mom hands me the bible saying, “Why don't you read, you're a good reader.”
“OK,” I say. I am a good reader, I'm very proud of that. I learned to spell Constantinople by the age of three and could read all the Dr Suess books too. I pick up the bible and grandma points to where I should start reading. I straighten my shoulders and begin, trying to enunciate clearly so everyone in the room can hear me. I'm doing great, I've finished the first paragraph and everyone is nodding and crying or listening respectfully.
Smack! I see white spots in front of my eyes and I hit the floor with a thud. I look up and my father is standing over me with his hand raised to slap me again. Mom and grandma rush to hold his arm. His face is twisted, he looks like a big, angry gorilla. I crawl backwards, face stinging, feeling dizzy and sick. I throw up quietly in the corner of the living room and then get up and go to my room. I sit. I don't understand what I did wrong. I read well, didn't I?
A few moments later, mom comes in to see me. Her face is red and shiny. She's not smiling. She says, “I'm sorry. Your father is upset and he's not thinking. He loves you and didn't mean to hurt you.” I nod, I don't know what to say. He hit me. I'm cold. I feel different now, separate, duel. I listen to two of grandma's friends in the other room discussing whether or not grandpa was a member of the Freemasons before he married grandma. I think about this, wondering what a Freemason is and why it matters. I make a mental note to look up Freemasons when I get home. I begin a whole list of mental notes to research later like how to act at funerals and what does it mean to be cremated. I'm going to be staying at the library for weeks. Mom tells me about what to expect at grandpa's funeral, tells me not to touch the body, that it's just for looking at. I nod, but I don't understand, he's still my grandpa, why can't I touch him?
Time is different here. The night goes by like it never was and now it's time to dress up for the funeral. It seems wrong to put on Sunday clothes to say goodbye to grandpa. Grandpa was a train engineer, he was always dirty. He loved to work outside and go hunting with his friends. He wouldn't like all this uptight stuffiness. The funeral is like a church service but shorter. Dad doesn't look at me, he hasn't since he hit me and I hate him for it. I hate him for hitting me and I hate him for not caring that he hit me. I follow mom up to the coffin. She tells me to say goodbye to grandpa but not to touch him.
I look at him. I see the diamond shaped wrinkles on his neck that I always traced with my finger, wondering how they got there. I look at his eyes and lips, checking if I can see the stitches where the embalmer stitched them shut. I don't remember who told me about that. I reach out my hand and touch his eyelid and his cheek. It doesn't make sense that I can play cards with someone one day and their dead the next. Mom takes my hand and we walk away.
Back home, late at night, I can hear them whispering downstairs in the kitchen. Dad angrily grunts, “She never cried, she's like a machine.” Mom answers quietly, patiently,
“She's young. Everyone handles grief differently.”
I hear dad get up and pace before thunking back down on the old, hard green sofa. “She hasn't even asked about him, how he died, if she's going to see him again. Shouldn't she be asking these kinds of questions?”
Why? I wonder to myself, why would I ask them when I can just look it up at the library. I prefer asking books over people. Books don't slap me and knock me down. I don't hear the folks talking anymore, so I slip back to bed. I wake up the next morning, almost forgetting what had happened. Almost. It's time for me to go back to school. At first period, everyone comes up and says their sorry. I don't understand why everyone is paying attention to me but it's a good kind of attention and I like it, so I go with it.
The attention only lasts a day or two and then it's back to business as usual. Michael is stalking me now. Apparently my magical shield of invisibility crumbled under the onslaught of all the attention I got after grandpa died. Michael can see me now and he wants to hurt me. He shoulders me into a locker in the hallway.
“Hey Eddie boy, we're going to shove that big nose of yours into the biggest, wettest, stinkiest pile of shit you ever saw. You're going to be puking your guts out for weeks, Big Nose Eddie.”
He always knows just what thing a girl is most sensitive about. I have a big nose and allergies, so I have to blow my nose every few minutes. Everyone teases me about making dying cow noises when I blow my nose and about being ugly. I ignore him, keeping my eyes on the ground. I think about shadows, quiet dark places, tall unreachable perches, invisibility.
I know my place in the world. I'm an outcast. One of the quiet, ugly people that the pretty people step around and patronize. Sometimes the popular girls will decide to take a charity case under their wing for a few days to try to change them. I lasted half a day before they gave up. I wasn't worth the effort. I enjoyed the brief attention though and noted the way they talked. It was so different from the way my friends talk. The popular girls discussed brands and names and colors. They made fun of Lisa who always came to school in mink coats and lipstick. She had stringy blond hair, pale skin and flaunted her rich stuff, so she really stood out.
My friends and I usually just talked about our problems. Who had gotten beat up, who had fought with their stepparent, who wanted to run away. We had trouble wrapping our minds around high fashion and brand names. Those things weren't really part of our world. After classes ended, I went out to the parking lot to wait for my ride home. Every day after school, the carpool would pick us up. I rode with the Jurgens and sometimes the Fishers or Jarmins. We would all pile into whichever car came to pick us up.
My mom drove a Checker Marathon. It had a huge back seat, so three of us would sit on the floor, four on the back seat and two up front. Mom had taken some time off from carpooling to help my dad and grandma with sorting my grandpas affairs, but now, after several months of back and forth driving to Eugene to help grandma, she was back and pulling into the school parking lot. I scrambled to get the primo seat, the middle seat in the back where I could quietly be in the middle of everything, but wouldn't have to move every time we dropped someone off.
It was always fun gossiping on the way home, talking about what games we were going to play. Who was going to play football out in the street or baseball. I was a good hitter and wasn't afraid to tackle. I was also the only girl in the neighborhood. After everyone else was dropped off, mom and I pulled into our own driveway. She turned to me and asked, “So , would you like to make cookies?”
“No,” I answered, remembering her love of baking with carob, seeds and whole wheat. “I'm going upstairs to read.” I tossed my book bag onto the bricks in front of the fireplace and ran up the red carpeted stairs to my bedroom. I turned on the radio and then went into the bathroom to pee and comb the tangles out of my hair. As I combed, I felt tears falling down my cheeks. I stopped, staring at the brush, confused. Placing my hands on the cool porcelain of the sink I looked at myself. A blank face stared back at me, tears streaming down the cheeks. I felt so sad and just collapsed onto the floor crying, sobbing. I didn't understand why I was crying but something felt terribly wrong.
Then, I thought of grandpa. I missed him. It had been several months since his funeral but I missed his diamond-shaped wrinkles and the smell of cigarette smoke. I missed his smile and the way he'd play practical jokes, driving my folks nuts. He taught me about fire by putting my hand in the flames and taught me what claustrophobic meant by making me sit in a closet for an hour. He “fixed” my broken finger by pulling on it. Mom almost smacked him for that and I loved him for all of it. I missed him and he was gone.
I went and collected everything I had that he had ever given me. The doll from Minnesota, the clock from Germany, the barrel from Alaska and the Indian dolls from Arizona. This was all I had to remember him. “Mom” I yelled, “Can I have a picture of grandpa?” There was silence for several minutes, then she walked to the foot of the stairs and looked up at me. “Of course, we have a nice photo of him. We can go make a copy for you tomorrow.”
“OK, thanks,” I said feeling better.
