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Debris
By Holly Tucker
My house went up in flames last Friday. I stood across the street alone by a fire truck, and I watched it as it fell apart—piece-by-piece, floor-by-floor. All the neighbors gathered around our yard and watched in awe and disbelief—their pupils wide, their mouths agape. Some swarmed like fire ants from a disturbed anthill, looking for a person to blame and bite at. Others looked as though they were about to cry. I didn’t cry, I knew who did it.
“But it was such a lovely home!” Mrs. Peterson had cried out as she ran frantically from her house toward the rest of the crowd, still dressed in her floral apron toward the edge of our yard. Was it? I stood behind the fire truck—dazed—in a place where I could not be seen.
I doubt Mrs. Peterson knew about my mother, my mother and my father, my mother and me. Although caring and always willing to bake for anyone and everyone, Mrs. Peterson had her own three kids, her own husband, and her own life to attend to. The “love” she baked into her red velvet cupcakes that she always sent over every time one of us had a birthday never stayed in any of our stomachs for very long. Our tall mahogany front door also did a great job of keeping her and everyone else out. It did an even better job of holding those of us who lived there in. My sister Jessie had to attempt suicide twice before my parents finally let her out. My Aunt Josie made them send her away.
“Sometimes terrible things like this just happen. Pipes burst. I’m sorry it had happen to such good people like you and your family,” John the firefighter had turned toward me and said after he had checked out the wreckage. “Where is your family by the way?”
“My Dad’s in Peru, my sister’s studying abroad in London, and my mom’s at work.”
I lied about everyone except my mom.
***
My mother is a peculiar figure. Thin and small, but with a head so huge it makes her look like a bobble doll. She acts that way too, with a big head and all. Always over thinking, over analyzing, and reiterating, my mother’s dinner parties were never short of perfect and her lectures never bearable.
She liked straight things, perpendicular things, and answers. When something happened to her that didn’t make sense, she would immediately start focusing on things that did. If dinner came out wrong, she’d make an irresistible dessert. If she suspected my father cheating on her, she’d get rid of him and tell Jessie and I that the banging on the door we heard a few weeks ago was construction up the road, not dad, and that it was his choice to leave us, not hers.
I think my father saw it coming, her kicking him out and all. It was he who married her after all, he knew her antics, but after he did whatever it was he did to her this time, she began getting really paranoid. If I were a psychologist, I’d guess she made some association with the front door, the knocking, and my dad. She began locking it constantly, stalking it almost. At the same time, however, she was still talking to my dad. She was saying, “love you Hun” on the other end of the phone-line, and sending him weekly care packages. “We’re separated, not divorced,“ she would tell her friends at church, and they would nod respectfully, happy that she was not a sinner.
It took her a long time to admit to Jessie and me that they were separated. She used phrases like long vacation, new inspiration, and “your father is who your father is,” around us. We knew what was going on, individually. We both handled it in our own way though. I went out to the lake with a baseball bat and smashed it against a maple tree at odd hours, when people weren’t around. Jessie went out with her friends and smashed her brains with narcotics.
***
My sister Jessie is a lot to handle, both physically and emotionally. She is two years older than me, and when I was a sophomore in high school, my parents finally both agreed that she had to be sent away. I think the separation had a trickle down affect on her, but we never really talked about it. We stopped being close when I got into high school—her old friends denoting me good-looking and her fat, but we’ve started talking again now that we don’t have to face each other every day, deal with the other one’s craziness. By the time I caught on to the fact that she had a problem, she was already gone. I would turn back time—if I could.
She had got involved with a misfit crowd and had instantly become the leader of it. When she was with them, I pretended she was not my sister. In her group, there was Irwin, a redhead with both a mullet and sideburns who enjoyed stalking the workers at McDonald’s in an attempt to learn Spanish. There was Margo, who was very pale and hefty—similar to Jessie—who liked to wear black clothing and bright yellow shoes that were hard to look at. And last but not least, there was Jack. Good ole’ Jack, whose father was in jail for selling coke and other hard drugs. Sadly, the whole prison thing rubbed off on him the wrong way. His goal was to “show the old man how to run a business.”
The group of them started off just dealing, which I knew about and didn’t mind. Kids in my grade would ask me about it all the time. I would just shrug. Then, they started “experimenting” and not just with common narcotics either. I learned this from her diary.
Bath Salt—that was what it was that got my sister enrolled in St. Maria’s Hospital for the Mentally ill. She’d come back from hanging out with “the crew,” and would spit nonsense at me. One night, after she had probably snorted, she told me that our parents were planning to kill us. I thought she had just smoked too much of that weed called White Widow, the stuff that Jack always called “good shit,” but, when I woke up in the middle of the night to her seizing—the result of snorting an immense amount of bath salt, I thought otherwise.
The snorting of the Bath Salt was apparently a suicidal attempt. It was strange to me to think how something could serve two opposite purposes—to relax and to kill. I was, however, happy that I had witnessed her first suicide attempt and not the latter.
A few weeks after the first, my Aunt Josie came over to make sure my Mom was doing OK. She too, knew my mother’s antics. She found Jessie in the garage dousing her body in gasoline. A lighter was nearby.
There are pieces of Jessie that I would never want to see go up in flames—pieces I will always hold on to. I like to imagine she was trying to make a statement, like that Buddhist monk, and that she was not self-destructive. The night Aunt Josie took Jessie away, I remembered that summer when we finished all the lemonade before our first customer, the pride I felt when my sister punched Hunt Campbell after he made fun of my pigtails, and the faith I had in my sister’s words she spoke to me the night my Mom locked my Dad out of our house and told him to never come back. “Everything will be OK, Coll.”
***
When my Mom got to the scene that night of the fire, the crowd parted like the sea did for Moses. I was busy answering friends’ frantic phone calls and nosy questions when I noticed the silence. The eerie, uncomfortable silence that usually follows “he’s dead,” or “I have cancer.” My mother stepped out of the vehicle like an actress would at an award’s show, yet the award she was winning was not a noteworthy one. The audience stared at her.
She didn’t see me right away and, in a way, I was happy for this. I got to watch her react inside her own element. She slowly sat down on the gravel of our driveway; she pulled her knees to her chest and held them in her arms. She picked at our lawn nervously as flames illuminated her eyes the way fireworks do on the fourth of July. Then, she spotted me.
To my surprise, all she said when I walked over to her was but Colleen, where will we sleep? She sounded childish. Then, I answered “Aunt Josie’s,” and Pandora’s Box opened. My Aunt Josie lived “too far” away in an “unsanitary, corrupted town full of hooligans,” and she was already on her way. I listened to my mother rant on and on about her for fifteen minutes after that. I think she was almost as upset about going to Aunt Josie’s as she was about losing the house.
***
My Mom hates traveling now, but she didn’t always. When we were younger and our family was functional, we used to always take trips. One summer, my mother and father took Jessie and me to a place in Canada called Jasper Park. I remember the crispness of the air and how I wanted to spend every day out there on the canoe in the lake after the first day.
That first day, my mother took Jessie and me out on the lake, while my father stood at the lake’s edge with an easel and paint. My mother had packed sandwiches—grape jelly and cream cheese—all of our favorites, and some snacks. Then, she taught us how to row. I found it to be extremely difficult, but in some way rewarding. Something about the pull of the rowing sticks against the water and the advancement of the boat gave me a sense of accomplishment. When we were far enough away from the shore, we began to eat.
My mother and I laughed about how fast Jessie ate her sandwich, and she laughed as well. “I could stay her forever,” my mother had said to us after a moment of nostalgia in which we all stared off into the distance. We nodded at her in agreement. Seconds later, a bee had us all jumping up and down and screaming, swatting, and almost crying. The boat tipped, and both Jessie and my Mom flew into the lake. I exploded into a fit of laughter and banged my legs and arms against the sides of the canoe. When my mother’s and Jessie’s heads both emerged from the water, their faces both went from terrified to ecstatic. They began joining me in laughter. Soggy bread drifted away from our boat and, for one reason or another, we all found it hilarious.
My father’s painting that day was of a girl in a pink swimsuit standing in the center of a canoe. The little girl was pointing at another smiling little girl in a life vest. There was a mother far off to the other side of the canoe trying to swim. We lost the painting to the fire. It was the only thing I wish we hadn’t.
That same summer, neighborhoods that surrounded us got increasingly bad. Headlines in newspapers read “Another Business out of Business,” and “Skyrocketing Drug Scene.” My Aunt Josie got held up by gunpoint in a local convenience store, and, as a result of this, my mother became increasingly paranoid. She began refusing to let Jessie and me go anywhere, especially during our middle school years. Jessie hated it, and would sneak out; I served as her lookout until it became too hard to keep track of her. My father came home less and less, and fights broke out between him and my mother more and more. For two years, divorce floated over my parents’ heads and lingered in the air above me. The tension pulled my life in a million different directions, and all I could ever express about it was anger.
There was one boy, who was fascinated by my athleticism and good looks, but unaware of my inner complexes—my boyfriend of ninth grade, Brian Delia. He didn’t know what he was getting into. I probably should have warned him. The cute kisses, care packages that contained peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (my other favorite), and love letters written on the back of homework assignments that he gave me eventually ceased. As my home grew more hostile, so did I. I’d tell him I loved him one day, and that I hated him the next. I told him I wanted to have sex, and then when we did, I cried. He tried to make sense of my mood swings, my weight loss, my sister who disappeared, but my mother taught me to lock the door, so I did.
“Nobody needs to know our family business,” she would say as she buried her face in her paperwork not wanting to face reality that she and my dad had ruined not only each other’s but their daughters’ lives as well. Sometimes, I wanted to talk to her, tell her how I was feeling, but the phone would always ring upon my entrance into her office; she’d give me the not right now honey look, and I would turn the other way.
***
Jessie always gave me the time of day if I asked for it. We usually talked twice a week after she was admitted. Mostly we’d talk about how crazy our mom was, and the “tough skinned,” black guard Jessie had a crush on, but sometimes we’d talk about deeper things.
Jessie called me two nights before the fire happened. She didn’t sound loud and hoarse like she usually did. She sounded quiet and spoke quickly. The conversation wasn’t normal, and the number she called from wasn’t either. I asked her where she was and she didn’t respond. She ended the conversation with “See you soon.” I never told my Mom.
I was worried if I did, she would read too much into the “See you soon” aspect of the conversation. She would probably deadbolt the door and call up the hospital and make sure they did the same to Jessie’s. She loved Jessie, but Jessie scared her. She told me this once after she found me in the shower. I had gone out drinking with friends and had accidentally passed out while I was trying to wash the mud off my body. My mother’s room was a floor beneath the bathroom, and she woke up to water dripping onto her face. Her pounding on the door was what woke me up.
“Colleen! Colleen, are you OK! Honey, answer me! Are you in there? Are you alright!” the door budged open and my mother, dressed in one of my father’s old t-shirts, came storming in. “Never, and when I say never, I mean NEVER, do that to me again. Do you hear me? You scared the living shit out of me.” She was shaking like she did the night Aunt Josie found Jessie.
In my drunken stupor, I said three words a child should never say to their mother, “Fuck you, Mom,” and this lead to a tyrant of life lessons on respect and on who my mother did not want me to ever become. “Don’t be your sister. Don’t be your Dad. Be yourself.” And who am I, Mom?
***
During one of our phone conversations, Jessie asked me who I wanted to be. Although, I was sure she was high on some kind of medication, I took the time to think about it. In first grade, we both told each other we wanted to be painters, like Dad. Nowadays, Jessie tells me how she plans on staying right where she is. I got accepted into an architect program in London, but I’ve known for quite some time that it’s out of the question. “Its too far honey, and you’re too naïve.” my mom always said.
When I told Jessie this, she was furious. “You got to get out of there, Coll. They’re tearing you apart! Look at yourself! You would build beautiful things! Put Ma on the phone! Let me at her! You’re going! Ok? Do you hear me?”
Every time I talked about London after that, Jessie reacted the same. She didn’t mention it when she called me that night two nights before the fire though. She didn’t ask many questions that day at all. Only one. “Coll, where does Mom keep the blue print of our house.” I told her, and didn’t question why she asked. I was used to her ridiculous questions.
***
Blueprints can tell a person a lot about a house. They tell you how big each room is, where it’s located, who it will belong to—master or an extra. They tell you what room will be in the center, where dividers will be, how to cross them. They show you how to get around the corners. Some show where pipes are located.
What they don’t show you is what lies behind the doors. What IS shown is blank white space—space that people will stand in, cry in, laugh in, scream in, go crazy in—space that people will come and go in.
After the blueprint is created, the house is built. Built and decorated on whatever foundation there may or may not have been before. It is renovated, torn down, redone. Some decorations, like Grandma’s china set with the clovers on it, nobody will notice. No matter how elaborate, how real looking or how intricate—people walk by these things without noticing them. I am one of those decorations. Jessie is one of those decorations. My mother—lost in space.
My sister burnt my house down in hope of rebuilding a new one.
***
How she got in and out and back to St. Marias, I have no idea—but she did. She was back in time for our Mom to call her and tell her the bad news. Jessie could always do the unthinkable, the unimaginable. She used to climb out her window on the third floor to sneak out during weekdays.
I told her where the blueprints of our house were—in the downstairs filing cabinet next to the laundry room entrance. I never told her how to burst or break a pipe. I never thought she actually would, but there are things that happen that we cannot control—feelings that exist inside people that undergo great pressure and multiple blows before they break the surface. And every once and awhile, these things burst into flames. But from ashes, things can rise. Rise like the dough in my mother’s pastries do; the ones that she coats with layers and layers of icing. Rise like the buildings I aspire to build.
Picking Weeds and Budding Flowers
By Holly Tucker
In a single lesson, my father taught me how delicate life is. When I was five, and no taller than a night stand, I admired butterflies, and the elegance of their flight, their cocoons and how they transform from little, chubby bugs to majestic, beautiful flies. My father knew this.
He had watched me spend entire afternoons running around my mother’s tiny garden that lined the side of our house trying to catch Monarchs in a cage just so I could marvel at them a little bit longer, a little bit closer up. He knew this, and still, he made an effort to catch a caterpillar of his own. I would have gladly caught one for him, had he asked. I wondered what he was doing around the garden that day, his normal place usually being the dark corner in our basement where there was a single, bright light, a desk, and piles and piles of papers. I got excited, thinking, for once, maybe, he might play with me. Maybe he would spin me around like the Dads in the movies did, and I would laugh and my mother would snap a photo and we’d be the Hallmark family I always dreamed we’d be. I still don’t know exactly why he was outside with me that day or why he left us later that year, but I remember how he brought that caterpillar over to me, and how he watched me as my pupils grew large and my mouth opened wide. I ogled at the creature’s slinky motion. Then, he told me how caterpillars have 4,000 muscles and how humans only have 629. He told me this and then—then, he accidentally crushed it. He smeared the brown and green goo on his already paint-stained jeans and stared at me like I was made of porcelain and about to shatter. He was surprised that I didn’t react, that I didn’t say a single word. Inside, I was broken. Outside, I was still. He scratched his head and did his best to try and explain. “Well, a lesson can be learned here Katie, life is fragile.”
I never meant to hurt anyone. I never wanted to at least. I was driving the speed limit that day on Central Avenue. I was on my way home from Justin’s house, a commute I made daily. Justin and I had been together for five months and three days before that day.
“I just feel like this isn’t going anywhere Katie, I don’t get excited when I see you anymore.” he had said to me. I knew it was coming. A simple, “I want to break up’” would’ve sufficed. But no, he had to say it like I was a plain, prude, and an uninteresting human being. It made me feel like shit. How he could just, out of nowhere, claim that I was boring. It hurt too. I learned in chemistry that when you lose your virginity to someone, a bunch of hormones are released—hormones that make you attached to someone. I felt that attachment to him then and still feel it now. When I heard the thud, I had his picture in one hand and my phone in the other. I was busy trying to think of who to call—who to turn to—if I was worth anyone’s time, when it happened all too fast. I didn’t want to bother anyone. I didn’t want anyone to think that I was a basket case. My head was blank across all fields.
Then, reality struck. I saw blood.
My name is Katie Stiles, and I am a murderer. I murdered Grace Burn on Thursday, April 2nd at 2:34pm. I am still sorry.
***
Grace Burn was Martinsville’s own Shirley Temple. She was the child prodigy every parent dreamed of having. She could sing like Christina Aguilera, dance like Shakira, and break up a preschool version of “West Side Story” with the flash of her smile. She won every competition she entered and always had a group of kids following her around her neighborhood.
My best friend Lizzie Anderson used to babysit her in the 9th grade and one time, I stopped by. I was walking my dog Penny by the Burn’s house when Lizzie spotted me and ran outside their front door.
“Katie, oh my God. You have to see this.” I looked over at Penny who was busy marking her territory all over the Burn’s lawn.
“What is it?”
“It’s Grace. She is literally meditating, like literally. I can’t handle it. I can’t! I’m losing my shit. It’s too funny. Please, please come inside. You have got to see this.” I tied Penny’s leash to the porch and followed Lizzie inside. If Lizzie was this excited about something, it had to be good.
Grace was sitting cross-legged in her bedroom and was facing a tiny statue of Mary, the kind you can get for fifty cents at any drug store. She was wearing a white, bridal veil that hid her blonde hair and a red shirt so long it looked like a dress. Some kind of Middle-eastern music was playing, and, for a minute, I questioned her knowledge of her own religion. She was humming silently which meant that we had to do everything humanly possible to keep our laughter in. When tears began to form in my eyes, I grabbed Lizzie and pulled her into the living room.
“Oh my God, you weren’t kidding! I wonder what the hell she’s thinking!” We exploded into laughter. Then, Lizzie turned red and went silent. I felt a tug on my shirt.
“I heard you,” Grace said.
Something about her tone belittled me. I think Lizzie felt it too. Both of us looked at our feet. We would probably never accomplish the things this little girl would in her childhood, in all our lives.
Grace walked away with her head held high in the air, and that was the second to last image I had of her. Lizzie and I stood there dumbfounded. I don’t know why, but I felt like we were Grace’s maids. We were all middle class, but Lizzie and I felt poor next to her, like her trophies were worth millions. Lizzie and I were the girls that only sometimes got asked to dance and cared about it. We were the girls that developed self-conscious complexes, from names we were called in Middle School. We’d always talk to each other about awkward moments like this one with Grace. Moments like when Jonny called her “Big Tits,” and how she always wore three sports bras instead of two after that. We’d talk about how Farah Dutcher once said she liked my cooking and how everyone had laughed afterwards. We’d talk about Justin and I, and about my fear of getting pregnant even though we had only had sex once and had used not one, but two, condoms. But, most of all, we’d talk about our mothers, their friends, and their daughters.
***
Grace’s Mom, Mrs. Burn, and Lizzie’s Mom, Mrs. Anderson, were good friends. Together, they ran the town. They were buzzing bees that would occasionally sting you. Mrs. Anderson knew before Mrs. Burn that Grace had been killed, and that I had done it. Breaking bad news to a best friend must’ve been hard.
My mom had tried to get in their inner circle of friends, but was quickly viewed as an outlier. The two women did not respect a mother who let her child dress in whatever she pleased, or a mother who did not graduate from college. Still though, my mom was at their feet, and did anything and everything to please them. “They never invite me to book club,” I once overheard her say to my grandmother on the phone. She sounded sad and disappointed. Penny danced around her feet as she twirled the telephone cord coyly around her finger. I wanted to hug her and tell her that those nimwits knew nothing and that she was better than both of them, but my mom gets more comfort from a bottle of Merlot. She was lost in her own world though, haunted by the mistake of ever marrying my father. “I know what it’s like to not belong,” I would’ve said. I would have talked to her about it, had she asked.
In Middle School, four years ago, I had no friends. All I had was my dog. They tell you that that’s normal for middle school, but it didn’t feel like it. In solitude, I cried every day. Then, Lizzie moved here from her Dad’s place and I didn’t feel so alone. The popular kids would chant “rat.” at me because of the scrawniness of my body and the protrusion of my nose, and Lizzie would joke and say that they were saying “cat,” because I was feisty. Eventually they matured, as did I, and the taunting stopped. I’ll never forget how it felt to be alone or how it felt to not be.
***
There are three things I remember about the accident and the week following it: hot green tea, a judge with a Hitler mustache, and self-cut bangs. My psychiatrist told me this was because I was in shock; I thought I was losing my mind.
My mom gave me the hot green tea when I finally got out of the police station after what felt like days—it could’ve been days. She had warned me that it was too hot to drink when she handed it to me, but I ignored her. I think, I just wanted to feel something and more than that, I think I just wanted to hurt myself. I remember how my taste buds swelled until I couldn’t even taste the air, and I remembered how I liked it. The mug quivered in my hand, and my mother just stood there watching me. Her eyes were soggy and bluer than the Caribbean ocean. My father used to tell me that they were the reason he fell in love with her, that they engulf you entirely until you’re so lost you forget what lies behind them. However, that was back when they were in love and were still living together.
I watched my mother as her mouth opened and closed probably over a thousand times. I understood that she couldn’t find words to say to me. What could she possibly say? Then, I blacked out.
The judge with the Hitler mustache had a mole above his left eyebrow that made Nanny McPhee’s look flattering. Spit came out of his mouth with each word he spoke. I found myself wondering the whole hearing, if he had kids, what they were like, if he had ever lost someone, if he had ever lost himself. I missed the part where he told me “Katie, of course you will not be charged with murder,” but I heard him when he spat out “We’re taking your license.”
On the drive home after the trial, I saw a family—all on bicycles. It was a nice day so this was not uncommon. The littlest one was on a small pink bike with a white basket. Three seconds was all it took to bring me back. The little girl’s bike was the same one Grace was riding the day I accidentally hit her on my way home from Justin’s. She had hit a bump and veered off the sidewalk right as I was turning.
The image of Grace’s lifeless face popped into my head. I could not see her eyes, her nose, her mouth—they were all distorted. All I could remember about her was what she looked like when she hit my windshield, her bangs too short to have been cut by a hairdresser. They must have been self-cut.
***
My first day back at school, a week after the accident, was full of awkward tension. Nobody and everybody noticed me. It was that “naked feeling” on steroids. My own friends acted like they did not know who I was, even Lizzie, my best friend—the girl who taught me how to French kiss in eighth grade, how to inhale from a bong in 9th, and how to funnel without puking in 10th, walked right by me like I was Sam Jessup, the girl who dissected baby pigs after school with Dr. Reynolds “for fun.” I had been calling her every day since the accident when I sat in front of full plates of food that I later dumped in the trash. I had been calling her every night when I couldn’t fall asleep. She didn’t answer. Well, once or twice she did with an excuse as to why she “couldn’t talk at the moment.” I could hear the awkwardness in her voice. I could sense she was uncomfortable. Yet, I couldn’t understand how she could abandon me like the rest of the town had. I had let the whole town down in some way, killed a future leader. I had disgraced myself. If I had lived in China, I would’ve disgraced my family as well. I wondered if my mom had thought about moving—if she had thought about running away to find my Dad who was god knows where now. Then, I came back to my senses. I focused on avoiding the blank stares coming at me from every direction. Breathe. Walk. Keep it together.
When it became time for lunch, an eerie familiarity struck me. I was alone. The tray in my hands shook, as I stood in the center of the cafeteria, contemplating where to sit. I felt like the whole room was growing silent and like an aura of hate surrounded me. In middle school, I would’ve just sat down anywhere where there were geeks, or at an empty table, but I was a senior in high school, and it seemed unacceptable to do so. No, I didn’t go to the bathroom; I went back to where I came from, the home economics classroom. The minute I left the cafeteria, I imagined a choir of voices singing a triumphant song, “We’re safe; she’s gone.” I tried not to think about the accident, what I did, Grace’s family, what would have been her graduation, what would have been her future profession—I tried—but these thoughts flooded my head; when I was alone, I let them.
***
The next day, after another sleepless night full of forlorn thoughts, Lizzie talked to me. She approached me at my locker, and she hugged me. It didn’t feel right. She apologized for being such an awful friend at a critical time, and again, she hugged me.
“It’s not your fault, Katie. I want you to know that,” she said to me. She held me too tight for me to pull away.
“I needed you Lizzie. You know I have no one but you.” I fought back tears. “Why haven’t you been answering my calls? Can’t you understand how terrible I have been feeling? Put yourself in my shoes, really Lizzie, try. Try to put yourself in my shoes right now. All I ever had was Justin and you and now—“
“I’m here now,” she said, “I can explain, really. It’s just—“ she reached out her hand and tried to put it on my shoulder. I backed away.
“It’s just what Lizzie? What is it? Really? I’d really like to know just what it is that has kept you from comforting your best friend who is undergoing serious trauma right now. What is it?”
“It’s just the whole thing has put my mom into a kind of funk, and I don’t want to disappoint her or to make her more upset or—I don’t know—I just don’t know what to do or how to help you or—I’m sorry—I don’t know, I’m sor—“
“No you’re not!” I yelled. She opened her mouth and I raised my voice even louder. “Get the fuck away from me Lizzie.” A few people around us stared. I have never lashed out like this before. Breathe. Walk. Keep it together. I walked away from her.
I didn’t bother going into the cafeteria that day. I waited for my fellow classmates to file out of the home economics classroom after they cleaned their individual kitchens (there were four, one in each corner of the room), and for my teacher to pack up her things. Then, I whipped out my brown paper bag. As I was eating, I began to notice things about Room 209 that I had not noticed before. There were two large paintings, one in the front of the room, and one in the back of the room. One was of little kids picking strawberries out in a field, the other was of three pigs wearing aprons and holding silverware. I wondered if Mrs. MacBurney liked the Beatles. In the back of the room there were stacks of sewing fabrics in every color and pattern one could imagine and right beside where I was sitting, there were stacks and stacks of magazines. Given I had some free time, and nothing to really distract me, I picked up a magazine and began to read it. It was Better Homes & Gardens.
There were articles about “Hosting Easter” and “10 Appliances that will Improve Your Life,” but what I found most interesting were the “How to Start a Garden,” and “What a Garden can do for you” articles. I wished my mother hadn’t let our garden go. My favorite memories of childhood surrounded it. Once my mother, and I had planted African Daisies together. She let me plant the seed in a pot, and we took turns watering it. It felt good being responsible for something—something else alive. When they finally came into full bloom, my mother picked one for me and put it in a vase in my room, attached to it, there was note: “With roots and water, we all will grow.” My mother, the philosopher.
Surprisingly, I found myself getting into an article about how to plant perennials, so much that I didn’t notice students filing into the room for class. They looked at me like I was cracked out. Eating lunch alone in the home ec room? Reading Better Homes and Gardens? What kind of killer is interested in gardening? This is what I imagined them saying in their heads.
I grabbed a few more magazines, hoping that they would keep me entertained for the rest of the day, gathered my things, and exited the classroom. For the first time in awhile, my mind was focused on sunflowers and Black-eyed Susans and not Grace.
I kept these good thoughts going, fueled them for as long as I could because I simply did not want them to stop. When I got home, I found my mom’s old gardening gloves and various tools. I put on an old T-shirt that I wore to a John Mayer concert and some shorts I had stained with hair dye a year ago, when I decided brown hair was too plain and blondes possibly could have more fun. I bent over, and I began to dig into the dirt. As I did so, I thought I heard the sounds of two familiar voices.
One of those voices I heard was assertive, but seemed damaged from either screaming or sleepless nights; it sounded like Mrs. Burn. My heart began to race and the real noise of lawn mowers and cars whizzing by started to drown out. I sat down in my pile of weeds, and I felt my heart sink into my stomach. I didn’t cry—I just sat there, not knowing how to react, if to react. Mrs. Burn wasn’t there; I was imagining it. I repeated this over and over to myself and tried to knock the image of Grace’s damn self-cut bangs out of my head. My dog approached me and began to lick me. He must’ve known I was hurting. I was sitting in rags, covered in dirt, and staring off aimlessly next to a pile of weeds and old flowerpots. My mother was watching me from our side window. Her hand was on her heart, and her chest was moving up and down. When we made eye contact, she walked away. I could tell she wanted to help me, but just didn’t yet know how. When I called it a day and walked inside, she was sitting on the couch reading “Eat, Pray, Love” and drinking red wine. When I passed by her, she told me she loved me. I mumbled a sad “I love you too, Mom,” and I retreated to my bed.
***
The following day, I walked five miles to Home Depot. I would have asked for a ride from Lizzie, if we were on speaking terms, and I would have asked my Mom, if I hadn’t dreaded the tension, but both were out of the question. The sun was beating down on me so hard that I had to take a break and sit on the side of the road for a little bit. I watched the cars whizz by, the drivers unaware of what a vehicle is capable of.
When I finally got to the store, I found myself lost in the garden section. Between the tools, the soil, the flowers, the fountains, and pots, I stood dumbfounded and alone. A boy who looked about my age startled me when he tapped my shoulder. His Home Depot attire looked worn down, suggesting that he had worked there for a while.
“So what exactly are you looking for,” he said. I took a moment to collect myself.
“I don’t really know.” I said.
“Gardening?” he asked.
“Yes, but I’ve never—“
“You’ve never gardened before, I’m guessing? Do you know what kind of flowers you like at least?”
“Eh, not really, I suppose I like African Daisies.” He frowned.
“We’re out of those actually, I’m sorry. What other types do you like? I mean, like, what does your boyfriend usually show up for you with?” He said confidently.
“I don’t have a boyfriend.” His eyebrows rose.
“For real? I see girls like you all the time who come in here and try to make replicas of what their boyfriends gave them.”
“Yeah, I’m not exactly popular in this town right now.”
“Yeah?” He laughed a little bit, and I couldn’t help but notice how white his crooked teeth were.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” I said. He paused for a while, raised a finger as if my name was on the tip of his tongue, and then let out a sigh.
“No, I don’t. You some kind of celebrity or something? I’m Grady though, nice to meet you.” He extended his hand toward me wanting to shake. I thought about not telling him my real name. I had always wanted to be named Madeline, maybe I’d just throw that out there.
“Katie Stiles.” I said. It was over now. He definitely knew who I was.
“Nope, never heard of her, she seems pretty cool though.” He winked. Was he hitting on me? He had to have seen my name in the paper, there was no way that he was from Martinsville and did not know my name.
“Are you from Martinsville?”
“Nah, I’m from Bernardsville. It’s a few towns over.” That explained it. We both stood there for a second staring at each other. I put my hand to my mouth and tried to discretely bite my fingernails.
“I think you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised, if you check out that corner over there.” He said as he pointed to the back left corner of the garden area.
“Right, thank you.”
“Let me know if you need anything else.” He said and walked back toward the cash registers. I began making my way over to the corner he pointed out to me, but I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder back at him three or four times.
***
Grady and I began hanging out after that. I’d go to Home Depot towards the end of his shift, he’d teach me some gardening tricks and tell me what to buy, and then he’d come over and we would dig and pat, pull and clip. He never asked me about the accident, but I think some kids at school told him the deal. He didn’t seem to mind that I committed such an awful crime, and we kept each other good company. When he got bored of gardening, he’d throw a Frisbee around and my dog would chase it. The two of them would go on like that for hours and I’d stare at Grady’s biceps as they contracted and expanded under the sun. I liked how he played with my dog, and I think my Mom liked it too. She’d watch from the window and smile, happy probably that someone was giving me comfort—comfort she couldn’t give.
Every once in awhile, I’d get weird around him. I felt us growing close, and on a deeper level then friends. I would stop talking and would look past him; he’d wave his hand in my face to regain my attention. I wanted to tell him about the accident, and about the nights I stayed up thinking about all the things Grace could have accomplished. I wanted to tell him something, everything, anything. I needed to. I thought about Mrs. Burn and wondered if she would ever forgive me. I’m not sure if I would forgive me if I were in her shoes.
On Mother’s day, I thought, what would she do? When it came to be that day, Grady thought it would be a good idea to make my Mom a bouquet out of the flowers in my garden; I made two. After Grady left that day, I left a bouquet on Mrs. Burn’s front porch. I was terrified that she would come out and see me. I remember shaking when I finally noticed her neighbor was watching me. The old man watched me place the roses and daisies—a strange combination for a strange situation—delicately down in front of the door. He definitely knew who I was, and he did not smile when I left. I wish he had.
***
A week after Mother’s Day, I answered a call from my mom while I was on one of my trips to Home Depot. She had noticed I had become happier, and we had gradually started becoming more comfortable around each other. We were finally aware that both of us had problems that we didn’t want to talk about and that that was OK. The calls kept coming, so I knew it was important and that I had to answer after the fourth time it rang. I picked up and my mom, through slurred speech, explained to me that it was Lizzie, and that she was at our house, drenched in rain, and looking for me. I deciphered words and phrases such as: upset, alone, and pajamas, from her speech. I had to face her or leave her. My first best friend, my teacher, a girl who had undergone so much pressure from her mother her whole life who just always seemed to express the wrong reaction—I had lost her.
Grady saw me crouched down in the isle where they have packets and packets of seeds, the mere beginnings of intricate plants. I put my hands behind my head. He approached me and asked me if I was alright, I said “no.” He let me cry on his shoulder. He patted me sincerely on the back. When I was finally done, his shirt had a black stream on it from my makeup. The stream started on his shoulder and just seemed to keep on going. He offered to walk me home. I told him I needed a ride.
He pulled up to the front of my house and put a hand on my shoulder. He gave it a nice, tight squeeze. “You’re a good person, Katie,” he said and he kissed me on the cheek. My face flushed, and my heart warmed. I headed home.
I went inside and, before she could begin speaking, I hugged her. I let her cry on my shoulder, like Grady had let me cry on his. We held each other for a while, two girls with black smudged faces, drenched in rain. Then, I told her to get some rest. “Sleep in my spare bed.” I said. She always used to sleep there when her mother was giving her trouble. “We’ll talk more in the morning.” I smiled.
***
The next day, I looked out at my garden. Each day my flowers were growing stronger and more beautiful. Their roots were interconnected under a sea of dirt and seemed to be working together to hold each other up. It might have been a silly thought, but for a moment, I imagined everyone a flower, everyone I knew, all struggling each day with each other for water, and for living space. Occasionally, the flowers were bothered or touched by bugs. They were snipped, killed, and picked, but they were stunning.
Grady stood beside me and held my hand. We were silent for a while. Then, Grady looked at me longingly and finally asked me the question I had been waiting for someone to ask me for months.
“Katie, do you want to talk about it?”
“She’s going to be alright. We’re going to be alright.” He put his arm around me.
The next day he left roses on my bed, while I was on a walk. Attached to it was a note that read: “Didn’t know if actions would speak louder than words.”
Hey friends, family, strangers. I am a n00b to tumblr so bare with me. The purpose of my tumblr account is going to be for creative writing purposes AKA everything I post on here will be stories/other things I have written for you all to read. Everyone’s always telling me they want to read my work etc. etc. so if you really do want to actually read it, now you can! Love it, hate it, like it, live for it.. I don’t really care it’s up to you. If i’m famous one day you’ll probably feel pretty cool that you used to stalk my tumblr, huh? I would too.
