Grief Girl (17 page)

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So Satan kills Job's family, covers him with boils, and makes him poor, and Job says to God, “What the fuck?”

“I lie down and try to rest; I look for relief from my pain. But you, you terrify me with dreams; you send me visions and nightmares” (Job 7:13–14).

So even old tough farmer Job could've used a sleeping tablet or two. Sometimes I can't sleep without the pills the doctor gave Tracy and me. They're smooth and shiny pale yellow.

Job did the pretend smile bit too. “If I smile and try to forget my pain, all my suffering comes back to haunt me” (Job 9:27–28). Maybe there are lots of people walking around with fake smiles covering up sad hearts.

Then God talks directly to Job. Why did God speak to people back then and not now? Hey, God, when are you going to have a chat with me?

“Who are you to question my wisdom with your ignorant, empty words?” (Job 38:2)

Oops! Did he just hear me?

“Have you any idea how big the world is?…Answer me if you know. I am sure you can, because you're old and were there when the world was made!” (Job 38:18, 21)

Whoa! God is sarcastic! God goes on to tell Job that he helps people who are suffering and that suffering isn't for nothing. Hmmm, wasn't Job's suffering just a game God was playing to prove a point?

At the end of the story, even though Job's life is restored, his family is still dead and the suffering is still within him, part of him. You can't take that back, God.

God says we learn from pain and become better people because of it.

I don't think I'm becoming a better person. I'm becoming a girl with a bad attitude.

At least I don't have boils.

         

First the Bible, now this: I'm going on a Christian retreat, and I'm not even one of the converted. Actually, I just want to go away to the mountains for the weekend, and if I have to listen to some sermons and singing, that's okay with me. No one has to know if I'm not listening. I'll just lift my head to the heavens every now and then and smile that mindless Christian smile and no one will know the difference.

“I'm so glad you're coming, Erin,” Mrs. C-J says when I tell her I'll be joining her and the six other girls from school.

Megan is coming, so at least I'll have one of my friends there. Ever since Megan's mother ran out on her, her dad, and her brother a few months ago, Megan's become interested in God.

“It's so hard. I feel like my mum's died too,” she said to me last week when I was at her house.

That really made me mad. I know her mother left, but Megan can still visit her any time she wants. Well, maybe not any time. I get the feeling her mother doesn't want her around too much. I suppose that's almost the same as not having one. But Megan doesn't have to lie in bed at night and imagine her mother's body rotting away. I suppose she might imagine her mother in bed with that other man.

Is that worse?

Megan is nervous about leaving her dad for the weekend. “What if he gets depressed while I'm gone?” I think it will be good for him not to see Megan for a couple of days. With her bobbed red hair and petite frame, Megan looks just like her mother.

“You can call him from up there,” I tell her.

So we're off to a cottage in the Blue Mountains for the weekend. Apparently they're called that because at different times of the day the trees look blue.

It's a Godfest with workshops, music, and food. And lots of gatherings. At our first one, Megan and I sit on seats facing a large outdoor wooden stage, under a tent. We sing a few songs. A preacher gets up and talks. I mostly zone out.

“If anyone sitting here today feels the desire to give their life to God, please come to the front now,” he says. Part of me would love to go up there as a joke. But I don't want to make Megan mad.

A woman begins playing an organ, and people start running to the front. Some of them are crying. Some of them are falling down. A few of them are twitching. Then I hear people murmuring around me. It sounds like pig Latin, and half the tent is speaking it.

“Mrs. C-J, what's happening?” I whisper.

“They're speaking in tongues. It's direct from God.”

“Do they know what they're saying?”

“Not really, but it's God's language.”

Poor God, he can't even speak properly. No wonder he never talks to anyone anymore. No one would understand him.

The newly converted walk back to their seats, some crying but all still looking the same. Maybe it takes a while to work.

“Now a final prayer before we go out into the world and spread God's love on this glorious day,” the preacher says in a hush into his microphone. Heads bow. Mine doesn't. I'm watching out for God…or something…anything.

Nothing.

I can't blame him. I wouldn't be in a hurry to come and play this crowd if I were him. I'm sure he doesn't like all this stuff either. He probably finds it as strange as I do. If he exists, that is.

“Well, what did you think of that, girls?” Mrs. C-J asks as we file out.

We all say it was great, but I wonder how many of us believe it.

We all pitch in and help make dinner that night. It's exciting being in a house with six other girls. There's lots of fun and laughs, but I can't stop thinking about the day. I'm still so angry inside. I guess I'm just like most teens. Isn't that our shtick?

After a Saturday-morning hike we have another gathering, where I sit feeling even more pissed off with God and all the weirdos there, and two workshops about Jesus and sin before going back to the cottage and packing up for the train ride home.

“Well, girls, I want to know what each of you thought,” Mrs. C-J says once we're on the train. Everyone tells her it was great. I'm tempted to talk in “God's language,” but Megan seems into the retreat, and I don't want to act like I'm not.

I do want to believe in God even though I don't want to. I want to go to church even though I hate church. I want to pray to God even though he's not really there. I want him to help me even though he hurt me. I want him to hear me even though he's deaf.

I don't want to be some needy dork who speaks in tongues and can't cope without God and all that crap, but sometimes I think maybe God does have a greater plan for me. For Job. For everyone. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, blah, blah, blah.

There's a church within walking distance of my house. I've now gone there a couple of times with Megan, and it all seems pretty normal. Everyone's young. There's no weird tongue-talking in this church. I still think singing hymns is pretty stupid, but whatever. I try to ignore the tambourine and triangle. But I'm not quite convinced yet. I'm not going that easily. I wouldn't jump out of a plane with a parachute on my back before reading up on it, and I'm not about to jump into this without some solid proof.

I've read about the Dead Sea Scrolls (the for and against); I've read about Jesus, and you at least can't deny that he lived; I've read and read and read the Bible. Now I've just got to have faith.

I'm starting to feel like I can't do this on my own anymore. I don't want to use God as a crutch, but the days aren't getting any better and I'm not getting any better. Trying God out for a while couldn't hurt, could it? I can stop whenever I want. It's not like God's a drug I won't be able to give up. You get hooked on heroin or coke. You don't get hooked on God.

My mother believed in God, and it didn't seem to turn her into a mindless idiot. Dad thought it was all pretty stupid. I wonder what he would think of me now.

November 1984

I
got up in church today and “gave my life to God.” Can I get it back if I want?

God's not as bad as I thought. It's the world that's all screwy.

I like liking God. It takes so much less effort than hating him. It keeps me busy too. There's fellowship on Friday nights, church on Sunday, and other events during the week. Oh, and I'm learning to play the guitar. It's fun. Trent dances around my room while I strum the guitar I borrowed from church. He's too little to know my playing sucks.

With God hovering around I'm never lonely, never alone in my room late at night when I can't sleep.

Tracy thinks it's hilarious that I've started listening to Christian rock music. But I don't care. It's all hopeful and triumphant. It makes you want to jump up and accept your Academy Award, fly like a bird, shout to the rooftops.

Amy Grant's my favorite singer. I figure if someone that pretty can be a Christian, then it can't be all bad. Christianity isn't just for ugly losers who can't get a date and people who can't cope with life.

Keith Green is a great Christian singer too. He died in a plane crash. I wonder why God would kill off someone like that. It seems pretty stupid. Like having an important letter you want to send but you kill the mailman.

It's funny, but I still can't imagine my parents in heaven with God. I don't think I believe in heaven. I never imagine seeing them again when I die. I don't imagine them up there looking down on me. I believe in heaven for other people, but I don't think Mum and Dad are there. They're nowhere.

         

I just got home from school.

Chris is crying. This terrifies me. “Chris, are you okay?” I ask.

“Erin?” Tracy nods toward my room and walks in that direction. I follow.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Katrina's dead.”

Katrina? Chris's sister? “What? How?”

Tracy winces. “Hit by a train.”

Chris had to go and identify her, and apparently she was so messed up no one else in his family could handle it. Maybe they think he's a death expert now.

Katrina was on a train, twirling around the poles you hold on to, and stuck her head out the window when it was coming to a tunnel. Who would think pole dancing could kill you? I wonder if her head came off. I still seem to have morbid thoughts like that. I must pray more.

I wonder what Chris had to identify. He doesn't say anything about it, and I don't want to ask. He wasn't that close to Katrina, but I imagine it will scar him for life.

Although her brother and my sister are an item, Katrina and I didn't talk much. She was cooler and tougher than I am, and she was always doing stupid stuff. She scared me sometimes in school, before I knew her as Chris's sister, because she was one of the tough girls. On the outside, anyway.

I feel bad for judging her. Funny how you don't feel bad about it until someone's dead.

Katrina did whatever she wanted. She didn't let her family know where she was half the time. She was a wild child.

         

It's been two weeks since Katrina died, and Chris is trying hard to be strong. He walks around looking like he's about to cry but never does—at least, not in front of me.

Chris's mother seems to be loving the attention. She's been on the news. When reporters knocked on her door, she invited them in with refreshments at the ready.

I don't feel for her the way I thought I would as a fellow griever. I know I said everyone grieves differently, but you'd swear she was hardly grieving at all.

I suppose I don't really know what goes on in her private moments, the way nobody knows about mine. Maybe everyone's saying,
“Look at Erin, she sure smiles a lot! She mustn't care.”

I can't believe I'm so judgmental, thinking about Chris's mother the way people have probably thought about me.

I guess I'm not that different after all.

December 1984

I
t's Christmas again. It's not so bad now that I'm a Christian. Grandma and Grandpa arrive for breakfast, and like a good Christian I just smile and try to be loving, even though they are telling Tracy and me we're not doing the best thing for Trent. Thank God we hardly ever see them these days.

When they leave, we head off to Chris's parents. This time it's more for them than for us. This year we're doing the cooking and looking after them. It's the same as last Christmas but with different grievers. It's actually good to have to think about other people. Just like last year, Trent cheers everyone up with his endless chatter about his exciting new toys.

January 1985

“N
ow I want you to look at that chair and pretend it's your mother. Talk to her.”

It's six p.m. and I'm in the cold, concrete church basement with the new youth leader, Dave.

“I think I can help you,” he said last Sunday at church.

I feel like I'm in a bad acting class and the pressure is on to give a show, a good performance.

I'm his little project, I know that. He does care, though. He's a former bad boy who found God and now tells us to stay away from alcohol and drugs. That's easy to say when you've already had the fun of trying them, but he's a cool guy. He's really nice, and easy to be around. And he's a good poster boy for Christianity, with his dark, messy hair and baggy pants and surf shirts.

“Now, Erin, look at the chair and pretend it's your mother.”

“Ever tried pretending your mother was a chair?” I retort.

It's not easy, especially when it's a rickety old spindly wooden chair. If my mum were a chair, she'd be a plush, soft, dusty pink velvet chair with big armrests and sturdy legs. The kind of chair you never want to get out of. It's insulting to see her as this piece of cheap junk. She'd be most offended.

“I can't do it. I'm sorry.”

“Well…imagine your
father
is the chair.”

Gee, couldn't we use a different chair this time? Dad would be a black leather chair with studs at the back. The leather would be warm and worn but the studs would be cold on your back. You could get comfortable in it, but not quite.

“Sorry, Dave. I have to at least use a different chair.”

So Dad gets to be an ugly green vinyl chair with a tiny layer of padding on the seat.

“Dad, I'm so angry with you,” I say in a monotone.

“Oh, Erin,” Dave says, laughing, “that was pathetic. Put some heart into it.”

I know Dave wants to help, and I like the attention he's giving me, but I feel like an idiot talking to a chair in an empty church hall with a young Christian surfer watching me. I eventually work up to tears and drama, but I feel so exposed and stupid and I don't even know if I'm being real or if I'm just doing it for him. Is my theater training just kicking in? Errol would be impressed with this performance. But those playacting days are over now. Once the tour ended, I stopped going to Shopfront. I didn't want to go back to the scene of the crime, where I'd had that terrible thought, and my heart just wasn't in it anymore. Now I can't even bear to go past on the train.

Dave is studying to be a counselor, and I think I may be his first project. Quite lucky, getting a girl with dead parents at your first parish. What an opportunity.

         

I have to save Tracy while there's still time.

We're in the living room. Chris is out front teaching Trent how to kick a soccer ball.

“But Tracy,” I say, “you'll end up with big red boils growing all over your body. They'll get all juicy and infected and yellow pus will ooze out like a volcano.” I have to tell her to change her ways before she dies a horrible death or the world ends, whichever comes first. Hopefully the world will end first. I can't stand her most of the time, but I don't want her to die, especially not before me.

“Tracy, promise me you'll stop having sex with Chris. God will forgive you if you stop now. Promise me you won't do it anymore. Because if you do, you really will be covered in boils. Even on your face,” I add for extra shock value.

That should get her. Looks are important to Tracy, and boils are not going to be in fashion anytime soon.

“If you don't stop sinning, even worse things than that will happen. You'll die and go to hell, and hell is worse than what we've been through. You'll end up in a place full of other people with oozing boils and red raw flesh hanging off their bones. They'll all gather around you and scream and moan and try to touch you because you're new to hell and all your skin is still intact.”

I can't believe she's actually listening to me and not walking out of the room. This is a first.

“Don't be stupid, Erin,” Tracy tells me. She gestures around us. “Hell is here and now. I'm already living in it.”

“It won't matter that you've suffered here on earth. God won't care that your parents have died. None of that will matter if you keep on sinning and don't pray to God to save you. They told us all about it in fellowship last night.”

“You're crazy. What are they doing to you at that church?” She's laughing, she's actually laughing for the first time in a long time. But why does it have to be about this?

“Tracy, this is serious, you've got to listen to me!”

“Hey. Don't worry about my soul, okay? I don't think God's going to punish me for something so stupid when he's made me suffer so bloody much in this life here on earth.”

“But Tracy—”

“Shut up, Erin.” She walks outside to join Chris.

I suppose I'll just have to keep praying for her.

At church there's this gorgeous guy, the minister's son, but he doesn't even know I exist. He's got dark curly hair and blue eyes and is a really good guitarist. I think about him all the time. Even though it's frustrating, I'm kind of glad I have these thoughts, otherwise I'd think there was something wrong with me. You see, every guy who's interested in kissing me is highly unappealing.

There's Phillip Sidebottom—the name says it all. He sits behind me in church. I can almost feel his hot lusty breath, and when the minister talks about death or losing someone you love, Phillip always puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Piss off, buster!”
I want to say, but as usual, I just sit there like a big dummy while the sweat from his clammy hand runs down my shoulder. Then when the service is over and people get up to leave, Phillip comes up to me with this pathetic “I'm a sensitive guy” look on his face.

“I know this must be so hard for you, Erin. I'm here for you one hundred percent.”

Why is it that I always get the dorks? It makes me angry that whenever a dorky guy at church is interested in me, he uses the accident and my “pain” to try and get close. It's disgusting. I didn't think this kind of thing would happen in the house of the Lord. Aren't Christian boys supposed to be nicer than non-Christian boys?

And Phillip isn't even a boy—he's twenty-three, which makes him doubly disgusting.

Eventually Phillip sees he's getting nowhere and gives up. But then with Phillip out of the way, greasy Mark Bean, cream of the loser crop, starts in. He doesn't even try anything different. He sits behind me and goes through the same motions as Phillip. But Mark's worse. He's almost a bit scary. He follows me around, leaves me notes. And, he's twenty-four.

Why are guys in their twenties interested in me? I'll tell you why. Because they think in my sad and sorry state I'm a sucker for anything.

I may be sad. But I'm not a moron.

         

I'm a pretty light sleeper now that the stupid doctor won't let me have any more sleeping pills. He doesn't want me to be addicted. Doctors, what do they know?

I'm lying in bed. It's just after one a.m. and I can't sleep. Then I hear a noise. Something's going on outside our house. I get out of bed and walk out to the living room.

The sound's getting louder. I look out the front living room window.

“Oh, Erin, I'm here for you;

Oh, Erin, don't be one, let's be two.”

Mark Bean is walking around the cul-de-sac, strumming his guitar and singing. He's serenading me. How embarrassing! What if someone else in the street hears his moans?

I sneak out onto the verandah.

“Mark, what are you doing?” I whisper-yell, so that he, but nobody else, can hear me.

He smiles like a lunatic. “Just listen,” he says before strumming the guitar again.

“Shhh! You'll wake up the whole street,” I hiss. I can't believe Tracy hasn't heard him. But he doesn't stop.

“We're made for each other—

Can't you see?

I care for you so much,

Like the wind loves the trees.”

“Listen, Mark, I need some sleep. You'd better go home. It's really nice of you, though.” Why am I always so damn polite to these idiots?

He's just standing there looking at me like “What?” I go back inside.

He starts singing again. Now I'm really creeped out. I don't know what to do. I suppose I'll just lie in bed and wait for him to get bored and give up. I can't decide how furious I am because I'm starting to feel bad for him even though he scares me.

Now I really need a sleeping pill.

         

“Please don't do that!” I yell.

It's a week after the midnight serenade. Mark has sneaked into the garage to get to Dad's lawn mower and is now mowing our front lawn at a million miles an hour.

“Mark, stop it! Please.” I run outside as soon as I hear the noise. It's seven a.m. Sunday. Our neighbors are going to hate us.

“I want to do it,” he pants.

“Yes, but I don't want you to. This isn't helping, Mark.” I cross my arms over my chest and go back into the house. This is the second time he's done this.

Tracy's up. “I'm getting a bit worried about this guy,” she says to Chris as he walks, yawning, into the kitchen. “He's twenty-four years old, for God's sake. What's he doing chasing a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“Yeah! And you know what's coming?” I say, thrilled that Tracy cares. “Next he's going to kill me, cut me up into little pieces and store me in his freezer so we'll always be together.” I'm joking, but I'm not.

“Oh, Erin, don't be ridiculous,” Chris says. But he hasn't really seen Mark in action.

For once, Tracy takes my side. “I think she's right; he's getting worse. He was here the other day, mowing the lawn like an out-of-control maniac.”

Why is Tracy so concerned? I don't get it, but I like it. If someone from outside the family treats me badly, the people inside get all protective and caring…. Interesting.

Come and get me, boys!

I wrinkle my nose. “Yeah, and the other night he was outside serenading me.”

“What?” Tracy is appalled. “You should have told me, Erin. What was he doing exactly?”

“Oh, you know, strumming his guitar and singing on the front lawn. It was pretty creepy.”

“I'll go and speak to him, but I think you're overreacting. He's just trying to be nice,” Chris says in a deep, stern head-of-the-household voice.

Ever since I got angry at his dog and kicked the glass door in, Chris has been different with me. He thinks I'm a big overreactor, and I guess sometimes he's right…but not this time.

         

I don't know much about sex. Mum never had a birds-and-bees talk with me. What little I know came from a bad movie.

Beverly Hills Girls' High decided that age twelve was time for girls to learn about the things that go on between a man and a woman. Like we don't already know, we all said to each other. Actually, I didn't dare tell anyone, but at the age of twelve I didn't really know as much as the other girls seemed to.

“On Monday we're going to watch a film about love and sexual intercourse,” my personal development teacher had said.

I figured it was going to be a bit racy, because we had to take a permission slip home for our parents to sign. I wondered what the big deal was. Mum let me watch R-rated movies, especially ones she thought would enrich my life. So Mum said nothing and signed mine.

The big day came. I sat in the dark next to Julie, waiting for the movie to start. It was times like these that I was glad there were no boys at our school.

The lights went out, the movie started, and I soon decided I was never having sex. I didn't want to end up red and raw with pus oozing out all over the place. And that was just one of the things that could happen. You could get crabs. Imagine having little crabs like at the beach running all over you down there! Then there are warts, which I thought you only got on your fingers, blood, smells, and pain, pain, pain. Then there's the baby factor. But still, that's nothing compared to warts and painful peeing. I couldn't believe how messy it all was. It made me wonder why people do it at all.

It was not what I imagined when I lay in bed listening to love songs. I thought we were going to see a film with men and women holding hands and kissing, getting romantic in the moonlight and then doing the deed with soft moans and declarations of love. Not ugly striped sheets stained with yellow pus!

No wonder I'm still scared of the whole thing.

         

Despite the weirdos, Megan and I are starting to think a lot more about guys. Julie couldn't care less. If a normal boy ever showed any interest in us, we wouldn't know what to do. Being at an all-girls' school doesn't help matters. There's the neighboring Narwee Boys' High, but we never really mix with them. So, unlike most people, we don't even know how to talk to boys like normal human beings. Luckily, there's a handful of boys at church who are musical, surfer types who don't look Christiany in the slightest.