Grief Girl (21 page)

January 1986

T
racy and Chris are getting a water bed and are insisting that I get one too. I'm happy to sleep on the foam and springs I've slept on my whole life. I don't even like swimming.

Tracy's a beautiful swimmer. She always won all of her races at school swim meets. Maybe that's why she wants a water bed. Maybe it's a way for her to think of good things at night, of a time when her life was happier. But I hate the water. Give me a flat, hard surface any day. Give me solid ground to sleep on. Sleeping is hard enough as it is.

“Tracy, I don't want one. I love my bed. You can't force me.”

“You reckon?” she says, getting annoyed. “Trust me, Erin. You'll love a water bed.”

“We can't afford it. It's a waste of money.”

“There's a sale. God, why do you have to make things so difficult?” There are those gritted teeth again. “Besides, your mattress is old and lumpy,”

“I do all my homework and stuff on my bed,” I point out.

“You can still do that on your new bed.”

I raise my eyebrows. “I'll be able to write neatly while I'm sloshing around?”

         

Well, I'm getting a water bed and that's that. It's arriving today.

Maybe they heard somewhere that it's therapeutic or something. Like going back to the womb. Shrinks always talk about the womb when people are screwed up, don't they?

         

Chris has put the frame together, and I have to fill the big silver sack with water. So here I stand in my bedroom with the green backyard garden hose coming through my window pouring water into my room.

         

Every time I sit on the stupid thing, it sways and wobbles like jelly. I have nowhere to sit anymore. My bedroom is ruined. I used to love doing my homework on my bed, reading a book, or listening to my music. I could do that for hours. It was peaceful. A place where the world was still, a place where I could at least try to be still. I can't even do my homework on my bed anymore. Every time I try to write, the bed dips and my words fall off the page.

I've tried sleeping in the water bed for weeks now and it's not getting any better. How am I ever going to get used to this? I'm lost at sea for life.

         

I think I have post-traumatic stress syndrome. I've read about it in those stupid grief books. I've been carefully watching out for signs that I may be totally screwed up for life, that the accident has scarred me deeply. So deeply that I'd never be truly aware of it.

Well, I think I've found a sign.

One of my greatest childhood fears has come true: I've become a bed wetter.

I've gone my whole life without wetting the bed, and now, at the age of seventeen, my fear has been realized. Even five-year-old Trent doesn't wet the bed!

Am I really
that
screwed up?

My pajamas are soaking wet, my sheets are drenched. I change into some dry clothes and take the sheets off the bed. There's a lot of water. I couldn't have wet the bed. The stupid thing must have a leak. I knew this bed was going to be a disaster. This could be good. Maybe the bed's broken. Maybe I'll have to get rid of it!

There seem to be tiny holes in the silver plastic sack, near my pillow. How could have that happened? Hmmm. I did catch Trent playing with some of my sewing needles the other day. I hid them from him, thinking he might swallow one and die. The holes do look like pinpricks, though.

“Trent!” I'm calling him, pretty sure of what he's going to tell me. He's been curious about this bed since I got it. He comes bouncing into my room.

“Yes, Erin,” he says in his husky little voice.

“Did you do anything to my new bed?”

“No,” he says, trying to act innocent, which is not easy for a five-year-old who is guilty of something naughty.

“Are you sure?”

“No, I didn't do anything.”

“I won't be mad at you. I promise.” I smile, trying to make a joke of it so he'll tell me the truth. “Did you make holes in it?”

“I put pins in it,” he says with an apprehensive smile.

“I'm sorry.”

“Trent!” I shout at him. “You don't do things like that!”

I'm angry and he's getting teary. I can't believe I'm doing it and I can't seem to help myself. I'm just like everyone else, just like an adult. I calm down and apologize.

“I'm sorry, Trent.” I hug him. “But that was a naughty thing to do, wasn't it?”

“Yes,” he says, frightened.

“But don't worry. I'll put a patch on it and it will be as good as new.

“I thought I'd wet the bed and would have to start wearing a diaper.” I try to laugh with him, but he doesn't trust me now, and I don't blame him. I broke my promise about not getting mad at him.

He walks out looking sad.

I wish I had just wet the damn bed.

         

Tracy never thought her life would turn out like this. She was the queen of the disco. She was going to have a rich, handsome husband, a nice car, trips to tropical islands where she could coat herself with tanning oil, lots of jewelry stored in a huge safe in a fabulous house on the water….

Well, she's on the water, all right, but this water is gray and murky, and she's not in her dream house. She's working as a waitress in a crummy waterside restaurant with plastic red and white checkered tablecloths.

She decided a while ago that she wanted to try a change from hairdressing because she's sick of all the whining people who tell her all their problems while she does their hair. “This job is perfect,” she told me last week in a rare moment of bonding. “The hours are flexible, so I can still pick up Trent, and the boss is really nice.”

Tracy has to work this Sunday, so Trent and I are going to visit her. It's fun driving with Trent in the car. Makes me feel like I'm taking charge of things.

When we walk into the restaurant, a small, frantic woman of about thirty is wiping down tables. She looks up and I'm shocked to see that it's Tracy. I try to smile like everything is okay, but it's not. She looks so old and sad and small and helpless and tired. Like life is crushing her and she has nothing left.

So this is her fantastic new job?

The whole mood of the restaurant is wrong. It's like the owners decided they would have a waterfront restaurant, not realizing the water was actually sludge. The building is on poles near the sand, but the water doesn't reach it. You can see the ocean way out in the distance through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but up close it's just puddles of gray water in the gray sand.

Seeing her do this job that is so far from her dreams just doesn't seem right. Apart from the night of the accident, I've never felt as bad for her as I do right now.

I never usually see her as a person, just as my bitch sister, but today she makes me want to cry.

When she gets a lunch break, we go outside and walk in the mushy sand. Trent runs and splashes, oblivious to what an awful place we're in. He giggles and makes us laugh the kind of laugh that could turn to crying at any minute.

Tracy never wants to talk, but today I get the feeling she might. So I try to start up a conversation.

“So, do you like the job?” I ask.

“Yeah, it's okay, I suppose,” she says, looking defeated but trying to hide it.

“It won't always be like this, you know,” I say.

“Trent, don't go too far!” she yells as he runs away from us.

“Tracy, I'll get a great career and make enough money for all of us.” That didn't come out right. It sounds like I think she can't. I seem to always think I can be the family savior, not realizing that maybe she's insulted by that.

I want to tell her I know how she suffers. I want to tell her I'll be a better sister from now on. I want to tell her that everything will be all right one day. We'll get through it and find a way to a better life, a life where we won't have to struggle anymore. A life where she doesn't have to do stuff that's so far from who she really is.

I know there are a lot of people out there doing bum jobs they hate. I just think a girl who loses her parents and has to take care of two younger siblings without much money or help from anyone deserves better.

I want everything to be the way it is in the movies. I want to hug her, but I don't. I want us to share and cry, but we don't.

It's all awkward and wrong and we couldn't be more different.

So we walk through the sludge before she has to go back and wipe tables and clean up after the lunch crowd.

I can't stand seeing her do that with her apron on. It's not who she is. I know that much.

         

“Tracy, Erin, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“That's okay, Trent, we're at the beach,” Tracy says.

The three of us have come to the beach—a real beach this time—to get out of the house and try something new together. It's a perfect day. The sun's shining, the sand's hot and white, and the blue water is clear and still enough for a nonswimmer like me to swim in.

“But there's nowhere to go,” Trent says, crossing his muscular little legs.

“That's easy, just go in the water,” I say. The nearest restroom is way too far to walk to in time.

“Really…no one will mind?”

“Everybody does it at the beach.”

“Oh,” he says, and he's off and running, holding on to his swimming trunks…but…he's stopped with the water up to his ankles.

“Why isn't he going in?” I ask Tracy as she reapplies her tanning oil.

“I don't know. Maybe he's scared,” she says, laughing at his cuteness.

It's great sitting here next to her laughing and oiling up. It's like we're a couple of girlfriends out for the day.

“He's never been scared of the water before,” I say, watching him.

“That's true.”

“Oh my God, he's pulling his willy out of his pants!” I'm really laughing now. He must not realize we meant he should be totally in the water before he starts peeing.

We look at each other and know we should go and tell Trent he's doing it wrong, but it's too much fun watching the arc of water going from his little body to the sea.

Tracy laughs. “Fine big sisters we are!”

Every time she laughs, I feel the laugh inside me. It's wonderful and corny and great.

We keep watching and try not to laugh at our little brother standing and peeing on a crowded beach. People must think he has terrible parents with even more terrible manners.

I love times like this, when Tracy and I are laughing and Trent is happy. It's like we're a real family and nothing bad has ruined us.

Maybe there's hope for us yet.

June 1986

W
e're leaving Knock Crescent.

Sorry, house, we've sold you to the highest bidder. It's time to get away from all the bad memories, Tracy says. I'm not sure I'm ready to leave. Tracy and Chris have decided to get married and don't want to start married life in this sad old house. Who can blame them?

It's strange. All I've wanted to do is leave this rotten house, and now all I want to do is stay…or do I? Will I forget everything if I leave? I want to forget. But I don't want to. I don't know what I want. I know I can't live here anymore. It's like the sadness lives here with us, and if we stay, it stays. I don't know if we'll be happy anywhere, but we've got more of a chance someplace else.

Am I leaving Mum and Dad? Am I leaving the good times behind forever? I can't remember them anyway. It's like they happened to another girl.

Will I remember what my room looks like? Will I remember Mum and Dad's room? Actually, I really could live without that. Will Trent be sad or will he not really care? I still don't know if he's aware of what's going on. It doesn't help that Tracy won't let us talk to him about it. She's even started telling Trent to call her “Mum” and Chris “Dad” in front of people at his school to prevent confusion with his friends. What about Trent's confusion? It's like our parents never existed. I know it feels like that sometimes, but we should keep some memories for Trent, shouldn't we?

What will it be like to come back to this street and see other people in our house?

I doubt I'll ever come back.

Goodbye, Knock Crescent.

Goodbye, Dad's cheap ugly bar made of fake bendy bricks that curve with the heat of a hair dryer. Goodbye, ugly metal clothesline that Mum used to hang her undies on, behind bath towels so no one could see them.

Goodbye, my very first bedroom, with your pink and purple flowered wallpaper. Goodbye, beautiful cement inground pool. Dad was so happy that he finally worked his way up from an aboveground circular plastic pool to you. Goodbye, lemon tree; you were so generous when I decided I wanted to go all out and have a real American lemonade stand out the front. Goodbye, Mum's dining set. Friends are looking after you for a while, until we know what we want to do permanently. Goodbye, Mum and Dad's room. I'm sorry, but I'm locking your door and throwing away the key.

Time to start again. Time to stop holding on to the past. Time to make things better.

Goodbye, Knock Crescent. You really did live up to your name as a dead end.

         

I was in hell, but now I'm in L.

We've moved into an old sandstone house fifteen minutes away from Knock Crescent.

My room is L-shaped, and even though it's tiny, it's really cool-looking. It's almost like having two rooms. And it's right at the back corner of the house.

“Gee, they've put you in the closet,” Julie says when she comes over for the first time.

Tracy and Chris have the room at the front of the house and Trent is in the room directly opposite them, so it's like I have my own space. I can almost pretend I have my own little apartment.

I think things are going to be better here. There are no sad attachments. The living room is just a living room and the kitchen is just a boring old kitchen. Tracy's still talking in Tracyspeak, but it's not as disturbing in this house.

It's just a house and nothing more.

I wonder who's living in our home.

Now that we have a new house, we decide it's time to get some of Mum and Dad's furniture back. But when Tracy calls Noelene, who's been storing Mum's prized dining room set, she actually refuses to part with it. I can't believe it, so when Tracy, Chris, and Trent are out, I call Noelene myself.

“Our mother loved that dining set and glass cabinet,” I tell my mother's old friend. “They hold so many memories for us.”

“We really can't give them up now,” she says. I can't believe her nerve.

A couple of days later I work up the courage to drive to Noelene's house. I hate to do it, but it seems like my only option. I feel pretty certain that if Noelene sees me in person, she won't be able to say no.

I'm standing in her dining room staring at our table and chairs.

“Look, Erin, I'm sorry, but we've designed our whole living room around these pieces,” Noelene explains with a shrug. Is this the same woman who used to laugh with my parents? Whose house we used to go to for family barbecues? Whose friendship meant a lot to Mum?

“But you promised,” I blurt out. I am so angry. Mum would be crushed.

Noelene shakes her head and walks toward the door. “I'm sorry. No.”

I'm seventeen and powerless to do anything else.

And that's that.