Grief Girl (6 page)

The minister is almost done, and Tracy made it through without shedding a tear.

I wish she were Italian.

Now we have to leave the church. I have to turn around and face everyone sitting in the old wooden pews. I have to walk past the coffin again and back up the aisle. I'm still crying like an idiot and I can't seem to stop. I'm going to puke. I just know it.

I'm up the aisle and I don't know how I got here. I'm walking without moving. Everyone's looking at me with sad, quiet smiles. We're poor motherless children.
“Don't forget about Dad!”
I want to say.
“He's still alive!”

I want them all to hug me, but at the same time I want to tell them to fuck off. That would be nice. All dressed like a lady in pink but acting like a ruffian in black. I don't think Mum would like that.

She wouldn't know, though.

“Her spirit is hovering over us right now.”

Bullshit! I don't care what the delusional minister says, that crap is just for people who can't cope with the truth. The truth is she's about to be shoved in the back of a big black car, tossed around like a sack of potatoes while she's driven to a cemetery, placed hovering over a hole, buried under a lot of dirt, and then left lying there all alone while we go off and eat tea cakes.

It must be so lonely in that box.

I wish I could save her.

         

My driver is sweating in the hot sun and holding the car door open for Frances and me.

“Thank you, sir,” I say, swishing my pink hem as I get in. I'm Auntie Mame on my way to the theater.

So now we're off to the hole in the ground.

I don't think I can stand much more of this. I want to hold my head up high the way grievers do in the movies, but this isn't really like the movies at all. They got it all wrong. This is unbearable. It's nothing like my daydream or premonition or whatever that thing was, where I was braver than Joan of Arc.

We drive and drive, slowly following the hearse. I suppose that's the number-one rule at funeral driver school: drive like an old granny. Take the corners real slow, and don't speak to the passengers. All the cars around us know who we are, the grieving relatives, and they drive slow too. It must be contagious.

We're almost there. The hearse has just turned into the tiny cemetery on the hill. The grass is dry and yellow and crunchy from the heat. Mum always wanted to be buried on a hill in the countryside. Very
Sound of Music.
Except the hills aren't alive, they're full of dead people. I sing quietly to myself, “When I'm feeling sad / I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel soooo bad.” Somehow brown paper packages tied up with string won't cut it today.

The car has stopped and Frances gets out. From here in the car I can see the hole and the green Astroturf stuck down on the ground around it.

I don't think I can watch them put her in there. I'm shaking. I don't know what to do. I want to ask the driver, but he's staring straight ahead. Maybe he's lucky enough to never have been to the funeral of someone he's actually cared about.

I'm going to scream. I can't move. I can't get out of the car. I can't. It's so wrong of me, Mum, and I'm sorry, but I can't stand there and watch it. I'm sorry.

Tracy's walking toward my car, so I press the window button down. I tell her I'm unable to get out and be decent enough to go to all of my mother's funeral and she walks away. She seems almost happy. I leave the window down. There are flies buzzing around but I don't care.

It's my mother's funeral and lots of people are here, but only one member of our family is up there saying goodbye. I can see Grandma and Grandpa, but they don't count. I wonder what Dad's doing right now. Can he feel it?

Here I sit. Wearing a pink dress in a car with beige interior. God, I hate beige. It does offset the pink nicely, though. I can only just hear what the minister is saying, unless a fly buzzes past and I miss it altogether. I can see everyone on the hill from the waist up, standing around the grave. I can't see Tracy.

Oh no, oh no! No no no no no! They're putting the coffin in the ground now. I can see the men using those white rope things to lower her down. I can't sit here and I can't move. I can't do anything. There's absolutely nothing I can do.

This is it. This is the end.

My mother is gone. She's in a box and she's not getting out.

She's dead dead dead dead dead. She's hasn't passed away. She's dead. Dead as a doornail, six feet under, pushing up the daisies.

She's gone and here they all come down the hill crying and talking softly. Don't come near me, I tell them with my look. And they don't. I sort of wanted them to, though.

So it's done and we drive away.

         

It's time for my uncles and their wives to go back to their daily lives, and it's time for us to get back to ours.

Whatever is left of them.

         

I thought the funeral was meant to help, but I just feel worse.

I can't do this living thing anymore. It's too much effort.

I can't sleep and I can't be awake. I want to disappear from the world so I don't have to deal with the day-today. I want to die. Then I won't have to bother with anything. I know Trent might miss me, but after a while he'll see that he's better off without someone like me, someone who's miserable all the time. Actually, misery's not even the half of it.

God, let me die. Maybe I'll be hit by a car too. I can't seem to kill myself. I don't have a gun and I don't have the guts to stab myself with a kitchen knife. Maybe I could OD on something. Why can't I just go to sleep and never wake up?

         

It's been a week since the funeral, and my fingernails look horrible. I can't stop munching on them. It's worse than ever. I shouldn't care about my stupid nails, but for some reason I do. Mum always said biting would ruin my nail beds.

Well,
I'm
in control now. They're my nails and I can do what I want with them. There's no one to stop me. No one whose permission I have to ask. So three weeks after the accident, I go to a nail salon. I've walked past it many times but have never gone in. It's all white, with mirrors. The women in there look happy and pampered.

I ask a manicurist with long orange nails to give me even longer dark purple ones. She's not the manicurist I wanted—I wanted the younger one with spiky hair, but she's home sick.

I sit down in a white chair and the woman starts to file what's left of my nails.

“You have lovely nails, but I must warn you, they have a tendency to grow upwards,” she tells me in a sweet, soft voice.

“My mum used to say that would happen if I kept biting them.” Then it comes out of me before I have a chance to stop it: “She died in a car accident just over two weeks ago.”

The woman is quiet for a second before looking up.

“I'm so sorry,” she says before looking back down at my nails for what seems like a very long time. At least she's stopped filing me down to nothing. I feel like an idiot. Why did I have to ruin this potentially nice experience by telling her? Most people gossip with their manicurist, they don't drop a bomb on her. Why do I always ruin everything? I decide to act extra happy so she doesn't think I'm some poor, pathetic, needy, crazy person.

“Gee, these are going to look fantastic,” I tell her, smiling brightly. “Why do you have to file the top of my nails? What's that funny smell? Will my real nails grow underneath? Will I be able to take these off one day and just have nice long nails of my own? Should I have pointy nails or square ones? I love yours. How long have you had them?”

Now I wonder if she actually believes me or if she thinks I'm someone who goes around saying shocking stuff to get attention. I've never thought of that before. Maybe people will think I'm making it up. She seems to believe me, though, because she looks kind of sad and awkward. She tells me she has a daughter my age. She seems like she'd be a good mother.

I pay and choose dark Morticia purple nail polish.

She's so gentle and fast with her brushstrokes that it's all over too quickly.

“Can I stay here while they dry? Do you have one of those nail-dryer machines?” She does, so I stay.

She sets me up and then walks out the back with her colleague to eat lunch. It's just me, the buzz of the little nail fan, and white, lots of white. And then I notice my reflection in all the mirrors.

Me, looking like a stupid little girl trying to be all grown-up and sophisticated.

I do feel like a new person, though. I can't wait to get to school and show them off. Julie is going to just die. Oh, I shouldn't say things like that anymore. It might happen.

         

I'm going back to work because I don't want to lose my job. We need the money. And I need to get out of the house.

I feel like an idiot putting my Cookie Man uniform on. I used to love it, but all of a sudden it seems so silly, so trivial. A frilly white apron over a blue and white checked tunic with puffy sleeves. And to top it off, a lacy white hat, like an old-fashioned candy seller.

I take the twenty-minute bus ride to work and people stare at me in my uniform, the way they always do. I probably should just get changed when I get there, but that's an even bigger hassle.

When I get to the mall, I put on my “Selling cookies is fun!” smile and get started.

My nice boss says he's so sorry and I say I'm okay and then we open the metal rolling door at the front of the store. I love this store. It's warm and sweet smelling and it's attached to a bakery next door, which makes it even cozier. All the bakery staff take our cookies home, and we get to take as much bread as we can eat. That will come in handy now. No matter what, we'll have bread and cookies. A family could live on that if they had to. People have done worse.

“Would you like to try a sample?” Smile.

“Here's your change.” Smile.

“Ooh yes, I love the peanut butter ones too.” Smile.

It comes out of nowhere. I finish serving and walk behind the huge metal cookie-making machine, where on a usual day I would stand and eat uncooked dough. But this isn't usual. I start to cry. I can't seem to do anything these days without bursting into tears at some point. It's ridiculous. I need to get some control.

“Are you okay, luv?”

I turn and see the bakery lady with the dyed red hair styled high on her head. The nest of hair frames her tiny face, and with her long eyelashes and blue eye shadow she looks like a country singer.

I try to act calm, but it all comes pouring out. The accident, Dad in the hospital, the funeral, Tracy, Trent…everything. We lean on the metal beam between the two shops and talk until I'm smiling again. At the end of her shift she gives me extra ham-and-cheese bread to take home. My old favorite. I get as much as I want.

         

Dad's getting better, so it's time for him to move to another hospital closer to home.

“How's he going to get there?” I ask.

“In an ambulance,” Tracy says, exasperated. What did I think, we were going to shove him in the back of the red VW with his legs sticking out the window?

The new hospital is only twenty minutes from home and five minutes from Grandma and Grandpa's. It's nothing like the one he just came from. I'd only give this hospital a one-star rating.

In the first hospital he had his own room, but here there are lots of other men coughing and spluttering. It's miserable.

His room is beige, beige, and beige, and the floor is cold beige linoleum, unlike the nice carpet at the other hospital. His bed at the other hospital was wood (well, fake wood, but still); here it's cold metal. I guess I shouldn't complain. In some countries you have to pay a lot of money to stay in the hospital. In Australia you get to stay for free. Maybe that's why the TV commercials say we're “the lucky country.”

Dad looks so much better, and the doctors say he's improving rapidly. He's still crying and apologizing all the time, but maybe this change of scenery will help.

Evelyn visits. She's just walked into his hospital room in a pretty floral dress, all made up with eye shadow, rosy cheeks and lips. I've never seen her wear makeup before. She's awkward and giggly. She has a bit of lipstick on her teeth. Should I tell her? I'd want to be told. Do I really want to add embarrassment to her sorrows right now? Sometimes maybe it's better not to know.

Poor Evelyn must be having a really hard time over Mum. Mum was always there for her during her many unhappy times. I really feel for her, pretending to be all happy and putting on a brave face for Dad. She must be going through a lot. She's known Mum and Dad even longer than I have.

I can't even remember how many family holidays Mum made us spend in the far-out suburbs for Evelyn's sake. When her husband hit her. When he left her. When they got divorced. When she couldn't afford decent food. When her three boys were acting up and didn't have a father to bring them in line. We were all there.

I wish she'd stop giggling and joking with Dad, though. It's sad. I think it would be better if she just cried and let it out. It must be getting to Tracy, too.

“I'm going to get a drink. Do you want to come, Erin?” Tracy says firmly, like it's not really a question.

“Can you believe her?” Tracy whispers the moment we're outside Dad's room.

“What?”

“You don't see what's happening? What she's doing?” she asks.

“What do you mean?”

“The makeup? The flirting?”

“What?”

“Forget it.” And she storms off to the hospital cafeteria with me in the rear.

November 24, 1983

I
t's exactly a month since the accident. Life goes on. Math goes on. I'm sitting here trying to make sense of the numbers I've written in my notebook when Mrs. C-J's head pops up in the small square window of the classroom door.

Is it for me? Wow, what an ego I've developed! Not everything is about me and my misery. But somehow, I just know she's here for me. She looks strange, like a scared little kid. Maybe she's scared of my math teacher too. Nah, Mrs. C-J's not afraid of anyone. She has God on her side.

She knocks softly and comes in. Then Mrs. C-J and my math teacher, Mrs. Pike, walk outside. After about a minute, Mrs. Pike comes back in, looking at the floor. Before she says anything, I get up. All pens in the room seem to stop moving. I look at Julie, who smiles a sad smile. I then slowly pack up my things in my dirty canvas hippie “I don't give a damn” backpack. I can't decide if I'm glad to be getting out of math or not.

Mrs. C-J and I walk out to the corridor.

“Erin, I want you to come downstairs with me,” she says, closing the door behind us.

“It's Dad! It's Dad, isn't it? You've got to tell me. Tell me.”

“Why don't we go downstairs?”

“What for?” I say, even though I'm pretty sure I know what for.

“Just come downstairs, will you?”

“No. Tell me now. I'm not moving until you tell me.”

“Please, Erin.”

“Tell me,” I say firmly, threatening a scene. “It's Dad, isn't it?”

“Yes. I'm so sorry. He's…he's gone.”

“What do you mean
gone
?” I want her to say it.

“Oh, Erin, I'm so sorry…. He died this morning.”

Before I really let myself hear what she's said, I quickly grab Dad's blue and gray checked handkerchief from my pocket and stuff it into my mouth. I scream. I think I'm going to have an asthma attack.

We walk downstairs, hankie held in place until I get to the deputy principal's office. Deputy Principal Edwards is a big teddy bear. He's all soft and cuddly, with a bushy brown beard. His clothes never fit right—they're always baggy—and his tie is always slightly undone and crooked. He's no pushover, though. He just rules with a smile and an open fist full of marshmallows.

Chris is sitting on the black leather couch chatting to Mr. Edwards like it's any other day. That's what we do now. When something new goes wrong, it's something normal.

I don't know what I think anymore. I don't know what I feel, either. I haven't cried at all, and I felt like I would a minute ago. Part of me just feels nothing. My life is ruined anyway. What difference does another death make?

When Chris sees me, he gets up and hugs me and we leave. It's like he's taking me out on this glorious summer day for an ice cream cone. We get in the car and I feel kind of special again. These thoughts make absolutely no sense…unless I have a heart of stone.

“I thought he was getting better,” I say.

“Apparently a clot of blood went through his heart. He died this morning,” Chris says as tears start streaming down his tanned cheeks.

I just stare straight ahead. Now I'm to blame for two parents' deaths. Why did I have to think that terrible thought? God really must think I need to be taught a lesson.

“But he was in a
hospital.
Can't they stop things like that?”

“It happened too quick.”

“Idiots.”

I knew that hospital was only worth a one-star rating.

We get home. If you can still call it that.

I walk in and see Tracy. There's nothing to say, so I pick up Trent and go outside.

Dad's been dead for half a day and people are starting to visit. It's just like with Mum…. The phone ringing. Lots of hushed voices.

Two of the first visitors to arrive are for me. Mrs. Stockbridge has driven Julie here straight after school.

Trent and I are sitting on Dad's varnished pebble-covered verandah. The pebbles drive me crazy, because you can't sit for too long without getting indentations in your legs and bum. If it weren't for these pebbles, I could probably sit here forever and never have to go inside.

When Julie and Mrs. Stockbridge arrive, Trent wanders inside, but I stay put. I don't want anyone in there to see how thrilled I am that Mrs. Stockbridge, an adult, a teacher, would care. I feel special, and embarrassed that I feel special. I know that everyone inside will think I'm a pathetic girl looking for a mother figure.

They walk up and sit on either side of me on the top step. It's a sunny day, a beautiful day…if I thought days could be beautiful anymore.

“You know, I really feel fine. I'm okay,” I tell them.

I'm sitting here feeling nothing much at all. I'm smiling and talking to people as they walk up the driveway to the verandah to see how I am before going inside to see Tracy, Trent, and Chris. It's dark and depressing in there. The whole house has lost its heart. Even though it's hot outside, the house is cold.

Ronald, Peter, Gai, and Frances come and stay again.

Flowers and cards start arriving again.

The phone starts ringing again.

People say they're so sorry again.

It's the same as before. Same details. Different parent.

Auntie Connie's casseroles keep coming, now arriving in dark blue ice cream containers. She doesn't have any casserole dishes left. We have them all. She hasn't said anything, but I wonder what she's been using at home. I must remember to get those dishes back to her. We seem to be quite forgetful these days, but it's not right when it's with someone who cares.

We put the casseroles in the freezer, being sure to not let Auntie Connie see the uneaten ones. It's funny. We have a big freezer full of ice cream containers again, like when Mum worked at the factory. It's not quite as sweet this time.

         

Dad's funeral.

I opt for dark blue this time.

We go to the same church in the same cars and then drive to the same cemetery, where they open up the same hole so my parents can be buried together.

It's the same sunny day. The grass still isn't green, but the Astroturf around the hole is.

I'm not crying as much, and this time I get out of the car. I'm an old hand at this.

The priest says his “ashes to ashes” speech as they lower Dad into the hole beside Mum. I want to peek over the edge so I can see Mum's coffin and say I
did
see my mother buried, but I can't bring myself to look.

If only I had some of that Italian blood in me.

Then we're off to the wake for tea and cake and chats about what a jolly good fellow Dad was. And so say all of us!