Life After Life (12 page)

“Everyone needs a mantra,” C.J. had told the residents of Pine Haven when they went to meditation class, which is something Sadie never misses. It is best when you use sounds that blank your mind. Sadie asked if it was okay if she imitated her old Singer sewing machine because it was her greatest meditation device for years. Absolutely, C.J. said, and so Sadie hums and Mr. Stone makes what he calls squirrel chatter, which annoys everyone and most just do the ordinary
om,
which Abby tries to do, but it almost always turns into a curse or what a crash would sound like if there was a twenty-car pileup on the interstate like that one in Tennessee when everyone was suddenly caught in a cloud of fog with no warning whatsoever. Could you see that coming? Her dad would say yes, you could. He would say that the makings of such weather and the traffic conditions could have been predicted. “You have to keep your eyes open at all times,” he said, but looked at her mother as he said it. “You don’t want to be caught unaware.”

Her favorites of her dad’s tricks are the ones he calls torn-and-restored, where it always ends with him saying
, No worry, good as new.
Abby wishes he would use it on himself.
Good as new,
he says. A pony prancing from a pile of crap, the phoenix rising from ashes, Jesus sprung from the tomb, the old dude we saw at the mall slapped with paddles and brought back to life.

D
OLLBABY WAS A
stray and though Abby’s mother tried and tried to get her to look at all the pictures in the newspaper from breeders, Abby held firm that this was the one she wanted. It was clear, after all, that Dollbaby had chosen
her.
Of all the kids, in this whole town,
she
was the one Dollbaby followed from the school where she had spent several days curled up outside the cafeteria doorway hoping for food. Who knew what Dollbaby actually was—a little of this and a little of that—the vet had said but she most resembled a Sheltie with her sharp little nose and bushy fox tail. The nose of a beagle, her dad had said the first time she ever picked up a scent and took off. She had clearly been abused and cowered at the sight of most adults and brooms and mops. She had the occasional accident in the house, but as Abby often pointed out to her parents, this was a temporary thing and would get better as Dollbaby got older and more used to living there. That was two years ago, when Abby was in fifth grade and before her parents started holding their late-night screaming matches. Now Abby is about to turn thirteen and Dollbaby has left as quickly as she came, likely gone for good, her mother had said because she had looked everywhere with no luck. Her mother said someone probably thought she was a stray and took her home.

“But she has a collar and a name tag!” Abby screamed, and her mother said her tag might have gotten lost.

“But I put pictures of her all over town!”

Her mother said the people could have come from out of town, that maybe Dollbaby ventured over toward Cracker Barrel off on the service road. “She did that another time, remember?” her mother asked. Abby’s dad was there beside her mother, holding her hand like everything was okay and like
she
was the one who had lost something. Like Abby wouldn’t remember Dollbaby at the Cracker Barrel? Like she wouldn’t have been terrified to imagine Dollbaby crossing the interstate all by herself. But that time, someone called, a woman from New Jersey and the woman sat right there in a big rocking chair with Dollbaby on her lap until they got there to pick her up. Abby’s dad offered the woman some money, but she said no thanks, she was just happy to have helped and for them to use the money, to buy something for Dollbaby, so they rode all the way out to the Dog House and got her an Old Yeller and sat and watched her lick the waxy paper clean.

“You are quite the dog, Dollbaby,” Abby’s dad said. “Playing Monopoly, going to the Cracker Barrel, eating at the Dog House.” The mention of Monopoly made them both laugh. Several months before, Dollbaby had eaten the race car and Abby’s dad made it their mission to find the car when it came out the other end. Finally, there it was, not a bit damaged, and they boiled it and then returned it to the box with the top hat and little dog and battleship. Her mother said it was outrageous and that someone with a real job wouldn’t have so much time to spend searching through dog shit. Her dad said it was fascinating and educational to imagine the journey the little race car took, like Jonah in the belly of the whale or Gepetto looking for Pinocchio. He said he had always gotten those two stories mixed up and now was eager to show Pinocchio on the big screen. He had reopened the old movie theater downtown and always ran kid movies on Saturday mornings. There was a time when this alone made people at school want to be friends with her, but those days were long gone.

Just earlier today, Abby’s mother said that
if,
and then she paused with the word,
if
Dollbaby is dead, they may never know. They will only know if someone takes the time to turn in the body. “I have left messages all over town,” her mother said. “So if they take the body to a vet or a shelter, we will hear. But I think for all practical purposes, we should probably assume she is dead.”

That’s when Abby got madder than she has ever been. “Never,” she screamed. “I will
never
stop looking for her!” She grabbed another stack of the posters she had made and went outside, slamming the door behind her. If only she had stayed home and helped her mother plan the stupid party, it might not have happened. Dollbaby would never have left if Abby had been out there in the yard or walking through the cemetery to Pine Haven. If only her parents would stop being so stupid. Dollbaby hates yelling and fighting. And Abby’s parents are stupid. Sometimes she hates both of them, something she only has the nerve to tell Dollbaby, who listens to every word. Her parents don’t allow sweets or sodas or TV unless it is educational, which isn’t the reason she hates them but it helps, and it is a big part of the reason why she started spending so many afternoons over at Pine Haven in the first place.

It is an easy walk through the cemetery and then the arboretum. She loves the cool shadiness of the cemetery, the huge trees, and old headstones to read along the way:
Greetings stranger passing by, you are now as once was I;
there is where the little playhouse used to be and the tall stone angel—
M
C
K
EITHAN
—
who once was vandalized and now stands with only one wing intact. There is a tiny lamb on top of a dark mossy stone:
Thou hast won the victory without fighting the battle, hast gained the cross without having to bear the crown.
It was a boy named Isaac Abbott who was born in 1832 and died a year later. She likes the old parts of the cemetery the best, though some of the stones are hard to read. The far corner, which is all overgrown, is where she had been told they buried slaves and suicides and unclaimed bodies like that guy called Spaghetti over in Laurinburg. They called him the Carny Mummy and her dad had once seen him preserved over there in a glass box. She wanted to go to Laurinburg to see him, but now he was buried; they even poured concrete in on top so nobody could dig him back up, that’s how famous he is. Somebody from the North had sent money to bury him sixty years after the fact because he thought it was disrespectful to Italian people. They said his name was Cancetto Farmica and not
Carny Mummy
and certainly not
Spaghetti.

When she is way back under the dogwoods and pines and willows, she can’t see anything beyond the tip top eaves of her house. There is no street and no Pine Haven, no cars. Sometimes she and Dollbaby pretend that it is 1833 and they have come to bury Isaac. They say what a sweet boy he was and how sad he died so young. Abby has always been able to make herself cry and often she has enjoyed that, but it was a mistake to bring Haley White out here in the fifth grade and let her in on the game. Haley acted like she understood and also really respected and loved these people and then she went to school and announced to the whole class that all Abby’s friends were either really old or dead. Dollbaby growled the first time she saw Haley, and Abby should have paid attention to that. One day Dollbaby was sniffing and chasing something, probably a rabbit, and led Abby to a little section closed in by shrubs at least six feet tall where Stars of David are on the stones and little rocks are left like calling cards. Abby is especially drawn to the grave of Esther Cohen who not only has the most rocks but lately is the one who often has notes neatly folded inside the urn attached to her headstone. Clearly, Esther is the most popular and Abby feels both resentment and admiration since she herself is one of those girls who has always gotten the assigned class number of Valentine’s and none with anything really written to her except the ones she got from Dollbaby, which her dad had made—big loopy words with backward letters—where Dollbaby professed her great love and adoration and promised not to pee on the living room rug anymore.

“I
’M SORRY, HONEY,”
her dad had said with the news of Dollbaby’s disappearance. He pulled her close and hugged her. He shook and cried as well, but it seemed he was crying about more than Dollbaby, and she almost screamed out her anger and hatred when she heard them again late that night, their voices filling the house even as they stupidly thought they were being quiet.
You
have no respect, she wanted to scream. It was what her mother had said to her when she got on that new white spread knowing her Nikes were covered in mud and maybe, hopefully, even some dog shit. You have to have respect, they both had said when she got in trouble for arguing with one of her teachers who mispronounced a lot of words like when he was talking about herbs until she quizzed him on why they were talking about
herbs
in history class and he said. “Erbs, girl!” he said, and then spelled, “A-R-A-B-S.
Erbs!
” The same teacher talked about the nigger river and said that evolution was the talk of the devil. Certainly, she didn’t respect
that
and she doesn’t respect her stupid idiot parents either.

This morning Esther has a lot of mail. The note that was there yesterday written in sloppy blue ink—
See you soon
—is still there. It has a smudged blot of lipstick—sealed with a kiss—and someone wrote
WHEN?
in all capital letters. The
when
looks angry, like it should be shouted.
WHEN?
Now there is a new one on the back of a Food Lion receipt.
I can’t keep waiting. I deserve something better!
Abby often stops to read the notes and then to sit up under the tendrils of the weeping willow growing closeby. Usually Dollbaby joins her and everything is fine, but today, she feels Dollbaby’s absence in a way that makes her feel a little scared, like the person who is writing these notes might be watching her from a tree or the Methodist steeple like that sniper she saw on television. Usually when she is out here, she thinks of all these dead people as neighbors you might call out and speak to, but it’s clear she is not the only person who comes out here. It could be Haley or some of those mean girls trying to play a trick on her and so she isn’t about to say a word to anybody except Dollbaby if she would just come home. Usually she would keep moving through the old part where the first family ever buried here—the Wilkins—have their own little iron fence with a gate, or she might climb up into a magnolia tree, lean and sling her leg up and over the big stone horse monument over General Fulton who founded this town and ride along for a while, or go sit on the lap of the lovely Lydia Edwards who died so young and now sits and stares in the direction of the newer graves and the arboretum. People say she once had eyes made of emeralds but somebody stole them and so now she is always watching whoever passes by to recognize the thief. “It’s just me, Lydia,” she used to always say until Haley went to school and told and then everybody started saying it back to her
, It’s just me, Lydia,
so now she just says it in her head, which Lydia totally gets if she gets anything. But now without Dollbaby, she can’t stand to be there all by herself and she feels like she needs to run as fast as she can. She puts the Food Lion note in her back pocket and takes off. She will collect the others later on her way back. She pats her leg for Dollbaby to follow out of habit and wills herself not to cry. She tries to whistle and sing so it won’t be so quiet. She sings her favorite Lady Gaga song, “Telephone.” She is passing the newer section now—graves without all the trees and vines. Newer stones with fancy-colored photographs of the dead people. Taco Bell in full view in the distance. Her favorite belongs to some people who lived in her house when her dad was a kid—Fred and Cleva Burns and their stone is cut to look like a giant ship:
Break, break, break,
it reads. Back when she talked aloud to everybody and not just in her head, she told Fred and Cleva how she had found some of their things and kept them in a special box. She has found bobby pins, which her mother would never use, and an old dried-up ink cartridge she didn’t even know what it was. She found a token from the Ferris Beach pavilion wedged in a crack in her windowsill and her dad said that place had been torn down for over twenty years.