Jennifer Brown: Torn Away

“They were from us. Chrissy had a set. She loved them, and they were the best way we could reach out to you and let her know that we still loved her, too. They were our way of saying we were thinking about you both the whole time,” she said. “And praying that you were okay.”

All those years, Mom and I were alone. I’d grown up believing that our aloneness was something that had happened to us—something we had to prevail over—but really it was only something that had happened to me. Mom had wanted it, and she had not given me a choice in the matter.

And all the time there was this family out there wondering about me. Caring about me. Wishing me safe and imagining what my life was like and giving me a place to belong in their hearts, even if I never showed up there.

But now here I was, and it was up to me whether I wanted to claim my spot.

“What was my mom like when she was my age?” I asked. “Before she met Clay, I mean?”

My grandmother smiled wistfully. “She was a ball of fire. Independent, outgoing. She was a cheerleader in junior high, you know.”

I blinked. Mom, a cheerleader? I tried to picture her hopping around in a short dress waving pom-poms. I couldn’t do it.

“She always thought she was going to be a hairstylist,” my grandmother continued. “One time, in elementary school, she cut her own bangs. Chopped them so short the other kids teased her mercilessly. They called her T-square for months. But Chrissy didn’t care. She was the kind of person who was going to do what she wanted, the whole world be damned.”

“She pretty much stayed that way,” I said. And then, thinking about Marin’s relentless begging for me to dance with her, added, “My sister was like that, too.”

My grandmother glanced at me, her mouth turned down at the corners. “I wish I’d met her,” she said.

And I couldn’t help thinking that Marin would have liked our grandparents. “Yeah,” I said softly. We drove along for a while longer. I held the kitten in my lap, stroking its side with my thumb. “Are there other relatives?” I asked, breaking the silence. “Like, cousins and stuff?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have a sister and a brother. Barry has two brothers. But they’re all in St. Louis, where we both grew up. Maybe we’ll take a ride out there someday,” she said, then amended, almost shyly, “if you want.”

I didn’t know if I wanted to do that or not. I was curious, but this felt like it was all happening so fast. I shrugged. “Someday,” I said. “If you grew up in St. Louis, why are you here?” To me, St. Louis seemed so much more exciting than Waverly.

And as we drove along the highway toward Elizabeth, my grandmother told me stories about my family. She talked about how she met my grandfather and their move from St. Louis to Waverly and everything that led up to having my mom.

She told me more things about my mom—that she hated being an only child and asked Santa for a baby sister every year, that she could swim like a fish and do splits in both directions and that, before she started smoking, she could outrun every girl in her class, and most of the boys, too.

And then she talked about Clay’s family, how they were notorious throughout Waverly as being a nuisance. How they always had so many babies around you wondered where they all came from, but there was never any mistaking a Cameron baby because they all looked alike. We all looked alike.

Before I knew it, we were driving up the exit into Elizabeth, all at once the surroundings looking familiar and unfamiliar to me, as if I’d been gone forever. This part of town had been untouched by the tornado, and other than a few downed trees, you would never have guessed that anything unusual had happened here. We stopped at a grocery store and bought flowers to put on the graves. I picked out pink carnations for Marin’s, because the florist had sprinkled glitter across them. I knew how much Marin had loved pink and sparkles. My grandmother bought red roses, because those represented love.

We shared memories, and picked out the perfect flowers, and by the time we reached the cemetery, my mom and sister were in some ways more alive to me than they’d ever been.

We both stopped talking as we drove through the cemetery. There was a very somber feeling about being there, so somber I almost felt a buzzing in my ears. Someone was being buried near the entrance; the mourners’ dresses fluttered in the breeze as they stood with their heads bowed.

Everywhere I looked, it seemed, there were mounds of new dirt. New graves. My grandmother had told me that the final death count from the tornado was one hundred twenty-nine. One hundred twenty-nine lives stolen, only two of them from me. It seemed so weird to think of so many families grappling with the same sadness I’d been wrestling. This was the only cemetery in Elizabeth, so most of them were likely buried here.

“Let me see…” my grandmother said as she turned right down one of the little side roads that snaked deeper into the cemetery. “I think it’s over by that fence back there.”

I gazed out the window, trying to find two fresh mounds near the fence, swallowing against the lump in my throat. This was where they were—my mom and my sister. This was where they would be forever. The finality of their deaths hit me on a whole different level. This wasn’t temporary. They were really gone. They were never coming back. At the end of this nightmare there would be no happy reunion.

Finally, my grandmother put the car in park and turned it off. She let her hands rest in her lap, gazing down at them for a few minutes. The only sound in the car was the crinkle of the plastic around the flowers as I squeezed them tighter.

“You ready?” she asked.

I turned back toward the window. The two graves were obvious now that we were near them. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.

We got out and traipsed toward the fence line. I read some of the names on the headstones, not recognizing a single one, and idly wishing that there were at least one person nearby that Mom would have known. Someone to keep her company. But I guessed she had Marin for that. I clutched the flowers so tight my fingers ached. Marin’s purse bumped along my side.

“They don’t have headstones yet,” my grandmother said as we got closer, but it was as if she wasn’t really talking to me so much as she was talking to herself. “I hope he bought her one, at least.”

I couldn’t imagine Ronnie not buying them headstones. But who knew what Ronnie would do and not do these days? After all, I’d never have guessed he’d abandon me. Boy, did he ever surprise me with that one.

We stopped walking, and even though I suddenly didn’t want to, was suddenly terrified to, I had no choice but to look at their final resting place.

I turned my eyes forward, expecting to be hit by an onslaught of sadness. Maybe even weakness, grief pulling me to my knees.

But it was just dirt.

Two splotches of dirt in an otherwise grassy field. One splotch of dirt much longer than the other. My mom and Marin were under there somewhere, but these splotches of dirt weren’t them. Now that I was here, I wasn’t even sure why I expected them to be.

My grandmother sniffed lightly, and I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, which might have been her wiping her eyes, but I was too riveted to the dirt mounds to pay her much attention.

“They’re gone,” I said. The obvious. “Ronnie sent me away before the funerals. I didn’t get to say good-bye, and now it’s too late because they’re gone.”

“I didn’t get to, either.” She paused for a really long time. Then finally, “But I like to think they knew I loved them, even if Marin didn’t know me.”