Jennifer Brown: Torn Away

“But I never got to say it. I never told them.”

She sniffed again, and then said, her voice louder with resolve, “You can tell them now.”

I turned to her. “But I can’t. I don’t know how.”

My grandmother looked like she was slowly melting. She tried to keep it in, but her face jiggled and wobbled and soon crumpled in completely. She nodded, letting out a sob. “I know,” she said. “And I don’t know how to help you. I feel like the only thing I can offer my daughter after all these years is to help you let her go, and I can’t do it. How can I, when I’m not ready to let her go myself?”

I stood awkwardly in front of her. I hated that she was crying, but this whole grandmother-and-granddaughter thing was so new to me, and I was such a volcano of conflicting feelings myself, always feeling so near eruption I barely wanted to move.

I bent my knees and dropped the flowers on the ground, then stood up again. Slowly, I opened Marin’s purse, then unzipped the small compartment inside. The foils shone at me, as if they were lit from within rather than reflecting sunlight. I scooped them out and held them in my palm, offering them to my grandmother.

She sniffled some more, blinking and calming down as she tried to understand what I was giving her.

“What’s this?” she said, pulling a crumpled tissue out of her pants pocket and wiping her cheeks with it.

I licked my lips. “This is Marin,” I said.

Slowly, with shaky hands, she reached out and plucked a foil out of my palm. She unfolded it, looking uncertain.

“ ‘Marin loves scorpions,’ ” she read. She flicked a curious glance at me, then reached out and took another. “ ‘Marin is a monkey.’ ”

And even though my drawings couldn’t possibly have made sense to her, she took another and then another, reading each one aloud, sometimes laughing a wet laugh and sometimes unable to finish the sentence for the tears in her voice. She met her other granddaughter that way, one chewed-up memory at a time.

We sat down on the ground together at my mom’s feet, the purse open between us so my grandmother could put the foils down without their blowing away. I explained some of them. The same way she told me about my mom’s cut bangs and swimming prowess, I told her about Marin’s peach-colored leotard and about the East Coast Swing. I picked at the petals of one of Mom’s roses as I talked, and my grandmother cried and asked questions and laughed and interjected and cried some more.

Finally, when we were both talked and cried out, I turned onto my knees and placed the bouquets of flowers on each grave, wiping dirt that had gotten stuck on my palms onto the sides of my shirt. I assessed how the flowers looked, and then, struck by a moment of bravery, I decided that if I was on my knees anyway, I might as well give talking to my mom a try.

At last.

My grandfather had said that to pray was to speak from my heart. So that’s exactly what I did. I pressed my palms together and closed my eyes, feeling shaky and nervous and self-conscious. I talked silently, in my head, so my grandmother couldn’t hear what I had to say. We had started to get to know each other, but that didn’t mean I wanted her to know everything. I still wanted to keep some things to myself.

Hey, God , I said. I know you’re keeping Mom and Marin safe up there and everything, and I’m really glad about that. I’m sure they were scared when they got to you. So thanks for taking care of them. I took a breath and squeezed my palms together tighter. I’m, um… not sure how to do this, but I’d really kind of like to talk to my mom, if that’s okay. I haven’t gotten to say anything to her since she died.

My knees pressed into the soft ground, and I let my butt sink slowly to rest on the backs of my legs. I squeezed my eyes tight, like I’d done before, and tried to picture Mom’s face in my mind.

And just when I thought the image would never come, it did.

She was smiling at me. Laughing, maybe. There was sunlight highlighting the top of her head and she was wearing that ridiculous pair of sunglasses that I’d always made fun of because they were so huge.

I felt such love radiating off her, the words poured out of my heart.

Hi, Mom , I said in my head. I’m sorry you haven’t heard from me until now. I didn’t know how to talk to you at first and I was afraid that if I started talking to you it would mean you were really dead. Which is stupid, of course, because you’ve been really dead all along. I’ve just had a hard time believing it.

So I guess you’ve seen everything that’s happened since you died. All the stuff with Ronnie and Clay and Lexi and Meg. I’m not gonna lie, Mom, it’s been hard. And scary. And every day I wish I had died with you. Not that I’m suicidal or anything, so you don’t need to worry about that. Just that I wish I hadn’t been left behind, all alone. That part really sucks.

But I’ve learned a few things. Like that Ronnie loved you so much he can’t live without you. Which, even though it hurt me, is kind of cool in a way.

And that Clay is maybe the worst man on earth and I will never, ever be stuck in the same room with him again. At first I didn’t understand why you lied to me about him leaving us, and I felt really betrayed. I thought everything I knew about you might have been a lie, but since meeting him and your parents, I’ve realized that the parts of you I knew weren’t untrue; they were only part-truths. There were lots of things about you that I didn’t know, and learning those things has actually been comforting in a way. They make me feel closer to you. And I can see that actually there’s one real truth, and that is you loved me enough to do anything it took to protect me. I think that’s something I’ve known my whole life. I’m thankful for it.

Grandma Patty and Grandpa Barry. Well, they’re not so bad, Mom. Maybe I just haven’t seen the bad side of them yet, and maybe someday I will and I’ll totally understand all the things you said about them. But right now I don’t feel like I have to hold my breath when I’m around them as much, which is good, because they’re my only choice.

I think about you all the time. You and Marin both, but mainly you. I remember all the stuff we did together, and the little moments when you did awesome things like get us out of bed to go get ice cream or buy us snowboards or that time you read the entire Harry Potter series out loud to us. It took you like six months, but you never complained.

Do you remember that time you took me to the water park? Just me, because Marin wasn’t born yet and you hadn’t even met Ronnie. I think I was in third grade, maybe? You wore your red polka-dotted swimsuit and I had that bikini with the stripes that I hated because it made me feel fat.

Anyway, we went to the water park and we rode that huge slide. I think it was called the Slippery Cyclone. Remember how you had to talk and talk to get me on it? I was so scared. That slide was so tall and the pool at the end looked so deep and I wasn’t sure if I could touch the bottom.

I was afraid something would happen to me if I sat down and let myself go. But, worse than that, I was afraid something would happen to you. That you’d fly off into the woods and smash onto the rocks below or that the slide would cave in and crush you or that you’d just never come down and I’d be treading water at the bottom of that slide forever and ever waiting for you. Waiting for those red-and-white polka dots to swoosh around that last corner.

That’s how I feel now, Mom. Like I’m treading water and you’re not coming down the slide. I can’t touch the bottom here, and I’m scared. I want you back.