Jennifer Brown: Torn Away

There are some things I never got to say. I’m sorry, Mom, for all the times I got mad and was mean to you. I’m sorry about the time I told you I hated you because you wouldn’t let me go to Jane’s house on Ronnie’s birthday. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I loved you when you took Marin to dance the night of the tornado. If I had to do it all over again, I would like to say I’d take all those things back, but I don’t know if I would. We were close, so close sometimes we screamed at each other, and I’ve been thinking that maybe those things were just different sides of the same coin. When we were screaming hateful things, it was only because we were feeling loving things. I don’t know, maybe that sounds stupid. But I like to think that way, because it makes me feel as if even though I didn’t show it sometimes, you still knew how much I loved you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “everything.” Whenever something horrible happens, you hear people say they “lost everything.” They lost their house, or their car or their stuff or whatever, and to them it feels like “everything.” But they have no idea what it’s really like to lose everything. I thought I knew, but now I realize even I haven’t lost everything, because I still have that polka-dot swimsuit in my memory. I still have those ice cream nights and the snowboards and the scorpion that scared Marin and the Barking Bulldogs sweatshirt and the robin’s-egg-blue nail polish. Somehow having those things makes the other stuff matter less.

I’m wondering if it’s even possible to lose “everything,” or if you just have to keep redefining what “everything” is. Because I didn’t know it before, but somehow Grandpa Barry and Grandma Patty fit into my “everything” now, and even if I’m not sure yet how they fit, they’re there.

I guess that’s just my way of saying you don’t need to worry about me giving up. I’m just going to keep redefining “everything” for as long as I need to, because I’m pretty sure that’s the best way to keep on going when you feel like you’ve lost it all.

I’ve learned a lot of new things about you from a lot of different people, but one thing everyone agrees on is that you were headstrong. You were tough. You taught me how to be tough, too. You taught me how to tread water and how to swim out of the deep end. But I’ll probably be looking for that red swimsuit for a while yet.

I love you, Mom, and I miss you so much. Tell Marin I said I love her, too. And I miss the way she hums.

The first thing I carried into our Elizabeth duplex was a litter box. I’d set it in the laundry room closet and poured litter into it, hoping Swing would get the hang of it in our new place.

She was a gray-and-white ball of trouble, or at least that’s what my grandfather called her after the fourth or fifth time he had to pluck her from the top of the drapes, which she was forever climbing, and she still had blue eyes. My grandmother said eventually her eyes would turn gold, like other cats’ eyes, but for now the fuzz and the wide blue eyes made her so heartbreakingly cute I could barely stand it.

Marin would have been over the moon with her.

We had gone out and adopted the cat the day my grandparents found the duplex we’d be living in from August to May. She was our celebration.

“What are you going to name her?” my grandmother had asked in the car on the way home, the little kitten mewing loudly in my lap. I stroked her head to calm her.

I’d thought about how much Marin had wanted a cat, how she’d never even gotten one of the porcelain birthday kittens that I had gotten every year. I wanted to name this cat something important to Marin.

“Swing,” I said. “E. C. Swing.”

“Sounds fancy,” my grandfather had said, and I’d grinned. Marin would have loved a fancy name for a fancy cat.

We officially moved in the week before school was supposed to start. Most of Elizabeth was still barely out of cleanup mode, just beginning to rebuild, and we were uncertain who all would be making it back for senior year. The library remained the place where everyone caught up, and as the first day grew nearer, more and more of us showed up there, taking over the parking lot. The librarians didn’t appear to mind. They seemed to like being the place where the crippled community felt comfortable gathering again.

I went with Dani a few times, while my grandparents stayed at the duplex and got us settled. Jane was still in Kansas City, and it didn’t look like her house would be rebuilt before school started. Which meant she wouldn’t be back for senior year. Dani and I would be a duo, and I wasn’t sure how we would do without Jane. We made her promise to visit a lot.

Three days before school started, Kolby showed up in the library parking lot, his arm still wrapped in a weeping bandage. His sister, Tracy, who seemed to have grown up so fast, hovered near him every step he took. At first people stared and whispered, but then someone asked him about it, and when he told the story, girls cried and people called him a badass and he smiled, relaxed.

I sidled up to him. “I’m really sorry,” I said.

“About what?”

I pointed at his arm. “I didn’t clean it good enough.”

He held it up and shrugged. “It’s not your fault, Jersey,” he said. “It’s nobody’s fault. It is what it is. The whole thing is what it is.”

“Did it hurt?”

He shrugged again, shook his head, then grinned and nodded. “Like ten thousand mothers,” he said. “Not as bad anymore, though. But at first it was wicked. And I was pissed off.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know the feeling.” In some ways it was like Kolby and I were both nursing the same infection, only mine was on the inside. We were both healing, but not without the scars to remind us that the cut, deep and painful, had been there.

Some girls came by and told him they were inspired by his story, and Kolby kind of ate it up a little bit, the good old Kolby I’d always known. After they left, his mom pulled up to the curb and honked, ducking and bobbing her head to find him in the crowd. He bumped my shoulder with his. “So admit it. I have a pretty nice ass, don’t I?” he joked, holding his arm up and waving it in front of me. I couldn’t help laughing.

“You’re disgusting,” I said, but I was happy to see that what had happened to him hadn’t broken his stride any, and hadn’t changed things between us.

“Come on, Kolby, we gotta go,” Tracy said, heading toward the car. He started after her, then turned back.

“I’m glad you came back to Elizabeth,” he said. “ ’Cause there’s something I want to ask you.”

“What?”

He held out his arm and pointed to the bandage. “How do you feel about guys with scars? Pretty hot, right?”

I laughed, a little tingling sensation in my chest, and nodded. “Definitely hot.” I tugged at my hair. “That is, if you care what purple-haired chicks think.”

“I was hoping you’d feel that way.” He smirked. “And I like the purple. Makes your eyes stand out.” Quickly, he bent and kissed me on the cheek, then strode to his mom’s car without missing a beat. “I’ll call you,” he said as he ducked inside.

Later that night, when Dani’s mom dropped me off at the duplex, I found my grandmother pushing the couch out of the way, against the wall in the living room.

“Oh, good, I’m glad you’re home,” she said when she saw me. She bent and fiddled with the little CD player that had been in their garage back in Waverly.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Music started to pour out of the speakers, and my grandmother twisted the volume knob to make it louder. Swing swatted at the power cord, which hung down the back of a little table. My grandmother turned and held her arms out as horns started playing in the background.