Sarah Stevenson: Underneath (Sarah Jamila Stevenson)

I pull our old green Volvo into the driveway next to Mom’s hybrid. As I drive up, I notice the mailbox door is open and a big puffy envelope is sticking out. I walk to the curb and grab it. It’s addressed to me, from my cousin Shiri. She hardly ever sends me snail mail from college, so I rip it open eagerly.

A small notebook falls out. The hard cover is dark blue, plain. I open the front; turn a few pages. I flip to the middle. All the pages are covered in Shiri’s neat, rounded handwriting. I frown, perplexed, and rummage in the envelope for a note or a card or something. As I do, a folded slip of paper falls out of the back of the notebook. I bend down to pick it up.

“Sunny!” My mom is standing in the doorway. There’s a strange note in her voice.

“Yeah, Mom.” I straighten up, juggling the slip of paper, the notebook, and my backpack.

“I’m so glad you’re home. Come in right now—we need to talk.”

“Is this about my race? Because—”

“No,” she cuts in, and this time her voice wavers. “No, honey, it isn’t.” She goes back inside, and I’m left standing on the front lawn, suddenly shaking for no reason I can name.

From Shiri Langford’s journal, January 18th

My grades again. Dad was livid. Not that I care what he thinks. Why should I?

It’s not like I was planning to get a C in Math 75, but everything just seemed like too much last semester. At least this semester I have Existentialist Lit. I don’t care if he says it’s useless.

But while I was home, THAT happened. Again. I thought it stopped about a month ago, but it happened every night, while I was trying to go to sleep. One night I must have screamed or made some noise, because Mom came in to check on me and stroked my hair like she used to when I was small.

I miss it. I miss my family, the way it used to be when I was little. Before THAT started happening.

The air in here smells like sour dirty laundry. The heavy yellow curtains are closed and it’s too dim to see much, but I can feel the lump of bedspread bunched up under my right shoulder; I feel my dry, cracked lips and swollen eyes but I don’t move. I should probably go downstairs to get cucumber slices to put over my eyelids, but it doesn’t seem important.

I haven’t gone downstairs in two days.

I haven’t changed out of my pajamas. I haven’t showered. I haven’t talked to Cassie, or Coach Rydell. I haven’t called Auntie Mina or Uncle Randall to say … what? What would I say?

My mom brings in tomato soup, my favorite creamy kind that comes in a box from the organic section of the grocery store. She’s even grated cheddar cheese over the top and brought a small plate with a slice of buttered toast. I only make it halfway through. It doesn’t taste like anything to me, and when I swallow my throat is sore. I put the plate on my nightstand and pull the covers up to my chin.

“Sunshine,” my mom says gently. “Please try to eat something before we leave.”

We’re leaving in an hour. It’s my first funeral.

We’re here, and it’s awful.

I stare at the dry skin on my knees, at the white specks of lint on my navy blue skirt. In my peripheral vision, everything I see is black—black dresses, black suits, Mom’s black crocheted handbag on the floor next to my chair. Dark wood-paneled walls.

All I want to do is go home and crawl back into bed. Mom squeezes my hand and doesn’t let go, as if she’s afraid I might bolt. Her hand is freezing, and her elaborate silver wedding ring dents my skin.

Of course, it isn’t technically her wedding ring, since my parents didn’t “technically” have a wedding. Instead, they eloped on the beach during a yoga retreat in Santa Cruz. And since both sets of grandparents are holding grudges about that, now I only “technically” have grandparents. You know; on holidays and birthdays.

And funerals.

“We are here to console one another during this time of grief and to remind ourselves of our love and respect for Shirin Alia Langford.” I jump as the chaplain’s voice blares out of the speakers that sit on either end of the dais.

“This young woman was just twenty years old, but she was universally loved by family and friends alike … blah blah blah dee blah.” The chaplain is obviously using a pre-fab introduction, something he downloaded off the Internet or pulled out of a file folder. His reedy voice rises and falls, punctuated by frequent sighs. I can’t help but wonder if that’s rehearsed, too. It makes me angry. It seems so insincere, so flat and empty and forced.

When Shiri first decided to go back east to Blackwell Cliffs College, it felt like part of me was getting ripped away. I knew she wanted to get as far away from her family as possible, but she was pushing me aside, too.

I was furious. I imagined the East Coast turning all her familiar Southern California habits into something I couldn’t recognize, some uptight, work-obsessed go-getter with a New York accent and no more interest in me.

Little did I know how much she really would change. Little did I know that my anger then would be nothing compared to now. When she choked down all that pain medication and drove off into the mountains, did she even think about what would happen to the rest of us? Is she somewhere out there looking down at us, regretting what she did, or worse, relieved she’s not here? My teeth ache, I’m clenching them so hard.

Auntie Mina, tiny and forlorn, goes to the front of the room. She starts talking in a small voice about how much Shiri was their little girl, how proud they were of her, and then she breaks down and I can’t make out the words through the crying. Uncle Randall and Randall Jr. go up and lead Auntie Mina back to her seat.

Randall Number Two, as Shiri and I used to call him when we were little, is dressed in a dark three-piece suit, his brown hair slicked down and a somber expression on his face. Uncle Randall’s son from his first marriage, his golden boy. The one he always indulges, while Shiri has— had —to excel at everything just to get acknowledged.

When Number Two gets up to speak, he manages to stop being an asshole for five minutes and sound like an actual human being. He even squeezes out a few authentic-looking tears for his poor departed half-sister. But I’m not convinced.

I look at Uncle Randall. He sits there rigidly, his face not showing any emotion at all. Auntie Mina can’t or won’t stop crying.

I don’t feel like I’m about to cry. I’m not even sure what I feel.

I guess I just don’t understand—not any of it.

I think about the journal Shiri left me, the one that arrived the day we found out about—everything. The note, scrawled on a half-sheet of paper, that fell out of the journal. Dear Sunny: I don’t expect you to understand any of this yet, but we’ll always have yesterday … and today, and tomorrow. Maybe one day you’ll figure it out. I never could.

I squeeze my hands into fists in my lap, digging my fingernails into my palms. I don’t know why she thought I’d be equipped to figure anything out. She was always the brilliant one. And me—I wanted to be just like her. My whole life , practically, I wanted to be like her; to have all the boyfriends, the tennis awards, the scholarships. By the time I started high school a little over two years ago, I was able to bask in her reflected glory, even though she was a senior while I was only a freshman.

Insipid as it sounds, the chaplain was right—everyone did love Shiri.

I didn’t just love her, though. I idolized her.

An imam from the local mosque gets up and says a few words at the request of my Pakistani grandparents, Dadi and Dada. On my right, my dad shifts awkwardly in his seat. He’s not religious at all; Auntie Mina isn’t either, and Shiri certainly wasn’t, so the imam’s words seem just as false as the chaplain’s address.