Phoenix Rising (10 page)

Good luck, Bloomfield, little rabbit, little darling. And good luck to Cheryl Prentiss and all the others (like me), who will think they can unlock his heart when Bloomfield holds the key
.

Don't look back. Sadness makes you weak. I must move ahead. I must be strong
.

I got a wonderful letter from Ms. Tormey and the class, and lots of get-well cards from kids at school. It surprises me; I've always been so shy. I didn't think anybody noticed me. The cards make it sound like I'm rebounding from the flu: “Hurry up and get well soon!” That sort of thing. People don't know what to say about cancer. It ain't considered polite to write: “I hope you don't die.”

Anyway, I've decided I'm going to live
—
long enough to be a FABULOUS success and grind my enemies to dust beneath my feet. Long enough to own a dog and name him Bloomfield
.…

Now, Helen June: It's not nice to be mean
.

True, but meanness gives you spunk and juice and tastes so much sweeter than sorrow
!

The nurse just took another blood sample. What in blazes do they do with the stuff? Is this place called Transylvania General? Maybe Dracula wasn't a vampire, just a misguided lab technician
.

I'm feeling tired today, but happy
.

For one thing, I'll be home soon. It's springtime and millions of flowers are blooming and I want to plant a vegetable garden
.

For another thing, I'll graduate from high school next month
.
THEN what? I wish I knew. I guess in the fall I'll go to the J. C., and then eventually I'll major in English. Get a teaching certificate so I'll have a way to eat while I'm waiting to hit the Big Time
.

I don't expect I'll ever be a Famous Writer but I'm sure going to try to be good. Not that I have a choice; I HAVE to do it; like birds gotta fly and Lucas gotta argue. It's destiny. It's in the blood
.

No matter WHOSE blood I have. I have to write
.

Here's a poem for the culture section of
How to Survive Your Life:

Hope

When you love someone

you give him the key

to your heart.

You hope

that he won't come in and

wreck the place.

You hope

that he will

feel what you feel;

see what you see.

It's like trying to meet for lunch

in a dream.

It is so unlikely

that you will

feed each other's needs;

follow each other's leads;

that you hope that,

if you can't come out of this

together,

you'll come out of this

alive.

So relax, Bloomfield. I survived you
—
although it was nip and tuck for awhile. I put on this happy face (see illustration:
) for Ma and Pa, meanwhile threatening to slash my wrists in the privacy of my/our bedroom every night. Jessie puts up with a lot. My moods go up and down. It's partly the cancer and partly the chemo, and partly my giant crush on Bloomfield, which turned around and crushed me flat
.

Sometimes I don't get the meaning of life. It's like trying to put together a giant puzzle with half the pieces lost under the couch
.

Then I'll experience a flash of understanding; realization breaks through my brain, like the time when I was little and I noticed that I had to keep swallowing spit all the time
.

Monumental breakthroughs like that
.

Once in a while I'll wake up and think: Wow, I'm alive right now! The hugeness of the universe sweeps me to the stars. Billions of stars! Millions of people! Trucks down the freeway and blood through my veins! Dinosaurs! Astronauts! Languages! Money! Money's so weird; it's just paper symbols, like hearts on Valentine's Day. Or the musical symbols that encode symphonies. Or the words that build worlds on pages
.

For that second I'll feel as if I'm part of everything, and that everything that exists is part of me. All the lost puzzle pieces fall into place, and life makes sense, and God is love and peace
.

Lucas goes CRAZY when I say stuff like that! Sometimes when the phone rings, he gets it and says, “Helen, it's for you. It's God. Hold on, please. She's been expecting your call.”

Lucas claims that he doesn't believe in anything. But I think he sees God as some heavenly hit man; a celestial sniper firing at the frightened mob below
.

That's not what I believe but I have no answers for Lucas. Most of the time I'm lost in the fog, feeling my way home
.

I just got a phone call (from Jessie, not God). She really cracked me up. She said Lucas and Dad are playing golf together. Do you think it's safe to let them use clubs? she asked. Will Dad come home and say Lucas drowned in a sand trap
?

I wish she would let people outside the family know her. She denies that she's shy and says people are jerks. She's beautiful and funny and she thinks she's ugly. Why can't she see herself clearly
?

We talked about the time when Lucas was little and he screamed in Dad's ear to wake him up. It was funny when kids did it on TV. Dad almost had a stroke. He shot out of bed and chased Lucas down the street
—
Now it's a family joke. I can still see Lucas hauling down the block, barefoot, in his pajamas
.…

Nurse Vampira is back with my transfusion
.

I say, “Fill 'er up with unleaded, please.”

14

We made it through Christmas. It was worse than Thanksgiving. Christmas is such a production. And you know you're supposed to be feeling happy … and when you don't, you feel so wrong.

Lucas didn't even stick around on Christmas Eve. He took off to visit friends. He slept in late the next morning until I finally had to wake him up.

“Oh God,” he groaned.

“Merry Christmas,” I said.

“Yeah, fabulous.” He looked hungover.

We sat around the tree and opened our presents, then ate the special breakfast that Mom makes every Christmas.

No one could think of a thing to say.

The day dragged on for years.

Dr. Shubert says that, when someone dies, it's hard to survive the “firsts”: the first Thanksgiving and Christmas without them, their birthday, and the anniversary of their death.

She's right, of course, but being right doesn't help. Dr. Shubert calls me her client, not her patient. She tries to relate but she dated Freud. Half the time she doesn't understand what I am saying.

Me: … so then Lucas split.

Dr. S: You mean your brother left the house?

No, he split down the middle like a threadbare schizo; tore in half like a fraying manic. He and Dad said killing things. My brother shouted, “You always make me feel like a jerk!” Then Dad said, “That's not true! I love you!” The words hung in the air while we stared at them. “I know,” Lucas said. He looked embarrassed and confused. Then he split.

I've been staying up too late. I've got bags under my eyes.

Overnight bags. Get it?

Hey, dja hear about the woman who had six months to live? She freaks out; she says: “Doc, what can I do?” He tells her to marry a big fat guy and move into a trailer park. “Will that lengthen my life?” the woman asks. “No,” the doctor says, “but it'll seem longer.”

When you watch TV at one A.M., your mind fills up with video confetti.

I am enjoying Christmas vacation. I am glad to be out of school. There's a history report I'm supposed to be working on.… It's around the house someplace.

The Big Bambino called awhile ago, raving about her boyfriend the meathead. He did this hilarious thing on New Year's Eve; put balloons under his sweater and pretended to be a girl. The man is a comic genius.

Bloomfield invited me to a New Year's Eve party but I didn't want to see him.

Bloomfield is a mirror reflecting the conspirator in a crime of silence against Helen.

So I baby-sat for Sara Rose and her brothers. They wanted to stay up and welcome in the new year, but midnight was way too late. So we pretended we were in New York City and pushed ahead the time by three hours. Instant celebration! The kids threw cornflakes into the air and banged pots and pans together.

Helen sat for them last New Year's Eve. She was winding down her baby-sitting. She didn't have time; she was interested in guys. Helen sure was changing. Sometimes I resented her. Especially when she tried to leave me behind. How can the left foot walk without the right? Who has been left behind and who has moved ahead? Does heaven exist? Can you see me, Helen?

O Helen, why can't I see you?

I don't think I'm going to baby-sit for a while. I really don't need the money. And lately, when I talk to people, sometimes I feel funny. I can't look in their eyes and my face gets stiff and hot, and my words tumble out in hopeless clots. Especially with grown-ups but even with kids, who nail you with their lie-detector eyes. That's why Bambi doesn't like them. She says they're pains. When she was little her mom would dump her at the library, then go shopping in San Francisco. Bambi would be there all day. Unfortunately, instead of absorbing literature, she'd do stuff like photocopying her face.

I want to leave this house. I want to go away. I want to become someone else.

Does reading Helen's journal help me or make me feel worse? Sometimes it's too close to call. It's as if Helen were talking to me! She sounds so near! If only she could hear me, too. There's so much I would say. Like: We meant to go to Disneyland again. We didn't think you'd die so soon. One minute you're alive and the next, you're memory. Life is so fragile it scares me, Helen. My heart is so full it might burst. Full of love and fear. Children die every second. Burned or drowned or starved or neglected; stolen and strangled and worse.

In the country of lost children, are you queen, Helen?

I want to kill myself so I'll stop thinking, but I'm too afraid that dying would hurt.

I have got to get myself together. I think Mom knows I've been cutting school. Some mornings she just lets me sleep. Most nights I wrestle dreams and lose.

Last night Helen and I were at Frontier Village. It looked exactly like it did before it got torn down for a subdivision; with the phony jail and saloon, and the merry-go-round, and the make-believe gunfights at noon.

The day was sunny and the booths and rides were mobbed by happy children and their parents. Helen and I were having fun. We were playing tag. Then I was it and Helen hid.

At first it was funny. “Helen? Where are you?” Then I was running through the crowd. People's faces had changed; their smiles were wreaths of teeth wrapped around their heads.

I looked everywhere. I couldn't find Helen.

The day leaked away. All the people went home. I was alone. Trash was blowing in the wind, down streets that would soon be covered with tract homes as fake as Frontier Village.

Tonight I tried to tell Lucas about the dream, and he said, “Let's go hear some music.”

“Where?”

“San Carlos.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?” Lucas looked exasperated. “These guys are really good.”

“I'm sure they are. I just don't feel like going.”

Lucas shook his head and left my room. Then he came back in and shut the door.

He said, “You know what's happening, don't you, Jess. You're not so dumb that you don't.”

“What're you talking about?”

“Helen's dead! Nothing can change that! You're letting this whole thing swallow you up!”

I almost started to cry. “Don't you think I know that?”

“What're you going to do, hole up in here forever? Take correspondence courses for life? You're afraid to go out of this goddamn house! You hardly even leave this room! When was the last time you went outside?”

“I don't have to answer you!”

He stepped into the hallway, then looked back at me. “Listen to me, Jessie, you can't outrun it. You have to face what's chasing you.”

“If you're so smart, how come you're so screwed up?” I slammed the door on my brother.

Lucas thundered down the stairs. Moments later, he roared off in his Impala. In the silence that followed I heard my father say to my mother, “What now?”

I ask myself this question.

15

May 15

I am so glad to be home
!

I could do cartwheels down the street
!

The whole damn world looks good enough to eat
!

It is one of those STUPENDJUS spring days, faultless as a child, one of whom happens to be standing beside me. Let's see what Sara Rose would like to record for posterity
.

S.R.: “What for?”

Me: “This is my journal. I'm writing down all the things I'm thinking.”