Phoenix Rising (11 page)

S.R.: “Why don't you just tell them to me?”

Good point. So I tell her that I've never been more content than I am at this moment, on this warm May morning. Sara Rose says: “GOOD!” and barks like a dog, then goes back to stirring the applesauce we're cooking on her Heather Homemaker Electric Toy Stove, beneath the blooming snowball tree
.

I have been home for about a week now and have never felt better in my life. It's funny how quickly things can change; one second I'm jumping out the window, the next, I'm admiring the view. I should do what Dad says and stay in the present. I sap (sap's the word) my strength with worry about what might happen in the future
.

I can only live one day at a time. And this day is as bright as something Sara Rose would color with the crayons she hasn't eaten
.

Also, I'm feeling very creative, which always does me good. One of my poems (“Leaving Home”) will appear in the yearbook. Ms. Tormey surprised me with that news yesterday. She thinks I did an excellent job on the mythological creatures paper. I chose the phoenix. The bird consumes itself in fire, then rises anew from its ashes. The piece was written from the phoenix's perspective, just prior to its death/rebirth. Ms. Tormey says my ability to empathize is what makes me such a good writer
.

I'd better get a grip on this brag festival
.

Anyway, I'm really pleased
.

Mom looks a lot better than she did a while back. When I'm sick, she looks how I feel. Sometimes I worry about what will happen to her if anything happens to me. She'll still have Jessie
—
but who will Jessie have
?

Nope. I'm not going to think like that. Onward and upward
!

Oh, can you smell that applesauce bubbling? My tastebuds are blooming with longing
.

Or, to be more specific and less poetic: I'm practically drooling
.

Speaking of eating: Bambi & I went out to lunch this week. Talk about a treat! She doesn't stop talking while she's chewing (or doing anything else, for that matter), so you get these great Technicolor close-ups of her burger being pummeled to a pulp.… She'd just bought a vat of some industrial-strength complexion cleanser that she claimed would give her a brand new face. Her mom calls any kind of skin cream “beauty goo.” We went over there one time and she was rubbing yogurt into her face; not plain white yogurt, the kind with fruit. Another time
—
I'll never forget this
—
I walked into the bathroom and Mrs. Bordtz was sitting in the empty tub, naked, eating a pomegranate. Bright red juice was all over the place. It looked like the scene of a chainsaw massacre
.

She said, “This way I don't get the juice on my clothes.”

God bless the Bordtzes! They make my family look normal by comparison
.

I wrote a song for Lucas. He actually likes it! It actually made him laugh
!

We've been getting along so well lately. He's really been nice, asking how I'm doing and making me tea, etc. We went out and heard some music last night (Jessie sulked 'cause she wasn't invited. Why can't he and I do stuff together, just like Jessie and I do?)

This really neat thing happened at the club. The band asked Lucas to sit in. So he got up and played a couple of songs; rhythm and blues, I guess you'd call it, and everybody clapped like mad. I was so proud! I felt like shouting, “That's my brother!”

On the way home we stopped for coffee and I don't know what came over me; all of a sudden in the middle of nothing, I blurted, “I love you, Lucas. I just want you to know.”

He almost dropped his coffee mug. He didn't know where to look. He nodded his head and said, “Thanks. I'm glad.”

He wanted to say he loves me, too, but he couldn't. That's all right
.

Here's the number one song I wrote for Lucas. (Jessie rates it a distinct number two.)

She Took Me to the Cleaners of Love

She was young, just seventeen,

But she looked like a million in her jeans.

From that very first night

It was love at first sight

When she took me to the cleaners of love.

Chorus:

She stole my heart, my tape deck, and my color TV.

There's a pain where my wallet used to be.

Love didn't come for free, oh no.

When she took me to the cleaners of love.

I loved her style and she loved to steal.

I knew from the start our love was real.

Everything was all right

When she turned out the lights

And took me to the cleaners of love.

Chorus: She stole my heart, etc.

O Wanda, Wanda, you took me for a ride,

And you took my Buick and my credit cards, besides.

It was love at first sight

From that very first night

When you took me to the cleaners of love.

Lucas has worked up a tune that's JUST RIGHT and sings it like his tie was caught in an elevator door
.

Sara Rose is handing me a steaming bowl. “Try it, Helen! It's good!”

It is better than good. It is sensational. This is how apples should taste on the tree: warm and tart with a cinnamon kiss, a kiss as tender as somebody's lips
—
Remember, Helen: Hold onto the present. The present is all there will ever be. The past is a shadow. You cannot catch it
.

And really, who could ask for more than this perfect day, this balloon of a tree rising into the cloudless sky, this darling child beside me, saying, “Do you like it, Helen? Is it good, Helen?” as if my word were the stamp of God's approval
.

I say, “This applesauce is the best stuff I've ever eaten.”

“In your whole life?”

“In my whole life.”

“I know.” Sara Rose beams. “Me, too.”

16

I have ascended to the tower. The transition is complete. From my bedroom window I study the world.

I have not left this house for two weeks.

Every hour or two (or so it seems), my mother drops by my room to weep, Pop pops by to plead, and Lucas sits on my bed, shaking his head, kind of smiling.

“What're you going to do for the rest of your life, Jess? Send out for Chinese food? You have to fight this thing!”

“I'm sick of fighting,” I say calmly. “I'm even sick of fighting with you.”

“C'mon.” He stands by the bedroom door, holding out his hand. “I'll take you for a ride. Wherever you want to go.”

“I want to see Helen.”

Saying stuff like that guarantees that he'll leave me alone. He gallops downstairs and out the front door … now he's revving the Impala's engine.

“You're blowing it, Jess!” he yells at my window, then peels backward out of the driveway.

The afternoon sun spills into the room. The house is as still as a photograph.

It's three o'clock and school has let out. Children bounce down the sidewalk like rubber balls. Soon Sara Rose will be on the front lawn. Every afternoon she calls:

“Jess-sie-ee! Jess-sie-ee! Can you come out and play?”

She calls until I answer. “What is it, Sara?”

She squinches her eyes to see me. “Can you come out and play?”

“Sometime soon,” I say.

“When? Tomorrow?”

“I don't know,” I say.

“Can't you come to my house?” This is the stubbornest kid.

“I have to stay here,” I tell her.

“Is your mom making you stay in your room?”

“Not exactly.” It's too hard to explain. “I have to go now, Sara Rose. I'll see you later.” I closed the window and stepped out of view. For a long time she kept looking up, waiting. Finally she went home.

Today's project: Eat more food. My shoulder blades are like skeleton wings. My wrist bones rattle. My face is too thin.

Food embarrasses me. What's the point of eating when it comes back out, and what doesn't is used to build a body that began to wither at birth?

My body is erasing itself. The smaller I am, the less of me there is to hurt.

But I can't bear the horror in my mother's eyes. “Don't do this, Jessie. You're killing me,” she said, when I left the dinner table last night.

It's funny how this whole thing started. I didn't get up one morning and decide that I would never again leave the house.

It sneaked up on me when I wasn't looking, like when you're sitting in your room reading a really good book, and the day slips away and you don't even notice until it's too dark to see the page. It reminds me of when I was twelve and we'd rented a cabin on Bass Lake. Every day we'd plunge into the icy water and swim out to a raft, where we'd sun ourselves until we were ready to jump in and cool off.

This one afternoon Mom stood on the shore, calling, “Come on out, Jessie. You've been in the water long enough.” As usual, I ignored her. I was having too much fun to stop.

The water was so cold I never felt my muscles numb. When I dove off the raft that last time and began to swim toward Mom, I realized I had exhausted my strength. I would never make it back to shore.

Helen saw me. Helen saved me.

This house thing crept up on me like that. I'd been having those panic attacks but not all the time; unpredictably. Suddenly, wherever I was, I'd have to leave. I couldn't breathe. Like that time at the supermarket. Talk about embarrassing. People probably thought I was on drugs.

I was still going to school. Well, usually. Sometimes Bambi and I would just cruise. Also, the dreams kept me up at night so in the morning I would sleep through the alarm.…

It's been gradual, more like wading into quicksand than jumping off the roof.

My parents have abandoned hope that this is a phase I am going through.

Last night my father said, “If you're not going to go to school, you'll finish your studies at home!” He was angry because he doesn't know what to do. He's frightened by the person I'm becoming.

A crazy person. A certified nut. Like those people who are afraid of fog, or the color red, or dairy products. One of the joys of having a shrink is that you learn about phobias and neuroses.

Dr. Shubert says (over the telephone; she refuses to come to the house) that I'm not crazy or neurotic or even long-term phobic. She says that grief is a chronic disease. “It never quite goes away, Jessie. You learn to live with the loss, and go on.” She insists on treating me in her office, and has been holding my appointment time open, in case I decide to appear.

I'm afraid she'll be waiting for a long time. Each day that passes is a nail in the front door. I'm safe here (except in case of flood, fire, famine, earthquake, or nuclear war). I've got a grocery bag stuffed with newspaper clippings of disasters from around the world; freak accidents of every description: tramplings, electrocutions, raining jet fuel; not to mention the intentional catastrophes: executions, bombings, poisoned candy.

I am cutting out death and containing it neatly.

What is happening to me?

My mother has spread the rumor at school that I'm down with pneumonia and will be back soon. She's brought all my books and assignments home. When I'm not busy studying, or cataloging calamity, I talk on the phone with Bambi Sue.

“Geez, Jess,” she bleats for the nine hundredth time, “how can you stand to just sit in that room?”

“I find it helpful in preparing for my future career. I'm thinking of becoming a nun.”

“Reeeeeally?” she squeals. “You're kidding!”

“You've heard about the nuns who pray for peace all the time? I'm joining an order that worries about the future twenty-four hours a day.”

“You're kidding. Aren't you?”

“Always,” I said. “My life is a complete joke.”

Phone conversations get boring fast when (like me) you've got nothing new to say but (like Bambi) say it anyway. When Helen and I were little we called up boys. Anonymously, of course. We'd say stuff like, “We know somebody who likes you,” that someone being Helen or I.

The boys would laugh and say, “Who is this, anyway?” until their moms took over the phone and announced, “Young ladies do not call young gentlemen.”

I've got to get out of here. I want to go to Foothill Park. I want to see Helen's meadow. The rain has grown the hills so green. The flowers will soon go wild. I'd like to climb the hill and lie down in the grass and let the warm breeze bathe my face. I would close my eyes and see Helen again: laughing, healthy, happy, saying, “Jessie, it's so beautiful here! Let's never come down.”

But I can't get there because I'm afraid to ride in cars, because I'm afraid I'll be killed. “Why are you afraid to die?” Lucas yells. “You're even more afraid to live!”

The dreams have changed. I hardly ever see Helen. They're mostly made up of sickening sensations; I'm spinning, falling, with nothing to grab onto. No walls. No floors. Utter darkness. Dr. Shubert tells me I must say, “This is a dream. I'm waking up now.” But that usually doesn't work. The worst times are when I think I've woken up but I'm still dreaming. Last night I thought I ran into the kitchen and told Mom I'd been having a nightmare, and she said, “You give me such a pain,” and walked out.

Then we were at Helen's funeral, in a purple room full of strangers. In the middle of the service I stood up and said, “This isn't right!” Everybody gaped at me with pale fish faces.

It wasn't right that Helen was dead. She was not a funeral kind of person. She'd never been to one in her life. The senior class dedicated their graduation ceremony to her. We talked about having a memorial when everybody in the family was up to it.

We haven't been up to it so far.

I think: What difference would it make? A ceremony won't change a thing and would just make everyone sad. But remembering Helen doesn't have to be sad. We can still be glad she was alive. It would please her to have her friends and family together; someplace pretty, like Foothill Park, with tasty refreshments and good music. Lucas could play his guitar.