What Remains True Read online

  I shrink away from these thoughts, these disemboweled, skin-burning, head-screaming thoughts, because I know they will take me to the something-awful place, and I cannot go there. I have to get up and make a snack. I think about the snack, even as my stomach twists (disemboweled) and my head pounds (screaming) and my skin itches until I want to claw it off (burning).

  Snack. Rachel, focus. Snack. Peanut butter and crackers for Eden and apples with almond butter for Jonah, not because he has a peanut allergy but because he likes the almond butter. The woman at Trader Joe’s thought that was interesting. That’s what she said. That’s interesting. Almond butter. I think I’m out of almond butter. I haven’t been to Trader Joe’s in a while. But I don’t need almond butter, or do I? I do, for Jonah. Peanut butter for Eden and almond butter for . . .

  Jonah.

  I sit up suddenly and force my eyes to open. The daylight sears my retinas. Through the spots of white obscuring my vision, I see him, perched on the end of the bed, smiling at me.

  Hi, Mommy.

  Jonah.

  My vision clears. And I remember.

  Jonah.

  Oh my god oh my god oh my god. JONAH.

  I’m screaming again.

  FIVE

  RUTH

  I hear the scream, and the keys slide from my grasp. I curse softly, then drop my carry sacks on the porch and scramble for the keys. The screaming continues. My fingers are shaking. I can’t unlatch the bolt. I stop and take a deep breath, then turn the key and push through the front door, leaving the groceries outside.

  The dog is standing at alert at the bottom of the stairs, its long nose pointing to the second floor. It sees me and immediately lowers itself to the floor and bows its head submissively.

  I hurry up the stairs two at a time and rush to the master bedroom. The smell of vomit assaults my nose, but I don’t linger on the question. Rachel is on the bed, clutching that damn stuffed monkey to her chest, rocking back and forth and screaming. Tears stream down her cheeks.

  “Rachel,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me. I move quickly to the side of the bed and reach for her. As soon as she feels my fingertips brush her arm, she lashes out blindly, smacking my wrist hard enough to make me wince.

  “Rachel! It’s me Ruth. Rachel!”

  I grab for her again, clutching her arms and pressing them tightly against her sides so that she can’t swing them. A deep moan bubbles up from her chest and ends with a blistering wail.

  “Jonah!”

  She goes limp then, and I wrap my arms around her and hold her to me. Her moans turn to wrenching, full-body sobs, with intermittent cries of her son’s name. We sit that way for what seems like a long while. I don’t allow myself to move or shift, but the stench of the room—the vomit from the trash bin next to the bed, the unwashed, sweat-soaked bedding, the rank odor of grief emanating from my sister—begins to make me nauseous.

  “Jonah,” she mewls.

  “I know, honey. I know.” When I’m certain she is calm, I ease her back down onto the bed. She stares at the ceiling, then throws her forearm over her eyes. The stuffed animal lies limp at her side. Her lips are cracked and crusted at the corners; her normally rosy, freckled skin is pale, with half-moon bruises under her eyes. Her strawberry-blonde hair is greasy and slick at the scalp and matted at the ends.

  “I saw him,” she says. “He was here.”

  The pills are talking. I slowly rise from the bed and walk around to the nightstand to inspect the bottle. I can’t tell how many she’s taken today. Guilt gnaws at me. I shouldn’t have left her in charge of her own medication. I shouldn’t have left her alone. But then, someone has to take care of the household. They were out of almost everything. I had to go to the store. The casseroles and premade meals from friends and neighbors are long gone. What was I supposed to do? Let them starve?

  I remember the groceries on the porch. “Rachel, I’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t go.” Her voice is like a child’s. I know I should feel sorry for her, and I do, but suddenly I’m angry. This is not my sister.

  “Rachel,” I say sternly. She flinches, but I continue. “I’m going to bring in the groceries and put them away. Then I’m coming back up here, and you’re going to bathe.”

  She shakes her head back and forth.

  “I’m not taking no for an answer. I’ll carry you if I have to.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “You stink, Rachel.” I know it’s harsh, but I can’t help myself. If my sister were on the outside of this grief, looking in on someone else, she would do the same thing. “You stink and your room stinks and you can’t live like this.”

  She doesn’t say anything. I grab the bottle of pills and tuck it into my pocket, then cross to the window and pull the curtains wide. I slide the window open all the way. Rachel scoots up against the headboard, scans the nightstand, then squints at me.

  “Where are my pills, Ruth? I need one.”

  I cross my arms over my chest and shake my head.

  “I need one. You don’t understand, Ruth. You don’t know what it’s like. I can’t take it, I can’t, I can’t . . . ” She is starting to work herself up again. I go to her and lay a hand on her cheek.

  “You have to get through this, honey.”

  “I want a pill.”

  “After. Your. Bath.”

  She glares at me, then gives a slight nod. She grabs the monkey and burrows under the covers, turns away from me onto her side. I release a sigh, then stand and walk to the bedroom door. Just as I step into the hall, I hear her muffled words.

  “He was here.”

  SIX

  SHADOW

  Dark Female is back. I hear her car before she comes in the house. It creaks and shudders when she turns it off. Not like my master’s car that hums soothingly or my mistress’s car that whispers, and I’m not sure it’s her until she slams the car door. Her car-door slam sounds hollow.

  Dark Female is outside when my mistress starts to howl. I jump from my bed and run to the bottom of the stairs. I’m not allowed up there, but my mistress is in distress. I should go to her. But the front door opens, and Dark Female rushes in. She looks at me like she always looks at me, with angry eyes like I’ve been a Bad Boy, but not angry eyes like my master when I stole the bacon from the counter—his eyes were angry but also laughing a little at the edges. Dark Female looks at me like she wants to hurt me, but I don’t know what I did to make her want to hurt me.

  Maybe I did a big Bad Boy thing. I must have. But I am good and faithful to my humans. I sometimes do small Bad Boy things like chew pillows and chair legs and Little Female’s stuffed animals and Little Male’s softballs, and sometimes I try to run out the front door when the cat across the street hisses at me. But I’m a Good Boy. “Good boy.” That’s what my humans always say to me. They did before. They don’t talk to me much now, but that’s okay because I know they are sad.

  They are sad because Little Male got hurt. They think he is gone. He’s not gone, not completely. I still see him sometimes. He looks different, and I can’t smell him at all. But he’s here.

  My mistress is still howling, but Dark Female gives me another angry look, and I lie down on my haunches and lower my head. Dark Female runs past me and up the stairs.

  She smells like food and fear.

  SEVEN

  JONAH

  I’m pretty sure Mommy saw me today.

  She was talking about snacks. Or thinking about snacks. It’s kind of funny because I can hear the words in her head as if she was saying them out loud. But it made me happy that she was thinking about making me a snack, even though I can’t eat it. I wanted to make her smile and know that I was happy she was thinking a good thought about me.

  I don’t like peanut butter. It sticks to the top of my mouth and makes me talk funny and Eden makes fun of me ’cause I sound like a baby. Almond butter is yummy and doesn’t stick to my mouth and make me talk like a baby. It goes down my throat better. Or it
did before, when I had a throat.

  So I went into Mommy’s room. I don’t know where I was before I heard her words. Sometimes I just am, but I’m not anywhere. It’s kind of like floating in a swimming pool when your eyes are closed and you don’t feel anything or think anything or do anything, but you just are. But then I heard Mommy talking about my snack and I thought of being where she was and then I was just there, kind of sitting on her bed, but not like I used to. I couldn’t feel the bed under me. And Mommy sat up and looked at me, right at me, not through me like when I sat next to Dad on the couch and his eyes saw the clock on the mantel instead of my chest, which was right in front of him.

  She said my name and then her eyes got really big and she started to scream, and I didn’t like that sound so I just thought about my room and I went there. I could still hear Mommy screaming even though I was down the hall, and it was loud, not like she was in my room with me, but like her screams were inside me, and I didn’t like that at all, so I thought of floating and the pool and then I was nowhere, but somewhere away from the screaming.

  And then, I don’t know how I could tell, but I knew everything was quiet again, so I thought about Mommy and I was back in her room. But not on the bed. I didn’t want her to see me and start screaming again, so I kind of slid into the corner of the shadows by the wall. I’m here now and I know she can’t see me ’cause she’s in the bathroom, sitting in the bathtub with water and lots of bubbles all around her.

  I can’t smell now, but I remember Mommy’s baths always smelled really good. She said it was lavender, a kind of flower, and she had me repeat the word until I got it right, until I could say lavender. And I told my teacher that I could say lavender and that I knew what it was and she was really proud of me.

  Auntie Ruth is in Mommy’s bedroom. She pulls the comforter off the bed and throws it on the floor, then pulls the blankets and sheets off, too. Her lips are white with frowning, and her nose scrunches up as she bundles up the sheets and tosses them outside the bedroom door. Every few seconds, she goes to the bathroom and looks in.

  “You okay, Rach?” she asks.

  Mommy sometimes doesn’t answer and sometimes she says, “Go away” or “Leave me alone” or “Can I have a pill?” Auntie Ruth’s frown gets bigger, but she keeps working, putting new sheets on the bed and tucking them under the mattress.

  I always loved that, when I got into bed after Mommy made it fresh, with the sheets and blankets tucked in under the sides and pressing down on me. It felt nice and safe and cozy. Maybe Mommy will feel nice and safe and cozy when she gets back into bed. I liked the way the sheets smelled, too. That word Mommy taught me was easier. Tide, she said. I didn’t tell my teacher that one because even a baby can say Tide.

  Auntie Ruth runs the vacuum and then she goes into the bathroom and washes Mommy’s hair. Mommy makes angry sounds when Auntie Ruth tries to brush through her hair, kind of like Eden does when Mommy brushes through her hair. Mommy and Eden have the same hair—that’s what Mommy always says. When Eden cries out, Mommy says, “I know, honey. You got your hair from me.”

  Auntie Ruth has different hair from Mommy even though they’re sisters, just like Eden and me have different hair. Mine is dark brown like Daddy’s. Or it was. Auntie Ruth’s is darker than Mommy’s, at least on the bottom it is, but not on top ’cause the top of Auntie Ruth’s head looks kind of gray, like my nanny’s was. The bottom of Auntie Ruth’s hair is kind of like the color of the stuff Mommy drinks with dinner, or sometimes before dinner, too, or after dinner, the stuff in the tall green bottle. Sometimes Auntie Ruth drinks the stuff from the green bottle with Mommy, but I don’t think that’s why the bottom of her hair is that color, ’cause if it was, Mommy’s would be, too.

  Auntie Ruth helps Mommy out of the bathtub and wraps a towel around her. Mommy just stands there while Auntie Ruth dries her off, then leaves her to come back into the bedroom to get some clothes. Mommy is naked. A nudist, I think. One time when I got out of the bath and the towel dropped to the floor, Mommy laughed and said, “Nudist!” And I asked what was a nudist and Eden said it’s someone who doesn’t wear clothes, dummy, like she was so much smarter than me, which she is, but only ’cause she’s bigger, and Mommy got cross with her and told her not to call names. Mommy made Eden ’pologize and Eden said she was sorry, but I think she only meant it a little bit, not all the way.

  Mommy looks really skinny, not like she did before when I would see her get out of the bath looking all pink and smelling of lavender. Her bones are kind of sticky-outy. Her boobies used to be round, but now they kind of flop down flat. And her belly that used to poof out just a little bit, which felt nice when I laid my head in her lap, kind of like a little warm pillow, is all sunken in and doesn’t look comfy at all.

  Auntie Ruth comes back into the bathroom holding a pile of clothes. A pair of sweatpants that Mommy used to wear when she cleaned the house or sat on the couch with Eden and me eating popcorn and watching Dora and Diego, which Eden said was for babies but watched anyway. And the yellow sweater with the unicorn on the front, my favorite thing Mommy ever wore because the unicorn looked like it was about to fly off her sweater and into the room. Mommy said that it could happen and Eden rolled her eyes like that was never going to happen, but Mommy said it could if you believed hard enough, anything could happen.

  I look up at Mommy’s face and her cheeks are wet, but not from the bath. Her eyes are crying again.

  “That was Jonah’s favorite sweater,” Mommy says, but her voice is kind of choky. Auntie Ruth takes in a breath and throws her arms around Mommy, even though she’s still naked, and then Auntie Ruth’s crying, too.

  I don’t want to hear the crying. I think of being nowhere and then I go.

  EIGHT

  EDEN

  This has been the worst day in my entire life. I know I’m supposed to say that the Jonah Day was the worst, but it wasn’t. Not for me. Everything was crazy that day, not just after it happened, but before, too. And after it happened, there was a lot of yelling and sirens, and people rushing out of their houses and Aunt Ruth sent me up to my room so that I couldn’t see anything, even though I already saw it.

  But today was way worse, because on the Jonah Day, nobody knew anything and today, everybody knows everything.

  I’m so mad at Mom and Dad, but even more mad at Aunt Ruth, because she made me come to school, and I don’t think I’m ever going to forgive her for that. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have cared if I stayed home for another week or another month or even another year. They don’t care what I do or don’t do right now. Maybe someday they will again, but they don’t now. So why did Aunt Ruth have to think she was all parenty and knew what was good for me? She’s not my mom or my dad. She doesn’t even have kids. Like she knows what’s best for a kid. She’s not even married anymore.

  I’m mad at my teacher, Mr. Libey, for looking at me all day with those eyes of his. Which were sad but also kind of afraid, like maybe he was thinking about his own kids and how bad things can happen no matter what and there’s nothing you can do about it. I heard one of my mom’s friends talking about that on the day of the funeral. “You just can’t keep them safe,” she said, dabbing at her bright-pink lips with her handkerchief that now had big bright-pink rings all over it. “No matter what you do, you can’t keep them safe.”

  And Mr. Libey kept looking at me and then looking at his cell phone, which I know for a fact has a picture of his kids as his screen saver. I asked him about them once, when I was at his desk turning in my math worksheet and I happened to see the picture of the two curly-haired girls with matching dresses and matching missing teeth in the front of their mouths. He said they were Hailey and Shaley, and I thought Hailey was a cool name, but Shaley was stupid and that he’d named her Shaley just so her name would rhyme with her sister’s.

  And he didn’t stop the other kids in my class from whispering about me and passing notes, even the ones I thought were my friends. He made some stupid speech
about being kind and considerate of “your school companions,” which was code for “the girl whose brother is dead.”

  But he didn’t seem to notice that everyone was still pointing and smirking and frowning at me. Well, everyone except Aimee Joyce and Corwin Kwe. They’re nice and don’t say anything mean about anyone, not even the kids who tease them.

  And I’m mad at Mrs. Hartnett and Mr. Libey for totally poning me in kinder-readers. Because they didn’t think about the fact that, like, I had no one to read with because my kinder-reader partner was my brother and my brother was gone. Duh? And Mrs. Hartnett got really round owl eyes and then started sniffling and everyone turned and looked at me, everyone in my class, and also the kindergartners, too. And because the teachers didn’t know what else to do with me, they sent me up to see this lady in the front office called Mrs. P, who isn’t married, according to Kylie Barnard—“at least not to a man.” I’ve never talked to Mrs. P before, but I know from listening to teachers talk when they think I’m concentrating on my work, that Mrs. P gets the kids who have “issues” or “problems” or are on something called an IEP, which I think means they’re dumb or something.

  Mrs. P smiles like she isn’t really happy at all, and that kind of creeps me out. She asked me how I’m doing and how it is to be back at school and if I need anything. I told her fine and fine and no. She told me I could come talk to her anytime, that she’d be here, and that I could talk to her about anything, and then she smiled that creepy smile and I knew right then and there that I was never going to talk to her about anything ever.

  And then at lunch, I had to buy because my mom didn’t pack me a lunch because she’s taking medication that makes her not do any of the mom things she’s supposed to do. So I had to buy lunch but there wasn’t any money in my lunch account because my dad forgot to refill it, not because he’s taking medication, but probably because the crease in his forehead is causing brain damage or something. So the lunch lady kind of pats my hand and pushes a tray over to me and says I can pay the school back tomorrow. And I take my lunch over to the table where the whispering stops suddenly and everyone looks at me.