All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

Then I had to borrow a pen, because that was how life was with Sean. I liked it better when I lived with Sandy. I didn’t always have to beg or steal things.

I wrote as fast as I could, but I didn’t want it to be messy.

Dear Wavy, we had to move and I don’t know where yet. I will write to you again when I know where. See you soon. Love, Donal.

“Who’re you writing to, sweetie?” the cashier lady said.

“My sister.”

“That’s nice.”

I wished she would be quiet, because it was hard to remember Aunt Brenda’s address. Before I could write the zip code, Sean put his hand on my shoulder.

“Whatcha doing, Don?”

“He’s such a cutie. He’s writing his sister a postcard.”

“Come on, buddy. You can finish that in the car,” he said.

In the parking lot, he took the postcard and put it in the trash. He squeezed my shoulder hard and said, “Don, didn’t we talk about how it’s not safe for you to write to your sister?”

“I didn’t tell her where we were,” I said.

“I don’t want you sneaking around behind my back like that again. Do you understand?”

I nodded. Wavy was right. Sometimes you have to nod, even if you don’t agree. She was right about a lot of things.

11

WAVY

1986

After Kellen was UNAUTHORIZED CORRESPONDENCE, and Donal was NO FORWARDING ORDER, I felt dead. I woke up in the mornings surprised my heart was still beating. The food I snuck at night tasted like nothing. I stole a whole red velvet cake from Mrs. NiBlack that was for a charity auction. It tasted like dirt. That was what I imagined it was like being dead. Feeling empty with the taste of dirt in your mouth.

Whatever Val felt now that she was dead, I couldn’t think of her as Mama anymore. I wanted to take her flowers like Kellen had done for his mother, but I couldn’t stand to go see her now that she was lying next to Liam.

Feeling dead was better than when my heart hurt. Sometimes I thought it might burn through my ribs while I was asleep, and smolder in the sheets until the whole house caught fire. The only thing that made it hurt less was moving my hands. Like Kellen washing dishes, making his head empty. I sliced and knitted and ironed and sanded and hammered and typed, trying to make my heart empty. Home economics class. Typing class. Woodshop class. Homeroom, where I volunteered to make decorations for dances.

The questions never stopped, but in high school, I learned a new way to deal with them. No matter what the question was, I nodded.

Were your parents really murdered? Yes.

Did your boyfriend kill your parents? Yes.

Is it true you were gang-raped by some bikers? Yes.

Aunt Brenda told the story to her book club and they told someone else, who told someone else, and on and on and on, getting less true every time it got told. Even less true than Aunt Brenda’s version.

I mostly liked high school. I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.

I also liked watching people. The girl who was pregnant changed the way she moved to hide it. The boy who looked at people like they were bugs scribbled angry things in his notebook. The teachers kissing desperately in the storage room weren’t married to each other. Amy stood too close to the Spanish teacher when she worked the football concession stand. Leaning over, she brushed her arm longingly against Mrs. Ramirez’s arm.

Watching and doing made things bearable. Also, time passed, even while I slept. After I turned twenty-one, Aunt Brenda wouldn’t be able to frown and say, “I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to spend your trust fund.”

Even before that, I would be eighteen. I could find out things Aunt Brenda didn’t want me to know. Where was Donal? How long until Kellen was free?

In the meantime, the things that hurt other people healed me.

At the end of my freshman year, a girl in my class was raped. Held down and raped by two boys in a bullpen at the city baseball diamond. The rape made other girls nervous, but it reminded me that Kellen loved me. He hadn’t raped me. I slipped secret notes in the girl’s locker. Notes to say, “You’re very good at math,” and “Your hair is pretty today.”

During my junior year, a boy in Amy’s class killed himself. He had terrible acne, purple welts like bee stings all over his face, and he went home from school and hung himself. I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less. If I lay very still in bed at night, I remembered how Grandma’s house smelled. The taste of mint ice cream on Kellen’s tongue. Donal jumping on the bed to wake me up.

For everyone else, the boy killing himself was scary. It made Aunt Brenda hug Amy harder and tell Leslie it was okay if she wanted to move home from the dorm, where she was lonely, even though the college was only twenty miles away. It made them go to church more, hoping God would comfort them.

I didn’t think God could comfort anyone, but I was content to go and sit in the sanctuary. People stared at me sometimes, but they had to follow the rules and I didn’t. God made everyone else stand up and sing, sit down and pray, stand up, sit down, pray, sing, pray. God didn’t seem to care if I read novels or knitted scarves.

Youth group was harder to get through. Charlotte, the youth pastor, was a hugger. She was big and blond, with an enormous mouth full of teeth to hold her big smiley voice. Once, she visited the house, so she and Aunt Brenda could discuss her concerns about me not being baptized. Swimming in a stock tank under the full moon didn’t count.