(no subject)
1992
Ruthie
Wednesday, January 26th, 1992, was the day Liz flew away.
When I try to look back on it, I can’t put myself back in the moment. I see it all as an old, silent, black and white movie. With the crackling of the filmstrip in the background. I see Liz as Humphry Bogart, taking a dark fedora and a trench coat off of an old, sinister looking coat rack with arms that look like they would come out and grab you if you got too close. I see her getting dressed, letting the dark colors make her disappear into the front door. She opens the door, and before leaving, turns back around and the black and white caption comes onto the screen and it says "Goodbye." She steps outside and as the door creaks closed, you see her lift up the bottoms of her Bogart dress pants to show tall high heels. They click as she runs faster away and the door finally slams shut.
Then the camera follows the neverending staircase as it twirls around and around and up and up until you get to a small landing. You see a mouse, starving, scurry across the otherwise silent landing. The mouse makes the same noise as the crackling filmstrip. The camera goes to a room I shared with Danielle, but in my silent movie I’m sleeping in a giant guitar. In my room my walls are covered in pictures and posters of Kurt Cobain, and one of them is jamming me to sleep. On the other side of the room, which seems like miles away, is Danielle’s bed. Her bed and her hair are spun out of doilies and spiders’ silk. She looks like a porcelain doll.
There’s a big window in the middle wall. It’s wide open and the salty sea breeze is blowing through, and the ruby red curtains are taking cover and blowing up to the top of the wall.
Out the window, Liz is still standing there, her heels still half stuck in the curb. She looks at you and you share a magical stare. Liz closes her eyes and reaches out her slender arm one more time. Danielle and I, still asleep, reach out our arms too and wave goodbye. Then Liz grows moondust wings and flies away. Her heels stay stuck in the curb.
When Liz’s feet are no longer seen, the black and white caption appears again. It says that someone is screaming sobby screams downstairs. The next scene is of the dark and damp living room. My mother is sleeping in a sea of old tissues and her eyes have been cried out. When the front door slammed Liz out, my mother drowned in her sea.
The morning Liz left, she had burnt Erin’s toast. Now my sister Erin was in a kitchen made out of black and white tiles that swallowed her up. Erin was hugging a toaster close to her chest as the tiles were closing up on her.
The caption comes back. In old style, white writing it says ‘The End’. But even though the movie was over, we kept going. We were the energizer bunny family in high heels and wet eyes. We were goddesses who were banished but were fighting our way back to the top. We clawed our way with long red fingernails and we watered the soil in the streets with our salty tears. We bled blood that would argue it’s way out of joining the tears on the ground. Our hearts wore boxing gloves and our spike heels left dent marks in the sidewalk.
It might have said ‘the end’, but there’s always a beginning that starts somewhere. The end of the end is a good place to start.
Danielle
The bottom part of my lip in the left side is a bit cut open. It never bled, but there was always an angry wound there. When we kissed, some of that kiss would stay locked up in that wound. And later in the day I would bite the left corner of my lip and feel the leftovers. Even after there were no more kisses, the leftovers stayed on my lips for thirteen days.
He used to always catch my eyelashes when they fell and he would hold them up on his finger, with the nervously bitten down fingernails and the specks of paint still stuck on his nails and knuckles. When I saw this finger I couldn’t think of anything else to wish for. I would make a strained wish and then the eyelash would float away as the wind blew hope in its direction.
I didn’t know what the wind blew in Liz’s, or his, direction. All I knew was that when I sat on my bed and my fingers slipped off of soaking wet eyelashes, that I had wasted all my wishes. The hopeful eyelashes were just as gone as my sister - love, my father - love, and my wishing - fingers - painting - leftover kisses - boy - love.
When he was gone, I was back to dusting three times a day and back to staring down food and staring down myself. When he was gone I locked up all his paintings of me. When he painted me, he painted someone more than a girl who had locked herself up in a cage. He painted me with smiles and laughter and trippy love colors. In his paintings I was a warm goddess with bright eyes and a heart that was so big it pressed up against my chest. He turned my stick - like figure into a sexy Laugh - In sixties chick.
Maybe he left because he knew that none of this was true. He had created a character that he fell in love with, then looked up from his art and saw a bland sketch of his beautiful creation.
Sometimes, when I bit on my lip until angry, sad salty blood drops came out, somewhere in the bloody taste was a kiss left behind.
The only Liz leftover I had was my mom. A leftover ghost. A broken woman floating through the house. Someone we all thought couldn’t fall any more apart until Liz slammed that door and she shattered into so many more pieces. Now she was just shreds of glass. Black circles under her eyes, bitten lips and broken fingernails, ripped night gowns and tangled hair, only small signs that they had once been curls.
The day Liz left I left the house as fast as I could. I wasn’t going to sit there and wait for someone to come up to me and announce I was the new Liz.
Danielle Larson,
Since your older sister Liz has run away from her life, you must now take her place. To do this we expect you to quit school, get a job at a daycare, sit with your mother while she cries and drive Erin to soccer practice. We expect you to make breakfast, lunch and supper, (not to mention brunch and lupper, not that she’ll eat more than a few bites) take care of the finances and accept checks from your grandmother. We expect you to pack up your goals in a brown paper lunch bag and hand them to someone who has time. Someone who has a real mother and a regular family. Sadly, that person is not you. You will have to live in Courage, alone and stressed and coming home everyday wanting to fall on the couch but realizing your mother is there, letting a blood red pillow soak up her tears and wet her cheeks once again when she falls asleep. We apologize, but you are no longer allowed to have dreams. Furthermore, you have to set an example for your family. You must stop smoking and start eating and get nicer friends. It would be even better if you had no friends, we do need you to spend all your time with your family. Thank you for your troubles.
Sincerely,
Dream Killers inc.
P.s. That is the last thank you you’ll be hearing for a while. Sorry.
I wasn’t going to let that happen. I wasn’t going to stand around long enough to read that letter in someone's eyes or tears. I heard that request enough in my own head. I tried to get it out, I tried to brush it out of my hair until it was long and smooth and clean and shiny and dead. I tried to get the thoughts out by keeping the inside of me clean, cleaning it out until it was hollow and empty of all thoughts and only full of cigarette smoke and black coffee and diet Pepsi and lemon juice. I kept the thoughts out by being too busy for them. By going out and cleaning and talking and organizing and partying. Anything besides being alone with myself.
It would work someday.
We did everything together. We all tried to quit smoking at the beginning of the school year, but none of us lasted longer than three days. I gave up first, running to the bathroom in the middle of History to smoke a cigarette and sit in a corner, calming myself down and counting the tiles on the ceiling. Two more of us came in the washroom two minutes later to do the same. Jessica was the only one who tried to quit again, and succeeded, which was very lucky of her because she got pregnant two weeks later. A little round pouch was beginning to show. For some reason I felt uncomfortable around her like that, like the baby was looking down on me and could see things in me that no one else could.
My friends and I probably wouldn’t see each other after high school. We all liked to say that we would stay together forever, but we all knew it wasn’t true. We all knew you couldn’t go through life filled with smoke and laughter and floating through life with tight jeans and late night parties. Walking down the streets in a big group late at night we could look up and watch each house’s bedroom windows light up as they heard the noise and clinking and clumsy singing. It was usually a slurred version of ‘Can’t Touch This’. A part of me knew I wanted more than this, that I wanted to clean myself up and feel it inside when I smiled. But the rest of me knew how comfortable being like this was, how easy and predictable. I was spinning in control.