Go Call You Mine
September 2008
I want you to know that I can drive faster than you. I can hit the gas harder and change lanes with more precision. I don’t even have to look in my blindspots. I can feel the cars on the road- I know where they stand.
You always had close calls. You’d get too close to the bumper when you tailgated. You’d hover towards the shoulders of the road. Your sense of spatial relationship was less developed. People who rode with you clung to the seats white-knuckled. It was the standard joke that you were going to crash your little red Escort- leave it to you to drive a car that screams ‘I’m a varsity volleyball player at a completely white high school in Ohio’. But you never crashed, never got so much as a dent on your doors.
They gave the Escort to me because even though you made the payments it was in Dad’s name. There wasn’t even discussion about it. Dad just drove it over one day, handed me the keys, and just left. Kathy, the current bimbo girlfriend in a decade long line of bimbo girlfriends, had followed him in his old Cadillac, the one that usually sat in his garage, stagnate but lovingly attended to, its hood popped, its liquids checked, the garage thick with the smell of motor oil changed in a car that never drove.
The first time you ended up in a hospital we all worried. Mom added your name to the prayer list at the church where she spends most of her time sitting in the front pew, head bowed, Bible open, notebook on her knee, taking notes about the sermon, the homily. Dad drank. It was one of those surprises, when the healthy girl faints and all of a sudden words like malignant are thrown into conversations that are whispered hoarsely into corded phones while brother, sister, mother, friend sink their backs against the cold plaster of the kitchen walls, trying to will into existence the days of phone calls filled with gossip about uncles who had left their wives and cousins who were knocked around by their boyfriends.
It was strange, like something from a movie where the actress is supposed to be on her deathbed but she’s so pretty, wearing makeup, her eyes bright, so there is no suspension of disbelief. When I came to see you, came to mourn you, you looked just the same as always. The blond hair thick and messy, but messy in a pleasant way, like bed-head after an afternoon nap or a sweet romp with a skinny boy with brown eyes and the kind of sweaters that well intentioned mothers give. The only sign that anything was wrong was that you left your pudding uneaten. It sat on your tray, along with the apple juice in the tiny plastic jug, its tin-foil seal unbroken by your straw. I used to tell you that tapioca pudding was made of fish-eyes and puss, but no amount of big brother taunting could make you dislike it.
I felt like I was visiting you after the birth of a baby more that what it really was, and I liked that.
After the first time, though, the glow left your cheeks, the pounds dropped from your ribs, the sweet rolls of fat on your stomach that caused me to call you Miss Piggy all through your high school years started to disappear. You stayed awake less. I visited less. The nurses forgot my name, had to ask what relation I was to you. I never forgot their names. Julie. Tanya. Becky. I’ll never forget how their voices, so used to all of this, were calm when they told me your room number. I’ll never forget the sound of sensible white tennis shoes hitting the laminate floor as they escorted me through halls that smelt thick of cleaning supplies.
After it happened I stayed inside until I ran out of food completely. I remembered you mostly. I wandered through my rooms, I stared out my windows that look over the apartment parking lot, stared at your car, at its decorated bumpers- nothing political, just Jesus fish and bitchy catch-phrases. I laid on the couch and let my eyes search the popcorn ceiling for the scar on your chin that you got after I pushed you off your bicycle when you were three and I was five.
We didn’t talk much until after you were out of high school. I was sitting on mom’s loveseat, an old floral one that moved from the family’s house to the apartment she lives in now, when you called to tell her that you had been raped.
A flash of you came to mind- seventeen, on your bed, laughing with friends while telling them that at a party you passed out and your guy friends took pictures of you with their penises on your face. I listened in from the hall but never said anything to you about it.
You came home, sat next to me on the loveseat, your face melting with tears, the mascara from the night before thick and running down your face, the cheeks tan, the skin taut. You and mom fought, fought about how you were handling it, about how you didn’t want to call the police, how you wanted to be forgiving of him, how you thought that this was just a one time mistake and that you really loved him. I wanted to shake you, wanted to yell, wanted to scream that if you were the first girl, then you wouldn’t be the last. I drove you to the YWCA where you got the rape kit, got the morning after pill, had pictures taken of your bruises, your tearing. My little sister. I felt like following you around with a baseball bat, puffing my chest at every man who glanced at you. This is when I started talking to you more, started going to your apartment, cleaning up your kitchen, became friends with your friends, started paying attention to the guys that you dated.
Before I was out of food, I ate the container of cottage cheese from the fridge, straight out of the container, with a spoon that I rubbed clean on my shirt. The last time that I saw you before the hospitals, the tests, the diagnosis we went to Steak and Shake. I ate a chicken melt, drank a root beer float. We ate our cottage cheese the same way, removing the pineapples, covering it with salt. It was rare that I saw these little things that we had in common. Our chins were the same, except yours carried the scar I gave you. You were part of me in this strange way that gave me an odd feeling of being too close, being too similar at the time, but that leaves me feeling empty, sick now.
I got in your car when I started feeling hungry and every dish was dirty and nothing was left in my cupboards but instant mashed potatoes. My intention was to drive to the grocery store, to fill your backseat with juice, milk, and bread, but I got on the highway instead of turning into the grocery store parking lot. I drove as fast as traffic would allow, pulling your little red car through the lanes, hitting the gas, slamming the brakes at the last moments. Your car smells exactly like the cars of any girl I’ve ever dated, that fruity perfume smell. It was the first time I drove it since dad left it at my house. You had leis hanging from the rear view mirror.
For a moment, a small moment, I thought about the physics that would be involved in a car crash. I thought about how hard I’d have to hit the gas and what I would have to hit to fall asleep instantly, to not wake up, to feel whatever it is that you are feeling. I imagined a crash, imagined the blood loss and the smashed-in glass of your windshield. But instead, I got off the highway, went through a drive through, and drove home with the bag of burgers and fries in the passenger seat.
The next day I listed your car online, sold it for five hundred dollars less than it was worth to a seventeen year old girl who looked, to my relief, nothing like you. She was giddy when I handed her the keys, made a joke about how all her friends had cars just like it. I nodded, listened, handed over the title, all the while thinking about your face the last time I saw you, how your chin stood out more on your newly boney face, how much you looked like me at that moment. You were asleep when I came back from the bathroom where I ran off to to collect my thoughts, to stop myself from freaking out when everything was already so heightened with drama. I opened the door, saw your sleeping, sunken face, and I left.
Copyright 2008 Jessa Marsh
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