SOME DAYS, I DON’T EVEN get out of bed. I shut the curtains and pull the sheets over my face. I say nothing when they speak to me, feign sleep, sickness. Dad hovers at the edges, stays at the door, invites me to eat at his table, but I don’t move. He leaves plates of pizza rolls at my feet.
Usually, they keep a safe distance, but one morning he sits on the bed and pats my leg. His hair slicked back, a dress shirt tucked into jeans. We’ve always had the comfort of repetition and routine, of doing what good country people are supposed to do. Church was always a place of support and friendship, but I never felt like we belonged, my family accepted despite its history, not because of it. At the large sanctuary doorway, I always froze, hesitated to step inside. This bizarre fear would pass, and I’d follow behind my mom without bursting into flames.
“Come on, Amy. Get dressed. You need to go to church.”
“I’m not going.”
“You really should.”
“Why? Because it’s done you so much good? Done us all so much good? Tell you what, Dad. Why don’t you go and pray to God to cure Stonewall. Let me know how that works out.”
He rubs my leg. “I wish you weren’t so hateful. You’re hurting. That’s why you need to come with us. Death’s hard to understand when you don’t have God in your life, honey.”
“Get the fuck out of here. Please.”
“I’m not going to let you push me away. You’re still my little girl.”
“You really should.”
He straightens a little Christian grief notebook on the table, flips through the blank pages. He’s never asked me anything, and he never will. “Your mother and I don’t want this for you.”
“What did you want? For any of us?”
He kisses my hair on the pillow, wipes at his eyes, and leaves.
That little dumb girl Amy with all her self-awareness and smarts, all the pitfalls I knew to avoid, the lessons my family taught me. And this is who I am, what I did. My knowing didn’t change anything.
Soon she stands over me. “Come on. Get up. You need to show your face there.”
“You don’t actually believe in that shit either. You never have.”
“Church gives us structure. Makes us part of the community, gets us out of the house. And it makes your father happy. His family’s been a part of that congregation a long time. It’s important we be there, Amy.”
“You do what you do to him and still pretend to care.”
“I love your father. Very much. He’s the best man I know, and nothing I do is his fault. But he cannot save me. Neither can a god, though it’s not that hard to pretend. Remember what I told you. I’m your mom. I know things. How do you think we’ve made it this far?”
I peer up at her. “Am I a toxic person?”
She laughs. “Oh, Amy. I’m not having this conversation with you. Get the hell up.”
I snap my arm back. “No more. I can’t.”
“You have to show your face. You have to show your face and smile. You just have to keep living in this world, fighting. That’s all.”
I remain still. “I’ll never be you.”
She leaves, beheaded by darkness. “There’s no sense to any of this, sweetheart.”
I visit Paul’s grave.
He’s planted near the top of Hillcrest Cemetery, not far from his house. His grandfather bought several plots for the family back in the seventies, when the ground was newly designated and cheap. Nobody expected Paul to be the first buried there.
It’s a plain granite headstone. His name is unremarkable, and his age can be easily calculated with simple subtraction.
In the winter there were always plastic flowers. They survived the snow and cold. One night I found several beers left by our classmates. The bottles had frozen and burst. His little cousins wrote cards illustrated with crayon people saying how much they missed him, how they knew he was singing with angels and hanging out with God.
It is spring. There are colored Easter eggs in a basket and melted candy bars crawling with ants. I take a bite-size chocolate and let the sweetness kiss my tongue.
I leave no gifts or writings or flowers.
Beneath a few inches of topsoil and six feet of dirt is my friend’s corpse. And that’s it.
By now worms must have breached the coffin and feasted on his flesh. Maybe even a few rats broke through, nested within his ribs. Those pretty blue eyes, once vibrant as the sky, are now sunken, gone, just black sockets staring up at me.
Today someone driving by would think I’m a sad case, in mourning, a long-haired girl alone on a windswept hill. This is what grieving, lovesick girls do.
But I haven’t cried here. I keep expecting to, wanting to, but I can’t. It would feel obscene. And I do not speak. I do not pretend. I hear only silence.
I come to this place to feel alive, to breathe deep and taste grim victory.
But he is never coming back. At no point do I stop being alone, missing him, us.
This is what death is. This is all death is.