Family

I was too young to know these things. They were my big, beautiful and exciting teenage stepsisters. I had inherited them overnight when our mothers fell in love and moved us all in together to that apartment on 15th street with the tall ceilings and steep winding stairs that led to a sunny patch of concrete backyard. There was passionate lovemaking in the bedroom in the middle of the night; I would wake up terrified, but Elizabeth and Traci always laughed and teased our mothers the following mornings about how loud they had been. I reassured myself that it must all be okay, normal. Maybe even funny.

We had cats, two or three, depending on the time of year. Traci would bring one home after finding it in the backyard crying for its lost mother: we have to take it in or it’ll die! I cuddled these creatures and talked to them during the long weekend afternoons when I waited patiently for some attention. I would sing to the cats softly, tell them my secrets and make cozy beds out of pillowcases for them.

Traci and Elizabeth had crazy 80’s haircuts, and clothes with lots of holes: gray, black, netted. I looked up to them and they mostly ignored me, except when they got jealous that I had a father who took me out to eat, who bought me presents, a father who had a stable home I could visit every other weekend.  Then they would make clear to me that I was a spoiled brat. I believed them, and longed to be close, to taste some of their wild teenage life that was still so far from me, to believe that I was part of something, and even if there were two moms, at least I had sisters that sat around the table with us at dinner time. I counted: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Family.

My Father Said

Elizabeth called my father to tell him they were leaving to go back to England, all three of them: her, Eve, and Traci. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about, my father said, and the tone of her voice almost convinced him it made sense that she would choose to call him of all people. As if she had even crossed his mind once over the past ten years.

“But did she say why she was calling you? Why you?” I tried to grasp this with all my might: My father, picking up the phone to hear a strange voice of a broken young woman who was the daughter of his ex-wife’s ex-lover. Telling him they were leaving the country. My father. Of  all people. And without any explanation.

“No, I just thought this was part of her mental issues––didn’t you tell me she’d been hospitalized before?” My father wanted nothing more to do with this.

“And your phone number. To think she kept it all these years!” How torn up Elizabeth was the last time I saw her. Her face, how it was puffy and white with a tight smile that never revealed her teeth.

I quickly placed a call to the woman who had once been a type of stepmother to me, a mother-woman caring for me alongside my fiery and anxious mother. I was worried that she and Elizabeth might have already left for England and I would lose that part of my life forever. It had been years since we had last spoken, but I always kept her latest number in my address book. I dialed the digits between short breaths. Eve answered the phone, her voice the same wavy voice, only older. Shakier, but clearer.

McDonald’s

Eve had to pick him up in a Mcdonald’s parking lot. You wouldn’t believe it, Naomi, it was so clandestine. She tells me the story shot by shot:

“Uh, yes, Ms. P? I’m calling to inform you that your daughter Traci was taken to jail this morning. We’re contacting you to request you take your grandson in until your daughter’s situation is figured out. There’s no court date yet, but the baby is with a social worker ready to be handed over.”

Eve had no car seat, of course, so she borrowed the one the social worker had with her and promised to return it the following day. The woman looked at her with pity so deep that Eve sensed she was new at her job––the way she handed over the baby, right there in a Mcdonald’s parking lot, and looked Eve in the eye, taking out a business card and handing it to her.

“He’s very lucky to have a grandma to take care of him. Please call if you need support, the district will be contacting you to notify you on the status of your daughter.”

Elizabeth, fresh out of the mental ward after another attempt at slitting her wrists, heard her baby nephew cry all night from her room, next to her mother’s. Eve didn’t tell her why baby Daniel was staying the night; she had to be careful not to upset her.

But Elizabeth felt that something was wrong, she knew there was a reason why her sister Traci hadn’t been returning her calls like she always did, for Traci knew these calls kept her alive, away from the razors and the pills and the hospital. As Elizabeth lay in bed, the baby’s voice carrying through the wall, she wanted to pound the wall with her fist, pound hard, maybe break a hole with a bloody knuckle. Mother, I cannot sleep, get that baby out of here. She tried to remember the last time she had spoken to Traci, was it last week when she called to tell her the baby was starting to crawl? Was it that short conversation on Sunday, or Saturday morning when Traci asked her to hold on, then muffled the phone and never came back? She remembered the voice in the background, unhappy, starting out in a slicing whisper, then getting louder until the phone line had clicked softly, both Traci’s voice and the muffled sound disappearing at once.

White Trash

Traci had another child before Daniel. Her name was Jessica and she was the reason Traci was in jail. When Jessica was three, Traci took her and left. Jessica’s father knew she must be heading back to England where she had family and could live off of the state. He didn’t try to stop her. He wasn’t worried about Traci’s drinking; he hadn’t thought it had much to do with her changing moods, or the distance between them that had grown so wide he could hardly feel her absence when she finally left. There was nothing there anymore, nothing between them; he couldn’t make himself feel sad or angry, he just looked at Jessica’s untouched toys, still spread around the stained grayish-blue wall-to-wall carpet as she had left them. He tossed them all in a big trash bag and shoved them into the closet. Better for a daughter to be with her mother.

Traci was pregnant with Jessica the last time I saw her. I was a teenager trying to connect the pieces of my childhood, longing to feel a connection to this young woman who I used to call my step sister. My mother dropped me off at a motel-style apartment building in the middle of nowhere, where Traci and her big belly greeted me and introduced me to the man she would soon leave who was sitting in front of a TV blasting in the background, cheap posters on the walls, piles of pink clothes for the baby. Was this what she had become? Is this what people call white trash? I wondered, immediately feeling ashamed for the thought. The attempt was in the air––she made us tea with milk and sugar, pouring the milk in first before the hot water just like her mother always did when I was a little girl. The Red Rose tea collection of porcelain animals lining the kitchen window sill took me back to the years we lived together when we lived in the City with our two moms in a bohemian apartment in the Mission, in the 80’s, when I was too young to understand anything but she had already been through it all.

She thanked me for visiting her that day, her belly about to burst––it meant a lot to her, and even though she hadn’t been in touch with me for many years, she always thought of me as her little sister, and remembered how I would make her laugh when I was such a silly, silly girl.

In Jail

Daniel was two and a half when I called Eve to see if they had already left to go to England, all of them, like Elizabeth had told my father on the phone when she called out of the blue.

“No, Naomi, we’re not moving, Elizabeth imagines things. I was shocked when she told me she had called your father. She was trying to reach out, I guess.”

“So she’s still not doing well.”

“No. She just came out of the hospital after being there for five weeks. It’s really hard to talk about.”

“Wow, I’m sorry to hear. She’s so lucky to have you there for her.”

“Yeah, that’s what I am most grateful about, that I’m stable, finally, after all these years. How are you doing? How’s your mother?”

“We’re good, my mom’s the same. We’re good. And Traci – how’s she doing? Last time we talked she had a baby boy, right?”

“Aaah, Naomi ,” Eve paused and breathed long and hard, “Traci…well, Traci’s in jail.”

Photo

It’s all over the Internet: the mother who sold her daughter’s body for drugs, there’s evidence. The girl came out and told her father everything, how her mother allowed men to come in and rape her, how her mother’s new boyfriend raped her, how her mother just watched from the side. The mother pleads innocent, the mother has another child, a boy, from the man who is also in jail, accused of raping his stepdaughter when she lived with them, before her mother sent her to live with her father because she just couldn’t take care of her anymore.

There’s a photo. She is looking straight at me from my computer, from court. It really is her. She looks the same, just older. And vacant. But I can still hear her deep laugh, a stark contrast to this sullen face online. And I see her crooked teeth exposed as she’s laughing–maybe she’s drunk, I realize now, maybe high. I was too young to know these things.

If our mothers had stayed together, if that last breakup had been like all the previous ones, ending in a passionate, dramatic reappearance of Eve and her daughters in my life; if Eve had been given her stabling medication sooner so my mother could stand to live with her; if she were always as charming as she was on the upside of her illness, full of ideas and desires, and love, and laughter; if we had remained a family; if Traci had me to look down on, or my mother to give her more of what she needed; if there had been a real home purchased together instead of deserted apartments that she could never call home; if there were more family dinners. Maybe then she wouldn’t have needed alcohol and drugs, so much that she forgot that she had a tender side to her, that she was really excited about having Jessica when I visited her in that trashy motel apartment, the crib set up, actually glowing in her pregnancy.

Innocent

Eve says the girl made it all up: Jessica was angry that her mother sent her to live with her father, she was still a virgin, she was a liar, her father was out to get Traci as well, still angry at her for leaving, crazy motherfucker, made her tell these lies.

Eve defends her own daughter, tells me Traci is innocent and her poor granddaughter made up these lies because she was jealous of her mother’s new life, husband and baby; the jury couldn’t find enough evidence and they were waiting on another trial, the bail too high for her to get her daughter out. She’s still a virgin, Naomi.

I listen, the words running around in my head. I knew this person, I shared a life with her, I was a little girl with her, I proudly called her my sister when I was holding on to things to call my own. I listen to Eve, telling me how beautiful Daniel is, how he has taken her bedroom for himself and he keeps her going, taking care of a little boy at her age. He’ll be wheeling me around in a wheelchair one of these days. She laughs.

I tell her I will call again soon, I will think good thoughts and send them her way. I know she needs it; I know how she will hang up the phone and almost pick it up again to call my mother after all these years, but she won’t, she can’t bear to tell her all of this, and then wonder herself what could have been, what should have been, what might have saved her two broken daughters if she had only taken care of herself sooner.

Dark Circles

My mother hasn’t been able to sleep since I told her about Traci being in jail.

“You should call Eve, mom, you really should. I mean, her daughter’s in jail.”

My mother is sitting across from me, a big plate of pie and ice cream between us. I asked her to join me, so we could talk. It’s been hard for me to digest it all too.

“I know I should.” She’s quiet for a long moment.

“Was there anything so obviously wrong with Traci when we lived together?” I break the silence, “I mean, I was too young to know these things, but did you notice anything?”

My mother’s face is still, she picks at the pie crust with her fork absentmindedly. “Not really, Naomi. She did drink as a teenager, but teenagers drink, you know?”

“You must feel so lucky, mom. I mean, think of Eve: two daughters, each one more fucked up than the other— ”

“Oh, come on, it’s a totally different story. You had support they never had. You had a father growing up, your mother wasn’t crazy, you had a completely different childhood. It’s not about luck.”

I lower my gaze and stare at the polished wooden restaurant table, holding in my words, knowing this is not the time to bring stuff up again. I was getting too old for accusations, and it was true, I did have a father, and unlike the stories I had heard about their early childhood, my father never hit me. Luck would have to stay out of this.

“So, do you think it’s true?” I lift my eyes to meet hers, dark circles around them. “Is it true?! I mean, if we didn’t know her we’d be cursing her way to hell, hoping she never sees the light of day again!”

“But we do know her. And if she was so addicted to drugs, I mean — why not just sell her own body?”

“I don’t know, Naomi, I don’t know. How can we understand something like this? It’s Traci’s own daughter, for God’s sake; would a daughter make something like this up?”

“That’s what Eve said. Mom, she said Jessica was checked, and she was still a virgin—”

“So what? God, you’re so naïve. You’ve always been.” My mother pushes the plate away from her and sits back in her chair, head turned sideways. I know she’s thinking of Traci in that cell, and Eve coming to visit her — an aging Eve, bloated from her medication, not the woman she had once loved. She sees Eve sitting with her grandson and daughter during visiting hours, trying to be cheerful for Traci, to give her hope. My mother is asking herself how in the world she would bring herself to make the call she could no longer escape.

Her Cell

Traci thinks about me in prison. When she sits in her cell, when she’s out in the yard, when she waits for a whole week for her mother to come visit with Daniel. I know she thinks of me; I have at least crossed her mind, even after all of these years. When she thinks about being in this place for the rest of her life if she is found guilty, she sees her life, all the years flashing before her, in no particular order, leaving out some places that she can’t remember anymore, but she remembers me and my mother, and she thinks of me. I am in her mind as she sits waiting for her next meal, for the next meeting with her lawyer. She remembers her teenage life before she met Jessica’s father, before she started drinking. She remembers our last visit, when she was almost bursting with Jessica in her womb, and she can’t believe I have children of my own now. She regrets never calling me after that last visit, not sending me photos of Jessica growing up. Traci thinks of how you never know what will finally do you in, of how she stood there with me, carrying her daughter whose words have now locked her up in jail, how she suffered through all-day morning sickness for her, how she tore so badly at childbirth that she had to sit on pillows for months, how she nursed until she could no longer stand the pulling sensation on her breasts, how she never quite felt the same after Jessica came into the world.  In her now clear mind, she can see that she never fully got back on her feet, that the alcohol was becoming more and more of her life. And the phone calls she would make to her mother, who was always moving around — still, after all these years — and who could never tell her when she was coming to visit, when she could help with the baby; she was not feeling well, had been to the doctor, they’re trying a new medication, it will all be fine soon, hang in there, give your daughter all I couldn’t give you and your sister, please.

Strawberry blond

Every week Eve visits Traci in prison. They still haven’t got her for life, she keeps telling herself. She takes Daniel to see his mother, takes Daniel for his mother to see: He keeps growing, mom; I never noticed it when he was with me. It’s amazing how my heart aches at night in the cell when I think of him, and how I didn’t give a shit’s fuck about him before.

She takes two buses to get to the prison. She prefers not to drive on those days; it makes it more special. She can hold Daniel close to her on the way there and back, and she can cry out the window without worrying about getting into an accident. It gives her time to digest, to process.

When she tries to remember the last time she saw her daughter so clean, so clear in the eyes, the only pictures that come to her are of Traci’s childhood, with her strawberry blond hair curling around her head. She can almost smell her, the sweetness of her first born, always happy and cheery, unlike Elizabeth who followed quickly after a year and half, born with that serious look on her face, sitting and drawing for hours, then crumpling up her work and running out to look up at the sky.

Eve kisses the back of her grandson’s head as they make their way back from the prison home, whispering into his silky-soft brown hair. They haven’t gotten her for life.

I am staring down at my grandmother’s sunken face.

She wears her FitBit on her wrist, the same amethyst-filled rings she always wore, and her hair is spiked like usual. Only today, the tips of her hair are purple.

“Do you like it?” my mother asks between sniffles. I nod my head.

“She always wanted purple hair,” I say as I gently touch the purple spikes. I look back at my mother. Her bottom lip is quivering.

I leave her standing by herself at her mother’s casket and join my brothers by a television screen. A slideshow of us—my grandmother’s grandchildren—plays with soft music. Photos of her holding me as a baby come onto the screen, and I find myself walking away once again. She took care of you when you were a baby, because I had to stay in the hospital with Noah. You got to go home to your grandmother first.

I think of all the stories my mother has told me in the past few days: stories of when my twin brother and I were born, and how my grandmother was the one to take care of me. She never put you down, because if she did, you would start crying. She’d sit in that rocking chair for hours with you. Call you her baby; her favorite.

The day my mother told me this was the day that my grandmother could no longer hold her head up on her own. Bedridden in the living room, a remote-controlled hospice bed was the only way we could get her to sit up. The rocking chair sat in the same corner as always, unmoved. “Just let her be,” my uncle said to my mother. She was holding the remote control in her hand and the bed was slowly raising my grandmother’s head. We could hear her groans, but her mouth didn’t move. It remained in a half-opened gape.

“She doesn’t like it. She’s uncomfortable,” my uncle continued.

My mother, who wanted to sit her up to try to get her to eat, looked defeated.

It’s no use. I could hear it in my uncle’s tone of voice, see it in my mother’s face as tears rolled down her cheeks. There will be no miracle.

*

I backed into my mother’s car. My grandmother was dying and Mom was giving her a sponge bath when it happened.

I was in a rush to leave the farmhouse I had found myself crying in far too often. My brother had a basketball game; it was my excuse to get out of the living room that had turned into my grandmother’s terminal abode. I was in a rush.

I wasn’t thinking.

I didn’t look in the rearview mirror.

When I heard the crash, I pictured everything that could have happened. Everything besides what I had actually done.

A car came into the driveway and hit me. The pole in the yard was closer than I thought. I didn’t hit anything. The sound came from something else.

All of these thoughts rushed through my head in a matter of seconds. I looked in the rearview mirror.

Behind me sat my mother’s silver Subaru Legacy.

How could I have forgotten that she parked behind me? She parked in front of me last night. I just wasn’t thinking. My mind was stuck in yesterday.

I could feel the tears stinging my eyes as I made the walk back to my grandmother’s porch. My uncle was in the kitchen when I stepped back into the house.

“Did you forget something?” he asked. Then he saw my tears.

“Could you get Mom for me?” I asked. I found it hard to speak. My breaths sounded like hiccups, or gasps for air.

He left to grab my mother. She returned with him.

“What happened? Did you hit my car?” She seemed to already know.

“I’m sorry,” I replied. “I just wasn’t thinking straight. I thought you were parked somewhere else. I’m sorry.”

She tugged on her boots. “Go sit with Gaga,” she told me, then walked out the door.

I went to the living room alone. I didn’t notice until I had reached my grandmother that I had kept my shoes on—something I never would have done months ago. She is still here. This is still her house. You should take your shoes off.

She didn’t seem to notice my shoes. She was sitting in front of the television on a portable toilet with her yellow pajama pants pulled down to the floor. Her hands were folded in her lap to cover herself. A bucket of steamy soapy water sat on the floor next to her.

This was only days before she could no longer hold herself up. “Come here, hon,” she said. “Give me a hug.”

I gently wrapped my arms around her from the side. Her hair, which was usually spiked and crunchy to the touch, was soft and yielding against my cheek.

“I don’t want to be like this, Riah. I hate this.”

Her confiding in me was quick. When I let go of her she turned her attention to my mistake.

“Shit happens, Riah. It’s just a car.”

“I know,” I replied. “I’m just so mad at myself.”

“Don’t be, hon. Your mother will get over it.”

*

“She looks beautiful.”

This is the third, fourth, maybe even fifth time I’ve heard someone say this. They stand over the casket, looking down at the body that is supposed to be my grandmother but does not look like her—a face that seems to be missing something: her puffy red cheeks, the fuzzy blonde hair that surrounded her mouth, a smirk that indicated that she always had something ornery to say.

“She looks good, Jul,” I hear someone say to my mom. I hear her sniff.

When no one is standing at the casket, my brothers and I walk over together. Gabe points at the FitBit that is on her wrist.

“Wait, they’re burying that?” he whispers. Noah and I look at each other.

“Yes, Gabe. It was hers,” I tell him. I save him the admonishment I would have given at any other time but now.

There is no heartbeat for the FitBit to read.

She had asked me to go to Dick’s Sporting Goods to buy her the FitBit that is now forever wrapped around her wrist. She loved to track her steps and tell us how many miles she had walked. She must have felt that she was accomplishing something; becoming healthier in her old age. She had beat cancer. What couldn’t she do?

It just had to come back. She thought she was in the clear.

I wonder how long the battery in the fitBit will last before it shuts off forever. I wonder if thousands of years from now someone will exhume her and be in awe of the technology that we buried our dead with. Will her tattoos fade to nothing? Will they be able to make out what they once looked like? I wonder what else they will find in the caskets of others. Or won’t find.

*

I have her crooked teeth. I have her green eyes.

I have her light brown hair that I’ve seen in pictures of her, where she is in her twenties and as ornery as ever.

When I am shown a picture of her standing in the yard with her long, light brown hair and a striped, two-piece bathing suit, I think for a second that I am looking at a picture of myself.

The hair to the waist.

The hand on the hip.

The green eyes.

The smile.

It is me.

I want to keep this fragment of her. Piece together every detail and clearly picture her as a twenty-year-old woman. Reveal some indication of who I should be.

*

“You can have anything you want,” Gaga tells me. “Don’t be shy.”

I’m 11 years old, staying the night at my grandmother’s house. A girl’s night is what she called it when she told my grandpa that he would have to sleep on the couch. I want my granddaughter next to me.

I wonder if my grandpa is mad that I am taking his bed, but Gaga doesn’t seem to be worried. She continues to search through her jewelry box as I sit on her bed, showing me necklaces that she thinks I might like.

“What about this gold locket?” she asks. “There’s no photo in it, but it’s still pretty on the outside.”

She hands the necklace to me, and I open it anyway, finding nothing inside.

“You can have it,” she says. “It was my mother’s, your great grandma.”

I think to myself that I will never wear this necklace. that I won’t risk losing it, or breaking it, or tangling it. I play with the locket some more, opening and closing it, then set it aside on her bed.

“Now what about some perfume?” she asks. “Do you have any?”

“Just lotion,” I say, and she shakes her head.

“Well, this one is a must-have.” She shows me a bottle that is labeled “Tommy Girl.” She takes the cap off and sprays my neck.

“Smell good?” she asks. I nod.

“Then it’s yours.” She puts the cap back on and adds the perfume to my pile of new belongings.

In the morning, after eating breakfast at Bob Evans, Gaga drops me off at home. My mother is at the door to greet me.

“I missed you!” she says as she hugs me. “Did you have fun?”

“Yeah,” I reply as I wave at the forest green Subaru that drives away. I hold up the gift bag full of my new items. “Gaga gave me a ton of stuff.”

Mom rolls her eyes. “Of  course she did.”

*

“You need to come to the hospital after you get off work,” my mother texts me. “She wants to see you.”

It’s the middle of January and there’s snow on the ground when I begin to drive down the road. I feel the hot tears fall down my face, knowing this can’t be good. I feel my lotion coming off in the sweat of my hands, making them slip on the steering wheel.

She’s going to be fine. She has to be. How can I live without her?

When I see the bright yellow Mcdonald’s sign at the end of town, I realize that I passed the hospital. I turn into the nearest gas station and head back towards the hospital, admonishing myself for wasting precious time.

When I walk into her room, my mother is sitting on a green couch. Gaga is lying in the bed, sitting up, talking with my mother.

“Why are you crying?” she asks me when I walk into the room. I walk to the side of the bed and hug her.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says to me. “Stop crying.”

I nod, then sit next to my mother on the couch. They continue their conversation that they were having before. Although there is an IV in her hand, Gaga still runs it through her hair. Although there is no gel in her hair, it still stands up straight.

Within 24 hours we will be told that she has six months or less.

Within a week she will be gone.

*

When calling hours are over, we begin collecting the scraps of my grandmother’s life that had been on display: baby photos, photos of her holding her grandchildren, scrapbooks of trips to Disney World, and pamphlets that read Heather Lenore.

For a moment it seems that everyone has stopped crying.

“What time do we have to be back here tomorrow?” I ask Mom as she closes one of the scrapbooks.

“Nine,” she replies. “Maybe earlier.”

Once everything has been picked up, my mother goes to thank the pastor. I stand in the doorway with my brothers. We look over at our grandmother before leaving. The idea of leaving her alone is haunting—a strange feeling that comes with the realization that her body is not under our care anymore.

Here lays a woman that would fall asleep in the tattoo chair.

*

My mother asks me to speak at the funeral. I write what I want to say in the notes on my phone.

I find myself struggling to breathe as I talk to my family and friends.

I don’t think about the consequences of cursing in a church as I talk about my grandmother.

I think that maybe the only reason I still want to believe in God is because I want to see my grandmother again.

I tell everyone that my grandmother was the kind of person who would flip other drivers off with a crooked middle finger, put her Subaru in Sport mode, and pass them on Johnson Road. She was the kind of person to tell you how it is. She always had something to say. She always told you she loved you.

I was the kind of person that sat next to her in the passenger seat, giggling as we flew down Johnson. I was the granddaughter that she talked to about sex, smoking weed, and how ugly cancer can be. I was the person she wanted to see as she was dying, but the person that she did not want seeing her.

I wish I had kept more remnants of you. Every now and then I find a birthday card from years ago. Your nickname, Gaga, signed with love.

Mariah Heather Lanzer. In between who I am and my family name is the woman that I search for.