Pieta

Two unbelievably close friends prepair for seperation

 “Pieta”

            “Five more minutes!” some exclaimed excitedly from my left. I looked over at Jenny Benson, bouncing obnoxiously in her seat. The teacher saw and glared at Jenny with watery gray eyes. Jenny stopped bouncing and tapped her Ugg boot against the metal of her desk instead.

            I stayed completely still. I tried to imagine myself as a piece of stone, preferably marble. My knees felt cold and I held in a smile. I could feel Jenny’s eyes on me at first, and then others. I never moved if people were looking.

            “You look like you died Maureen. You’re already pale, could you perhaps show some signs of life?” she pleaded. I ignored her. Jenny knew I loved her and she was one of my only friends in school. Everyone else talked about me in hushed tones, making fun of my mannerisms. I didn’t think wearing blue lipstick to school was that bad, but apparently it was unacceptable behavior. I did not get in trouble for the lipstick by the administration. I have a feeling the teachers did not reprimand the other kids that were whispering snide remarks behind their hands to each other because they secretly hoped I would feel self-conscious enough to take off the lipstick. Their plan was foiled.

            “What are you going to do today?” Jenny whispered out of the corner of her mouth to me. I wanted to laugh at her inability to stay silent and, again, ignored her.

            It was the lack of motion combined with the jet black hair, pale skin, and almost eerily bright electric blue eyes that had gotten me the nickname “Vampire”. I laughed at this, comforted by the fact that although these empty headed breeding machines poked fun at me, they were frightened of me.

            When I was sure no one was looking, I reached up and scratched my ear carefully. I had been yearning to do this for an hour and finally could now that everyone was distracted by the passing out of candy by our English teacher. Personally, I would rather get candy on a normal day rather than the last day of school. Wouldn’t it be more suitable if candy were passed out on a less bright day? Perhaps a day when someone needed a little bit of joy from an almond joy to make their day a little less ridiculous?

            My finger in my ear grinded slightly and my fingernail popped out with a little bit of sticky, grimy yellow wax on the nail. I wiped it on the underside of the desk, a little gift for the next person who was subjected to hell in this classroom.

            The bell rang and I stood up slowly, in contrast to everyone else who jumped out of their seat as though they had been wound up by a metal key in their backs. Jenny waited for me outside the classroom.

            “I have to go clean out my locker.” She groaned. I had cleaned out my own locker about two weeks ago in hidden anticipation of never having to return to this place. I did feel a pang of regret as I walked down the hallways with Jenny. I wouldn’t miss this school, but I would miss this town, this little, restricted town that I would no longer be in come autumn. I actually shook my head slightly to try to resist thinking about it.

            “So what did you have planned for today?” Jenny asked when we were out of the building and had stepped into the bright sun that felt invasive and uncomfortable on my pasty skin.

            “Claudia-Rae wanted to go to the place.” I told her. Jenny nodded her head in complete understanding.

* * *

            Claudia-Rae is a playground junkie. So was I really, but I was not as addicted to the squeak of the chain-link swings that left puffy blisters on our fingers as she was. I pressed my ultra-dark sunglasses up higher on my sweaty nose and pushed the gate open. I knew she was here. She always got here first.

            I looked everywhere for her, including under the picnic tables and benches, thinking maybe she had decided to hide in the cool shade they offered.

            “Damn it Rae!” I said out loud. She was the only one who could ever trick me and she took full advantage of that.

            “As a newly graduated senior, off to Maine to leave me in this pit hole of soup forever, I don’t think you are in the position to swear.” The voice, animated but icy with hidden pain, came from above me. I looked up and saw her head with cascading honey colored curls and big green eyes looking down at me from the roof. My stomach turned over. I hated when she did this, and she knew that.

            I clamped my eyes shut to avoid looking at her up there. She couldn’t tell since I had sunglasses on, but I could tell she knew I was bothered.

            “Would you get off that roof before you fall off and splatter like a cracked egg on the pavement?!” I demanded.

            “Mm, scrambled eggs!” she said before her head disappeared back over the edge of the brick roof, but not before she smiled, satisfied that she was torturing me, and her legs came out instead.

            I saw her slide over the edge, her feet wiggling around, trying to find the foot hole in the wall. Her body was long enough to reach the ledge she was looking for, but  she still had to stretch like rubber. Her body elongated and her shirt slid up, revealing a sliver of her waist. I made a mental note to tell her she was getting too thin and to ask Jenny or someone to make sure she ate when I left. When I saw that her pants were now too big for her as well, I made another note to inform everyone that we should begin force feeding sessions immediately.

            Once inside her car, I didn’t have my own car, but Claudia-Rae hated driving, I turned the air conditioner on full blast and it hummed exhaustedly as if it desired a break. I looked at Claudia-Rae in the passenger seat, waiting.

            “What?” she asked, snippy and impatient.

            “No blindfold today?” I prompted.

            Claudia-Rae opened the glove box and took out a red bandana. It had been given to her by one of her previous friends who had betrayed her trust. In Claudia-Rae’s childish mind, the bandana was rightfully hers since the owner had never asked for it back.

            “I don’t want to wear it anymore.” She whispered, looking down at the paisley pattern on the handkerchief bandana and running her fingers over the frayed edges.

            I would have thought to argue with her, but I was too hot and tired. It was customary for her to wear a blindfold whenever we drove to this one specific location we were headed. More than anything, so that she couldn’t go back alone. She already spent most of her time on the roof of the elementary school to which the sacred playground belonged. If she knew the exact location I am quite sure she’d never leave except to climb back on the roof.

            I let the argument go and started to drive. Her car was fairly new, a gift from her rich father who lived in Indiana. It was something else Claudia-Rae and I had in common. Both our fathers lived in other states, mine in Maine. I really despised this car because of the beige interior. It made me think of old people.

* * *

            The graveyard was in Scituate. I hate Scituate. It proudly lived up to its title of Pot Capital of Rhode Island. There was really only one other thing to do in Scituate, and that was visit graves. There had to be about twenty-five graveyards in Scituate alone, and it wasn’t a very large town. If you tried to hold your breath as you went past every graveyard, as some superstitious people do, you would surely pass out because there seemed to be no end.

            Claudia-Rae sat in the passenger seat quietly, looking down at her shoelaces with fixation. The clouds overhead looked disagreeable and I knew it would rain. I also knew the rain would not stop us from sitting here for at least an hour.

            We grabbed our bags and the bouquet of fresh flowers we had stopped by the side of the road to pick and went through the decrepit old archway with its rusted gate swung open grandly in welcome. Claudia-Rae made a beeline for the isles that would lead us to the back of the cemetery where the newer graves were. I made sure to walk a little bit behind her, knowing she wanted no distractions when she walked.

            We found the grave, not that it was hard to find. It was not like the plain, gray markers all around it. It was shiny black and had a smooth, curved top like a heart but with straight sides. There was a stone woman, leaning over to rest her head on one of the bumps. It was hard to tell if the woman was mourning or sleeping, but she was comforting either way.

            Claudia-Rae sat down at the grave and took the old flowers out of the pot that came with the gravestone and put the new flowers in. she then plopped herself down right on top of the dirt over the body. I stayed a little off to the side. I was still cautious about walking on top of dead people.

Claudia-Rae sat there in silence of awhile, looking at the headstone with no inscription on the front before asking, “Do you think she can see me?”

            “I do. She’s probably laughing at your outfit.” I told her, trying to keep my voice light and airy. It was a hard thing. I had a lump in my throat that tasted like I had rolled up a wad of carpet and swallowed it without water. It became still harder to bite back tears when Claudia-Rae put her face down onto the ground and stretched her body out all over the area. I just barely heard her mutter “I miss you.”

            I shoved my sunglasses onto my face as my eyes filled with tears. I knew Claudia-Rae would let them flow freely, unashamed of her pain. I was not ashamed of my pain; I just wanted to be the strong one. I walked around the grave to look at the inscription on the back even though I had it memorized.

Devonelle Leila Harlin

Born May 16, 1991- Died July 12, 2005

“The walls of my castle are cracked, the shadows are many. But come in. Feel yourself at home.”

            Few people would understand this quote, but I was happy that the family that uprooted after their youngest daughter died and moved to pot town had at least chosen a quote from their daughter’s favorite movie. I pressed my tingling pointer finger to the D in Devonelle and traced it, feeling the smooth ridges of the indentation and thinking about how much she had hated being called Devonelle and insisting we call her Devon. We did, most of the time.

            The clouds above had clumped together and were swirling delicately. Thunder crackled and my eardrums throbbed as my eyes skimmed the sky, looking for the lightning that they had already missed. I looked down at Claudia- Rae who was digging her hands into the earth, her eyes wide and possessed. I saw the dirt crowd under her fingernails. I crawled over to her slowly and put a hand on her elbow. She jumped slightly then glared at me. The pupils of her eyes were fully dilated so all I saw was black.

“Why are you digging Rae?” I asked her gently.

            Claudia-Rae seemed confused, as though she could not remember why she had started digging. She opened her mouth to say something at the sky opened up and dumped a waterfall of rain onto us. We didn’t move though.

“Why were you digging?” I repeated, just as gently. I saw her eyes overflow with her fat pearly tears. They dripped down her face and mingled with the rain, but they were warmer that those droplets. I knew that. As her cherry red tongue darted out to catch one I thought about how salty they must taste. In an effort to distract myself I took a moment to ponder just what made tears taste salty.

            Claudia-Rae shook her head violently and continued to cry. I pulled her against me as her body trembled in my arms and I could feel the hot tears that leaked from her eyes seep into my shirt.

            “You’ll tell me later.” I finally relented.

            She nodded and opened her bag. She pulled out a bag of lifesaver mints, the blue peppermint kind that Devon had loved and, in a way, resembled. She had had pale skin like Claudia-Rae and I but had taken the extra step of dying her hair blue to match her fresh blue eyes.

            Claudia-Rae put the bag on the grave then fell back against me and I hugged her close, feeling the velvet of her moist skin and breathing in the sweet scent of lavender soap. I stayed very still.

***

            I drove her back to the playground and left her car there with her.

            “Are you sure you don’t want to come to the roof with me?” she pressed on. I looked up at the roof and my stomach knotted uncomfortably. I shook my head no.    “Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked.

            “Yeah, definitely tomorrow.” I agreed. The rain was letting up now so that it was just a cool drizzle. I liked it better than the invasive sun. Claudia-Rae fell into my arm again and squeezed me tightly. I pressed back for a moment then disentangled myself and started walking home.

            My house was barely a street away. It was just my mother and me in the very tiny house. It had once been my mother, father, younger sister Malory and I before my parents split up because of my father’s drug addiction. I was only two when he left and Malory was an infant. Barely two years later Malory died of meningitis. Now all my mother had was me, and it was clear by the way she drank like a fish that I was not enough for her.

            I walked in to a piercing scream.

            “MAUREEN!” she shouted. I screwed up my eyes at the noise that once again made my ear drums throb. “Where have you been!?” she demanded as she stumbled out of the kitchen with a bottle of Grey Goose Vodka in her hand. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes pointedly.

            “I was out with friends Mom.” I told her. She need not know where Claudia-Rae and I had gone. My mother wasn’t sober or attentive enough to remember the names of my friends on the best of occasions.

            “Did it not occur to you that I might want you to come home after school?” she bellowed, alcohol laced spit flying from her mouth and into my face. I repressed a look of revulsion, but just barely.

            “No, it didn’t. If you wanted me to come home, why didn’t you tell me that this morning?” I inquired.

            She threw her hand out and struck me fast and hard across the face. I did not budge. I did not cry. I simply looked into her blood shot eyes for a moment before turning on my heel and going right back out the door.

            I tried not to run because I wanted to stay composed.  My life was all about staying composed and being the rock that everyone leaned against. I was the one that resisted crying at Devon’s funeral so Claudia-Rae could have someone stroke her hair and whisper soothingly to her. I was the one that had to be the mature adult in my house. My mother had to look to me for strength and comfort when she wasn’t looking to the bottle. I was tired of being stone.

            I pushed the gate of the playground open and went right to the back where I knew Claudia-Rae was on the roof. She was probably lying down on the hard cement top, looking up at the cloudy blue sky with a confused expression as if asking “Why did you have to take my friend away? Did I do something wrong?” No one who knew Devon would have ever thought she was the one who deserved punishment, so Claudia-Rae always blamed herself. It was something I hated about the notion of God.  No matter what happened, we were always sinners, we could always be better, and we never deserved a reward.

            “Rae, are you still there?” I called up to the roof. I heard sneakers scrape on the sharp ridges of cement and her face came into view again. Even from two stories below, I could see that her eyes were red and puffy.

            “Hey, I thought you were going home.” She replied, making no motion to come down.

            “Changed my mind.” I said simply and shrugged. My face was still burning where my mother had smashed her hand against it. Claudia-Rae gave me a sympathetic look. She knew.

            “Want to come up?” she asked, gesturing toward the roof. My stomach was already contracting uncomfortably just from seeing her up there. She knew I didn’t want to go up and yet she asked almost every time she wanted to go.

            “Why do you like it up there so much?” I demanded. “Why can’t you just come down?”

            “Why can’t you just come up?”

            I bit my lip in frustration and stayed very still again. I would not go up on that roof. I didn’t want to, and that was all there was to it.

            “You need to learn that you can’t climb up on that roof and leave your problems on the ground.” I told her, desperate for her to understand that we only had a month or two before I left for college. I just wanted some reassurance that she would be okay without me with her.

            Her head tilted slightly to the right like a little confused puppy dog. “You think I’m trying to avoid my problems by being up here?” she asked.

            I shrugged again. She put her feet over the ledge and started climbing down. I resisted the urge to grab onto her waist and help her down. My heart beat was reverberating in my ears just watching her descend.

            “Why are you afraid of going up there?” she demanded of me when she had landed, catlike, on the ground and turned to pin me with a glare.

            “What? I’m not afraid of going up there.” I insisted.

            “I think you are.” Was all Claudia-Rae said in response.

            Whatever, I thought. That was not the issue. “Rae, what are you going to do when I leave?” I inquired softly, looking at the still damp pavement.

            “Throw a party.” She giggled. I sighed in aggravation. “What?” she asked, apparently offended that I had not found her joke hilarious.

            “I’m worried about you.” I told her flat out. She raised her eyebrows at me and tilted her head a bit again.

            “Yeah, so? I’m worried about you too.”

            “Why would you worry about me? You have no reason to.” I said.

            She laughed at me as thought I had said something ridiculous. I waited for the chuckles to subside and for her to look at me so I could raise my eyebrows at her in turn.

            “You think I’m so helpless Maureen, but I’m not.” She told me, looking me straight in the eye. A shiver ran up my spine, but I ignored it. I couldn’t believe that she was going to be okay without me.

            “You fell apart when Devon… yeah.” I paused. “I’m not going to be here to hold you together anymore.” I pointed out.

            She smiled at me, a watery, gentle smile. “What about you?” she asked.

            I wanted to grab her and shake her. This wasn’t about me! Why couldn’t she understand that?

            “What are you talking about” I demanded.

            “Who’s going to hold you?”

            I found I couldn’t meet her gaze. I looked down at her crumpled shoelaces. Her hand reached out and grabbed my wrist. I stumbled forward as she led me over to the wall.

            “Come on.” She insisted and started to climb. I shook my head violently. She continued to pull my wrist. “Come on Maureen, I want you to do this.”

            “That’s stupid.” I responded.

            She jumped back down. “You don’t always have to be the strong one.” She whispered and grabbed my hand again.

            She started pulling me up the wall with her. I was in a daze as my palms grinded against the grainy brick. She got up to the top rather skillfully, easily showing that she had done this a great many times. I was not as agile and it took me longer. My heartbeat was the only thing I could hear other than the crumbling brick that seemed to be breaking around my fingers and I could practically taste my nerves in my mouth.

            She reached out a hand for me to grab onto. She wanted to help me up to the top. I considered not accepting her help for a minute before grasping her hand in return and allowing her to hoist me over the edge, which was the hardest part to get above it seemed.

            She looked pleased and leaned against me again and giggled, “You’ll be back.”

            I didn’t know what to say to that so instead I asked, “Why were you digging earlier?”

            Claudia-Rae was silent for a minute. “I thought I heard her heartbeat in the ground.” Her breath rattled but her voice did not break when she added, “It end up being my own.”

Author's Note

I loved this story, but not many other people did. Any suggestions would be tremendously helpful.