This past summer, my mother ran out of sugar and drove to the local convenience store mid-recipe, leaving us alone for twenty minutes-which is not that long a period of time, you’d think. But it was long enough to start a fight with you about which TV show we should watch; it was long enough to yell There’s a reason Mom wishes you were dead; it was long enough to watch your face crumple and feel my conscience kick in.
“Wiki,” I’d said, “I didn’t really mean it.”
“Just shut up, Amelia-”
“Stop being such a baby-”
“Well, you stop being such a dickhead!”
That word, on your lips-it was enough to stop me in my tracks. “Where did you hear that?”
“From you, you stupid jerk,” you said.
Just then, a bird smacked into the window so loudly that we both jumped.
“What was that?” you asked, standing on the couch cushions to get a better look.
I climbed up next to you, careful, because I always had to be. The bird was little and brown, a swallow or a sparrow, I could never tell the difference. It was sprawled on the grass.
“Is it dead?” you asked.
“Well, how would I know that?”
“Don’t you think we ought to check?”
So we went outside and trudged halfway around the house. Big surprise, the bird was still exactly where it had been moments before. I squatted down and tried to see if its chest was moving at all.
Nada.
“We need to bury it,” you said soberly. “We can’t just leave it out here.”
“Why? Things die all the time in nature-”
“But this one was our fault. The bird probably heard us yelling and that’s why it flew into the window.”
I highly doubted that the bird heard us at all, but I wasn’t going to argue with you.
“Where’s the shovel?” you asked.
“I don’t know.” I thought for a moment. “Hang on,” I said, and I ran into the house. I took the big metal mixing spoon Mom had in her bowl and carried it outside. There was still batter on it, but maybe that would be okay, like sending Egyptian mummies off to the afterlife with food and gold and their pets.
I dug a small hole in the ground about six inches away from where the bird was. I didn’t want to touch it-that totally creeped me out-so I sort of flicked it into the hole with the edge of the spoon. “Now what?” I asked, looking up at you.
“Now we have to say a prayer,” you said.
“Like a Hail Mary? What makes you think the bird was Catholic?”
“We could sing a Christmas carol,” you suggested. “That’s not really religious. It’s just pretty.”
“How about instead we say something nice about birds?”
You agreed to that. “They come in rainbow colors,” you said.
“They fly well,” I added. Until about ten minutes ago, anyway. “And they make nice music.”
“And birds remind me of chicken and chicken tastes really great,” you said.
“Okay, that’s good enough.” I shoveled the soil on top of the dead bird, and then you crouched down and made a pattern on the top with bits of grass, like sprinkles on a cake. We walked side by side into the house again.
“Amelia? You can watch whatever you want on TV.”
I turned to you. “I don’t wish you were dead,” I admitted.
When we sat down on the couch again, you curled up against my side, like you used to when you were a toddler.
What I wanted to say to you, but didn’t, was this: Don’t use me as your model. I’m the last person you should look up to.
For weeks after we buried that dumb bird, every time it rained, I would not sit near that window. Even now, I wouldn’t walk near that part of the yard. I was afraid that I’d hear something crunch and I’d look down and find the broken bones of the skeleton, the brittle wings, the chiseled beak. I was smart enough to look away, so that I’d never have to see what might surface.
People always want to know what it feels like, so I’ll tell you: there’s a sting when you first slice, and then your heart speeds up when you see the blood, because you know you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, and yet you’ve gotten away with it. Then you sort of go into a trance, because it’s truly dazzling-that bright red line, like a highway route on a map that you want to follow to see where it leads. And-God-the sweet release, that’s the best way I can describe it, kind of like a balloon that’s tied to a little kid’s hand, which somehow breaks free and floats into the sky. You just know that balloon is thinking, Ha, I don’t belong to you after all; and at the same time, Do they have any idea how beautiful the view is from up here? And then the balloon remembers, after the fact, that it has a wicked fear of heights.
When reality kicks in, you grab some toilet paper or a paper towel (better than a washcloth, because the stains don’t ever come out 100 percent) and you press hard against the cut. You can feel your embarrassment; it’s a backbeat underneath your pulse. Whatever relief there was a minute ago congeals, like cold gravy, into a fist in the pit of your stomach. You literally make yourself sick, because you promised your self last time would be the last time, and once again, you’ve let yourself down. So you hide the evidence of your weakness under layers of clothes long enough to cover the cuts, even if it’s summertime and no one is wearing jeans or long sleeves. You throw the bloody tissues into the toilet and watch the water go pink before you flush them into oblivion, and you wish it was really that easy.
I once saw a movie where a girl got her throat slashed, and instead of a scream, there was this low sigh-like it didn’t hurt, like it was just a chance to finally let go. I knew that feeling was coming, so I waited a moment between my second and third cuts. I watched the blood welling on my thigh and I tried to hold off as long as I could before I drew the razor across the skin again.
“Amelia?”
Your voice. I looked up, panicked. “What are you doing in here?” I said, folding my legs up, so that you couldn’t get a better glimpse of what you’d probably already seen. “Haven’t you ever heard of privacy?”
You were teetering on your crutches. “I just wanted to get my toothbrush, and the door wasn’t locked.”
“Yes it was,” I argued. But maybe I was wrong? I had been so focused on calling Adam, maybe I had forgotten. I fixed my meanest stare on you. “Get out!” I yelled.
You hobbled back to our room, leaving the door open. I quickly lowered my legs and pressed a wad of toilet paper against the cuts I’d made. Usually I waited until they stopped bleeding before I left the bathroom, but I just pulled up my jeans with that strategically placed padding and went into our bedroom. I stared at you, practically daring you to say something to me about what you’d seen, so that I could scream at you again, but you were sitting on the bed, reading. You didn’t say anything to me at all.
I always hated when my scars started to fade, because as long as I could still see them, I knew why I was hurting. I wondered if you felt the same way, once your bones healed.
I lay back on my pillows. My thigh throbbed.
“Amelia?” you said. “Will you tuck me in?”
“Where’s Mom and Dad?” You didn’t really have to answer that-even if they were physically downstairs, they were so far removed from us that they might as well have been on the moon.
I could still remember the first night I hadn’t needed my parents to tuck me in. I might have been about your age, in fact. Before that night, there had been a routine-lamps off, sheets cozied tight, kiss on the forehead-and monsters in the drawers of my desk and hiding behind books on the shelf. And then one day, I just put down the book I’d been reading and closed my eyes. Had my parents been proud of this newly self-sufficient kid? Or had they felt like they’d lost something they couldn’t even name?