What Goes Unseen

The teenage girl, the grunge one with the enormous dog, was in the cemetery. Again. Or the Kirkyard, whatever they called it. She was leaning against a tombstone; the curtain of her long red hair fell in limp clusters. As always, she was alone. Except for her dog. The massive thing was roaming idly, sniffing at a cluster of wet leaves and mushrooms nearby. I walked between the grave plots and hoped the girl wouldn’t ask me for a lighter again (I hate smokers), but she was already twirling a cigarette in her fingers. She locked eyes with me. Even though I glanced down and watched my steps, eager to continue my search, she called out in that rough, abrasive, accented voice of hers. 

“Whacha doin’ ‘ere ‘gain?”

I stopped, caught a little off guard by her broken script. 

“Just visiting. Paying respects,” I said. 

She narrowed her dark eyes in suspicion, as if I were trespassing. 

“Nah. Ya don’t got no flowers.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, which came out more petty than I meant it to. Mimicking a child was not my proudest moment. 

“I like it 'ere. So does Turnip.” 

“Turnip?”

“He also goes by Jack.”

“Ah. cute.” 

Turnip was not cute. He had that dark gray, scraggly coat that always looked dirty. And his legs were too long, his steps too quiet as he wove through the stones. He matched them. Or at least, I thought he did. For all I knew, the gravestones were dotted with blotches of colors. I knew moss was a color called green, but it didn’t look much different than a blotchy watermark or rough stone to me. The girl wore the same flannel jacket and beanie as the days before. Her entire ensemble still blended into muted rusty tones in my eyes. 

“What color is your jacket?” I asked. I’m not sure why. 

She blinked, looking irritated, and I flushed. It was a strange thing to say, and I was about to be bullied by a child for the first time in over 10 years. 

“I’m colorblind,” I said reflexively. “I was just wondering if your outfit all matched, or if I just can’t see the differences.”

“Lady,” she said flatly, “what difference does it make?”

No one had ever said that one before. 

“Well, I’m just curious, I guess.”

She shrugged. “If I're colorblind, I wouldn't care. Completely blind, well, I'd miss this,” she said, looking out over the crumbling stones, the markers of the dead, and further out, the tree line and church. 

“Don’t you have a favorite color, or something? That's usually the first question people ask.” It was. I didn’t date much before I met Penny, but the few coffee dates and mixers I found myself at usually included the unavoidable question. 

“‘Spose I kinne like brown.”

“Well, if you do magically go colorblind, you’ll be fine then. Odds are most of everything will be brown or orange.” If she hypothetically developed Deuteranopia, that is. 

“Browns yer color too, then?”

“No, blue. It stands out.” It was one of the only colors I could see. Which was why all my school backpacks, scarves, mugs, and notebooks had always been blue.

“And, do you see,” she fidgeted with her cigarette, her expression pinched for a second, as if pained, “anythin' else?”

I pushed up my glasses. “I mean, I’m nearsighted? But besides that- what do you mean?”

“Never mind. Do ya got a lighter or not?”

“No. You asked me before, actually. Yesterday. I don’t smoke. Look, you’re here pretty often, right?” I said dumbly and kept going before she could shoot me an icy look or walk away to go find someone else to pawn lighters off of, “I’m looking for a grave with the name Healy, maybe you know where it is?”

One of her eyebrows nearly disappeared into her beanie. 

“Ya got a lighter?”

She ignored me. Until I returned with a lighter. I had to buy one from a tourist shop all the way back down the road, and I bought myself coffee while I was at it. The lighter had the Scotland flag on it. Maybe I could get it back from this weird girl and give it to Penny as a souvenir. Strangely enough, I had a hunch that she’d prefer if it was used. Pen would probably like a story of a strange teenager who bummed around graveyards. 

As I watched this girl click the lighter and send a few tiny sparks between her fingertips, I felt oddly sick. The graveyard swayed. Like sudden-onset altitude sickness, even though I was standing still. The smell of the cigarette didn’t help; it only reminded me of getting into Carrie’s car, of spending mandatory visitations in parks and by the pool of her apartment so that she could spend their allotted time smoking. But I wasn’t ten anymore. Carrie was gone, and I had no right to scold a girl bordering on adulthood about the quality of her lungs. 

“Deals a deal, right?” I said, and the girl blew smoke, looking unimpressed. Her upper eyelids were always heavy, her eye bags dark, even smudged with black makeup that she hadn’t washed off all the way. Maybe she liked that haggard, rough look. It had a certain punch to it, a “don’t fuck with me” energy that some of Penny’s friends had. Maybe teenage Penny would have fit right in with this girl. Maybe current-Penny would like this girl, would want to take her in, teach her guitar, adopt her. 

I clutched my coffee closer to my chest, appreciating its warmth and the fact that Penny wasn’t here to insist the teenager stay with them in their Airbnb or something else overly charitable. Pen and her strays. I was only a little lost in thought about Pen and missing her when I noticed the teenager had left. She was walking ahead, her huge dog following in a silent bound against the soft grass. Careful not to spill lukewarm coffee on myself, I stepped over roots and moved through the invisible checkerboard of covered bones. (Not that I’m superstitious, but it still felt disrespectful).

The girl pointed to the other side of the weather-beaten gray church, where there was a cluster of headstones. They were neater. Newer. She took a drag of her cigarette before saying, 

“Should be ‘o-er there. Why’re ya lookin?”

“Family history, actually. I may not have flowers, but I am sort of visiting someone.”

“Family?” She asked, trying to sound bored as she scratched behind her monstrous dog’s ears. “Tryin’ ta find your roots, American?” she sneered, but it ended in a teasing smile. 

“Yes,” I said, stepping towards the stones, but she didn’t follow, so I turned to her. “Lawrence Healy, or maybe his parents? I don’t have much to go off of.”

“Lawrence?” Her voice was little more than a breeze, something broken and old slipping past her teeth as if she had let it go by accident. Or it had escaped. The girl’s long strands of frayed rust hair drifted on the same low wind that tumbled a few leaves. The smoke of her cigarette was rising, twirling between us, and her dog started pacing. There was more smoke, too much, but the girl was still staring at me, and there was something- a light reflecting in her wide black eyes- but when I looked behind me for a source of that bright light, I couldn’t see anything other than gloomy clouds and gently rustling branches. Turnip barked; the sound pounded my chest and jolted me with all the force of lightning.

The girl’s sleeve was burning, embers eating up her oversized cuff. I rushed towards her to put it out; I even tore the lid off my paper cup, ready to throw coffee on this stranger, but she dropped her cigarette, shook her sleeve, and stomped on the discarded butt. All signs of fire were squashed, and everything was still, except for my pounding heart. It was fine; everything was fine. I braced myself against a headstone.

“Lawrence Healy isn’t here. His ma’s down there.” She stomped away with her monstrous protector, leaving me with a pang of shame. Had I offended her? I needed to ask her if she knew the family, if she knew where he lived now, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask or to follow her. Maybe she’d be here again tomorrow. 

I walked down to the little row of stones, and there was a name- Margery Healy, died 1957. 

“My name is Sarah,” I said to the stone, “and you might be my grandma, so, nice to meet you, I guess.” Did I look like her? All I seemed to get from Carrie was black hair, not even the texture of it, because hers was wild and wiry. Was personality genetic? Did Margery like dark chocolate, cats, and itemizing everything? 

The wind blew a little harder, and clouds drifted lower, heavier. I’d been here long enough to know it could rain at any moment, so I took a few photos of the stone and the area around it with my camera. Maybe I could look up the other names. And besides, the composition was good. It’d be a pretty picture, if solemn, after I adjusted the contrast. 

On my way out, I didn’t see the girl or her dog again, but I did spot the lighter resting on the top of a gravestone. I snapped a picture of the still life, but left it resting atop the stone.