Definitions

May 26, 2018

Northern Texas

The gym is not grand. It smells overwhelmingly of teenage-boy sweat and degrading rubber, an odor so ingrained in my brain I know I will be able to recall it years from now. I sit quietly in my designated folding chair, my legs warm beneath the black vinyl graduation gown. I feel more like an unfolded tent than an accomplished scholar.

My fingers tap a rhythm on my thigh as the valedictorian, Siya Devulapali, delivers her speech. It’s wonderful, of course. She’s been my friend since middle school when she brought me over to her house, and I happily ate the Indian fried rice her mother made. I remember telling her it smelled so good.

Since then we have revolved around each other in AP classes, her always the sun and me Pluto. I don’t mind being Pluto no matter how often my mother tells me I’m smarter than that.

It takes two and a half hours to hand all 502 of us graduates our degrees. By the end of the entire ceremony, I only want to go home. My legs are now sweating beneath the black gown, and the back of my neck aches.

I meet my mother and grandparents outside the gym on the parched lawn. My grandparents hug me as the late May sun sears across brown strands of grass, baking the curled blades into fertilizer. My stomach aches, and I realize I forgot to eat breakfast. Why did this graduation have to be at eight in the morning?

“Can we go get lunch?” I ask no one in particular.

Grandpa Hartmann, a man shriveled from hard labor and leaning on a cane, opens his mouth to respond. My mother, Kim, beats him to it with an astonished gasp, “What did you have for breakfast? It’s not even noon yet.”

***

December 25, 1979

Southern Ohio

The break room in the steel mill is not a place to sleep. There is no couch, not even a bench, and it smells like sweat and rotten eggs. A few of the other men are napping in foldout chairs, snoring and then waking with cricks in their thick necks.

David Hartmann rests his eyes. He’s been here forty-eight hours already, and his feet are swelling and bleeding in his steel-toed boots. The sores popped about four hours ago, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to sleep despite how desperate his body is to knock out. His children, Kim and Trent, should be waking up soon, he thinks as he checks his watch. It’s five AM on Christmas day, and he’s working a triple shift. His body feels like lead, and he hurts more than he can truly feel. He’s pretty sure he killed some of the nerves in his feet today. The pay is good but at what cost? He knows, of course.

He sees what his wife bought Kim and Trent and what he helped wrap with calloused fingers and bloodied nails: a Holiday Barbie and the game Simon. God, he wishes he was there to watch them open those fucking presents.

He’s too tired to cry, but the sorrow catches like a meathook in his chest. He closes his eyes again. The snowstorm has them trapped here, so even if he wanted to leave, he couldn’t. Part of him wants to die in a snowdrift just to say he tried. Or maybe he’s just being selfish. Maybe he just wants to numb the bloodcurdling pain consuming his body.

***

May 26, 2018

Northern Texas

An awkward silence spreads. My grandmother looks from my mom to me before saying, “Well, we can get lunch. Grandpa and I can take her to get lunch.”

“We need pictures,” my mom says. She looks around as if searching for either someone to take a picture with me or a group to shove me in. “Ellie, where’s Siya? Or… I haven’t seen John. Where is he? Have you seen him?”

A spark burns at the base of my neck, and I bite the inside of my cheek. I know my mom wants to remember my graduation, but Jesus Christ, could she at least act like she cares a little?

“No, Mom, I don’t know where Siya is,” I say, trying to keep my cool. My voice strains with the effort, and my mother’s icy gaze slides toward me. A warning. I never heed it. “John’s probably with his girlfriend. I think I see Brett.”

My mom turns, and in the stark sunshine, Brett Farvaro picks his way toward us. He and I have been friends since sophomore year. We met in orchestra class, and we’ve been sharing inside jokes and awkward high school chemistry since.

“Hi, Brett, you look so handsome,” my mom exclaims as Brett gets close.

***

March 20, 1991

Dear God,

Please help me decide. I don’t know what to do. Ken proposed to me, but I still have a year left of school. I don’t think I can throw away all of the work I’ve done and run his household. I have to finish my degree. Dad will kill me if I don’t. He wants me to finish college so bad because he never did, but I know I have a duty to the man I promised to marry.

That being said, he also proposed to me like an idiot. The ring was nice and all, but he didn’t even take me anywhere. I was eating chips in the kitchen like a fat ass. Sorry, I’m not supposed to curse. Please forgive me, Lord.

Please help me decide. If the path You’ve chosen for me is to become a keeper of the home, send me a sign. Help my dad see that I’m just doing Your will. He thinks I’m literally crazy now because I’ve been going to all these Bible studies. He’s a good dad, Lord, he just needs a little of Your guidance.

Amen,

Kim

***

May 26, 2018

Northern Texas

Brett glances up at my mother and squints before pressing his lips together and nodding. He turns his gaze on me, and his shoulders relax slightly. “Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” he says.

“You look fine,” I tell him, a small smile tugging at my lips.

“I look like I’m being cut with a cheese wire,” he says.

Indeed he does. The gown is too tight around his neck, and it looks like it is cutting off his circulation. Divots form where skin should be plentiful. I raise my eyebrows and reach to unzip it. “Take it off,” I say. “Seriously. Oh my God, what is wrong with you? You’re so masochistic it hurts.”

He lets me wrestle the gown off of him, and I hold it up, pinching it between two fingers. The slippery fabric glistens as if it was left out in the rain. “It is like covered in sweat,” I say even as my own gown sticks to my sweat-caked legs.

“What can I say? I’m going for Ripley’s Most Sweated-In Graduation Gown.”

“Shut up.”

We both shoot each other big dumb grins that only kids without fully developed prefrontal cortexes can produce.

“Why did you take off his gown?” my mom asks as if she wasn’t watching the entire time. She stares at me, her eyes piercing. A hawk waiting to poke with its razor beak. “Put it back on just for the picture.”

She holds up her phone then squints at it. “Oh, darn it.”

My eye twitches. “He can just hold it,” I tell her, handing the graduation gown back to Brett. That sparking heat in the back of my neck sears into a steady flame, and I watch my mother lower her phone, her eyes steely.

“No, just put it back on for a little bit, Brett,” she tells him in that sweet Southern drawl she shouldn’t even have. She wasn’t born anywhere near Texas, yet the Ohio hillbilly in her couldn’t help but bloom as a Southern belle. “Come on, just one picture. Just one quick little picture. Scoot in.”

I bite the inside of my cheek again, and my stomach clenches. I can’t tell if it’s from hunger or stress. My guess is both.

“No, Mom,” I say. “It’s fine. He’s holding it. What does it matter?”

It’s in the fucking picture, lady. Why do you care so much?

My grandma clicks her tongue. “He is holding it,” she says. “It’ll be all right, Kim. You two look so cute.”

My grandma is smiling brightly and holding up her phone, and it is a stark contrast to the stormy twisting of my mother’s face. My mother used to say that if looks could kill, I would kill her with most of the ones I gave her. But the one she’s leveling at me now? Her eyes frost over, and her mouth is a tight thin line suppressing daggers. A vein actually pulses on her forehead, and I can’t quite tell why she fucking cares so much. It’s just a graduation gown. It’s just high school graduation. Both Brett and I will attend a university fifteen minutes away in the fall. Who really gives a shit?

And also, it’s not even my graduation gown.

***

April 4, 2018

Memo Recording #2077

Dr. Gayle Pond, LPC

“Well, good afternoon. First, I want to thank you both for coming here. I really am glad you both came. It’s nice to see a mother supporting her daughter through a stressful time.”

“Yeah, well. Yeah, good to be here.”

“Hello, Dr. Pond.”

“Great. Well, I want to jump straight in today. I do have the results of your test, but before I discuss them with you, Ellie, I do have some questions.”

“Oh, sure.”

“How often do you have suicidal thoughts? The reason I ask is because you put down that you do experience them, but I just wanted to… be specific.”

“Oh, often. Every day at least. Sometimes every hour. Sometimes it’s constant. Just depends on the day.”

“All right. Any plans to follow through with those thoughts?”

“Define plans.”

“Let’s switch gears for a moment. Have you ever attempted to take your own life, Ellie?”

“Define attempted. I’ve… There was a night a few years ago where I got out of bed and grabbed a knife to slit my wrists, but all I did was hold it. The knife, that is. Does that count as attempting?”

“You… did that?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have believed me? I was tired of crying that night. I wanted it to stop.”

“That does count as an attempt, Ellie. At the very least, it counts as a plan. That was premeditated, yes?”

“Yeah, I guess. I had other plans.”

“What other plans did you have, Ellie?”

“Lots of them. The whole alphabet. Plan A to Plan Z.”

“Well, then why didn’t you tell me? We could have done something earlier. Imagine what you could have put all of that energy toward instead of… that.”

“What, like my grades?”

“Yes! Exactly.”

“Are you serious, Mom?”

“What are your grades like in school, Ellie, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“As and Bs.”

“To be honest… I’m surprised you’re doing that well given the results of your test.”

***

May 26, 2018

Northern Texas

We take the pictures. The hot sun radiates across the field without relief, and when I finally slump into the car with my grandpa, he blasts the A/C. We both sit in the car for a moment to gather ourselves before he finally says accompanied by a pat on my back, “Boy, it’s hot out there. Leave it to Texas to fry you in May.”

“Seriously,” I say.

I catch a glimpse of Siya in the dwindling crowd near our high school’s sign. She’s sitting on top of the C in CHS, smiling as if she’s on top of the world. I smile a bit. She’s going to Princeton in the fall to study some biology thing that is way over my head, and I hope she succeeds. I roll down the window and wave to her as we pass by, but she doesn’t notice me. I notice though that she’s holding her gown and her mother is hugging her tight.

It occurs to me that my mother didn’t hug me once today.