Kim Merrill

from Hilda’s House (a novel excerpt)

CHAPTER ONE

Joy came to me today! Oh, how strange the form. Deirdre, my dead daughter, burst from the kitchen door. Bright-eyed girl nineteen hair a flaming red. She died fifty years ago. Her college boyfriend Bradley shot her in the yard, then he shot himself. How did she know where to come? How did she know where I live? I was in my parlor, watering an aloe plant. She was holding a mouse. Kozy Kat is a hunter, so the mouse did not surprise me. But Deirdre. Oh my Deirdre. She laughed and threw her head back as she raced to me through the hall. There came a shuddering sound that bent the walls and tilted the floor and shook my watering can. Deirdre pulled the can from me to toss the stiff mouse in then tipped the can above my head. Joy filled me to the brim as water soaked my neck. I saw time and life go by as if from a far away distance yet also close as a mirror. Past and present together, singing in a choir. I reached my hand, took her wrist, and led her to the garden. I wanted to show a rosebush I planted years ago.

Joy is the ocean. Grief the shore. That’s what I hear when I open my eyes. Machines are beeping. Footsteps. A blueish curtain hangs. Something is on my face, heavy and smelling of ink. No, not ink. Formaldehyde. I am pickled. In a jar. Eyeball in a jar. The eyeball roams, scanning the room. My name floats by in water. Hilda the eyeball. Hilda Glee. I am Hilda Glee. Eighty-eight. Brickton, Maine. I am Hilda Glee. A woman opens the curtain. Blond hair. Familiar face. Yes, yes, her mother’s face. The yard of their house was plastic toys, rusted wheels, a jutting eyesore on the road, Sterling Road, Sterling. Pam Sterling. Pam! The woman’s name is Pam! One of five kids, maybe six, grown to be a nurse. Slowly the room expands. A skeleton poster hangs on the wall. Arrows point to bones and in a burst of shock I remember seeing Deirdre. Mouse, sound, flaming hair, water joy on my neck. I describe it all to Pam. Her face is smooth with makeup her youth does not require and while I go on about Deirdre, unable to stop myself, I see that she is humoring me, a babbling nutty woman with rivers of veins in her skin. She puts a hand on my arm and tells me, clear and quiet, that I fell in my garden. Do I know how it happened? Do I know who I am? Memory is a torrent crashing in my head. I try to answer sanely, careful and precise. Yes, a fall in the garden. Yes, yes, a fall. Hands first. Elbows. Wrist. Then the terrible moment of knowing my face was next. A single step on treated wood is how I enter the garden dirt and never, in fifty years, have I lost balance there. Deirdre was holding a notebook, she used to write in notebooks, and I took the notebook from her to place it on the step. This garden is yours, I said. I made this garden for you the year you died in the yard. I plucked her a cherry tomato. Did she bite? I don’t know. I turned away from her to stand on the treated wood, not once feeling fear that I could topple down. My legs are strong for my age. Born with calves of a giant. Does joy outlive a body? That’s what I heard as I fell. There is a mid-sized buddha in swarms of blue hydrangea. The buddha is gray and granite and its pointy ushnisha crown might have broken my cheek. I think I blacked out in the dirt. It may have been then, and not before, that I ask myself about joy outliving a corporeal body. Are we flesh or spirit? Is that an important question? Pam pats my arm as I speak, waiting for me to finish. After I do she takes a breath and asks, I hear her ask, if Deirdre might have pushed me. I startle at the question. Do we believe in ghosts? Pam says years of watching death makes a person know. She saw silver dust rise from a boy who broke his neck. Also blinding light fly from a woman’s chest. Her eyes fill up when she tells me this, so I stay quiet about my thought that ghosts are memory junk. I watch her unwrap a lozenge. Her breath is sweet with lemon as she tells me, patting my arm, that ghosts arrive to right a wrong. Deirdre is desperate to be with me. Angels, light, cotton clouds, puffs of gold and purity beyond what we can imagine shine inside her world. She wants me to see her heaven. Clear the path for coming. Pam flips a curl from her forehead and smiles like a cheetah. My cheek begins to throb. I hear my voice blurt out that heaven is a fairy dust for numskulls scared to die. She smacks my wrist with a tissue. Hilda, she says. Hilda. I know about Deirdre. Where she died. Under that tree in your yard, right in front of your house. Bradley Wilken shot her in accident or rage. I wasn’t alive but stories are told. Surely you know there are stories. The tissue shakes on my arm, or maybe my arm is shaking. I want to rip the IV tape in fury at myself. Why did I talk about Deirdre? I am a private person, close to ninety and brave, and despite my years of a life well-lived I’m known as Hilda The Strange. Hilda The Woman Who Bought The House Where Sally’s Boy Shot Her Daughter Before He Shot Himself. Odd perhaps, buying the house, I concede the odd. But wrong? Where is wrong? I fix my eyes on the ceiling. How silly I look to myself. Bandage on my face, thin gray hair a sticky mass wetting my bony skull. There is twilight, I see now, between our waking hours and new approach of going. When Pam leaves the hospital room, I shout again about numskulls before she shuts the door.

Deirdre, is it you? A glow is on the blanket piled at my feet. Nineteen, then a girl, then a swimming egg. Oh my twinkle light! I used to see your morgue face. Stiff, blue, missing a jaw. I pushed it away, had to push, ugly grief in a box. But here! Floating here! I have a thousand questions. Can you talk? Are you mine? I’ve been waiting years!

I see that you are silent. I hoped, well I hope, yes I had a hope. Will you stay? Stay until? I think I’m dying, Deirdre. You are my only child.

Ghosts, heaven, righting wrongs, I don’t want that, Deirdre. I want understanding. You called me private, yes I know. Unreachable, even. Stone. So many stories I never told, so many you couldn’t hear. I can start with birth, jinxed and happy birth. Flicker if you want it. Ah, my feet are warm. I feel you in the blanket. Thank you, Deirdre. I will speak. I will say it all.

Slap. Mother’s hand. I’m nineteen. Young nineteen. We are in our kitchen, or maybe on our porch. Memory pops and bursts in me, forgive it if I roam. I’m seeing a kitchen and porch, joined somehow with beams. My mother, I know, is alone. My father is dead. Sixty days. I love him like a god. He studies plants for a living and walks the woods for hours to camp alone at night. I remember the smell of his backpack, piney and tinged with mushrooms he puts into soup. One morning in June, when I’m nineteen, he doesn’t return from camping. Searchers tell my mother they found him under a boulder. The boulder must have rolled at night, crushing him while he slept. My mother collapses at the news. I stand away from her chair, wearing the starchy uniform for my job at Freddy’s Dream. Watching my mother clutch her chest and stare through the open window brings a chilled sensation in the bottom of my feet. I am a freshman in college, home for summer only, but while I shake with cold I see my future stretch ahead as a blank blizzard of snow. It is wrong, I know this now, to never have told you your father’s name. Finn. Your father is Finn. An Irish boy, fat and brash, who works with me at Freddy’s Dream. Our customers are children whose mothers are well-coiffed. Perfectly dressed. Exquisite clothes. I see myself as poor when I look at my shorts. Poor little Hilda, father dead, scooping ice cream for brats. No not brats, I don’t mean brats. Happy children, milky and fresh, enjoying their lake vacation. I’m not deeply poor working at Freddy’s Dream. Not as poor as Finn. He has to rent a room from his raging Irish uncle who snagged an American wife. We are in Massachusetts. A little lake side town. I wish you could have seen it! My house is a cabiny place, full of drying herbs and right against the forest. Stars come out at night. I see them from the roof when I climb up and hang my legs to smoke a cigarette. Oh, but we’re not on the roof. I am speaking of Finn. Finn and I are silly. We laugh and juggle ice cream cups and put chocolate chips in our ears. Below us, I believe, is quiet hidden grief. On his last day in America, I don’t know I’m pregnant. We have sex only once, on a night our manager’s car breaks down and we have to close the shop. I think we lie on a towel in front of the ice cream freezer, or maybe my father’s truck, which after his death I drive to work. When you are five, or maybe six, you ask what Ice Cream Dad is like. I say he has red hair and laughs like a hyena. You love to hear that. Happy girl. In the notebook by your bed you draw dancing ice cream cones with pointy hyena teeth. I say to you often, I’m sure I do, that Wonderful Ice Cream Dad Would Love You If He Knew. I can’t tell him, Deirdre. He left no address in Ireland and his uncle scares me to death. It’s 1962. Abortion is illegal. I walk in the woods for hours, scared my uterus, tight and small, will blow up like a balloon. At night I hear my mother crying in her sleep. She is missing my father. Love at first sight, according to them, though as a young girl, their only child, I heard them argue loudly in the room below my own. The ceiling of my bedroom is slanted on two angles. I bump my head if I stand in a rush. On the day I tell my mother, I touch the ceiling carefully before I walk downstairs. In the kitchen, or on the porch, there comes a moment of empty air before she slaps me hard, cursing my stupid body. I give it away like pennies, I am a foolish waste, why did she ever have me if I want to wreck my life? She shoves her hand in a cup of ice to cool the heat of the slap. She yells that she can fix it, fix me, fix it up, she knows who to call. My cheek burns like a coal. A shirt my father wore blows on a hook near the outside door. We must be on the porch, not inside the kitchen, or maybe my father’s shirt is blowing in our hospital room, pulling me to the moment, this moment with my mother, when I will tell her No. My Father Is Gone Forever. I Want The Baby Born. You are protest, Deirdre. Jinxed by death and slaps. Parent blames a child, child blames a parent, and round and round we go like snakes who bite their tails.

Oh, I need to whisper. Pam is in our room. She’s checking the machine, looking at my eyes. You are slipping from the bed. Come back, Deirdre. Feet are cold. Good. Pam is near. There she goes, lifting you up, flipping you on my legs. I can hear you cry, soft as if a baby. Pam doesn’t seem to notice. She’s tucking you round my ankles as if you were a sock. Careful, Pam. Careful. Everything is alive. Food is on the tray. Meatloaf and potatoes. Don’t worry, Deirdre, I won’t eat. We’ll keep going as we were once Pam trots away. Good. She’s off. Bye bye, Pam. Deirdre, listen now. We’re not snakes who bite their tails. I am wrong to say that. I know nothing of reasons or what’s a jinx or cause. I wish you could talk. I’d give anything, Deirdre, to hear a tiny why.

CHAPTER TWO

Pam Sterling likes her job okay except for some days, boy oh boy. Hilda’s got a bug in her butt. Yelling at her about numskulls when all she said was Deirdre could be missing her mother. Oldies get confused. Pam knows that, she’s cognizant, been around the block. Her mom used to say that Hilda was a stuck-up snotty snoot. Could be so, back in the day, but Pam is sorry for Hilda. Rich and independent yet nobody in her room. Not for Pam, no way. If she had to make a choice between having money or piles of friends, she would choose the friends. Too many oldies die alone with no one holding their hand. Depressing, in her opinion. She brings her lunch outside each day to keep her spirits up. Today it’s tuna salad and eating one bite at a time, slowly chewing, mindful taste, blah blah blah blah blah. Pam gets weary of Marty, her skinny stick husband who meditates and tells her each moment is now. Each moment is now when all is well but try doing now with Hilda. Talking nonstop, not believing in God, though Marty is no believer, he’s just into chewing slow. If Marty were here with Pam, she’d tell him believing in now instead of God almighty doesn’t solve the problem of tragedy ripple effect. Hilda’s not the first oldie to talk to somebody dead. The dead can be a wife, or a person you have a gripe with, or even some old fight that never got a finish. Ripple effects are invisible, that’s all we know for sure.

She taps her tongue with her fork, thinking of herself. If she were to talk to somebody dead, it would be probably Marty. She’d say he can’t convince her that all we have is now. If now is all we have, explain old spirits showing up, hanging around, disturbing, messing with well-being. Pam has watched so many patients sick with ripple effect she calls it a diagnosis. Pain that won’t go away, grudges stuck for life, resentment and misunderstandings festering like infection. In her considered opinion, Bradley Wilken and Deirdre Glee are Hilda’s ripple effect. Dead for no reason anyone knows but there is never a reason for shooting out of the blue. Their bodies lay in the yard of that old Wilken house and the house got touched forever. So did the Wilken family, in Pam’s unspoken view. She heard a story once, back when she was ten, that Juno Wilken’s greyhound ate one of Bradley’s fingers while he was dead on the ground. Anybody can snap, the storyteller said. Pam didn’t believe in snapping then and doesn’t believe in it now. No one snaps on their own, out of the blue from nowhere. Ripple effects and spirits are there, taking over control. An olive pimento lands on her knee and she brushes it with a knuckle. In a minute she’ll eat the chocolate fudge Marty wrapped in paper then tied with a shred of old twine.

Marty and his twine. He wastes nothing, ever. When he and Pam first married, she wasn’t big on his lifestyle of joining up with freegans. Waste-not-want-not-use-don’t-lose is Marty’s freegan motto. She mutters the motto under her breath when she pockets used-up hospital gauze to boil in water for germs then tie on tomato stakes. Marty’s workshop is full of gauze and empty dispensers of latex gloves brought to the house by Pam. She feels it a sort of duty to swipe used stuff from the hospital for their little freegan group. The five of them live by a pact to recycle whatever they can and eat good food from the trash. Pam had her doubts about getting involved in such a bizzaro life. Messy, too much work, no one else understanding the midnight raids at dumpsters or carting off broken pots. Then she saw the wisdom. Friends over money, always. That’s when you are rich. If she had to be in a hospital bed, Marty would come for sure. So would Percil, Maeve and Jeb. They wouldn’t leave her alone, talking like Hilda to somebody dead. They’d be swarming around, freegan wacko and all.

Chocolate is her favorite treat. She’ll never say no to chocolate. She unwraps Marty’s fudge and holds her nose to the smell when darn if her phone doesn’t shake. Jeb Burns is calling. Why. She considers not picking up. Jeb is a love, of course he is, but not so easy to talk to. His avatar on the phone is a picture of his bare foot. Months ago he decided, for reasons he wouldn’t explain, to give up wearing shoes. Pam tried to get him to tell them why but he’s what she calls taciturn. Once on a freegan run he said seven words. Something must be up with him if he’s calling her on a shift. She hits speaker on her phone and bites into the fudge. Jeb sounds out of breath.

-Pam?

-Jeb? You okay?

-Checking on Hilda. She alive?

-Last I saw she was. But I’m confused you ask. How do you know she’s here?

-I found her in the garden. I’m the one who called for help.

-Well, you did right with that. Specially since you don’t like her.

-Is that a joke? I like her fine.

-You pretty much hate her, Jeb.

-I want to talk with her.

-What about?

-I can’t tell you, Pam. When can I see her?

-You’ll have to wears shoes. At least the hospital socks.

-Ask her if she’ll see me. Tell her it’s important. Call when she answers, okay?

Pam tries to tell Jeb that Hilda is not exactly stable in the here-in-this-world department, but he is off the phone. She sighs the way she does with Jeb then puts her attention on the fudge, chewing slowly in now. Easy to do with chocolate. She lingers for a bit, folding the used-up paper around the shred of twine. If Marty were here with her, she’d use Jeb as evidence of what she means by ripple. Jeb Burns is a Wilken. His mother was Bradley’s aunt. The beef Jeb has with Hilda goes back fifty years and Jeb’s only forty-five. To live in a beef before you’re born is spirits sticking around. Pam won’t share her views, too many people laugh, but ripples and spirits are everywhere if anyone cares to look. She stands to rinse her tuna bowl in the outdoor drinking fountain. Swishing the water in her bowl, she thinks about Jeb in hospital socks. Must be important, what he wants. She plays with possibilities, then tells herself to quit. Marty calls her nosy. Nosy Parker Pam. She doesn’t disagree with him but labels it human interest. Either way, she’s cutting back. Jeb is not her business. She sets her tuna bowl inside the reusable lunch bag and shakes the bag to let him go.

At the hospital entrance an oldie guy using a decaled walker thanks her for holding the door. On the back of his T-shirt she sees a big cat sticking out its tongue. The cat is hanging from one arm, its tabby face smirky and smug. Pam covers a laugh when she passes the man. Jeb owns the exact same T-shirt, worn last time she saw him.

CHAPTER THREE 

The meatloaf is inedible. A soggy potato is all I will do. Don’t let me choke on it, Deirdre. Heimlich if needed, pronto. Do you remember Martha? My old college housemate? She gives me the Heimlich once. A chocolate covered strawberry flies out in one punch. Good. Potato is gone. Back to the roving litany of who knows what or why. My mother quits speaking to me after the slap on my face. You know her as Prudy, Deirdre, but her full name is Prudence. She’s an angry person in my youth, softer when you meet. She watches from the house as I put my bags in Martha’s car. Martha loves to speed and we lurch and scream and laugh on the drive back to school in Boston. When I tell her I’m pregnant, and keeping you, her eyes go big with surprise. Crazy, she says. Crazy. Go for an adoption. If not abortion, adoption. I listen to her, Deirdre. Poverty. Single mom. Living without support. Prudy will help with college. After that the problem is mine and I understand it is. But something about you pulls me. Pulls and pushes both. During my sophomore year, I’m frantic with push and pull. I don’t know what to do. Then, one day in a class, you skitter in me like a fish. I feel the flip of your toes, or what I imagine are toes, the moment Professor Forget-His-Name holds up a page of Prose Edda. The class is Icelandic Literature. I signed up on a lark. I don’t remember the words he reads, but I remember a lightning bolt when kennings are explained. Two words yoked together, creating metaphor. There is a blast of certainty that enters me from nowhere. Kennings. Magical union. Words taking hold of each other to make their sense as one. Sea as Earth of the Fish. Me as Earth of You. Something wild comes over me and shows me what is right. On the spot I decide to keep you, study, and earn a degree. Martha holds my hand when the water breaks and you arrive and the doctor who lifts the flipping fish, waxy-slick and new, asks me for your name. Deirdre, I say. Deirdre. The name of my father’s mother who died when he was young. Martha says Deirdre means sorrow. Am I sure? Certainly sure? Deirdre is the name? I am sure of nothing, but I don’t know that yet. Deirdre! I bellow. Deirdre! My father’s mother’s name! 

I name you Deirdre Glee, but truthfully, Deirdre, in truth, I don’t know my father’s family. Our history is silence. Unmet absent figures, far behind, in the past, irrelevant in their distance. Or is that really so? Could the name of Deirdre jinx you to a sorrow? Doubtful, I think, in reality, a name could have such effect. But during my years of study and earning the degree, I dive in the world of saga clans. Kings and queens and lines-of-blood clearly drawn by battles. Clanging swords of righteousness defending loyal tribes. Perhaps in the kennings and gory lore I see my wish to belong. Or I just like to study. I don’t have a simple answer for what I become as your Momza. Squirrely academic. Scraping by, single and poor, a weird embarrassing lady teaching community college. I am awkward, Deirdre. Guarded. Wooden. Clumsy. I fight a hidden temper. You see it on the phone the night we scream about Bradley. Oh, the words I use! Break up, lunatic, leave him, no I won’t send money. I’d give anything, Deirdre, if I could take it all back. Pay phone. On the phone! Our final conversation! I have to stop now. Have to stop. Talk talk talk. I talk too much. I’m going to wiggle the blanket and see if it makes you laugh.

When you are a little girl, I call you Elf from Alfheim. Alfheim, land of elves, sits on top of Yggdrasil tree which holds up all the world. Though the scholarly facts aren’t clear, and I’ve forgotten my studies, I say Alfr are beautiful things who trick and disappear. That’s how I think of you Deirdre, a beautiful thing who disappears. Once, when you are seven, or maybe you are six, Martha comes to babysit and talks to a friend in our kitchen. She tells the friend, pregnant then, that I considered adoption weeks before you are born. Our apartment is only one bedroom. She should never have spoken. When I come home from teaching, you are not in your bed. I race the sidewalks screaming your name, searching the playground, deli next door, cars in the parking lot. Finally, after hours, I find you in the vestibule of our crumbly red-brick building. You’re scootched below the stairwell, scribbling in your notebook. I carry you to the apartment. Stroke your hair, read Beowulf (you like Grendel-monster) and tell you you are loved. You don’t want to believe me. Jokes won’t work. Hot chocolate. You spit once in my face. I start to have my nightmares about your empty pillow. I get needy, I know I do, though I try not to show it. When you are older, Deirdre, you tell me I’m odd. Private. Aloof. You don’t want to talk to me and I have to understand. Do you remember Florenza? Dramatic eyebrows and wide strong hands? She plays piano every day before she comes over with Milk Duds the two of you eat outside. I envy her, Deirdre, I do. You conspire together like twins. You tell her everything on the curb and no, I never spy. She tells me so herself when you’re thirteen in your Horrible Phase of slamming our apartment door to hang with a different group. Shoplifter types on the corner who never go to school. Where is Florenza, I ask once, but you snarl like Angrboda, the giant Norse mother of monsters. I say Angrboda as a bad joke, odd and foolish, yes, so I tell you I’m sorry, or think I do, then choose to let you be. Maybe wrong. I don’t know. Could I keep you home? Martha tells me no. Your Horrible Phase of slamming doors lasts, I think, a year. Then you completely change. You become a studious girl, eligible for scholarships. I’m puffed and proud of you, Deirdre, the year you head to college. I sing your praises to grocery clerks or anyone with an ear. But we barely speak, do we, when you get on the train. At home I cry in a towel. I tell myself to get a grip. Fumble on. Live. I decide to take over your bedroom. No more fold-out couch. I start dating Bob. He tells me I talk in my sleep, saying your name out loud. I wish I could have been different, able to show my feelings. I wonder if you can know, ever even know, how much I think of you freshman year. Pay phones in the dorm hall. Quick and distant talks. I’m not sure why we’re silent but I feel I’m to blame. When you don’t come home for summer, I’m scared I’ll never see you. And I don’t, do I. I get the call in April. Brickton Police. Officer Gray. Hearing his voice on the phone gives me a cracking moment, a breaking cracking moment, of seeing my empty pillow dream as a sort of premonition. I hang up the phone, get my keys, stumble into the car. It rains on the way to Brickton. Headlights blur the windshield and I can’t see the road. I drive for over an hour, my eyes in pain and squinted, before I notice, with a shock, I’m in the car alone. I pull to a gas station phone. Call Martha and ask her to come. She speeds and arrives in time to walk with me to the morgue. The sky is bright with sun, hazing up a rainbow. It makes no sense, no sense, and I feel the top of my head open and fall on the sidewalk. My legs are strange and buzzy, I stumble several times, until we get to the door and look at you on the table. Your body is covered with cloth that peels away like skin. The woman who peels the cloth doesn’t watch my face. She lets me stand, touch your chest, and shake in a sort of silence. Your fingernails are stubby. You always bit your nails. Your hair is short and cut, not how I saw it last. The missing bit of your jaw gives you a look of surprise, as if you’re the neck of a turtle stretching from its shell. I believe I say that to Martha, who puts a hand on my back. There is a scar on your inner arm from when you fell on a stake stuck in someone’s yard. The scar is what I stare at to hold myself upright. A tiny hole, clear and white, that I imagine burrowing in until the woman, hand on the cloth, asks me if it’s you. I nod my head, blank and numb. After that it’s out of the room and forms to fill and writing in ink and yes that is my daughter and I have to stop, Deirdre, I’m sorry, I have to stop again. Galloping thoughts are racing, kicking and crashing fences. My mouth is dry with thirst. Don’t push the button for Pam. I can reach the water mug. Good to have a straw.

I buy the Wilken house. Later I will tell you how I buy the house, but today is a day in Brickton. 1981. You’ve been dead ten months. I’ve had the house a week. I’m walking in tunnels of sidewalk snow I can run my hands on, passing the stores you might have seen on visits with Bradley’s family. One is a music store, Brickton Toodles and Tunes. I’ve no idea why they call it that if Toodles means goodbye. I don’t ask in the store. I browse the records aimlessly, flipping them one by one. A boy behind me, smelling of weed, brushes against my coat. I almost start to scream. I grab the edge of a record, hating Brickton. Hating the boy. Hating myself for moving to a place I don’t belong. The boy is carrying hockey skates and I wonder, holding the scream, if he played against Bradley’s team when Bradley was in high school. The boy walks off, oblivious. I curse him under my breath. He’s innocent, not his fault, he didn’t mean to bump me, so I tell myself this in a scolding way as I pull out the record I’m holding. I can’t believe what I see. Florenza! On the cover! I want to tell you what I’ve found, then remember no. This has happened before. Me exited. Wanting to call. Then sight of you in the morgue. But finding Florenza in Toodles and Tunes brings a sense of rightness. I’m right to be in Brickton, right to be near you. I buy the record. Carry it home. In the Wilken parlor room, unfurnished except for a chair, I light a gigantic fire. I sit near the big bay window, a glass of scotch in hand, and listen to Chopin’s Etudes. Florenza’s touch on the keys melds with falling snow outside in a lovely roaring sadness. I say lovely, Deirdre, because I finally feel it. In our red-brick apartment, I was a granite robot. Guttural syllables. Trapped in glass. Bob called me impossible. I broke up with him not caring. I quit the community college because I couldn’t bear students alive when you are not. So Florenza playing Chopin, with falling snow outside, is a lovely roaring sadness I am glad to feel. I drink more scotch. Put logs on the fire. The feelings start to flow and I understand, slowly, like a huge and sinking anchor, that you are really gone. A horrible loneliness comes. Deep and desperate need. I’m saying this, Deirdre, telling you now, to explain why I open the cardboard box full of all your notebooks. Oh, I’m hearing the door. Pam is here. Wanting the tray. Wait until she goes.

I buy your notebooks from a store that sells old-fashioned diaries with clasps and little keys. Expensive, with my pay, but the store owner knows you love them so gives a big cut in cost. You wear the keys on a necklace chain and make me swear to never read on pain of instant death. I remember that Deirde, and promise you now, I am wrecked with guilt knowing what I’ll do. When I get up from my chair, scotch spills all over my lap. I’m probably drunk, I’m sorry to say, as I rip the cardboard box, slice the notebook clasps, and nick my thumb with the knife. I don’t have the little keys. You took the necklace to college and it was not on your neck. The notebooks I have are the ones you left that go through the end of high school. The first ones read like joy, lovely and light and Elf. I thrill at the dancing ice cream cones drawn with colored pencil. Daddy is an ice cream cone. Look I make him dance! I laugh at my ratty bathrobe. I love you Momza Lady when we throw socks at the wall!  I spend days, maybe weeks, reading by the fire. Momza Lady wearing a crown with penguins on the top. Me and Momza twirling batons. I want to march in a band! Momza says Martha will teach me cards. Hooray I learn poker face. Martha can’t beat me, haha. Neither can Momza Lady. I’m going to play poker when I grow up and earn a thousand dollars! When I read the later notebooks, it’s more difficult, Deirdre. Everything I’m afraid of is written in your words. Momza Lady. Hate her. She doesn’t talk she reads all day her head in the clouds + messy hair + I am 13 and LONELY GIRL + Momza lost in space. Yggdrasil Tree + Mother of Thor + stupid posters on the wall = MY EMBARRASSMENT and thank you thank you Oh Journal Thou for being my place to TELL THE TRUTH + scream the way I feel!!!  Selfish bitch. Wacky bitch. Thinking I’m hers. Thinking I’m here. No $ for clothes = shame. No father = bad. Leaving this place = dream of mine and someday someday I’ll get out and leave her needle voice. Needle needle all the time like I don’t have a life! Momza Lady = blind + totally into herself = find new mother, Ice Cream Dad & maybe feel better w/o selfish bitch + I’m not a pet chihuahua, I’m a human being! Well, I think to myself, finishing all by the fire. Elf was right to lock these. I close my eyes to rest. The fire crackles with smoke. I hold a notebook on my chest, cradling it like a baby, and start to bawl and sob and rock in ripping grief. You couldn’t know me, Deirdre, not as a teen-age girl. I sometimes imagine us older, laughing together as women over our silly battles. I hurts to know we never will, but I put every notebook, every Oh Journal Thou, back inside the cardboard box to keep and hold forever. I don’t have your last ones. Martha and I searched everywhere when we went through your dorm. Did you still write when you left home? The way you did with me? I wonder what you were thinking, Elf. I wish that I could know.

CHAPTER FOUR

9/1981

Oh Journal Thou! Cute boy today! Tanya made me laugh. FTB club. Follow that boy. We are FTB. We snuck behind him on the quad. Oh my god. Instant love! Tall + scruffy hair + moody eyes so deep. Tanya says he’s not her type. Good cuz I take dibs. Name unknown I’ll find it out. Put mine on his heart haha. Statistics test tomorrow. AGH!!!!! Up all night!!!!

Miracle miracle meant to be. Cute boy came to Environment Club. I didn’t get the nerve to ask him for his number. Courage, Deirdre! Courage! You’re president of the club!!! Cute boy = Bradley. Freshman Bradley Wilken. Younger than me but maybe? Clues about perfection: Goofy smile. Birthmark ear. Shy when he shook my hand. Kind boy! Cute boy! Soul mate! Deirdre Deirdre slow it girl. You don’t know the soul. But I do! Oh I do! Sings the song inside. Ecology Gov & Lit tonight. Study ugh ugh ugh *##*~#

Failed first Government quiz. Maybe not my future. Ecology going better. Dream I’m having & hold the dream: I’ll work like Momza’s father w/ forest learning & study. I like to be outside. I could tromp the woods saving forests & maybe us & life-on-trembling-planet. Oh shaky world oh fragile life oh how do we save ourselves from those who see the sky as solid instead of ripped?  Listen earthlings hear the call the sun will kill b/c of us do not sleep wake up!!!

Sept 18! Hold engraved! Bradley asked me after Club if I would be at Parker Place for a party Friday night. Never heard of Parker Place. Tanya says it’s cool. Says I live under a rock. She’ll go too. Excellent plan. Tanya and dorky me. Thank you Tanya!  Roomie the best!

10/81

Oh Journal Thou Oh Journal! Protest at river tomorrow. Oh my god so nervous. President of Environment Club = nervous job. Checklist am I ready yes. Petitions packed for signing. Clipboards paper pens brochures waterproof sheets for rain. 3-2-1 blast off! Deirdre must get brave! Talk to people don’t hang back don’t be the Dorky D. Find yourself get energy OUT like steam from cracks in earth. I want to see volcanoes. Wonder if I will. Hawaii = money = years of ???? to earn but DON’T GO NEGGY DEIRDRE! Remember what Tanya says. Neggy is negative dark side you can kick away. Keep the chin up hope the hope you will see a volcano! You will travel the world! You will win a lottery or figure a $$$$$ way! Question of the moment: jeans tomorrow or straight black skirt. Effectiveness rating unclear? Granola relaxed or serious look (?) Hair pinned up or hanging. (?) Tanya says hang. Tanya is god. I wish she were coming with. She doesn’t get the planet thing & why concern is good. I heard her say to Rachel I am neggy doomy. If I am stay proud. I see extinction coming. A future giant behind a hill throwing rocks & lightning bolts & flooding the world with sea. Hard not to care when I care. People = shut their eyes see no evil hear none but world is world and world will do whatever it must to save itself and we are venom for the world a poison of human beings and world can flick us off like leeches on the skin. Yes I’m neggy doomy. People killing the world? Seeing that in my heart? Do what Tanya says. Smile tomorrow. Don’t forget. Practice tonight in bed. Lips up haha with teeth exposed as long as you can before sleep.

Pride! Woo! Yay! Protest = success! First one down and done. Oh my god relief. Dorky Me was rocket fire no shaky hands or sweat. 200 names & signatures so maybe the acres won’t get cut & maybe the river will stay. Oh Journal Thou hear this. Bradley is great w/ people. He can talk to anyone and get them on his side. Happy when he came up to me as if he knew I was scared & shying-out w/ nerves. The guy with a scar on his face who stuck his axe in a tree + stood in front of me smirking + crossing his arms on his chest. We are legal I told him. Environment Club I told him. Take a brochure I told him. My hands were getting shaky/dropped my pen on the ground & when I picked it up Bradley said yeah legal. Thank you, Bradley Wilken, for being who you are! Fingers crossed we’ll kiss before we leave the earth.

10/30/1981

Oh Journal Thou Oh Journal biggest f-ing news!!!  Bradley is my boyfriend! Holy Moly Shmoly! So much better than Dan last year. Bradley has a brain. Bradley has a heart. He gets me. Really gets me. Tanya can’t believe I finally asked him out. I can’t believe it either. I wasn’t even drunk. I felt this warm like blanket-brave come onto me after Club. He’s too sweet to ask me first so I stepped over the comfort line of Sophomore girl asking Freshman boy & he said yes! Okay yes! Confidence oh my god. What a concept hahaha. First kiss = perfect. Location: back room of Parker Place. Halloween party & theme. Ridiculous plastic lit up skulls hanging green around us. Pretenders Message of Love cranking from the speakers + then-then-then when Bradley smiled & leaned in close but soft it was like a movie dream of bliss & love & shooting stars & nothing I’ve ever seen or known so guess who’s scared haha! Neggy Doomy Deirdre scared of love & pounding heart but also yes hell yes. Oh my god so happy. Happy happy happy. Bradley Wilken + Dierdre Glee. I can’t believe it happened! Last night = miracle time! Heart Heart Heart of perfect. How can I study Hobbes tonight. Leviathan oh my god.

11/81

Oh Journal Thou distracted & sorry I haven’t written. Bradley Bradley Bradley = enthrall/encompass/effervescence/everright/never ever felt this way + same for him SAME FOR HIM = we are lost in love so Journal Thou is empty whoops + haha sorry for that. How does Deirdre spend her time Oh Journal Thou might ask? First and cover your ears, haha, the sex we have is DYNAMITE & MAKES ME LOSE MY BRAIN!!! Sweet & hot & crazy & everywhere you can imagine including the library closet I have a work-study key for. What thinks you now Oh Journal Thou? Is Deirdre growing up & shocking you w/ freedom? Serious serious seriously, I am changing in my soul (do I believe in soul?) and miss you sometimes Journal Thou you’ve been my friend forever so I am back & will stay back b/c my life w/ Bradley (we call it ‘our’ life oh-woo-hoo) is growing & taking over & I don’t want that to stop but I will tell you everything b/c I have always have. Bradley + me = not only sex. We work together Environment Club we read we study we talk all the time next week we’re doing mushrooms w/ Tanya & Rachel & Marc & ? to see how we’re affected. Nervous. Never done. Not like you don’t know that ha. Don’t worry Oh Journal Thou. When I say Bradley reads with me I don’t let him see you. You are private locked with key always always always & I’m not ready to give you up you save me Oh Journal Thou you always have & will & I will never quit!   (END OF EXCERPT)