Chapter 2
The funeral was two days later. My aunt Laura, my uncle Rob, and my grandfather had all come in the day before, and of course Lisa was still there. The house felt strange, like it was too full. I was still used to it being just Mom and me. I thought maybe if I fell asleep, when I woke up it would turn back to the way it was before. But it was impossible for me to sleep at all.
In the morning the sun came through the window and lit up my room. I had let it get very messy. The clothes I'd worn the past couple of days were on the floor, along with a hundred other things that had been in my closet. It had been hard to figure out what to wear. All those months that Mom was coughing, I didn't think she was dying and I never thought about asking someone to take me to the mall to buy an outfi t to wear for the funeral. The thing was, Mom was always the person I went shopping with. I tore everything out of the closet and threw it on the floor. Afterward, I looked at all my clothes lying there. There was no reason to put them away. I was going to have to pack it all up anyway when I moved to Dad's, so I just left them there.
Lisa came in to make sure I was awake, which of course I was. She was holding a cup of coffee. I could see the steam rising off of the top. I watched her step around my clothes carefully so she wouldn't fall and spill the coffee everywhere, but she didn't say anything about the mess. I sat on the edge of my bed with my legs crossed. I was wearing a light gray dress that Mom had bought me a year before, at our favorite store. It had been at the very back of my closet and when I tried it on it was too short, but when I stood in front of the mirror I actually thought it looked better that way. My hair was pulled back tight in a half ponytail. It gave me a little headache but I didn't want to loosen it because I kind of liked the way it felt.
"You're dressed already?" Lisa said. She was still wearing pajamas -- leggings and an old shirt of Mom's. It said Fleetwood Mac: Sold Out on the back. I nodded. "You look very pretty," she said.
"Thank you," I said.
Lisa sat down next to me on the bed. She put the coffee mug down on my nightstand. Once when I was visiting Dad, I put a can of soda down on one of the side tables and Meg got upset because I didn't use a coaster. She said the wood could get ring stains. But I didn't care if the coffee mug left a mark. Lisa moved her palm across the comforter to smooth it out. I kept thinking, This is what I will be wearing when my mother is buried. I was watching Lisa's hand move across the bed, but I was picturing the coffin being lowered into the ground, and me standing next to the grave in my gray dress that was too short, with my hair pulled back too tight. Then I thought of the other outfit -- the one Mom was wearing. Lisa had showed me the dress she'd picked out before she had it sent over to the funeral home. It was rose colored and had a tie around the waist. I blinked quickly so I could stop seeing it.
"Do you want to come downstairs?" Lisa asked. "You can have some cereal."
"I'm really not hungry," I told her.
"I know," she said. She stood up and held out her hand. "Come on." "Is everyone downstairs?"
"Your grandfather went for a walk a little while ago. I think Laura went with him."
"What about Uncle Rob?"
"He was on the phone with someone from his office a few minutes ago," Lisa said.
"His office?"
"Well, it's a weekday," Lisa said.
"Oh yeah," I said. It was hard to remember the difference between weekdays and weekends. I hadn't gone to school in almost a week, and it felt like forever. The last time I was at school, Mom was alive. It was strange that people had to go to school and to work now that she was gone. It still felt like the whole world should have just stopped. But right then, as I was sitting on my bed in the dress I would wear to Mom's funeral, everyone else in the seventh grade was in homeroom.
Lisa was still holding out her hand to me. She shook it a little to remind me it was there, and I took it. We walked out of the room. Lisa's coffee mug was still sitting on my nightstand, but I didn't remind her to take it with her. I don't know why.
I followed Lisa downstairs and into the kitchen. Someone had lined up my pill bottles on the table. That's the thing about AIDS. You can never forget that you have it. Technically I don't even have AIDS -- I'm HIV-positive, which means I'm infected but I'm not sick. But I have to take pills every day, like clock work, to make sure I don't get sick. I take them three times a day -- with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I have to take them at the exact same times every day, which isn't always the easiest thing to do.
Some people think as long as you take the pills, you'll stay healthy. They think people die of AIDS only if they live in poor countries where they don't have medicine. But it's not that easy. It's just so hard to take medicine all the time. It's like a constant reminder that you're not normal. And some people have really bad side effects, so they can't their pills like they're supposed to. That's what happened with Mom. The medication made her sick, so she couldn't always take the right amount. I only get a little bit sick when I take my pills, and the sick feeling goes away pretty quickly.
At school when I have to take my pills, the nurse doles out the exact dosage, like she doesn't trust me to remember how much to take. But at home it's up to me. I pressed down on the child-safety lock and popped open one of the bottles. When I was little I used to cry every time I had to take my medicine. It tasted so gross and I hated feeling nauseous three times a day. Mom would hold the bottle up and kiss it. "I love this for keeping you well," she would say. I closed my eyes for a second and thought of Mom's voice again. I had learned to swallow pills, so I didn't have to take that awful liquid stuff anymore. But I still hated it.
Uncle Rob was standing in front of the fridge, leaning inside with the door wide open, his cell phone balanced between his ear and his shoulder. "Well that's what you're paid for, buddy," Uncle Rob said. He was speaking loudly, the way he always did. When I was little I asked Aunt Laura what Rob's job was, and she said he put deals together. I pictured him at his office with a deck of cards, dealing them out to a bunch of guys in suits. I still had no idea what his job really was. Uncle Rob turned from the fridge and saw me at the table. "Sorry," he mouthed, and walked out of the room. I heard him start cursing in the hallway.
Lisa put a bowl of cereal in front of me. "Just do your best," she said. I picked up the spoon and pushed down on the flakes floating in the milk. I liked the way they popped back up. Lisa sat down across from me. "Just a few bites, Emmy," she said, like I was a little kid. I felt like a little kid, but I also felt older. I closed my eyes and thought about dipping the spoon back into the bowl, scooping out cereal and bringing it to my mouth, chewing and swallowing. It seemed impossible. My hand felt heavy. I opened my eyes and made myself lift the spoon up in my hand. I dipped it into the bowl and brought the spoon to my mouth. I could still eat. I just didn't want to. "Good girl," Lisa said.
Rob came back into the kitchen. He snapped his cell phone shut and put it in his shirt pocket. He put his hand on my shoulder and tapped his fingers up and down. I took another bite of cereal, but it tasted funny. I could taste the metal from the spoon. I made myself swallow so I wouldn't throw up. "Aunt Laura and I want you to know that you can come to Colorado anytime," Uncle Rob said. "Anytime at all. You can come for Christmas break, if you want. We can go skiing. You'd like that, right?"
"You mean winter break," I said.
"What?"
"You said Christmas break, but they call it winter break, so it includes everyone."
"Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, winter break," Uncle Rob said. He pulled out the chair next to me and sat down. "Whatever you want to call it, whenever you want to come, you are welcome." I nodded, even though I didn't want to go to Colorado. Mom had said maybe we would go to Paris. She liked us to have special vacations. She said we needed to take advantage of having time together.
I didn't want the cereal in front of me anymore. "Do you want the rest?" I asked Uncle Rob. He was always hungry. When we would all go out to eat, he would finish his meal and then eat the leftovers off of Aunt Laura's, Mom's, and my plates.
"Sure," he said. I pushed the bowl over to him and he picked up my spoon. The phone rang and Lisa stood up to answer it. I hoped it wasn't Dad. He had called about a dozen times since Mom died, but I didn't want to talk to him. Lisa said he wanted to see me, but I told her to tell him not to come. I figured if he really wanted to see me, he would come over no matter what I said. Besides, I would have to see him at the funeral anyway.
"Em, it's Nicole," Lisa said. Nicole Lister -- my best friend. She had also called a bunch of times since Mom died, but I didn't feel like talking. We'd text-messaged each other. She had written, "luv u xox," and I wrote back, "thx luv u 2." Mom used to read over my shoulder when I was texting, and she would laugh because she thought it looked like another language. "MOS!" I would write Nicole, which meant Mom over shoulder.
I looked at the clock and thought Nicole should be in French class right then, conjugating verbs or something. Maybe she had snuck into the bathroom and was using her cell phone in a stall, or maybe she told the teacher she was calling me and got special permission to leave class. She seemed like a stranger, in a way. I hadn't seen her since Mom died. I realized that was how I was measuring time -- by when Mom died. If the last time I did everything was before Mom died, then she didn't feel as far away. Lisa was still looking at me and I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Nicole," Lisa said. "Emmy can't come to the phone right now." I wondered what Nicole was saying back to her. Lisa hung up. "She says the principal is canceling all the seventh-grade classes this afternoon and she'll see you at the funeral," Lisa said.
"It will be good to see your friends, don't you think?" Uncle Rob said. I nodded even though there was only one person I wanted to see, and she would be in a box.
Uncle Rob finished my cereal and left the room to make another phone call. Lisa put the dishes in the dishwasher. I heard the front door open and close and I knew Grandpa and Aunt Laura were back from their walk. The house was full again. Everyone had to get ready for the funeral, but I was already dressed.
Copyright © 2009 by Courtney Sheinmel
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