Chapter 6
6
FIFTH GRADE
I MEET MANUEL GARCIA VALDECASAS on the first day of fifth grade.
He arrives in the afternoon. In the morning, I spend most of my time sitting at my desk and trying to fix whatever has broken inside my head.
That morning, I woke up in my four-poster princess canopy bed and decided that I knew exactly how to solve this. How to make the moths flying about my mind stop beating their torturous wings: I will think about it. I will think really hard about it. I will apply all of my brainpower to the task, to this one problem, the only problem that matters anymore, because that technique has always worked in the past, right? Stuck on a test question? Think about it. Think about it really hard . Close your eyes and press your palms to your forehead and think think think think and then—there! The answer. It pops into your mind as suddenly as a file opening on your computer.
So, I do. After hopping out of Speedy’s navy-blue Suburban, I sprint over the pavement and into the Skokie School, Winnetka’s only public middle school and my home for the next two years. Inside, the hallway is packed with fifth and sixth graders shouting greetings or swapping stories about the summer or shyly shuffling forward with their eyes on the tiled floor. Their skin is tan and freckled. The popular girls are resplendent in their First Day Outfits. I ignore them all, making straight for my new classroom.
Once there, I find the desk with my name on it and sit down. Then I start to think.
And think.
And think.
The result of all of this thinking?
Chaos.
You loved your brother , I tell myself.
But did you? Did you really ?
Of course I did. He was my best friend.
But don’t forget that you didn’t cry at his funeral. Don’t forget that even your parents noticed, that they were concerned about you.
They were worried about me because they wanted to make sure I was grieving.
Maybe. Or maybe they’re really worried that you’re a bad person. A person who wants their older brother to die.
That’s not true , I thought. Please, stop. Please. It’s not true.
Thinking doesn’t find me a solution to the Worries. It only makes them worse. It makes them circle tighter and faster, the moths beating their wings as hard as possible, everything a tangled, awful mess.
Class starts, but I can’t pay attention to anything Ms.Collins is saying. I open the lid of my desk and pull out a notebook. It’s massive, a lined eight-by-twelve spiral with over two hundred empty pages. And so, as Ms.Collins talks about multiplication charts, I write out my Worries. That’s the name I’ve given them: Worries. On my bookshelf at home are other, more sensible journals—palm sized, featuring flowers or puppies on the front, but this is the only option on hand.
And so—it becomes my first Worry Journal.
I’ll eventually fill dozens of Worry Journals. Hundreds, maybe. I’ll see the entries as confessions, a safe way to seek forgiveness. To empty myself of the horrible things I’ve done. Each entry a little apology. To whom am I apologizing? The Universe? God? I don’t know. I’ve never believed in such things. But I want desperately to rid myself of these thoughts, and this is the only way I know how.
I’ll write every day. Obsessively record every shred of guilt that passes through my mind. Over time, the notebook will grow heavy with pencil markings and memory. Add a good six pounds to my backpack. But I’ll carry it everywhere. I have to. I’ll think of the book as a sidecar—a small but sturdy vessel that carries a portion of my thoughts. Relieves me of them. Just a small one, but a portion nonetheless.
—
WHEN THE NEW BOY ARRIVES, Ms.Collins steers him into the classroom like a grocery cart, one hand on each shoulder. She announces that this is Manuel, then pushes him into the empty chair to my right. He glares at her back as she walks away. “ Puta ,” he mutters, the meaning of which I will discover later that day while flipping through the inappropriate section of Advanced Spanish Translation .
I like him immediately.
“Hi.” I offer my hand, the way my father taught me to. “I’m Eliot.”
Manuel’s only response is to stare.
“So, where is Colombia?” I ask, having absolutely no idea what the answer is.
Manuel just stares at me with an open mouth and slightly squinted eyes.
I’ve never been a talker. Quiet as a woman on trial , Clarence always says. It was Henry who sparked our dinnertime productions and presentations, Henry who led us in games of make-believe. But maybe that’s not me. Not deep down, I mean. I’ve always wished I were a talker, that I could tell stories as skillfully as the rest of my family. But I can’t. I’m only ten, for God’s sake. Who wants to hear a ten-year-old’s stories?
With Manuel, it’s different. He feels different, even if I can’t say why. I’m instantly comfortable around him in a way I’ve never been with the rest of the kids at this school. So I talk. I whisper. I give my thoughts on Ms.Collins’s lessons or make jokes about the posters on the wall. I don’t care if my observations are funny or interesting or even intelligible. I give them anyway. His only response is to stare at me with those same squinted eyes. Eventually he stops looking at me altogether.
Still, the comfort does not dissipate. Over the course of the afternoon, it only grows, as if his presence has created a little bubble of safety around our two desks. As if he’s popped a cork on the well of words within me, the ones that have circled around and around and around in my mind, torturing me, dragging me through hell. In this moment, I feel that I can say anything. And I do. I jabber at his left ear about schoolwork, my family, the irritating things Molly Parker says during story circle.
I even graze the subject of Henry; Manuel’s ear twitches slightly at the sound of the phrase car accident —my first clue that he might actually be listening—but that’s it. No response. And me, I feel instantly guilty that I brought up a brother I disrespected by not caring about his death.
I switch subjects.
I tell that ear more in two hours than I’ve told the rest of my classmates since I first met them. After a month spent in the silence of my own home, it’s an incredible release. I feel myself rise from the depths of my mind. The Worries don’t disappear, not by a long shot, but they quiet, just a little. Just while I talk.
The ear doesn’t respond.
Still, I don’t give up. I’m determined to make him my friend.
After school, I repeat what I hear him mutter: “Ess-tay chee-kah ess lo-kah,” I whisper. The syllables crackle atop my tongue.
—
THAT AFTERNOON, I ARRIVE HOME energized in a way I haven’t felt since before Henry’s death. I sprint into the kitchen, only to skid to a halt beside Karma and Taz.
“Guys!” I say. “Guess what? There was a new kid at school today. His name is—”
But my voice dies on my tongue when my mother walks into the room. She’s dressed in real clothing this time, not a bathrobe. I glance at my siblings. We cluster closer together, watching our mother like rabbits eyeing an unfamiliar beast from a distance—breath held, wondering if this new creature is friend or foe. She doesn’t attack. Doesn’t yell. Just picks her way through the piles of sweets clogging up the kitchen—Karma’s excessive baking, which continued after we came back from Cradle—and puts on a kettle of water.
Dad walks into the room. When he sees Mom standing at the stove in a pair of jeans, he pulls up short. My siblings and I go still. By now, the tension and resentment between our parents has grown nearly obese with thickness. We feel it through the walls of the house. We hear it in the way Dad stomps about in the morning, as he prepares us both breakfast and lunch for the day. Often, he sleeps in Henry’s empty bedroom. More than once I hear Karma or Taz whisper the word divorce .
Dad clears his throat.
Mom looks up. “Oh, there you are, dear.” She smiles and points at the cabinet above the stove. “Would you mind grabbing me a box of Earl Grey?”
“Would I mind…?” He takes a step forward. His face is blank. “What?”
“Earl Grey. The tea?”
He takes another step forward. “I know…” His voice trails off. He shakes his head. “Are you…are you back, then?”
“Back from where, dear?” she asks, picking absentmindedly through bundles of sugar and Saran wrap. “I’ve been here this whole time.”
Karma, Taz, and I glance at each other.
Speedy blinks. Something about his expression scares me. It’s completely lifeless. He steps forward again, but this time it looks mechanical, as if there’s no purpose behind the movement, as if he’s being dragged. I want to stand up and yell at him to stop. To my right, Karma’s fingers close around her butter knife.
The last step my father ever takes happens right there, right before our very eyes. He tries to lift his leg, but as he does, something short-circuits. His knees buckle. His ankles collapse. He screams, and Karma screams, and my mother screams, and his legs fold beneath him, and his body hits the floor.