Mayte
WHEN I GET HOME FROM SCHOOL, MY MOM IS SITTING ON THE COUCH.
Usually before I play parent to my parents, I have time to collect myself and figure out what I’m going to say, to take a moment and turn off my own big reactions.
But I don’t remember the last time she was home before me and, to be frank, I don’t feel like I’m ready to handle the scene.
She is doubled over, hands on her knees, and sobbing. Her face is red and her eyes are swollen. Her nose is all mocosa and she’s not doing anything to wipe it away. It takes almost a full minute for her to look up at me.
“Hi, baby,” she says.
“Hi,” I say. I put my bag down and join her on the couch. “What’s going on?”
“I just lost it at work today,” she says through sobs. “They sent me home.”
“Did anything happen or…”
“I just miss her,” she says. “I was a terrible mother. I just gave her away when she was little, and then she comes to live with me and she… she—” Her crying intensifies. “I’m sorry I killed your sister. I didn’t mean to.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “They don’t even know why she died, right? They said it just happened.”
“But what if I had taken her to the doctor earlier? What if they could’ve found whatever it was?
What if I had called an ambulance sooner?
What if I had actually known CPR and not whatever the fuck I tried to do to keep her alive?
I kept trying to blow air in her mouth and I didn’t even know if it was her lungs.
It could’ve been her heart or…” She doubles over again, crying onto the floor.
I feel my own tears trying to well up and I scream at them internally: Your mom is crying right now.
Don’t make it about yourself and have your own meltdown.
This isn’t the time for feeling sorry for yourself.
If your mom, who was with her when she died, who tried to keep her alive that night, feels like a bad mother, then what does that make you, her sister, drunk on a couch, giggling over high school shit and not there?
“Can I get you some water?” I ask.
She nods without saying anything and, as I go to fill a cup for her, I hear the front door open.
In walk Tía Dely and Tía Elisa. They do not say anything to me as I set the water on the coffee table, but they wrap my mother in their arms. All three of them are crying, and my mom sighs, her face buried in Tía Elisa’s shoulder.
“I needed someone,” my mom sobs. “I needed someone to be here with me. Thank you for coming,” she says to them.
There’s that ghost feeling again. Like I am floating, like I am translucent, like I am hollow every time I’m in this house. Tía Dely is sitting in Aida’s couch spot, and I turn away so I don’t have to see it.
I sit at the kitchen table silently, trying to stop staring at the love on the couch and the way they do not acknowledge my presence.
It’s such a fight inside me—wanting no one to ask how I’m feeling and at the same time craving that care.
Wanting someone to tell me it’s okay to feel this black hole in my heart and at the same time hating myself for grieving a sister I was never sister enough to.
I pull up my text thread with Auggie.
ME: Hey. I’m really struggling right n
I delete the message before I can even finish the word. I pull up threads with Claire and with Leo, but end up closing those, too, and sliding my phone across the table.
They’d give me the comfort. They’d give me the care. They’d give me the love because they always do—even Auggie. I’m their person, their friend. They’re always going to be on my side, and I’m grateful for that.
But Leo, being around Aida about as much as I was growing up, is the only one who would see something wrong with me reacting the way my mom and tías are right now.
The only one who would understand how unfair it is for me to want the same level of comfort or act like I deserve it.
Leo was heartbroken when Aida died, but she got over it quickly enough.
She pulled herself together and didn’t make everything about her. Why can’t I just do the same?
And then a worse thought crosses my mind: What would Auggie’s family do in this situation?
I imagine the funeral, Auggie’s mom holding his hand while they cry at the casket, and his dad with his arms around Kate’s shoulders, shedding tears of his own.
I imagine his mom with snacks on the table when he comes home after school, asking him how his day was, how he’s feeling, and I imagine him telling them the truth.
His dad comes home and tells him how proud he is of him and how strong Auggie is, but that it’s okay for men to cry.
I imagine his mom and dad with dry eyes in front of him, crying later together in each other’s arms once the kids are out of earshot.
But they’re not pretending it’s not real either.
They’re just holding it in boxes they can sort out with each other.
They are not handing those boxes to their children.
They are not sitting in her spot on the couch.
They are not seeing through me. They are looking at me and they are seeing how heavy everything is, and even though I can carry it, they are taking the weight off me.
Off him, I mean. Off Auggie.
I speed walk to my room and close the door quietly, even though no one would notice if I slammed it.
I lie on my bed and end up face-to-face with Buttercup, my stuffed dog, who has apparently been taken from Aida’s bed and returned to mine.
Here come the tears again, and even though I’m alone, even though I am not trying to protect anyone from my own pain this time, I push them back.
I take Buttercup and throw her off my bed, but she lands perfectly on the floor and I can still see her when I lie there.
So I get on the floor and stuff her beneath my bed.
Beneath my bed is the bag of nail polish, a few colors, and the pack of candy-flavored lip balms sprawled out on the carpet.
I pull out the bag and the spilled nail polishes and the lip balms, and another wave of emotions rolls over me, but this time it is all fully and completely directed at myself and a bright, angry red.
I’d paint her nails and just ignore the seashell hand.
There’s no way in hell I’d go to school with only one hand painted, but I just assumed that she would?
That she wouldn’t notice or care because she was…
what? Because she was disabled? Because she should’ve been glad that her super important, very busy sister even took the time to paint her fingernails at all?
And when I finally painted her seashell hand, I just let her curl it right back in, smearing all over her palm in a messy pink splotch, which, now that I think of it, probably ended up all over her clothes too.
And when did I finally care about making sure her nails were perfect?
When I was staring at her lying in a casket.
I pick up the lip balms, only four left in the pack, because I gave the others to Aida.
All of the chocolate-scented ones that gave me a stomachache when I smelled them.
Because I didn’t want them anyway and they just would’ve sat in there unused.
Aida should’ve been happy she got lip balm at all, even if the scent was absolutely nauseating. Of course I’d thought that.
I consider the ghosthood I’ve taken on since she died and realize it hasn’t come from nowhere.
It’s an inheritance.
It’s what my sister felt every day of her life.