Love Letters to the Dead(32)

He turned back. “Yeah?”

“You’ll still be here, right? Tomorrow?”

He smiled and kissed my forehead. “No,” he said, “I’ll be at home.”

“But, I mean, you won’t leave me, right?”

“Right.”

When I woke up today to the memory of Sky’s body, all of the sad things in me were still hungry. They started to take everything in—the rain streaking in the sky, the spill of light on the table, the tiniest drops of water clinging to a pine needle on a tree outside my window. Maybe that’s what being in love is. You just keep filling up, never getting fuller, only brighter.

I looked you up, and I found out where the name of your band came from—from this quote, written by a poet named Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” I’ve been thinking about that. About what it means to see the endlessness of each moment, of each piece of it. I want to be cleansed—I want to burn away all of the bad memories and everything bad inside of me. And maybe that’s what being in love does. So that a life, a person, a moment you need to keep, stays with you into infinity. May smiling back at me. The two of us as little girls at Fallfest, with parents who danced. Your song playing into eternity. The night leaves on the cottonwood trees catching the white lights. And every little star that burns hotter than we could know.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Janis Joplin,

Kristen’s parents have money, but she drives a super old Volvo anyway, because she thinks it’s cool. She has a bumper sticker on the back of it that says I’M NOT TALKING TO MYSELF … I’M TALKING TO JANIS JOPLIN. When she and Natalie and I were driving to Garcia’s Drive-In during lunch on Friday (Kristen never ditches classes, only lunch, because she’s a good student and keeping her grades up for college applications), of course we were listening to you. Since Kristen loves you so much, she knows all of your songs, not just the most popular ones. You were singing “Half Moon,” and Kristen turned to Natalie and said, “Did you know that Janis had women lovers, too?” Natalie shook her head no. Kristen continued, saying, “She could have been singing about a woman when she sang this,” as you crooned, Your love brings life to me.

Natalie looked off and said, “That’s cool,” trying to sound like she didn’t care. But by the way her face spread with a little smile, I could tell she did think it was really cool. I think Kristen was trying to make Natalie feel like she knew about her and Hannah. Like it was okay.

Hannah got another boyfriend. She has two right now, counting Kasey and the new one, whose name is Neung. She met Neung at Japanese Kitchen, where he’s a busboy and she’s a hostess. Yesterday, we went to his house, Hannah and Natalie and me. It was Sunday, and after we opened the fourth day of Aunt Amy’s advent calendar, I’d asked her if I could go to Dad’s early in the day, so that really I could go and hang out with Natalie and Hannah.

Before we left Natalie’s, Hannah kept trying on new shirts and asking Natalie if she looked fat, and Natalie was getting mad and saying, “Of course you don’t.” Hannah put on a lot of makeup, so she had these crimson lips, darker than bloodred against her pale freckled skin. She looked like someone who was beautiful but trying to show how she hurt.

We walked to Neung’s from Natalie’s, and it was really far. It’s getting cold now even when it’s still sunny, but Hannah didn’t wear enough clothes, so the whole way there she was shivering. Natalie was putting her arms around her to keep her warm, and Hannah was talking about Neung and how his skin is so smooth that when she touches it, she feels like the world will never end. And how he used to be a gangster. Natalie said she didn’t want Hannah going over there alone, which is why we went along. I was glad, too, because I didn’t want her going alone, either. I didn’t know what might happen to her.

Neung lives in this tiny house with his whole family, his mother and his father and his uncle and his grandfather and his brother and his sister and his sister’s son. Before we got there, all the way down the block, we could smell the hot peppers cooking. His mom and sister were cooking them on the grill outside. They must have been the hottest peppers in the world. As we got closer and closer, our eyes started to burn so badly from the smoke that by the time we made it to Neung’s, our faces were covered in tears, and Hannah’s mascara had streamed down her cheeks.

We played outside with Neung’s little nephew, wiping away pepper tears the whole time. Neung was nice around us, and he picked up his little nephew and spun him like an airplane. He laughed at our chile tears and called us güeras, which means “white girls” in Spanish. He did this even though he’s Vietnamese and Natalie’s Mexican, so it didn’t make that much sense.

Then Neung drove us to the 7-Eleven to get Slurpees and cigarettes. Once we were away from his family, Neung started touching Hannah a lot, and calling her baby girl and putting his hand in the back pocket of her jeans when they were walking, which made Natalie roll her eyes at me. When we got back to Neung’s, we sat on the sidewalk and drank the Slurpees, and they all smoked the cigarettes. (I didn’t smoke any, because I don’t actually like them that much. I thought I’d get used to the taste, but I haven’t.) We all laughed about our chattering blue lips. Then it was getting to be nighttime, and Neung said he wanted to be alone with Hannah. So they went inside, and Natalie and I sat on the steps, waiting.