The Other Side(68)
I take my place in line behind a girl who was in my PE class junior year. She’s buzzing with excitement and her hair is so big in the front that her hat is pinned to the back of her head, instead of resting on top. It’s defying gravity, clinging to her ratted hair with strategically placed hairpins. I distract myself by counting them, twenty-seven bobby pins that I can see by the time I take my seat amongst a sea of red robes. There are nineteen other white robes like mine, the top twenty GPAs in our graduating class are required to wear them. Along with the ostentatious sash I threw in the trash. I worked hard for this robe. It’s amazing what you can do when you have a point to prove and a grudge to hold. My mom always said I was stupid and would amount to nothing. She was right about a lot of things, but I’m not stupid.
Our principal steps up to the podium on the stage and I try to listen, but after the first cursory line in a speech that feels like he wrote it ten years ago and has delivered every year since, I tune out. I think about scanning the crowd for my mom’s face, but who am I kidding? Anything ten feet from me is distorted, and the further my field of vision extends from there, the more it blurs. The people in the stands are a kaleidoscope of muted color, a combination of other people’s families cheering them on. Not mine. The isolation of the thought makes me close my eyes and tune them out. There is no one here for me. I’m going out alone. I know Alice is somewhere in the rows ahead of me. We’re seated in alphabetical order, but there are over four hundred in our graduating class, the gap between Es and Ps is immense. I can’t see her. And I can’t feel her either.
In the darkness behind my closed lids, the voices coming through the loudspeaker vary in pitch, but they’re all monotonous droning. The valedictorian’s speech is the highlight. I don’t hear words, but I think it’s valiant that the pride and excitement almost mask the fear in her voice. People like her don’t bask in accomplishment, they beat themselves up over tackling the next hallmark before it even comes into view. Stress is a way of life. The future is a way of life; the constant carrot dangling within view but just out of reach, is a way of life. There is no present. Only future.
What feels like hours pass before the presentation of individual diplomas begins. I still haven’t opened my eyes hidden behind Johnny’s sunglasses. Unbidden, the knot in my throat tightens and thoughts bombard me consecutively and uncensored: Nina coming to visit when I was five, acting strange, and leaving soon after a fight ensued with Mom. I hated that our mom fought loud, her anger amplified her voice to unbearable decimals. And I hated even more that Nina fought quiet, her anger muffled her voice to unbearable decimals. Nina’s eyes looked vacant, a look I would see many times in the years to come, but the first time left a scary impression. It was like her body was there, but she wasn’t. The moment the door clicked shut and Nina left, my mom looked at me and roared, “It’s all your fault she’s like this!” I loved my sister and the words crushed me, because even though I didn’t understand them, I felt the weight of them in my soul. My mother parented with tone. Hearing something enough, I believed it—and have turned into it. Reflecting back, I feel the guilt of my five-year-old self compound and blend with the guilt of my eighteen-year-old self. And then I see Nina’s body lying in a pool of blood. My mother’s screeching continues, “It’s all your fault she’s like this!”
“I know,” I say the words out loud. They blend in with the cheers and clapping that surrounds me and no one notices. Me in the midst of a singular meltdown, the rest of the world in the midst of a mass reverie. The juxtaposition sums up my life: there’s everyone…and then there’s me. Knowing from a young age that I didn’t fit in.
Just then the loudspeaker cuts my thoughts like scissors snipping a string. “Alice Eliot,” it booms.
The same obligatory, polite, congratulatory clapping continues, but I hear a loud whistle and a faint, but mighty yell from somewhere in the stands. “Way to go, Alice!” Taber. And it makes me do something I haven’t done in a while. I smile. I smile with cheeks still streaked in fresh tears. I smile despite myself, because Alice has her entire life ahead of her. And I know it’s going to be beautiful. The smile gives way to a few chuckles that feel foreign. My mind and body don’t know what to do with them and quickly they morph into what still sounds like laughter but is fueled by despair and accompanied by tears. I’m so tired it’s making me delirious. That’s my only explanation.
It’s a long time before the alphabet and ceremony proceed to my row. Lost in my thoughts, I take my cue when the girls sitting on either side of me rise, and I stand, mimicking them. I’m sweating like mad. I mop my face with the flared cuff of my robe sleeve to clear away the evidence of my crying, though the mania driving it remains etched in my features, I’m sure.
I wait: outwardly calm, inwardly growing more impatient by the minute. When I ascend the three stairs of the stage, I’m acutely aware of three things: how much I dislike the sound of my own name amplified and drawing attention to me; how clammy my hand is when it accepts Principal Scott’s proffered, robotic shake; and how I know, without a doubt in my mind, that Marilyn Page is not here.
My mom didn’t come.
Of course she didn’t, I think sarcastically.
Of course she didn’t, I think accusatorially.
Of course she didn’t, I think hopelessly.