Turtle under Ice Read online

  To those who have lost,

  and those who will lose.

  Row

  When your older sister disappears

  under the cover of night,

  during a snowstorm,

  leaving no tracks

  and no trace,

  someone should notice.

  I noticed.

  When she wasn’t jockeying

  for the shower.

  When she wasn’t sprawled

  across the sectional

  mindlessly scrolling through socials.

  When she wasn’t being

  a total bitch.

  But Ariana isn’t here.

  Her open bedroom door

  exposes a tidy,

  silent room

  with a slightly rumpled duvet cover,

  emanating the smell

  of verbena-coconut body wash

  into the hall.

  I don’t know where she went.

  I don’t know how long she’s gone for,

  but I’m afraid that

  she might never return.

  Because for the past few months

  I feel like Ariana has become

  that one station on the car radio

  that gains more static

  the farther away you drive,

  like she is the one

  driving farther away

  from something.

  But I don’t know

  what that something is,

  and I don’t know

  where she is heading.

  Maybe it’s us.

  Maybe she’s driving

  farther away from our history,

  trying to find

  her own future.

  Without us.

  Without me.

  Ariana

  I’ll tell you what grief looks like.

  It’s a forty-year-old woman, unshowered,

  for two days, in yoga pants and a Barnard sweatshirt

  and eyeliner that hasn’t been scrubbed off her face.

  It’s dried, chapped hands that crack around the knuckles,

  raw from washing away too many emotions.

  It’s bloated faces. It’s open wine bottles.

  Stained glasses that remain in the sink.

  It’s the nursery half-painted, half-stenciled with giraffes.

  A mural unfinished. A crib disassembled on the carpet.

  It’s your stepmother telling your father that she’s “fine.”

  It’s my father searching for something to eat

  in an empty fridge, searching for something to say.

  It’s me sitting at the kitchen counter

  and sliding him a carton of takeout.

  It’s the house that was supposed to be filled

  with a wailing baby, poopy diapers,

  and a kid who would eventually toddle.

  And it’s me knowing that I should be grieving

  with my family, with my father, my stepmom, and Row.

  But I can’t.

  Because I’m trudging through the snow,

  hauling an eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch

  painting wrapped in brown paper

  awkwardly stuck under my arm,

  escaping.

  Row

  Dad doesn’t notice

  that I slam Ariana’s

  bedroom door shut.

  He emerges from the master bedroom

  and reaches for a pot of coffee

  that has turned cold

  because it was

  from yesterday.

  I watch him microwave

  the dredges

  and wonder if

  day-old coffee

  tastes stale.

  Does he notice

  that Ariana isn’t

  standing in the kitchen

  with thick droplets of water

  falling to the kitchen floor

  from the ends

  of her waterlogged hair?

  Dad returns to his bedroom

  and closes the door

  on the world

  again.

  I eat a bowl of cereal

  that tastes like

  living rooms,

  and minivans

  and family

  and I look out the window

  and say to no one,

  “Hey, guys, it snowed.”

  Ariana

  I didn’t just wake up at four a.m. and decide

  to suddenly change my life. No one does that.

  No one decides to change their life. Their life instead

  changes for them. Without warning.

  Without a chance to decide.

  Because in the natural order of things, death is normal,

  but we do a shit job at expecting it.

  I’m out here due to an accumulation

  of little things. For sure.

  A blizzard. A blog post. A failing grade.

  A general unease about living.

  Like my skin doesn’t know how to be

  warm or cold or normal.

  A sister.

  I saw the chaos of snow flying in all directions. I heard

  the rush of wind. At four in the morning, from the safety

  of my bedroom window, I could see a world

  that couldn’t be controlled.

  Finally. A picture of the world as I see it.

  Outside. In the middle of a blizzard.

  The thing about death is that you can never fight it.

  Be it bacterial or viral,

  addiction or cancer, natural causes or accidents,

  something is destined to kill us.

  Because in the natural order of things, dying happens.

  I read a blog post on my phone, alone

  in my room last night, by a girl around my age.

  Her father died last summer. Cancer.

  Stage four. A five-month prognosis.

  I was jealous. Of all the extra time the girl

  had with her father. I should know that there is

  no point in playing grief Olympics. To pit one

  source of pain against another.

  But I find myself questioning

  who had it worse?

  What if I had a five-month warning?

  How much more Mom could I have had?

  Six years, thirty-seven days.

  The girl admitted to the world that she thought

  those last five months would be different.

  She thought there would be hours of quality time.

  That she and her dying father would talk about things

  they never talked about. She expected to discover

  new things about her father, her family, life itself.

  But none of that happened.

  Instead, he continued to do all the things you absolutely

  do not have to do when you know you’re going to die.

  Go to work. Run errands. Fret about taxes.

  But he did, because maybe, like me, he was scared.

  To create meaning. To connect with those around you.

  Because it only reminds you

  of your own impending death,

  and I don’t want to die. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

  Row

  When our mother died,

  Ariana and I

  didn’t go to school

  for a month,

  even though

  we were supposed to,

  even though

  we were just barely old enough

  to spend time

  alone in our house.

  During that month

  we learned to cook

  ramen. We learned to wash

  rice and crack eggs.

  We never made our bed
s

  because no one

  told us to.

  We spent long afternoons

  lying on top

  of piles of laundry.

  We practiced French braids

  and ponytails

  and detangling

  each other’s hair,

  and keeping secrets

  and sharing secrets

  and fearing the worst

  and holding hands.

  We stayed inside

  our rambler in California,

  sliding across the tile floor

  in our socks,

  wandering from room to room,

  and sitting on the floor

  of Mom’s closet full of clothes

  just because we could.

  “Don’t leave me,”

  I said to Ariana

  while underneath

  all those clothes,

  but I meant something deeper

  than me. I meant

  don’t let it change

  this feeling of us.

  This frozen moment

  in time when it was

  just Ariana and me

  and this house

  and these shapeless reminders

  of Mom.

  Ariana held me so tight,

  for so long,

  that I thought

  maybe we could,

  we would hold on to this forever.

  I know there’s no longer California,

  or a month without school,

  or a closet full of Mom’s clothes,

  but I thought, Ariana,

  that we still had us,

  to hold on to, forever.

  Ariana

  Pellets of snow and ice smack me in the face

  and the wind blows from every angle.

  The butcher paper tears at the corners,

  and the canvas underneath begins to poke through.

  The package slides out from under my armpit.

  I stop and readjust. Shift the painting to my other arm.

  Maybe I should have put the whole thing

  in a giant trash bag

  and hauled it over my shoulder.

  It’s not like it’s heavy.

  It’s not like it should be hard to carry a painting

  in the wind,

  protecting it from the snow, trying not to drop it

  while walking

  to the bus station in a snowstorm.

  What would people say about what I am doing?

  Would they call it selfish? Desperate? Ill-advised.

  A car fishtails at the stoplight ahead. The back wheels

  begin to skid, but the driver regains control

  and straightens onto the dark street ahead.

  It’s way too snowy and way too early for either of us

  to be out here on the streets heading somewhere.

  But we are.

  Because, like snowstorms and earthquakes and death,

  your future will happen regardless of whether

  you planned for it.

  Row

  I walked through the door

  after practice

  on Thursday.

  My family stood

  in the living room

  staring down

  at what looked like

  a porcelain crime scene.

  “That was your mother’s favorite.”

  Dad’s hands trembled

  as he got down

  and picked broken pieces

  off the floor.

  I tossed aside shin guards

  and stripped off socks.

  “What’s going on?”

  But no one answered.

  “Row, I have something

  to tell you,”

  Maribel started.

  She winced

  and doubled over.

  I froze.

  Dad sprang to his feet.

  He cooed into Maribel’s ear

  and rubbed her back

  with such vigor

  that the cotton tunic

  she wore began to bunch.

  I felt the sting

  of sliding on artificial turf

  run all over my skin.

  Ariana just stared

  at the pile on the floor.

  “Why can’t we have

  something good for once?”

  “Ariana,” Dad said.

  “Please don’t make it worse.”

  My sister was

  a tangled knot of hair,

  the kind you need

  scissors to cut out.

  “God. The cramps,”

  Maribel said,

  gritting her teeth,

  clutching her side.

  The room was large and exposed.

  All the lights were on.

  I heard them buzzing.

  Ariana didn’t even flinch.

  I should have

  said something to Maribel.

  I should have

  said something to Ariana.

  Put her in check.

  But it’s like I couldn’t.

  Because Ariana was

  sucking all of the courage

  and strength

  out of the room.

  She consumed everything

  that might have helped

  just by standing there

  doing nothing.

  The words I might have said.

  To Maribel. To let her know

  that we were here for her.

  We saw her pain.

  But I didn’t do anything

  because all I could focus on

  was my older sister and her

  selfish, self-involved pain.

  Dad led Maribel

  back into the bedroom.

  I heard the door close

  with a distant click.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Nothing,” said Ariana.

  She gritted her teeth

  and clenched her jaw,

  just like Maribel,

  trying to fight away pain.

  “What happened?” I repeated,

  still holding my soccer bag.

  Feeling the weight

  of the gear on my shoulder.

  “I threw one of Mom’s figurines.”

  “What happened?”

  I said again, firmly this time.

  Ariana still didn’t respond,

  but I didn’t need her to tell me

  anything about what was going on.

  I felt it, like the dread

  of picking up

  an unexpected phone call,

  knowing what the person

  on the other end

  was going to say

  but wanting them

  to say it anyway.

  To make it real.

  “It’s the baby, isn’t it?” I said.

  Ariana held the broken shards

  of a porcelain in her palm.

  She closed her hand around it,

  and I wondered

  if she did this

  just to feel

  the sharp edges

  of pain piercing,

  but not breaking, the skin.

  We stood there

  in front of the couch

  where just yesterday

  we marathoned a show

  about small-town secrets

  and portals to another world.

  Now it’s like I’ve entered the portal

  and found a different sister.

  If she were a player on my team,

  I’d find the words

  to give her a pep talk,

  reinforce the strengths

  she possesses,

  point out a weakness

  on the other side’s defense,

  and show her a way

  to break through.

  But recently, I’m not sure

  she’s even on my same team.

  Or if instead she’s simply

  walk
ed off the field,

  because that’s what it feels like

  not a teammate

  or an opponent,

  but a sister

  who refuses

  to play.

  Row

  “It’s not a competition,” I said.

  “You don’t get to be the only one

  who feels it. You don’t get to consume

  all the sadness in the world.”

  “Feels what?”

  Ariana finally looked up.

  “The steaming pile of shit

  that is grief.”

  “What do you want me

  to say, Row?”

  Ariana looked the same

  as always in a lot of ways.

  Like her round cheeks

  were still holding on

  to being a child,

  the way that my body

  did the same,

  but there was something else

  that I hadn’t really noticed.

  If you looked at her

  long enough,

  her rounded face

  would begin to fall,

  the muscles strained

  to a point where they decided

  to give up.

  I always thought that as sisters

  we would be unchanging.

  I thought that was the whole point.

  That sisters were like baby blankets.

  With you since the crib,