Butter, Eggs, Jelly

I got a letter today, addressed to my dead mother, regarding my dead cat. Is moxy up to date on his shots? Make an appointment online!.

It’s funny getting someone's mail after they die. It’s similar to my using her frequent shopper card, or how I was using her netflix account until the subscription ran out. They have no idea. I’m sure her email is full of coupons, “special offers!”, “get it now doorbuster sales!”, and “for a limited-time-onlys!”. Marketing to a dead woman. They just keep sending you shit till you die, and after. You don’t think about that when signing up to get emails from the drugstore. In a way, you’re alive and well on mailing lists way after you’re gone, a potential spender in the database.

I’m standing in the bread aisle, shopping for my Grandmother. Butter, eggs, jelly, grape juice, and english muffins. There’s an astounding amount of options in the bread aisle. Entirely too many. Which type of english muffins are the type she would normally get? Probably not the name brand, but probably not the store brand either. She’d get an off brand of the name brand. I stared. How many hours of my life in total will I have spent in some sort of aisle trying to pick between nearly identical items? I pick the blue package, she likes blue.

I bite the skin off my lips, it’s a bad habit. I end up chewing on them till they’re uneven and sore. I try to fix them by ripping off the left-over skin that hangs ragged, and then I bleed, I sour. I have the same lips my mom had, only hers always seemed to be beautiful, and pink, and full, and never chapped. And she had long nails she never bit, and she didn’t drink. She smoked cigarettes though, she did that. She didn’t do much besides that, actually. I sometimes feel like I remind people too much of her, like my own face is a bit morbid.

Shit the milk. Almost forgot the milk.

I stand in line, I smile, I swipe my card. I compliment the cashier on their necklace because I know it’s nice to do.

I drop the stuff off at my Grandmother’s, she’s about to run out the door to my aunt’s house. I pretend I forgot the milk and she tells me it’s okay. I tell her I’m just messing with her, she says that’s okay too. My grandmother takes in everything, she’s almost not fun to mess with because she accepts whatever happens. She’s funny without trying to be, and she gets things done. She always handles everything without complaining. She seems to always maintain. Not like my mother was at all. But I know that my mom once told me that when she was a little Grandma would get overwhelmed and break all the dishes in the house. Maybe it was from maintaining for so long. I never saw her do anything like that though. I said bye, that I loved her, and I headed home.

 There was a cat outside howling near my window. It went on all night. I laid in bed falling halfway asleep for several hours. I was dreaming while still awake and watching movies on my eyelids. I kept thinking I was outside. I thought back to when I used to work at the florist shop. I was watching my hands tuck roses between baby’s breath. I remember I would always tell people the mums lasted longer than the roses. But people liked to buy the roses, since they were more expensive. I couldn’t tell if I was sleeping, but then the florist shop became my grandmother’s kitchen. Orange peels started falling from the ceiling.

I woke up. The light wakes me up every morning. The blinds only go halfway down the window. I could get better blinds. Instead I usually pile pillows up next to my head to block the light, it doesn’t work.

I think about getting up. I could get up. That’s always an option after going to sleep isn’t it? Getting up? I think it’s remarkable how everyday I have been alive I have had to wake up.

You would think after all that time it would be easier. But still, here I am, wondering. It seems impossible sometimes. And today I don’t have work, It’s Tuesday. Why get up if I don’t have work? To what? Eat? I’m not too hungry. But it would feel good right? That’s the whole thing, balancing my chemicals, getting up, going outside, maybe working out a bit. All the days come at me in sunrises and sunsets until it is just a dull thud, a dull thud like sex. A drawer that doesn’t fit quite right, always at a bit of an odd angle, half off the track. Morning, Night.

But it’s not Tuesday. It’s Monday. Shit. Always frantic.

“Anything helps”, is written on a piece of cardboard on a red folding chair under the bridge. I’ve seen it there day after day, “Anything helps”. But not anything does, and not everyone does. I roll down my window and give three dollars to the sign owner. It’s the only cash I have on me.

I park, go into work, I finish. I contemplate going to my Grandmother’s and seeing if she needs anything. I’m always checking in there, but she never seems to need much help. She lets me go to the store for her if I insist, but she would just do it herself anyway. I just get worried sometimes. Since I moved out it’s just them there. Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa’s at work all day, Grandma runs around doing whatever. It used to be a big full house. Me, my mother, my aunt and her kids. But now we’re all gone. Mom died, the cat died, my aunt moved, I moved. I don’t want them to be lonely. In a sick sense I also worry that now no one is there to find their bodies when they die. I feel like it’s my responsibility. My grandma is pretty alive and kicking though. My mom used to think I had a “disastrous” way of thinking, “Too cerebral”. Not my fault really, if it was my choice I’d be a dog.

 “Hey! I’m here!” I yell through the house, but I don’t think anyone is home. I walk around a little bit, drink some grape juice out of the fridge. I notice all the things on the windowsill in the living room are knocked over, the jar of thumbtacks is sideways and its contents all over the floor. Maybe one of my aunt’s kids was in there?

Someone knocks at the door and I walk back to the kitchen to answer. I can see through the window it’s a priest and there’s a nun with him. It’s not what I expected, but my Grandparents are very devout catholics, they have priest friends. I’ve never seen this man before though, he’s old with a pouchy face. But my family has lived in this house a long time, people know where to find them. I let them in and they sit down at the kitchen table with me. I feel uncomfortable, like I am sitting in a skin suit of a girl, but I am not one. I am propped up.

The priest says he is looking for my father. I tell him he probably means my grandfather, and he does. I tell him that my Grandfather is at work. He tells me that he knew my Grandfather from a very long time ago. He tells me that my Grandmother doesn’t like him much, that he won’t stay too long. I look at his white clerical collar, it looks tight.

He looks around and asks me where Christina is. I say he probably means Christine, and he does. I tell him she died, I’m her daughter. He asks me how. I hesitate for a minute. I tell him that she killed herself. He asked me how again, “Was it hanging or did she shoot herself?”.

Because I don’t know what else to do, because when someone older than me asks me a question and I’m conditioned to answer, and because I am not really there, I tell him. He says he could weep.

“Did she believe? What happened? Did her husband leave her? Her boyfriend?” He asks me.

 “She was just very sad.” I say. I don’t know what else to say. Because how can I explain to someone who wouldn’t understand. Why should I?

“Oh that’s terrible. I knew your Grandparents before they got married. She was the first born. Terrible. Your poor grandparents. Do you say the rosary everyday?” He looks at me.

“Um yeah, we all do.” I say. I feel like I’m taking a test I haven’t studied for. I don’t even know why I’m lying.

“How many times a day do you say it?”

“Um, I’m not sure. I guess when I wake up. When I go to bed...” It’s like being a kid again. It’s like I’m in school.

“You’re supposed to say it three times a day. It makes life a lot easier, smooths it out. I remember when my father died I was the only one who didn’t cry, because I said the rosary so much. ” He said.

The nun, who had been quiet till then, cut in, “Yes it really does help.” She said. 

They said some more things, I sat there, they left, and I wrote down their number for my Grandparents. I felt like I could fit into a cabinet. The house was quiet, like no one besides me had ever been there.

I walked back into the living room and suddenly heard flapping wings. There was a tiny brown bird on the dining room table. It flew behind the china-cabinet and I reached my arm back there to scare it out. I tried to catch it with a washcloth over my hands while it flew all around the room, knocking things over. It went into the bathroom and I caught it cornered in the bathtub. I carried it outside and let it go. The sensation of it pushing off my hand and flying away startled me. It was so alive, it was the feeling of being alive, that push. When I began picking up the thumbtacks off the floor in the living room I realized I was crying.

China Rain is 22-year-old student at the University of the Arts studying Creative Writing and Art Therapy. She is a writer as well as a visual artist. Her work focuses mostly on the anxieties and uncomfortableness we tend to try to avoid. Her Instagram is @china_rainnn and she posts art projects and animations/poems.