it's 9:06 am, on April 13, 2002 - eleanor and nelly.
~
In lieu of an entry, I'll give you two things.
One: I dreamed about Nelly, *nsync, and sean dinsley last night, for some reason, and yes, all together at once. Nelly and nsync were jamming outside the store Sean and I worked at, and I think, though I'm not sure, I had a crush on Sean. What this means I have no clue, since I haven't seen or thought about Sean in probably four years. Also, why was nsync and Nelly in the rain, playing around? I have no clue.
Two: I've been trying, albeit slowly, to write original pieces. This is something that came to me. Don't know what it is.
These two things, combined, are a hell of a lot better than whining or explaining what is wrong, and what will and will not happen. Nelly won't be in the rain, in front of my store, I'm pretty certain, but it's still fun to think about.
~*~
It started when Eleanor hung herself.
That should have been the end of it, seeing as it was the end of El, her last meal, last breath, last words, but instead it was the beginning. Sometimes, I picture the cleaning lady when she found El, how someone -- a policeman? -- had to come up those three flights of stairs in that awful, smelly place, to cut her down. El used thick rope, the nylon kind that people use to tie things to the backs of trucks.
Thing is, she may have stopped breathing but that doesn't mean she's gone. El's not ready for her last words, oh no. I saw her just yesterday, cleaning her glasses, leaning against a light post downtown, by the dingy A&B Sound. She said to me, "This being dead thing is really great. No worries, no regrets. No money problems."
I have that still photography memory of her slipping her glasses back on her face, and peering at me for just ages, even now. She added, "It's amazing. I've never felt so good." And then the magic words-- "you should try it sometime."
I've tried to explain to people about when I see her. She's the same as before, only much happier. Death, she tells me, takes away a lot of the blinders from your eyes, shows you what counts -- you. People think I'm crazy, and so I've given up trying to explain; I would think me crazy too. Who would want to believe someone insane enough to talk to their dead friend, yeah? If she'd go away, I would maybe miss her, but I'm not sure. She hasn't been gone long enough for me to really miss her at all.
And she looks the same, except for the perpetual bruises on her neck from where the rope dug in.
*
She looks at me while I'm brushing my teeth. "Nat," she says to me, "You're not brushing right."
"You're not my fucking mother," I say to her, and spit toothpaste down the drain.
"Whatever." I glance behind me, and of course there's no one there. She normally shows up on reflective surfaces: mirrors, windows, the television set if the light hits it just so. Looking back in the mirror, she's there again, glasses set firmly on her nose. She says, "Floss like a good girl. Wouldn't want anyone to think you were gross and hadn't flossed, right?"
This, I think to myself, is a ridiculous thing to be arguing about.
"Of course," she adds, "if you were dead, you'd be gross and rotting, and hey, no more braces!" She opens her mouth, and I look at her reflection in the mirror, her proudly showing off her perfectly straight teeth. El had had braces. They'd removed them for the funeral.
I put my toothbrush away, because okay, this isn't the weirdest conversation I've ever had, but it's coming close. I say, "Yeah, later," and she shrugs and disappears. I rinse my mouth out, taste copper. Have to floss tomorrow.
*
I never cried when Elly died, never grieved. I mean sure, I heard about the funeral from my friends that went. I nodded sadly when they told me what a nice service it had been. Honestly, no one around me had ever died before. Technically, it should have had this impact, this great, cratering impact about mortality and death and life and fear and sadness and living. Right?
Some kind of stasis bubble wrapped around my head a few days after I heard about her. The words, "hung herself," ran through my mind, over and over and over again, until they made no sense, just vowels and consonants, soft sounds the tongue bends itself around. 'hungherselfhungherselfhungherself'. Words have no meaning, and I said them aloud, to my mirror, quietly, almost terrified of the outcome.
"Hung herself," I said to myself. The bathroom light was very bright, and for one little minute, I could feel the rope closing around my neck, snapping, crackling, popping vertebrae into place. I was wearing jeans and a blue tee shirt.
But one moment, compared to sixty or seventy years of life, barely makes a dent in your consciousness, and I turned the light off and went to bed, and woke up again, and went to bed, and woke up again, and still Elly was dead, and her parents would miss her.
You'd think she would have appeared that first day, while I was looking in the mirror, but no. It was a week after she'd done it, and I was on the bus.
*
"You're going to get a cramp if you sleep like that, Nat."
Looking up, and yes, that's her in the dark window of the bus, tilting her head like she used to, big old glasses askew. I mumbled, "Great, now I'm going crazy."
y'know. etc.
~
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