What Remains True by Janis Thomas
PART ONE: A DAY IN THE AFTERMATH
ONE
JONAH
Sometimes I hear Mommy crying in the middle of the night. She’s in the bathroom, her head pressed hard into a bunched-up towel so she won’t wake anybody. If I had arms or hands or fingers, I’d touch her on the shoulder. Just so she’d know I’m here.
Sometimes, when no one else is around, she screams like someone’s stabbing her or something. But mostly it’s crying.
Sometimes all three of them cry at the same time, Mommy, Daddy, and Eden. All together. It sounds like a song Mommy used to play in the car when we were driving somewhere, but it wasn’t crying in that song, it was laughing. Lots of different people with different voices laughing together. I liked that better than the crying. If I still had ears, the crying song would hurt my head. But I don’t have a head anymore, or a body, or anything. So the crying just whispers through me and reminds me what it’s like to be sad, even though I can’t feel it.
I’m not sure what’s happened to me. I know I died. Kind of like my goldfish, Fred, only I’m not floating on top of the water waiting for Mommy to flush me down the toilet. But I feel like I’m floating somewhere.
Daddy told me once that when we die, we go to heaven, but I know I’m not there. I haven’t seen God yet, or any angels.
I see places I’ve never seen before, like the crawl space above my room and the gardening shed, which I was never allowed inside ’cause of all the sharp tools, and the closet that has the water heater in it. I can slip through the cracks in the door and slide around the metal tank, then slip out the other side.
But I haven’t left the house or the yard since the “very bad day,” which is what Mr. Escalante calls it whenever he talks to Luisa about the day I died. Luisa works for Mrs. Martin next door, and sometimes she brings lemonade out to Mr. Escalante or coffee or something else to drink, ’cause Mr. Escalante does both the Martins’ yard and ours at the same time. Now when Luisa brings it, Mr. Escalante shuts off the lawn mower and limps over to her, and they talk quietly so Mommy won’t hear them. They both shake their heads and look at the ground, and Mr. Escalante always sees something on the ground, like a weed or something, and bends over to pull it out. I think he does it on purpose so that he won’t see the tears in Luisa’s eyes. And by the time he stands up straight again, she’s already wiped them away.
I don’t think I’m a ghost. Mrs. Hartnett, my teacher, read us a story on Halloween about ghosts, and they all were mean and tried to scare people. I’m not mean. I know that because Mommy always told me the same thing. “You’re such a good boy, Jonah. You’re such a nice boy, Jonah. You’re such a lovely, sweet boy, Jonah.” I don’t think ghosts are nice and lovely and sweet and good. So I must not be a ghost.
I think I’m supposed to do something. But I can’t figure out what. ’Cause I don’t have a body anymore. So I’m mostly just waiting. And listening. To the crying. Hoping it will stop.
TWO
EDEN
I told them I didn’t want to come today, but they didn’t listen. They don’t listen to me anymore.
They used to, before. We’d all sit around the table at dinner, and Mom and Dad would make us talk about our days. Jonah never said much. Mostly finger painting and jungle gym stuff, kindergarten stuff. Mostly. Sometimes he’d talk about the stupid jerky kid Jesse, who was always getting into trouble for doing stupid jerky things. Sometimes he’d talk about books. He was learning to read, and he liked this one book a lot—The Little Rose—and he could read it good, too, even though it was a first-grade book. But mostly he’d talk about coloring and drawing pictures. He loved to draw pictures.
Mom and Dad would ask me to tell them about my day, and Mom would put down her fork and knife and look at me full-on, her blue eyes totally focused on me like I was the only one in the room, and I’d tell her about school, from start to finish. Dad would listen, too, but he’d still be eating, even though he’d nod and ask questions, sometimes with his mouth full, and Mom would give him a smack on the arm and tell him he was being a “bad influence on us” for talking with food in his mouth.
Mom and Dad don’t ask me about my day anymore. They don’t ask me anything anymore. Mom doesn’t even really look at me. Her eyes have changed, like they can’t really focus on anything. They’re shiny, and not just from tears. I heard Aunt Ruth say something to Luisa about medication. I don’t know what that means. I had to take medication when I got an ear infection last year, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t make my eyes shiny, so Mom must be taking a different kind of medication. A kind of medication that makes her not listen to me anymore.
I don’t think Dad is taking medication, but he doesn’t listen to me, either. His eyes aren’t shiny, but he has this really deep crease between his eyes always, like he’s thinking hard about something, trying to figure something out. The kind of look he used to get when we did puzzles at the dining room table or played Wii bowling in the living room or when he helped me with fractions. Now, he has that crease all the time, but he just wanders through the rooms of the house like he’s looking for something, but never finds it. And when I talk to him, he turns his head and looks at me, but like he’s looking through me, like whatever he’s trying to find is right behind me, and he never answers my questions quite right. Like, yesterday, I asked him if he knew where my softball helmet was, and he told me he didn’t think it was going to rain today.
They said it was time for me to go back to school. It was Aunt Ruth, actually. She did all the talking while Mom sat on the couch with her shiny eyes staring down at her hands in her lap. Dad was standing by the window, looking out at the front lawn, with that crease in his forehead that looked like it hurt. And Aunt Ruth kept talking, saying things had to get back to normal at some point.