Caulfield

The hum of conversation reverberated from the lofty ceilings of the wide corridors. I paced, leaning from heel to toe outside of the door-- slightly ajar but not opened enough for anyone to notice me sweating bullets and taking sharp breaths while I leaned against the wall. My knuckles were white, balled into a fist around the leather strap of my bag. The girl meant to be showing me where I was supposed to go tapped her foot in annoyance before leaving me outside to fend for myself. Glossy mary-janes met with charcoal knee socks and glinted in the light from the tall, arched windows lining the hall. Crisp button-downs were tucked into navy plaid, everyone blending into a sea of typical schoolgirl uniforms. My schedule was crunched in the hand hanging by my side and with a deep breath, I blinked rapidly until my vision became vingetted. I shakily pushed forward as the oak door opened completely. The classroom looked more like a college lecture hall than anything, and I assumed it was the insane amounts of money the affluent parents funneled into this school, hoping it’d make their daughters more successful one day.

“New student, I’m assuming?”

The woman at the front of the classroom looked like she had a permanent hangover. Her eyes were droopy and her face was flushed aside from the obnoxious circles of bubblegum pink blush on her cheeks.

“Well? Are you just going to stand there and gawk?”

“Um… y-ye-, I mean no. Sorry.” My eyes were glued on the blackboard behind her.

1 CORINTHIANS 3:16-17 was scrawled across it in bold, blocky letters.

“Can you please tell the class your name and where you’re from?”

“Jodie.”, I murmured to the floor, “My name is Jodie. I’m from Wichita.”

“Welcome to Providence Conservatory for Girls, Jodie from Wichita.”

I slumped down into a seat, pressing my palm into my right eye so hard that flecks of color danced around my vision for the rest of class. I noticed a girl with hair chopped erratically, brushing close to the bottom of her chin. She sat at the far end of the row in front of me, her bag spilled about the floor at her feet. Among the mess was a single dice and a chunk of rose quartz, which intrigued me, though I had no clue why. I rolled my neck around in a circle, getting stuck in her direction no matter how hard I tried to look away. Mrs. Divorce Number Three finished her lesson on who knows what, and I fell into the line of plaid skirts leaving the classroom. I watched the girl bend at bony hips and then bony knees to pick up her bag, trying to convince myself that her skirt hadn’t fluttered up the tiniest bit and that I hadn’t seen the neat, white lace underneath.

The windows of my shared dorm room were covered up by heavy, dusty velvet drapes that smelled like the inside of a library. Black metal bed frames were pushed into either corner, one side of the room already occupied by a girl with carrot orange hair and freckles. Her name was Pansy, and she had introduced herself to me with such enthusiasm that I wanted to vomit. My entire life was packed into a trunk that sat, popped open at the end of the bed. Pansy had lived in the same dorm since she moved to school here four years ago.

“I’m prepping for Yale.” She had said in a dreamy voice, sort of like a twelve year old dreaming about being a million different unrealistic jobs. I nodded in her direction.

I flung my blankets out over the bed, tucking them in at the bottom corners and along the sides. I hopped up and stood in the center of it to tape dried flowers and a couple polaroids of my mom and I above the head of it, noticing the cream wallpaper was beginning to peel up at the edges near the top. I hung up a pea green sweater and a pair of jeans folded over a hanger in the wardrobe in the corner and sat back down on the bed. I laid all the way back, my hair spread out around my head like a black halo. I focused on the white ceilings, plagued with splotchy, brown water stains that reminded me of the leaks in the roof of the old one bedroom that my mom and I lived in. I closed my eyes and took a deep, unsteady breath at the thought of that house.

A pillow flies through the air and makes contact with my chest, causing me to stumble.

“You are going down!”, I screamed as I launched a pillow across the room.

My mom laughs and dodges my attack. I chase her around the coffee table and tackle her onto the couch, tickling her. We laugh until we can’t breathe properly and collapse back onto the couch, both of us only wearing our bath towels, clipped on by hair clips. My mom was given her diagnosis a few days before-- osteosarcoma. My mom wraps her arms around me so tight and I tuck my head in the crook of her neck. She kissed me on my forehead.

“You know you’re my sunshine, Jo.”

I woke up with my hair matted to my neck by sweat, still in my uniform.

“Why did you come here so late in the year?”

Some questions are best left unasked, Pansy. How do you tell someone you just met that your mom, your only friend in the world, died and that your father wanted nothing to do with you so he shipped you off to a Baptist boarding school in Rhode Island instead of trying to take care of you? Who knew Baptists even had boarding schools? I thought that was a Catholic thing. Not to mention the fact that winter break was two weeks away. He could have waited.

“My dad.”

“What about him?” She wanted more.

“Thought it might be a good change in scenery.”

And it was a change in scenery. Rhode Island was nothing like Kansas. I had spent my whole life surrounded by fields in the rural part of Sedgwick County. We had cows across the street, and so far I hadn’t seen a single animal here, not that I had even had time to look around since I was dropped off here. Pansy just nodded and went back to clacking on her keyboard. I wondered what she was writing. If I had to guess, probably a tragically shallow recount of her life thus far, in case she ever gets famous. Or probably talking away on AIM to some well-off boyfriend that she’d marry and then find out he had been cheating on her from the start with any blonde that looked his way. She just seemed like the type.

“How long was I asleep?”

“It’s two in the morning.”

Getting up off of the hard mattress, I grabbed my shower things and a towel. I wandered down the hallway until I found the communal washroom. Upon entering, I thought that I was alone, until I heard a flat hum coming from behind the wall that blocked people from peeking in at naked adolescent girls from the hallway. All the way inside the washroom, I saw the girl from class. She was slumped all the way down into the tub, her nose hovering just above the surface of the bathwater, arms on either side of her to hold her from going under completely. The water was milky and didn’t look like water at all, and it smelled very herbal. There were orange slices peeking out of the murky water. I felt suddenly weird about just standing there staring at her in the bath, although she had no clue I was there because she was humming and her eyes were shut. I wondered if she had fallen asleep in there. I walked over to the row of shower stalls on the opposite wall, picking the one on the very end and closing the curtain behind me. I unbuttoned my shirt and tossed it up over the rod overhead, doing the same after I slid my skirt down my legs. I pressed myself into the far corner and stood there, strangely conscious of being naked, letting the water heat up and fill the stall with steam. It burned my skin, causing me to flinch when I walked under the shower head.

I woke up at seven the next morning, the room still pitch black on account of the drapes. Soft snores were coming from Pansy, who had passed out before I had made it back from the shower. My eyes tried to adjust to the darkness, but I still managed to stumble and bang my toe against the corner of my trunk. Silently writhing in pain, I jerked my jeans and sweater off of their hangers, accidentally causing the hangers to make a clanging noise on the pipe. I held my breath in hope that Pansy wouldn’t wake up, but her snoring just continued to fill the dorm. I ran out not bothering to brush my teeth or anything.

The morning air was frigid, causing chills to creep over my cheeks and hands as I stepped out into it. I looked around for somewhere to go, approaching a spot-- just on the edge of the woods-- where two low-hanging tree branches that were tangled together sat at chest height. I thought about how it would be a nice place to just sit and think. I heard a twig snap, and it wasn’t caused by my own steps. Snapping my head towards the noise, I saw the girl, staring at me from a distance. She was dressed in dark-wash denim jeans, cuffed at the ankle, and an oatmeal colored knit sweater. They were both baggy on her thin frame and the sleeves of the sweater wrapped around her fingertips. She turned her face towards the ground immediately when I looked at her. She didn’t want me to know she was watching me. I kept walking towards the school, while she stood frozen in place. Entering the back doors, the heat inside immediately shocked my body. I always only felt truly cold once I came back into the warmth. It caused me to realize I hadn’t been warm the whole time. It reminded me something had changed, and that I hadn’t realized it. I slipped back into my dorm and under my covers, hoping to fall back asleep before Pansy woke up.

“Jodie. Wake up. Breakfast.”

So apparently, meals were mandatory, even on weekends. I only got thirty minutes of tossing around in my bed before Pansy took it upon herself to hop onto my bed to get me up. I rolled out from under the covers, still with my clothes on from earlier.

“Why are you already wearing clothes?”

I didn’t feel like answering questions, so I ignored her. I stood in front of the tiny porcelain sink in the corner of our room, which seemed like such a random afterthought to the room, and splashed water onto my face. I patted it dry and brushed my teeth and hair, following Pansy out of the room and down the hallway behind the other girls filing out of their rooms.

The volume of chatter in the dining hall was insanely loud for morning, which caused me to audibly groan, earning side-eyed glances from several of the girls at the table. The plate sitting in front of me had an already peeled and halved banana, which was incredibly odd to me, a poached egg, and some fancy breakfast pastry. I poked around at it with my fork, spreading the egg yolk all over the rest of the food. I picked up my plate of food I didn’t want to eat and hurriedly dumped it into the trash, tired of all of the weird looks I was getting from the other girls at the table.

I wandered around the campus trying to find somewhere silent to sit and read the copy of Catcher In The Rye that I’d tucked into my back pocket before leaving the dorm. My mom had given me this book after she’d read it, claiming it to be her absolute favorite in the world. I went back to the tree I had found earlier and found Mystery Girl sitting on the branches. She had six oranges stacked next to her, as well as the chunk of rose quartz balanced on her leg.

“What’s your name?” I was surprised by the words leaving my mouth. I never spoke first.

“Sicily.”

“Like in Italy?

“Yeah. My mom always wanted to visit there.” I found this oddly funny. My dad was Italian, and I hated the time he made me visit his family over there.

“Why do you have all of those oranges?”

“I steal them. For baths, they’re used to enhance psychic ability.”

I narrowed my eyes a bit.

“Come on. I know you saw me in the tub last night, Jodie. I put a bunch of ingredients in the bath to reset my energies.”

“How did you know it was me when your eyes were closed?”

“Psychic, Jodie.”

My mouth fell open a little bit, and Sicily laughed.

“Just kidding. I saw you go into the shower stall. And besides, I knew your name from class.”

I laughed nervously, which I think she picked up on.

“I’m not a witch or anything. Well, I wish I was. I found this old book that talked about spiritual baths and tried but they don’t actually work. I just figured out that they’re really, really good for your skin.”

I nodded, and she motioned for me to sit next to her on the tree. I don’t know why I decided to, but I liked that she hadn’t asked me why I was there or anything about myself for that matter. I climbed up next to her, accidentally knocking over the neatly stacked oranges. She laughed and I didn’t feel as bad about it. I pulled out my book and began to flip through the pages. She stared at my hands, moving through the book quickly, trying to find the underlined passages.

“If you get caught with that book, you know it’s Confine for you.”

“Confine?”

“They make you sit in this tiny room and read your bible for hours.”

“That sounds...terrible?”

“It is.” I guess she’d been in Confine.

Later, I asked Pansy about Confine. She told me not to worry about it and that it wasn’t likely I’d get sent there, at least not in two weeks. I also asked her about Sicily.

“She’s like messed up.”

“Messed up?”

“Yeah. Like, she said she got raped last night. She told Phoebe, her roommate. No one believes her, though. She cuts for attention.”

“Oh my god.”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!” There went her dreamy tone.

Providence Conservatory for Girls seemed to be perpetually stuck in the 1960’s. Dinner had been chicken a la king with some sort of gelatin salad for dessert, but I’d only moved it around the plate with my fork again. I hadn’t been hungry since Mom died, and my skin was starting to look like it was pulled taut around my bones at my hips and elbows. I looked at myself in the mirror when Pansy had gone to shower and noticed that you could see the blue veins ripple under my skin, and I felt as if I were becoming a ghost.

Exactly a week later, someone knocked on the door and I assumed it was Pansy accidentally locking herself out of the room after her nightly shower routine, which was oddly specific-- pre-shower exfoliation, exactly 16 minutes in the shower, and meticulously plaiting her hair so it fell into perfect waves the next day. I flung the door open and turned away from it, walking back towards my bed.

“Can I come in?” It was Sicily. I motioned for her to come inside.

She sat on the edge of my bed with her legs crossed indian style and her hands between her thighs. She swayed back and forth like invisible wind was blowing and she couldn’t stay upright.

“Are you drunk?” She giggled. Yes.

“Come on, we gotta go to your room before Pansy gets back.”

She pulled a thin bottle out of her waistband. She chugged from it and liquor the color of molasses dripped down her chin, which she licked off slowly. The way she moved looked like it felt the way that it feels to float on the surface of the ocean with the sun beating down on your face, warm and careless. I had never been to an actual beach, but my mom and I had snuck into the Moorings one night when she was really sick. The Moorings was a lake beach, the really disappointing kind that had a strip of sand and picnic grills that hadn’t been touched in years.

“I don’t have a room.”

“What?”

“My roommate kicked me out. Something about witch trials.”

“Is she even allowed to do that?”

“Who cares. I don’t like her.”

Sicily was laying flat on the bed with her feet towards the ceiling, trying to keep them still but unable to due to the fact that her bottle was half empty by this point, which meant she was well past drunk. She hummed Mirror In The Bathroom by The English Beat, the same song that she had been humming in the tub when I’d seen her.

“My mom used to sing that song when she’d clean the house.”

“Your mom was a new wave fan? That’s sick.”

“Yeah, she was cooler than me.”

Within the hour, I was sitting with my back against the tile wall and my knees tucked to my chest outside the bathroom stall while the liquor made a violent-sounding reappearance. Sicily groaned and slumped over onto the floor, face down. Out of nowhere, she had the strangest energy, hopping from half-comatose to fully aware in seconds. She was back on her feet and popped her head out of the stall, a look on her face that couldn’t be good.

“Come on. Let’s drop.”

I looked at her confused. I had no clue what she was talking about, but she pulled a little sheet of paper out of a plastic sandwich baggie in her pocket.

“Acid.” Yeah, I guess I was supposed to know that, right?

We went outside to the tree and hoisted ourselves up onto the twisted branches. She ripped two little tabs off of the sheet and passed one over to me, explaining that I should put it on my tongue and that it would take a little bit to kick in. She put her tab on her tongue, closed her eyes, and laid across the tree. I thought about whether or not I was the type of person to do acid. I could just hand the tab back to Sicily and go to bed. But, then again, I had no reason to not do it. I genuinely could not think of a single reason that I had to be against dropping acid with Sicily. So I sucked up my reservations and put it on my tongue, laying back the same way she did. Before it kicked in, Sicily handed me a folded piece of paper and told me not to open it, so I slipped it into my pocket.

I felt like I was floating in Moorings Lake with my mom again. Except, I felt more like the lake itself than me, my mom peacefully floating on my surface. Her face was washed in moonlight as she completely took on the motion of the water. She was peaceful, and I wondered what was going through her mind. She stood up and walked to the shore, her clothes dripping and clinging to her skin. She was bone thin and very sick. I wasn’t me. I was the lake, but I saw myself still floating there, unaware that my mom had gotten out of the water. I felt the ripples moving through the water. I saw each individual dip in the water, swirling and peaking in the moon. Tiny clear hands were holding my body still in the lake, filling my mouth, rendering my physical body unable to move. The next thing I knew, I saw my mom’s lifeless body in the sand, and a couple, with the wife covering her mouth in shock, and a dog sitting with no clue what was happening. I saw an EMT pull a sheet up over her face on the stretcher and police officers trying to console the strangers that had found her, dead on the beach after she’d taken a handful of sleeping pills in the car when I was already half undressed and halfway into the lake. I tried to scream but a watery fist was blocking my airway, and red and blue lights filled my skull.

In the flashes of light, although everything was blurry and shapes were wriggling like little worms, I could see people. A lot of people, way more people than were supposed to be outside in the middle of a Saturday night. I saw girls on the ground, but I couldn’t tell if they were crying or if it was an illusion.

“Mom! MOM!” But she wasn’t there.

There was a silver blanket out of an ambulance draped over me. Except, I wasn’t at the lake. I saw that one of the girls on the ground was Pansy, she was sobbing. I looked up and saw a noose that had been cut raggedly, in a hurry. There were four squad cars and an ambulance and a fire engine, and so many people. Everything was still fuzzy, but I was starting to pick up on things. I saw a stretcher with a sheet over it being loaded into the ambulance. Police were surrounding me.

“Miss. We’re gonna need to ask some questions here.”

“What happened?”

“A girl hung herself. Sicily Caulfield.” All at once the air was knocked from my lungs.

“No.”

“Were you friends with her?”

“No. I ba-barely knew h-her.”

“Can you explain what you remember?”

“I- I fell asleep in the tree. I don’t… I’m sorry.” Tears were streaming down my face.

“Usually, we’d send you to Confine for drug use. These circumstances are… unique.” It was the headmaster. I think I’d rather go to Confine than home.

Sicily Caulfield had hung herself in the tree a week after she had been raped by some boy she had gone on a date with in the back seat of his BMW. This happened the night that I had found her in the bath, and she was going to do it that night, but couldn’t find her “lucky razor”, which made me want to throw up while I read it. I know all of this from the police report, which they knew from the letter that Sicily had written. That was all they could make out from it because the rest was “illegible, seemingly due to drug use.” No one else seemed to care about it after a few days, almost like everyone knew it was coming besides me, which I guess was accurate.

The semester ended a week early, which everyone was excited about, including myself although I felt bad about being excited. On the car ride home after my dad picked me up, we listened to Mirror In The Bathroom on repeat, peeling one of the six oranges from my bag and popping a slice into my mouth.

“Mom loved this song.”

“Your mom loved you so much, she only did what she did because she wanted to die with her dignity.”

I ignored him. I just wish she would have left a note. The tears were back. I pulled the paper out of my jacket pocket, which I noticed was a page ripped out of a book. There were words underlined in messy, black pen marks, and I noticed that it was a quote from Mr. Antolini to Holden Caulfield:

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

There was a bubbly Sicily Caulfield doodled in the bottom margin, surrounded by hearts.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep with my face pressed against the cold window, halfway back to Wichita, crumpled book page in my fist. I woke up in my bed at home, a chunk of rose quartz and a single dice next to the polaroid of my mom on my nightstand.