MAY

The day Jaylee Sill’s life fell apart was the same day she first skinny dipped. In the shallow end of some obscure lake she went to for summer camp, she and her friends stripped off their suits and dove into the cold (and probably unsanitary) water with glow sticks on their wrists, giggling. Jaylee felt free, for a moment in the murky water, free from the weights that held her down- whatever weight a 14 year old feels anyway. She stood there, in the dark, water rushing all around, and she dove down and down and down.

Before she knew it, she was in the camp counselor's cabin, and her sister was dead 100 miles away. Her sister ran away from home while she was gone, and was hit by a car and the car drove off without a trace and Jaylee Sill had one less sister.

There are many ways a person can deal with losing a sister. People get angry. People hurt themselves. People cry a pool of sad and live in it. People get tattoos and dye their hair or cut everyone they love out of their life so that they never have to lose a loved one again. Jaylee didn’t feel anything. She didn’t feel sad or angry, or at peace. She felt nothing. The nothing she felt wasn’t just about her sister. The nothing bled into everything. Nothing made her happy, but then, nothing made her very sad either. Just nothing where there should always be something. So here she was, the 14 year old who couldn’t feel, whose ears and eyes seemed to be turned off to reception. The girl whose feelings consisted of blankness.

“How have you been feeling this week Jaylee”, the therapist asked again. This was the 14th time this therapist had asked this particular question. 14 weeks of therapy, and counting.

“Okay, I guess”.

“Did you do anything fun?”

“Not particularly.”

“You didn’t hang out with your friends?”

“No”

“I see. So school’s been a drag then?”

“You might say that”

“What’ve you been learning?”

“Renaissance. Black plague. Some short story by like something Bradbury”

“How do you feel about that sort of stuff?”

“It’s alright”

Jaylee heard the therapist tell her mother that she had “unprocessed trauma”. Something about her brain and her emotional response not quite catching up to what's going on. Taking a little extra time to figure out how to process the situation.

“Not to worry”, she said, “everybody takes different amounts of time. Be patient with her”.

Jaylee decided to pay attention to how the other family members were “processing”. She wrote it in her journal.

Mother: Cries in the bedroom when she thinks no one can hear her. Note: is a loud crier. Also sometimes apologizes over and over again under her breath even though nobody is mad at her or says anything at all. Barely eats. Picking up a lot of shifts at work.

Father: Watches more TV than usual. Sleeps a lot. Yells in the evenings more than usual and then hides in his room and in the morning feels very bad for yelling but does it again in the evening anyways.

Lucy: Started reading the bible a lot, says prayers, stops at every fountain and throws a penny in. Probably wishing May back into existence. Prays a bit more. Cries in the middle of the night sometimes. Note: unclear if she is asleep or awake.

Marcus: says he doesn’t care. More aggressive than usual. Sometimes forgets May is gone and asks where she is. Gets angry and storms off a lot.

Rachel: Is a baby. Doesn’t seem to care.

“How have you been feeling this week Jaylee?”

Fifteen.

“Alright”.

“This week I was thinking we could do something a little different. Would that be okay with you Jaylee?”

“Sure".

“How about rather than telling me about this week, let's talk about a different week. Whatever week you’d like to talk about''.

“Like from my past?”

“Yes, anytime you remember”.

She stopped to consider this. A memorable week.

“Well one week we went on a walk together, all of us, and May was alive but we were all a bit younger. Rachel wasn’t born yet, Marcus was a baby I think. And well, May walked ahead of us, and mom could see her but she crossed this alley all on her own and some people in their car saw and they pulled over. They yelled at mom, told her she was a terrible mother, and that their kid could’ve been killed and I cried and when we got home mom cried and then the police came the next day. The house was a mess, they said that if mom didn’t fix herself they’d call CPS. I thought that meant that mom was going to go to jail if her house wasn’t clean. I thought that was weird. What do they care if the house is clean or not, they don’t have to live there. Well I think I know what CPS is now because my friend Aimee got taken away from her parents for some reason.”

“Thanks for sharing that Jaylee.”

Some more things happened but Jaylee frankly didn’t care to focus on it much. That night she dreamt of CPS taking May away. She woke up and wrote.

Is God like CPS? Did God think the house was too messy?

“Do you feel emotions yet Jay?”, Marcus asked, “Is that what you’re writing?”

“I’m just curious about something. I guess that’s a feeling”.

“Whatever. You’re still a psychopath”.

“Maybe”.

“Shut up”.

That was how most conversations with Marcus went. Marcus resented Jaylee for not feeling anything. He felt angry. He didn’t find any part of the situation to be fair at all. First his sister got taken away, and everybody was crying and he found that annoying. He felt guilty for finding it annoying. He felt guilty for stealing May’s things. He felt angry that he felt guilty, and guilty that he felt angry. He was angry that Jaylee got to feel nothing. He also found it creepy. He sometimes saw videos of crazy people who didn’t feel anything. Especially after killing people.

It was week 22 when Jaylee said she didn’t want to go to therapy.

“It’s boring and repetitive and no help at all. Frankly, I’m fed up with it. And that’s an emotion I’m starting to feel. I feel fed up. And I’m not a psychopath. I think I would know if I was. I don’t want to kill cats or dogs or people or even ants.”

“Jay, nobody is calling you a psychopath”, is what her mom said, “And you have to go to therapy. All of us go because it helps us deal with the difficult emotions we feel about May-”

The children knew that she was going to say ‘dying’ and couldn’t. It sounds a bit like a swear word in a way. The thing that nobody wants to say out loud. It feels like a cruel word.

“Well mom, all I feel right now is annoyed, because every week this random lady just asks me how my week was over and over and guess what? My week was fine. Same as always.”

“Get in the car. This isn’t up for debate”

“No”

“Get in the car Jaylee, we’re going to therapy, and I won’t say it again.”

“I’m not going mom”

“What the hell is wrong with you? I know you think the world revolves around you, but it doesn’t. I know that you like the attention, so you pretend like you’re some angsty kid with no feelings, and that’s cool. Keep playing! Keep pretending like you’re the most important person in this narrative but you’re not! Fine! Don’t go to therapy! You obviously don’t care about your sister or anyone else in the family so do whatever the hell you want to do. See if I care.”

Well turns out mom's other processing method is being a bitch.

Laura was married young, 19, and had her kids quick and close together. Bethany, who was married and living on the other side of the country; Arnie, who was off at college and didn’t call much anymore; Lucy, who was in the tenth grade and was surprisingly religious and very intelligent; Jaylee, who was in the eighth grade and suddenly felt nothing; May, who would’ve been in the sixth grade had she not so tragically passed; Marcus, who was a mischievous fourth grader; and Rachel, the surprise seventh child.

For 21 years Laura had been raising children. 21 years she’d been putting food into their stomach, and loving them and providing for them. For 21 years she had felt completely and utterly taken advantage of.

Laura was going to be a surgeon, before she had 7 kids instead, and got her diploma to be a rehabilitation therapy assistant. Most people thought that meant she dealt with drug addicts in therapy. That was not the case. She worked with elderly people whose mobility had decreased with age. She helped teach them modified ways of doing things so that they could enjoy life still. She helped them participate in social programs to help increase their quality of life. That’s what she did. Life was good.

But still, she was not a surgeon. She was a mother of 7, and frequently walked in on elderly patients who had shit the bed.

Laura was having one of those days. One of those days where she started regretting the fact that she had gotten married to a deadbeat and had 7 kids, and felt like she was falling apart in the geriatrics ward. It was one of those days where she wanted to stand at the top of the mountain and scream and thrash and yell and swear at the world, and her past self, and everything that had led her to the life she had. It was one of those days that she resented her children, how snobby and entitled they were, how Arnie never called and Bethany always sounded annoyed on the phone and how Marcus only wanted to play video games and how her husband still hadn’t got a proper job.

She was drowning in her own misery. Drowning a bit in self pity. Drowning in regret.

So on that day, that one day, she packed a suitcase. Some sort of inspiration came over her. The more she packed, the more adrenaline pumped into her. She knew if she stopped and thought for just a moment she wouldn’t leave. She wanted to leave. She wanted to live the life she missed out on. She didn’t know where she would go, but she was leaving.

On that day she stepped out the door and there was May, on the steps. Coming back from the park. The sun was shining, and she was smiling.

“Where are you going mom?”

“I’m running away”

And she left. She drove away.

‘I deserve this’ she thought. “I deserve this'' she whispered. And as she barreled down the highway she screamed it.

“I deserve this”.

Twenty minutes down the road Laura stopped at a gas station and parked next to the convenience store. She cried and cried and drove back home.

“How was your week Jaylee”

“Terrible”

“Why is that?”

“My mom is going off the tracks. She’s hysterical, and yelling, and swearing, and she never swears. She was going on about how I’m a terrible person and there’s something wrong with me”

“I’m sorry that happened to you. Did it upset you when she said those things?”

“I guess. It just annoyed me. Everybody is getting one my nerves”

“I’d say you’re making progress then”.

“And why would you say that?”

“Because you’re feeling things again. Feelings can be uncomfortable, and sometimes cause us pain. It’s important to focus on allowing those feelings to come, and permitting them to leave. When you have a healthy acceptance of your emotions, and allow them to serve their due time and move on, you open up pathways to be able to process and work through your trauma. Thank you for sharing that with me Jaylee”

“Well that sounds pretty stupid to me, because it sounds like you’re saying it’s fine for my mom to be jerk”

“Your mother shouldn’t say mean things to you, but she’s going through a lot of pain too. Sometimes people in pain say mean things, terrible things. They project their hurt onto other people. It’s not always the right thing to do, but you have to be patient with her, so that she can start to feel better”.

“Whatever”.

Marcus hated going to school, because his teachers coddled him and people made fun of him for it. He seemed to be able to get away with anything because all the teachers gave him this look, and would touch his arm and say something like ‘I understand how difficult this all must be’. It made him want to hit them, or somebody, or something. It made him want to run to the office and say something vulgar into the intercom and tell everyone to shut up and leave him alone.

His friends made fun of him and said he was a teacher's pet. It made no sense because normally teachers' pets are suck ups, but he wasn’t a suck up. He was mean, and angry and for some reason, it was okay. It wasn’t his fault.

Marcus knew that the teachers were being nice to him because he had a dead sister now.

“I don’t even care about having a dead sister,” he’d explain to everyone, “I have way too many sisters anyways. It’s good to have one less”. Usually this made people uncomfortable. It made him angry that it made them uncomfortable. It also made him feel guilty to say things like that. He didn’t want to be a cry baby. He wanted everything to stop being so complicated. He wanted to stop missing May. He wanted to stop feeling the twisty feeling in your gut you get whenever you remember that the person you loved is gone and isn’t coming back.

May used to take him on walks when nobody else would. They’d walk down the street while all the big kids were at school and dad was asleep on the couch. They’d draw hopscotches with chalk, or walk a few blocks away to the community garden and pick vegetables. They sometimes got lost, and Marcus could remember being picked up by nice men and women, sometimes neighborhood people, sometimes police officers, who would take them home.

Then dad would yell at them until they cried because they left the house alone.

Marcus didn’t understand why it was their fault when he was the one who fell asleep and didn’t notice they left.

Marcus lost his best friend. Rachel was boring, Jaylee was weird, and Lucy was even weirder. Lucy got extra weird after May died. She prayed too much. It felt like a cult in her room. May was cool. But May was gone. So Marcus was angry.

Lucy was in high school. She loved science, math, and English. She liked most things except social studies and Phys-ed. She wasn’t bad at Phys-ed though, she just preferred to think. Lucy always felt at odds with everyone at school. Bethany and Arnie had always been popular. Their friends came over a lot when she was still in junior high. People found Arnie charismatic. Boys found Bethany beautiful. People hardly noticed Lucy. Some days that made her sad, other days she was okay with it.

“God is my best friend”, she’d say. Some days she really meant it.

Religion hadn’t stuck with most of her siblings. The youngest ones were indifferent. Bethany was moderately religious. Jaylee and Arnie blatantly rejected it. May had been fairly religious. Her parents were religious, and wanted their kids to be too. Something had just clicked with Lucy. It wasn’t forced at all.

Lucy was mostly a peaceful person, though with contentions just like anyone else. Luckily she found joy in simple things. Reading. Writing. Praying. She liked to write her prayers down. She wrote to protect her family from harm. She wrote to thank God for her blessings. She wrote and wrote. Sometimes she only wrote to stop herself from thinking about the pain and frustrations of life. She knew that anger was a sin. She did everything in her power to avoid it. It wasn’t so easy.

Her prayers changed when May died. Her prayers were full of grievance, and confusion, and pain that she’d never felt before. She didn’t know what to do. But if she prayed, she didn’t have to think. If she spent too much time thinking, she felt like she’d explode. Everything in life was off. Missing a sister was one thing, the turmoil following was too much to bear.

God put me in a position to make a very difficult decision. I trust that God believes I will do the right thing based on the knowledge he has blessed me with. This is a trial to see how I will react to a conflict of my beliefs, I understand this is a test and trust that I will receive his guidance. There are things which I see and know that have been put in my life to guide me to greater understanding.

No matter how many times she wrote the sentences, every day it became harder and harder to believe. She never questioned religion, just her ability to handle the situations in front of her. She laid in bed crying. Crying crying crying. Every day she carried the weights of the family on her shoulder, and everyday it became harder to bear. Everyday it becomes harder for Lucy to stay alive.

“How was your week this week, Jaylee”.

“I don’t know. Lucy is acting weirder and weirder. She started talking in her sleep”.

“Are you worried for her well-being?”.

“I don’t know. She has God and all that. I’m sure she’s fine. She just seems so off. Like more off than anyone. Except mom, mom seems off too. I feel bad for calling her a bitch though. That was kind of rude”.

“Did you apologize?”

“Yeah but it was weird, I don’t know. She started crying and wouldn’t look at me. She was just crying and didn’t say anything”.

“Your mom probably has a lot of emotions circling her head right now. Maybe she feels she let you down by saying mean things and feels that she’s hurting your relationship. Maybe she’s scared she’ll lose you too”.

“That makes sense”.

One day, dad was sleeping on the couch, and Marcus was asleep upstairs, so May couldn’t go on her walk like she normally did. So she sat on the couch instead and waited patiently for someone to wake up. Mom was at work like she always was. May waited and counted the linoleum tiles.

1...2...3...4…

She Couldn’t count all the way up.

“Whatcha' counting May?”, dad asked as he woke up.

“Tiles”.

“Good job. Where’s Marc?”

“Asleep”.

Dad sat silent for a very long time and sucked his teeth. He looked down and smiled at May.

“Well since you’ve got nothing to do, let's play a game- you and I. How does that sound?”

May smiled.

Jarrod always loved May more than anyone in the world. He told his coworkers about her, and every achievement she made felt like a Nobel prize. Laura got upset sometimes, with how much he coddled her. She’d tell him he had to treat his kids as equals, and couldn’t be a pushover to one, and hard on the other. He was a creature of habit though, and their bond was unbreakable. The other children often resented her, because while he yelled and screamed at them, he always wanted to spend time with May.

“Lucky May”, they’d sneer at her.

She’d usually shrug. “I’m sure he loves you guys just as much”. She’d smile weakly. She didn’t like confrontation, especially when talking about her dad. She didn’t like to feel ostracized. She didn’t like to think about it too much. She too wanted them to be equal. She saw how wrong it was too, though it was hard to admit.

When May died, Jarrod coddled no one. He yelled and swore and sometimes said nothing at all and just watched TV. Jarrod felt guilty about it. As the weeks wore on he resolved to spend more time with his kids. He tried but most times it ended in explosive yelling. He opted instead to take Rachel in her car seat for little drives around the neighborhood.

“Great”, Marcus would mumble, “he picked a new favorite”. Lucy watched as they drove off and broke into tears. Marcus and Jaylee were confused.

Jaylee wrote.

Update. I think Lucy gets sad anytime one of us leaves the house, even if it’s Rachel and dad. I think she’s scared we may never come back if we leave, just like May.

Jaylee began to feel more and more. Like a frozen chicken thaws slowly until it's a mushy blob on the counter. Jaylee feared the day she’d become a blob on the counter. She feared when everything finally cracked into her it would be too much to handle. She felt like she’d snap in half. Ever since the Rachel and dad incident, Lucy had been mostly quiet except for praying. She wrote furiously. She wrote in the middle of the night. She cried. She talked in her sleep, mumbling mostly. She knelt by her bed. She prayed. She read the bible. She wrote and wrote and wrote. Jaylee felt frustrated. She shared a room with Lucy, and these habits were getting out of hand.

One day, Lucy left for church and Jaylee opened her prayer book.

She flipped through page after page of the same lines over and over again.

Grant me the courage to tell the truth. Grant me the courage to tell the truth. Grant me the courage to tell the truth.

Jaylee couldn’t understand. She wondered if Lucy had a secret boyfriend, or was pregnant.

‘No’, she thought, ‘that’s not like her’.

At the end of the notebook, half a page was shoved in the back. Jaylee read it slowly.

There are so many things I should have said that I didn’t because I thought it would break our family apart. I feel responsible for not having said anything. I feel guilty for breaking God’s trust. I have become a liar. I have hurt so many people. Now, among other things, I have the weight of my dear sister May’s death on my shoulders. Her life was hard, and I did nothing to improve it. I am conflicted over whether it is better to tell the truth, or keep a family together. I am scared to lose my siblings. I can’t handle this pressure anymore.

I know it is a sin by God to do so, but I don’t think I can keep living…

The note was incomplete, but written nonetheless. A panic settled in. A panic that shattered Jaylee’s soul. And suddenly she was thawed. She fell to the ground sobbing, and her heart broke and her vision was blurry, and the intensity of her fear and sadness was crippling. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing another sister. It was only then that she realized how hard it was to lose the first one. She knew her mother and father were in church, their phones silenced. So she ran. She caught a bus, she went to the church. She walked in and it was a bustle with movement. Crowds were dispersing. Jaylee ran and cried until finally she saw Lucy. Lucy, alive. She hugged her tightly. So tightly, that Lucy gasped for air.

“Whatever it is”, Jaylee whispered fiercely through tears, “You can tell me. You’re the bravest person I know”.

Lucy froze. Her heart stopped in its tracks, then sank and seemed to never stop sinking. She had thought about how to say it a million times.

One day, Lucy was reading a book on the porch and Dad came home with May from getting ice cream. He left and May sat next to Lucy and swung her legs and ate the ice cream. Lucy noticed a bruise on her arm and poked it.

“What’s that from? You take a tumble?”.

“No, daddy did it.”

“By accident?”

“I think so. We got ice cream to make me feel better.”

“What’s it like being the Golden child May? None of us get ice cream when we get hurt”

“It hurts”, she said nonchalantly.

“What do you mean? Brain freeze?”

“No I mean when daddy plays with me”.

“Why? May, why does it hurt to play with dad? Does he hit you?” Lucy felt panic rising in her throat. She felt anger.

“No. we just play games that’s it”

“What kind of games, May”.

“Dad said it's a secret”.

“Well you can trust me”.

“I’ll get in trouble.” Suddenly May sounded scared.

“No you won’t, I won’t be mad”.

May paused for a long time. It felt like years. Lucy’s leg was bouncing. She needed to know

“Dad makes me… touch him”

“Touch him how?”

“Like, touch him to make him happy”.

“What else does he do May, what else?”

“He puts his… thing... inside of me”

She felt nauseous, her head was spinning.

“You can’t tell anyone”, May whispered, “Or we won’t get to be sisters anymore. They’ll take us away from mommy and everyone else in the family, dad said so. So we can’t tell anyone. No one in the whole world. Okay?”

Lucy didn’t tell a soul. She wanted to a thousand times. It haunted her dreams. Her hair stood on edge whenever their dad came near her. She tried to protect her and play with her and steal her away, but over and over again it was too late. She’d hear May’s door open and she’d run to keep her safe but she was too late. She was already back in bed. The damage was done.

She felt ashamed for keeping the secret. She knew she should’ve told someone. She was too scared. Scared she’d lose everything she ever loved. And now, it was going to happen again. Maybe it was already happening. To Baby Rachel, who wouldn’t even be able to tell anyone she was hurting. She felt everything was her fault.

On the day that Laura ran away, May ran away too. She didn’t tell a soul she was running away, but after Laura left she knew she had to as well. She was scared of her dad, scared of what he’d do to her. Scared of him being the only parent around. Scared that his arms would be the ones she had to run to. She left because her mother was gone, and she couldn’t live without her. So she packed her backpack full of books and clothes and canned beans and apples and walked down the street and down the block. Nobody noticed but Lucy, who followed her slowly, keeping a safe distance so as not to be spotted, kept an eye out for the sixth grade runaway. Lucy always followed close behind May when she could. She felt the need to protect her.

And then from a block away, Lucy watched the driver tear through the pedestrian controlled lights. She watched little May’s body go flying. She watched it in slow motion. She saw blood. She watched the driver stop, get out, and stare at the mangled little body. She watched the driver get back in and drive away. She stared at the license plate and it swirled in her head as she ran.

TTE515 TTE515 TTE515

She called 911. She watched the paramedics cover May's body. She was dead. They couldn’t save her. The police asked her if she saw the car.

In her head she said “white SUV, license plate TTE515, a bumper sticker of a sunflower on the back”

Out loud she said “No, I didn’t see it, I just heard the crash. By the time I got there, the vehicle was long gone.”

The image of May’s body replayed and replayed and replayed until Lucy threw up. And then she prayed. It was all her fault she thought, she followed her to protect her, and she watched her die.

On the day that Laura ran away and May died and Jaylee skinny dipped, Laura cried in the parking lot for a long time, and kept crying as she drove back home. She cried and cried and her vision was blurry from crying. She saw the lights flashing but didn’t register it. As she drove and cried she heard a thump. The car jolted.

She stared down at the bloody ruins of a life she had created. She stared at the cracked skull, the half opened eyes. She stared at it and got back in. She cleaned the car and parked it and waited for a call. The white SUV was spotless and clean in the sun, the white SUV she’d driven for years. The white SUV with the little sunflower on the back.

TTE515.