The Other Halves of Me

I still remember the day my sister was kidnapped. Guess I should since I had to rehash it about a thousand times.

I was mad at her over something stupid, so I rode my bike like mad home from the park. I thought, if I could get there fast enough, I’d have time to play with her Crissy doll and braid her hair.

Oh, that reminds me what we’d been fighting about. Barbara said Crissy’s hair couldn’t be French braided, but I wanted to show her it could. Turns out I couldn’t French braid anyway, but since Barbara didn’t come home, I had plenty of time to practice.

Hours passed and it didn’t occur to me to worry about Barb. I didn’t wonder where she was. I was only happy I had unlimited access to Crissy. Mom eventually came in our room after the sun had gone down to tell us to come to dinner.

“Where’s your sister?” she asked.

I glanced around and shrugged.

I remember that shrug. It was a heartless one. I don’t care where she is. Fine with me if she never comes home. That line of thought sent me to years of counseling. The guilt I felt because of it.

“She’s probably still at the park,” I said, and I turned my attention back to Crissy.

You know how moms get when they worry about their kids? My mom actually wasn’t like that very often. It was the 70’s, after all. We were allowed to wander around town all day long, as long as we were back by dark. There was no fear of strangers worrying our moms’ heads. Mama worked long hours at the hospital. She probably figured if we got hurt while we were out and about exploring, we’d end up where she was anyway. Kidnappings happened other places to other people — that sort of thing didn’t happen in Stone Elk, Oklahoma.

But it did that day. Barbara never came home.

My mom started out calmly, telling me she’d drive to the park and bring Barb home. I just figured this slight delay meant I had more time to pilfer through my sister’s barrage of toys that she never allowed me access to. I think it was when the cuckoo clock struck ten that I realized something was wrong. I normally heard that sound in the dark on my bed. But, that night, I was still in my play clothes, dirt clinging to my knees, and it hit me at once that I must’ve been alone in the house for at least an hour or more.

Where’s Mama?

That scared feeling when your safe and pleasant home suddenly becomes the location of your nightmares washed over me. I didn’t really wonder where Barbara was. Just Mama. She equaled safety. If she’d come back home, then all would be right.

I know I called Grandma. Maybe because Grandma was my mom’s mom, which meant she might still be keeping tabs on Mama’s whereabouts.

“What is it, honey?” she asked.

I could tell she’d already taken out her dentures for the night and probably ditched her wig, too.

“Mama left to find Barbara, but she’s still not home,” I told her. “Can’t you go find her?”

Grandma must’ve had a sixth sense that kicked in at that moment. Either she could feel my mom’s distress flowing out from somewhere in the darkness or she could sense mine.

“Just wait there,” she said. “I’ll be right over.”

Grandma was coming and, all of a sudden, the darkness outside the windows seemed like the carriage for my savior. I sat on the divan in the front room, dinner plate on my lap — which mom would’ve killed me for on a normal occasion, but I figured whatever was going on was abnormal, so I didn’t worry much. My eyes were glued to the darkness outside that window. I knew I’d see Grandma’s headlights first shining on our mailbox as she turned onto our street. Then, I imagined I’d jump up and open the door for her.

It disoriented me when a car pulled into our driveway from the opposite direction. In fact, it blocked the mailbox and I panicked that I’d miss Grandma’s headlights.

But it was Grandma. I couldn’t figure out why she’d come a different way. She didn’t explain and I didn’t think to ask.

Her wig was on and she had her teeth in, but she was in her nighties and smelled like Fixodent. She wasn’t her usual talkative self, but she smiled and hugged me. It was one of those super tight hugs that Grandma’s sometimes give — or moms — when they’re trying to show you how much they love you, as if their words aren’t enough.

“Now, I’ll just take your plate,” she said, “and you run along and get your pj’s on.”

I was worried because my mom wasn’t there — and I wondered if something might’ve happened to Barb like a skinned knee or sprained wrist — but what Grandma said sounded like an invitation to skip my routine bath, and I was game, so I made no fuss. Five minutes later, I hugged and kissed Grandma goodnight. I might’ve laid awake for a minute or two, thinking the room sounded strange without Barbara’s breathing, but I fell asleep quickly.

The police said there’d been a brown station wagon hanging around the park yesterday. Had I seen it?

Sure, I saw brown station wagons every day of my existence. My uncle drove one. So did my neighbor across the street.

But this one had damage to the right front fender. Had I noticed this one?

My knowledge of cars beyond the color and shape didn’t extend to include the word fender. Still, the police harped on about that one for days.

You must’ve seen it. Did you notice who was driving it?

The shrug — again. Only, now I remembered the shrug I’d given my mom, the one that said, “I don’t know where Barb is and who cares? As long as she’s gone, I can play with her toys.” Every following shrug felt like a consequence of that first one, a heavy weight sitting uncomfortably on my shoulders, penance for my heartless soul.

I never played with her toys again. I put them all away in exactly the places she liked them. I wanted her to come home and see that I didn’t play with them, didn’t violate her personal space. I thought, maybe if I could be good enough to my sister now, then she’d come home.

It was my uncle who first suggested a funeral service for Barbara. My mother wouldn’t hear of such a preposterous and insensitive thing, but he said it might help her have closure.

“She could still be alive, for all we know! It’s only been a year!”

“Maryann,” he said, and he had that tone that told me he’d do anything to make her pain go away, just like he’d sounded when our dad had walked out. “I know you want to keep hoping, but the police have no hope now that she’s been missing for a year. They said —”

“I know what they said!” she shrieked. “But I can’t — no, she’s not — she’s still alive! She’s somewhere, lost probably. She was never good with directions. I’m sure she’ll come home soon. She’s just lost her way or something like that.”

It was classic denial. And I, only eight at the time, bought right into it.

Yeah, Barb’s just lost. Uncle James will see when she comes home. Mom was right all along. Barbara will just walk through the door and see her things are all in order and it’ll be just like it was before.

I wanted to believe it, but I was slowly being ripped to shreds by the turmoil of losing my best friend and sister. Already, I’d grown quieter, recoiling inside myself, keeping anything from my lips which might upset mom in any way, stuffing my pain down, deeply, into the depths of who I was, trying to be strong for Mama and be the best daughter I never was, willing Barbara to come home so all the pain would disappear.

Mama went away. For schooling, she said.

“Stay with Grandma and be a good girl, will ya?” She leaned in and whispered, “Make sure she don’t lose her teeth again, huh?”

I smiled, for her sake, and returned her wink with my own. But, deep inside, I felt as if, slowly, every person I’d ever loved was abandoning me, going off on their own to a place where I couldn’t come.

“Mama, when you come back, I’ll . . .” I wanted to say something really clever, like that I’d make up a new dance or write her a song, but all I could think of was, “never stop loving you.”

“I’ll never stop loving you, either, baby cakes.”

She lit a cigarette and was out the door. I waved to her from the window seat in Grandma’s kitchen as she got into her friend Pam’s car. And many years passed until I could “never stop loving her” again.

I think she thought she was going to school. I think that might’ve been the highest possible version of her plan. But her depression quickly sank that ship and she ended up in her lowest version quickly. Grandma never wanted me to hear the conversations she had with Mama or whoever was taking care of her, so she’d usually wait until I was at school or had gone to sleep.

“Run along to bed, hon,” she’d tell me.

Even if it hadn’t been only 6:30 in the evening, I would’ve known she was anxious to get on that call and hear the latest on Mama’s condition.

I could hear her crying some nights.

“Well, she’s been through terrible heartache,” she’d plea. “Just give her some time to come out of it. She’s a strong girl — always has been. She was a nurse, you know, before —”

Before what, I never wanted to hear. I’d gently shut my bedroom door and climb into bed, sometimes hours before the sun went down. Bed was peaceful. I could fall asleep and dream of other things or tell myself stories about what I’d do when Mama brought Barbara home.

Then, he showed back up.

I was twelve. Barb had been gone five years. Mama nearly three.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said. “Remember me?”

Honestly, at first, I didn’t. His hair was longer than it’d been. I guess that might’ve been due to his shift from corporate work to bouncing at a club.

“Thought I’d take you for a drive and we’d catch up.”

I knew Grandma would probably want me to go with him, so I agreed before she had to convince me of the rightness of it. But I was nervous. I hadn’t seen my dad in six or seven years. I was a little girl then and, now, I was becoming a woman and feeling awkward about all of it and too embarrassed to ask Grandma what was going on with my body because, to me, she seemed to be about a hundred and fifty years old.

He drove a brown station wagon. I knew, now, what a fender was, and I always checked brown station wagons now for damage to the right front fender. But no dice. His car was clean. Or, else, he’d fixed it. I felt suspicious, regardless, maybe because this man had abandoned me and my mom and sister. Maybe because Barb was supposedly kidnapped by someone who drove a brown station wagon. Maybe because I felt like an awkward preteen.

But Dad was actually cool. He had the Sex Pistols on 8-track and he let me take a hit off his joint. After that, I was feeling fine enough to drive all over the country with him, had he only asked me. But it was just one afternoon and then he was gone as quickly as he’d vanished before.

“Why did he even come?” I grouched to Grandma weeks later when the high of his presence had worn off.

“I don’t know, hon,” she said. “Maybe just to catch up, like he said.”

“But all he did was tell me what he was doing and where he was working and stuff like that. And about his ex-girlfriend and his new gig in California. But he didn’t ask about me or what I like.”

My heart ached more at that moment than it probably had in all the years past. I had been this close to having my dad back, or so I believed, and now he was gone. I had my loyal grandma, but I didn’t feel like I had anyone else — no one else who knew me or knew what I liked or asked me how my day was or gave me Christmas presents.

I burst into tears right there at the table. I think, normally, Grandma would’ve sent me to my room to ‘cry it out,’ but she came to me with the smell of bologna on her hands and gave me that same big, tight hug she’d given me the night Barb disappeared.

“Hon, he’s a mixed-up guy. Always has been. He did too many of them happy pills and, now, his brain’s all kinds of screwy.”

“Did you want me to go for that ride with him?”

“Only if you wanted to. Honest, I wouldn’t have cared if you’d stepped on his toes and called him ape.”

I had to laugh, partially because her dentures at that moment fell to the floor and, also, because I knew if Grandma, the epitome of cordiality, was ok with me stepping on my dad’s toes . . . then she must really love me.

Years have passed — I’m a mom with two daughters and a son of my own, not to mention a husband who’s the second-best person to ever come into my life.

Yes, Grandma took first.

First to reassure me that it wasn’t my fault Barbara never came home.

First to tell me how beautiful I looked in my prom dress — and how smart I’d be to keep it on all night.

First to suggest I apply at the college I’d been eyeing — even though it was six hours from home.

First to get a suspicious feeling about my (ex-)fiancé, who I later discovered was screwing around with my best friend’s cousin.

First to pull me back up on solid ground after I’d near jumped off the platform of sanity.

First to tell me she’d prayed my whole life that I’d meet a man like Grant (my husband).

First to tell my dad he wasn’t walking me down the aisle at my wedding — because she was.

First to break the news to me that my mom (her daughter) had taken her own life.

First to say my newborn daughter looked exactly like my mom did.

First to give her DNA so the police could identify remains they suspected were Barbara’s.

First to give up her own burial plot so Barb could lie next to Mama.

First to show me what unconditional love was.

And today’s another first with Grandma — the worst first — the first day of my life she’s not taken a breath, and I’m not sure how I’d keep taking them myself if she hadn’t been so irrationally crazy about me. That spoke more to me than any of her big hugs ever did (although, I’d love another one of those, too).

As I lay her to rest today, on the other side of Mama (where my dad was supposed to be buried before we saved ourselves the trouble and money and just cremated him), I’m afflicted with a deep aching that hovers over me like a haunting ghost from my past. It was a feeling I couldn’t describe back then, not until I’d been through counseling — since my birth, Barb had been my other half and, when she was gone, it felt like I’d been ripped in two. Mama had become my other half, however brief that may have been, and then she was gone, too. I was ready for my dad to be my other half, if only he’d felt the same way, but that loss healed quicker than the others. Yet, somewhere along the way, Grandma took all their places. And, now with her loss, I feel ripped again, half of who I am.

There, side by side, lies my three halves, the three parts of me I never wanted to give up. Together, they’re whole. And I’m still here. Grieving. Ripped. Yet, whole as well.

I’ve got Grant. My kiddos. And my first grandchild on the way. Even got a newly-discovered brother (from my dad) that I’m learning to love in a unique way. And I’ve got the memories of those I’ve loved and lost. And one day I’ll join them, the unbreathing half of someone else, a person I love and leave behind who must go on and live and become someone else’s other half, willingly but not willed, until their time finally comes to join the rest of the buried halves.

Halves laid to rest. Yet whole, even so. Dividing entangled souls. Yet multiplying in love. A long, timeless chain of halves, connected to one another since the beginning. Breaking, though unbroken.

May we all rest in peace.