Laurustina

I am sitting here at my father’s desk just before midnight. The house has been quiet for more than an hour, with both my sisters, my father and his wife E. asleep. I have just finished off 3/4 of a pint of vodka and think that I can probably sleep soon. Before I do though, I sneak the secret stash of vodka out of my suitcase and use it to refill the legitimate bottle of vodka in the freezer so no one will worry come morning.

We bought the legit bottle at the local Super WalMart here in Fallon (yes, i was dragged kicking and bitching into a WalMart tonight to purchase desserts and spirits and yes, therapy will ensue). The trip out here was good. It is easy being around Morticia. Not so easy once we got here. Baby Sister tiptoes around me. E. just kinda pretends that everything is normal and Dad, I see him watching me more than he used to. No one says Ashlie’s name aloud. As if it is not proper.

My father and his wife have eight children between them. Those eight children have eighteen children between them/us. Of the eighteen, nearly a third have offspring of their own. There are fistfulls of photos of children I don’t recognize, have never met and barely remember the childhood versions of the parents of, in gilded frames about the house. E. shows us new photos of “Mandy’s baby” on the computer tonight, and I honestly can’t even figure out who Mandy is, except that apparently I am somehow related to her and I should be gushing over how lovely her little angelic kid is.

And all I can think is “fuck this”. I love you all, Dad, E., both of my sisters and hell, i even like a few of my step-siblings, but seriously, I don’t fucking want to fucking look at fucking photos of some baby when i don’t even fucking know whose baby she is, or what grandkid i do or don’t remember even fucking birthed her. And then, of course, I feel like shit, because deep down, I want it to all be about me and MY baby who won’t be birthing any babies or knocking any teenage girls up or doing a goddamned thing for ever ever again.

Later things feel a little better. Baby Sister and I are chainsmoking in the garage, where our father created a makeshift smoking lounge because the desert winds are too furious for casual outdoorsiness after dark, and we talk a bit about  things. Later still, when everyone has gone to bed, I chat with Mr. J. on facebook a bit and even though I’m not home I get a little of home through the wonder of the internets and I finally think that I’ve had enough of the vodka rock stars to be able to sleep which is when and where i set about pouring the secret stash of vodka into the legit bottle of vodka so no one will worry in the morning. Because god forbid someone worry in the morning, ya know?

I am leaving tomorrow morning on a road trip with my sister Morticia, heading East, over the mountains and into the Nevada desert. Our baby sister Little G. flew down from Oregon on Sunday and awaits our arrival at Dad and E.’s house in Fallon, about an hour outside of Reno. It will be the first time in years, that all three of my father’s daughters will be under his roof at the same time. I am looking forward to the trip, but am also apprehensive at being away from home, even for two nights, right now.

My sister Morticia brought me tulips today, a delicate pink with fringed petals. Ashlie would have approved. Each day things get easier AND harder. Yesterday I cried because I couldn’t find anything in her room that still smelled like her. Today I laughed because there were nine lighters in the dish on the back porch, when a month ago, I’d have been lucky to find one because Ash would lift every lighter she could get her hands on. Each time I passed the tulips today, I smiled, realizing that while I’ve spent a lifetime shying away from the color pink (finding it too prissy, too obvious) now it embodies her spirit and beauty and i find a great comfort in that.

Our dear friend Jorge read the following poem from the Great Sufi Master Hafiz at Ashlie’s bedside on our last day with her and our equally dear friend Dan read it again, at her memorial. It was impossible not to notice that today was the 19th again, a full month after the day that this whole nightmare began. There is comfort for me in these words and I whisper them to myself, alone in her room sometimes late at night.

  Before today, the longest I ever went without seeing her was ten days, three years ago, when she packed herself off to Devil Pups boot camp at Pendleton Marine base in Oceanside. I’ve always been fine for the first couple of days when she is gone, but by day three, I’d start to miss her … like an itch in the back of your throat, or the ache of an oncoming cold … you can feel it coming and you know there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it.

Today marks three weeks since I last touched her warm hand with its chewed-down fingernails, painted goth-gurl black, since I last worked a tangle out of the lock of hair that always fell onto her forehead until she’d get so fed up with it that she’d glue it back with a half-gallon of hairspray. Today marks three weeks since the night I walked out of the Oakland Children’s Hospital and got into the car with my father and sister, leaving her body there for the last time. And today was the day that my sister Morticia brought her ashes home.

Inside the bag my sister carried into the house, there is a box. Inside the box, there is a bag. Inside the bag are Ashlie’s ashes. They have a weight that is unexpected. Later in the day, alone in the house, I enter the room where we left her. I pick up the box and  wrap it in a soft blanket. Then sitting on the floor in the middle of the empty living room, I cradle the box, in the blanket, and I rock back and forth like any mother would cradle and rock her child to sleep.

Tonight she is home and I can finally weep.

I spent a while today in her room, cleaning and unpacking and repacking her footlocker. Mr. J’s father bought the footlocker for her a couple of Christmases ago, back when she was hardcore into the military relics and collectables. Until today, that’s all it held. A jacket and leg warmers and four-finger gloves from WWII, an old packet of MRE rations with the tiniest bottle of Tobasco from her Devil Pups days, a canteen, tin plate and utinsels, medic’s bag and helmut from circa-I-don’t-know, a framed photo fo General George Patton and the printout of an e-mail exchange between her and Sarge, the old Army Drill Sergent who taught her for two years in that one room classroom off Soquel Ave., and still teaches the kids no one else wants to teach in Santa Cruz County. He was one of a handful of grown-ups she truely respected and in these last few months, he did her the honor of respecting her back.

The footlocker is split into three sections. A removable wooden tray, the size of a dresser drawer and split in half by a board running down the center, comes out to expose the lower half of the interior, with its bits of sawdust and a couple of stray rust nails swept into the corners. I unpacked her boy things, sorted through them, and tightly repacked the ones that meant the most. I don’t know if it was my intention at the outset to free up half the space in the trunk for girlie treasures, but that’s how it worked out, so that folded in tidy stacks beside the camoflauge pants and AirSoft Glock, are her Frankie Goes to Hollywood and “Do Ask. Do Tell” babydoll tees.

I tucked the wooden tray into place and started filling its interior compartments in the same way; half with memories and whatnots from her first life and half with trinkets and treasures from her last one. I don’t know if its right, compartmentalizing her life in this way, but I DO know that the hour or two spent in her room today, touching her things…laughing at the letters we sent to Camp Pendleton, which came back “Forwarding Address Unknown” and crying while remembering shopping for a particularly delicate bra she never wore…it was good and therapeutic. The forty minutes it took to write this; equally so.

Bliss and Pea have arrived, therefore all is as well as it could be tonight.

Last night I called The Second Redhead and told him what had happened. Today he called me back and I tried to explain about Ashlie. It was more than he could handle. “Don’t call him HER” he said. I didn’t, after that. Telling someone that someone they loved is gone is fucked up. Telling them that the person who is gone was someone other than who they thought they were, and for that reason, a whole period of time they could have shared was intentionally snatched away is even more fucked up. Thing is, he figured i was keeping Ash from him all this time because of the drugs. Another thing is, that the guilt of being a practicing addict in her life while she was growing up, kept him up all night last night. I told him that there is enough guilt and blame to keep us all company for a lifetime. We both stayed quiet for a long time after that.

We are pushing forward towards Saturday. The day of her memorial. Two weeks to the day from the last time I held her warm hand up to my face and wiped my tears on her fingers. And as long as I keep my mind on the calls still to be made (a shorter and shorter list), the tasks to be completed (precious few remain) and the social graces to be maintained, I can keep going. I can even look forward to the small pleasures to come; the presence of beloved friends, cooking for people i love, the peace (though tinged with terror) of finally collapsing into myself. I can hardly hold off the need to crawl down the hall, curl up on her bed, amid the twice-washed, thrice-folded laundry and weep until i can weep no more.

The photo is from a No On Prop 8 Ralley. That’s Jackie on the left, a mid-fifties transwoman who became Ash’s “Auntie” and dearest friend over the last year. It was Jackie, who found Ash unconscious and barely breathing on the morning of the 19th … Jackie, who held my hand in her own shaking hand while we waited in uncomfortable chairs in the ER … and Jackie who broke down when the doctor came in to deliver the most devistating news of my entire life.  I faltered, weak in the knees, and leaned into Mr. J.’s shoulder. I remember mumbling “Jesus” and “Oh Fuck” and “Oh God” and “Shit” over and over. I remember feeling faint and the wetness of tears on my face. I remember moving across the room to comfort Jackie at some point. But I didn’t weep and I didn’t wail.

I have spoken with Jackie every day since it happened. She was there with us in Oakland when we left my darling girl for the last time. She has taken up the task of coordinating the sympathy calls and condolences of the Pride Center here in town and the PFLAG crowd. Carved out in my heart is a fat and soft (though occasionally grudging) space for her. But tonight, on the phone, in the middle of our rambling “check-in” I felt a pang of jealousy so intense that it has remained with me for hours. 

“I’ve cried so long and hard, that I can’t cry anymore.” she said.

“Me too.” I responded, which was a lie.

Because I haven’t. Oh there have been brief moments of polite tears and even a few disquieting sobs. But honestly, horrifyingly, I haven’t REALLY wept or wailed or grieved yet, and I was somehow suddenly angry and jealous and devistated by the thought that Jackie had … could …did … and dared to go on to say, that this morning, she saw a little spark of sunlight break through from the other side.