Trigger Warning: Themes of Suicide A secret goodbye To you, to my childhood Chalk on the sidewalk Maddy’s dad had looked at what I’d drawn and laughed, like it wasn’t a beautiful smattering of semantics, but me pining—looking for someone to acknowledge the depth of knowledge I held at a young age. I didn’t care too much, just continued blending the chalk with my fingertips and damp sponges, creasing the colorful dust with my thumbs and smoothing the ridges with my index fingers. I followed the lines, the outlines of letters, with a careful precision, like an astronaut held moon dust; so intentional, so devout to its wellbeing. I moved my body with the chalk, the butt of my cheap Walmart jeans smudged with a pallet of pastel chalk colors; purple for lightness, black for darkness, and red for both hate and love. My chalk sticks were wearing thin, the tops of my fingers grazing ever so lightly on my square of sidewalk. My sponges ripped, their fibers tired down by my constant blending and shaping. I asked mom to get me more, but they were running out. The Berea Arts Fest was winding down as the summer sun dipped over Coe Lake, and the real artists were retreating back to their homes to paint about deeper things, and talk about deeper things, and exist on a deeper level. They weren’t being driven back to their dad’s house, forced into a tiny car for an hour where their mother would complain about all the things she had no control over, and when I dared to disagree with her—to let her know that dad is happy now and maybe it's time for her to be happy as well—she’d wind her Italian tongue, whipping me with her words: You are a child—what do you know? Life has been so forgiving to you; you have nothing to worry about. You know not of the suffering of this world. In those moments of a rage--a rage only a sad mother was capable of—I would've happily traded places with one of those artists. Oh, how badly I wanted to be one of them! Drinking their red wine, coexisting with the opposite sex (but not in a sexual way), renting a cheap house filled with beaded curtains, talking in deep conversation, expressing love for anyone who walked by. I was going to be one of them—someday—but for now, I drew with my chalk, giving life to the words in my child-like head. When I looked up, my cousin Hannah was there--the person that held the other half of my soul—and there was her mom, Aunt Rox. She looked hot, waving a piece of paper impatiently, her pursed lips zipped, her eyelashes curling up in their long, beautiful, black way. She wore jean shorts, and slightly arched flip flops with a tong, her bangs “poofed” in their normal 80’s way, her weight shifting slightly to one foot. She looked annoyed with my mom as they spoke—when did she not? —but when she saw me, her lips stretched wide across the ocean, her brown eyes so warm like coffee before breakfast, her jiggly arms wrapped around me as we forgot about the heat. She used to call me kiddo, or bear, or some other name that I had outgrown, but I secretly loved that she gave me my own nickname, as if it were our little secret—as if I was her own. I smell her fresh shampoo as I lengthen my body--the scent always clinging to her hair— standing on my tip toes, showing off my slender eighth grade volleyball legs. There’s been a shift, Hannah and I are both wearing bras—Maddy, not so much—but my choppy boat ride into the sea of adolescence doesn’t change my love for you. You let me and your four kids watch scary movies when I hop your fence and stay for a sleepover, you let me decide what to eat on my plate, you let me stay up too late and still make me do chores every Saturday morning as you dance on your green carpet and turn up Kenney Chesney. You’re the cool aunt, the one who lets me vent about mom when she’s being a you-know-what, the one who doesn’t question my weight, or my worth, or complain that I’m too much like my father. You ask about Sarah and John and the step monster, and you don’t add a weight of heaviness to your tone like mom does. You are cool, and accepting, and you let me be weird. I’m brimming with pride when I show you my chalk masterpiece. I watch you read it, swallow the words and squish them around like a red wine, like there are tiny tannins taking a seat at the edge of your tongue—each one of them lined up for a show. A single eyebrow shoots to the sky, just like grandma’s. It’s the Italian coming out of you and now I’m sweating like I’ve done something wrong. I read it aloud, so eager to show off, so eager to feel your approval: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” There’s a pause. “It's a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.!” I continue. “I read it in my book. Isn’t that just a great quote?” I look at Aunt Rox expectantly; she knows how much I love words, even at a young age. I watch her eyes shimmer—they’re a little glossy—and then they turn to a blank stare, like she’s not really here, just merely connecting the dots to her daily routine of A to Z life—not living, just breathing. I recognize the defense, just like mom’s, but I’m young, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, can’t quite give that feeling a name yet. Her smile is sad, and her words don’t match what she means. And that’s it. I don’t remember if she hugs me goodbye for the last time, or what her last words were to me, or if she gave me a clue or a sign. She walks away with Hannah, and mom will drive me back to dad’s house soon and Maddy will go home. Next year will be the first year I don’t go to the Berea Arts Fest, in fact, I won’t go again until I’m a senior in high school with a college drop-out boyfriend. I’ll go back in 2016 and try to find that sidewalk square that holds an impossibly important memory, but I won’t tell my boyfriend what I’m looking for or why. It's my secret—our last goodbye, preparing me for a lifetime of them. They’ll have repaved the sidewalk by then, so things are off and god damnit life is just one hurdle after the other. I want to sink into that old sidewalk square, sink deep into the wet cement and encapsulate the last time we were together. I never want to let go of this moment. I want to sink deeper and deeper into that cement with you and ask you what you really think about this quote and the colors I choose. I want to ask you if you know that this is the last time you’ll ever see me. I want to ask you if you’ve really made up your mind. I want to ask you if you’re sad, or how long you’ve been sad, and what makes you sad. I want to ask you about your favorite color, and about the first time you kissed a boy, and the first time you smoked a cigarette. I want to ask you for your recipe for meatballs and apologize for that one time we made them together and how I didn’t eat them because I complained there were too many onions—I love onions now! I’d eat a whole onion raw to see you once more, your cheeks not pumped with formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, and methanol, but with life. The news will greet me in a few weeks, how you’re gone. But for now, I sit in this cement and remember Dr. King’s words and I just wonder and wonder. I go crazy asking myself questions that I’ll never find an answer to. You left me, you left your kids, your family, your friends, your home, and I’ll never know why. My uncle will tell me and Hannah when we’re older that you used to hide train schedules in the kitchen. I picture it next to the dark green rotary phone hanging from the wall, right above your little bread box that I use to open and shut. Was it there my whole life and I never noticed? No one tells you to look for clues, for signs, for train schedules when you’re young. Instead, you draw with chalk, and you paint words that move your little mind, and you worry about your next volleyball game, and your bedroom posters. You don’t worry that someone you love so deeply will die by suicide and leave your life, hitting the pause button forever. You don’t grow up questioning whether or not you have loved enough in your lifetime, that maybe it was your fault she’s gone. How are you supposed to know what kind of love people need? How could I have been so selfish? How could I not know? You don’t grow up thinking that suicide is weird; you stumble upon that fact as those heavy bricks called grief drop from the sky, hitting you whenever and wherever they so please. You ache, you miss, you feel the sickening feeling in your stomach knowing that you’ll never feel true, unhinged happiness again. You’ll feel guilty for feeling too happy and you’ll remind yourself that the world is a sad place filled with misery and suffering, and the living are the fools. When you’re young, you just want your aunt to look at your drawing and tell you that it's the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, how prolific, Rebecca—you have such a way with words! But she doesn’t, because she’s desperately depressed and you have no way of knowing. You’re just a kid playing with chalk. You’re just a kid, Rebecca, playing with chalk on the sidewalk. About the author:
Rebecca Cybulski is a midwesterner, through and through. She received her BA from Kent State University and works as a copywriter for a children's book company. In her spare time she enjoys playing tennis, annoying her dog, and spending time on Lake Erie.
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