I still cry about Diane at least a few nights a week, and sometimes at school, too, in front of Miss Odeen, who always has fresh tissues on her desk when I need them and time to listen to me when I feel like talking. It’s almost like now that I let myself cry, it’s a faucet I can’t turn off. Since Diane died two months ago, the time in between crying spells is growing longer, but Miss Odeen has been right. Just because it’s getting a little easier, it doesn’t mean that I’m forgetting Diane. Forgetting Diane would be like forgetting my own name. Impossible.
Speaking of Miss Odeen, she still hasn’t told me what she did when she was younger. Maybe one day she will. She has plenty of opportunities to tell me now that I’m helping her out in her classroom. Connie and the other girls joke around that I’m turning into a teacher’s pet, but they don’t give me too hard a time. After all, they’re still my best friends, even if I don’t cut class as often as I used to.
It helps to have Cheryl home. About a month after Diane died, she surprised us by showing up at our front door with a stuffed suitcase and her dark brown hair cut shorter than I’d ever seen it. I reached out with a squeal and hugged her right there on our porch.
‘I told Dennis I need some time to think,’ she said to us when at last I let her out of my arms. Mama opened her mouth, glanced at me, and then shut it. After a moment she answered, ‘You can have all the time you need.’
Now Cheryl spends her days working the cash register at Samperi’s and thinking about taking classes at the University of Houston. She’s also started reading a new book called The Feminine Mystique that looks boring to me, but I guess she finds it interesting. She’s always underlining parts of it with a pencil.
Her first night back home, having Cheryl back in our shared bedroom made me the happiest I’d been since I lost Diane. When it was time to go to sleep, she crawled under the covers with me.
‘I’m so glad to be here,’ she said as she got under the blankets. I didn’t even care that her feet were ice cold.
‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ I answered, snuggling closer. She still smelled of Noxzema like she always did at bedtime, and this comforted me so much.
‘Do you want to know something shocking?’ she asked.
Of course, I told her yes.
‘Grandma was the one who sent me the money for the bus ticket home,’ Cheryl admitted, her whispers tickling my ear. ‘She sent it in the mail with a note that said just in case. But don’t tell Mama, all right?’
My eyebrows popped in surprise, but then I smiled, pleased with this development.
‘I honestly think maybe Mama would understand,’ I told her.
‘Things have changed around here, huh,’ Cheryl said. It was a comment more than a question.
‘They sure have,’ I said, and we ended up staying awake until two in the morning talking about all of it, our voices weaving together like they’d missed each other, too.
The day I finally decide I’m ready to visit Diane’s grave, I take the city bus to Washington Avenue. I tell my mother I’m going, but I don’t tell any of the girls. Maybe one day they’ll want to come out here with me. In fact, I know they will. Connie especially.
But this time is just for me.
There’s a small caretaker’s cottage planted among the enormous trees and the angel statues and the winding paths in between large oaks and carefully maintained hedges. I go inside, and when I tell the kindly-looking older caretaker I’m looking for Diane Farris’s grave, he tilts his head and looks at me through rheumy eyes, then offers me a soft, sad smile. We head outside and he points me in the right direction. I walk, aware of my own breathing, each exhale painting a cloud in the air ahead of me. Wanting to never make it to my destination but at the same time knowing I must get there eventually.
And suddenly there it is. Diane’s grave.
The headstone is modest and plain, but I think Diane would like it that way. Would have liked it that way. I wince at the revision of the sentence in my head. Then I study the words carved into the white marble laced with gray.
Diane Amelia Farris
1948-1964
Beloved Daughter
I feel my fists clenching, my nails digging into my palms. Beloved daughter. How dare Diane’s parents put such a lie on this stone that will be here for as long as the earth turns? They kept their lies up until the very end, I guess.
Beloved friend! I think to myself. That’s what it should say. That’s the truth. Beloved friend.
The air is cool and fresh around me, but suddenly I’m warm and light-headed. I start to sink to my knees, then collapse in front of the headstone into dirt covered in patches of new grass. I feel sobs begin to build from my gut, from the deepest possible place, and soon they come heaving out of my throat, unstoppable. Full-throated cries, harder tears than I’ve ever shed.
Diane, the girl who saved my life. Diane, the girl whose baby will never know her. Diane, the girl who believed in love above anything else.
Diane, the girl I’ll never see again, except for maybe, hopefully, in my dreams.
I don’t know how long I cry, but my tears eventually lessen enough that I can hear the sound of footsteps behind me, twigs cracking. I jump and look around.
It’s Betty Howell, dressed sharp in a pink sweater set and gray skirt and carrying a bouquet of red geraniums. I exhale shakily.
‘Evie,’ Betty says, taking an uncertain step forward. ‘I’m sorry, did I startle you?’
I wipe at my nose with the back of my sleeve, not even caring how it looks. Betty reaches into her pocketbook and hands me a white handkerchief edged in pink. I stand up and take it.
‘No, it’s all right,’ I say, sniffling and dabbing at my face.
Betty leans over and rests her pocketbook and flowers in the dirt, then takes a few steps forward to stand next to me. She stares at Diane’s headstone, her face expressionless.
‘Damn it,’ she says at last.
At this I glance over at her, and our eyes meet.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘It’s rotten what they put.’
‘It’s rotten, but I’m not surprised,’ says Betty, glancing down at the gravestone again and frowning. ‘And they didn’t let anyone come to the service. They wanted to keep her hidden until the very end, I guess.’
We stand there in silence, and I think about Diane under our feet, her teenage body wrapped up in the cool, hard earth, stopped still forever at sixteen and Betty and me still breathing and moving and growing up. And I think about what Grandma says about Jesus and heaven and good souls going to their reward, and I want to believe that this is true for Diane, because she was a good soul. I want to believe that somewhere unknown, she is gliding among the clouds, golden light trailing from her fingertips. But I don’t know how much I can believe this. How much I can take comfort in this. I don’t have faith in the same way Grandma does, I guess. But I believe in my friendship with Diane, and that feels like its own kind of conviction.
I glance over at Betty. Silent tears start slipping down her face, so I offer her back her handkerchief, but she just shakes her head. She doesn’t even try to stop the tears. Just lets them race down her apple cheeks, running into the corners of her mouth and dripping down her jawline.