Little Pink Pills

Part Nineteen, by Michelle Wilder

And he says, "Oh no, no, can't you see
When I was a girl, my mom and I we always talked
And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked.
And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do
And I have lost some kindness
But I was a girl too.
And you were just like me, and I was just like you"

(When I Was a Boy, by Dar Williams)

(Revised and reposted)

----

"I never felt that way about her."

She looked over at the doorway, and Strawberry was on the couch in the living room where I left her. Like she could see her.

"I never took care of my little girl with her. I never made sure she was safe. She was just a doll, a cute toy."

She rocked me a tiny inch. Then she kissed my hair, and breathed into it.

"I took care of you."

"I kept my little sister safe."

----

I couldn't talk. I could nod and say I was okay, but I... didn't know.

Even though it was just afternoon, Valerie said I had to go to bed.

I didn't argue. I was so tired. She got Strawberry and helped me up the stairs.

-

She undressed me and pulled a nightie on me and covered me up. Then she sat on my bed and brushed the hair out of my face and just touched my chest, where it was tight.

"Do you need anything?"

I looked at her, and I hadn't been looking at her.

I shook my head. I didn't think so.

"Can we talk? Can I talk to you?"

She moved her hand and I suddenly needed to touch her and pulled my arm out to hold hers.

I felt okay with her hand in mine. I felt safe.

----

We talked about school... going back to school... what happened that morning, and what Mom said.

Val said I was a good friend, and it wasn't always the same as loving someone.

-

She told me about university. How it was so different for everyone... like, she was taking a half course load and living at home, and some students lived in rez and were taking three times her classes.

She thought she was missing a lot that went on there, but planned to take an extra year and all of them would be a course or two easier....

The biggest difference from high school, she thought, was that nobody made her work, or even go to class, and a lot of kids dropped out from getting too far behind.

Which she wasn't, she assured me. Me neither, I assured her.

-

"If I moved into residence, would you like my bedroom?"

"You're not going to, are you!?"

"Shush... I was just asking."

-

"Well, we could ask Mom to make some nice curtains, at least. But a prettier paint maybe? It'd only take a day or two."

"You watch too much reno TV. I bet it'll take more like a week...."

"Maybe...."

-

"You think, though? Just paint and curtains?"

"Well... and new sheets and stuff."

-

"What about something like this!?"

"That's a petticoat!"

"That doesn't matter!"

-

"You think?"

"Yeah! It'd look really nice and bright... and ruffles, too, but big ones!"

"That'd look pretty...."

----

After she finger-combed my hair about the third time, Valerie went and got her antique silver hairbrush that Aunt Lucy gave her one Christmas.

----

"I was three when you were born...."

She brushed and then smoothed, brushed and smoothed.

"Mom says you were easier than me to deliver, and she was only in the hospital two days."

Brush and smooth.

"She says I didn't even understand she was pregnant or really believe that I'd have a baby brother or sister. She says I never even believed her when I felt you move in her tummy."

She lifted the hair off my forehead and then brushed it straight back.

"I guess I couldn't believe you were really our baby, that you were going to live with us... when you came home.... I thought I had to behave, like you were a treat or present I never deserved."

Her hand stopped.

"She says I used to pray like on TV... that I was being good enough and you wouldn't be taken away."

She put her brush on the bed and hugged me hard around both arms.

-

"When you were hurt, when you were so sick, I thought... I prayed. If you could only get better and... come home... I'd be good, I'd give anything...."

-

"Carson and you..." She touched me. "I felt like I got you back."

"I was so afraid I was causing it... but I didn't want to say anything and make you go away, either...."

----

"I used to sing to you when you were a baby. Mom says I was just four."

"Hush, little baby, don't say a word,
Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird.

"If that mockingbird won't sing,
Mama's going to buy you a diamond ring.

"If that diamond ring's made of brass,
Mama's going to buy you a looking glass."

She sang, and I remembered. I knew the words. I didn't remember her singing to me, but I knew the words.

She had the same look Mom did sometimes. Like she was remembering me. Like I was all the times she ever saw me.

"If that looking glass gets broke,
Mama's going to buy you a billy goat."

She had tears, but she was happy.

-

"You're the first thing I remember, really, that isn't partly from Mom and Dad telling me, or pictures. Your crib and you... helping Mom and learning how to feed you, and she taught me lullabies and I remember you looking at me while I sang, when you slowly went to sleep, and I did it..."

She suddenly cried a great big sob.

"When you were little I could teach you, you things... I could help you and be your big ~sister~.... And... and you were gone so long being a, just a boy... and didn't need me!"

-

"I always told Mom and Dad you were my little sister. And you grew up into a boy, but I was happy because you were still a little girl a lot of the time...." She touched my cheek.

"You were my bestest friend...."

"Bestest..." I lifted my right hand... and... couldn't....

Val crooked her little finger and I remembered. I hooked my pinky and we shook. Bestest friends.

----

We talked and remembered, sometimes going different ways....

"Dad said you taught me to ride a bike on the grass... and I remember we... your dollhouse in the front yard, and a... a doll bed, a wooden cradle that was... bigger... and a game with a jeep and your Barbies... and a pink table..."

I lost the memory with a dozen others, parties.... I could see the little wooden table for tea and sitting in the yard... on the front steps and... I remembered Valerie making Barbie talk and moving me around to be in the right place to move mine for her story...

Val laughed and said Mom always said she was bossy and I always said she ~wasn't~ bossy, she was ~smart~!

My doll was bigger, with yellow hair and a yellow dress... Cindy.... And Mom bringing out crackers....

It was a laughing memory, and I had to smile. A perfect tea party.

"You used to play dolls with me all the time.... I remember you... and Diane and... Robin!" I felt something more, something harder to feel....

"One time, they were... we were on a merry-go-round and you were holding me so I wouldn't fly off and it was like the best day...."

I remembered singing along with a tape player with them on a jungle gym. It felt like the same day. The park... it was gone now, the play structures. There used to be a sand box there, too....

"Do you remember the basket and wagon? I used to put you in a wicker basket in a red wagon and tow you with my tricycle?"

I remembered her laughing... and.... Not the same time, but her laughing.

I had a picture of a basket, in her room. I remembered her crying and I didn't understand and it scared me to death, then, or I was scared and... there were grownups everywhere, and Mom was crying. Everyone was wearing black clothes.... It felt like a bad dream.

I told her.

"I think that's when Oma Gertie died. After the funeral they all came here."

"I remember... a basket, in your room, in the corner... by your dresser, with toys... I think my bear with the ribbon was in it.... And you were so sad. But I don't remember Oma."

I looked over where her dresser was, in my memory, in another room. Her room....

"You wouldn't stop crying and Mom said you were scared by all the people because you were little and I said I'd take care of you and I really just wanted to get away and hide, and we played... I can't remember. A game, but I kept crying and ~you~ hugged ~me~."

She started to cry again, I think just remembering, and I hugged her.

"Oma... she was really nice. She made us this berry... dessert... plotz... and she always said it... it was called that because I dropped it once on the floor and it went 'plotz!' and Mom and Dad said it was true...." She wiped a sniffle. "But it wasn't. It's a real name."

She had to get another hankie, and brought a whole new box.

"I just remember her in pictures, and just a minute here and there unless Mom or Dad talk about her...." She looked around.

"This is where she stayed whenever she was here, and you slept with me." She started to weep. It was the only word.

"It was the last... the... last times...."

"You never slept with me, after... she...."

----

"Was there... did she have a blue fridge?" I had a picture....

"Yes! It was just painted, just like her cupboards!" She smiled at me, almost.

"I remember her, I think, and a blue fridge, with pictures on it... and you were standing on a chair and she was holding you in her arms and showing you them and you were laughing."

"She put all our pictures on the fridge...."

"Was that Oma Gertie? That I remember? She was really old... and had red glasses...?"

Valerie nodded and started to sob again and we held each other.

I remembered... she touched my hair....

Oma smiled and used to touch my hair and say it was so pretty.

----

"Do you remember your Oshoshes?"

I looked at her, at how much she wanted me to.

"Purple-"

"Purple Oshoshes! Yes! I remember... they were..." I moved my hands as if I could still feel them, their buttons... a butterfly... someone else, too....

A smile that seemed to be from somewhere else....

"They were yours!"

A ~hundred~ days and laughing and running and riding, and Val and Robin and Diane and....

And a bike that was HUGE and I had to reach ~up~ to reach the handlebars and I barely was above the scary, dirty chain and Val holding the seat while I... fell... and Val jumped on me and wrestled... laughing!

"I ~REMEMBER~!! I remember you teaching me to RIDE!!" I started crying for having forgotten it.

"It was your bike! It had a...a basket and ~streamers~ and I wanted some when I got my own bike and you got a new one instead and you ~gave~ me yours!" Remembering that bike... all the speed, and going... the streamers flying back....

"And Billy Devine pulled them off... and threw them away. He took them...."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, how I felt, and how silly it was. I remembered crying my eyes out to Daddy. And being too embarrassed to ask for new ones....

Val smiled. "Billy was a little pig."

"He was my best friend." I felt sad at that.

"No, he was just a boy who lived across the street. You were starting to be a boy sometimes then, and you thought you had to have a boy best friend, so you said that." She smiled and it was just memory.

"Catherine Oxby was your ~real~ best friend. You played all the time with her and she was your best-best friend for years and years."

Cathy.

Suddenly... all the memories had her. She was...

She had purple Oshkoshes too, that her mom got after we were friends, and brown eyes and... and... I remembered her house and mom and dad and her older brother Dev who was almost a grownup and they had a dog Cyrus who was old and didn't play but was friendly and had bad breath and was warm... and went away....

She had long black hair, and wore ribbons, and she taught me how to braid.... And her, here, in my bedroom, on the floor by my old bed and playing dolls.... And the woods where we always met. Our house...

"The woods...."

"At the end of her street! And all summer it was... those ~huge~ trees all around it and we could climb that one that... it had a branch as big around as a car.... do you remember?" Val looked at her memory. I remembered it too.

I remembered her and Diane standing on a branch like superheroes. I remembered adventure games and in the winter, the snow there....

We'd all played there. The woods. It was our world, our secret house under the trunk that leant over. It wasn't even as big as some yards, but it was our woods, and the park was next, over... under an old fence that was bent up like a tunnel... and we played in cardboard boxes, and had secret spots in the bushes, and picnics, and rode our bikes into the water in the spring and got soaked...

And one summer, they cut down the woods and built a real house....

Cathy. Catherine Anne Oxby. She was in my classes and we walked to school that was three streets away, past the park....

And her mom sewed tons of clothes, and even knit sweaters and scarves and hats, and we had fashion shows and shopping and walks and... I couldn't remember all the games, shopping and dates and, and... dolls.... I remembered Rebecca and Angela and Nancy, her three favorites. And Linda.... She gave me Linda....

And.... I remember we played dolls for years after all our friends gave up theirs. And dress-up and tea....

"Yeah...."

-

Cathy's family moved.

I felt my heart breaking again.

----

"What's going on?" Mom came around the doorway.

"Why are you in bed?!" She sounded scared and then funny, all at once.

"We're going to bed with our toys!"

Valerie laughed and kinda pointed, but the bed was covered with our old stuffed animals and dolls and toys. And a lot of books. And Val's old pink radio, playing an even older Madonna tape.

"Is it okay if we play up here today, please, ~please~? We're ~remembering~, and I know it's a mess but we promise we'll clean up after, please?"

"Mom, I remember Oma Gertie!"

"What..."

"I remember her! And her kitchen and blue fridge and you were there and it was Val's ~birthday~ party! and she got a video... and you had a pink skirt on and long hair!"

It came back to me as I spoke, like pictures... but more.

I remembered out loud... the smell at Oma's... it smelled like wood, and flowers... and she had a huge flower garden we could walk in and more kinds than I thought there could be.... And mice! There were mice in the garden! And running and screaming with Val, and Oma laughing and laughing and hugging us and she was skinny and bony and soft! And Mommy and Daddy and....

Mom cried. And laughed.

----

Mom said if we didn't quit jumping around we'd just have to go downstairs! It was only her and Val, though. I was being perfectly still, after I almost spilled on the photo albums.

Valerie said a tea party was one of her best memories, so Mom brought up a tray with real tea in a tea pot and proper cups and saucers and cookies and cut-up fruit. Half the toys were on the chairs, but enough dolls were left for a proper party. Strawberry sat with me.

-

Mom showed us pictures and told us stories about Oma and Opa's house when it was still a farm, and when she was little and visited the whole summer with her sister, Aunt Lucy... and Opa George was there, still alive....

He was always smiling, and had huge hands and one of his fingers was gone from an accident when he was a young man, and he wore plaid shirts in almost every picture. Mom remembered his voice, and how he could still remember German from ~his~ father who moved from Pennsylvania almost a hundred years ago and he said his father's grandfather told stories about coming on a sailing ship across the ocean. Mom said.

She closed her eyes at one picture, of her and Aunt Lucy sat in his lap in an armchair. She told us how he read the local little newspaper to them, and all the stories were about people he knew....

She showed us the pictures of everyone, and never cried, but sometimes she spoke slower and softer... sometimes about happy things, too.

One was Oma, Granny, Aunt Lucy and Mom all on the sofa at Oma's. They all looked sad. It was a different picture, not like the rest.

Mom said she couldn't remember why, but she looked at it a long time, and even took it out and looked at the back.

-

There was a picture of me in my... in Val's pants. She pointed it out. And Cathy, with the same, exactly same pants, and Val in a skirt. We all looked like sisters.

"Your old Oshoshes! Oh, you were so happy when they fit!" Mom was amazed I remembered them at all. She almost cried again, too.

"You were so little! I remember we had to roll up little cuffs! See?! Oh, you looked so darling and you were so happy to have your big sister's Oshoshes!" Everyone said it that way, like that was the right way.

She touched the picture. I was in the middle, holding Valerie's and Cathy's hands. We were all smiling so big....

Cathy and I were so little... but I remembered we were so big, as big as Val, sometimes.

I could see why Mom almost cried over so many pictures.

----

Mom turned the page to a big picture of a lot of men and boys.

"Oh, I remember this! This was taken at our family reunion in 1992... just after your Opa died...."

She turned the page. There was another picture of the same outdoor place, a house wall and a tree, and women. Oma Gertie, and Aunt Lucy and Granny... and an almost-a-baby, little-girl Valerie. And Mom was pregnant.

Mom turned the page back.

I recognized Grampa and my uncles and some of my cousins. Dad wasn't in it. I realized they were just Mom's side of the family. Oma and Opa's family.

"There are more men in every generation.... let's see, there were... it looks like eighteen men...."

She flipped back to the women, just seven, and pointed them out.

"Oma Gertie, your ~great~ grandmother, my grandmother... your Granny Susan, my mother... and that's your Great Aunt Fiona... my, she looks so young..."

She pointed them all out and told us how they were related and what they were like....

-

"This picture was all the women on Oma's side of the family, four generations."

"You snuck in there, somehow...." She tapped a finger on her pregnant belly in the picture and smiled at me.

Valerie hugged my arm against her chest and looked at me.

-

"Mom...."

Valerie kept hugging, and held my hand so tight it hurt. She smiled, and nodded.

Mom nodded. She still had the album open to that picture.

"Mom..." I closed my eyes. "What I asked about, this morning...?"

She nodded.

"Carol... ever since Carol said... something... I've had a, an... idea...."

It was harder, not just yelling it or something. I looked at Valerie. My bestest friend.

She smiled and nodded. I ducked. It was easier looking at Mom's hand.

"I feel like I was a little girl sometimes, so hard that it scares me, and other times I feel like a boy!"

I peeked at Mom, but she was... serious. I suddenly had no energy and was so tired I felt heavy.

"All the time, when I try to think, before?"

"I'm a girl...."

-

"But with Carson... I don't understand...."

-

End of Part 19