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By Yah Yah Scholfield
Janine was alone, afterwards. Once the gawking neighbors got their fill, once the cops and firefighters did what little they could do, and once the coroners had gingerly swept up the charred body, all that remained was her and the dead grass. She shrugged off the shock blanket one of the firemen had thrown on her, folded it over her forearm. A gust of unseasonably warm wind blew ash into the air, a sprinkling of black on her hair, her lashes.
Wordlessly, Janine went around the yard and plucked up the singed scraps of fabric, slipping them into the pockets of her cardigan. She grabbed the water gallon still reeking of fuel, the cheap Zippo lighter plastered with bare-legged women, and a single blackened shoe. She went inside her house, deposited her collection onto the kitchen table. Wiped her face. Washed her hands. Soot clung to them, the lines of her palms and her nailbeds and beneath her nails dark with it.
What now? thought Janine. Was she supposed to scream? Cry? Screaming would only
tire her further, and tears would not douse the flames that danced behind her eyelids. She settled on tea, instead, and a little snack. Janine filled a kettle with water from the tap and placed it on the stove, then pulled down a box of shortbread. She had two, then three, then five. They tasted like nothing, like ash and mush, but she did not stop until the tin was empty and her lap was full of yellow crumbs.
Gluttony was one of the seven sins, wasn’t it? There was something vile about eating for the sake of eating, of eating just because her jaw worked, just because she was alive to do it. Janine thought of Atalanta, how when she fasted, she’d look surreptitiously over at Janine’s plate piled with goodies, her napkins and plastic cups stuffed with chips, cookies, ice cream. She never lectured, never said anything outright, but Atalanta knew how to turn a room cold with a look. Janine opened her mouth, let a blob of half-eaten cookie fall into a napkin, and threw the mess away.
The house was always quiet, but it was deafening now without Atalanta’s ambient noise. Where was that featherlight step in the hallways, the socked feet padding across the kitchen floor? Where was that terrible clatter of cutlery as she looked for her favorite spoon? Where did it go, the even breathing that rattled flypaper and blew wind into the blinds? Who had snuffed out the voice tunelessly humming hymns, musicals? Without it, the house sank in on itself, embarrassed by its vastness, mortified by its emptiness. It lacked something, some thing bright and young lounging on the couch, tearing up the stairs two by two. Some thing disappeared.
The kettle whistled. Janine poured two cups on reflex, one with light sugar and the other with a dash of milk. When she realized what she’d done, she set the milky cup at Atalanta’s usual spot along with that artless steel spoon of hers. She took a sip, felt the tea scald her mouth and throat, burning her from the inside out.
Almost, almost but not quite like Atalanta herself, who, an hour ago, stood out on the front yard, doused herself in a brew of cooking grease, bacon fat, kerosene, alcohol and gasoline she’d siphoned out of the car, and lit herself aflame. She burned for approximately five minutes and twenty seconds before collapsing, screaming, shrieking, onto the grass. By the time somebody found the wherewithal to call anybody, somebody, to help, Atalanta was naught but ash and bone.
What was strange was that Janine knew it was coming. Atalanta had told her with her own words that she’d been dying soon, that her spirit had grown too weary for this wicked world. At the time, Janine was unimpressed. Atalanta was always like this, moody and prone to dramatics, so she paid little attention as her daughter described her eventual ascension into sainthood.
Only once Janine had drunk her second cup of coffee did she start questioning the
proclamation.
"The body must fall away for the spirit to rise..."
Janine looked her over. Had she gotten skinnier? Were those cut marks on her arms any deeper or was she fine? They had a suicide scare a few months ago —Atalanta in the bathtub like Ophelia, her wrists cut longways up to her elbow, the tub more blood than water. The bathroom was awash with votives, the light from the myriad candles casting weird shadows on the tile. Though she lived that time, saved by Janine’s nursing expertise, it was just another notch in Atalanta’s self-flagellating belt. She worried about not being fast enough. She worried about not being there when (not if) it finally happened.
“You’re not thinking of scaring me to death again, are you?”
Saintly Atalanta rolled her eyes. “’Be ye not afraid.’”
“Can I get a direct answer, Sister?” Janine stared in Atalanta’s eyes, and Atalanta held her gaze for a while, then looked away. She had the sleeves of her shirt rolled up to her elbow, and she pulled them down.
“It’s not going to hurt. It never hurts.”
“It never hurts you,” said Janine. She took Atalanta’s hand in her own and squeezed it. “I never know what’s going on in your mind. You never tell me, but I’m here anyways. I’m your mom. You can tell me anything.”
But I am telling you,” insisted Atalanta, which of course led to a sermon, and a sermon led to Janine getting flustered, and Janine getting flustered only led to anger, arguments. They were always one-sided, Janine ranting and pleading with Atalanta to see someone, seek help, come out of her head, come out of her room while Atalanta sat in total silence, hands folded on her lap and eyes downcast. Sometimes she prayed while Janine raved, hands tumbling over her rosary as she asked God for patience, for peace (for Janine), for acceptance (for Janine).
In the end, Janine gave up, literally throwing her hands in the air, and said, “Fine! Fine! If you want to play Joan of Arc, play Joan of Arc. What do I care?”
What did she care? Janine ran her hands over the singed fabric and scraps of Atalanta she brought from outside. Blue cloth and a tennis shoe, that’s all she had left of her girl. She wished she kept fighting her. Kept fighting God, if that would’ve helped.
Not that she could fight God, or even would. Janine had long ago decided she wouldn’t play tug-of-war with her daughter, not for anything or anyone. She loved her, she would let her go, even into the mouth of the holy lion. And Atalanta went, threw herself headlong into God with no intention or wish of being saved, save by salvation. Fervor became fanaticism. A little collection of saint cards and candles became boxes upon boxes of Bleeding Hearts, shrines, relics. She shaved her head, wore a hair-shirt. Atalanta mortified her body, mortified Janine, too.
How could Janine compete? God, formless, flawless, so far and yet so close, closer than Janine could ever aspire to be, was more mother than Janine was. After Atalanta’s father died, after Janine’s grief swallowed her whole, He came to Atalanta in a haze of thurible smoke. Money problems forced them to bounce from place to place, never making friends or keeping them, and here came Jesus, meek and mild and permanent, his mouth pouring with promises to turn her tears into wine. What good was her motherly love, her advice, when a holier mother stood in shady alcoves waiting for Atalanta with open arms?
Even so, even knowing what she knew about Atalanta’s disposition, her fevered prayers for release, Janine couldn’t have braced herself for the immolation. There were no pamphlets at the support groups, no handy article written by sympathetic sufferers. Neither the nurse nor doctor warned Janine about Christ and his tarot deck of saints when they placed Atalanta into her arms. And even if they did warn her, what could Janine have done? Bar her from religion? Ban the cross, outlaw the disciples? No, there was nothing to save her Atalanta, and Janine knew it. All her life, from birth to birthdays, Atalanta had been running towards burnt grass, the stink of gasoline.
Janine finished her tea. Washed her cup, washed her hands. She left Atalanta’s cup out for her, in case she changed her mind.
And yet, life went on. A week passed, then two. Time off for mourning was offered to Janine, but she refused it. If she could not save her daughter, she would tend to other people. Working at the nursing home gave her time away from her own house, time away from the quiet and the detritus of the dead. Better to be here amidst the old, the kindly folks that patted her hand and slipped her candy and gave her cheek. Ever so often, a co-worker or a patient would say how sorry they were for Janine’s loss, how shocking and terrible it was. Janine only smiled and told them that each day was a blessing, and that she just had to push on. Push on and past the aching in her chest, the suffocating press of memories and thoughts that assailed her, the way her stomach flipped at the mere mention of Atalanta’s name.
During the third week after Atalanta’s immolation, Janine buried what remained of her daughter. She gave the dirt all she had of her, the shoe and the scraps, the melted remains of a crucifix. The priest said a few words. A handful of kids from Atalanta’s school brought flowers and cards.
After the wake, after her kitchen had been stacked with casseroles and cakes and pies, after a neighbor had offered to re-sod her yard (she turned it down), there was just Janine in the house, alone again with the quiet. She refreshed Atalanta’s tea and set it back where it was on the kitchen table, then walked the house.
Wandered, dazedly, the halls, looking for signs of Atalanta, for some proof that she really existed. Doubting Thomas wanted to see Christ’s stigmata; Janine only wanted to see Atalanta’s laundry in the hamper, her book report crushed at the bottom of her bookbag along with pencil shavings, a bag of chips.
Where did she go? Where was that little girl of hers, mysterious and sunny, turning cartwheels on the driveway and doing flips on a trampoline? Where was that thing that sprinted barefoot, who danced wildly at gatherings, who knew the right thing to say and when? Did she exist? Janine considered what she knew about Atalanta, what she knew was true and what she might’ve imagined. The realization that she knew nothing, had nothing almost bowled her over. She disappeared. Somehow, while mothering and providing and protecting, Janine forgot the complexity of a teenage girl, how everything seemed dreamy and serious all at once. And she missed it, the catalyst, that thing that transformed her Atalanta from a bombastic, light-filled girl into a modern-day Joan of Arc, complete with the voices of saints and trumpets heralding in her head.
Janine came to Atalanta’s room. She hadn’t looked inside since before Atalanta died, and now it seemed too holy to touch, sacred even in Janine’s blasphemous mind. She imagined there was a shrine set up in there, the candles melted down to scented wax and cards gathered around framed paintings of Francis of Assisi and Saint Therese. She imagined it was plain, much like the room was when they first got the house, the air stale from the lack of circulation. Janine took a breath, opened the door.
Pictured —Mary Magdalene at the tomb of Christ, eyes blown wide at the rolled stone and the angels standing guard. There were no guards touched with sleep here, no angels dressed in light. No hark or ‘Fear not!’ to ease her mind. And Janine, under prepared for her role, held no oils, no spices and cloth to prepare the body. All she carried was her own body, weary wiry misery, weak with grief.
Where did Atalanta go? She went here, up here, to her bedroom. There was not nearly as much religious paraphernalia as Janine thought there’d be. Atlanta lived simply —her bed with its thin sheets and blanket, her dresser stuffed with knee length skirts and long sleeves, her nightstand heaving beneath the weight of her miscellany. There were posters on her wall; a Korean boyband she liked, a magazine clipping of the Sacred Heart, and a flyer taped over her bed announcing the time and place for the auditions of the Catholic school’s production of Grease. Janine smiled. Atalanta had come to her a month ago with the script, pestering her to sing the male part of “You’re the One That I Want” and then, once she realized she didn’t have the vocal range to play Sandy, switching over to Rizzo’s “There Are Worse Things I Can Do”.
Dead girls needed no privacy. Still, Janine felt devious as she carded through her late daughter’s things. She opened the drawers of the dresser and nightstand, rifled through her scrunches and hair care, her chaste dresses, her books, her CD collection, her laptop (always unlocked, she never had anything to hide), her heavily annotated copy of the Bible. Her diary.
It was just a composition notebook, the white parts of the cover colored with pink pen. Janine took a seat on Atalanta’s bed, opened it, and read. She learned that Atalanta’s mind was verdant with visions of fields. Her Heaven was a heaven of humpback whales and Broadway numbers, saints with halos and angels dressed like Judy Garland. Atalanta dreamed like a prophet, all ladders and dry bones. Goats spoke to her, and sheep, and dogs, and trees, when they felt like it. God appeared to her as burning bushes, as mountains, as sunlight shining through her window in the morning. Everything was blessed, everything was bright. Angels came to her in
the black of night and lit her room alight with holy fire. She spoke warmly of Janine, and spoke very little of herself.
In the latter half of the diary, Atalanta’s prose took a turn for the biblical. She wrote exclusively in the third person as she described dreams that became more and more outlandish. Her visions of God came to her twice, sometimes three times a day. Joan of Arc spoke to her through the radio, and Saint Lucy walked her to school. The Holy Mother appeared in the parking lot of the abandoned Blockbuster, turning cartwheels and inviting Atalanta to discard the flesh, discard the flesh.
At first, it seemed as if Atalanta was fighting against these whims, tussling with angels, but soon the pretense was dropped. She was all in, devoted. She assured herself that in time her mother would understand, that though the grief would eat her, soon she’d be at peace.
Tear after tear wetted the pages of Atalanta’s diary. Like Christ mourning Lazarus, she wept. The pages flew past her, telling her over and over how Atalanta had conferred with God in the scrubby park by their house, praying in her own Gethsemane to be relieved of her burden, to have her cup taken from her. God pushed the cup to her, though, and Atalanta obeyed. For two months, almost right after she’d been released from the hospital for cutting open her veins, Atalanta collected her mix of oils, saving bit by bit until her water jug was full. She wrote how she was scared but excited, how she feared the pain but awaited it. Joan wrote back saying that the flames never hurt for long, that they burned and burned, and then you were free.
Janine closed the diary, set it to the side of her. She blinked through her tears, blinked around the barren room bare of its owner. A picture of Mary Magdalene gazed beatifically at her from the wall, a vase of perfumed oil in her hands. She smiled, benign and close-mouthed. Janine looked away, righted Atalanta’s room (drawers neat again, diary back under her bed), locked the door from inside, and left the room.