My mother died on a Tuesday, sometime before the B Train arrived. I know this because I had been heading to work when I got the call. I was running late that morning and missed the subway.
I already knew by the time they called me that it was over. I sat in the waiting room until the doctor found me. I didn’t cry until I got home. I didn’t know whether to be ashamed of that or not.
I spent the next few days laying on the couch with the TV on in the background. My roommates didn’t bother me too much. They watched television less and went out more and made good attempts to pretend they weren’t just avoiding me.
Her landlord called on Friday.
“Listen. I’m sorry to do this to you. But she was already overdue on several payments, and I can’t hold her apartment any longer.”
I apologized and took the cab over. Everything felt exactly the same. I almost couldn’t tell it had been seven years, it seemed even the dust was settled in the same places. The ghosts still hung in their frames, only now there was one more.
I walked through the kitchen, past the fridge full of rotting food. I walked past the beaded curtains and the picture frames and my mother’s bedroom. I wandered back into the bedroom my brother had died in.
It still has his old posters tacked to the wall. The room has always belonged more to him than it did to me, and even when I lived there I never felt like more than a guest. It seemed he had always been following me. He whispered in my ear each night while I laid in bed and my mother snored in the next room.
On the nights whenI could hear her weeping while I laid in bed, I would go to hold her. But it was almost like she couldn’t tell I was there. Her body felt so cold, so fragile, it felt as if she were made of glass. Glass doesn’t love you back.
I think now my mother must have loved me from a galaxy away. It must have been a strong love if it could cross through the chasms of grief my brother had left behind. But back then I don’t think I ever believed that. All I believed was that I had to be bigger than his shadow.
***
I moved out when I turned eighteen. I drank a lot then, and I worked as a hairdresser. I tried not to think about my mother. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think about the tasseled rugs or the tarot cards or the fortunes or anything.
Outside of my house, I felt crazy. I knew how to read, and basic math, but I felt I had missed out on giant chunks of the world. I never knew the books or the films or the songs anyone talked about.
I could barely afford rent. I found a listing in a paper, a cheap two-bedroom that was being rented out by four other girls. I slept on the couch there for a while and lived on their week-old takeout. It was better than my mother’s apartment.
The winters in New York were the kind of cold that I could feel deep into your bones, even in my apartment. Another hairdresser gave me her old jacket. She blamed pregnancy, but really I think she felt sorry for me.
It was cold though, still, but sometimes I found myself waiting outside after the salon had closed for no reason at all. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself back to that old apartment. I watched people through the windows of the restaurant beside us, cutting into steaks and laughing. I pressed my nose against the window and wiped away the foggy condensation made by my breath.
I didn’t want to go home to the apartment, and I certainly didn’t want to go see my mother. So, I wandered down the road until I came across a Catholic church.
It wasn’t one of those big ones. It was crowded between two bigger buildings, and the stained glass in the windows was covered by bars, but the doors were unlocked. I pushed my way through. I felt warmer there than I had in a long time.
I sat there, in the pews, by the rows of candles. Something about the smell of incense brought me home.
I felt scared of everything for a long time. I sat there for a while and tried to shrug off the feeling that I might die if I stayed any longer. I sat in those pews for hours.
On the way home, I stopped by a crystal store and picked up a package of incense. I fell asleep that night to bergamot and juniper.
***
I knew the smell of home, but I didn’t think I’d ever find my way back. Now, somehow, I have. And this is what I think:
I am what didn’t burn. I am what my mother and brother left behind. I don’t know if I am weak or strong. I feel my skin is made from cobwebs, but my bones are forged from iron. I didn’t know myself before and I don’t know myself now. In this kitchen, this is the closest I have come, and it was scribbled on the backs of cereal boxes in crayon. It was in drawers full of baby teeth that have now rotted.
I look around the apartment. I’ve moved everything here into black trash bags or cardboard boxes to take home with me. My mother would kill me if she saw me throwing away my brother’s things, but he is already gone. They both are. I don’t want to hold onto someone I barely even knew.
When I leave this place though, it will be permanent. My mother will be gone. My brother, too. Graves won’t keep them alive and neither will this old New York apartment. The landlord will lease it out to the next owner, and the ghosts will disappear.
But I won’t. And I think something will still be haunting me long after I have left. I don’t think grief fits into an apartment. I don’t think I can ever get back what I have missed.