Claudia and the Sad Good-bye

There are people you’ve known a long time and you know you’re never really going to like. And there are people that you meet and grow to like. Then there are people you meet and you like instantly.

Everyone says little kids don’t break, but they do. Inside. I broke when my father walked out on us.

My grades were dropping. My grades aren’t too good to begin with, but they’re pretty stable. Your average C work with an occasional B or D thrown in. I’ve been known to fail tests, but when I dropped to a solid D average, no one seemed surprised or even said anything and that surprised me. Ordinarily, my parents would have hit the roof, and my teachers would have called me in for conferences. They’d have said things like, “We know you can do better. You’re a smart girl. You have a high I.Q.” (That’s true. I do.) Or, “We know you can do better. You’re Janine’s sister.” That was the killer. It was also the point. I’m Janine’s sister, not Janine. Anyway, except for feeling tired all the time, I wasn’t sure why my grades had gone down. I did my homework more often than usual. I read all the chapters that were assigned to us. But I’ll admit that it was hard to concentrate. Maybe that was because suddenly it had become hard not to think about Mimi. For awhile, I tried to shut her out of my mind. Now I couldn’t. But why didn’t someone say something to me? Why did they let my grades slide? Just because Mimi had died? Mimi would have wanted me to do well in school, if I could.

Sometimes I forgot that Mimi was dead. Like, one morning, I woke up to the smell of coffee and thought, Mimi’s already in the kitchen. And one afternoon I was in a card store and suddenly thought, almost in a panic, Mimi’s birthday is only a week away and I don’t have a card or a present for her. Each time, the awful truth would then blaze its way back into my brain. Other times, I wouldn’t be thinking about Mimi at all, and her memory would come crashing back to me. Those times were the most inconvenient, because I wanted to forget, not remember. Once, I was listening to the radio, and a song was playing and there was a line in it about a gentle person or a gentle life or something like that, and it brought Mimi to mind right away.

All I wanted was something normal, a day like last Tuesday when Mimi was still alive, which was less than a week ago. I wanted to walk to Stoneybrook Middle School with Mary Anne, open the side door, which we sometimes use because it’s close to my locker, saunter through the halls, look for the other club members or maybe for Dorrie Wallingford or Ashley Wyeth or some other friend, and hope that a boy would notice my outfit and smile at me.

The burial service began. It was quite short, but Stacey remembers much more about it than I do. All I remember is thinking, as the casket was being lowered into the ground, Mimi’s not in there. So I didn’t cry. A bunch of men were just putting a box in the ground. That was all. Then Mom made me throw a white rose into the hole. I thought, What’s the point? Mimi won’t see it, but I did it anyway (since we were being formal).

Despite what Kristy wrote in the notebook, I know she felt a little funny holding a club meeting on Friday, the day before Mimi’s funeral, but I really wanted to. Janine and I weren’t going back to school until Monday because there was too much to do at home and with everything all out of order like that, I at least wanted to hold regular club meetings, and Mom and Dad had given their permission. I didn’t like special attention. I wanted my life to go on as usual, or, as Kristy said, as if nothing had happened. That was pretty difficult when I wasn’t going to school, so if we’d stopped our club meetings, I don’t know what I’d have done.

You must be Corrie,” I said to the little girl standing on our front steps. She nodded shyly. Corrie was very pretty, with brownish-blonde hair cut straight across her forehead in bangs, and straight around her shoulders below. Her eyes were framed by long, dark lashes. She was small for her age and had no color at all in her cheeks.

Sometimes when my friends leave after a club meeting, I feel a little let down. Suddenly my room is quiet again and it’s funny, but that’s when I miss Stacey the most. Knowing that my only best friend is all the way in New York City makes me feel bad, but just for a few moments. Then I remember that Mimi is home and I can run downstairs and help her fix dinner.