What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez

We were not that kind of family, the type who spoke politely to each other about where and how we were in pain.

It never failed. Being at my mom's house always made me feel like expired milk.

Sometimes it feels like the three of us are still stuck in that car. Shouting out Ruthy’s name into the unanswering dark.

I tell you, the worst type of womanizer is the former geek.

For some reason, guidance counselors always reminded me of robots, as if they'd downloaded their gestures from a manual.

Jess liked all of her liquor to taste like aluminum pouches of Capri Sun.

Besides, you can only sympathize so long for somebody else's loss before you run out of encouraging things to say.

Like they always tell us, there is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future. Who am I? To immediately judge?

Avevo sempre avuto paura di mia madre. Avevo sempre avuto paura che facesse una sceneggiata. Non solo perché le sue emozioni potevano schizzare da zero a cento in qualunque momento [mine too], ma anche e soprattutto per il modo in cui ESAGERAVA NEL SUO RUOLO DI MADRE.

Gli altri mi dicono che dovrei sorridere, ma quale persona normale riuscirebbe ad avere un solo pensiero felice in testa con questa consapevolezza? Come potrei ridere? O fare qualunque altra cosa? No, mai più.

Part of me wondered what it would be like to be a kid again, to not have to work, to lie in bed all day, to simply open my mouth and scream. Surely somebody would run to my side and cradle me in the dark and whisper It's okay my love, over and over again into my ear, until I fall asleep.

Chorus wouldn’t be so bad if Ruthy weren’t an alto, because altos always have the suckiest parts. It’s almost like they aren’t even singing but grunting out random low sounds. Like little cavemen. And for this reason, the altos have been beefing with the Chorus teacher, Ms. Marino, since September, because they think she’s making them sing all the most boring parts on purpose.

But that was what Ruthy was like, always tiptoeing to the edge of my mother’s nerves. Sneaking drugstore makeup in her pockets. In the bathroom at school, sliding on lipstick in the morning. After eighth period she’d rub it off with scratchy gray DOE-issued toilet paper.

Her voice had reached new inflections of whiteness.

Besides, you can only sympathize so long for somebody else’s loss before you run out of encouraging things to say.” So my mother stood still.

Irene was my mom's 60 year old church friend who blew her hair out like Whitney Houston from the Bodyguard days and still rocked her rum raisin lipstick like it was 1992.

You sound like Olive Oyl working the Piercing Pagoda at the Staten Island Mall.

And it seemed to me then, and still does now, that I could have become a completely different girl, a completely different woman, if Ruthy had never gone.