Krissy Carbomb
Lost
The worst thing about being lost is worrying about the people who are worrying about you. If I'm lost, I still have me. I also know that everyone in my life is where they're supposed to be. Or not. But my small circle of family (my mother and her brother) don't know where I am. They are missing something that I'm not missing. They are missing me. I have a history of getting lost. All throughout my life I tended to wander off. One time I was following my mother carefully who was wearing a tan colored raincoat with a tan colored belt. (It wasn’t raining, but mother just loved that coat.) I was holding on to it as we moved around the farmer's market. At some point I looked off to the left to stare at a stand with brown bananas that I later discovered weren't bananas at all. They were plantains. But at 7 I didn't know a plantain from a banana so I tugged at my mother's belt. A voice not my mother’s responded. I had been following some stranger who didn't realize I was holding on to her belt. I was a slight girl. I didn't take up a lot of space. It's possible she didn't even feel me there. She nearly stepped on me. (I have been stepped on before but never by accident.) A lot of children would have cried, but this wasn't my first experience with being lost so I knew exactly what to do. I looked up at the woman and just squinted. She was shocked at first, but then she replied, "did you lose your mother, little girl?" I wanted to reply, no. I'm not lost. My mother lost me. But I wasn't really into talking much at that age, so I just shook my head and let the woman take me to a police officer. I found out later that my mother found a police officer on the other side of the farmers market. Why the police officers didn't just radio to each other, I don't know but it took a good hour for us to reconnect. I think my mother understood me. Whenever I was lost and then found, she was never mad at me. She just asked me where I went and what I did and what I saw. In fact it became an opportunity to have a pretty interesting conversation. Over the years, I got to see a lot of things that my mother would have missed. I started to believe that maybe my mother enjoyed the fact that I got lost. It was like she had an extension. She had another pair of eyes to see the universe. She got to be in two places at once. She didn’t seem to see the danger of my getting lost. She never saw the danger. Whenever I took a bath I would make the water murky with soap and I would slip under the surface so that my mother couldn’t see me at all. I challenged myself to stay under the water longer and longer. One time she reached into the tub to unplug the drain as if I weren’t in. She was shocked to find me there turning blue. I wondered if she had forgotten I was in the bath. I hoped for that. One time I got lost in a way that scared her and made her angry. It was the night I first ran away. I didn't think I was lost, but this time I was. I had somewhere to go: anywhere but there. And that's exactly where I went. It took me somewhere rotten. There's never been a time when I was lost that I thought I was in danger, but this time the danger was inside of me. I was running from the danger, but it just wouldn’t get smaller. It wouldn’t go away. Not everybody in my home was as kind as my mother. My uncle. He got mad whenever I wandered off. Hatefully mad. Like he lost his wallet or his belt. I saw him and knew him. He knew I knew him. He wanted to know where I was at all times. He would whisper to me, “you’ll never find your way without me.” I only ever really felt lost \when I was alone with him. He was not a healthy man, and he was never good to me. I hated him. Was I scared? In the beginning, I suppose so. But oftentimes I simply felt the way you might feel if you were in an elevator in a high-rise that was falling. Helpless. What could you do? They say you should jump up and down, but that can't be the answer. Jumping up and down can't be the solution. I think the only thing you can do is pray. And then wait for death. So when I saw my uncle, I definitely prayed for him to die. The night that I ran away for the first time was a terrible night for me. Only the two of us knew what really happened. It was just another night. Until I confronted him. Until I said “no.”It was also the night that I learned exactly how far I could run in my bare feet. It took a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost. There was an Amber alert. Eventually a woman walking her dog saw me hiding behind a tree in a park. It was very late. The woman told the police that her dog would not stop whining, so she had to take him out. I guess I'm glad that she did. By the time I got home, there was a lot of confusion. This was the first time (but not the last) my mother was ever angry at me for getting lost. And she yelled at me in a way that was unfamiliar and unkind, but I was glad to have her standing there yelling at me. I was terrified and wanted to sleep in her bed which was something she would never do. But tonight she said yes. She told me that my uncle drove all over town looking for me. He was worried I would get lost. But tonight he will go to bed disappointed. Let the elevator crash with him in it. I curled into my mother and enjoyed the satin sheets. I would run away again and again. And one night it would be for good. When there was no raincoat and no mother to wear it.
Oh, The Places You Will Go
or How the Dead
Helped Me Ace High School
Classmates, Parents and Family, Teachers and Honored Guests, I have been asked to deliver this speech on this day of our graduation. I have the highest GPA, so I get to speak. This speech will be more like a confession. (pause) I am number one in our class for a reason. (A longer pause with a dry cough cough.)
I cheated.
(murmurs and mumbles with a hint of rage and disbelief)
I cheated all of you for the past four years, and I did it with the help of my family. My dead family
(the crowd buzzes and hums and snickers into silence.) (After the longest pause)
I was going to give a lovely speech centered around Dr. Suess’s book, Oh the Places You Will Go. But I scrapped that idea last night when the ghost of my great uncle kept me up after begging me to listen to his story. My great uncle has been dead for 62 years. Should be a good story, right?
(the crowd quiets a little bit)
It wasn’t good last night. It was interesting the first time I heard it, but I have heard it hundreds of times. First wife died. Second wife died. Police investigated. Seems there was foul play. Great uncle dies in prison. The end. I’ll skip all the gloomy details and the sobbing.
Why did he kill his second wife? I don’t know. He never has a good explanation for that. It’s probably because he did it. Guilt. The dead are fueled by it. Technically, his wife was my aunt, but she’ll never tell me her side of the story; only blood relatives can come to me. Who made those rules? I have no idea, and the dead either don’t know who or they are sworn to keep that a secret. My great uncle, like all of my dead relatives, forgets he told me his story the very second he finishes telling it to me. And so he told it to me three more times. I was up all night (which is typical) I had no time to write the Dr. Seuss speech. Now, I am just winging it. So sit back everybody; this speech might take a while. There are so many dead family members, you know? And they all have a lot to say.
(The crowd silences itself. Despite their indignation, they are intrigued. As they should be.)
I became an orphan when my dad died four years ago. And so I was shuffled off to foster care, and the committee was assembled. It seemed I had no more living blood relatives. I was an only child and so were my parents. There were bigger families back in the days when my relatives all came to the US from Russia (from the same little town they all reunited here in Baltimore). But lives were cut short or they were too poor or…who knows? But by time they got to me, only my parents kept the dead away.
Once they “crossed over,” the visits started.
At first it was remarkable and emotional and terrifying. To see the dead I knew in life and the dead I had never met was shocking (to say the least).
But I quickly realized that they were all just like my uncle. They had a story, and they wanted to tell me. Needed to tell me. I became their audience. I am their only connection to their human lives, so I get to “absolve them” of their guilt. Only there is no absolution. The guilt is the only thing keeping them stitched together. I am trapped like you are now, imprisoned by my fascination and by the fact that nothing I did could ever get rid of them.
They spoke to me in my many foster care homes, outside as I walked to school, on the light rail. At the bus stop, at my job scooping ice cream. Everywhere I went, one or two or ten of them would claw and scratch to get to me. I could help them set things right. I could calm them. Let them find peace. HA! (she laughs, loud and alone.) There is no peace for the dead, I can tell you that right now for sure. We’re all guilty of something, and that little “crime” of ours will spin and spin like a dangerous carousel in the minds of the dead. For how long? Forever, I guess.
(The audience rumbles a bit, scared of that immortal potentiality)
Even while I sleep, they never stop. Aunts and cousins and even my second cousin (who died of brain cancer at six years old). There is no way of really knowing them. Even the ones I knew when they were alive are unknowable now. Death changes you. And yet I can't let them go. There are words I can't translate without them. There are maps I can't read. There are things that happen inside of my head that I can't understand until one of them stumbles into my bedroom and sits down to tell me. There’s also all of the school work. My dead relatives helped me with every single essay or math problem or reading assignment I ever had to do. Really, I'm a talentless idiot. I am standing here today because death found me and won’t go away.
(pin drop)
Because what I discovered was that the dead want so badly to tell me their stories that they will do anything I ask. My ears are conditional. I’ll listen to them, if they will help me. I had one driving goal: valedictorian. Yes. Just that. And here I am, ranked number one over all of you. Am I smarter than Betsy Wagner or Rodney Kairo or Jahsinda or Ethan or you, Moe, my only friend throughout all of my nightmares? No way. I promise you, I am not smarter than three quarters of you. My real class rank should be 256 out of 312. Maybe 255…but not a notch higher. Nope. So how did I do it? How did I fool everyone and leapfrog to the top? Hmmm?
My mom died when I was eight and my dad died four years ago, right before I entered 9th grade. It's almost as if the dead who died before and after I was born wouldn't let my parents live. They needed them. Once they were both dead, the alliance was sworn in.
The first one to come to me was my Dad. He came the night of his funeral. There was no family to speak of, except two of my great uncles on my father’s side (the murderer was my mother’s uncle). These two men were married. Their wives tried to stay close to each other and spoke to my father from time to time, inviting the two of us for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes we went, and sometimes we stayed at home and acted like they didn’t exist. When they heard my dad died, they reached out and helped me with the process. Papers to be signed and someone to inspect the body were just two of the many things they did. The only thing they couldn’t do was give me a home. That’s how I wound up in six different foster care families.
(I don’t want to tell you about my father’s guilt. It hurt to hear it. He was a good man, regardless of his “crime.”)
So how did I whip all of your asses in High School? Star of the Drama Club? Chess Champion? World Class Debater? All of these goals were reached because of my dead relatives. My cousin who died at 26 was well on her way to becoming a celebrated physicist. My great great great grandfather fought in World War I and II. My grandmother baked. My father was an accountant. I had all of my bases covered. And what did I have to do to earn all of this “tutoring?” I had to listen to their damn stories, over and over again.
At school, whenever we had a test and the teacher directed us to separate our desks, I would bring four or five of my dead relatives to peek over the shoulders of the brightest kids. My family would just tell me the answers the other kids got. I am the only one who can hear them. It was that easy.
Of course, I had to spend the rest of the class pretending to listen to the teacher when all I heard were those same relatives telling me their stories….all at the same time! So much noise, but it was worth it to grind all of you into the dust of my ascension. (grins)
I am surrounded by my dead family. They are all here. Hundreds of them. Tongues wrapped around their guilt, telling their stories even as I speak this speech. Can you feel them? Can you HEAR them? Just be quiet for a moment. Button your lips and prick up your ears. (The room fell silent.) Listen. Lean forward. (And they did, but no one heard anything)
Of course you can’t hear them. Your family has life. Their roots are still planted. Your blood lines flow in all directions. But I am a lonely tree. I am alone in a garden of dead things. And thousands of stories are all praying to keep me alive. I listen to them. I just don’t know who will ever listen to me.
I guess it’s you. Thanks for that.
(pause)
Happy Graduation! My dead are here, all around you, just waiting for me to walk off of this stage and fall straight into their dry and hungry mouths.
(silence)
(applause)
(The dead descend)