In theory, I have always been interested in the idea of ethical practices: how to live, what to do, so to speak. Being interested in something is partially how I cultivated my talent and genius, I thought, because I wasn’t born this way, I was born instead with no natural talents or capacities, I was born as a shabby little baby, but after a long and unremarkable time, I became a virtuous woman, I transformed myself into something good, and one by-product of this particular nature was behavior that seemed to land mostly on the ethical side of things and, at worst, the retiring and overly apologetic side. Pragmatic, I have always preferred to be in the background, unobserved; I preferred to play the role of the detached observer/receiver, the way one would live if one lived and spoke and shat inside a puffy white cloud floating along above the world harmlessly like a balloon.
Think of me as your balloon, I would tell my troubled young people, I’m always next to you or hovering right above you. After I said that, I noticed some of them didn’t seem to know what a balloon was, they looked at me so confusedly, I was compelled to assume they had never even seen a fucking balloon. So one bright afternoon a few months ago, I drank a few gin-and-tonics before work, which I do not often do, and then I forced them to watch a DVD of The Red Balloon at our after-school facility. We were not allowed to sit alone in darkened rooms with the troubled young people, all of the overhead lights were on, making it difficult to see the screen. My face was bright red, like the balloon, which one of them observed astutely. I told them to focus on the beautiful film I was screening for their viewing pleasure and to stop looking at me. Then I broke the rules and turned off the lights. I spent the next five minutes or so pointing out for them how each scene was so artfully composed, it was almost like watching a painting come alive.
It’s a painting come alive, children, do you see it? I said with excitement.
Halfway through the film, I felt nauseous, ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and threw up for almost an hour. When I came out, the lights were on, the movie shut off, and they sat there in silence, staring at me with their mouths opened. I must have been making really loud retching sounds.
The point is I always knew my talents would be useful one day, I said to the coworker who asked me what I was doing showing a group of at-risk Latino and African American teenage boys The Red Balloon. Then I employed a strategy I have honed throughout my life when asked a difficult question: to respond with a question of my own. I asked my coworker pointedly what the troubled people’s race had to do with it, couldn’t Latino and African American people watch and enjoy The Red Balloon? And what I said previously was true: I always knew my talents would be helpful to someone, someday.
It took me the entire day after the phone call with Uncle Geoff to begin to clear my head. I wasn’t feeling well in the first place; I had called in sick to work earlier that morning. I spent the rest of the day in bed sobbing, coughing, and toying with the idea of calling my adoptive parents. Surely they would call me, I thought. A call never came. My roommate Julie texted me to ask what the couch looked like, did it look good, could I take a picture of it for her as she would be spending the night at her boyfriend’s place and wouldn’t see it until tomorrow. And what was I supposed to say to that?
That night, somewhere in between my sobbing, somewhere in the middle of my hysteria, the seeds of a plan had germinated. I calmed and composed myself. I have always been a rational and relational person; I didn’t recognize this hysterical, sobbing woman. No. I took care of my peace, I kept it in spotless condition. As the plan germinated, I pictured the funeral, that great spectacle of mourning. I saw strangers standing around taking part in a superficial grief performance ostensibly to both celebrate and mourn a dead person they never bothered to know when he was alive. The next morning, I woke up and saw without question what needed to be done. It was necessary that I attend the funeral, because I was the only one, perhaps, who once knew and understood him.
I stared at the white wall on my side of the studio apartment. A few days ago, when he was alive, I had wiped down all of the walls of my shared studio apartment with a can of cleaning disinfectant, then a rag soaked in lemon oil. Overnight, everything changed, temporally. Everything was now before and after his suicide. I was located in the after-phase.
It was my very observational acumen combined with a genius for ethical practices that compelled me to stuff my canvas suitcase with all of my clothes and to book a same-day plane ticket to my childhood home. Before I put the flight on my credit card, I spent an hour looking online at sweaters on sale, because I had nothing black to wear to the funeral. It took me a long time because there were so many different types of sweaters. Why were there so many different types of sweaters? Fluffy sweaters and mohair sweaters and fisherman sweaters and boyfriend sweaters. Which sweater should I order? I wondered. Finally, I chose a black turtleneck sweater, ribbed, half off. I was always thinking ahead and strategically planning. After I pressed CONFIRM SALE, I smacked my forehead. I should have had it delivered to my adoptive parents’ address! It took a half hour on the phone waiting to speak to customer service to get the sweater sent to the right address. During this time of waiting, it began to dawn upon me that in fact this family tragedy had come at the worst possible time for me, as my work status was currently under probation, even so, there was no question as to whether I would go home or not. Once I reached an actual human, the sweater situation was straightened out almost immediately, but not before I explained to the customer-service agent the special purpose of the sweater: a funeral sweater for a suicide. She understood, and waived the cost for shipping. I hung up the phone and went back to my computer.