There’s a reason I only let my mom and Parul call me that; Jessica can’t be mistaken for a boy’s name and for all my natural femininity, I’m still defensive about the blurred gender of my own lifelong nickname. I can hear Parul’s voice in my head, she sounds like home as she impatiently exclaims for the hundredth time, “Oh my God, Jess, no one thinks you’re a boy!”
I think nothing of it when my mother gets a call and takes it into the guest bedroom we’re sharing at Nonnie and Papa’s. She’s probably talking to some guy and doesn’t want me to hear any dirty details, my none-too-curious brain decides. But then I hear it. A gasp; and then “no” over and over. Then the crying. I hear my mother heaving and choking on tears but I’m too terrified to run in and find out why. I know this cry and it isn’t about her, or at least not just about her. This isn’t the way she cries for herself, this is the way she cried when I split my forehead open on my dresser. This is the way she cried when she had 3to tell me my father was incarcerated. This is the way my mother cries when her heart is breaking for me, her only baby. So I impulsively get on my knees and I start praying, fiercely, and even though I’m not religious. Our background is Methodist, but I’m frantically trying to think of all the Catholic prayers my cousins recite because they always seemed more powerful to me in their formality and mystery. I feel myself begin to cry and shake as I pray to Jesus and Mary and the blue little-g gods I remember seeing at Parul’s house too. All I’m praying is, “please, please let everyone be okay” because I don’t yet know what’s about to be wrong with me.
The door opens and my mom is sniffling hard. As she walks towards me, her eyes are bloodshot and her face is scrunched in the most unflattering way. She can’t make it all the way toward me, so she stops and sits in a navy director’s chair in the hallway and pats on its identical mate, begging me to come her instead. I go to her, crying, and she knows I know the worst is about to happen. She knows I know better than to hear that cry and think otherwise. I can feel that it’s worse than my forehead, worse even than my father. “Three days ago Parul, her dad, and her oldest sister were in a car accident... Jessi, they were all killed instantly. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
I can’t find my voice, I can’t even find my thoughts, I can’t hear a word coming from my mother. I’m so removed from any sense of reality and from myself that it’s like I’m watching this moment happen to me, as if it were all on the TV. I feel my body sobbing but I can’t decipher any of my emotions; I’m legitimately shocked for the first time in my life. It occurs to me that I need to talk to Parul about this and I realize, even if I could, she won’t ever hear me, wherever she is now. So I shake, and sit, and stare at everything and nothing at all until I can produce no more tears. I hear Gilmore Girls begin on the T.V. in the living room and strangely enough, I go to the fridge, fish out another cup of something I don’t take the time to analyze, and I begin watching my all time favorite show. I shake with the aftershocks that come with a deep cry and want nothing more than to live inside this T.V. show and pretend my entire life is what’s pretend. I wonder if my mother knew then that it would be three whole years before I’d let myself make another friend.