Sofia Spencer 

‘Angel’ from My Hand is Also a Map

My name is Angel. I’m nineteen years old. My best friend is Jill and my mother is Mary. My father died days after I was born, and I haven’t thought about him since. I have all the family I need.

My mother named me Angel because she wanted me to be one. But Angel conjures a wispy girl with blonde hair and blue eyes – someone like Jill. I have black hair and blonde spilt ends. My eyes are brown. When I was a child, I wanted someone to nickname me Devil, but no one ever did.

I used to run: track in elementary school, cross-country in middle school, both in high school. When I ran, I got nosebleeds. The blood splattered warm, wet, congealed against my cheeks. I should’ve gone to the doctor, but I didn’t. Nosebleeds were my signature. My coach said it looked like I was ‘escaping the Underworld’.

In elementary school, I thought “Underworld,” was a non-bad way to say Hell – like “H, E, double hockey stick.” In middle school, I learned there was a difference between the two. In high school, I realised lots of people tried to escape the Underworld. Perhaps I was like Orpheus: musician and fellow runner. Like Orpheus, runners can’t look back: it throws off their stride.

I quit running after I graduated, two years ago. It’s hard to keep going when no one’s chasing you.

Albion and Alma College both offered me full-tuition scholarships, but my grades weren’t good enough. I didn’t want to go anyways: I like looking backwards. These days, I have a crick in my neck. But that’s probably from the cold.

It’s November. Pre-winter (which comes after pseudo-fall). On average, there’s twenty minutes of sunlight a day. Eleven hours for the month. The clouds press into the potholes and one day blurs into the next. I wake up alone and I watch TV alone and I fall asleep alone. I eat dinner with my mother, and I don’t get nosebleeds anymore.

I watch TV on my phone, in my bed, between sheets streaked with red Kool Aid and a cover crusted with milk. I watch TV while sleeping and eating and, occasionally, reading. I watch new shows – but not the actual news – during the day and old ones at night, episodes I can picture without looking at the screen.

My phone charger is ten feet long; when my phone falls between my bed and the wall, I reel it up. Then I watch Deadliest Catch. I like it when fisher-people reel up grouper with their fingers. Sometimes, I wake up with the charger wrapped around my neck. Then I change shows. I listen with my eyes closed, phone rumbling on my chest. I like sitcoms with a laugh track so I remember to laugh. The sitcom parents say, “Easier isn’t better.” But they’re wrong: better was before.

***

On the last day of better, Tommy’s Death Day, Jill was out sick. So was our teacher. The substitute had a buzzcut and black combat boots. I thought they were leather snow boots – the kind foreign, fashionable, people in New York or Los Angeles wore. It was spring in Michigan. Maybe it was still winter in Los Angeles.

The substitute had a black unibrow. I said to Suzie Shinola, my second-best friend (first when Jill was absent), “Maybe he’ll marry Mrs. Briggs so they can have one-eyebrowed babies!”  Suzie laughed without opening her mouth.

At twelve pm, the substitute said, “TIME FOR LUNCH! MARCH!”

I marched to my backpack and unzipped it. My mother had packed me tuna fish and a sleeve of Oreos. I was playing Marching Soldiers – a game I’d just invented. It was a mix between FBI agents and War Heroes. The substitute teacher was the perfect villain. He was so scary and serious that he ceased to be either.

Before anyone could unwrap their sandwiches, the substitute said, “GET IN LINE AND MARCH TO THE CAFETERIA!”

I stared at Suzie, she at me. Our school didn’t have a cafeteria. But part of playing Marching Soldiers was following orders, even if they didn’t make sense. We got in line and started marching. I was in front of Suzie and behind Tommy Alvarez. Tommy lifted his knees all the way to his hips. I did the same. My sneakers slapped against the floor and lit up red. The hallways smelled like mildew. We marched around the entire school looking for the cafeteria. We passed our classroom and someone, probably Miranda, said, “Sir we don’t have a cafeteria.”

“IN THE ARMY PRIVATES ARE SHOT FOR LYING! I WOULDN’T DARE LIE TO MY CAPTAIN DURING ‘NAM!”

That shut Miranda up. Suzie snorted. I didn’t realise Nam was a war; I thought it was a type of cookie. We marched until the librarian, Mr. Scher, intervened.

Recess was right after lunch. Tommy finished first; I ate my tuna sandwich slowly; Suzie preferred the twisty slide to playing pretend. I missed Jill.

I went outside and headed straight to my favourite spot, where no one else ever played. Where no one, not even Mrs. Briggs, could see Jill and me. But Tommy was already there. He was on his back. His face was tinged blue. I thought he was playing astronauts. Holding his breath so he could walk on the moon like Neil Armstrong. Our stump looked like a spaceship console. Wow! He’s just like a real astronaut.

This was the end of better. The end of harder and the beginning of—

Tommy wasn’t breathing. I touched his blue-tinged, astronaut skin. It was as cold as ice, cold as a Michigan winter. That’s cliché but this wasn’t. I’ve had plenty of time to write this, to think about this, and—

Tommy Alvaraz is and was as cold as my breath when I ran outside in the middle of winter. In the dark. Under the floodlights when we’d lost a meet, when blood streaked across my cheeks and I couldn’t see the track beneath my feet but I kept running anyways. My coach, Joy, said, “Faster! Faster! Slugs don’t make it to Nationals!” 

An hour earlier, Tommy had eaten a sandwich and marched in the hallway. An hour earlier, I’d been worried about my new game. An hour earlier—

My sneakers had red lights in them; they lit up when I ran away.  I didn’t look back. Tommy was dead or dying and I got in line for the twisty slide. Tommy went to space…Tommy is walking on the moon. When it was my turn, Suzie said, “You go faster if you hold your breath!”

After recess, the beginning of worse, the substitute asked, “WHERE IS THAT HIGH MARCHING PRIVATE?” I shrugged my shoulders, like everyone else. Breathless, like everyone else (the twisty side was on the far side of the playground). Tommy was on the moon. Breathing, on the moon. “DID HE GO OFF TO JOIN THE COMMIES?”

That afternoon, I forgot how to do long division and the substitute said, “IF THIS IS THE FUTURE OF THIS GREAT NATION YOU SHOULD ALL JUST STAY HOME!”

Tommy was found after school, three hours after recess. Miranda and I heard shouting from the pick-up lane; she thought it was the kickball team. Our mothers were late; they were always late. Miranda’s digital watch counted the minutes and the seconds at the same time. It was shaped like a spaceship.

Seconds, eons, later, my mom arrived. I think there were still screams because when I went to the car my sneaker-lights looked like blood. My mother hugged me, and I could hear her heartbeat. The blood rushed from her chest to her lungs, and I wanted to push her away because an Angel would know how to get to Heaven. I said, “Do you think we can turn ourselves into spaceships if we try hard enough?”

And my mother looked at me the same way I looked at celery and said, “There are some things that we just can’t do. No matter how hard we try.”

***

Tommy’s funeral was in April, when the world started to bloom and track finished. Jill and I, her mother and mine, all went to the service. I wore a black dress from Target; my mother had bought it six-months before; she’d said, Every girl needs a little black dress. The collar was itchy. I opened my mouth to complain, and my mother handed me a thin mint cookie. Jill’s mother had celery sticks in her pocket.

Tommy’s grave was six feet deep. I looked inside but I couldn’t see any treasure chests or pots of gold or fairy nests. Only dirt. Dirt and death and worms and parasites. I counted my fingers and I counted my toes and I counted them again. Jill cried and maybe I did too. I had ten fingers and ten toes, and I could’ve saved Tommy but I didn’t. When we walked back to our cars, Jill’s mother said, “This is what it means to be haunted.”

I buckled my seatbelt and said, “What does haunted mean?”

My mother said, “It’s when a person eats vegetables instead of candy.”

One year later Tommy’s mother planted daffodils around his grave. She said, “They’re as bright as he would’ve been.”

She invited the whole town to the memorial; half of us showed up. Jill and I wore our school shoes and dandelion crowns. Her mother brought vegetables and hummus; mine packed candy-corn and gummy worms. The soil was wet. The sky was blue. I wonder if this is what astronauts see from space. My nose was covered in pollen, and I sneezed. The air smelled like living things.

The next day, in math class, while our teacher reviewed long division, I doodled daffodils in my notebook. I drew the centre as a rhombus and the petals as spirals. The flowers took up the whole page, my whole notebook. I drew petals in place of the Pythagorean theorem. I doodled during social studies. Years passed. Social studies turned into history. Jill gave me notes I needed the next morning while we ate breakfast or on the bus or while we ate breakfast on the bus.

After school, I went to track practice. I ran until my nose bled and then I ran until the blood dried. The track was black and the heat radiated off the rubber in waves. In the winter, the surface was slick with ice. Then I walked, later drove, to the cemetery. The sidewalk and the parking lot were equally potholed. My snow boots and sandals stubbed the ridges. Rocks or rock salt crackled underneath my shoes. Sometimes, I caught myself mid-air; sometimes I didn’t. Tommy’s grave was clean, covered with grass or snow. Usually snow.

***

The night Jill found her mother – dead, in bed, from an aneurysm – I had a hangnail or the flu and I stayed home from school. I still went to track practice. My mother had Mrs. Foronado, the school secretary, on speed dial. I was up for two scholarships and my grades were beyond saving.

I ran until my nose bled and then I ran some more. Joy, my coach, said, “The more you bleed, the faster you run.”

My mother called during cooldown. My blood had dried in my nostrils. It looked like I’d stuck two raisins up my nose. I answered even though I wasn’t supposed to. Phones were strictly forbidden but so was going to practice after not going to school. My breath froze mid-air and stuck in my chest. My sweat turned into icicles and melted back to sweat.

My mother said, “Come home. There’s been an incident. I’m going to go pick up Jill from the police station.”

Jill and I hadn’t spoken for three days. At our last sleepover, Jill had fallen asleep on my basement couch, playing Mario Kart, next to a pile of Barney tapes and broken-down cardboard boxes. During the day, I stretched in the gym, and Jill went to the greenhouse. She grew pots and pots of marigolds and gave them away as Christmas presents.

I said, “She wouldn’t commit a crime without me.”

My mother said, “She didn’t.”

I came home and Jill was as white as her mother’s bathrobe. She was mouthing, De-Fen-Es-Stration. Over and over again. Our childhood game. We hadn’t played it since Tommy died. And then I knew.

That night, Jill and I ate Oreos until our hardened stomachs roiled. We watched Halloweentown with the lights off. We didn’t talk, but I squeezed Jill’s arm. She didn’t pull away. My room smelled like evaporated Kool Aid. I couldn’t tell if Jill was crying.

***

Last year, Jill left for college; she was the smart one. That’s what our teachers said: “Opposites attract, the academic and the athlete.” We all know what ‘athlete’ means to an English teacher.

The night before she moved, Jill told me, “I wish you were coming with me.” Her suitcases were overflowing. My Netflix was queued; Deadliest Catch recorded on the DVR. I stared at her like an alien from Mars. “You should be my roommate,” Jill said. “Not Suzie. You’re one of the smartest people I know.”

I laughed. “I’m not built for college. You know that. You saw my grades.”

“Grades aren’t everything,” Jill smiled. “Dumb people like slides. Smart people don’t.”

 I didn’t respond. The next morning, she was gone. I left the sheets on her bed anyways. Ann Arbor was only forty-five minutes away.

Jill came back for Christmas. As her ‘present to us,’ she said, “I’m moving out.”

I’d seen it coming; Jill hadn’t come back for my birthday. My mother said, “Don’t you want to save money?”

Jill smiled, eyes dull, “You’ve already done too much for me.” Jill had lived with us for three years; she moved in after her mother died.

I heard what my mother didn’t. When Jill moved in, she steamed her own uniform skirts and finished her homework before dinner. She set the table and took out the trash and never made grocery requests.

In those early months, Jill ate like me: cookies for breakfast and ice cream for dinner. When we were children, I used to pass her cosmic brownies underneath the dinner table. Jill still hid candy in my dresser – out of habit, rather than necessity. I found plastic bags under my bed, beneath her socks. Then, her skirts got tighter, her tights started to run, so she switched to celery sticks: “I want my clothes to last until I graduate,” she’d said. We were at the tail-end of our junior year and her mother’s house hadn’t sold yet.

“My mom will get you new ones, if you ask,” I said. I knew Jill wouldn’t. She had birthday money and my mother’s generosity. She bought candy corn and celery sticks and said, “I can’t wait for the day when I can take your mom out for dinner.”

Now, Jill has an apartment, a roommate, a job to pay the rent and scholarships to cover the rest. Last April, on my mother’s birthday, she took us to dinner at Ruth Chris. We ordered two petite filets. Jill had salad. My mother drank wine. I sipped sparkling water and crushed butter mints between my teeth. When the check came, my mother wouldn’t let Jill pay. Jill slid a fifty in her purse when she was in the bathroom.

Jill graduates in two years. When she does, she’ll go as far as she can: New York, Chicago, D.C., London. Everyone in Michigan, who can, leaves. To look back is to get trapped here, in the Underworld, where winter lasts six months and opportunities are scarcer than the sun. My mother never left; I won’t either. Second place goes to Eurydice and I gave up on the race long ago.

***

Last July, a year after high school graduation, when the humidity reached 100% and the temperature followed suit, I visited Jill’s apartment. It was on the edge of the University of Michigan’s campus – a thirty-minute walk from the library and twenty-five minutes to the food co-op. Jill said, “Just close enough to both so I don’t need a car!”

Jill didn’t scrub the shower door or the streaks on her dishes. The air conditioner didn’t work, and the garbage disposal gargled: her roommate, Marisa, had drunkenly stuck her I Love New York shot glass down the drain in September.

Marisa wore a red beret and said, “The high rises are so bourgeois. Who on earth would spend that much money in Michigan? I’m saving my money for Manhattan.”

Marisa’s black, Canada Goose jacket hung in the coat closet. The hood was lined with fox, not faux, fur. I looked at Jill; she didn’t meet my eyes. Her black parka hung off her desk chair. It had belonged to her mother. I’d helped her patch it for the funeral. The inside was lined with leopard print.

‘Thanks for having me,” I said. The words felt stilted. Our senior year, Jill and I spent our nights in silence. We listened to true crime podcasts and watched the Great British Bake Off. I don’t know if we understood each other too well or not enough, if we didn’t need words or we’d run out of things to say.

I handed Jill her favourite blue sweater. It matched her eyes, her mother’s eyes, her fresh fingernail polish. “You left this behind, at Christmas.”

Jill took it. “I didn’t even realise I’d forgotten it.”

That stung and I wasn’t sure why.

***

One day, months later, after I’d rewatched series five and four of the Great British Bake Off for the fourth or fifth time, I called Jill and she picked up the phone. She never called me first, but she always picked up the phone. I said, “Do you remember defenestration?”

Jill’s ghost was next to me. Swinging legs and squinting eyes and mouthing De-Fen-Es-Stration; me eating cookies, her celery sticks. It’s strange, I thought, how we can turn into our mothers without realising it.

She said, “Of course I do.”

“Do you remember why we stopped playing?” I asked. I opened a small Twix. The wrapper crackled and so did our connection. I thought of young Jill, “I’m not short! I’m fun-sized!” 

“We stopped after Tommy Alvarez got poisoned.”

Older Jill leaned over her mother’s tombstone. She plucked the dandelions from the plot. Planted marigolds in their place. I stood back, at a respectable distance, and Jill whispered words my ears weren’t good enough to hear. Then, now, I would give anything to stop Jill from turning into her mother, from meeting the same end.

“ZZT! Where’s the binder clip, Jill? He wasn’t poisoned. Poisoned is when someone else kills you.  And…” I breathed, and waited for Jill to remember – before, better, harder when we worried about Mrs. Briggs and touching living things.

“We played one last time, after he died, didn’t we? I’d forgotten.”

I laughed. High and short and tinny. I laugh ugly when I’m alone. I’ve forgotten how I used to sound.

“Why are you calling me about this, Angel?”

“I wanted to know if you still think about him.”

“I still think about a lot of things.” Her voice was short and clipped, the way she’d sounded right before she moved out. Back when we pretended too much or too little.

“Clearly.” I leaned off the edge of my bed; my hair touched the floor.

“I think about you, you know. I miss you. I wish you were here too.”

 I didn’t respond; It was like old times in all the ways I didn’t want it to be.

“Do you miss me, Angel?”

I reached out to Jill’s empty bed. It’s the middle of the night, then and now. Jill’s just downstairs. She’s calling me from the basement. She’s playing Mario Kart or organising Barney cassettes and telling me about her day. She’ll be upstairs soon, and she’ll fall asleep before me, and I’ll watch her breathe and make sure she keeps breathing. I’m not alone; I’ve never been alone; Jill is here; she’ll always be here.

“The substitute teacher made us march around the entire school looking for Tommy. But I knew where he was, Jill. I thought he was playing astronauts, but he wasn’t. He was—” My breath hitched, caught. Is this how Tommy felt? “I found him and then got in line for the twisty slide.”

“I know,” Jill said. I was the runner, but she was waiting for me to catch up. “I knew then. You never would’ve waited in line for that slide. Not voluntarily.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“We liked to pretend back then.”

The and now… floated in the space between us. Unsaid and known. Like so many other things had been, would be.

“You would’ve known if it was me,” Jill said, finally. “You couldn’t have saved him, Angel.”

I laughed at that. I laughed ugly. At the ugly world. At my ugly life. At the ugly way I let myself end up here. I wanted to say, You found your mother and then called mine.

The line crackled. So, I said, after a lifetime or ten, “Maybe. But you would’ve tried.”

I hung up before Jill could reply.

***

I’m nineteen years old. Almost twenty. This morning, I wheezed around the track. The last dandelion seeds stuck to the rubber. My nose bled. I didn’t wipe the blood away. My life is easy, but I want it to be hard. I would rather be Orpheus than Eurydice. Orpheus didn’t win but he lived. He played music and mourned and that must count for something. Even if he looked back.

The track is by the cemetery so – after my walk, jog, slog – I went there too. My feet found their way to Tommy’s grave. The grass was overgrown. The headstone was flat against the ground. His name was half-obscured. The daffodils were blooming and unkempt; only one flower still had all its petals. My nose felt crunchy. All the times I’d come here, I’d never seen Tommy’s mother, father, or brother. Maybe they had moved on, moved away. Maybe—