expectations and Mona

Whenever I asked Cora what it meant to be normal, she’d say all she had to do was look at me and she’d see normal. “Everything about you,” she’d say, “everything in your mind is completely normal.”

I don’t know what Cora thought normal was, but she was wrong and I didn’t know it.

I had three friends growing up, and they all died. That was normal. I always thought that people just couldn’t stay around one another for very long. I always thought you expected your friends to die. That’s just what happened. You made a friend and then they died.

Peter was my first friend. He was quiet, never speaking to me unless I asked him a direct question. We were friends solely on the fact that I liked his muted voice and he could tolerate my piercing one. The best we ever did was talk about the rain and why we liked it. He liked the color. I liked the way it washed away my chalk drawings, because I figured that even the sidewalk couldn’t put up with my people for very long. That’s what happened to Peter when he died. The rain took him. And it wasn’t unexpected.

“I made a friend, Cora. I made a friend and then he died.”

“It’s okay. That’s how it’s supposed to happen. It’s normal.”

The second friend I had was called Boxer, and I still don’t know if it was a girl friend or a boy friend. It didn’t matter. Boxer hated the rain and Boxer hated chalk drawings. Boxer liked to sing, and its voice grated over my ears and sent my heart into heaven. I sang with Boxer but I could never hear my own voice over the sandpaper notes pouring from its mouth. Boxer told me I had the most beautiful voice it had ever heard, and I believed it. I still believe it.

Boxer died full in song, and it wasn’t unexpected. 

“What happened to Boxer?”

“Boxer died, Cora.”

“What happened?”

“They always die.”

I never took my friends to meet Cora, and she said she didn’t want to meet them anyway. She liked to watch me, and write things about me, and get A’s written on her papers and keys in her hands and gas to drive her car. I was never allowed in the car. It was normal. I stayed home and Cora went to get A’s and keys and gas. Each time I thought she wasn’t coming back. Each time she did. It was normal.

The last and longest friend was so old I couldn’t see her eyes. I called her Mona, but Cora tried to tell me her name was Oma. Cora told me again and again. Oma, not Mona. Oma, not Mona. Mona. Oma. Mona said I could call her whatever I wanted to call her, and I touched her papery skin and told her about Boxer and Peter and the chalk and the rain and the sandpaper, and she would tell Cora to stop writing and to listen to me. 

“Where’s Boxer?” Cora would ask.

“Boxer died.”

Mona would sigh a little bit. 

“Who was Boxer?” Cora would ask.

I didn’t understand the question and I never answered it. Boxer was my friend. Boxer was my second friend. Boxer came when Peter died.

Cora didn’t understand Boxer, but she understood Peter. She never asked questions about Peter. She never asked questions about Mona, only told me that it was Oma, not Mona. 

“Why didn’t you cry when Peter died?” Cora asked.

“It was supposed to happen. You said it was normal.”

“Sometimes people still cry when normal things happen.”

“Be quiet, Cora,” Mona would say and her voice sounded tight and sharp. “Be quiet.”

Mona died inside herself, and then they took her away. Cora cried, and her face turned red and swollen and she put away her paper and keys and I didn’t see her for three days.

“Why are you crying, Cora?”

“Be quiet.”

I didn’t make any more friends after that. I got into a car and I drove away, and it was dark and cold and frightening. I lived in an enormous white house with hundreds of rooms for a long time, and didn’t see Cora or anyone. They all asked me questions about Peter and Boxer but nobody wanted to hear about Mona. Nobody ever wanted to hear about Mona.

Cora was married when I came home, and everyone told me that that was perfectly normal and that I was safe now and someone would come by every few days to make sure things were “going smoothly.” They took me to visit the cemetery a few times. Peter Mousekiller and Margaret Shawn. Nobody knew how to make a grave for Boxer and they never tried.

It was not unexpected.