I once had sisters. And I like to think if they would have stuck around, I would have too. They would have shown me how to shave and put in a tampon. They would have laughed with me on our hard couch while watching rom coms. They would have introduced me to makeup the right way, and I would have never spent a portion of my teenage years with far too much gold eyeshadow streaking across my lids. Most importantly, maybe they would have taught me not to try and see myself, or lose myself, in girls like Sienna Lawrence.
The first day I saw Sienna was the last day of summer orientation in 2009. It was the last week before high school began. The entire incoming freshman class had been showing up to the sun-soaked sweat box that was Reginald Beaker High School for three days—8am to noon. We would sit in a mock homeroom and go through our mock first quarter class schedules. We all got our lockers, and we were made to practice the combination to open them at least ten times. A teacher stood in the hallway with a clipboard and told you when you could stop turning the black and white dial. There were tours of the lifeless tan hallways. There was a scavenger hunt on the last day to familiarize us with the entire campus. Find the Principals office. Where is the statue of St. Francis? Buy a piece of gum from the spirit shop. Find the center of the auditorium. That is where I saw Sienna. She already had a group of two or three girls following her around. I wondered how they seemed so close and cliqued already, when the first day of school hadn’t even happened. I hadn’t said more than two words to anyone outside of forced, group ice breakers. I made sure to seem approachable but not desperate, yet nothing.
My mother was so proud that I was continuing the tradition of attending RBHS. Although all her other daughters had left, some simply out of this city and others out of this realm, she didn’t change any of her child rearing traditions. She had a hope for me that I did not have for myself. And I knew I could not disappoint her, nor could I ever leave her like my sisters did. So, when I climbed into the car after that last day of orientation, she asked me the same question she had asked the past two days.
“Did you make any friends?” Her eyes longing for a different response than I had given her before. Her lipstick was a little smudged. I looked down at her thermos in the center cup holder, and the faint smell of vodka wafted through my nostrils.
“Yeah, I did.” I replied with a comforting lie.
“Really,” she lit up, “What’s her name, or his?” She asked with a sly wink that made me scream internally as we pulled out of the school parking lot.
“Sienna.” I replied
#
I don’t remember much from when they left for all their reasons, but I remember wondering if they would miss me and Mom. I was nine when the last one, Gillian, stepped off our front porch for the last time. There was me, Catrina, —the last to arrive and the last to leave. The oldest was Gloria, then Carma, then Gillian.
There were photographs left of all of us together that I couldn’t even recognize. We looked like a different family, they all looked like strangers, including my mother. Smiles and warmth captured in time, unable to be replicated. One night I found my mom burning the photo albums one by one in a drunken haze. I grabbed onto the albums and screamed and struggled and fought to make her stop, but she wouldn’t. She was drunk and determined to listen to whatever her mind was saying. I eventually snatched a handful of pictures from up off the floor and ran to hide them in my room, where I would sneak to look at them now and again. There were scratches from her long red nails all over my arms and wrists from our battle over the only thing either of us had left of my sisters. When I came down for breakfast that next morning, she asked me what in the world had happened. I told her I fell into our rose bush. And she warned me that I must be careful because some beautiful things have thorns.
#
In the least dramatic way, those first few months, high school had been exactly what I feared it would be. I was quiet to a fault. I hadn’t gone to any football games or made many friends. Though, there was Jeremiah. I met him in ceramics on the second day of school; he had boldly skipped orientation. He was so fabulous and clearly didn’t belong in this town, or anywhere in Kentucky for that matter. The second sentence he ever said to me was him coming out. Followed immediately by him asking if I knew where to get a fake ID so we could get into the gay clubs across the bridge. We were fifteen. I laughed at his absurdity, and the thought of me having some connection to an exciting life. We had ceramics, French, and lunch together, and I was grateful for him every day. Even if he was a little self-absorbed, he was my little gay angel.
“Madame?”
“Oui, Catrina.”
“Puis-je utilizer les toilettes?”
“Bonne, oui.”
Jeremiah flicked me off as I left the class. We had to speak entirely in French in this class, even when asking to use the restroom, or Madame Henry would adamantly ignore you. Jeremiah always called me a show-off for having to pee. I flicked him off right back and stuck out my tongue.
I loved the bathroom on the second floor. That sounds sad to reminisce on, but it was bright and clean, with windows so high up on the wall you could see the tops of the autumn trees. And no one was ever really in there. On the days Jeremiah decided to skip, I would eat lunch there in a stall with paper towels laid across my lap to catch crumbs of Lays and drops of peanut butter.
I was washing my hands when I heard items clatter against the tile floor behind me. A tube of MAC lipstick rolled from beneath the stall door and out near the sink I was using. I picked it up and heard a toilet flush. I placed the tube on the small counter below the mirror, and out walked Sienna Lawrence. I stared at her briefly through the mirror before I realized how creepy I must have looked. She stood at the sink right next to me, even though there were like five others available. She smelled like every spray at Bath & Body Works, but it somehow wasn’t overwhelming. I kept washing my hands, knowing they were well past clean. I looked at her again and our eyes met. As I had predicted months back, Sienna was no-doubt the most popular girl in our class. One of those people that either peak in high school or ride a beautiful life of ease until death. She looked like she had been crying, and annoyed that I may have noticed.
“Why don’t you ever talk?” She asked me, definitely annoyed. I abruptly turned off the faucet and it was silent in the bathroom.
“Huh?” I replied, taken aback.
“You like never talk, I always see you around and you’re just…quiet.”
“I don’t really talk unless I have something to say,” I replied, “and also you have literally never spoken to me.” I said. She just glared at me. Then she grabbed her lipstick off the counter and began to reapply. I dried my hands and pretended to fix my hair, waiting for her to say something else. After a couple minutes, I headed for the door.
“You know, all that shit people are saying about me isn’t true,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to pretend you haven’t heard about it.”
“I haven’t…heard about it,” I said. She squinted at me.
“Are you being funny?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. She huffed and tossed her lipstick into her purse.
“You don’t even want to know what I’m talking about?” She asked.
“Do you want to tell me?” I asked. It felt like she did.
“Julie Long said I had sex with Mark Hudson in the back lot last week in his car after Friday’s football game,” she blurted out. She waited for my reaction, but I didn’t think to have one. All I could think about was how Mark Hudson is a senior and kind of a creep.
“Oh, okay,” I said, finally. “That sucks, if it’s not true.”
“What about if it is?”
“Is what?”
“True.” Sienna said.
“I don’t know…” I wondered what she wanted me to say so I could have just said it.
“Julie Long is telling everyone I have a dirty vagina.”
“Well…I think you can do whatever you want with your vagina, and I’m sure it’s perfectly fine.” I rubbed the temples of my forehead and kind of wanted to disappear because, you know, what the fuck? I don’t think I had ever said the word vagina out loud and there I was saying it to Sienna Lawrence, in reference to her vagina. I couldn’t believe it. I continued toward the door, hesitantly, eager to walk back into French class and tell Jeremiah about whatever twilight zone I must have stepped into to have that brief conversation. Sienna started to laugh.
“Hell yeah, we can do whatever we want with our vaginas.” She said.
She looked at herself in the mirror and tussled her hair one last time. She walked past me toward the door and squeezed my hand.
“Thanks, Caroline” she said.
I remember thinking, I’d be Caroline for her.
Kayla Belser (she/they) is a writer and editor from Cincinnati, OH. She received her BA in English with a minor in Social Justice Studies from Northern Kentucky University. She is currently obtaining her MFA from Miami University. In her work, she pairs words with the many layers of Black existence, queer identity, the phenomena of grief (birthed from death and all the other devastating things), and forgiveness. Her favorite book is The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.
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