Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By
Gabe Wollenburg
Ok. So. We’ve been over who I am and what I can do. I didn’t
show you my skills and I’m not going to.
The point is, even if I had been there, or able to speed to her
protection using a push of super-goo, or leapt a tall building in a
single bound, or outran a speeding bullet, she would have still
choked to death. I don’t have CPR training. They don’t teach you
anything useful at Hero High School Even if I’d known she was
dying. Even if I’d believed she was stupid enough to drink so
much; even if I’d known she had the kind of shit-head friends
who would leave her hidden, tucked behind a crook in a willow
tree along the banks out on the island on Riverside Park.
Identifying the body was the single hardest thing I’ve ever
had to do. It wasn’t one of those things where I couldn’t believe
she was dead. Little Rosa, blue, puffy, with dark rings under her
eyes, laying on the corner’s slab, still had the magical
underpinnings of the sweet, innocent little sister I loved. I only
had to look for a moment. I left a puddle of yellow goo under my
feet in the morgue as the attendant pushed her back into the
drawer.
It was Rosa, who was my savior. Not the Rosa I’d idealized in
my head. Not the magical, innocent girl I believed her to be. It
was the real Rosa-- with her dark secrets and her tragic flaws-- the
ones I’d never bothered to see until after she was gone, who came
to my rescue.
I’m not going to tell you what it said. Not all of it. A lot of it
is private stuff that Rosa never meant for anyone to read. I
shouldn’t have read it myself. But I did. I was in pain, ok. I was
looking for something to keep me in pain. I was a sadness junky.
What better way to stay depressed than to force myself to read my
dead baby-sister’s private thoughts. I needed pain like a junky
needs junk.
And it turns out. Rosa was proud of me. Can you believe
that? Proud of me! She said I was going to be the next a-lister hero.
She said I’d be the one to lead a new-generation of heroes. She
knew I’d do it. She had a few newspaper clippings of some of my
college antics-- I won a student writing award, for example-- in
the diary.
I kept reading the diary over the next few days. I read slowly
and enjoyed each passage. And as I spent more and more time
engaged in my college and hero training, Rosa’s writing changed.
She confided that she was jealous, and sad and lonely. I cried and
cried the night I found out that, all though our adolescence,
dealing with dad’s incarceration, and mom’s death, the trail, and
our emancipation hearings, Rosa and I had nearly the same
feelings. We both wished we could have saved mom. We both
wished we’d have told her we loved her one more time. We both
didn’t hate dad for what he did, and we both felt horribly guilty
for not hating him.
I’d spent a lot of time in Rosa’s room over those dark six
months, but that day was the fist time I’d ever noticed as the sun
came up a beam of light, directed by a crystal hung from the
window’s lock, traced down the far wall, bounced off Rosa’s
dresser mirror and landed in a rainbow swatch across the bottom
drawer of Rosa’s bureau.
Would you have opened the bureau? Would you have
dashed over there expecting to find something wonderful and
meaningful? I did.
I tore the drawer off its hinges hoping to find out what she
had in that chest. I took the drawer apart looking for the secret
payoff, flapping the t-shirts open and tossing them over my
shoulder when there was no payoff. All that was in the drawer
was t-shirts. Retired t-shirts-- the ones she didn’t wear anymore
but still loved too much to give up. Peter Murphy. The Cure. Nine-
Inch Nails. Powel Peralta Skateboards. Finally, I was so frustrated,
I knocked the whole dresser over with a punch and a swipe. A
block of goo formed over my hand as I punched. I slumped over
where the dresser had been, putting my back to the wall and my
hands to my knees, crying softly.
Gabriel@writelarge.com
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