Clarity talked as we walked through the park, taking this curve, that fork, randomly traveling nowhere within Six Flags.
“Well,” she says. “There was this woman in Arizona, who I would have known very well if this hadn’t happened to her, but in reality I only knew her for a very short time. She was amazingly beautiful, and she was pregnant. She had a husband but really she liked girls, and she left him for another woman. So these two women were together and one was going to have a baby. They did all the things you do to get ready for a baby, taking breathing classes and getting ultrasounds and she had had a baby before so she knew what to do. She took all the right vitamins and everything but when it came time to have the baby, there were problems. The labor lasted 16 hours and when it was all said and done, there was a healthy infant baby girl and the mom was dead on the operating table.”
I have stopped walking.
“That was you.”
“Yes.”
“Your mom is dead.”
“Uh huh.”
“She died giving birth to you.”
“Yeah. I know I said the scariest thing that ever happened to you and even though I don’t remember that happening it’s still the scariest thing. I think about it every day in the versions the rest of my family has told me and it has become the scariest story I know of—it’s the story that haunts me the most.”
“I can understand that.”
“It’s ok, it happened a long time ago, you don’t have to take it seriously.”
“No, I do. I do have to take that seriously.”
“I’m sorry. You look freaked out.”
“Clarity, grief, I’m sorry.”
“For what? I’m used to it. I never met her. But there is a sense of guilt you carry around with you your whole life when your mother died giving birth to you—like you’ve got to live your life to a certain level just to make up for the sacrifice that was made to get you here. Like if I just fuck up that I’m dishonoring her. It’s a lot of pressure.”
“I bet.”
“It’s ok. I’m sorry I told you. Look! Happy happy joy joy!!”
“Ok happy happy joy joy but—Jesus—Clarity.”
“I shouldn’t have told you. It’s like the trump card of all disaster stories. Car accidents, train derailments, all that stuff is so impersonal, but your mother dying giving birth to you..it’s an ace, and I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have played it.”
“No. It’s ok. I’m sorry. Can we sit down?”
“Actually, I have our next rollercoaster picked out.”
“You do?” I say.
“Yes. Let’s do Riddler’s Revenge, then see Purity, then do Batman The Ride.”
“I thought you didn’t like rollercoasters.”
“That’s not what I said. I said I’m not doing Goliath.”
“Why not? Goliath doesn’t even have any loops.”
“But you see that first drop?”
She points up.
“See how it curves as it goes down? Something about that I find..evil. Like it wasn’t meant to be.”
“I’m sorry, Clarity, but your mother died on the operating table? Are you just fucking with me?”
“I’m not fucking with you.”
“Well let’s just get a hamburger or something. That shit is disturbing. I need to get some food in me.”
“Do you know how much a hamburger is going to cost in this place?”
“What are we gonna do? Not eat all day?”
“I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m sorry that it happened to you.”
“Look don’t be sorry. I never even knew her, ok? All she is to me is pictures in some album, stories from aunts and uncles and my sister.”
“Purity remembers her?”
“She says she does but I’m only a year younger than Purity so I doubt any of her memories are real. They’re most likely the kind of memories you form from hearing other people tell stories about some event that happened when you were too young to remember but you start to remember—or feel like you remember—once you’ve heard the story told a million times. Or like with Purity: she’s seen pictures of the two of them together, and in her mind she remembers what happened in the picture, but really all she remembers is the picture itself..you know?”
“I know what you mean,” I say.
“So you wanna get a hamburger or your wanna go on the Riddler with me?”
Clarity has her map out.
“It looks like there’s a food hut which might have a hamburger and right next to it is a designated smoking area—see this symbol?..that’s you, me, and the Parliaments—and that’s right on the way to the Riddler. So we get your burger, smoke until you have time to mourn my mother’s death—which happens all the time by the way—and then we scare the shit out of some kids in line for the Riddler with some true-life old-school Disney theme park suicides (I looked up a list on my phone). What do you say?”
I’m just imagining this tiny version of Clarity with her mother’s blood all over her being held up by the doctor right after her umbilical cord was cut and there’s her mom and her, both naked, and it’s like the life was transferred right out of Clarity’s mom into that little girl that became this confident, sexual, smart young woman standing next to me. It’s almost like because her mother died, more energy was passed into Clarity, and this woman standing next to me has the strength and the spark and the verve of two people and I look at her in the eyes for two seconds and I have to look away, the look of her is so harsh.