Grief Girl Read Free Page A

to die too.
    â€œMum, please say something,” I’d begged, thinking I could make her better.
    â€œJust give her some time,” Dad had said.
    So I guess Mum doesn’t want to go through that again.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Mum thinks she’s fat. So she’s become a Weight Watcher. Pretty stupid, if you ask me. How can you lose something if you’re constantly watching it? Mum doesn’t see it that way. She goes to her meeting every Tuesday.
    Last night Mum came home and ran into her bedroom without saying hello. Tracy got up to see what was wrong—she and Mum are “best friends.” Tracy likes Mum all to herself, but I wanted to be part of something for once, so I followed.
    Mum sat crying on the bed. Next to her on the gold bedspread was a pink rubber pig’s head. It was the size of a basketball, with blue eye shadow and long lashes.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t meant to be funny.
    â€œLook, Erin, if you have to come in, shut the bloody door,” Tracy ordered. She hugged Mum and glared at me over Mum’s shoulder.
    â€œThey’ve given me the pig’s head,” Mum said, weeping. “I’m the worst fat lady in the group. Not only did I not lose weight this week, I put it on! I can’t do this anymore.”
    I pride myself on being good at cheering Mum up at times like this. “Just because you have a pig’s head doesn’t mean you
are
one.”
    Tracy shook her head, but Mum started laughing and crying at the same time.
    I can relate to Mum better when it comes to this stuff. Tracy doesn’t get it because she’s skinny. She gets mad at Mum and me for eating fattening food. “It’s simple,” she tells us. “Just stop stuffing yourselves!”
    That’s easy to say when you’re naturally athletic and beautiful. Tracy’s latest school picture looks like a Hollywood movie star’s. And she
always
looks that way. I can stare at that picture for hours, hoping I’m half as beautiful when I’m fifteen. Everyone wants to be like Tracy.
    Mum’s blue passport was on the bed next to the pig’s head.
    When Dad walks around the house saying, “Where’s my passport?” it’s because he’s threatening to leave us after an argument with Mum. All he does is jump in the car and drive around the block a few times to scare Mum, which it doesn’t; instead, it just scares me.
    I pointed to it. “Mum, what are you doing with your passport?”
    â€œHa! I wish that was what it is, darling. It’s my Weight Watchers book.”
    I looked closer. Instead of red stamps from foreign countries, there were little red piggy stamps in it.
    â€œCome on, Mum, throw this stupid thing in the trash,” Tracy said, giving the pig’s head a slap.
    â€œI can’t. I have to take it back next week.”
    â€œWell then, let’s put it somewhere you can’t see it, at least.”
    â€œOkay,” Mum said, her face blotchy and tearstained.
    The next week Mum took the pig’s head to her meeting so some other poor lady could go home crying with it.
    But Mum was the lucky recipient again.
    After her meeting, I heard her on the phone with Evelyn. “I stopped off on the way home and got a milk shake and a Mars Bar. You only live once, right?”
    But she doesn’t really believe that. Mum believes in heaven and hell, in rubbing Buddha’s tummy and that if you’re bad, you’ll live your next life as a cockroach.
    Mum believes in lots of things. Her Bible, her Edgar Cayce reincarnation books, and a little Buddha statue that she moves around the house when the mood takes her. Whenever one of us walks past it, she tells us to rub Buddha’s tummy three times in a clockwise direction for good luck. Then there’s the tarot lady Mum visits. Mum takes a tape with her each time, but she hides them and won’t