This is a short story dealing with a few issues. Read at your own risk.
DIGNIFIED IDENTITY
A Story Of
Death And Rebirth. A Story Of Loss And Love.
In the summer of 2012 my best-friend and the love of
my life tied two cement blocks to her ankles and drowned herself in the ocean.
That warm cloudy day, she died and I was reborn.
Cameron Everly was barely a day over sixteen when she
decided that she wanted to die under her own terms.
“I want you to take my identity,” she said to me three
days after she turned sixteen.
“What?” I asked. I stopped mid-bite, the spoonful of
pudding slid off and splattered on the floor.
Cameron had been bedridden for almost two months now
and the cream colored hospital room had become our sanctuary since she couldn’t
escape up to my attic room anymore.
I sat with her every afternoon after school with the
lights off watching the sun go down through the open blinds. Our conversations
were usually light hearted except when she pressed me to discuss my feelings
about my family. I always felt terrible griping about my silly problems when
she was lying there with cancer ridden lungs. But she insisted, she said they
made her focus less on her own problems.
“I want you to take my identity,” she said again. She
turned towards me, her face catching the shadows of leaves from the setting
sun.
I mournfully stared down at my lost pudding but my
head was trying to make sense of what Cameron was saying. All I could think of
was a stupid conversation we had months ago right before she’d gotten diagnosed
with The Cancer. She had said that we could run away and assume each other’s
identities and no one would be the wiser. I had been upset that day, I’d gotten
into a nasty fight with my parents about something that I couldn’t even
remember anymore. And Cameron, ever the adventurous one, had outlined a million
ways we could run away to Canada or Alaska and live like the Inuit. I don’t
know why she always suggested cold places to run away to. I preferred our well
heated Florida.
“Are we going to run away to the North Pole this
time?” I asked with a grin. She smiled softly but in a way that I knew she
wasn’t teasing. She was very serious.
“Help me up,” she said. I hopped off the chair and
helped so she was sitting upright in the bed.
“I don’t think I’m cool enough to have your name,” I
said. I scooted my chair closer to her bedside but I stared at her hand instead
of her face.
She laughed. “What are you talking about? You’re
cooler than I am.”
“Bah,” I said, and took her hand off the sheet. It had
gotten so cold and frail. She squeezed my hand and rested her other hand on my
head. I felt the tears welling up behind my eyes again.
She removed her hands and I felt her place something
on my head. I opened my eyes. Her perfectly shaped head caught the light of the
dying sun through the blinds making her look like a zebra.
I touched the hat she put on my head.
She had a collection of brightly colored hats that her
family had bought her but most of them went unworn. I had learned to knit while
I was sitting here with her everyday watching her fall into a depression as her
beautiful blonde hair fell away with every chemo treatment. She held off
shaving it all until the last minute. I had made her a hat that looked like a
Viking helmet. It was her favorite. She cried when she saw herself in the
mirror with it on the first time. She claimed it was because she was so happy.
“See, with that hat, you could conquer Disney World.”
“I dunno, I’m more partial to Dairy Queen,” I said and
handed the hat back to her.
She pulled the hat over her ears and smiled at me.
“What do you say, do you want to be me for the rest of
your life?”
“What are you talking about, Cam? How could I be you?”
“Have you ever heard of Jack Kevorkian?”
“Dr. Death?” I asked. I remembered his name from documentary
my social studies teacher had us watch. “Didn’t he die last year?”
“Yeah, but he was an activist for a patient’s right to
die if they were terminally ill.”
I didn’t like where this was headed. “What does that
have to do with me being you?”
“Winnie, I want to die,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“Yesterday, they told me that I have a couple months
left. The cancer is uncontrollable now, the chemo’s not working anymore and
it’s only a matter of time before I start to degrade to the point of--” She
stopped and stared down at her hands.
I opened and closed my mouth a couple times, at a loss
for words.
“Here’s what I
want to do. We’re going to take my dad’s boat out on to the ocean and I’m going
to jump in, and sink like the Titanic. You know I like the theatrics.” She
laughed.
“Cameron, you can’t--”
“I deserve to
die with dignity, Winnie. I… I hate this feeling of losing control. If I have
to go I want to go under my own terms. If I have to suffer through any more of
this… I just can’t.”
“But why that?” I said finally. “Why drowning?
“I dunno, Jack Dawson did it.”
“Jack Dawson isn’t real, Cam. Plus he froze to death.
Meat popsicle”
“Beside the point, Winnie. It’s my favorite movie and
I get to choose how I die.”
“But I don’t…”
“Do you love me?”
“I…” I stuttered. “Of course I do.”
“Didn’t you say when we were ten years old that you
were going to marry me?”
“Yes.” I blushed. I couldn’t believe she remembered
that.
“Well, I want to marry you too!”
“I don’t think Florida is that progressive yet.”
“It’s full of old Republicans, that’s why we get
married in international waters and no one has to know.”
“And then you’ll kill yourself? I can’t--”
“But, Winnie, I can feel it. I can feel my body
letting go. And I don’t think I have much time left.”
“But maybe…”
“There’s no maybe, there’s no but,” she said firmly.
“Do this for me. It’s my dying wish.”
We ended the conversation there. I had to leave and I
focused on my guilt about not cleaning up the chocolate pudding on her floor
instead of her Titanic style death. I didn’t want to leave her, but my family
would be wanting to have dinner and if I didn’t show my face they were likely
to think I was hanging out with crack addicts or something.
My disagreements with my family had been trivial up to
a certain point, typical teenage bullshit that probably would have passed with
a bit more maturity. But I didn’t have a chance to let those trivialities go
away.
It started with a casual conversation at the breakfast
table. My older brother was talking loudly about his newest girlfriend. He
treated girls like trophies and the more he got the higher he was on some
invisible totem pole.
I hadn’t really been paying attention when my brother
asked me, “so Winnie, when are you getting yourself a boyfriend?”
I laughed, and said sarcastically, “how about never.”
Eric laughed back. “Why? You’re not that ugly.”
It wasn’t supposed to come out like this but I was
feeling happy and secure and I wasn’t thinking about all the signs that should
have red flagged me away from saying a damn thing. “I like girls, not boys,” I
said.
My mother dropped her cup and it shattered with all
her coffee on the floor. “No you don’t,” she said. She said it like her firm
statement could change the very weather.
I felt a cold shock run down my spine. Oh crap.
“Never say that again, Winnie, you’re not like that!”
she said. She got out of her chair and threw paper towels on the spilled
coffee.
“I…” I didn’t know what to say.
My dad started to laugh, but it wasn’t a kind of laugh
that was playful. It was mocking. “Just a phase, Margie!”
I knew my parents were a bit dismissive of gay people.
But a couple of my parent’s coworkers and friends were gay so I didn’t think
they would be disapproving of it. It was only later I learned that they were
okay with it as long as it wasn’t in their own house.
From that point on my parents scrutinized everything I
did, where I went, and what I wore. My mother went on a rampage through my room
and threw away any article of clothing that was remotely boyish. “No daughter
of mine will be a dyke!” She said angrily as all my band shirts and jeans ended
up in a trash bag. I managed to rescue the bag and left it at Cameron’s place
for safekeeping. Whenever I was home my mom insisted I wear skirts and pretty
blouses, but all it did was make me hate the color pink.
A couple nights after Cameron had declared that she
wanted to die I came down from my room one night to get dinner and overheard my
parents talking.
“Do you think we ought to send her to one of those
rehabilitation summer camps?”
My resolve to leave with Cameron had been shaky, but those words struck
me like a cold icicle to the heart. They thought they could fix me. But I
wasn’t even broken.
I left without even trying to get dinner and headed back to the
hospital. Visiting hours be dammed I was going to visit my only friend. I loved
my parents, as flawed as their thinking was, but I didn’t want to be in that
toxic environment any more than they wanted a lesbian daughter.
When I finally got to Cameron’s room, she was asleep.
She had a ventilator hooked up to help her breathe at night so the machines
were loudly breathing with her. I crawled up into her bed and lay by her like a
child woken by a nightmare.
I cried into her pillow and apologized over and over
when she woke up. She didn’t say a word and cradled my head to her chest,
humming a song she liked until I fell asleep.
She was the only person who really understood me.
I hated that she was in here, in this sterile place that had generic pictures on the walls instead of her movie posters. She must have been so unhappy to be trapped here.
I hated that she was in here, in this sterile place that had generic pictures on the walls instead of her movie posters. She must have been so unhappy to be trapped here.
We began to plan. I wasn’t happy with the planning to
take Cameron to her watery grave but her mood got better every day. She had
more life and light in her posture those last few days than she had in almost
two years. The darkness that had entered our lives when she had been diagnosed
with lung cancer at fourteen was dashed away and I felt like we had been
transported back to when we were children playing without a care.
I avoided my parents even more. I was more confident
about leaving with every passing day but part of me was distraught to leave
everything behind. My distancing seemed to freak my parents out and one day
they even took me to their pastor to see if there was any way they could pray
the gay away. I wanted to puke when they all sat there with their heads bowed
and called out to some merciful god to fix me.
Any misgivings I had about leaving dripped away with
every snide comment from my father and passive aggressive look from my mother.
My brother didn’t seem to know how to deal with me so he didn’t.
The last time I had dinner with them I smiled all
through dinner and tried to chat them up. “Everything will be okay, you’ll
see,” I said to my gloomy faced parents. I finally felt like Cameron looked. I
felt like freedom was just a breath away.
That night after everyone had gone to bed I lifted the
keys to my brother’s car and headed to the hospital.
Somehow, filled with some kind of second wind Cameron
had managed to get out of bed and down the elevator without any of the nurses
seeing her. I don’t know how in her weakened state she was able to even stand
but there she was in her rumpled shirt and jeans that were too big for her
standing at the edge of the hospital lot.
She jumped in the passenger seat and giggled like she
was going an illicit party instead of catching a boat to end her life. I
quickly drove out of the parking lot and Cameron kicked up the radio and sang
loudly with after midnight pop songs. I tried to laugh and sing along with her
but with every mile my heart grew heavier.
+++
We got to the docks on the coast and parked my
brother’s car as close to The Selfish Shellfish as we could. I will never cease
to be amazed at Cameron’s ingenuity. Somehow she had managed to get copies of
her dad’s boat keys. She had clearly been
planning a lot longer than I had been in on it.
She showed me how to control the boat and we maneuvered
out of the docks just as the sun was rising on the horizon. Her father kept the
boat fueled so we went out as far as half a tank would take us and then stopped
to watch the sun continue to rise in the sky.
Cameron sat me down and handed me a small packet.
“Here’s my folder. It has my social security card,
birth certificate, passport, and driver’s permit. It’s everything you’ll need
to establish a new identity.”
I held it like it was going to explode. This was
really happening.
“But first, I want you to marry me.” Cameron said with
a huge smile. She pulled out two little plastic rings that looked like they
came from one of those little vending machines in restaurants.
She took my hands and we stood in the middle of the
boat staring into eachother’s eyes. She looked so silly with her knitted Viking
hat on but all I saw was the pattern of her blue eyes. I dared no to forget
what they looked like. My heart ached from the love I felt for her and the loss
I was about to experience.
“I, Cameron Everly take Winnie Tyson to be my wife,
till death do us part.” She said with such strength I wanted to believe that we
were going to be together forever, that we were going to grow old and adopt a
bunch of babies and die in bed together with wrinkles on our faces. She took
one of the little rings and pushed it onto my pinky. It wouldn’t fit on the
others.
“I, Winnie Tyson take Cameron Everyly to be my wife,
till death--” my voice cracked, but I pushed through, “til death do us part.”
She kissed me then and smiled. I put the little ring on her pinky finger and
raised her hand to my cheek. Don’t forget the feel of her skin.
“Let’s eat,” she said.
We had a picnic in the sun and she started to tell a
story. In the next two hours she told a story about the future we were never
going to have. “We get married out here on the ocean and our boat runs out of
fuel. We’re stranded and we have a long conversation about where we’re going to
move to after the honeymoon.” She went on on and on talking about intricate details
like the kind of carpet we will have in our first apartment to the kinds of
coworkers we’re going to have at the jobs we get after college. “Then one day we
retire, you from music producing and me from movie directing and move to--”
“Canada,” I interjected with a laugh.
“Canada! Oh, Canada!” She giggled. “And then we buy a
house in the woods and grow some flowers that only grow in Canada. And we pay
for our grandkids to come up every summer to play at the lake we’ll have.”
“And we’ll spoil them stupid!” I said.
“Fill them with sugar and send them back to their
parents!” She laughed herself into a coughing fit. I patted her back until it
passed.
“And then…” I started to say.
“And then,” she repeated, “we’re going to grow so old
and wrinkly that you look like a prune and I look like a raisin.”
“Why am I a prune?” I asked.
“You’re taller, of course.”
“By like an inch!”
“And then!” she said again, “we’re going to crawl into
bed one night, say goodnight and I love you to each other, and a shooting star
will pass across a crescent moon and it will be the last thing we both see
before we fall asleep for the last time.”
We grew quiet after that. Half-eaten sandwiches
between us, I felt like a gap was widening. Her time was growing close. But the
smile on her face was bigger than ever.
And for the last time that day I sobbed like a baby. It’s
stupid that in the end it was her comforting me, but she was content with her
decisions.
+++
At 1:35 Sunday afternoon, Cameron tied the two
cinderblocks to her ankles, held the blocks in her hands and stood at the bow
of the boat. “I’m king of the world!” she shouted.
Then with my help she sat at the edge of the boat and
released the blocks into the water. She sat there for a few seconds and then
looked back at me. She smiled and nodded her head. She leaned over and kissed
my cheek one last time. Then she took her Viking hat off and put it on my head.
“Remember me fondly.”
“I love you, Cameron,” I said.
“And I love you… Cameron.” She grinned and with sigh
of relief she leaped off the edge. I trembled with shock as I watched her sink
quickly. Bubbles trailed up behind her. The smile never left her face and her
eyes never left mine until the darkness of the water swallowed her up.
She was gone.
I sat watching the point where she disappeared some
part of me expecting her to rise up and come back to me. But realistically I
knew she had used all her strength to come here. Even if she had wanted to come
back she wouldn’t have had the energy.
I didn’t move for hours, suddenly lost. All the plans
to run away had been so solid up till now. Because strong Cameron had led the
way for weak Winnie.
But Cameron had given her name to me, I was supposed
to be strong now. Everything that she embodied I had to honor. Her strength had
to be my strength. I pushed myself up on shaky feet and took the controls of
the boat once more.
I drove along
the coast until the boat ran out of fuel. Then I wrapped up the folder with
Cameron’s identity in it and the Viking hat in a plastic bag stuffed it into a
backpack and swam back to shore. I came out somewhere near Ponte Vedra Beach
and walked up onto the beach. If it was strange to see a fully clothed girl
emerge from the water none of the Sunday beachgoers said anything. I took a
seat on a sandbank and watched the sky grow dark. It was hot out so my soaked
clothes felt good on my skin.
I wanted to cry but I promised Cameron that my tears
would only be from happiness after this point.
I opened the folder just so I could see Cameron’s name
again or see her face on her driver’s permit. Along with the ID I found a
smaller envelope and in it was a letter with some numbers written on it.
Winnie—or should
I say Cameron?
Here is the
account number and pin for my bank account. No one knew I had this so don’t
worry about being tracked. It contains all my birthday, Christmas, and
babysitting money from the past two years. I also managed to get ahold of my
parent’s savings account information and transferred a portion of my college
savings into it as well. I left the rest for my sisters and my parents for any
expenses that might come up. Enclosed you will also find a $100 bill. Go get
your hair cut, dyed and styled differently. From here on out you are Cameron
Everly, unrelated to the missing cancer patient from Orlando.
Be safe, and I
love you. Go be the best music producer you can be.
~CE
“I won’t let you down. I promise.” I clutched the
letter and allowed one last tear to escape. I didn’t move for the whole night
feeling my body go through another shock.
When the new dawn came I opened my eyes and saw the
world with new eyes. I wasn’t limited to small minds and small lives. With
Cameron’s blessing I could be everything I couldn’t before. She had left this
world behind and given me the opportunity to better myself. I would never
forget her and with the strength she has passed on to me I will make the world
a better place.
FIN
