Atlas and Alice, Issue 19
Carolyn Fagan
Graveyard Girls The five friends were buried together. The sixth one couldn’t make it. She needed to be buried with her husband, her children—her family, she said. The five had sensed this long before the planning and planned accordingly when it came time. By the time the sixth friend needed to be buried, there was no question with whom she would be buried. To ask the question, sometimes, is to make the choice. Three of the friends had significant others close by: a wife, a lifelong boyfriend, a husband. They were cushion, padding, additional joy to lives already full. The significant others were let in on certain secrets. They entered parts of their respective romantic friend with fingers and other appendages that the friends had never tangibly explored between themselves. They built homes with their friend. They listened as their friend cried or yelled or whispered anger or resentment about the other friends. But they watched, too, at times with jealousy but often with relief, as the friends found and rewound themselves against each other like phone cords around wrists, slinky cats around ankles. They understood that the burden of being everything to someone could be too heavy to bear and they thanked their friend’s friends with lavish wedding, baby shower, Hanukkah, etc.-gifts. They accepted their plots with steady, simmering gratitude that they were loved by someone with so much love in their life already. Two of the friends had argued at first with the other three. To be buried, they explained, was a waste of precious land. The environment, they explained, was collapsing under our very feet. They didn’t even know if their kids would live the entirety of their lives with clean water, breathable air. They pleaded to burn. We can have our dust sprinkled in all of our favorite places, be together everywhere we’ve loved and where we’ve loved, they said. The three friends looked at one another. They exchanged side calls and emails, leaving the two out, for the next several years, developing their argument. They chipped away at the two with visits to graveyards, beachside and firefly12
