pictures of celia

pictures of celia

“If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart, I’ll always be with you.”

—Winnie the Pooh

pictures of celia

by paige r. berry

I initially told her no. She had asked me to go with her on this road trip, and as her raspy words came through the receiver I twisted the phone cord around my fingers, watching them turn white before answering. I tried to think of all the reasons I shouldn’t go. There was the fact that we hadn’t spoken much over the past six months. There was the drug use, and the misplaced glamour of her new life--the new identity I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw her as my best friend.

I couldn’t remember

I couldn’t understand

the last time I saw her as my best friend

I would’ve given anything to be just like her

I thought back to her last birthday.It was an Alice in Wonderland themed party and she had told me about this great corset she’d be wearing that her boyfriend had bought with all the money he’d made dealing. She told me that it would be fun and that she had some E she would pass out at the party. You can have some if you want, she said. I thought about it. Truthfully, I would’ve given anything to be just like her and her ever-changing group of friends.It all seemed so sublime in a way I couldn’t understand. Their world was glitter versus jewels and I couldn’t connect to the façade of reality in which they immersed themselves.

I would’ve given anything to be just like her

I actually went to that party. I had bought a new black and white dress on sale at the mall and dressed it up with some costume jewelry. I knew no matter what I wore, Celia would don something far more extravagant. When I walked in, I could barely hear myself think. I found myself getting dizzy from the colors and the heat and the mirage of faces. No one could tell me where Celia was.I squirmed my way through sweaty bodies and around

the red solo cups to a small back room.There was a long line to the corner of the room, where Celia and her boyfriend sat like king and queen on their thrones. He was cutting a line and she was passing out the ex to those waiting patiently for their happiness. Her eyes were rolling around in her squinted sockets and she seemed to sway as if being shoved from every direction.

she seemed to sway as if being shoved from every direction.

right?“We are best friends right?”

right?I cut to the front of the line of hippies and kissed her on her cheek, hand-ing her the gift I had so carefully chosen for her. She looked at me as if we’d never met, and offered me a tiny blue pill. I wanted to melt into the floor. I spent the rest of my night falling all over her, cross-faded as hell, feeling a sort of elation in my drunken freedom. Through my absent filter I kept saying to her “We’re best friends right? We will always be best friends, right Celia?” When I could no longer stand, she sat me down by her side in the corner where I’d found her.

I let my head rest on her shoulder and imagined I was falling. We were six years old again, laughing and free. I savored every minute of my pain.

* * *

We will always be best friends right, celia?”

We will always be best friends right, celia?”

she told me she didn’t have a

PLAN

She told me she didn’t have a plan. She had some cash her new boyfriend had lent her and some coke we could sell if money got tight. She figured we’d prob-ably be gone for a week or so. I wasn’t even sure what to pack. She invited me to coffee so we could try to lay out the basics.

PLAN

After throwing out lame excuses,I finally found my voice. Okay, I told her, I’ll go. After all, I always saw pictures of her and her friends in unidentifiable places doing peculiar things. They looked so bohemian. I wanted to find my way into those sepia tones if only for one time. As soon as I agreed to go along, I knew this would be the last time I saw her. This would be my way of saying goodbye to the girl I no longer knew.

I wanted to find my way into those sepia tones if only for one time.

I found my voice Ok, I told her, I’ll go.

“ Celia, I’m just not sure how we’re going to do this. I mean we don’t even have any idea where we’ll stay each night. I feel like we should really think about the logistics before we just go,” I said smashing the leftover crumbs of my cof-fee cake on the porcelain plate.

This is our chance

this isthis THIS is

“ God, Renée, lighten up. This is ourchance to just get away, you know? We’velet everyone else’s plans dictate our lives until this point. This will be just for us, no worries, just carefree fun.”

just carefree fun

no worries

I wanted her confidence. There was so much I wanted to say that was keeping me from just hopping in her car. Why hadn’t she been there for me when I needed her most? The transition from childhood to adulthood had seemed so hurried that I felt almost completely severed from who I was.

One day I was making clover flower chains on the playground with Celia, and the next I was in the back of crowd-ed venues, sipping beer and watching Celia socialize. It made the growing pains so much sharper to realize Celia experienced her transition completely differently, and lost me in the process.

i wanted her confidence

so much i wanted to say

it made the growing pains

so much sharper

I was so resentful of the way she had embraced her new scene without a thought to my place in it. I felt like the comfortable sweater discarded in favor of a sequined dress. What made it harder for me was that I saw the sideways glances her friends gave me when I came around. They knew I wanted to belong, but couldn’t. They had their vinyls and their tea and they had my best friend. They knew she was no longer mine.

discarded

discarded in favor of a sequin dress

fleeting feelings

“ There are a few places I think we should definitely stop,” she added. I heard about this really huge carnival in Phoenix, just a few hours from here. It’ll be just like all those trips to the fair when we were little. Plus, I really want to photograph in the desert.” It seemed like everything she said lately reminded me of times past, of fleeting feelings I could barely grasp anymore. I remembered

our sticky little fingers perspiring with anticipation, gripping the swings at the local fair. We always rode them together and threw each other crazy grins as it started to wind up. We understood what it meant to be there. No one else saw the magic like we did. We always knew we had the world in our hands, and no one else could come into it. We were in love with our point of view.

fleeting feelingsfleeting feelings

fleeting feelingsI could barely grasp

fleeting feelingsI could barely graspWe always knew

we had the world in our hands

We were in love with our point of view

in love

We were in love with our point of view

in love

I wish we had photographs of those times. When you’re eight, every picture of you is posed and forced, sitting on a bale of hay with some pumpkins, or on the lap of a famous stranger, or any number of the unusual things parents have you do for their own amusement. Where were the

where were the pictures of

those times

pictures of us rolling around in the grass, laughing until our clothes were green and our hands were red with the clay dirt? Where were the pictures of us huddled underneath blankets whispering our secrets back and forth until gray light came through the window?

where were the pictures of

those times

Celia had become quite the photog-rapher, but not until after we’d already made our best memories. The silver gelatin lining her wall now boasted faces I didn’t recognize framed with dark glasses-waifish girls smoking cigarettes and sipping wine, even more feminine boys in tight white shirts and fedoras. There were one or two pictures of me. I looked so

squat and awkward. I was usually touching my eyebrow (an anxious tick of mine) or staring into the camera like I was search-ing for something to say. She didn’t ask to photograph me often. Even now as we sat at the corner café she had her Mamiya in her lap, threatening to capture the expres-sion of a passerby.

searching for something to say

staring into the camera

I hated her for her

I knew she’d want to leave immediately, because she didn’t have any concept of responsibility, or really anything outside the fairytale she had created for herself. I wasn’t sure why she’d want to leave if her life was so awesome here and now.

“ Well, when do we leave?” I asked, more or less knowing what she’d say.

“ I was kind of thinking tomorrow. Let’s just get the fuck out of here I mean, there’s nothing really stopping us.”

predictable whims.

outthe fuck the fuckthe fuck

“ I’m supposed to work at the radio station tomorrow, but I was thinking of bailing anyway. The hours are so shitty that it isn’t a huge loss if they fire me. I don’t think I can work it around my class schedule next semester either. Alright, tomorrow works I guess. If you want to come to my place to pick me up around noon, that’d be ok. Just give me a call.”

She barely acknowledged me because she’d become fixated with something hap-pening across the street and was reaching for her camera to document whatever it might be. I sensed she wasn’t even really there anymore, so I touched her hair as I pushed in my chair and walked away, knowing she’d be at my front door tomor-row afternoon.

I woke up for the second time that day to the Strokes struggling through white noise on the radio. The changing signal meant we must have made some significant headway in travel time. I tried to discreetly wipe away the drool that had crusted at the corners of my mouth. Despite so many years of being practically the same person, I felt newly self-con-scious in front of her. I slid easily from my place on her leather seat toward the dash,

aided by the sweat pooling around me. It was hot as hell outside, the hottest sum-mer most places had seen in a while. I felt like I was withering without the protection of her ragtop.

years of being practically the same person

“ Hey, you’re awake. Listen, I called my friend Rob and he says he has a couch for us in Phoenix. He and Konrad used to fuck with each other. He’s all right, and it’s

“Celia, I have a sunburn.”

in BFE.” Konrad was Celia’s ex-boyfriend, the arty, eccentric, and probably a little bit touched, drug dealer. He had been obsessed her, but she discarded him easily, as she was prone to do.

“Wait--what?”

They used to fuck with each other?” She sort of fluttered her eyelashes and made this pinched smile, which was her favorite way to preface telling me something I should already know. It was something she’d done since we were little, and it bugged the shit out of me.

I didn’t say anything, mostly because I didn’t have anything interesting to add and party to mentally catalog this with the wealth of other unfamiliar terms Celia had recently introduced to me. I was building a language, just in case I was initiated back into her life.

better than a crusty motel room

“ How far outside of Phoenix are we?” I said fumbling for the map on the dashboard. “I really need to pee and my mouth tastes like asshole. I may have swallowed some bugs.”

my mouth tastes like asshole. i may have swallowed some bugs.

She took a swig of some ginger ale while grasping the wheel with her other hand, but didn’t offer me any. She had a slight germ-o-phobia. This struck me as odd now, knowing she shared countless bowls with people she’d never met, and didn’t think twice about it. We’d even shared a couple between us, but this didn’t seem to affect her present generosity.

“ Maybe like an hour? We’ve actually been on the road for a while now, but

I guess you wouldn’t know that.”

she hated it when I fell asleep while she drove

She had always hated it when I fell asleep while she drove. Celia craved constant conversation. I felt the reason for this was primarily for her to squeeze in as many Rolling Stones references as she could at all times. That was her favorite band, as was anything she could get her hands on by way of recommendation of her friends. I hadn’t listened much to The Stones except for the songs everyone had

heard (much to her shock), and never claimed a band as “favorite” until I’d conducted a thorough investigation and listened to the album at least a few times.

“ Hey do you want to stop up here? You could get a drink and we can take a break for a little while.”

STOP

I responded enthusiastically, eager to get that god-awful sleep taste out of my mouth. When we stepped out of the car my joints rejoiced and I languidly stretched to the sky. Celia swayed side to side, making even stretching look like some art form.I used the grimy-tiled rest-room littered with tissue-thin paper and briefly examined my appearance. I had always despised the toll road trips took on

my personal hygiene. It is impossible to remain stationary in a car and not end up looking like death. Were it not for the pay-off of sightseeing,

I would never leave home.

Celia leisurely came in behind me casually tousling her own thick hair, so similar in color to mine but recently cut to short wavy bob. It fell perfectly as always.I recalled the times I urged her to be grateful, referencing the baby-fine strands on my own head.

We moved to the scarce grass outside and Celia stretched across the gray concrete slab that was meant to be a bench and laid her camera on the adjacent picnic table. I closed my eyes and saw the impressions the sun had made just moments before.

I welcomed the breeze that made its way through the open space and brushed against my cheek with a sort of reassurance. I felt so much more rested and at ease now than I had beneath the relentless sun with static filling my ears and bad memories just behind my present thoughts.

I glanced toward Celia and saw that her chest had began to rise and fall in a rhythmic motion. She looked so beautiful. Her dark eyelashes fluttered, giving way to a dream and she sighed quietly against the wind. I couldn’t help but think back to the nights we stayed up so late watching Dirty Dancing and talking afterward about the prospects of life, that we could scarcely keep our eyes open. I was almost always the first to fall asleep and had this nearly

conscious knowledge that she was watch-ing me, and that I could sleep feeling safe and guarded my best friend. Every so often she would drift off before I did and I would take the opportunity to observe her as I did now. She had always looked just like an angel, so pure and honest. I felt so privileged to be her confidante.

My attention was drawn unexpectedlyto the small patch of white light that made an amoeba-like shape on the table. It had found its way through a crack in a passing cloud and drew attention to the shiny camera just to its left. So many times I had seen Celia caress it as if it were her child,

placing more importance upon it than much else she owned. I always considered the prospect of creative tools, and in her hands, I knew the possibility of resulting beauty was more than probable, it was cer-tain. For all she’d lost, she’d gained back just as much in artistic talent.

It seemed sacrilegious that i should even touch it, like I was breaking some golden rule. I felt like as soon as I wrapped my hand around the hard plastic of the 35mm it would shatter to pieces, awakening and angering its jealous guard-ian. But as I slipped the camera strap over my neck, nothing happened. Celia’s hair danced gracefully in the evening air, and her thin tee continued to be animated as her lungs filled and emptied.

I EXPERIENCED HER

It was then that I knew what I had to do, and already felt guilt and longing in the act. I twisted the ridged surface of the manual focus and the blurry lens became clear to frame her fair-skinned counte-nance. I wanted--needed-- to capture her this way. This was Celia as I knew her, my best friend and keeper. This was Celia stripped clean of her loyalty to social nuances and fleeting friendships. She seemed as innocent and fresh as a new-born, and all I wanted was to immortalize the way I felt as I experienced her in this

moment. I felt my palms sweating and my finger slipping a bit as I increased pressure on the round black button at the top of her precious camera. It gave a satisfying click and swoosh as I executed the shot. I saw the way the light made her golden locks glisten, and I took another. I remembered the way I loved the knobs on her crooked knees, and took another, and another. Before I knew it, I had taken the entire roll. Celia remained still as ever, none the wiser.

this was Celia as I knew her

my best friend and keeper

Standing over her, watching the slight movement of her eyelids, I felt a panic that she would awaken. I lacked the remorse I expected to feel for what I had just done, but was left with the realiza-tion that I couldn’t stay here. I knew what I wanted this trip to mean for me, and I knew that somehow the feeling I had hoped to gain had already come to frui-tion. The thought of losing this made me sick to my stomach, and the thought of

seeing her any other way was something I couldn’t bear to face again.

I popped the back off of the camera after winding the film onto the spool and slipped it into my skirt pocket. I placed the camera back on the picnic table with feline poise. I hesitated before walking away, considering a more proper goodbye, but only lightly touched Celia’s thin shoulder.

I reached into the back of her Mustang and grabbed the only bag I had packed, surprising myself with its lightness. I walked across the parking lot through the mirage of heat to the black eighteen-wheeler at the nearby weigh station and asked the trucker inside where he was going. He said he was headed out west and I told him I had a stack of twen-ties that might persuade him to consider

my company. I climbed into the high cab and looked toward the rest stop, wonder-ing if she’d seen me. She was sitting up, rubbing her eyes and tugging at her tee shirt. I put my head in my hands and asked the kind trucker if he’d be leaving soon. He started the engine in reply and it roared with a thunderous retort.

I touched my pocket as the dirt behind us billowed into the dusk.