Excerpt from ‘Nothing is Ever Over’

Three years ago, Harmony Cox was a married woman with a stable life. When she decided to blow it all up by coming out of the closet, she had no way of knowing where she’d land after the blast. But she’s still fat, still queer, still struggling to process a traumatic childhood, and still obsessed with former WWE Women’s Champion Bull Nakano. As much as life changes, some things always stay the same.

Nothing is Ever Over is a book for all those other fat genderqueer Midwesterners who just want to be seen. It’s for people who feel neglected by women’s essay collections that sport a rotating cast of boring dudes, but not a single supporting character from Star Wars. It’s a book for people who know how to use pop culture as a bandaid, even when they need a tourniquet. It’s a book for people who are brave enough to be who they are no matter where they live, who they love, or how they’ve been broken before. Harmony sees you, and now you can see her too.

*

Some people would say that it is not appropriate for a mother to smoke around their small child. But the truth is simply that she was a smoker, and the only times she ever managed to stop for any period of time was when she was pregnant with me and my siblings, so I think she was doing her best. The stink and the haze was the price of admission to spend time with her, and there was nobody I wanted to be closer to than her. I knew she would never truly quit, even at that age, so I just learned to hold my breath every time I noticed her exhale. That quiet cycle— her out, my in—was the rhythm of the time we spent together.

She looks, to my eyes, the platonic ideal of adult beauty: a chubby, short brunette with a sophisticated asymmetrical haircut, one longish lock dangling over the lens of her invisible rim glasses. Her brown eyes look the same as mine, and we have the same nose and mouth.

After she dies, I will learn that some people find me painful to talk to because I look too much like her. I do not blame them.

On this particular day, we are in a state park near my childhood house, where my mother has taken us to make leaf etchings. I am laying on my belly, and I can feel the tree roots underneath me, dampened by the thermal Eddie Bauer blanket and my cool Technicolor shirt.

My mother is wearing a Keith Haring t-shirt from an AIDS fundraiser. The figure on the shirt has a glowing head, but his arms are spread out in a shrug. He seems genuinely humbled and stunned to be featured on a shirt. This is layered over one of a thousand bohemian print broomstick skirts that don’t match anything yet somehow match everything, a colorful trick that fascinates me. She is wearing her ever-present denim jacket, which she is trying not to ash on. Unsuccessfully.

At some point, my sister looks over and wrinkles her nose. She thinks she understands colors much better than I do, to the point where she will haughtily inform my father every time his shirts and pants clash. So I take it seriously when she says, “Those aren’t leaf colors! Those aren’t right!”

I glance up at my mother, who always has one ear out for the start of a sibling scrap. She’s leaning forward, her hands on her knees. “Harmony can draw with whatever colors she likes, honey. That’s how art works.”

I give my sister my smuggest smile and reach into the crayon box for a purple crayon, prepared to rub in my sister’s rhetorical defeat. “You heard mom!”

“But it isn’t right!” my sister says, confounded by our arrogance in the face of God and nature. “That isn’t what leaves look like!”

My mother cuts in. “Art can be all kinds of things. Sometimes it’s realistic, but sometimes it’s not. It’s about capturing moments.” Summarily dismissed, we return to our task of capturing moments with imperfect tools, just doing the best we can.

*

It’s late afternoon in the waning days of summer, and I am filthy and soaked with sweat, but I cannot help but smile. I am sitting in my sister’s SUV as we drive across town, backseat full of boxes of food that we are taking to people who need it. She sits next to me in a pair of well-tailored denim overalls and a black sports bra, somehow looking effortlessly cool despite the fact we’re both sweaty and tired and sore. She’s always known how to look her best even when everything goes to hell.

The pandemic has been rough on me. The streets are filled with violence and death, and there is nothing I can do about it. All I can do is sit at home and refresh Twitter and vibrate and cry. So when my sister texts me and asks if I want to assist with a mutual aid project that brings food donations to people who are too sick or old to make it to food distributions, I jump on the opportunity. I can leave my house and help people? Absolutely.

My sister and I are making small talk about the deliveries, joking about stealing the nicer bakery items out of the boxes for lunch. We have a couple of boxes of food for each family: grains and protein that were donated, day-old loaves of bread and bagels provided by the employees of corporate bakeries, cookies and treats dropped off by kind strangers, and farm-surplus produce. Ugly but edible, as long as you sort through it first to pull out anything rotting or oozing. The smell of rotting vegetables has its own special weight, and it clings to fabric, making our pandemic precautions difficult to maintain. Once I get a mask full of rotting lettuce, the smell lingers for hours and makes me nauseous. I get used to bringing extra masks with me when we pack.

I don’t write often about my sister, other than simply acknowledging her existence when it would strain the credibility of my writing not to. I tell people I avoid writing about my family because they dislike appearing in my work, and there is some truth to that. But honestly, I just didn’t know her that well for a long time. She moved away as quickly as possible after our mother died, and though I visited the places she ended up whenever I could afford it, our relationship was often strained by our difficult shared history. She seemed tense and annoyed when I traveled to be with her, and would often break our plans when she came back to town, if I did not break them first.

I have a flashback to a different hot summer: myself and my sister and a dozen of her friends, drunk in a hot tub in Indiana, celebrating her marriage to the man she has since divorced. She is giving an impromptu speech in the tub about how much she loves us and is grateful for our presence, as drunk people at bachelorette parties do. At one point she turns and gestures to me, droplets of hot chlorinated water bouncing off my glasses as she notes that we never really got along. I was surprised to learn she felt that way. I still wonder, sometimes, what she was referring to. I’m still not brave enough to ask.

Since she moved back, we’ve been getting to know each other again. We have conversations about how to have conversations, how to avoid each other’s sore spots, what needs to happen in order for us to be in the same room without fighting. It’s been slow-going, but we’re both trying, and I am grateful to have her in my life. The time we spend together seems to go well when we have a task to concentrate on: a movie to watch, a meal to make, food to deliver. So every Sunday, I meet her in a church basement and we pack boxes full of food for people who need it, spaced six feet apart and wearing masks.

The extra food in the back of the car makes the SUV heavy, and we feel every bump and swerve of the vehicle as we cross the arterial big roads of Columbus that take us from campus to the “bad” parts of town. The sun beats up at us off of cracked asphalt, making everything shimmer, painting the crumbling apartment buildings yellow against the clear blue sky. A drive I’ve made a thousand times before in my hometown, but this time eerie instead of calming. I can’t help but think about how normal it looks, how I could pretend this was just an average day if we were not driving boxes of food to people who had been struck down by a pandemic.

“Oh, look at that.” My sister points through the windshield and I see it: a gaggle of young kids, no adults to be seen, all painfully skinny and quick as they slip into traffic and knock on car windows.

“Do you think they’re selling water?” I rifle through my fanny pack, hunting for loose bills. I can feel myself salivating. “I could grab us some. I’d rather buy it from the kids than stop somewhere.”

“Maybe. I’ve seen kids selling water out here before.” My sister sighed.

“I don’t mind when kids hustle stuff. They probably sell it cheaper than the corner store anyway.” I wonder if my sister can hear the nerves in my voice. I am straining not to acknowledge why these kids might need extra support right now, and why whatever I can scrounge up will only be a drop in a bucket that will never be full enough.

“I can’t read the sign. Can you?”

“I...oh.”

We’re nearly at the intersection, and close enough to the sign that even my myopic eyes can read it. It says, simply, in a trembling Sharpied hand:

MOM DIED OF COVID

GOD BLESS YOU

I look over at my sister and realize I don’t need to read the sign to her after all: her lips are thin, and she looks pained. I know we’re both thinking the same thing: those poor fucking kids.

“Can you roll down the window for me?” I wave one of the kids over to the car. She’s so small, so skinny: she looks like a pile of rubber bands in sneakers as she clomps over and holds out her hand for whatever I can spare. She is so small and young her fingers barely reach up to the window. I hand her the ten dollar bill and wish her luck. She looks away quickly, then thanks me and runs back to the card table. We roll across the street and away.

My sister clears her throat. “Those poor kids.”

I glance over at her. “Do you think there’s any chance it’s just a hustle?” It sounds cynical, but I hope she knows what I mean: that I hope the kids are lying because the truth of what they’re about to go through is so painful I’d never wish it on anyone.

She shrugs. “Maybe. But I don’t think so.”

“I don’t either.” I look down at my hands, smudged with dead lettuce and dirt. “This is all going to get much worse. I don’t see how it can’t, you know?”

“I know.” My sister knows all too well, in fact: she’s already been laid off from one job, and she’s about to be furloughed from another. Before the pandemic hit, she was planning on going full-time as an illustrator. She's not sure what she's going to do now. Neither am I.

I think of the kids we just saw, and what they might have wanted to do and be before all this hit. Before a sickness came out of nowhere and took their mother away. I think of the ways we suffered when that happened to us, and for a minute I think I may actually break down and cry. It all feels too much, and too familiar.

“There’s our next stop, up ahead.” My sister’s voice draws me out of my reverie, reminds me there’s work to do. “We can leave the box beside the gate. Can you run it up so I can keep the car on?”

“Yep!” I grab our printed delivery list and check the address. “Should we call and let them know we’re here?”

“No, they never answer anyway.” She pulls over and stops by the curb.

I sit there for an awkward, quiet second. I look over at her. She doesn’t seem particularly upset, but still waters run deep where my sister is concerned. We’ve only talked a few times about what the final years of Mom's life were like for her. I know she saw and heard much more than I did, more than I will ever know. She’s braver than I am, and she always has been.

“I’m really glad we’re doing this together.” I say it in a rush, embarrassed at my vulnerability.

“Me too.” She replies warmly, nodding with agreement. Then she pops the lock. “It’s the one on the left. See you in a few.”

I run back to the trunk, hissing as the chrome burns my fingers. I grab a few boxes of food and step gently over the curb, aware of the eggs and bread I don’t want to ruin in these few short steps. I walk away from the car, considering how proud my mother would be of myself and my sister on that day. Living her legacy, being a part of a community, carrying on calmly no matter what.

Six weeks later, I send an email to the mutual aid group to let them know my own mental health has declined to the point that I will need to play my participation by ear until I am in better shape. My PTSD from surviving my mother's illness and death is spiking my blood pressure and making me too nauseous to do hard physical work. I send this email after I bend over to re-velcro my shoes at a produce serve and nearly vomit all over my own hands. My body won’t let me pretend anymore.

I don’t have to explain this to Leigh. We’ve already been texting, joking about the things she’s uncovering in therapy, about the way both of us are completely fucked. The day I send the email, she sends me a message: “I like talking to you because nobody else gets my trauma stuff. I’m glad we’re going through this together.”

We’ll always be going through it together. That’s my mom’s legacy too.

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