THE SOLARIUM

In memory of Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum

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My suicide–starvation–was a slow one. In a sick way, I admired anyone with the courage to cut to the quick. Then again, I had always admired her.

We ran in the same circles, a Venn diagram that intersected occasionally in a friend-of-a-friend sort of way. She was such a character: mousy and deferential one moment, with her poofy, curly ponytail and her little cardigan, and a spitfire the next. She could burn you alive on the pyre of her intelligence. Half the debate circuit was afraid of her; I never pictured her afraid.

I went to her memorial in black, my only color the ribbon they handed everyone at the door: purple and turquoise. It was at Kincaid, on a summer evening. I wondered how many
people were just down the hill, playing Frisbee golf in the mosquito-morass of tangled trees, unaware. How many times had I been them?

They called the memorial “a celebration of her life”. It struck me as perverse, celebrating a life the deceased clearly hadn’t, like we were taking something from her by refusing to acknowledge her pain. No one meant it that way, of course. Everyone in that golden, high-ceiled, wide-windowed room was unquestionably well-intentioned.

Many who spoke seemed baffled. Her life seemed linear from the outside: straight and sharp, with Ivy League assurance. They spoke of her countless classes, tireless volunteer work, achievement after dizzying achievement, and all I could think was, no wonder she did it, if this is how we’re defining her, even now. The pressure must have seemed insurmountable from that ever-steepening precipice of precociousness.

We were over a year into the new normal, the pandemic grinding on. We all wore masks, and the resonance was almost too obvious. Of course we’re wearing masks–she must have felt that way all her life. I wonder if she actually liked the physical covering, if it let her forgo false smiles.

She asked Yale for mental health leave. They denied it more than once. She stood at the counter of academia, grade points clinking through shaking fingers like coughed-on pennies into a rusting register, and they told her to stay. Her studies were essential.

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This piece was originally written in response to the prompt “What’s under the mask?” during a community workshop in 2022 and was published in issue six of Chatter Marks.