How he looks at me
Like I’m a car that won’t start, and if he opens the hood, examines every valve and piston, he’ll find the problem.
Like I’m an insect pinned in place, and if he angles the magnifying glass just right, he’ll watch me burn.
Like I’m a piece of furniture, without will or consequence.
Like I’m a mosquito bite, begging, scratch me, please. Like I’m a mountain, and he wants to climb me. Like I’m a dog, and—it’s a miracle!—I can speak.
How he looked at me when we met: like I was human.
Everyone before him had treated me as a set of problems to be handled. A thing, broken. Everyone before him would say, Now I’m going to check your blood pressure or now I’m going to take an X-ray or now I’m going to insert the speculum, now you’re going to feel the pinch. No one asking my permission, only narrating my future on my behalf.
There was something about the way he said my name, as if it was a name rather than a label. It made me feel newly real, and I thought, am I the kind of woman who needs someone else’s permission to believe in my own existence?
I had by then been this woman, in this body, for a month. Hospital first. Mental hospital, worse. Then women’s shelter, two nights, then the third night when I couldn’t stop crying. These tears were happening to me. I was not making them happen. I was calm—but only in a secret inner corner no one else could see. The body made its noisy fuss and was carted back to the hospital, a pill forced down its throat, and soon the body was as calm as I was, and we both fell asleep. When we woke up, the body was strapped down. It screamed.
Time floated. I swallowed more pills. The pills made a fog. Sometimes I talked to myself, to see if my voice would sound as far away as everything else.
His voice didn’t slice through the fog so much as dissipate it. He painted two pictures for me. First, the Wendy Doe who stayed in the hospital. Not for long, he said. The bed cost money, the oversalted soup cost money, the state could find cheaper ways to house me, and would—back to the shelter, then, or maybe the street. “You’re not a prisoner,” he said. “They can’t keep you, and trust me, they don’t want to.” This Wendy Doe had no means of legal employment and no claim to unemployment or disability or any other official payout from the state, because in the state’s eyes, Wendy Doe did not exist.
In the second picture, he said, I would have a room of my own. A bed, food, an allowance, freedom to do as I liked, for as long as I liked. I only needed to agree to let myself be studied. He said we would be collaborators. “Spelunkers,” he said. “Exploring the mysteries of your mind.” He called me a fascinating case. He said he monitored the news for possible subjects, but I was the first in months he’d deemed worthy of further study. I asked if he thought he could help me remember. He asked if I wanted him to.
“No.” I liked that he seemed unsurprised.
“Good,” he said. “Frankly, you’re of no use to us once you get your memories back.”
I liked that, too.
I wanted to be a spelunker of my own mind. Maybe I was the kind of woman with a thirst for knowledge, I thought. Or maybe I was the kind of woman who would shape myself into what this man wanted me to be.
“Let’s achieve greatness together,” he said. Maybe it was a lie, him looking at me like I was a person, but I don’t think so. I think I was real to him then, for the last time. A real person is someone who can choose, even if she’s choosing to give her choices away. A real person can say no or she can say yes.
I said yes.