Sometime I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything.
—BLAINE HARDEN, ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14: ONE MAN’S REMARKABLE ODYSSEY FROM NORTH KOREA TO FREEDOM IN THE WEST
I couldn’t move any part of my body without pain, so I usually sat in my room, refusing to exert myself beyond walking to the bathroom, or taking an occasional stroll around the yard on Papa’s arm. My days consisted of watching my favorite reruns on TV, turning the pages of books I couldn’t concentrate on enough to read, and finding creative places to hide my food so Mom wouldn’t know I wasn’t eating. Sometimes I used Mom’s computer to look up things that were relevant to my recovery—for instance, post-traumatic stress syndrome, a psychological condition triggered by a terrifying event that can completely shake up one’s life. I had all of the symptoms, the flashbacks, the nightmares, the paralyzing anxiety. My parents suggested I see friends to help me get my mind off the throbbing of my wounds and the pain in my heart, but I usually refused, and even on those rare occasions when people did come to visit, I was usually so out of it I forgot they’d been there.
The only thing that could get me moving was the three times a week when I knew I had physical therapy in Dallas, and then it wasn’t the therapy that motivated me. Home was almost an hour’s drive from Dallas, so we hired livery drivers to take me to and from my therapy sessions. Those trips were my big adventures, and I really looked forward to them. I could hardly wait for the car to come so I could escape into an alternate universe, where I didn’t have to worry about bleeding on my sheets again or staining the towels Mom used to cover the furniture so I didn’t stain the wood or upholstery.
The drivers didn’t care what I did. They were an assorted bunch, some women, some men, all of them employed by workmen’s comp and using their own cars, many that looked as if they might not make it out of the driveway, much less all the way to Dallas. The drivers didn’t seem to care if I was in pain or depressed or even if I stained their backseat. They’d drive along, living their lives, and I’d just be along for the ride, enjoying their chitchat, or their quirks, or their private cell phone conversations.
Some of them were real characters. One of my regulars was a woman who I thought was a man for the longest time. She was forty or fifty, with calloused hands and chewed nails and hair that was cut into a mullet. She wore biker clothes and always the same braided leather bolo tie with a silver and gold Texas Star. Her car smelled like cigarettes and alcohol. She took the corners on those country roads like a racecar driver. I’d shut my eyes really tight and hope for the best, but it was better than being at home thinking about what was and what might have been, or feeling as if I was drowning in survivor’s guilt.
After a while I began requesting a driver named Teresa. I adored her. She was a large African American woman with an expressive face and a gleaming white smile, and she always told me stories about her kids and her grandkids. She hadn’t had an easy life, but she was always warm and cheerful and I came to really like her. To reward me after every physical therapy session, she’d drive to a McDonald’s in a ghetto part of northeast Dallas and get a stash of oatmeal raisin cookies. She’d park the car, pull out two cigarettes, one for her, one for me, and we’d sit there smoking and gorging ourselves.
“Now don’t you tell your mama what we’re doing,” she’d say conspiratorially.
“Not a chance,” I’d say, flipping my cigarette butt out the window and stuffing the last cookie in my mouth.
Then we’d be back on the road again, headed back to reality.