How stuck I felt

I woke just before dawn. I ignored the lying mourning dove.

Before I went downstairs, I looked at my fifty-thousand-dollar check. I could have hopped on a plane to Borneo that day. I could have bought a flashy car or less knobby knees or something. I could have bought an electric oven so I could learn how to bake brownies and broil flounder.

I had no idea what I would do with the money, though, so I sat down and wrote a new entry in The History of the Future.

I pieced together everything I saw. I drew a timeline. But I didn’t write about what I was thinking. I didn’t write about how I wanted to take the commune back from Jasmine Blue because I didn’t think she deserved it. I didn’t write about Ellie and how stuck I felt.

This book was supposed to serve as a record of how I went crazy. In case… you know. What makes a rock a rock? So I wrote all the visions down, and the details about the laws, the armies, the exiles. I didn’t write about how I couldn’t see my future when I looked at my father. Just a past. I tried to ignore that, even though the longer I ignored it, the more I noticed it.

When I was done, I went down to the darkroom and returned Darla’s sketchbook #3 to the shelf and pried Why People Take Pictures from behind the cabinet. I opened it to where I’d left it the night before.

Bill is following me. He still doesn’t have a head.

He is telling me something important. He is telling me that there are three of me. I am me. No one special. I am Roy’s wife. I am Gloria’s mother.

It is like juggling.

Sometimes I want to drop all the balls and rest my arms. Sometimes I want to stay in this darkroom and sleep until I know which one of me I really am.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

Underneath this was a sketch. It was hard to make out what the sketch was, but when I squinted at it long enough, I saw it. It was a sketch Darla made of herself, but with Bill’s head. Or, more accurately, with no head. When the image firmed up and I saw what it was, I turned away. I closed the book.

I opened my sketchbook and I replied to her, minus the morbid sketch. I have no idea what I’m doing either. I am not juggling anything and I am juggling everything. I can see the whole world’s future, but I can’t see my own. I can see the whole world’s past, but I can’t see yours.

And then I cried—maybe the first real cry I’d had since I was a child. There were so many tears, I was caught off guard. How could there be that many tears stored inside one person?

I remembered crying when I was at school—the times when kids or teachers asked me about my mother. They didn’t know any better. They were just normal people with normal lives. Can we call your mom to pick you up? Can your mom make us something for the end-of-the-year class party? How come your mom doesn’t volunteer like my mom does? Does she travel a lot?

It’s hard to understand. I knew that. I was surrounded by people who never had to think about morbid things like I lived with every single day. They never seemed to know how lucky they were.

I cried about the darkroom. I wished I had someone—anyone—to hand me a tissue or find something smart to say. And yet, I’d made sure there was no one. This made me cry harder.

I heard Ed Heffner in my head. I heard him tell me how smart Darla was.

I wanted to believe it so much.

But if she was so smart, then why didn’t she see? Why didn’t she see what she was doing? Why didn’t she understand that one day, I’d be in tenth grade, trying to make friends with the new girl in my class, who would say, “You’re so lucky you don’t have a mother, Glory. Mine is such a bitch.”

Why didn’t she understand that once she was gone, Jasmine Blue Heffner would be the only female role model on our road?

Why didn’t she understand how lonely Dad would be without her?

I looked back at Bill and I knew the truth. Suicide isn’t something people do to hurt other people. It’s something people do to release themselves from pain.

My crying lasted an impossible amount of time. It went on forever.

Once forever passed, I found a roll of paper towels and cleaned myself up. I didn’t want Dad to see I was upset.

The story of my life. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because I knew he had that many tears stored up, too. If we both started, maybe we wouldn’t ever stop.

I noticed my shirt was wet from crying, so I went upstairs to change and I saw the check again. I thought driving to the bank would be a good thing to do. Clear my mind. Maybe even figure out what to do with fifty thousand dollars. So I drove to the bank.

The bank manager was called over because of the amount. Apparently, fifty large makes bank managers anxious. They all fluttered around behind the bulletproof window like chickens locked in a small pen with a hungry rat. Eventually, the steel drawer extended with my receipt and the teller asked me if I needed anything else.

What else could I need?

When I was done at the bank, I drove around. I drove around the neighborhoods. I drove around the old community swimming pool that’s overgrown and never open anymore. I drove to the high school and around the empty back parking lot. And then I found the perfect thing to photograph—the empty graduation platform. No one had broken it down yet. It was just 350 empty chairs and an empty stage with empty steps and empty bleachers and an empty sky and an empty podium.

Day one, post–graduation from high school: This was the first day of the rest of my life. And it was empty, just like everything else. Zone 10 was in the shiny reflection off the white stage awning. Zone 0 was in the shadows beneath the makeshift handicapped ramp and the chairs.

I metered the scene and took a roll of pictures. I titled them in my head. Empty Chairs. Empty Stage. Nobody’s Talking at the Podium. When I was done, I walked to the away bleachers where Ellie had been the day before. I looked for her graffiti.

Free yourself. Have the courage. WHO IS THE PETRIFIED BAT? That was in all caps. WHO IS THE PETRIFIED BAT? I sat on the dewy-damp concrete and asked myself. Who is the petrified bat? Then I pulled a black Sharpie marker from my purse and answered. I wrote: I Am the Petrified Bat. I wrote it ten times, in ten different ways. I took pictures of each one and went home.

When I looked at my negatives once I’d developed them and hung them to dry, I saw each angle as a point of view. That was what a picture was, wasn’t it? A point of view? If you took a picture of a glass from above, it would look mostly empty. If you took it from below, it would look half full. A clichéd example, but you understand. Everything we see is based on where we’re standing when we see it.

Maybe my mother went crazy. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was really being followed by Bill, the man with no head. Maybe Bill existed. Maybe Bill didn’t exist. Maybe he existed just for her, as a message from somewhere else. From over there. Or from down there. Or from up there. Maybe it all depended on your point of view.