EIGHT

After school I have to take the bus to see my therapist, Dr. Waverly. She might be a shrink, actually, not a therapist. I’m not sure. She’s the kind of doctor that can give you medication, but she also likes to talk about my feelings.

So maybe she’s both.

I get off at my stop in Danville Village at ten to three, which gives me enough time to walk the rest of the way. I skirt sidewalk puddles and rich ladies pushing strollers. This is a real upscale part of town, and instead of regular square buildings, all the businesses here live and breathe inside Victorian row houses. One of them is Dr. Waverly’s and I could probably find it in my sleep, that’s how well I know the place. Maybe that’s not such a great thing to admit, but I’m not certifiable or anything like that. It’s just, after what happened with our mom, I had issues with worrying. I like to think that’s normal.

The ironic thing is, when we first moved in with the Henrys, Cate was the well-adjusted one. Cate was everything then. At eight years old, she was precocious. Outgoing. Spunky. She took to Angie in an instant, slipping into poor dead Madison’s rich-girl role like an understudy. I was pretty much her polar opposite, and my problems became glaringly obvious on the day Grammy and Grandpa Karlsson, Angie’s parents, came to visit all the way from Sweden for our first summer with the family.

At that point, we’d only been with the Henrys for seven weeks.

At that point, our mother had only been dead for seven months.

At the airport, Cate bounced and ran straight for our new grandfather. She wrapped her arms around him. Legs, too.

“Well, well,” he said, squeezing her hard. Cate wouldn’t let go. “She’s a friendly one, isn’t she? Run right into the arms of Charles Manson, this one would.”

Grammy Karlsson, who was shaky and mean-looking, peered down at me over the rims of her bifocals and said, “What’s wrong with his face?”

I cowered. A lot was wrong with my face. My eyebrows were still gone, and in addition to being gaunt and sickly and practically hairless, I cried way too much, at the drop of a hat, an act that left my eyes pink and puffy like a lab rat’s. Nothing made me happy. Not the niceness of Angie and Malcolm. Not the vibrant spirit of my sister. Instead, my well of sorrow grew deeper and wider with each passing day. I got picked on in school for my lisp. I wouldn’t talk or do my work. I worried about monsters. I worried about planes hitting our house. I worried about people breaking in and killing everyone. I worried I would go crazy and kill everyone. I had nightmares about blood and more blood and death and body parts and loss and terror and I was scared.

All the time.

Of everything.

“He’s a good boy. He’s just … still adjusting,” Angie told her mother. “Go on, Jamie. Hold Grammy’s hand.” She nudged me forward. I stumbled and my stomach cramped like I might get sick, which I knew would be bad, but I did what I was told.

Grammy’s hand felt brittle and papery to me. Stale. She reminded me of an old art project, constructed from paste and macaroni wheels. We walked together from baggage claim and she asked me questions like did they have manners where I came from and why did I still talk baby talk and did I know how lucky I was to have been adopted by such a wealthy family? I felt my own non-stale hand grow clammy and wet, like overripe fruit. I wanted to wipe it on my pants, but didn’t dare let go. I didn’t dare do anything that might come off as rude.

Making our way down a long flight of steps toward the airport parking lot, Grandpa and Cate skipped ahead, chatting cheerily. I took each step with great care, still holding on to Grammy while at the same time trying very hard not to throw up on my shoes.

“Hey!” Grammy said, yanking on my shoulder socket. “Pay attention!”

I blinked and looked up. “Huh?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“N-no. I’m sorry,” I said, but with the way I talked back then, it sounded like tharry.

She pursed her old-lady lips. “Angie says you won’t call her Mom yet, but you will soon, won’t you?”

My shoulders rolled in a listless shrug.

“You’ll forget all about that other woman. I know you will. She sounds absolutely frightful!”

Suddenly my head swam with dizziness. I ripped my hand from hers.

“What’s wrong with you?” Grammy asked.

“My mother’s not frightful!” I shouted. “She’s not!”

She smirked. “That’s not what I heard. Living in filth. Having babies on her own. You’re better off now. You just don’t know it.”

My blood boiled. I wanted to yell at her more, to say something awful, something more than awful, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my vocal cords wouldn’t work.

Grammy kept talking, shaking her finger, too, but my ears weren’t working, either. I couldn’t hear what she said. I couldn’t hear anything. Instead I took a step backward. I felt myself trip and fall.

And fall.

I kept falling. Like a dry leaf in autumn.

Then everything around me went dark.

Hours later, when I opened my eyes, I was in the children’s hospital with a green cast on my left arm and Cate looking right at me. She had a huge grin on her face. Freckles dotted her nose. She’d taken in sun lately. Me, I hurt all over. Everywhere.

“That was so cool,” she said.

“What was so cool?”

“You.” She shoved Pinky into my lap. I slipped the silk edge of the blanket square into the webbed space between my thumb and forefinger on my good hand, and began sliding it back and forth.

“Me?” I asked.

She nodded. “You fell down, like, a whole flight of steps at the airport. It was awesome. Like a movie stunt!”

“I fell?”

“Grammy Karlsson said you got so upset you held your breath on purpose.”

“What? No I didn’t!”

“Uh-huh. Yes you did.” Cate played with her hair. It was different than mine: black, shiny, flowing past her shoulders. “Grammy said you held it until you fainted. She thinks you’re totally nuts. Told Angie to send you back and everything, but I said I’d help take care of you. She likes me.”

My heart beat way too fast. “Why can’t I remember that?”

“Those people in the ambulance. They gave you pills right after. Something for the pain.” Her voice lowered. “You were really screaming something awful, Jamie. But they said the pills would make you forget what happened. Probably a good thing, don’t ya think?”

 

 

After I got out of the hospital I went to see Dr. Waverly for the first time. I was shy and didn’t want to, but Malcolm convinced me she wasn’t the type of doctor who gave shots or reset bones. And he was right. All we did that first time was talk. Dr. Waverly sat across from me and told me that years ago she and her partner had adopted a baby boy from Guatemala and that she liked helping children who were going through similar transitions. Her disclosure about her son made me feel safe. And understood. We also talked about other things, like holding my breath until I passed out. I told her I didn’t do that, but that no one believed me. Dr. Waverly said she believed me. I told her I was mad about what Grammy Karlsson had said about my real mom, and she said she believed that, too.

I liked her.

The second time I saw her, Dr. Waverly asked if I would do a bunch of tests with her. I said I would and the tests we did were fun, not just the kind where you had to prove you knew different letters and numbers. These were ones where I got to play games and make drawings of myself with my new family. She also wanted me to look at pictures and make up stories about them.

“And what might this be?” she’d ask, holding up an inkblot card.

I’d stare and stare. Answering took me a long time because I wanted so badly to be right. “It’s a monster. A scary monster. And he’s angry, you can tell because he has these streaks of red that show off his anger. He wants to kill someone. That’s why his boots are so big. So the police can’t find out who he is.”

At the end of it all, she told me I had severe anxiety and that the reason I couldn’t remember my mother dying was because of something called dissociative amnesia. She explained that my brain was so smart and so special it had found a way to forget the trauma. Only my body was still scared. That’s why I worried so much. She said she wanted to help me be less anxious, that there were pills she could give me and things we could do together, but that more than anything, I had to want to help myself.

I cried.

I said I wanted help.

I wish Cate had gotten help, too.