Test. Test. 1-2-3.
Awesome.
So, if you’re listening to this, then I’m dead, too. We’re together again in our cornfield. You shouldn’t have left the way you did. That totally sucked.
I haven’t listened to your tape. I’m sorry. No can do.
So, anyway, can you see where I am now? Fucking nut ward. Fucking Alta. Unbelievable. Group therapy three times a day. Meds twice a day. Individual therapy once a day. The shrink who’s kind of okay gave me this totally old tape recorder, like huge, ancient, and she said I have to get stuff out, stories and stuff. With all the meds my mind goes fluffernutter, but talking to you, that works. All I can do in group is picture you in the cornfield, hanging in the dorm, your greasy hair. And I imagine the one-liners my brother, Doug, would make to the kids in the group, like “Shut up” or “Life’s a bitch,” to the loser kid who flubbed his suicide. Missed his brains and shot his ear, van-fucking-Gogh. Or the Whiner whose momma never pays attention to her. Bor-ing.
You’d like Doug. You two were kind of alike. He and I had this pediatrician growing up, all pasty white and crew cut. Like the shrink in charge here: Dr. Do Little. He’s sitting across the circle from me, tweed jacket and bow tie. Dr. Do Little turns to me in group, his round glasses all smudged, and I’m like, “I don’t know,” to everything he asks. He’s always asking what I feel. The way he says “feel,” it sounds gross and slimy.
Do Little says I should let it out. He doesn’t say what “it” is. In the prison cell they put me in, hospital room, they give me a journal, no lines, and a tape recorder with a blank tape. Bonus. I can’t help but think that they erased somebody from the tape to use it again. I haven’t said a word to anybody anywhere so far.
Okay, there was one time I talked. Had to.
That time the Whiner, sucking on her gross hair, is next to Do Little, her body all stretched out, like she’s a board somebody propped up against the chair. The loser, van Gogh, is talking about his miserable life in this nasal voice. I hear him say, “wah wah wah nobody cares about me wah wah wah, poor me.” So, I don’t know, I just lose it. These kids are like Tim-Tim kids, stupid and spoiled.
“You know what’s funny?” I say out loud, and the room goes dead. Dr. Do Little pushes his glasses up with his finger and looks at me.
“Carla?”
“No, Mabel,” I say.
So, I start in, and pretty soon the Whiner isn’t sucking her hair, all wet and gummy, and van Gogh’s jaw is dropped.
“Yeah, so, I figure he got me alone for like eight years and did whatever he wanted with me out there in the peach trees and in my room at nap time. Trouble is I don’t remember a thing about exactly what he did. All I know is afterwards, I had big bruises. I remember those. But later I got cool things, like a car.”
Do Little says something nerdy, “Your brain protected you and compartmentalized the experience.”
Whiner tilts her head, keeps her soggy hair in one hand. “What kind?”
“Mustang.”
“Awesome.”
I don’t know why I blabbed. Had to show them up. Dad must have done it to Doug too. Dad was totally fucked up.
I remember this one time in the summer, it was so humid that we were dripping, standing still. Doug and I kept sticking our heads in the fridge. Mom yelled at us, so we pretended to help her in the kitchen.
“Here, Mom,” Doug said, “I’ll get the butter.” And he had that shaggy brown hair in his eyes, but his eyes were crinkled with that big smile on his face. The light from the fridge made his eyes black, his nose long, his neck forever. His hand on the fridge door. The cool came from the fridge in waves, like someone breathing winter, and he stood there.
“Yeah, Mom,” I said, “I’ll get the eggs,” but I was too little to reach that shelf.
“Kids,” Mom ended up saying, “out of the kitchen.” Mom cooked when she got hot, cooked in the stinking heat. Flour made her hands doll hands. She pushed her hair back with her forearm, and her hair stuck there.
It was Dad who called us from their bathroom.
“Kids, get in here.” His voice was Father-Knows-Best and Elmer Fudd, both.
Doug stood there so long in the fridge light the waves didn’t come out any more, and his eyes went away from mine. His shoulders went down, the way a dog goes down when it knows it has to do something it doesn’t want to do. His face turned toward Dad’s voice. “Coming,” Doug said.
Our parents’ bathroom was huge, bigger than a bedroom at St. Tim-Tim’s. The spray on the tiles was all the sound there was in the room, and Dad was wavy behind the shower glass. He was moving all around like some shadow in cartoons. The glass door popped open. He was in there, his hair flat not curly, the khaki pants sticking to his legs, his shirt wet paper sacks on his chest. His way of getting cool around him.
His big voice, “Come on in, the water’s fine.”
Doug bent over to take his shoes off, and Dad grabbed him by the waist, pulled him in, butt first.
“Shit,” Doug said, “shit, shit,” and Dad let him say “shit” because the water was cold.
“Come on, Carla,” and both of them held out a hand to me.
I jumped in with my shoes and clothes, and the three of us squeezed into the shower and jumped around. The cold felt good, and we arched when the spray hit us. Then Dad had his arms on either side of Doug, his hands flat on the tile, like a bull hooked his horns in him, and Doug couldn’t move. Dad blocked the spray with his back, the spray bouncing in my eyes, and I couldn’t see Doug. The water hit my head and made two rivers around the front of me, my T-shirt was my skin, my sneakers soggy by the drain. The smack of the water wasn’t as loud any more. Dad stood like a bull does, before it charges. I know that now, Kyle. But then, I went around him and got between the two of them, did a little Ring-Around-the-Rosy dance. Doug’s head was the height of Dad’s armpit, and Doug turned in circles right where he was, little tight circles, his eyes closed, not touching anyone.
That was weird. Creepy weird.
So, I guess the point of a nut ward is to keep you living your miserable life. Like van-fucking-Gogh is supposed to be boring, and Whiner is meant to whine. Doug’s still in his lock-down place, you’re dead, and I’m stuck for eternity at Tim-Tim’s. That means walking those freezing halls with fucking Jack Song and that pathetic Alta and that echo of where you used to be.
A gray moth.
A lump in the cornfield.
Origami animals out my window.
Doug would like you.
If I could be the tie around your neck, I’d rip. Every thread would snap and curl. The tie would tear across its stripes, and you’d thud down on the floor of your cubby. You’d still breathe, and I’d be the tie piece, hanging from the rafter.
And the cornfields would be good. Uh-oh, I better be quick. The tape is squeaking.
And I could look out my window and see something besides cranes.