If stock is to be put in the Hippocratic theory of the four humors as indicators of temperament, it would be safe to say Bunny was born with an extravagance of melaina chole, more commonly known as black bile. Pensive, withdrawn, wary, pragmatic and pessimistic, she was an unhappy child, and to see her now, you might reasonably assume there was never a time when she was happy; an assessment neither accurate nor inaccurate. There have been long stretches of something like happiness. But from the onset of puberty until the end of her first semester at college, there were six seamless years of immaculate misery. Her anguish was pure, her angst a masterwork, and her adolescent rage, like coal over time and under pressure, crystalized; a gem of flawless wretchedness that all too often manifested itself in a desire to make everyone around her wretched, as well.
One night, her father, having reached his limit, having had it “up to here,” told her if she was unable to sit at the table and have a civilized conversation with her family, then perhaps she should take her plate outside and eat dinner in the yard. “Like a wild animal,” he said.
“For your information,” Bunny retorted, “wild animals don’t eat from plates,” and she picked up her plate along with her knife and fork, and went out to the backyard, where she did not eat, but she sat in the grass and pictured her family, choking on guilt and remorse, and how soon her father would come out and apologize. Maybe her mother would come with him, to give her daughter a hug, and later maybe her sisters would come to her room, just to hang out with her. When Bunny was done with this picture, she left her plate and utensils in the yard because wild animals don’t put their dinnerware in the dishwasher, and she went to her room, where she sat at her desk. Her desk was part of her matching bedroom set: bed, chest of drawers and nightstand, all white with a trim of pink flowers. The bedspread and throw pillows were a pink floral print. Pink ruffled curtains, a pink rug shaped and hooked as a rose; it was a room that in no way reflected that which Bunny articulated as the darkness of her soul. Her room, her room, the walls and the ceilings, she argued, ought to be painted matte black.
“Not a chance,” her mother had said. “Not in my house. When you have your own house, you can paint your walls whatever color want.”
“For your information,” Bunny said, “black isn’t a color.”
Bunny was big on the preface “for your information,” a turn of phrase that endeared her to no one.
From her white desk drawer with the hateful pink flowered trim, Bunny took two pens and her notebook, which she opened to a fresh page. To see herself through this time that was unbearable for all concerned, Bunny wrote poems, what she called poems. Anyone who knew anything about poetry would’ve called them drivel, and they’d have been right. Even worse, she was prolific, some nights producing four or even five of these cringeworthy poems; sentences of lugubrious banality, the lines broken at random. Although she remembers having written reams of these things, she can’t recall the specifics of any of them. Except for one, and even then, she can remember only the title, which was Fuck You Everyone, and at that, for the first time in a long time, Bunny laughs. Not a big laugh, it’s more of a snort, but it is a genuine visceral expression of pleasure that propels her up from the couch in search of paper and a pen, which she finds in the kitchen. Without thinking, she opens the refrigerator and gets an apple.
Apple in one hand, the pen in the other, her back resting against the arm of the couch, notepad propped up on her knees, Bunny writes: Fuck You Everyone. Then she bites into the apple, which is perfectly crisp. Fuck You Everyone, the revision. But it can’t be a revision when there is no trace of the original. She crosses out the revision and writes the sequel, which doesn’t sound right, either. Again? Fuck You Everyone, Again, that works for her. She skips a line, the pen poised for words to flow. The pen poised for the words to flow, but the words don’t flow. It’s as if she is physically unable to transmit the impulse from one neuron to another, as if her synaptic system were clogged the way an artery can clog or the way hair and gunk will clog the bathroom sink and the water puddles around the drain with nowhere to go. The words can’t, or won’t, flow, from head to hand, from thought to paper. She takes another bite from the apple. On a fresh sheet of paper she writes Fuck You Everyone, Again. Words bottleneck at the base of her skull. She presses the point of the pen hard into the page, like pressing against an iron door, either locked or too heavy for her to open, but then she writes.
She writes: Fuck You Everyone, Again / Stella, you had no right to die.
Bunny lets go of the apple. It falls to the floor.