The little Niña is going home. She’s no longer a harm to herself.
In group the doctors ask her about the time she jumped out her bedroom window and she says, That was a mistake. I’ll never do that again.
When they ask her, Can we trust you with an open medicine cabinet? With knives in plain view?
She says, I’m not thinking about dying. I have a job to do. I have a future.
She once put her hand into an open flame on the gas stove in her kitchen. She kept it there for a count of ten.
What about causing yourself unnecessary pain? they ask.
Can they trust her not to burn her arms with cigarettes?
Will she promise to eat three meals a day?
Will she look before crossing the street? Think before opening a bottle of aspirin?
She once ate fire.
She made a funnel with construction paper, soaked it with gasoline, and lit a match to it. Then she took a breath, in and out, quick.
Will she be doing this again?
No, she tells them. I’m past that. My mind is on other things. I want to make the world a better place to live in.
No pain . . . no pain . . . no pain . . .
Don’t feel . . . don’t feel . . . don’t feel . . .
That’s how she did it, put her hand in the flame from the kitchen stove and counted to ten and survived with nothing to show for it. No scars. No souvenirs.
“I listen to the words. I believe that what I’m saying is true: I feel no pain.
“Then I do it. I do it while the words are everything.
“If you don’t fear it, you’re OK. Nothing happens. But think about it, and you’re lost.”
Her hand never burned, she says. It was sore for a while. She put some Bactine on it and it was OK. Like a sunburn. But there were no blisters. No scarring. And she’s telling the truth. She holds out her hands for me to see. There are no marks of old wounds or punishments.
No one would even know about it, except her mother caught her in the act. She came into the kitchen and saw the Niña with her hand in the open flame and she screamed to bring down the house. Then she called 911, not even thinking to get the Niña away from the stove.
“It wouldn’t have been sore,” she tells me, “except she interrupted my thoughts. I lost my focus.”
It’s all in the head, she says.
There are promises the Niña must make before they’ll let her go. She’ll sign a contract. We all will. There’s no leaving unless we agree to come back, once a week for as long as it takes. We’ll get a real job. Pee in a cup. And no calling people from the past, they’re more weight than we can bear.
We leave knowing we’ll be fighters the rest of our lives. Guerreras. Our problems can come back, if we let them. If we’re not careful. Vigilant. So we can leave Madeline Parker, but on a leash.
The Niña will sign her contract just to get out. She’ll sign it so she can get on with her life. She’s tired of living in limbo. Of feeling like a ropewalker without a net.
Just about everyone expects us to fall. And when we do, it’s up to us alone to scrape it all back together.
“My life is set,” she says.
They have her organized. A half day of school until she feels better. One hour a week with her private therapist and an hour in group here at Madeline Parker. She’ll have family therapy with her mother. She’ll have chores to do around the house. After-school activities will have to wait. Maybe a part-time job in the summer.
We say good-bye to the Niña the night before she goes. We have a little party, with cake and music and staff telling her why they think she’ll do OK out there, why they don’t expect to see her back here anytime soon.
“Your life has new meaning,” they say. “You understand your mother and she understands you.”
In the morning the Niña packs her bags. She packs everything except her diary.
“I want you to have it,” she says. “We’re a lot alike.”
I don’t think so and I tell her this.
“But we are.” She says we’re both where we’re at in life because of a brother or a sister. “And our mothers are just the same.” She knows this because things never should have gone so far.
I start wishing I never said anything about Camille or about our mother’s boyfriends. That I’d never showed them what growing up Chloe was like. And besides, she’s wrong. It’s not Camille who got me where I am today. Not the way the Niña’s brother did her.
And one more thing, she says. “We changed our names thinking it’d change who we are.” Thinking we could have a different life.
Her doctor told her that.
“We’re running away.” With nowhere to go.
Dr. Dearborn has been after me to come up with a new last name. One that says I’m somebody. He thinks I chose Doe to make a statement. One that didn’t require an explanation. A statement I no longer need because my life is changing. I have a future.
The Niña leaves the diary on her bed. She says we’re almost sisters. I think about that. Could we be sisters? Not the way Camille and I were, but because our lives are too much alike, the markings on our bodies too much the same, this could be our bond. She could be my little sister, and maybe having one wouldn’t be so bad.
I don’t tell her I’ll think about it, but I will.