Chapter Three

Extinguished.

On a slab in a morgue.

If I’d dug a little deeper and gone a little further, I’d have left the motel in a body bag instead of on a stretcher. My attempt to make myself invisible had failed. Now I was too visible, sitting there with my wrists wrapped in bright white gauze with Rie sitting next to me, her head down as she scribbled away on a clipboard. Soon I’d have a student ID number. People would look for me. I’d be accountable.

“I’ll be right back,” Rie said, setting the clipboard on the table.

I held my wrists up in front of me. The bandages mocked me, reminding me that I’d tried to leave my life, but instead I’d just chopped up parts of my body. I’d made part of my outsides match the core of my insides — torn up, bloody, and gross. Where other girls would wear tennis bracelets, I’d wear the reminders of my wish to be gone.

I picked up a black Sharpie marker from the table and wrote NEXT TIME on my left bandage. My dad used to say, “No matter how dark it is, Chanie, always remember, the sun is making its way back to you.”

Fuck the sun.

If things didn’t look up by the time I graduated from Begin Again, I’d make it happen. Except the next time, I wouldn’t mess it up.

Rie came back into the room and stood in front of me holding a new, pink clipboard to her chest. She took a deep breath and said, “Do we need to put you on suicide watch?”

I quickly covered my wrist with my right hand. “I don’t think so.”

She stared at me, chewed her lower lip for a few seconds, and took another deep breath.

“I’m fine!” I threw my hands up. “Plus, the shrinks at the hospital assessed me when I got bandaged up.”

Rie nodded. “Here’s my business card. It has my cell number on it. If you need me, call.”

I’d never call. Not even if I was dying on a curb three feet away.

I nearly moonwalked out of the police station, a new wave of gratitude for my dingy apartment propelling my steps. I had to get away from cops, shrinks, and programs for girls like me. I needed time to regroup. The previous twenty-four hours had felt like I’d been driving down a foggy highway, making the miles, but disoriented and lost. It felt as though I’d been whisked off my bed and tossed into a ghetto version of The Wizard of Oz, flying through the air at the whim of some trickster entity. Except I didn’t have Toto. But what I did have was my new pop-up boyfriend, Blue.

“Hey, Chanie! Come sit down.” Blue patted the tailgate of his Chevy as though he were camping in a rest area and not illegally parked in the loading zone of the cop shop. “I got you a Teen Burger, but I ate your fries. They were getting cold.”

How long had he been waiting for me? It creeped me out that he’d been popping up in the strangest places, as though he’d been given an advance copy of the script to my ghetto Wizard of Oz freak show. It made me uneasy. Men were only nice when they wanted to do filthy things to me. I didn’t like them. I couldn’t trust them. They were tools, really, economic means of keeping me in rent, food, and booze.

I didn’t like surprises, either. Surprises like Blue sitting perched on his tailgate, my recent rape rodeo, cops, counsellors, and restoration programs. Surprises came with price tags. New friends were never free. Like when Ariel, the lavender-haired, busty goddess who’d transferred to my school, had befriended me and my first-ever, grade-seven boyfriend, Ulysses. The three of us had become inseparable, so much so that Ulysses and Ariel claimed to have developed a sacred bond. Soon after, Ulysses took me aside to tell me that he and Ariel wanted to explore their sacred journey together. He took my hands, looked into my eyes, and said, “Chanie, it’s like I’m a coyote and you’re a bunny.” Whatever the fuck that meant. And what did that make Ariel?

I squeezed my eyes tight and yanked my hands away from him. I wasn’t going to let “the coyote” see me cry. I ran home, like a bunny, washed Ulysses off my hands, and burrowed under my bedcovers, where I cried myself to sleep. A few hours later, I woke up to my stepdad, Clayton, sitting on the edge of my bed with a bundle of pink roses wrapped in cellophane.

“What are those for?” I sat up and pulled the covers to my chin.

Clayton put his hand on my thigh and squeezed. “Your mom sent me a text to tell me you were in bed bawlin’. I figured it had to be about a guy! Do you want me to go kick his ass?”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to shuffle away from his hand.

Clayton squeezed harder. “You just gotta say the word, Chanie, and I’ll lay the beats on him. Teach him not to mess with my girl! He’s a loser. And he’s got a stupid name. What is it again? Unit something? Uni—corn?”

“Ulysses!” I started laughing.

Clayton leaned closer to me. “You can’t worry about guys like Uniquon. He’s a dumb kid. Sees a pair of tits and goes into a coma. Some guys like skank, you know, porn star looking. Other guys, well, they like a different look, more natural, like you. Like that Holly Berry girl — you know the one — the one that Billy Bob nailed in that movie.”

I assumed he meant Halle Berry. I’d never seen her “get nailed” by Billy Bob, but I just nodded.

“His new girlfriend’s name is Ariel.”

“What in sweet fuck kind of name is that? Ariel! That’s what we call car antennas! Get up. I’ll take you and your mom for pizza! We can even watch a movie tonight in the den.”

“I’m not really hungry,” I said, moving my leg away from his grip.

“I’m not askin’.” He yanked the covers off me. “And wear that little yellow dress and pretty bracelet I brought back from Fort Mac for you.”

Clayton took us to Coliseum Steak and Pizza. He and my mom polished off three pitchers of beer within two hours. I pretended to watch football on the screen above their heads. I pictured Ulysses and Ariel holding hands in the school hallway, floating away on their cosmic journey, while I stood alone, like an outlier, waiting to combust.

“You’re not thinkin’ of that little asshole, are you?” Clayton tossed a lemon wedge at me.

“Kind of,” I said, tears welling up.

My mom wavered slightly, her top lip curling into a drunken snarl, the early warning of her loose mouth and hands soon to follow. She pushed against the table, her huge boobs resting on the tabletop, and said, “Did ya fuck ’im?”

“No!” I snapped.

“Come on, Tressa! Chanie’s not that kind of girl,” Clayton bellowed in his big beer voice.

“Yeah, Mom!”

Clayton smiled and leaned back in his chair, flexing his arms as he reached behind his head, his hairy belly peeking out from below his T-shirt. “Chanie’s more the blow job type.”

My mom laughed and leaned into Clayton. “Yeah, always wavin’ that tiny ass of hers around in them tights she wears.”

“I’m not like that!” I started crying. I had an idea of what a blow job was, but I’d never done it and had no plans of doing it! They laughed like howling dogs while I quivered like a bunny with a belly full of fleas.

“I’m not like that!” my mom mimicked, sending her and Clayton into stitches.

The waitress glanced over and walked up to the table. “Everything okay here?”

“She’s fine,” my mom snapped. “She just can’t take a joke.”

“Time to go, big guy,” the waitress said, pulling the bill from her apron and setting it down hard on the table in front of Clayton.

“Drop me at the bar,” my mom said on the way out of the restaurant. I assumed she had become quite a legend at the old dive bar.

---

Blue shoved the teen Burger into my hands. He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring. “So, what’s the situation? Are you going to jail?”

I leaned against the tailgate. It’s got to be sex. What else could he want from me? We had nothing in common. We’d never had a conversation other than a few words here and there, and before falling asleep on his chest in the hallway, he’d repulsed me. But I’d slept so well in his tattooed arms.

“It seems I can join a program for what they call girls like me,” I rambled as though he and I were best buddies. “I have to come back at four o’clock this afternoon to sign the agreement, plus, I have to swear that I won’t drink, do drugs, or engage in illegal activities.”

Blue flicked his cigarette butt and squinted at the sun. “How are you supposed to make a living?”

“Apparently, welfare will kick in for a year or so.” My face reddened. Somehow, accepting welfare seemed even worse than prostitution. “Then I guess I’ll go on to the glamourous life of a secretary. Who knows?”

“Well, let’s get you home and cleaned up.”

We didn’t talk much in the truck, mostly because I was nervous. Was he planning to come upstairs? I had nothing to offer him. I’d sucked back the last of my booze before my attack, and because I’d been raped and arrested, I didn’t have the cash to go to the grocery store to restock my food supply. I wondered if there was a lone can of soup hidden behind the dishes somewhere. Or a bag of Mr. Noodles.

Blue parked the truck in the handicap spot outside the back door. He turned the ignition off and hopped out. “Come on, girl! What’re ya waiting for?”

He followed me into my suite. My underarms were sticky, and other than the half-assed sponge bath I’d received in Emergency, the rape was all over me. My skin cried out to be clean. “Get yourself a nice bath fizz. It’ll help.” That’s what the ER nurse had said when she brought me ice chips. A bath fizz! Raped and nearly dead and she suggests a bath fizz. Two minutes later the doctor walked in, wagged his finger in my face, and said, “No baths for two weeks, young lady.” He flashed an election candidate smile, plopped my chart into a plastic holder, and disappeared.

I’d wanted to tell the doctor that I never bathe; I only shower. That bathing in water polluted with the remnants of the men I’d scrubbed off would be like swimming in hazardous waste. But bandaged wrists and internal injuries had left me with one option: sponge baths. A two-week sentence to whore’s baths. The irony.

Blue took my hand and walked me into the bathroom. “Let me help you get cleaned up.” He twisted the creaky taps and stepped back while the water spat and sputtered out of the old faucet.

“I’m okay.”

Blue held his wrist under the running water. “You are not okay.”

I was not okay.

Blue walked over and stroked my arms and shoulders. My skin rose into goosebumps beneath his fingertips, like tiny soldiers standing at attention. I softened against him. His heartbeat stirred a wistful longing in me, like he’d opened a treasure chest full of mysteries. He gently stripped my clothes off and eased me into the tub, the shallow water drinking me in like a warm sunbeam. I wanted to sink deeper, immerse myself so he couldn’t see the fingerprints of all the men I’d sold my body to. I pressed my palms to my cheeks and slumped forward while he massaged me with a sudsy bath sponge.

Blue took a sharp breath. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Chanie.”

I followed his eyes down my body. My long, dark hair clung to my scrawny collarbone in strands. Dark-purple bruises and red scratches splotched my breasts and ribs like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle — multicoloured, patchy, and ready for the trash. I pulled my knees to my chest but couldn’t hide the ugliness of the beating I’d taken. I scrunched up my face because I didn’t want to cry. I would rather have been sucked down the drain than cry over a rapist. I had to stay strong. There was no other option. Sitting in a tub being washed by a man I barely knew — I didn’t want to fall apart, but I did.

“You’re all right now, Chanie. He can’t hurt you anymore.” Blue draped a towel over my shoulders. “It’ll get better. Right now, it’s painful.”

I wept as we watched the trail of water rinse the blood, sweat, and violence toward the drain. Blue dried me off and rubbed French lavender body lotion on my skin. I didn’t fight him. I rested against him because I had no energy, but he had enough for both of us. He held me for a long time. When he let go, I couldn’t take my eyes off him: his calloused hands, the tiny white scar on his upper lip, his blue diamond eyes.

We rushed to my four o’clock meeting with Rie so I could sign my shitty deal. She looked remarkably rested for a woman who probably didn’t get a lot of sleep. I sat across from her with an extra-large coffee loaded with cream and sugar.

“Do you want to talk?” Rie leaned forward in her chair.

I shook my head.

“Why don’t you want to talk?”

The corners of my lips drooped.

“Don’t you want to get help? Have goals and dreams? Friends? A support network?”

I didn’t know what I wanted other than to not cry in front of Rie. Seems I’d cried more in the previous few hours than I had in the last four years. Part of me knew I didn’t want to feel bad anymore. I didn’t want to be unpredictable and explosive. But anger kept me alive. Without it, I hid in my bed, got drunk, and silenced my mind with Netflix or any other distraction that helped me forget who I was.

“Tell me how you’re feeling,” Rie said.

How could I explain my insanity to a woman who seemed so normal? I’m irrational, ruled by electric nerves, exhaustion, alcohol, and hangovers. All the prying and attention since my latest rape feels suffocating, but I feel desperate to be seen for some reason, and I want to cling to something, but I don’t know what.

“It always feels like something’s wrong. My insides feel like there’s bees and mosquitos buzzing around, picking apart my chest. It’s never quiet. I get drunk because it makes the bees quiet down. I can pretend we’re friends, and we all get along until I’m sober again.”

“Do you believe you can get well?”

“I’m too much of a fuck-up to get well. You can’t fix me.”

“I’m not here to fix you, Chanie. I’m here to help you remove the obstacles to your own personal growth.”

“What does that even mean?” I shot Rie a hard glare.

“I believe that humans are naturally wired to thrive, given the right conditions. I’m here as a partner on your healing journey. Together we can work to remove the things that harm you and find the things that heal you.”

“Why would you want to do that? You don’t even know me.”

“I’ve learned as much from my clients as they have from me, if not more. I’ve seen extraordinary transformations in the most downtrodden people. I see something in you.”

I shook my head and looked at the floor. “Like what, my lonely funeral?”

“For some reason, Chanie, you stay alive, even though suicide attempts seem to be commonplace for you. Why do you try to commit suicide?”

I closed my eyes.

Rie waited about a minute while I sat in silence. “Okay, why do you drink?”

“So I don’t have to feel my life. I don’t think as much when I’m drunk.”

“Maybe not feeling your life is why you try to end it?”

I snapped my eyes open. “Why would I want to feel it? I’m a hooker with anxiety and, apparently, addiction issues, according to you and the city police.”

“Do you remember a time when you enjoyed your life?”

I closed my eyes again and tried to think of something, but all I could remember was the last time I’d seen my grandmother alive. We’d spent the evening decorating her Christmas tree. She’d brought out a checkered box stuffed full of decorations: pink glitter butterflies, glossy snails, candy cane hearts, polar bears, a variety of long-tailed birds, owls, hummingbirds, and ribbons and bows. Like any five-year-old would have been, I was awestruck.

A bright blue peacock with long tail feathers fell off the top of the pile. I reached my hand toward it, but my mom yelled at me and slapped my hand. My grandma shushed her and told her to leave me to sleep overnight. When my mom had left, my grandma gently placed each and every ornament on my palm and told me fantastical stories of where they’d come from. We even named our favourites, like Magenta the Pink Peacock and Piper the Snail. She got me a stool and let me hang as many ornaments as I could. Her patience. Her tenderness. Soothing at the time, but a stabbing memory since.

I opened my eyes and looked at Rie. “No!” I snapped. My throat was thick, and I wanted to sob. I felt like I was five again, reaching into the dark for a grandmother who’d been ripped from my fingertips. Cancer had stolen her only two years after it had taken my grandpa. And then my mom threw out everything my grandparents had owned, including the ornaments and knitted blankets I had loved so much. Everything good came with a price. Booze was the only thing that kept my carousel of sad and scared horses from flying off their platform and shattering to pieces.

Rie leaned toward me. “You don’t always have to feel like you do. We can work together to find things that bind you to your life. Suicide is a symptom of something else. Often, it doesn’t mean that you want to die. It means that you don’t want to keep feeling the way you do.”

I exhaled a long, heavy sigh. “It’s the only way to end the sadness. I think the world is mean. I see stray cats suffering in alleys, baby seats in back seats while I’m in the front seat giving blow jobs, cops beating up hookers and homeless guys. Men beating, raping, and exploiting me, and a crazy bitch of a mother who never bothered to look for me. I’m always bee-keeping my insides. I think the only way to kill the bees is to kill myself.”

“We can help you. Are you willing to let us help you?”

“You don’t get it! It’s like having a psycho killer inside my brain. Unpredictable!”

“You have to commit to wellness. We can work together to get you well, but you have to commit to it. Your mental health is more likely to be fatal to you than any john you might meet on the street.”

She had a point. I tossed my head back and rolled my eyes.

“Are you willing to commit to our program?”

“Okay!”

“Okay what, Chanie?”

“Okay, Rie. I’ll commit to your program.”

“That’s wonderful, Chanie. I’ll be with you every step of the way. We will get you healthy!”

What had I done?!

When I left the police station, I sat on a sunny bench outside and waited for Blue. I read the copy of my agreement that Rie had tucked into a pretty dark-blue journal with a salmon-coloured lotus flower in the centre:

I will not consume alcohol or drugs with the exception of prescribed medication.

I will take my prescriptions and attend three counselling sessions per week.

I will not engage in illegal activities.

I will show up Monday to Friday at the Hope for Tomorrow Centre.

I will complete all of my assignments.

I will complete my after-hours assigned volunteer service.

I will act with honesty, integrity, and respect.

Counselling helpline is available 24/7 (staffed by our dedicated practicum students).

Blue pulled up with Brenda in the truck. She leaped out and threw her arms around me. “Girl! Why didn’t ya call me? Blue told me all about what happened to ya! Why should I hear this through the grapevine? You’re still my baby girl. Brenda can take care of ya!”

I wanted to punch her in the throat. “Where’s Penelope?”

“Penelope! She’s off with all her yogi friends. I ain’t got no time for that voodoo shit.”

“Hop in,” Blue yelled, double-parked. He flipped off a UPS driver who’d honked his horn.

Brenda squeezed in next to Blue and yanked the sheet of paper from my hands. “Now show me this nonsense ya had ta sign.” She pulled out her pair of Dollarama glasses and mouthed her way through the words. “This is all bullshit, honey! You gotta be there tomorrow? You shoulda told them to go fuck themselves.”

“And go to jail?” I snarled, wishing she’d shut up. Old hooker, drunk again! AA clearly out the window. And why her sudden interest in Blue?

“See, honey, ya just don’t know how to play the system. That’s why ya should have called me up, to represent yer interests!”

When we got home, Brenda insisted on making her famous grilled cheese: white bread, cheese slices, and a slathering of Cheez Whiz. She claimed it was a special night and made her other specialty — macaroni with a can of tomatoes. I wanted takeout, and I wanted her to get out so I could be alone with Blue.

“I guess I better get to bed early,” I said, hoping she’d leave. “I have to be at school tomorrow morning to meet my worker for orientation.”

“Wait a minute, my girl! I got you a surprise.” Brenda jumped up and ran over to the door. She pulled a bottle of Captain Morgan out of her purse. “The Captain is here!” She jumped up and down.

“Jesus Christ, Brenda! I can’t drink.”

“You’ve had a rough couple of days,” Blue said. “Maybe it’ll help you sleep.”

“Yeah, Chanie!” Brenda cheered. “Loosen up. One or two won’t hurt. You’ll sleep it off like water.”

One or two wouldn’t hurt ...

“Do we have any root beer?” I asked.

“Does your momma not know her girl?” Brenda pulled a bottle of Barq’s out of her bag.