Between Black and Sunshine (17 page)

Things were easier when all I felt, the only emotions running through my body were anger and hate. God, the anger was so much better than this. The hate that tells you you need to stay away from everything, including yourself. The hate that tells you to fold yourself up into a dark corner was so much better than this. I want it back. I want the hate back.

But this place… it’s getting to me. It’s gotten to me already- worked itself into me.

His smell became so strong that I couldn’t even taste the food in my mouth. His sweatshirt, laying on the floor- the one that disgusted me when I first reentered this room- has crept across the floor and made its way under my head, over my body, onto my arms.

The arms became his for a night, wrapping me up and making me believe it was going to be okay. Telling me that it was okay to crawl onto the futon. To cover myself with one of the quilts that came from his bed. To lay on the pillow where our heads had rested together. To lay on the bed where I let him become part of me.

Then the bed and the blanket led me to believe that it wouldn’t hurt to remember his fingers on my skin. That it would be okay to feel his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth, the way that he tasted. They urged me to see his smile, his eyes, the mole on his pelvic bone, every muscle in his body, every bit of ink on his skin. They played the images to me, over and over, like the most beautiful slideshow ever played.

I forgot about what he did. I forgot that he’s not mine.

But then I remembered. I remembered what he did but I wanted him anyway. I remembered that he wasn’t mine and it hurt. So. Bad. I was forced to feel the pain of losing Luca.
Losing him
. Never having him again. Not as a friend. Not as an enemy. Certainly not a boyfriend. Definitely not a lover. I will never know how it feels to have Luca inside of me. I was forced to see that Luca is gone from my life as surely as Jonah is.

Those were the worst days.

I don’t know how long I suffocated under the blanket of those days. But I climbed out. I began to remember other things. All bad. But better than only knowing the loss of Luca.

I don’t know what I feel now. The original pain. The agony of watching Anton get beat. The images of him in the hospital. The pain of realizing that Luca is in love with Clara. That she is his and I was not. The fact that she knows what it feels like to have Luca inside of her. The knowledge that he gave her everything.

I imagined how she would have comforted him after he came out of his rage and realized he had beaten Anton.
I still love you
I could hear her saying.
I know your heart. I know how well you love me. You didn’t mean to do that.
I saw her kiss his forehead, his nose, his cheeks, his eyelids, his mouth… until he believed that he was still worthy, still worthy of her love.

That’s how it started. That one small distraction where I could see them. When I felt like I knew them, like I was there with them.

It’s overtaking me. It’s clouding my brain. Sometimes I think, if I am capable of caring, of thinking about someone I should be thinking of Anton and Piper.
Sometimes I think this rational thought, but still, I only see Luca and Clara. I can only hear their voices. I can feel them here with me. I can see them, but they can’t see me. I shouldn’t be watching them; intruding on their private lives, but I can’t help it. I can’t make it stop. It’s all I care about.

Luca. Clara.

Clara.
It’s a good name, a perfect name
. Luca and Clara
. That sounds right, like the two things belong together.
Clara and Luca. Luca and Clara
….they are perfect together. They are a perfect couple. Beautiful. They are beautiful. I am ugly. But ugliness can be a beautiful thing, I think, as I stare into the bathroom mirror.

I’ve never looked so ugly. My skin is pale and clings to the bones in my face. The shadows under my eyes are permanent and grow darker every day. My eyes and hair no longer shine. My body has become weak; everything is shrinking, including my breasts.

Did you see that girl that Luca cheated on Clara with? She’s hideous, why would he risk losing Clara for that girl?

But ugliness is what I am. It is gratifying to look into the mirror and see that this is what I have become. My outside so precisely fit to my inside.

Snippy truthful voices chime into my thoughts constantly now. If I’m not listening to Luca and Clara I’m listening to truths about them and about me. I wish everyone would just shut up – I can’t think. I can’t stand this anymore. I feel suffocated by this room, all the lies in here; the art supplies, the bed, the smells and the memories. I have to leave here.

I walked and told myself I didn’t know where I was going. When my emaciated body could no longer keep moving I hailed a cab and denied I had a plan, even when I told the cab driver where to bring me.

Through the window I see her. In the back of the store, behind the counter. The sight of her makes my bones feel weak. She’s real, this woman that I hate, this woman who knows what it feels like to have Luca inside of her. This woman who is such a big part of my life but who does not know I exist.

I pull the door open carefully, quietly, never taking my eyes off of her. But a chime sounds and her eyes find me as I step through the door. She stares at me with a blank expression on her face. My cold, hateful eyes stare back at her. She smiles at me, the smile of a person that has something to offer me; a butterfly pin, a bundle of incense, a greeting card. I don’t smile back.

My feet move me closer to her. Step by step her smile fades and her eyes tighten as she continues to look at me. “Can I help you?” There is a superior tone to her voice. I’m no longer a customer, but a potential problem. A weirdo.

“No,” I tell her.

The door chimes behind me. She gives me a critical looking-over before her eyes travel to the new customer. The smile is back on her face. I veer off to the left, stopping behind a tall carousel of necklaces where I can see her but she can’t see me.

“How are you ladies doing today?” she asks the customers.

“Cool store,” a girl’s voice says.

I look at the customers. Two women, late-twenties, dressed in nice clothes, big expensive-looking bags on their arms. People worthy of Clara’s time and effort. I look at Clara now, too. Her black hair is pulled up into a high pony tail. Her sweeping bangs perfectly accentuating her arched eyebrows. White skin, red lips.

Clara is so beautiful.

Her dress is black with small white polka dots, belted around her waist, buttoning up to her neck. Her lacy, black stockings disappear into a pair of black, high-heeled Mary Janes.

Where does she find her outfits? She’s one of those girls who can walk into a thrift shop and make all those old, used clothes look great.

She prances around the store, selling the ladies on anything she happens to pick up. Her eyes dart to my side of the room every time the ladies look away from her- her smile disappearing from her face in those brief moments. The other two ladies probably don’t know I’m here- watching them from behind necklaces. If they saw me they would frown. Wrinkles would appear between their eyes. They would think less of the store and its charming owner.

I turn so abruptly that I trip over my feet, recovering myself and stepping fast toward the door. I push my way through it and am on the sidewalk before the chime can even go off.

What a strange girl.

I run down the sidewalk, a hitch to my gait still, even though my leg is healed. Only a big, ugly, pink scar remains. My stomach churns inside of me; it wants to get rid of my insides but there is nothing to expel, so it cramps and my gag flex is triggered, but noting comes out of me except some bitter bile. I turn in the direction of the dead industry and I stop when I know there is not another living soul anywhere near me.

Clara is the only thing I see. Her face, her pity, her confident body.

I’m sorry Clara. It’s just that I told her brother I would always be there for her and I mean… she moved here for me. Christ. What was I supposed to do?

I hate his voice. I don’t want to hear his voice. “Go away,” I yell.

You shouldn’t have strung her along like that, Luca. She’s just a child. She worships you; you shouldn’t have given her hope that she could have you.

I know. But she’s gone now. We can just forget about her.

Dr. Rose sits kitty corner from me on the part of the couch that faces the sunny window. Every time she comes here I resent her a little less. I resented her because I didn’t want her; she was forced on me by Anthony, Rake and Clara. I came out of my room one day, the room that I disappeared back into after Anthony and Clara tried to talk me out of it. I came out to use the bathroom but I ended up getting an intervention. Dr. Rose was the mediator.

Dr. Rose, Anthony’s grandmother who raised him. When I heard that I actually started laughing. Anthony… street wise, baggy pants wearing, slang talking, homeboy Anthony… was raised by a psychiatrist. He never mentioned that when he talked about growing up in the slums. I thought that was pretty hilarious. In our third meeting though, she explained that the work she did was mainly for the inner-city families where she raised Anthony and his three brothers in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That Anthony really did grow up in the
el gueto.
She’s retired now and spends her time divided between her children and grandchildren. When Anthony called her she cut her trip to California short. 

“Have you been taking your medication?” Dr. Rose asks me.

“Five P.M., every day,” I tell her. She put me on lithium after or first meeting.

“How have your moods been over the past three days? Are you experiencing fewer highs and less lows?”

“There haven’t been any highs since the assault. My lows are manageable though.”

Dr. Rose refers to what I did to Anton as an assault. Sounds too generous. Too nice of a word for what I did. He just got out of the hospital two days ago. He was there, because I
assaulted
him, for eleven days. I know he’s out because Clara takes breaks from watching over me to go visit him. She only brought him up once, to announce that he was home. I wanted to ask her about Jude… if she was there, if she was okay… but I couldn’t. I can’t talk about Jude.

“Have you been in contact with your aunt and uncle? Were you able to find any more information about your mother’s family?”

I take a deep breath, trying to work through my instinct to shut down when anyone asks about my family. I can’t get used to fact that Rose knows. She knows what no one in my life does. She knows my secret because I told it to her.

I’ve never done that before.

Her questions though… so intrusive but professional… made it okay for some reason. I told her everything as if I were explaining my past job experience to a potential boss in an interview.

My mom is in a federal penitentiary. She’s been there for nineteen years, since I was one.

Why is she there? Oh, well… because she killed my father.

Why did she do that? Hmm, well the folder that I found in my uncle’s filing cabinet when I was ten- the file that said LUCA’S ADOPTION-  said that after she had me, her only child, she feel into a deep depression, one she couldn’t get out of. She stabbed her husband fifteen times while he slept in their bed. She left him there and came to my room and went to sleep on my floor. When I woke in the morning, she fed me, bathed me and dressed me. When she went to get herself dressed she saw the blood bath and her dead husband and she didn’t understand… that she had been the one that had killed him.

Was there a reason why she did that, did she feel threatened, was he abusive? No, according to the trial transcripts she loved him very much. He’d never even raised his voice at her.

And she didn’t remember? No. In fact, at the trial she was still denying that she had killed him, even though the knife came from the drawer in her kitchen. Even though her’s were the only finger prints on the knife. Even though the dried blood that was on her skin and under her nails was his.

Dr. Rose looked at me and nodded, wrote it all down in her book like she understood that I was only telling her this as a fact that I had stumbled upon in my uncle’s office, not as a real event that has dictated every second of my life since I learned the truth.

Even though that event, that I never told anyone about, not even Jude, is the definition of who I am.

Now she wants me to dig deeper, to find more ugly facts. She thinks that I should talk to my aunt and uncle who raised me. But I can’t do that because they don’t know that I know the truth. The first time I found that file I didn’t know what I was getting into. I thought I might find a picture of my mother- something that I had never seen. I still don’t know what she looks like. There were no pictures in that file. Just page after page of awful truths.

That file haunted me. I went back time and time again to sift through the papers, to remind myself who I was. Especially after I knew I loved Jude. Especially after Jonah made me promise to protect her and take care of her forever. I needed a constant reminder of why I could never have her. Before I left I took the file down to the library and scanned the papers into the computer and saved them on a memory key. They live on my computer now, amongst my pictures of Jude.

My mother had murdered my father, whom she loved. She did it, not because she hated him or was angry with him, but because it was who she was since the day she was born. Those papers told me about my past. About my grandfather who spent most of his adult life locked away in a mental institution for beating a man into a coma.
Done that.
Those papers told me about his mother who killed herself when she was nineteen.
Tried that.
I don’t want to know anymore.

“No,” I answer her question. “I don’t think I’ll do that.”

She peers up from her notebook, asking an unspoken question. “I don’t speak to them,” I tell her. “They don’t want to talk to me. They have always been as afraid of me as I am of myself.” Rose stares at me. “My mother killed his brother. She killed my uncle’s brother, and then he had to raise her child. I left and they let me go. I’m not going to torture them anymore.”

She looks back down at her notebook, scribbling her notes, adding more items to her list of how fucked up I am. She sets her notebook down then takes off her glasses and leans into me. “I would like to talk to you about my diagnosis, Luca. Are you okay with that?”

“Sure,” I tell her. What can she tell me… that I’m crazy? I already know that.

“Your symptoms…”

“My symptoms?” I interrupt her.

“Yes, the symptoms of your disease.”

“My disease?” I ask, doubtfully.

“Yes, Luca. You are sick with a disease. You have very clear symptoms and that is why I have put you on medication, to help you get better.”

“Alright…” I tell her, holding back the smart-ass comments running through my brain.

“Your symptoms,” she begins again. “They are irregular. Most days you are high-functioning and stable. But there are clear patterns to your behavior. You experience extreme euphoria, racing thoughts, bouts of anxiety and you become impulsive.”

She pauses and I think about Jude. About my ups and downs with her. Eventually I nod, agreeing with her words.

“These behaviors are normal in the beginning stages of mania. It appears that most times you enter this state unaware that you have done so. But when you recount the times that you have hurt someone or done something illegal or fallen into periods where you abused drugs or alcohol, you connect these symptoms to those events.”

Another pause, another nod.

“When you have a manic episode you become compulsive- you partake in risky behavior. For instance, drug abuse. You make decisions that you don’t think through. It is also common for people in these states to become enraged, sometimes blacking out for short periods of time.” She stops again, looking to see if I’ve understood.

“Yeah, I obviously have that symptom. What does that mean?”

“You have bipolar disorder, Luca. Because yours has not been treated you go into manic states; all of the things we just talked about.”

“Bipolar…” I say the word out loud. It sounds worse than crazy.

“I know it sounds scary but it is completely manageable. There are more than five million adults in America with bipolar disorder. There is no reason why, with treatment, you can’t live a happy and healthy life.”

I look at her, doubtfully. “How is that possible? I mean, considering how well things turned out for my other family members….I’m assuming they were also… bipolar?”

“You have a strong family history, and bipolar can be hereditary, but you have to keep in mind that your mother did not get help. Your grandfather and your great-grandmother wouldn’t have had the option to get effective help. But you do.”

I stare at her blankly.
I’m bipolar
.

“It’s a cycle Luca, one you got stuck in. There are several factors that contribute to your disorder. Your genetics are not the only indicator. The greatest factor is stressful life situations. You have lived in stressful environments for most of your life. You never knew your mother or your father- this would have affected you deeply as a young child. Your awareness, perceived or real, that your aunt and uncle may have been afraid of you or that you were unwanted has probably been there long before you recognized it. The knowledge you had of your mother and father that you never spoke to anyone about would have been enormously stressful for you. The results of your manic episodes would cause you great stress.” She pauses to meet my eyes. “I assume there have been many other stresses in your life that we haven’t touched on yet.”

Pause, stare. I nod and think about Jude and Jonah. About Patsy and Arnie.

“Does this make sense to you, Luca?”

“Yeah,” I say although I’m still trying to take it all in. “I’m fucked.”

“No, Luca. You are not. The medication I gave you is a mood stabilizer. If you continue to take it, it will continue to work. The most important thing is that you are aware and that you recognize the symptoms. It’s possible to find peace, Luca.”

I shake my head at her and let out a breath of disbelief. I did find peace. Jude was my peace. I’ll never find it again.