My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (64 page)

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Authors: KATE BERNHEIMER

BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
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She tore off his pantaloons and his erection sprang up. I whimpered.
The prince entered the princess brutally. She pushed herself into him in return. I could no longer distinguish the sounds they were making. They attacked each other in an aggressive ancestral rhythm.
The lava reached my groin. The lava reached my eyes, and tears rolled. The heat rattled my soul. My body shook and spasmed.
The prince kissed the princess, and their tongues fought, intertwined, became one. Their lips coupled and melded. Their hips merged. His hands cleaved to her breasts, hers to his back. Their feet joined. Before my eyes, two humans disappeared into a monstrous, nebulous one. The prince and the princess rocked back and forth but only for a few moments. They finally settled into a solid amorphous shape on the bed, a weird conjoined entity.
It took time, slow time, to regain some semblance of control over my senses. I was sopping wet, exhausted, but no longer weak. I decided to depart from this room. I did not care whether harm had come to the princess. I did not know whether I was healed or not, but this certainly was a sign. I snatched the egg and the loaf, devoured the latter first. It was damp, not fresh, and I loved it. I bit into the egg, ate half of it in one swallow. It was rank, sour, almost rotten, and utterly delicious. I finished it and licked my hands and my fingers.
As soon as I exited the room, my first drop of blood appeared—a pellet of blood struck the sand dust of the tower’s stairwell. More blood as I descended, as I stepped over the skeletons of the princess’s family. Outside, the weather was pitch-perfect. As a light wind flirted with my face, I felt healthy and joyful. The brier had left the hero’s slashed path for my egress. I walked on, corpses of failed princes to my right and left, above my head, offering a final farewell. Surrounded by brier I traveled, thorns pricked me everywhere, pulled at my hair, snagged and tangled it.
Bloodied and bleeding, refreshed and rejuvenated, upon my head a tiara of thorns, I returned to Mother.
The tale of the sleeping princess (commonly known as “Sleeping Beauty” but known as “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” in French) has had a hold on my imagination for as long as I can remember. I have tried in the last ten years to write stories informed by the fairy tale, variations around a leitmotif. This is the first attempt where the main protagonist is neither the sleeper nor the waker.
—RA
STACEY RICHTER
A Case Study of Emergency Room Procedure and Risk Management by Hospital Staff Members in the Urban Facility
I.
SUBJECT 525, A CAUCASIAN FEMALE IN HER EARLY TO MID-TWENTIES, entered an emergency medical facility at around 11 P.M. presenting symptoms of an acute psychotic episode. Paranoia, heightened sensitivity to physical contact, and high-volume vocal emanations were noted at triage by the medical staff. The subject complained of the hearing of voices, specifically “a chorus of amphibians” who were entreating the subject to “pretty please guard the product from the evil frog prince.” The staff reported that the subject’s bizarre behavior was augmented by an unusual sartorial style, commenting that she was “an ethereal young woman wearing a Renaissance-type dress, with huge knots in her long, otherwise flowing hair.” She was accompanied by a strange odor, tentatively identified as “cat urine.”
During the intake interview, the subject volunteered the information that she had nasally inhaled “crystal,” estimating that she had nasally inhaled (snorted) between 50 and 250 mg of “crystal” in the twenty-four hours prior to hospital admission. “Crystal,” it was determined, is a slang term for methamphetamine, a central nervous system stimulant similar to prescription amphetamines such as Benzedrine. Methamphetamine is a “street” drug-of-abuse that has become popular in recent years due to its easy manufacture possibilities (Osborne, 1988). It’s sometimes referred to by the terms
crystal, speed, zoomazoom,
and
go fast
(Durken, 1972). In a brief moment of lucidity, Subject 525 theorized that her psychotic state might be due to the large quantity of methamphetamine she had “snorted,” and the staff agreed to put her in a “nice, quiet, white room” for a period of observation. The head resident thought it advisable to administer antipsychotic medication, but the subject, who by all accounts exhibited an uncanny amount of personal charm, prevailed upon the staff to give her a can of beer instead.
II.
After approximately sixty minutes of observation, a member of the nursing staff noted that the subject had begun to complain that “a beslimed prince” was causing certain problems for her, namely “using copper fittings” and “not ventilating right.” This “prince” was, as the nurse understood it, acting “all mean and horrible” concerning the manufacture of methamphetamine, which the subject had cheerfully volunteered as her occupation during the intake interview. The nurse, who was formerly employed in a federal prison and had considerable experience treating denizens of the
demimonde
, theorized that “Prince” might be a moniker used by the subject’s “old man”; this was particularly likely, the nurse indicated, since the manufacture of methamphetamine is the customary province of “gangs” of motorcycle riders, who often use colorful nicknames as a way of asserting their “outsider” status in society (Ethel Kreztchner, RN, 2002).
The nurse further asserted that this would explain why the subject had offered, at intake, only the name “Princess,” and would indicate no surname. By then the hour had grown rather late, and as the emergency room was quiet, much of the staff gathered around the subject (“Princess”), who began to tell a lively tale of capture and imprisonment by a handsome but wicked “Prince” who was, in fact, “an evil enchanter.” The tradition of shape-shifting sorcerers is a familiar one in old German folktales (Grimm, ca. 1812), though these tales have been widely regarded as fanciful narratives concocted to intimidate and control unruly juveniles (twelve and under) in diverse cultural contexts and are rarely considered historical evidence. Nevertheless, the Princess claimed that the Prince had captured her from an orphanage near Eloy, Arizona, where she had spent her days climbing trees in pursuit of nuts. Chasing butterflies, according to the subject, was another activity she enjoyed in her youth. But that all changed when a handsome young man approached the girl and offered her a pony made of candy. The pony was beautiful and delicious, and though the Princess wished to save it forever, she found she devoured it anyway. With every bite the pony grew smaller. And with every bite the handsome “young man” became more fearsome and wicked-looking.
The staff gathered close, listening with great interest. The Princess went on to indicate that the Prince/Sorcerer had bewitched her with the candy horse, and had since imprisoned her in a prefabricated “home” near a foul-smelling landfill, where she was kept locked up in a “tin can with carpet taped over the windows.” There, the Prince had prevailed upon her to undertake the smelly and dangerous manufacture of methamphetamine by means of his sorcerer’s power. All day long, the Princess said, she was forced to “boil down Mexican ephedrine in a triple-neck flask, bubble hydrogen through a stainless steel tank, or titrate ethyl ether out of lock defrosting fluid, dressed only in filthy rags,” while the Prince rode his shiny “hog” through tall pines in the mountains to the north of town. Or the Prince would “relax and kick back with a can of brew” while the Princess “slaved over a hot chemistry set.” The only positive aspect of the experience, the Princess noted, was that she “cooked the best damn product in Arizona,” a substance that was uncommonly potent and white, she said, with a “real clean buzz.”
The Princess explained, in a sweetly chiming voice, that these endeavors were dangerous, particularly under the conditions imposed by the Prince, who habitually smoked marijuana cigarettes in the vicinity of fumes. She had survived because she was protected by a special angel, one with “gills” who could exist underwater or possibly “inside a solution.” She referred to this angel as “Gilbert” (possibly “Gillbert”), and noted that Gilbert appeared to her when she imbibed heavily of “the product.” The manifestation of angels, seraphim, djinns, and Elvis Presley is common during episodes of psychosis (Hotchkiss, 1969), and much of the staff believed that the Princess was describing an aspect of methamphetamine-induced hallucination. Others on staff found themselves strangely moved by the Princess’s story of forced enslavement and the high-risk game of organic chemistry, and wondered if there might be some sort of truth to it.
The head resident, in particular, took an interest in the subject’s case, indicating to researchers that he was “bored that night, as usual” and that he found the Princess “interesting.” The resident further indicated that his prodigious academic success was based on his above-average intelligence, which was also “a curse” because it led him to feel a feeling of “boredom” and intolerance with all of “the idiots around him,” which, he made clear, also applied to the researchers gathering data on this case. Researchers in turn described the resident as rather “vain and haughty,” or “arrogant,” though most theorized that these traits covered up insecurity about his youth combined with a doomed romanticism undercut by a persistent tendency toward bitterness.
The Princess was exhibiting fewer symptoms of psychosis, and had become quite comfortable in her surroundings, curling up in a nest of pillows “like a cat” (Overhand, 2002). She said that she loved the medical staff and was grateful to them for helping to save her from the evilness of the Prince and the pungent squalidness of methamphetamine manufacture. The head resident shuffled his feet and pointed out that the Princess herself had actually contributed to her own care by wisely seeking medical treatment when she felt overwhelmed by drug-induced psychosis, whereas a lot of “tweaked-out idiots” just went ahead and did something stupid or violent. Then the two stared for a while into each other’s eyes.
It was then that lateness of the hour was nervously remarked upon by all, and several staff members complained that they had been on duty for an excessive length of time. The Princess made a “general comment” that her product could “give a person a little pick-me-up” that theoretically might make the staff members feel like “they were operating at one hundred and fifty percent.”
The staff was curious about the efficacy of the Princess’s homemade methamphetamine, though their enthusiasm abated somewhat after a phlebotomist (a “pretty plump girl who never wore any makeup and never smiled or said hello to nobody beneath her,” according to the environmental control officer) recited aloud in a high and quavering voice a list of the possible effects of nasally inhaling methamphetamine, including “nervousness, sweating, teeth-gnashing, irritability, incessant talking, sleeplessness, and the obsessive assembling and disassembling of machinery” (PDR, 2002). Interest swelled once again when the Princess pointed out that the young phlebotomist had mumbled while mentioning one of the chief effects of the substance: euphoria.
After that, the staff cleared from the small room where the Princess was being kept sequestered by herself, though occasionally a lone member would disappear inside, to emerge a few moments later wiping their nose with eyes unusually wild. Such staff members were also observed tidying their work areas, peering into the mirror, smoking cigarettes, and talking to one another with great animation and enthusiasm but little content (Overhand, 2002). The receptionist was observed taking apart a telephone, so that she could “clean it.” The overall effect was that the staff was unusually energetic and “happy” (see below).

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