The First Time She Drowned (16 page)

We stared back up at the sky.

“You should come out here late at night sometime,” he said then.

“Why?”

“I dunno. Just because. I do it all the time once my parents are asleep.”

“Maybe,” I said, though I was sure I wouldn’t dare.

He stood abruptly. “I gotta go eat.”

“Okay,” I said. Then I stood and watched Wade run off into the night, leaving behind a fat, lonely girl, half a book of matches and a small light of hope. I stuffed the matches in my pocket—a keepsake—and started for home, wondering as always, if I would find my mother dead.

• • •

As it turned out, my mother was once again not dead, but alive and well and, moments after I arrived, filling the doorway of my room.

“I got a phone call today,” she said, watching me. “From your guidance counselor. I’m assuming you know why he called.”

I tried to make my face blank. “Nope,” I lied, because I was
sure it was about my cutting school with Wade.

She came over to me and frowned thoughtfully. “A student told him that you were trying to kill yourself in the cafeteria.” She tilted her head and peered at me with an unreadable expression on her face. “That’s not true, is it?”

I was shocked, wondered who had told, had no idea how to answer that question. On the one hand, I was still convinced that everything between my mother and me was a misunderstanding, that if I could just make her see me for who I really was, she wouldn’t be angry anymore, she would love me, she would love me as much as she loved Matthew. Sure, it hadn’t happened yet, but I was always going to be that kid holding a lottery card in her heart, believing, despite the odds, that my number would someday be picked. And yet, the thought of looking in her eyes and admitting how alone and worthless I felt was so shameful that it was all I could do just to fight back the tears.

“Well?” she said.

I nodded so slightly, I wasn’t even sure my head moved.

“Is that a yes?”

I nodded again, so wide open in that moment that I had to close my eyes to avoid her gaze.

“You. Stupid. Asshole,” she said. I looked up in surprise. Her hand came down across my face.

My head stayed sideways where she slapped it, my hand automatically on my cheek. I was shocked in the same way I had been the first time she hit me, shocked directly in the place where that hope for her love still lived.

But this time I thought of Wade’s words, and it was like some
internal valve shut off and another one opened. I turned to meet my mother’s eyes, and when I did, the expression in my face must have matched the look in hers.

“You’re the one who gave me the idea,” I said, “so I guess that makes you a stupid asshole too.” Then, without thinking, or perhaps with more thought than I’d ever had, I drew up my hand and slapped her back.

The sound of my palm against her face was a cracking whip, so loud it seemed to stop time for a second. I watched her wobble backward, watched the outline of my hand bloom across her cheek, and I was struck by a realization I never would have thought possible: I was stronger than my mother. I was the stronger one.

My mother steadied herself and brought her hand to her face, eyes hot with fury.

“How dare you!” she said, and there was so much righteousness to her outrage, so much authoritative certainty, that for a second I wondered,
My God, how dare I?
But I made my rage louder. I let it drown out all but its own roar. I stood tall, firm, huge with it.

“No, Mom,” I said. “How dare
you
.” And somewhere deep inside where the tiny light of the life force burns, these were the words that felt truer.

Her eyes widened. They were wide with the shock of how big I had gotten. Like in all this time that she had been feeding me her rage and despair, depositing it into me like coins into a slot, she had never stopped to consider what might happen to all that hate. And now that she was face-to-face with it, I could almost see the dawning awareness that she had created this, and that this which she had created was now bigger than her. It was bigger than both
of us, but especially my mother, because I was used to carrying it.

She stood there speechless as the truth hit her. She appeared defenseless. She looked almost sorry, like she saw me and saw herself for the first time. And that was what I needed so desperately: for her to see me, her child, her daughter, and not the hate she had assigned to me. For that I could let it all go, forgive everything and ask to be forgiven in return.

But then her eyes changed. I watched it happen. I watched the shade drop down, and the moment that it did, a slow, pitying smile spread across her face.

“You’re a very sick girl,” she said. Her tone turned soft and compassionate like a nurse. “Very, very sick.”

“I’m sick because I defended myself? Because I’m tired of you treating me this way?”

She shook her head sadly and walked to the door. At the entrance she paused. “I feel sorry for you,” she said. “It must be terrible to be so misguided. I’m actually surprised you didn’t go through with your little suicide plan.” She turned on her heels and started down the hall.

“You would have loved that, wouldn’t you?” I called after her.

Then I went and sat down on my bed and thought that I should cry, but the tears would not come. Instead, I felt only a hardening over everything soft, like a newborn hermit crab acquiring its shell. I knew I had crossed some invisible line between the innocence and compliance of childhood and the rebellion of adolescence, and with that I had exchanged despair for not giving a shit.

I sat on my bed and pulled Wade’s pack of matches from my pocket, and just as he had done, I lit them one by one, letting the quick flicker of flame ignite my own before blowing them out. A few moments later my mother walked by, talking to my dad on her cell phone about me, making it sound like I was the one who had hit her first, like I was the only one who had done any hitting at all. I gave her the finger as she passed, and she put her hand over the phone so my dad couldn’t hear, held up her own middle finger and hissed, “Right back at you, you little brat.”

I waited until she was asleep and then I slipped out my bedroom window and went back to the basketball courts to find Wade. As soon as I got there, I understood why he came there late at night. With the whole neighborhood quiet and sleeping, it felt like Wade and I were the only people in the world.

It became a habit then to sneak out at night, to take ownership of the universe for a little while when there was no one else around to stop us. Sometimes we just lay on the grass and talked. Other times we rang the doorbells of nearby houses and ran, charged by the symbolic victory of waking some adults up. Nothing made us happier than hearing one of the kid-hating neighbors we targeted screaming from their window, vowing to call the cops. To our ears, the voices of adults had become as meaningless as a birdcall. Their threats no longer had power. We just liked to run.

And so we ran through those nights with the cops on our heels but never upon us. We ran until I felt myself exploding into my youth, being lifted out of my stagnating swamp of a life and thrust into the moving world with the thrilling force of a fast ride in a convertible. We ran until running was the bond between us, and
I knew that in Wade I had a true friend. It was the kind of thing that could make a girl forget all about her shitty home life, that could make a fat, lonely girl think that in some way, her lottery number had been picked after all.

I didn’t care that my grades were plummeting because I was too tired during class to pay attention, and when the teachers said, “What about your future?” I rolled my eyes at them. The only people who have room to worry about the future are those who aren’t fighting just to survive the present.

For the first time in my life I felt both at home in the world and free.

I had no idea what was coming.

THREE HOURS AFTER
the phone call from the dean’s office, I am ready to put Operation Stay in School into motion. I am dressed to the nines—perfect makeup, perfect hair, the steady click of my new heels announcing that I’m fine even as I head off to convince someone that I’m not. I’m still hungover from the beach party, made worse by the stale pizza, the anxiety about school, and the prospect of an actual date on Sunday, and naturally, the place I’m headed is at the top of the steepest hill on campus.

I have no idea if my plan is going to work. All I want is to stop and lie down on the grass next to the sidewalk, wake up in another body, another life. It seems like that should be possible—to drop one life like a school course and pick up another. At the very least, I’d like to get the hell out of this history class I keep getting stuck in: Fuckup 101, which, like all history, repeats itself.

I reach the top of the hill and open the door, which is so heavy, it moans with my effort, and then head into the familiar waiting room. This time there is a guy sitting at the reception desk. He checks my name on the appointment schedule and hands me a
questionnaire to fill out.

I sit down on the scratchy yellow couch and look at the questions before me. I am old hat at this particular psychological assessment quiz. Back in the loony bin, James had stolen one out of the nursing station for us to entertain ourselves with. He would pretend he was Dr. Meeks, leaning back in his chair and firing off the questions at me like I was under interrogation. Then no matter how sanely I answered them, he would declare me “certifiably, categorically, without question . . . cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” and we’d cackle our heads off like the lunatics they tried to make us think we were.

I smile, remembering. I miss James. I’d love to talk to him about everything that’s going on, but every time I think of it, Zoey is around. Besides, I know I need to stand on my own two feet and not lean on the crutch of the hospital or anyone in it. It’ll be different when James is out, when he’s not part of the system I’m trying to break free from. Then we can chat all the time. Hopefully even see each other.

I look down at the test in my hands and locate all the questions that would reveal symptoms of depression. Deliberately, I check off yes to each one even though I don’t actually think I’m depressed.

Do you feel unmotivated?
Check.

Do you feel overwhelmed?
Check.

Do you feel a lack of interest toward school or work?
Check.

The accuracy of my responses to these questions is starting to make me a little defensive. Doesn’t everybody feel this way?

I laugh when I see the next one:

Do you ever find yourself somewhere and not know how you got
there?

That was always James’s favorite question. He’d say, “What do they mean by ‘somewhere’? Somewhere like the grocery store or somewhere like . . . Maine?” But today, for me, the question seems clear. Today I have arrived in yet another doctor’s office, and I don’t quite know how I landed in this moment.

I finish the test, double-check that I haven’t answered yes to any questions that might indicate I am suicidal or homicidal, crack my knuckles and massage my hands. I am nervous that someone I know will see me sitting here, even though I know exactly two people on campus.

I rehearse my planned speech in my head. My stomach tosses and I tell myself that there is nothing to be afraid of, that I am just here to get a note. But after the mental hospital my body has been well trained to be wary of a place like this.

The door across from me opens and the same woman from last time steps out with her brown curly hair and her kind face. She appears to recognize me. “Not here to see me, I assume?”

“Actually . . .” I stand up.

A look of surprise and then she smiles. “I’m Liz. Come on in.”

She opens the door and I follow her through it.

Liz’s office is small and dark with stained wood, like the interior of a tree. The only light comes through a small window with a view of the ocean. I sit. The couch is comfortable, invitingly squishy. I perch myself at the utmost edge, straight as a square ruler.

Liz watches me as I take in the dimensions of the room, the distance from the couch to the door and from the couch to the window, marking my exits. There is a yellow ashtray on her desk,
shaped like the sun with beams of light sticking out of it. It gives me the slightest sense of kinship and ease.

“You smoke?” I say, pointing.

“I quit,” she says. “Haven’t been able to quit the ashtray for some reason, though.”

“I thought you people weren’t supposed to have unhealthy attachments.”

“Us people?”

“Shrinks. You’re a shrink, right?”

“You see shrinks as different from other people?”

I shrug.

“You don’t like them?”

“I don’t like people who claim they are ‘here to help.’”

“Do you want to tell me about that?”

“Why? So you can help?”

She smiles. “Well, you’re right. It is an unhealthy attachment.” She picks up the ashtray and looks at it. “You know what?” She looks back at me and then tosses it in the garbage beside her desk. She rubs her hands together. “Oooh, that felt good. Thank you for that.”

I am totally unnerved by this, by her willingness to let me have an effect on her behavior. “You’ll just take it out once I’m gone,” I say.

“I sure hope not,” she says with a twinkle in her eyes. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see what I do.”

“I don’t really care what you do,” I say, and it comes out harsher than I mean it.

“Okay.”

I turn to the window. The ocean is just beyond the highway, a wide stripe of blue catching flecks of silver light. I stare without seeing, reverting easily into the shut-down state I am accustomed to entering whenever I find myself in a therapist’s office. I can actually feel the pull of air around me as I enclose myself within it, zip myself up like a plastic lunch bag. Her gaze follows mine to the window but neither of us says anything. I had a whole speech planned. Now my mind is blank.

“So . . . you’ve come in talking about negative attachments,” she says finally. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No,” I say too loudly. I force myself to look at her, to summon the speech. “I’m having a bit of a problem with school. Basically, I’m failing out.”

“Well, that does sound like a bit of a problem,” she says.

I expect judgment, but I can’t find any in her face. It’s hard to assess her age, although I suddenly want to know.

“I was sick with pneumonia first. And then I think I got . . . depressed.” I work my mouth into a grim line, letting my shoulders droop the way I have seen in the shuffling patients returning from their morning meds. Part of me wants to laugh at my little act, do a tap dance across the room:
I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine.
Instead I continue, “Not like I want to die or anything.” It is important to establish this line. To make sure I give her nothing she can use against me.

“It’s just—”

“Everything seems hard.”

I sit forward suddenly because she has surprised me. Just as quickly, I lean back, cross one arm over the other. “Why do you
say that?”

“Because you told me that the last time you were here. Out in the waiting room.” She tilts her head. “I guess you wanted me to know.”

“That was a joke. God, you people take everything so literally.”

“So everything is not hard, then?”

“Look, I just need a note, okay? I’ve missed too many classes and I’m worried they’re going to kick me out. Can you please hook me up so I don’t have to waste any more of your time?”

“You think you’re wasting my time?”

“I just need a note.”

“A note.”

“Yep.”

“Well, we can come back to that. But first why don’t you talk to me a little bit about why you think you might be depressed.”

I sigh, exasperated. “What difference does it make?”

“Humor me.”

I can see this scheme isn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped, so I pull out my trump card. “Here’s the deal,” I say. “I just got out of a mental hospital right before I came here, so I’ve already been through all this therapy shit.” Of course, she doesn’t need to know that I was never an active participant in any of the therapy they tried to force on me. Still, it’s a relief in some way to mention the hospital out loud, to not have to conceal it from at least one person here.

She nods calmly at this news, and maybe it’s my imagination but I could swear I catch the slightest flicker of surprise in her eyes. This gives me comfort and makes me kind of like her. So far
she doesn’t seem to think I’m crazy.

“Do you want to tell me about why you were there?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me,” she says. “Start from the beginning.”

I pause for a moment, calculate the risk in telling, quickly decide there is none. Everything I say to her is confidential, and it’s just easier to get it over with, get my note and get out. It doesn’t matter if she believes me or not.

“I don’t remember everything,” I say, though I’m not sure why I say that or if it’s even true, only that I have a vague sense that pieces are missing. But I launch into what I do remember, starting all the way back to the first time I drowned. There is no emotion attached to the words I say. No experience weighs more than another. There is only the nagging feeling that I am leaving something out, something large and shadowy, like the words are a trickle of water around a bigger clog.

When Liz says the hour is almost up, it’s like I’m coming out of a dream, so surprised am I to see the light in the room has changed, to see my own hands in my lap, to see the clock on her desk marking the hour. I realize I didn’t even get to the details of how my mother had me committed, the other words tumbling out first like caged animals finding an open door. And yet even without that, the look on Liz’s face is shocking to me. It is not the pity I hoped for. It is not the disbelief I expected. It is something I’ve never seen before, and it startles me. She is staring at me with what looks like admiration. I lean back. My throat gets scratchy
and I clear it.

“No wonder you’re suffering,” she says. “It’s amazing you survived at all.”

“I’m not suffering,” I say, forgetting my lie. I shift in my seat, sit upright, and look out at the spread of water against the sky, the blue breaking beneath blue. “The past is the past. I’m over it. I’m a different person now.”

She watches me but says nothing.

“So the note?” I say.

“Yes, the note. Would it fix things?”

“What do you mean? Of course it would.”

“So you’ll start going to class and catch up on your work?”

A dull pain launches itself behind my eyes. I hadn’t thought beyond getting the excuse. Now I picture the piles of makeup homework, all the new assignments on top of that, the daily attendance in class. I realize with great clarity how impossibly far from me it all seems—this normalcy, this ability to function as an independent, responsible person in the world. It’s like I’m still waiting for my childhood to happen before I can get to my adulthood, and the vast expanse of territory between the two seems insurmountable. How do you get here without ever having started there?

“You’re right. I can’t do it.”

“Is that what you heard me say? That you can’t?”

“You didn’t need to. It’s true. I’ll never catch up.” The room is suddenly too cramped, the couch too squishy. All I want is a cigarette.

“Of course it’s a lot to take on,” she says. “So why don’t we see if we can break it down a little? What’s one thing you can do today?”

“I can’t do anything. I don’t even have my books.”

“Can you get your books today?”

I imagine going to the bookstore. Just finding it seems daunting, everything so much work. But I tell myself it’s just the bookstore, no promises of anything more than that, so I say yes, I can do that, because Liz seems to think that I can. “But then what?”

“Why don’t you come back on Monday. Would nine
A
.
M
. work? Then we’ll figure out the next step.”

“You want me to come back?”

“I want to hel—” She catches herself. “I want you to stay in school.”

“My mother might be in town next week, so I don’t know what my schedule will be.” I don’t know why I choose this excuse or if it’s even true.

“Your mother?” she says with barely contained surprise.

“Oh yeah, we’re actually kind of okay now. I’m trying to put all that stuff she did behind me.”

I expect her to be impressed by this. Instead her brow furrows slightly. “Oh?” she says in a way that seems like she wants me to say more.

Before she has a chance to ask me anything else, I stand to go. She hands me the appointment card and I stuff it into my bag. All I want is to get out of there; I have absolutely no intention of coming back. As nice as she seems, I’ve had quite enough of therapists.

It is only after I’m out the door and walking down the hall that I realize I never got the note.