The Law of Moses (17 page)

Moses

“CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT THE ARTWORK MEANS?”

I sighed heavily. The Asian doctor in the tan blazer, wearing the self-important spectacles she probably didn’t need, considered me over her rims, her pencil poised to make notes of my mental deterioration.

“You need to talk to me, Moses. All of this will be so much easier for both of us.”

“You wanted me to tell you what happened at my grandma’s house. That’s what happened.” I tossed my hand toward the wall.

“Is she dead?” the doctor asked, staring at my grandmother’s death scene.

“Yes.”

“How did she die?”

“I don’t know. She was laying on the kitchen floor when I came home that morning.”

I should have known she was going to die. I had seen the signs. The nights leading up to her death I’d seen him hovering around her, the dead man who looked like the man in Gi’s wedding photo. My great-grandfather. I’d seen him twice, standing just beyond her right shoulder while she slept in her chair. And I’d seen him again, just behind her as she’d rolled out her pie crusts Wednesday afternoon when I headed to the old mill to finish the demolition. He had been waiting for her.

But I didn’t tell the doctor that. Maybe I should though. Then I could tell her someone stood behind her shoulder, waiting for her to die too. Maybe it would scare her to death and she would leave me alone. But there wasn’t really anyone standing beyond her shoulder, so I held my tongue as she waited for me to speak.

She wrote in her notebook for a minute.

“How did that make you feel?”

I wanted to laugh. Was she serious? How did that make me feel?

“Sad,” I said with a sorrowful frown, batting my eyes at her ridiculous, clichéd question.

“Sad,” she repeated dryly.

“Very sad,” I amended in the same tone.

“What went through your mind when you saw her?”

I stood up from my chair and walked to the wall and leaned against it, completely shielding my grandmother from her clinical gaze. I closed my eyes for a minute, reaching out just a little, parting the waters just a crack. I focused on the woman’s shiny black head, her hair pulled back in a perfect, low ponytail.

She asked me several more questions, but I was concentrating on raising the water. I wanted to find something to make her run, screaming. Something true.

“Did you have a twin sister?” I asked suddenly, as an image of two little Asian girls in pigtails and matching dresses suddenly surfaced in my mind.

“Wh-what?” she asked, dumbfounded.

“Or maybe a cousin the same age. No. No. She’s your sister. She died, right?” I folded my arms and waited, letting the images unfold.

The doctor pulled off her glasses and frowned at me. I had to give it to her. She didn’t rattle easily.

“You had a visitor today. Georgia Shepherd was her name. She’s not on your list. Do you want to talk about Georgia instead?” she parried, trying to derail me.

My heart shuddered when I heard her name. But I pushed Georgia away and thrust back.

“How did that make you feel, losing your sister like that?” I asked, not breaking eye-contact with the doctor. “Was she crazy like me? Is that why you wanted to work with crazy people?” I gave her a wild-eyed, Jack Nicholson smile. She stood abruptly and excused herself.

It was the first time I’d ever done something like that. It was strange and oddly wonderful. I had stopped caring if I was believed. If I never got out of the psych ward, I was fine with that. I was safe there at least. Gi was gone. Georgia was gone too. I’d made sure of that. It was the only thing I could do for Georgia now. She’d seen them put me in the ambulance. I’d fought. But as my eyes swam and the world spun, I’d seen her horrified, paint-streaked face. She was crying. And that was the last thing I saw before the world went dark.

Now I was here. And I didn’t care anymore. It was all spilling out the cracks. Georgia teased me about my cracks, telling me I was cracked so the brilliance could spill out. And it was spilling out, brilliant and brutal.

And so it continued for the next few weeks. The hardest part was when the therapist or doctor hadn’t lost anyone. There were people like that, and I had no one on the other side to use against them. To say I had the entire floor rattled would be putting it mildly. They tried to fix my cracks with medication, just like they’d done all my life, but the medication made the cracks wider, and short of putting me in a stupor, nothing they tried made me stop seeing the things I could see. And I started telling them all exactly what I could see. I didn’t do it out of love or compassion. I did it because I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass anymore. I didn’t break it to them gently either. I hit them over the head with it, Georgia style. In your face, tell you like it is.

Georgia

MY MOM HAD CONNECTIONS through her work with the foster system, and she found Moses for me. I don’t think she wanted to find him. But for whatever reason—maybe out a lifelong compassion for troubled kids or out of respect for Kathleen Wright—she tracked him down. We had to be on a list in order to see him. The list was comprised of doctors, immediate family, and people Moses had been allowed to add.

My mom came with me the first time and we waited outside an official area while our names were relayed to another reception area on another floor. It was a building with different levels and pass codes and key pads. The reception area was as far as we got. We weren’t related and Moses hadn’t added any names to his list. I wondered if there had been any family to see him. I doubted it. My mom patted my hand and told me it was probably for the best. I nodded, but I knew it wasn’t best for Moses. I would keep trying without her.

I skipped school and drove Myrtle to Salt Lake the next time I attempted a break in. Or a break out. I would take him away if he’d let me. It took me three hours to get there in that damn truck. I had to drive in the slow lane, pedal pressed all the way down, Myrtle shaking even worse than I was. I talked us both through it, patting Myrtle’s dash and telling her there was nothing to be afraid of. We would take it slow. Cars and trucks flew by me in a swarm of horns and angry fists. But I made it. And I went again the next week and the next and every week for a month after that. Week after week, Myrtle never could get over her nerves and Moses never did let me in.

Finally, on my seventh week in a row, a woman came to the reception area and escorted me into a private meeting room. I’d noticed families being led to these rooms. My pulse sped up and my palms started to sweat in anticipation. I had high hopes that I would finally be able to see Moses. I needed to see him. I needed to talk to him.

“Georgia?” the lady looked down at her clipboard and smiled at me, though I could tell she wanted to get this over with. If she was a therapist or a psychologist, she needed to work on her poker face. She was impatient and had an irritated little wrinkle between her brows. Maybe it was because I was in cowboy boots and jeans, with my hair in a long, swinging braid. I probably looked easy to get rid of, easy to brush off and send away.

“Yes?” I responded.

“You aren’t on Moses’s list.”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what they tell me.”

“So why do you keep coming?” She smiled again, but she also looked at her watch.

“Because Moses is my friend.”

“He doesn’t seem to feel that way.”

The hurt that was now a constant companion grew a size bigger in my chest. I looked at her for a long second. So prim in her little white coat. I bet she liked wearing that coat. It probably made her feel powerful. I wondered if she wanted to hurt me or if she was just the kind of doctor who was comfortable dispensing bad news.

“Georgia?” I guess she wanted me to respond to her statement. I fought the urge to rub my hands on my jeans, my nervous habit. The denim soothed me.

“He never has. He’s always pushed me away. But he doesn’t have anyone else.” My voice didn’t sound very strong, and that seemed to please her.

“He has us. We’re taking very good care of him. He’s making remarkable progress.”

That was good. Remarkable progress was good. The ache in my chest eased a bit. “So what next?” I shrugged. “Where does he go from here?”

“That’s up to Moses now.” How wonderfully vague.

“Can I write him a letter? Could you give him a letter from me? Would that be okay?”

“No, Georgia. He’s been granted phone privileges. He could have called you. He hasn’t, has he?”

I shook my head. No. He hadn’t.

“He is adamant. He doesn’t want to see you or communicate with you. And we honor those wishes when we can. He has control over so little, and this is what he wants.”

I wouldn’t cry in front of this woman. I wouldn’t. I took the letter I’d written Moses out of my purse, slapped it on the table in front of the doctor and stood. She could give it to Moses, throw it away, or read it to her monster babies for their bedtime story. They could all have a good chortle at my pain. Including Moses. Whatever the doctor decided, it was in her hands. I had done all I could do. I headed for the door.

“Georgia?” she called after me.

I slowed but didn’t turn.

“He knows where to find you, doesn’t he?”

I pulled the door open.

“Maybe he’ll come to you. Maybe when he’s released, he’ll come to you.”

But he didn’t come. Not then. Not for a long, long time.

Moses

THEY PUT ME IN A DIFFERENT ROOM without pads, which was nice, because then I didn’t have to draw in the space above them. They told me to stop drawing, but short of tying my hands behind my back, which was apparently frowned upon since I wasn’t “violent,” I wasn’t going to stop. They started bringing me blank paper and letting me draw instead of write, as long as I would talk to them about what I was drawing, and as long as I left the walls alone. I didn’t like interpreting my drawings. But it was better than telling stories that were easier shared in pictures.

Eventually, they let me attend group sessions, and it was at my second or third one that Molly decided to come back. Suddenly she was there, flitting at the edges of my vision, someone I thought was gone. Someone I hadn’t missed. Someone who made me think of Georgia. And it made me even testier than usual. I started looking for a way to get sent back to my room.