Tiger, Tiger (36 page)
So I crafted my two-page suicide note, my assiduous print a final show of respect to Poppa. Would I regain my honor now? Poppa was at the bar and my mother was upstairs sleeping in the master bedroom. I had complained to her about the draft coming through the window and insisted that I sleep in her bed in the kitchen extension. I couldn’t bear the thought that my death would occur in that master bedroom. I took out Poppa’s large bottle of whiskey and all ten of my mother’s medication bottles. After I finished taking all of the pills with several shots of whiskey, I went into the bathroom with the whiskey bottle and started swallowing Tylenol, Advil, Robitussin, fever medication, Imodium, Pepto-Bismol, vitamins, codeine, and every other household drug I could find. I left the empty pill bottles scattered on the table and the half-empty whiskey bottle on the bathroom sink. The tap was running and the toothpaste tube was empty because I’d swallowed all of its contents as well.
T
he first thing I saw when I woke up was bright light blazing in rectangular shafts above my head. Then I was vomiting black liquid that looked like melted asphalt.
“Don’t panic,” a man in green said. “We gave you charcoal to make you throw up. You’re a lucky girl. You’ll be okay; you’ll be just fine. Just keep throwing up, honey. You’re doing well.”
With a kind of fascination, I realized I wasn’t human anymore. I was tubes and wires. I had an IV taped to my hand with thick clear tape. I had no underpants and a catheter had been inserted inside me. My hands were free but my legs were tied with some kind of cord. I wriggled them violently but the cord wouldn’t budge.
“Untie me, please, untie me.”
The white world blurred toward me. I closed my eyes for a second and the hospital people vanished. “Undo me,” I muttered. “Please let me go.” It was hard to keep my eyes from shutting. My ankles flapped weakly against their restraints and I had a thought that the doctor wanted to have sex with me: that’s why he’d tied me up.
The next time I woke, it was to the sound of voices, Poppa’s and Peter’s. They were at the foot of my bed. They were talking about me, so I pretended I was still sleeping.
“No damage to her internal organs? Are you sure?” Peter asked.
“No damage. I thank God for that. The doctor told me she must have left everything a mess on purpose, for her mother to find. It was a cry for attention, apparently. She knows her mother wakes up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.”
“She left a note, you said? Cassie found a suicide note? Did she say why she did it?”
“She overdid it. That is why she lived. Had she taken just a few pills she could have died. But, you see, it was all for attention. It was a show.”
“Well, what did the note say? You said you read it on the way to the hospital. Did it mention her mother or you or me or Inès?”
“I gave the note to the doctor. He can give it to whatever psychologist they have on the adolescent ward. It made no sense at all. Kurt Cobain, Ouija boards. She referred to some conversation she had with him on the Ouija board. I did not know she had a Ouija board. That is dangerous to fool with. Why didn’t you stop her from playing it?”
“She played it with Inès. I thought it was harmless at the time. Is that all the note mentioned: Kurt Cobain and the Ouija board?”
I thought, Why is he harping on that letter? I’m still alive. That’s all that should matter to Peter.
“Kurt Cobain. The love of her life; a heroin addict. It was a sick note. You could tell a sick person wrote it.”
“It’s unhealthy, that obsession,” said Peter, and I couldn’t believe he and Poppa were ganging up on me like that. I didn’t want to keep thinking about it. Due to whatever drugs I was on, sleep was right within reach.
In the adolescent ward, there was a really cute guy who’d cut out his own tattoos on his arms with a knife. I wore my red lipstick for the group therapy sessions I had with him; my mother had to bring it in with the rest of my clothes. Mommy couldn’t cry on all that medication, of course. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, whether she was worried that I’d end up like her or my roommate, Shawna, who wore twin globs of face cream. If a staff worker told her to rub it in she’d snap, “Eat shit and die.” Luckily, I wasn’t anything like Shawna: I was depressed but my head was still clear.
During my two-week stay at the psych ward I was given the Inquisition about Peter, put through tricky questionnaires and ink blot tests, and made to sign a ridiculous contract promising I wouldn’t ever attempt suicide again. The psychiatrist said the questionnaires revealed I had a lot more rage toward my mother than my father, more proof in my mind that they didn’t know what they were doing. How could I be mad at poor Mommy? It was Poppa who’d ruined our family. According to the psychiatrist, I had to think the best of Mommy to avoid thinking the worst, and despite my anger at Poppa, deep down inside I still loved him. I’d never in my life heard more nonsense than what these so-called experts were saying about me.
I kept bleeding. I told my new friend Kim it was probably a miscarriage to look cool, even though I was always having these types of prolonged periods. Shawna was gone, shaving her legs in a special tub provided for that purpose under the watch of a female attendant who made sure that you didn’t slit your wrists, so Kim and I took it as an opportunity to talk alone in my room. I annoyed Kim by bragging that I didn’t care when the counselor Greg pushed me against the washing machine during laundry time and rubbed his hard-on against my crotch.
I told Kim, “If he’d had the balls to rape me, I’d be glad because then I’d get him fired. And on top of that, I’d sue him because he has no right to touch girls, here or anywhere. Especially people here; everyone already has it bad enough. I was molested starting from when I was eight. I’ve probably been molested longer than anyone in this place.” My words, coming out so fast, sounded so arrogant that I wished I could take them back.
Kim’s face was without pity and I was grateful; all I wanted was for her to think I was tough enough to endure any test. “Was it your dad?” she asked.
“No, a man from Weehawken. No relation.” The bad Peter of course was just a stranger. As long as I didn’t mention his name, it didn’t seem like I was talking about the man I loved, the man who’d demanded the doctor remove the restraints from my legs and arms.
“Well, freakin’ Shawna’s own brother felt her up. Weren’t you paying attention in group therapy the other day? Her own brother. And what about Tracy?”
I was embarrassed. Even while I was listening to Tracy’s horror story about being gang-raped, the thought had crossed my mind, “But at least she wasn’t eight.” It was somewhat shocking to think my problems weren’t the biggest or the worst.
Kim said, “I hate Greg. I hate every goddamn pervert in this world. If I were making the laws, they would all be tortured and then executed with the electric chair hooked up only to their dicks.”
“Yeah, definitely,” I said, feeling more alone than ever. It occurred to me again that Peter was a child molester and that everybody would hate him here. I loved him still and had protected him from jail. So what did that make me?
A
few months after my release from the psych ward, I threw out the pills they’d prescribed. Zoloft, at first, had seemed to give me energy, but slowly it had taken away my ability to feel any emotions at all. The worst part was that it made me lose interest in writing my novel. Peter and I had bought a paperback a week, and I usually read to him for four hours a night. That stupid drug had stolen even my ability to enjoy literature.
Peter was now talking about going on medication himself; his psychiatrist at the veterans’ hospital said he was now bordering on major depression. He had gotten to the point where he couldn’t tolerate any criticism at all, even playful teasing. For instance, if a waitress kidded him about all the sugar he put in coffee he’d get so upset that the next time I’d have to go into the diner to get the coffee for him.
Then, one day, he came over so distressed that he could barely talk. Mommy made him sit down and I rushed for Poppa’s ashtray. “Paws, Paws, Paws,” was all he could say.
Immediately after Paws’s death, Peter got a prescription filled and his high dose of Prozac, combined with his increased dependence on the tranquilizer Lorazepam, obliterated what was left of his sex drive; he was also now under assault from the side effects of diarrhea and nausea (during our walks he’d now sometimes have to use the woods as a toilet). Despite this, we still drove about twenty-five miles each day; I was addicted to the routine and so was Peter. The Granada eventually broke down, so I gave Peter permission to use a few hundred from my savings, which I kept stored in his bank account, to buy a used Cadillac Cimarron. A few years before, Peter had convinced me to put my money in his account, saying this way it would gain interest; I’d been too young to open up my own.
That fall, now seventeen, I started the process of applying to Hudson County Community College after Poppa said that I needed to either get a job or go to school. I’d not only seen his point, but I was thrilled by the prospect of starting college; I knew it would be different from high school. Peter was busy lamenting over the loss of his blow jobs and massages, saying he no longer felt like a man. But as far as I was concerned, it was a call for celebration; the bad Peter, the one from the basement, was gone at last.
When I started HCCC, majoring in early childhood education, I’d assumed I was unlikable, but now I was making both casual girl and guy friends. I’d tell guys in the beginning that I wanted to keep it strictly platonic, and for a while they went along with this, taking me out on Sunday or meeting me for coffee before class. If a guy asked me to be his girlfriend, I’d always lie that I couldn’t date because I was still recovering from the pain caused by my previous boyfriend. Or maybe it wasn’t a total lie. I’d been with Peter all this time, though it was hard to use the word “boyfriend” in regard to him. “A father that had sex with me” was still the more accurate description.
I was too ashamed to confide in anybody about Peter or my past, but others opened up to me. Jennifer snorted coke before classes; Keisha, who’d been hospitalized for depression twice, still believed Jesus was calling her on the phone; Natalie, like me, had tried to get pregnant as a teenager, only she’d succeeded, and now she worked as an exotic dancer to support her son, all the while finding time to work toward a nursing degree. Katie had had a lot of sex with different middle-aged men and now thought she should get an HIV test at the free clinic in Jersey City, but was too petrified to go. Girls my age talked unabashedly about a potpourri of sexual positions they’d tried, the toys they used to pleasure themselves, what lingerie their boyfriends liked, but nobody mentioned
anything
about a guy having fantasies like Peter’s.
On Sundays now, I occasionally took mall or NYC trips with Rocco, who’d emigrated to the United States from Nigeria a year ago, or shopped on Bergenline with Tania, a Puerto Rican girl with blond-streaked hair and a tongue ring. Whenever I hung out with Rocco we took turns deciding what to do, but with Tania, I let her control everything: what movies we saw, what music we listened to, even what food we ordered. She liked this role, and I enjoyed my place as a mirror in which her sexuality and power were reflected back to her. She had a wide feline face with broad, sensual nostrils, large breasts, a shapely neck, thick hair, and a righteous anger at cops, atheists, and conceited guys who had nothing to be conceited about. Mostly, Tania liked to talk about herself, which worked out well, since I preferred the role of listener. I could learn more this way. When I was with her, I wanted her to vent and brood while I remained indistinct and slippery, like a shadow she boxed with alone in her room at night. What was ineffable in me, I saw expressed at last through Tania, so my instinct wasn’t to compete with her but to study her, to know her completely. By giving her no cause for envy, I coaxed her to reveal the pearl of her true self to me. This was worth far more than the immediate gain of impressing her; it was serious in a way nothing else ever could be, for often I felt like I had been much depleted these last years, and my personality needed somehow to restore itself. Like an architect, I needed solid blueprints first. The hardworking, gentle pastels of Rocco and the brash primary colors of Tania were two shades of a palette I mixed every night in my dreams.
Yet this bright work of venturing, of learning and trying, wasn’t easy; it was like the pain of stretching wasted limbs after a long coma. I just wasn’t accustomed to socializing: after a good four hours with Tania or Rocco I felt overwhelmed, sometimes slightly nauseated. I longed for Peter’s room, the car, and Paws, whose death plagued me with a recurrent dream: finding him by the train tracks, his gutted belly swarmed with white roaches. During these times, I felt like I would do anything to burrow under the torn blankets of Peter’s hospital bed, in the low bluish plant lights, smelling stale smoke and baby oil, retreating like an evening bat to a deserted building, to hang unseen.
When Tania and her boyfriend broke up, she noticed that I hung out with her only on Sundays, a fact that she regarded as strange. She knew I didn’t have a boyfriend. I’d told her that I spent the rest of the week reading to my legally blind grandfather. At her insistence, I gave her Peter’s phone number, and one Friday night she called on a spur-of-the-moment whim to go clubbing in the city.
After hanging up, I told Peter, “I have to go home now, and get something to wear. I’m so excited. We were talking about the Tunnel or maybe the Bank, this Goth club where you only have to be eighteen to get in.”
“You’re going where?” Peter groped for his pack of his cigarettes. “You’re just leaving, just like that?”
“Yes, it’s last-minute. I’ll see you tomorrow, though.”
“What am I, nothing? Just someone to fill your time and then somebody else calls, you just drop me?” His wrinkled eyes were already filling with tears.
