by Mira T. Lee
“Are you seeing someone?” I ask.
She blinks, quizzical. “I’m married,” she says, and I’m so embarrassed I have to lean forward to pretend-wipe Essy’s face. I meant, like, a shrink.
She asks whether I’m working and I say I hope to again, soon. My last job I wrote features for a newspaper in Queens. Nipa taught high school math in the Bronx for twelve years, started the week after her college graduation, continued through her treatments, but quit when Natey was born.
“Now I feel stupid and useless,” she says.
“Oh, I feel stupid and useless, too,” I say, and her cat-eyes glow a little brighter.
I tell Nipa I used to cry all the time, too. She asks why, but I can’t bring myself to say. Even the thought of it makes me feel ashamed.
The serpents invaded my head after Essy was born. I would sit in my bedroom, not moving for hours, terrified to wake them. Flanked by banana plants, oriented by the window, my knees pointed precisely to two o’clock. I needed to align my body with the earth’s magnetic field, like a grazing cow or caribou—only this way could my innermost thoughts resist detection by the mind X-rays from Central Compound. Any sudden movement or breach in concentration, I was sure, could have cosmic consequences, like causing an Olympic figure skater to miss her triple Lutz, or a driver to plow onto a snowy sidewalk, or an airplane to fall out of the sky. But even within silence, the stimuli flourished: photons in the sunlight made my skin itch; tiny creatures stampeded in the walls; invisible rays from the light sockets leached vital qi from my meridians.
Sometimes, I heard babies.
“Can you hear that?” I’d ask Manny.
“What?”
“They’re crying.”
“Who?”
“The babies.”
“No, Lucia,” he said, pointing to the bassinet. “Essy is asleep.”
The serpents, they mocked me—stupid girl, made you look! Then I understood, all the crying babies were a recording played by Central, an evil trick to divert my attention from my child. I would outsmart them, ignore them—but I ended up ignoring Essy’s cries, too. Finally, Manny got angry, threw his temper around, and when he insisted on having Susi’s sister, Betty, watch Essy in her home, I gave in. Then I was consumed by guilt.
I kept the socks on my hands, like a scarlet letter, even when I was alone. One time, as punishment, I gulped down half a bottle of laxative, then crawled next door to Mrs. Gutierrez’s garden and lay on her flower bed. The ground was frozen (it was middle of winter) but I was sure if I focused intensely enough, I could will a daffodil up from the earth. If this happened, I reasoned, it would be proof that my body had been cleansed of its poison. Three hours later, Mrs. Gutierrez found me prowling on my hands and knees. “I can’t find them,” I mumbled. “Find what?” she asked. My fingers and toes. They were numb.
She brought me inside. The warmth of her house smelled suspicious, like vitamins and beef broth and soap. “You need a doctor?” She peeled the socks from my hands, touched my fingers, frozen like grape Popsicles. “Maybe I need to take you to a doctor,” she said. No way, I knew better. A doctor would send me to the lock-up hospital for sure. Mrs. G pressed hot washcloths to my face, wrapped my hands and feet in iron-warmed towels, brought me a bowl of hot soup. Two sips and I ran to the toilet, stayed bolted there for over an hour. The serpents hissed. One giggled, one cursed. Slowly, I regained sensation. It burned.
When the serpents were awake, my first instinct was to muzzle them by turning up the television. But electromagnetic waves were bad for the baby, and if Manny was home, he’d shut it off. I knew he worried, sensed his thoughts in distress, and I wanted desperately to tell him I’d find some way to care for our daughter. But by that point I found it hard to speak—my mouth moved, but to form the correct sounds seemed impossible. Well, words were a trick, too easily intercepted by Central, I’d need to devise a telepathic code. “Witness Protection Program” meant home, “bread” meant poison, “awake” meant scared, and Essy was “my pancake” or “pet” or “our bumblebee.” Of course, this schema ended up being far too complicated. Just thinking about it left me exhausted, mute.
Some days I tried to seek refuge in the loudest place I could find, like Pizza Palace or the laundromat or a fitness class at the Y. But people were risky. Spies gossiped and conspired to wring out my thoughts like they wrung out their wet gym towels. They knew who I was, in spite of my disguise as a Sweet Asian Doll. She’s trying to hide. Why is she hiding? It’s time to open her up. Expose her.
The Chinese restaurant in Greenburgh turned out to be the most effective din, especially at lunch hour, when the serpents had to compete with the crowds. And when the noise thinned I clamped on my headphones and blasted Ella Fitzgerald, who mourned for me as I lay down my chopsticks and washed my fingers in tea. She’s lying on the floor. She’s curled up like a ball. She’s crying. Are her eyes made for crying? Cut them out! Stop her crying now!
I stopped crying. My insides dried, cauterized. I had no tears left, but I wanted to die.
• • •
After I entered the hospital, the voices quieted, but it didn’t take too many brain cells to figure out that Crote Six was an anagram for EXORCIST and only one E shy of EROTIC SEX. Central was broadcasting to China, to teach people there about safe sex and mental hygiene. And while I was trapped in their prison, the FBI schemed to steal my baby. I called the police, the fire department, three city council members who turned me away. Help. Finally, Child Protective Services said they’d send someone to check on the baby. This made me feel slightly less agitated.
I’d been in lockup before, I knew my rights: If I stayed calm, posed no immediate threat to myself or others, they’d have to let me go. I was the subject of a top-secret government experiment; a journalist working undercover on a sensational exposé; a finalist on a TV reality show—any day now they’d announce the results of the audience vote! The days passed. Little changed. My concerns faded in urgency as life became its new routine: mealtimes and groups and ping-pong with Big Juan, the drama of Hulk and Loco Coco and the other patients in the unit. Gradually bleached of purpose, I’d stand by the windows, projecting my reflection onto the winter. I was the snow and the fog and the wind and the cold. I was the blue scrub, accosted by other blue scrubs, illuminated by fluorescent white lights. But it was different this time, because of Essy. I had a baby now. They would never let me go.
The doctors say I have insight; I can talk about the past, recognize something was wrong. But the truth is, I’m still not sure how to tell what’s real—because when you’re inside it, it’s your reality, and if your own perception of the world isn’t valid, then what is? Here’s what I do know: I spent a total of forty days in Crote Six. I missed my baby’s first laugh, first solid foods, first tooth.
• • •
On the day I was finally released, Manny brought me flowers, a dozen Gerbera daisies, and drove the whole way home at exactly two miles under the speed limit. It felt fast, wheeee! And it was spring, with tulips and daffodils and blossoms exploding from every tree. I wanted to yell, I’m free! “Can I do that?” I asked Manny. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. He rolled his eyes but I think he was really nervous. “Joking, geez.” Doped up as I was, I still pinched his cheek, stuck my arm out the window and waved to everyone on Main Street.
We stopped at Cousin Delia’s first. Essy sat on a plastic floor mat in the kitchen, scooping yogurt in the general direction of her mouth with her fingers. My baby. Sitting up. Feeding herself. I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. When Manny had brought her into the p-ward she’d seemed like a borrowed doll, something I couldn’t possibly keep. Now I kissed her yogurt-smeared face. I kissed Manny. I kissed Cousin Delia. I beamed the whole way home.
The house looked respectable. Some debris in the front yard, but a freshly swept stoop (Mrs. Gutierrez, no doubt), and only a few hardened food stains on the
kitchen floor, a handful of dishes in the sink. Upstairs, I emptied my plastic bag full of personal belongings; clothes got tossed into the laundry heap, toiletries restowed in the bathroom. I brushed my teeth. Flossed. Filled a cup and watered my banana plants. I named them: Dusty, Dusty Two, and Parched. Lying back on the futon mattress, I studied their fronds, such lovely green veins, neat and parallel, in contrast with the wild, crisscross cracks on the ceiling. I sat back up. I pointed my knees to two o’clock. The room felt different. Once thick and seething, it now sat eerily still, as if it’d been depleted of some elemental particle.
The Vargas boys acted like I’d never been gone. “Everything is fine with your family?” said Carlos, and I said yes, and no one asked me anything more. I figured Manny had explained my absence in whatever way he thought best and I felt grateful to him for this. I knew the social had given him pamphlets and explained to him a lot of things, like how I had a Very Serious Lifelong Condition and how to best speak to me in a Supportive and Nonthreatening Manner, and how Very Important it was that I Take My Pills, even though they would make me tired and I’d need extra rest.
On the day of my own homecoming, I decided to bake Chinese almond cookies.
“The almonds are from China?” said Hector. He laughed at his own joke. Slid his stool closer to the small TV on the kitchen counter.
“They’re usually for special occasions,” I explained, but he was too absorbed in the news. We all know Hector is in love with Mindy Griffin, the reporter on channel 9 with the blond halo hair and spectacular cleavage.
The refrigerator hummed. The kettle boiled. Essy beat on a colander with a wooden spoon. Eventually, she whacked her finger. “Bad spoon. Bad, bad spoon,” I said. I hugged her, kissed her, but she kicked and flailed and pushed me away, inconsolable for a good fifteen minutes. “Essy. Hija,” I pleaded over and over. “Mama’s here. Essy, Mama’s here.” Finally she pressed her wet face into my shoulder. When she fell asleep, I brought her upstairs, then returned to my mixing bowl. I strained my eardrums, now attuned to the frequencies of her doleful cries—but I heard no cries. Reports included a drunk driving accident on the Pelham Parkway, a house fire in White Plains, traffic on the Tappan Zee Bridge.
You did that, right?
“What?”
“You did that, right? Reporter. Manny said you used to do that, like on the news.”
“Oh. Right.” Hector! “I was a writer. I was on TV only once.”
“Oh,” he said. “I thought . . .” He pointed to the screen, started laughing, kuh-kuh-kuh. Hector has a great laugh, like how a penguin would laugh if penguins laughed, so then I had to laugh, too.
I beat together flour and butter and sugar and eggs. I watched Mindy Griffin. I waited. The screen flickered at me but there was nothing. Or rather, there was something, but it felt far away, no longer in my realm of concern. Maybe for the serpents it was like trying to talk in outer space, with no air to conduct the sound.
• • •
For the first few weeks, Manny went all domestic, made the bed, folded laundry, cooked me breakfasts with chorizo and eggs. The Vargas boys were on their best behavior, but I missed Susi, my sweet hermanita, with her denim jacket and miniskirts, who was always sprucing up the place with crepe paper streamers or vases of paper flowers or cakes with bright-colored frosting. She was taken away while I was stuck in the p-ward, and I’m convinced it was my fault; when I went to find her sister in Pleasantville, it turned out Betty had gone, too, moved out of her apartment. “Where would she go?” I asked Manny. “Back to Ecuador?” He said he didn’t know. These things happened, like with Jimmy Prieto. I could see it stressed him out to talk about it, so I didn’t bring it up again.
Soon after I came home, Essy got sick. She coughed and cried, broke out into a rash one night. The pills knocked me out, I didn’t hear her—Manny called Dr. Vera Wang and took care of everything. The cough lasted for weeks. I told Manny he should wake me, but the one time he did, I was completely disoriented, changed her without putting a fresh diaper on and in the morning she was covered with shit.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” I washed her in the shower, scrubbed the bedsheets in the tub, sprayed the mattress with bleach and vinegar.
I didn’t try to explain to Manny about the meds, how some days my head feels like it’s been mulching underground for the duration of a New England winter, how they’ve tried me on twelve different drugs over the past five years. One made me gain thirty pounds, swell up like a balloon animal, all twisted and pinched and skin too tight for my body. Pop. The next pill caused headaches, the next diarrhea, the next shot me deep into a neuroleptic daze. They prescribed pills in combination. Added pills for the side effects, then pills for side effects of the pills for side effects. They kept upping my Xanax. I couldn’t feel. Finally I said, No more pills.
I take only one kind of medication now. They adjust the dosage. Sometimes I still slosh around, dense and slushy like a watermelon; other times I’m flat, de-fizzed. And every night, Manny barges into the bathroom, hangs around until I finish brushing my teeth so he can watch me swallow the pills. After a few weeks of this I can’t take it, I tell him it makes me nervous, like I’m back in Crote Six. I’m not a prisoner anymore, and I refuse to be treated like one.
This is me, at the p-doc’s again. It’s slow going with Beige, but he’s meticulous at least, records everything in his notepad with his rollerball pen.
“How’s the fogginess?” he says.
“A little better. Lighter. Less San Francisco, more L.A.”
Fog: less San Francisco, more L.A. There must be a lot to parse in that statement because he’s scribbling away for a full minute.
“I notice you’ve been rubbing your eyes.”
“Spring,” I say. “Because everything has to have side effects, I guess.”
He doesn’t smile. He jots again, asks if I’m familiar with tardive dyskinesia, and I say yes, I know, it’s a nasty long-term side effect of the meds, where your tongue falls out of your mouth and you twitch and shake. He explains it anyway, neurological effects, et cetera et cetera. So we can be mindful. As if I’m not already terrified.
“How about the voices?”
I say they’ve gone away. Because the truth is, even if the whispers float around the edges, it’s better than the zombie haze. Then he asks if there’s anything particular on my mind today. Something I’m hoping to get out of the session. For the first time, he sounds like a therapist!
I tell him I’m looking for a job.
“Oh? What kind of job?”
“Local news reporter. Preferably a daily, but I’m looking into radio, maybe TV, too.”
“I see,” he says. His tone stays even but I catch the slip, the flinch, that arc of the brow, the subtle shift of weight.
“Well, I need a job. Now that I’m not stuck in group therapy sessions every day. And I studied journalism.”
He nods, expressionless, rests his elbows on his knees, his chin on his loose-clasped hands. He’s thinking awhile, sorting his words. Finally he says, “Did your last therapist speak with you about setting Attainable Short-Term Goals?”
Attainable Short-Term Goals? I picture an ice hockey rink, and he’s wearing one of those creepy white masks with holes. Hannibal Lecter. I quickly blink him away.
“What I mean is,” Beige continues, “don’t you already have a very important job?”
Hannibal Lecter gone, my mind runs blank, so I scan the room with my eyes, the universal sign for, Um, am I missing something? Then he is smiling at me! Showing his teeth, yellowish, and this is a first, a landmark event, but still I find nothing to say.
“Aren’t you . . . a mother?” Beige unclasps his hands.
“Oh.” Hot embarrassment floods my body, though I’m not sure why. “Sure, I guess. I mean, yes. I am.”
He nods and nods and smiles.
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br /> When I get in the car, I’m all fluttery. I sit on top of my hands. I say it out loud: Fuck you.
“He said that?” says Nipa. “A doctor said that?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s so obnoxious. Fuck him.”
I keep on looking. I scour the ads, send out résumés. I try for news reporter, cultural editor, arts magazine proofreader, radio show fact-checker, Web content manager, ghostwriter. One day I’m with Essy at the laundromat, checking out the bulletin board while she’s mesmerized by the dryers. I find an ad for “art assistant” at one of those Paint-Your-Own pottery studios. I apply for that, too, what the hell, I apply and apply and I wait. Whenever I get called for an interview, I sling on my favorite pair of heels, red suede Mary Janes, tamed with my most conservative skirt. I’m overqualified, underqualified, the position is filled, but everyone compliments my shoes.
To stay active, I assign myself projects, including a feature story on El Pollo Loco.
“El Pollo Loco?” says Manny. “Are you serious?”
But I get a good vibe from the chicken guy, in spite of the creepy rubber suit. And the suit, well, it’s intriguing.
We meet at a coffee shop. He’s punctual. He takes off his chicken head and he’s early fifties maybe (he won’t confirm), lean and Germanic, with chiseled features and pale gray eyes. Sweaty, intense, with an ants-in-the-pants energy too big to be confined indoors—so it’s only mildly shocking to learn he’s an ex–fighter pilot who flew in Iraq, with a daughter in her last year at Vassar. I ask the obvious question: Why? “I am El Pollo Loco,” he explains, and when he puts on that suit every morning it’s like climbing into his own skin. There’s something reassuring about this fixed identity, instantly recognizable to everyone in the world, including himself. “Why so rubbery? So . . . dead looking?” “My insides turned out,” he says.