I have to do something or I will explode.
Talking to Evan, finding Mikey, waiting for him to come visit me, thinking of Ellis, I miss miss miss so much.
I find them all in Crafts, bent over the long plastic tables, Miss Joni walking around, murmuring in her deep, warm voice. Miss Joni wears purple turbans and lumberjack shirts. When I came to Crafts the first time and just sat, doing nothing, she only said, “Sitting’s all right, too, girlfriend. You just sit as long as you want.”
I didn’t just sit because I didn’t want to paste sparkly stars on colored paper or blend watery paints, I sat because my arms hurt. My arms hurt all the way to my fingertips and they were so heavy in their bandages.
They still hurt. But today when Miss Joni says, “Dr. Stinson and I had a little chat,” and slides me a beautiful, blank pad of all-purpose newsprint paper and a brand-new stick of charcoal, I greedily clutch the stick in my fingers. Little sparks of pain shoot up and down my forearm. My scars are still tender and tight and will be for a long, long time, but I don’t care. I breathe hard. I work hard. My fingers take care of me. It’s been so long, but they know what to do.
I draw her. I draw them. I fill my paper with Ellis and Mikey, Evan and Dump, even DannyBoy. I fill every last piece of paper until I have a whole world of missing.
When I look up, everyone is gone except Miss Joni and she’s turned the lights on. It’s dark outside the window. She’s sipping from a Styrofoam cup of coffee and scrolling on her pink phone.
She looks up and smiles. She says, “Better?”
I nod. “Better.”
Today I’m excited to meet with Casper. I want to tell her about Crafts, and what I drew and what drawing means to me. I think that will make her happy. But when I push open the door, she’s not alone. Dr. Helen is with her.
The turtle is hiding inside the sunken ship.
Dr. Helen turns around when I enter the room and says, “Oh, Charlotte, please sit down, here.” And she pats the brown chair I always sit in. I look at Casper, but her smile isn’t as nice as it usually is. It looks…smaller.
Dr. Helen is a lot older than Casper, with lines at the edges of her eyes and rouge that’s too dark for her skin.
“Dr. Stinson and I have been reviewing your progress, Charlotte. I’m happy to see you’ve made some strong strides in such a short time.”
I don’t know if I’m supposed to answer her, or smile, or what, so I don’t say anything. I kind of start pinching my thighs through the flowery skirt, but Casper notices and frowns, so I stop.
“You’ve been through so much, and at such a young age, I just…” And here, weirdly, she stops, and kind of sets her jaw and says, very sharp, to Casper, “Are you not going to help at all with this, Bethany?”
And I’m still absorbing Casper’s name, Bethany Bethany Bethany, so it takes a while for me to understand what she’s telling me.
I say, “What?”
Casper repeats, “You’re being discharged.”
Dr. Helen talks then, about a special sort of psychiatric hold that allowed me to be treated at the hospital, and about my mother having to meet with a judge and sign papers, because “you were a danger to yourself and others,” and insurance, and my Grammy, who I haven’t thought of in a very long time. All the words kind of bang around my brain as my heart squeezes into a tinier and tinier thing and I ask about my mom, but it comes out in a stutter. I bite down on my tongue until I get a faint, metallic taste of blood.
Casper says, “Your mother’s not working right now, so there isn’t any possibility of coverage. As I understand it, some of your stay has been covered by your grandmother, but she’s unable to continue due to her own health and financial care issues.”
“Did something happen to my grandmother?”
“I don’t know,” answers Casper.
“You talked to my mother?”
Casper nods.
“Did she…did she say anything about me?”
Casper looks at Dr. Helen, who says, “We’re working as hard as possible to locate resources for you. In fact, Bethany, how are we doing on the bed at the house on Palace?”
When Casper doesn’t answer, Dr. Helen flips through the pile of papers on her lap. “There’s a halfway house that may have room for you, possibly as early as next month. They specialize in substance addiction, but that is one of your subsets. You’ll need to stay with your mother before then, of course, since you can’t stay here. No one wants you back in your previous situation, no one.”
Previous situation: meaning, homeless. Meaning, Dumpster diving. Meaning, cold and sick and Fucking Frank and the men who fuck girls.
I look at the turtle. His legs twitch, like he’s shrugging at me: What do you expect me to do? I’m a goddamn turtle trapped in a tank.
Outside the window, the sky is turning hard and gray. Fucking Frank. A halfway house. I’m being sent back outside.
When I say it, I sound like a little baby, and that makes me even madder. “It’s still cold outside.”
Dr. Helen says, “We’ll do everything we can, but is there absolutely no possibility of long-term reconciliation with your mother, even with counseling? She’s agreed to house you until a bed opens at the halfway house. That says something to me, that she’s trying.”
I look at Casper in desperation. I think her eyes are the saddest things I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Very, very slowly, she shakes her head from side to side. “I don’t see any other option, Charlotte. I’m very sorry.”
Once my mother hit my ear so hard I heard the howling of trains for a week. I get up and walk to the door.
Casper says, “We’re not abandoning you, Charlotte. We’ve investigated every possible option, there just isn’t—”
“No.” I open the door. “Thank you. I’m going to my room now.”
Casper calls after me, but I don’t stop. My ears are a sea of bees. Our rooms are on the fourth floor, Dinnaken Wing. I pass by Louisa and go into the bathroom and stand there for a while. Louisa says my name.
Then I step into our shower and pound my forehead into the wall until the bees die.
When Casper comes running in, she grabs me around the waist and pulls at me to get me to stop. I take her beautiful yellowy baby bird hair in my hands and I yank so hard that she cries out and pushes away. I slide to the floor, warm blood trickling down to my mouth.
I say sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.
Feathery strands of her hair flutter in my hands. I’ll never be beautiful or normal like Casper, and just like that, just realizing that, out everything comes, all she ever asked of me.
I tell her: After my father died, my mother curled up into something tight and awful and there was no more music in the house, there was no more touching, she was only a ghost that moved and smoked. If I got in her way, if the school called, if I took money from her purse, if I was just me, the yelling started. She yelled for years. When she got tired of yelling, she started hitting.
Casper blots my face with a cloth as I talk. Louisa wrings her hands in the doorway. Girls pile up behind her, pushing, trying to get a look.
I say: She’s been hitting me for a long time. I say: I started hitting back.
I say: Please don’t make me go back outside. I tell her about the man in the underpass, he broke my tooth and broke me, and it hurts swelling out of me, but I give it to her, all the horrible words in my heart—about Ellis, about Fucking Frank.
I stop. Her eyes are watery. I’ve given her too much. Two orderlies muscle through the crowd of girls. There are little pinpricks of blood at the roots of Casper’s hair, little blips of red amid the yellow. They help her up and she doesn’t say anything to me, just limps away.
A TIMELINE
A girl is born.
Her father loves her. Her mother loves her father.
Her father is sad.
Her father drinks and smokes, rocks and cries.
Into the river he goes.
; The mother becomes a fist.
The girl is alone.
The girl is not good in the world.
No one likes the girl.
She tries.
But her mouth is mush.
Stupid girl. Angry girl.
Doctors: Give her drugs.
Lazy girl. Girl is mush on drugs.
Mother hits girl. Girl shrinks.
Girl goes quiet. Quiet at home. Quiet at school. Quiet mush mouse.
Girl listens to radio. Girl finds music. Girl has whole other world.
Girl slips on headphones. World gone.
Girl draws and draws and draws. World gone.
Girl finds knife. Girl makes herself small, small, smaller. World gone.
Girl must be bad, so girl cuts. Bad girl. World gone.
Girl meets girl. Beautiful Girl! They watch planets move on the ceiling.
They save money for Paris. Or London. Or Iceland. Wherever.
Girl like-likes a boy, but he loves Beautiful Girl.
Beautiful Girl meets wolf boy. He fills her up, but makes her small.
Beautiful Girl is busy all the time.
Girl hits mother back. They are windmills with their hands. Girl on street.
Girl stays with Beautiful Girl, but wolf boy leaves drugs.
Beautiful Parents are angry. Beautiful Girl lies and blames Girl for the drugs.
Girl on street. Girl goes home.
Beautiful Girl texts and texts Something wrong Hurts
Girl slips headphones on. Girl slides phone under pillow.
Beautiful Girl bleeds too much.
Girl gets messed up, too messed up, broken heart, guilt.
Girl breaks mother’s nose.
Girl on street.
World gone.
I’m staying here, but I don’t know for how long. I’ve been released from individual sessions with Casper. My paperwork and discharge dates are being sorted out. They have another emergency stay from a judge while they work out an arrangement with my mother and with the halfway house.
Casper is still kind to me, but there is something else there now, between us, a distance that makes my heart ache. My sorrys start up again, but Casper just shakes her head sadly.
Vinnie checks the stitches on my forehead every morning, clucking his tongue. Blue calls me Frankenstein in a horror-movie whisper. I go where I’m supposed to go. At night, I just pretend to do my online classes. I’ve tried to message Mikey when Barbero is busy or napping, but the only response is an empty white chat box. I watch the Somali office cleaners at night, drifting across the windows in the building next door, pulling their carts of solutions and mops and cloths.
The sky is postcard dreamy now, the clouds less full of rain, the sun a little stronger every day. If I look farther out the window, between the towering, silvery buildings, I can see the endless terrain of the university and, beyond that, the snakelike wind of the river that leads to St. Paul, to Seed House and being hungry and dirty and hurt and used up, again, because I have nowhere else to go.
—
Sasha is making popcorn. Vinnie has brought in tiny canisters of powdered flavoring: butter, cayenne, Parmesan. He cooked a pan of brownies at home and Francie is helping frost them. The room phone rings. I’m blazing through the channels, one by one, until I hear my name. Vinnie wiggles the phone at me.
I listen to the breathing on the other end before I tentatively say hello.
“Charlie, you didn’t put me on the list!” Mikey.
I almost drop the phone. I grip the receiver in both hands to keep it from shaking.
“I told you I was coming! You were supposed to put me on a visitors’ list or something. I’m only here for one more day. I’m here for the show later tonight and then we go in the morning.”
“I did put you on the list!” My mind races frantically. Did Casper forget? Or did they just take him off since I’m going to be leaving? “Where are you? I need you. They—”
“Hang up, Charlie. Is there a window? I’m in the parking lot out front!”
I hang up and run to the window and press my face to the glass. A shock of orange catches my eye. He’s standing in the parking lot, waving an orange traffic cone in the air. When he sees me, he lets the cone fall.
Mikey looks the same somehow. He looks open and worried. And safe.
There’s a light rain, droplets glistening on his dreadlocks. He looks bulkier, though he’s still small. He holds out his hands, as if to say, What happened?
The glass is cold on my forehead. Vinnie is playing Go Fish with Sasha and Francie in the corner. Blue is on the couch, humming to herself.
My face is swimming with tears as I watch him in the falling rain, his mouth open, his cheeks red.
Vinnie says pointedly, “Charlie.” Blue stirs on the couch. She joins me at the window.
“A boy.” Blue’s breath makes a foggy circle on the glass. “A real live boy.”
Sasha and Francie throw down their cards.
The first time Ellis brought me back to her house in the fall of ninth grade, after we’d known each for about a week, she didn’t blink an eye to find an older boy already there, in the basement, reading comics with one hand and stuffing the other in a bag of salty pretzels. There were anarchy symbols Magic Markered on his sneakers. He looked up at Ellis, his mouth full of pretzels, and smiled. “Your mom let me in. Who’s this?”
He was wearing a Black Flag T-shirt. Before I could stop myself, I said, “I’m about to have a nervous breakdown.”
He put the comic book down. “My head really hurts,” he answered. He waited, his eyes gleaming.
“If I don’t find a way out of here!” I yelled, startling Ellis at the bar. She glared at me.
The boy laughed and yelled back, “I’m gonna go berserk!”
We sang the rest of the song while Ellis rifled through her parents’ mini-fridge. She was a little miffed, you could tell. She didn’t like that sort of music. She liked goth and mopey stuff, like Bauhaus and Velvet Underground. Nobody else at our school could recite the lyrics to “Nervous Breakdown,” I was sure of that.
But she shouldn’t have worried. Mikey always loved her more.
“Oh,” Sasha and Francie say in unison as they gather at the window.
I push up the sleeves of my sweater and press my arms to the window. Can he see my scars, all the way down there?
Mikey covers his face with his hands. I remember that gesture. He used to do that, a lot, when Ellis and I did things that overwhelmed him. “You guys,” he would say tiredly, “stop, already.”
Vinnie stands next to Blue and groans deeply. “Shit.”
“Girls,” he grunts. “Goddamn girls and boys.” He raps on the glass roughly, making Sasha jump back.
“Go!” He shouts to Mikey through the glass. To himself, he mutters, “Don’t make me call anyone, son.”
He turns to me. “You! Put down your damn arms.”
“It’s like that movie!” Francie exclaims. I’m waiting for Mikey to take his hands away from his face. His T-shirt is soaked from the rain.
Sasha starts to cry. “No one’s ever come to see me,” she wails. Vinnie mutters “Shit” again as he punches the buttons of his pager. Blue’s fingers are on my shoulder.
“Shut the fuck up.” Francie is getting agitated. “Nobody ever comes to freaking see me, either.” She picks at her chin with her fingernails, drawing tiny specks of blood.
Blue says, quietly, “Look.”
Mikey has opened his messenger bag and is furiously scrawling with marker back and forth on a notebook pressed against his knees. He holds it up. I squint through the glass, through the rain.
DON’T.
He drops the paper. It flutters and flattens on the wet ground, settling near his sneaker. He rips another page from the notebook.
YOU.
Nurse Vinnie raps his pager against the window as Sasha’s wailing grows.
Francie tells her, “Shut up.” Gives her a pinch that o
nly increases the wailing.
“I have a situation here.” Vinnie is at the phone.
Mikey struggles with the next piece of paper; it’s stuck in the notebook’s rings. Two hospital orderlies amble across the parking lot. They shout to Mikey; his head shoots up at the same time the paper rips free and is caught in a pocket of wind. Running after it, he slips in a puddle and crashes down. Blue sucks in her breath. We look at each other. Her eyes are glittering.
“Outstanding,” she whispers. “Absolutely outstanding.” She twines her fingers through mine against the glass.
Blue says, “That’s utter devotion, Silent Sue. You know that, don’t you?”
The men, college boys, really, weekend workers with well-sculpted arms and clipped hair, slip their hands under Mikey’s armpits and haul him up. He struggles with them, the soles of his sneakers slipping in the puddle. He’s crying messy, ashamed boy tears. They set him down, faces changing from annoyance to curiosity. It’s odd to see him, smallish with his crazy dreads and thrift store clothes, next to the two orderlies fairly bursting from their blinding white uniforms. They’re all almost the same age; they’re all light-years apart.
“You pieces of shit!” Nurse Vinnie yells. “You fucking pieces of shit. Don’t you do it, don’t you let him goddamn do it!”
The orderlies shrug at Vinnie, furious behind our fourth-floor window.
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