by Mark Tiro
“Okay—seven. What about that time we were in the grocery with mom, and you toppled a whole display of Jell-O pudding packages on top of me to see if you could bury me under it? That was absolutely vicious.”
“Why? Because the manager made you pick it up and not me because he thought you had done it on purpose? Anyway—I was such an innocent little girl. I couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with all those jello packages coming down on top of you.”
We both laughed.
“Well,” he started slowly, then gulped, “because of Tom. I’m worried about you because of what Tom did.”
That’s when I feel it. A sharp kick at the door.
It’s a cracked door to a darkened room. Not this room. But I feel the jolt viscerally. I close my eyes and begin to see the tiniest little bit of light, poking through the door’s cracks, streaming out around its edges….
What horrors lie behind this door? I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I’m not an investigator. I’m not a journalist. Whatever’s down there—it’s someone else’s problem to figure out. And I hate horror movies. Someone else can deal with it.
I refuse to look.
This is not my problem, and I won’t be getting close to that door anytime soon. Whatever happens, I will never open that door. I will never look inside.
The tunnel’s closing in around me now. I feel myself starting to go numb. That’s when I notice the paper and pen digging into my side. The darkness is closing in around me now. I’m losing energy, slowing down, falling.
With tremendous effort, I reach down and open up my list.
“What’s that?” Sean asks.
I don’t hear him.
I don’t hear anything.
The tunnel is swallowing me up. I’m slipping into nothingness, becoming catatonic…. Heavy, now. Fading, numb. I become dizzy as the darkness rises up to engulf me.
With my last bit of strength, I pull out the pad to where I’d been, pull the pen up to the paper and write a #9.
15
Fifteen
“You’re tapping out?”
“Tapping out?” I asked. I stood up and suddenly noticed I felt better. Much better, like when you can finally relax and breathe normally. As I got my bearings, I realized there was no stress closing in now. There were no worries at all, actually.
“Tapping out?” I repeated. “You mean like they do when I go watch Sean’s wrestling matches at school?”
“Yes. Like that.”
“Uh, no. I am not giving up. You should know I have more fight in me than that. I just needed to take a small breather, and now that I’m here, I feel better. So much better. Thank you.”
And I did.
The weight of all the pain, all the emotions were gone now. At least I wasn’t staggering under its burden anymore. I could see clearly now. Like a calming balm, I’ wasn’t half-afraid and out of my mind.
I stood up straight and took another deep breath to relax. Or whatever the equivalent was there. I got the sense that I was standing over to the side, just watching, observing the pain and emotions. But they were all outside me, piled into a heap somewhere else. And they definitely had nothing to do with me. I could still see them—but what did any of it have to do with me?
Just like watching a movie.
It might be a good movie, or a bad one—but either way, you never really forget that’s all it is. Just a movie.
“Okay, I give,” I said again. “So what if I am tapping out? What of it? And by the way—what just happened?”
There was something about this place, or at least, there was something calming about talking with him. It was like a cross between post-game analysis and reading a boring chapter in a history book, all rolled into one.
“Denial?” he asked.
“Yeah—I don’t think we finished with that. Why the Nile? And what was that whole Egyptian princess thing all about? A princess? Really? And with Steve as my brother-turned-prince. Iiiccckkk, Iicckkkk, Iiiccckkkk…. I would’ve taken Ariel or Belle. Even Elsa. Heck, I even would’ve taken that red-headed one who no one can remember her name. But, I mean—were you actually trying to give me hemophilia or something?”
“Well, technically, that’s a genetic disorder. I thought I’d explained this to you, no? It’s not really something you’d catch… more like something you’d pass on to your kids, when the prince you’re marrying happens to be your brother…”
“Eewwww. Just… eewwww.”
“But see, Maya—this is exactly the point I was making.”
“Genetic mutations in royalty by… inbreeding?”
“No, not that point, Maya. Not the ‘Nile.’ My point was denial. Which as you know isn’t just a river in Egypt anymore…”
Of course, he was laughing at me now. So of course, I ignored him.
“Stop it. Why did you bring up the Nile if you weren’t going to explain what the hell the point was of making the prince… my brother? Double yuk.”
“I didn’t bring up the Nile, Maya. You did. The point I brought up—and the same thing your brother Sean is trying to bring up with you, but he’s just too overwhelmed and scared by everything to do it—is that you’re in denial.”
“What’s wrong with you people? Why are you always talking in riddles?”
He didn’t say anything in answer to my ‘you people’ comment, which I figured was fair enough.
But he smiled gently, and that defused some of the emotions I was now starting to feel. I could think and see a lot more clearly when I had first popped in here and seen David, when all of my emotions were on the side. The flip side is that I felt really vulnerable without my anger to protect me. And now that I felt the wall of my emotions creeping back in, little by little, I was less… off-balance, less… out-of-sorts—more protected.
He grinned, then parroted back my words, in mock-earnestness, “‘You people’?”
“Sorry,” I said, feeling pretty sheepish. “I didn’t mean that.”
He just laughed, but this laugh was very gentle. It was just one more of those things around him that made me feel comfortable, safe—forgiven, almost. Not really forgiven, though—it was more like, I’d just made a mistake somehow, and in his laughter, it was swept away like the wind—as if I’d never made a mistake in the first place.
I felt a kind of tentative peace wash over me, and I decided to rest there a while before returning to the next chapter in whatever battle it was I was fighting all the time.
“Maya? It’s going to be okay, and this is a good start. You don’t have to be afraid. These are all just images now. Whatever you think seems to happen, please try to remember that none of this is actually happening now. These. Are. All. Just. Images.”
“Okay, but I’m not sure I understand.”
“And that’s okay, too. The important thing to remember is the dynamic. It’s what’s playing out in your mind, in every situation you think you find yourself in, with every thought you imagine, in the entire world you see.”
“Which is?”
“Which is that whatever you deny, you repress. Projection is its natural—inevitable—result. Even more than night following day, this is the one, immutable law of the mind. Whatever you deny, you project. And worse—because you’ve denied the cause by repressing it in your mind—you won’t realize that what you project is just that: a projection. What you’re seeing, what you believe is outside of you, is nothing more than an outside picture of what’s going on inside your mind.”
“A projection.”
“Yes, Maya. Yes. And the worst part? It’s that because you don’t realize it’s nothing more than that, you defend against what you believe is outside of you. You attack your own projections… because you don’t realize that’s all they are. And even worse—you believe your projections are attacking you.”
“So I’m the cause of all this? It’s all my fault?”
“Well, not exactly. You’re the cause of all the effects it has on you. Not to say
that any of the horrific things you see happening in the world—or to you, in your experience of the world—are okay, or are alright, in any way. In your world, there are things that are horrific, things that have terrible consequences. These things certainly are not okay. But the ultimate solution is not to fight injustice, or bad things, or evil—where you perceive it, in the world. The only solution that will actually work in the end is to go back to the source of the projection itself—the cause of the projection in your mind—and to undo it there, at its source.”
“I have to go back and remember what I’ve denied—what I’ve forgotten? That’s ridiculous. How am I going to remember what you’re telling me I’ve repressed and forgotten? Isn’t it unconscious? For that matter—isn’t that the definition of unconscious? How on earth can I remember something I’ve forgotten?” I stopped to think about that a moment. “No, not ridiculous. It’s impossible.”
“It is impossible, you’re right,” he said. “Because you’ve forgotten it. It’s unconscious now. But there is one way to undo the projection at its source—to undo all its terrible consequences.”
“Without having to do the impossible and see the invisible?”
“Yes. The one means left to you now to undo the projection is to forgive—to overlook—it for no other reason than because it is a projection. That is the one real power left to you in this world in which you feel you are at the mercy of everything outside of you. Overlooking, forgiving because it is not real—that’s your ultimate power. And it is enough. It is enough to undo all the painful effects of this terrible dream you believe you have fallen into. And it’s enough to bring you peace.”
He stopped a minute, and I stopped, too, trying to understand what he’d said. Before I could even think of a question to ask, he went on.
“Forgive the pain, the terrible things because, when measured against your reality, none of it is real—and none of it will be have any power over you anymore.”
“Can you just give me the short version, please? This is a lot here.”
“Forgive illusions because they’re illusions. That’s what undoes them. That is all.”
16
Sixteen
I must’ve been sleeping forever because when I woke up, I was in my room, sleeping under the covers. I was still fully dressed. I couldn’t remember when I’d gone to sleep. I’d probably been reading and crawled under the covers because I was cold, but when I felt around to try and find my iPad, I didn’t feel it anywhere.
For some reason, I had a feeling that I’d been crying. I felt around and patted my pillow to see how wet it was.
It was completely dry.
That’s weird. I could’ve sworn I’d been crying. And angry, too. I knew I was angry. But now—I was mostly just out of sorts, not angry. At least not about anything I could put my finger on. I did feel run over, though. Again.
Why does all this keep happening to me? Why me?
While I sat pondering this, one word kept intruding, coming to mind, refusing to let me be.
Forgive.
I did not like that word.
Not that I’d ever really given it much thought. But what thought I had given it—I didn’t like. The word was just one more thing I’d associated with my crazy older brother Tom. He’d go to one of his bible study retreats or whatever new thing he was always doing to try to be normal. Then he’d come home with that vacant look in his eyes, spewing words just like it at anyone within earshot.
One more thing also occurred to me. This magic list was not nearly as much fun as it should have been.
Actually, now that I think about it—it wasn’t any fun at all.
That night, I was doing homework while I was talking to Katie on my phone. She was from my class, and we’d been working on our science module together while I was watching TV and reading my iPad. The news had come on TV (how’d I let that happen? I guess whatever I’d had on had finished and rolled over to the news and I hadn’t even noticed).
It was the story about a mom and a dad who’d been arrested because they’d been living with their kids in a shack in the desert for the past however-many years. They were being dragged off in handcuffs while the kids were being carted off into DCFS foster homes. As the mom was being forced down into the back of the police car, the news camera caught her in tears, pleading, “Please don’t take them. We didn’t have any money. We gave them everything we had, we just didn’t have anything—”
Then the announcer came on and said how the parents were being held on one million dollars bail for felony child endangerment, and how the kids were safe now, at last, in three separate foster homes.
I had never been one of those kids who get all news-y or politic-y or whatever, but I got so mad when I saw this. Those poor parents, I thought. What an injustice.
They got their kids taken away just for being poor? That’s ridiculous.
It’s just not right, I thought. Good luck in foster care kids. Between the social workers and all the little gang members you’re going to meet being in the system, it’ll be a miracle if you don’t die there.
I was so angry at it that I think the intensity of my own feelings actually startled me. I couldn’t remember ever having felt so strongly about anything else like this before. Where’d this feeling come from? Usually, I tried to stick to myself, trying as best I could to focus on my own life—which was hard enough anyway…
After a while, I decided to turn the TV off. As I was digging around for the remote, I looked across my bed and noticed the pen and pad of paper sitting there.
Exactly where I’d left them.
Good.
I would use the list for good. Only for good.
That’s when I decided that, for the first time.
That was the right thing to do. Now I just have to judge what’s good and what’s bad, so I can use the list for good—only for good—and use it against bad people.
I thought back to the people I knew. I tried to separate out who were the good ones who I should help with the list, and who were the bad ones who should be punished. As a test, I decided to start with something small. I’d just start with the kids I knew in my class and go from there.
My mind drifted though, halfway through. I started daydreaming. I imagined myself finishing school, going to a great college… being a TV host. Wendy and Oprah don’t have anything on me, I thought. (Though, when I looked across the room at my open clothes drawer with three of my bras hanging over the side, I realized both of them did have at least one thing on me….)
I made a mental note to myself to try and think about if I’d rather have my TV show be more like Wendy’s or more like Oprah’s. My mind kept wandering, though, and over and over, it kept drifting back to Steve.
Steve had gotten accepted to the performing arts magnet school, and now I only saw him sometimes, and even then—only in the after-school test prep program we both did. Oh, and there were the community service hours we both volunteered for, so we could make our college applications look better. I’d always wanted to be more than just friends with him, but somehow, we were always moving in different directions. I never told him this because I always thought maybe if we would stay friends long enough, it would just happen.
But now he was at his school, learning to be a dancer and a singer, and he’d probably be off to New York, trying to make a name for himself on Broadway in a few years, and I’d still be here, trying to do more community service hours, and if I was lucky, get accepted to a community college.
I guess I’d fallen asleep again, and I must’ve been reading because I woke up to my iPad crashing down on top of my forehead. But I remembered everything, and it’s then that I realized I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
I pulled out my pad of paper, opening it up to where the last entry had ended.
It was a simple idea, I thought. Very clear. So clear that I was sure there was no way this could go wrong.
“Fight injustice.”
That was it. Ev
en now, I’m still not sure exactly why I wrote the words down. Maybe I was trying to make myself feel better. Maybe I was just trying to find some meaning in life. Or maybe I was just ready to join the fight.
Anyway, those were the words that day that I wrote under #10 on my list.
Then, of course, I felt that familiar pop, the change of pressure or whatever it was, in my ears.
And then… nothing.
17
Seventeen
Still nothing.
I closed my eyes, to brace myself for the now-familiar change. But when I opened them—still, nothing.
I stared quietly at the wall of my room. It was the same one I’d been staring at. Nothing different, nothing changed. The clock hadn’t moved, and there was still daylight streaming in through the window. My iPad was lying on the bed next to where it had whacked me on the head earlier, waking me up.
Jeeesh! Why on earth does nothing ever change in my life? I thought back over what had happened. That’s when I realized there were big gaps in what I could remember. There were things I was sure happened, but that I couldn’t even remember at all now. It was like I knew they’d both happened and hadn’t happened. I wasn’t sure if I was daydreaming and making up the memories, or if they were real.
All this dissonance in my brain was giving me a headache. Maybe I’m going crazy, I thought, and so I started thinking about the list instead.
It must’ve lost its power. This magic list—maybe it’s done. It’s magic, I told myself. The doubt in me quickly jumped in, though. But maybe it just isn’t anymore? Maybe the magic is gone. Maybe it’s just all… tapped out now?
Tapped out…. Hmmmm, I told myself, starting to rack my brain. Where had I heard those words before? I couldn’t remember. Sure, at Sean’s wrestling matches, but somewhere else, maybe?
I couldn’t remember.