by Tara Sivec
It’s time for me to stop pretending I’m a normal girl, and it’s time for me to stop waiting for my parents to be normal parents. They argue and keep secrets, lie to me, and look at me in fear. Nothing about our relationship is normal.
Something clicked inside of me out in that water. For the first time since I woke up confused and disoriented in my bed, I felt alive, and I didn’t feel crazy. Something I dreamed of and something I felt deep in my bones turned out to be true. I know how to swim, regardless of what my parents told me, or something I saw written in a photo album. I don’t know why I never told them or how I learned without their knowledge or why I let them continue to believe that something that happened to me when I was little still traumatized me today.
It doesn’t make sense that not only can I swim, I can swim exceptionally well, like I’ve been doing it every day of my life. I know I could have swum a hundred more laps and never run out of breath or felt like my arms and legs would turn to jelly. My muscles never grew tired and they never burned like I hadn’t used them that way before. My body knew exactly what to do once I forced the panic away. I didn’t even have to think about the motions: they came naturally—freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, diving underwater, and flipping around to push off in the opposite direction. It was exhilarating, and as I swam, I could suddenly picture other times I spent in the water. I couldn’t remember everything. I didn’t remember where I was or whom I was with; I just remembered being in the water and knowing it was the only place that gave me peace.
There are still so many unanswered questions, but I’m finished trying to make myself believe that my dreams and memories can’t possibly be real because they don’t make sense. I’m no longer scared of the images and memories that flash through my mind—I crave them. They are the missing pieces, and I know they will all click into place.
After I finish wiping the stairs and the floor, I climb into bed and wince when I flop onto my back. The excitement of realizing I can swim overshadowed the fact that I was pushed into the lake. I didn’t imagine the hard shove against my back, and the soreness I currently feel in the center of my spine as I gingerly turn onto my side proves it. Lying here in bed, I think it’s pretty telling that my first instinct wasn’t to go running to my parents; it was to hide the evidence. The truth of the matter is that I don’t trust them. They haven’t gone out of their way to figure out what happened to me in the woods, so why would they behave any differently if I told them someone tried to drown me? They would probably tell me I imagined it, remind me my head still isn’t quite right, and I should get some more rest and forget all about it.
I should probably be scared that someone was outside in the middle of the night watching me, snuck up behind me, and shoved me into the water. Maybe the culprit is still out there, waiting for another chance to get me alone.
Or maybe the person is right here, under the same roof with me. That thought should petrify me, but it doesn’t. Instead, it fills me with anger and determination. I’m not afraid…I’m pissed. Furious that someone thinks I’m weak and won’t fight back. Livid that I’m supposed to just accept the lies I’m told as the truth and not question what I feel. Irate that twice now, someone has tried to hurt me and I have no idea who or why.
I close my eyes and drift off to sleep, welcoming the dreams that show me who I really am, letting go of my refusal to believe them.
*
Running a brush through my high ponytail, I roll my eyes at my reflection in the mirror above my dresser. My mother has no idea I took a pair of scissors to one of my nightgowns and a pair of jeans. She has no idea I walked outside and spoke to Nolan without a bra under the flimsy top and my hair a wild mess around my shoulders. As much as I want to walk around here and flaunt it in my parents’ faces that I am not going to cower to them and that I refuse to just accept the things they tell me, I’m not going to just yet. That clothing, along with having my hair wild and free, is one of the few things in my life that feels right. As much as I feel better to dress and look like that and as much as it finally makes me feel like me, instead of my parents’ puppet, I’m not ready to share it with them unless they do something to prove to me without a shadow of a doubt that I can trust them. I don’t want them ruining the only thing that makes me feel normal instead of crazy, by taking one look at me and then feeding me more lies about good girls and proper ladies and all the other crap that makes me want to hate them. For now, I’ll put on their stupid dresses, and I’ll pull my hair back from my face to keep them off my back, even if looking like this makes me miserable.
My parents have their own secrets, and now so do I. Somewhere along the line, I learned how to swim and there has to be a reason why they don’t know. Until I have all of the answers, there’s no point in sharing anything with them.
A soft knock sounds at my door and I set my brush down before moving to my bed and taking a seat on the edge.
“Come in.”
The door opens and my mother steps in, staring down at the floor instead of at me.
“Dr. Beall is here for your check-up,” she tells me in a dull monotone voice. “He’ll be up soon; he’s chatting with your father right now.”
She doesn’t smile, doesn’t come near me for her usual pat on the head, and doesn’t flutter about my room, picking up things and putting them away. She also doesn’t fill the awkward silence, while we wait for Dr. Beall to make his way up the staircase, with useless, happy chatter about the weather and what her plans are for the day, or suggestions for things I could do to keep me busy. She’s been so over the top with her cheerfulness and doing whatever she can to pretend that what happened in this room the other day never occurred that I’ve gotten used to it, and it comes as a complete shock to see her like this. I don’t remember ever seeing her without makeup, but it’s obvious she isn’t wearing any now. I can see the dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, and the wrinkles and blemishes that are no longer hidden with her usual thick layer of pan-cake foundation.
For the first time since I can remember, my mother looks old and tired. She looks every bit of her forty years of age, possibly even older than that if I stare at her long enough.
“Is something wrong?” I ask, even though it’s glaringly obvious something is wrong with her.
“I’m fine, just feeling under the weather,” my mother answers, still not making eye contact.
My dreams last night were filled with pain and hurtful words, scathing looks, disappointment, and outright hatred with flashes of my parents’ faces aiming all of this unkindness right at me, their daughter. I can’t ignore that and I can’t just push aside what I feel deep down inside: that all of this is wrong. My life, my actions, my past…my entire being feels wrong and I know it all started the morning I woke up, disoriented and confused. A minor head injury with sporadic memory loss shouldn’t make me feel like a completely different person than who I’m supposed to be.
I realize as I stare at my mother that I’m not concerned about her well-being in the least. I’m not worried about her nor do I even care what’s going on with her. The only reason I asked if something was wrong is because the silence was getting on my nerves, and I had to say something. I know it’s mean and heartless that I don’t care about my own mother, but sitting here looking at her, I feel like something shifted inside of me last night and I didn’t even fully realize it until just now. Staring at this woman standing in my doorway, I feel nothing but hatred. It’s come and gone at different times over the last week and it’s always made me feel guilty and ashamed, but not now. I don’t even have the desire to try and push it away this time. Just like swimming, it feels right and like something I’ve always done. It feels natural to detest this woman and it makes me feel good. I welcome the anger and the hatred. I crave it, feed off of it, and I’m no longer scared of these feelings.
I barely hear her answer because my mind is occupied with other things. The overwhelming animosity I finally allow to break free and take over
, instead of trying to suppress it, makes me feel alive. It makes me want to take it and run with it, revel in it, punish the ones who have hurt me and make them pay. I’m filled with anger and hate; it lives inside of me and I love it. I have always loved it and I’ve never been ashamed, no matter who tried to make me think otherwise.
“I’m doing this for your own good. It will all be over soon.”
My hands clench into fists in my lap, and my fingernails dig painfully into my palms as I imagine what it would be like to punch my mother in the face: the feel of the bones in her nose snapping beneath my knuckles, bright red blood dripping down over her lips and off of her chin. I smile to myself, imagining the feel of that warm, wet liquid dripping down my hands.
I went into the water last night a confused girl who refused to believe the memories that completely differed from everything I’ve been told about myself. I came out of the water a fighter, letting go of the girl they want me to be because she’s dead. She doesn’t exist and I’m not sure if she ever did. That cool lake water cleansed me of all my doubt and insecurities. It baptized me anew, and I am never going back.
“You are bad. Bad, bad, bad.”
Dr. Beall’s footsteps pound up the stairs, and my mother leaves the room without a word.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I’m a very bad girl.”
Chapter 11
“The cut on your head seems to be healing very nicely. How are you sleeping at night? How are the headaches?” Dr. Beall asks as he presses his thumbs gently under my eye and pulls the skin down to look deeper into them.
“I’m sleeping just fine and the headaches are long gone,” I tell him with a cheerful smile as he drops his hands from my face and leans back from me.
“Good, very good, Ravenna. Your father tells me you’ve been acting a little strangely the last few days. Would you like to talk about it?”
The smile drops from my face and I narrow my eyes at the older man seated on the bed next to me. My father won’t speak to me about my behavior, but he’ll run his mouth to a virtual stranger.
“I’m missing large chunks of my memory—of course I’m acting strange,” I tell him in annoyance. “My father seems to think lying to me about everything is the solution to the problem, and I think otherwise.”
“If you’re still missing pieces of your memories, how do you know your father is lying to you?” he asks calmly, crossing his legs and clasping his hands around his knee.
“I might have forgotten a few things, but that doesn’t make me an idiot. The things I have remembered are the exact opposite of everything my parents are telling me.”
He cocks his head as he studies me, a lock of his white hair falling down over his forehead. “What are they telling you that you don’t believe is true?”
I should lie, tell him I’m imagining things so he’ll leave and stop studying me like I’m a bug under a microscope. I know as soon as he walks out of my room, he’ll tell my father everything we discussed. A few days ago that knowledge would have filled me with dread, but now I no longer care. Let them talk; let my father have another reason to look at me in fear. I’m finished hiding who I am.
“Did you know me before the accident, Dr. Beall?” I ask, pulling my legs under me on the bed and sitting up tall.
“Yes, I’ve seen you on a few occasions over the years. Little things here and there like the flu, a twisted ankle and other minor problems.”
I nod my head and continue. “How would you describe me when you saw me those times?”
His face scrunches up in confusion, but he doesn’t say anything about how strange my question is.
“I guess I would say you were a normal, happy young lady. As I said, I didn’t have to come out to the prison very often. You were a normal, healthy girl so there was no need for regular check-ups.”
There’s that word again, normal. It’s pathetic that it seems to be the common word used to describe me.
“And that seems to be the problem, Doctor. The things I’ve remembered, the memories that flash through my mind and wake me up in the middle of the night, tell me I was anything but normal. They show me that I probably wasn’t the good, perfect little daughter my parents like to keep reminding me of.”
Dr. Beall sighs and uncrosses his legs, pushing himself up from my bed to pace around my room.
“The mind is a tricky thing, Ravenna. It gets even more complicated when someone has suffered a head injury as you did. I know it’s frustrating, but you can’t always believe everything you see when your mind is still in the process of healing,” he explains. “Our minds can play tricks on us. Make us see things that aren’t really there or feel things we wouldn’t normally feel. It doesn’t mean your parents are lying to you about anything or that you suddenly woke up a completely different person.”
I bite my tongue to stop myself from screaming at him. I want to scramble off the bed and shove his old, slow-moving body right to the floor. I didn’t just wake up one morning a different person. I know with everything inside of me that I’ve always been this person. Why else would I feel so alive letting the anger consume me? A switch has been flipped and I no longer care about turning it off because I like feeling strong and in control of my life.
“The night of my accident, did my parents tell you what happened?”
He stops pacing and turns to face me. “Just the basics that I would need to assess the situation. Your father called my home around one in the morning, telling me you’d suffered an accident outside and you weren’t conscious. I got dressed and came right over. I checked your injuries, dressed the wound on your head and your mother assisted me in cleaning you up and putting you in dry clothes before we put you to bed. I was told you must have been sleepwalking and fell down out in the woods and your injuries matched that information. When I questioned you after you woke up, you couldn’t remember what happened, so there was no reason to think otherwise.”
It was pointless thinking this man could give me answers to my questions or fill in any blanks. He’s going along with whatever my parents told him and not bothering to think anything is strange about what happened. Why would he? Two seemingly loving parents who run a well-known business in town tell the good doctor their daughter was walking in her sleep and must have been clumsy. When the daughter wakes up and can’t confirm or deny their story, there’s no reason to argue it.
“Everything is going to be fine, Ravenna, you’ll see. Just rest your mind and you’ll be back to your old self in no time,” he tells me with a smile as he comes back to the bed, closes his black leather medical bag and moves to my door.
“I do believe I’m already back to my old self,” I mutter under my breath.
Dr. Beall stops with his hand on the door and looks back at me. “Did you say something, dear?”
I give him a fake smile and shake my head. He nods, pulling open my door and is just stepping out into the living room when another question pops into my mind. I jump up from my bed and jog to the doorway, stopping him at the top of the stairs.
“Dr. Beall, one last thing.”
He stops and turns, waiting for me to walk across the room to him.
“When I was little, around five, there was an accident here at the prison. I think it happened out at the lake and, according to my parents, ever since then I’ve refused to learn how to swim, and I’m terrified of the water,” I explain. “Do you remember anything about that? Did my parents call you out here to check on me?”
The doctor scrunches his nose and stares down at the floor while he thinks. After a few seconds, he shakes his head and looks back up at me.
“If I recall, you were around six years of age the first time I ever treated you. Now that I think about it, there used to be a full-time doctor on staff here at the prison. He not only attended to the inmates, but the warden and his family as well. I believe he was the one who delivered you and handled all of your medical care until I took over.”
“I can’t believe I forgot about this. It’s been so many years since it happened that I guess I pushed it out of my mind,” he says with a chuckle as he looks up the stairs at me. “It was such a strange thing…”
I move slowly down the stairs toward him, clutching the banister so I don’t tumble to the bottom. I’m lost in his words, eager for the rest of the story, even though something tells me I’ve heard it before. Something tells me I’ve lived it before.
“He worked here for many years, the doctor, and of course I’d heard of him before. He’d developed a host of new techniques dealing with patients with mental issues, especially those spending time in prison, and he was renowned for his work. He was consumed with dissecting the criminal mind, wanting to know how it ticked, what made them different from the rest of society and what caused them to do such unspeakable things,” Dr. Beall explains.
I hold my breath as I continue moving down the stairs, stopping when I’m on the step right above him.
“He thought he could trick a person’s brain into behaving differently. That through certain tests and continuous therapies, a robber, for instance, would no longer have the need or the desire to steal things from other people,” he explains.
“This hurts me more than it hurts you.”
“If you’d stop being bad, I wouldn’t have to do this to you.”
“Anyway,” Dr. Beall continues. “Right before I moved to town and started treating you, the doctor just up and disappeared. No one ever heard from him again. Not his family, not his friends and none of his colleagues. He just vanished and he took all of his medical files with him. Which is why I didn’t have much to go on when I first started treating you when you were six. There was no record of your birth or any information about past treatments and I just had to start from scratch.”