Black Iris

by Leah Raeder

  “Do it,” I yelled over my shoulder. “You’re a fucking cancer.”

  “I’ve tried,” she called back. “Oh, how I’ve tried.”

  Dad put me to bed. He talked for a long time but I didn’t hear a word. I only heard her, over and over, filling the hollow channels of my heart with her mother’s-milk venom.

  She was right about one thing.

  I was her daughter.

  In every hateful, destructive, murderous way.

  ———

  It stood at the foot of the bed so still and so long I was certain it wasn’t real. Nothing watched you like that but the demons in your head.

  Then it sighed and said, “Delaney June.”

  I was too tired to tell her to leave. I’d cried myself raw. All I could muster was a sluggish roll to one side, blinking crystals from my eyelashes like a mermaid sloughing away sea salt. Mom moved soundlessly but I tracked her smell, rosewater sweat, cabernet breath. She sat and the bed bowed toward her. My body tensed.

  “When you were a little girl,” she said, “you were fascinated by me.”

  Incredibly, she began reminiscing. Told me how I’d watch her paint on makeup like liquid magic. How I’d stare when she spoke, imitate her expressions. How I’d follow and watch, unnervingly quiet, a silent doll with blue glass eyes.

  “You were so serious. Always observing, absorbing. Sometimes I hardly saw you as a child. You were my little protégée.” Her voice floated to the ceiling. “I never wanted children. You were a concession for Ben. Ben was good to me, good for me, and he wanted this, the full house, the sitcom fantasy. Two-point-three children, two-point-three-car garage. Two-point-three orgasms a month. He kept me from hurling myself off the ledge, so I gave him what he wanted. What harm could there be in more anchors to this world?”

  I listened. Deep down I’d known all this but she’d never confessed it so baldly.

  “I never wanted you until I had you.” She looked at me now, her breath ruffling my hair. “And then I couldn’t imagine my life without you. You’re the dark thing that was in me. I set you free.”

  “No mother on earth talks like this.”

  “I’m no mother. I’m a creator.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, but it sounded apologetic.

  “What dark thing?”

  She touched my head. “There are two parts of me. The night and the day. One part went to you, one to your brother.”

  “You think I’m the bad part of you?”

  Her hand twisted in my hair, painful. “Darkness isn’t bad. It’s only darkness.” Those fingers relaxed. “All it means is you don’t see the world as they do. You see what’s really there. They see what they wish was there.”

  I didn’t speak. I was a little afraid of hearing more.

  Her hand ran down my face, fell. “It unsettles me to see so much of myself in you.”

  “What do you want, Mom?”

  “To release you.”

  A shiver scuttled over my shoulders. “From what?”

  But she didn’t respond. She gazed across my room, lost in herself.

  I didn’t buy it. She’d accused me of doing all this for attention. Fuck her.

  “You can’t treat me the way you do,” I said, bolstered by the shadows. “It’s emotional abuse.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sick of being your punching bag.”

  She looked at me.

  “I’m sick of your mood swings. Sick of never knowing if you’ll be sweet or a total bitch. I’m sick of walking on eggshells all the time. And I’m sick of the way you treat Dad. He deserves better. The only one you actually love is Donnie, and you’re warping him.”

  “I’ll stop drinking.”

  “It’s not the drinking. Being bipolar isn’t a license to be a bitch, Mom. You said you could handle it without meds, but you were wrong. And we’re all paying the price.”

  She looked away. Moonlight scalloped over her throat. “I can’t take medication.”

  “Why?”

  “It makes me feel dead inside.”

  This was like some biblical moment when the scales fell from my eyes. I stopped seeing the Gorgon and saw a human being in pain.

  “How?”

  “Everything is the same. No more highs or lows. I’m inside a glass box with the air pumped out. I can see, but can’t taste or smell. Can’t get enraged or aroused. Can’t hear myself scream.” She leaned closer but her voice sounded farther away. “It’s awful, Delaney. I start thinking, What if I’m already dead? Isn’t that what being dead is, the inability to feel? What if I stepped in front of a train? Would there be any difference?”

  “Mom,” I said, getting freaked-out.

  “I need the highs and the lows. It’s who I am. I need them both, but they’re killing me. There’s no way for me to be at peace.”

  “You’re scaring me, Mom.”

  “It scares me, too,” she whispered.

  I was clenching her hand. Since when? “They can change your meds. You don’t have to take lithium. You can take something else.”

  She stared at my hand on hers as if she couldn’t comprehend it.

  “Please. Say you’ll try something else.”

  “I’ve tried so many ways to be normal. I just want to be myself for a little while.”

  Something tiny and sharp cracked in my chest. We are the same, I thought. I could have said those words.

  “You should go to bed.” I pulled away. “Talk to Dad. Tell him all of this.”

  “There’s no one to tell. No one understands. Only you.”

  For the first time she had given me control of something, and it was her life.

  “Go to bed,” I said, baffled by possibilities.

  And she did.

  ———

  I paced up and down the street outside the house, shadow to lamplight to shadow again. Twice already I’d let my finger float over the doorbell. This time I pressed. No electrocution. That’d be letting me off too easy.

  Warm gingery light glowed from the inset window. A ponytail bobbed in silhouette. The door opened, and a girl I didn’t recognize—pretty and put-together—said, “Yes?”

  “Is Kelsey here?”

  The girl blinked. Then she turned and said, “Dad.”

  That’s when I should have left.

  Idiot me waited on the doorstep until Mr. Klein eclipsed the light with his Hummer-wide physique and crew cut and faint odor of beer and onion rings.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m Delaney. I’m Kelsey’s friend.”

  “I know who you are.”

  Run, my mind said. My mouth said, “Can I talk to her?”

  Mr. Klein glanced into the house. Then he stepped onto the porch, pulling the door closed.

  Neither of us spoke. My neck ached from craning to look up at him.

  Finally I said, “I want to apologize.”

  “Apologize.”

  “Yeah. I—” God, what did he know? “I embarrassed her at school. I feel bad.”

  “Embarrassed.”

  This echoing shit creeped me out. “I understand if she doesn’t want to talk, but I want to tell her I’m sorry for—”

  Mr. Klein advanced until he nearly touched me. I retreated to the railing.

  “You want to tell her you’re sorry,” he said in that frighteningly calm voice. “For what you did to her. To her body.”

  “No.” I edged toward the stairs. “This was a mistake. I’ll just—”

  A massive arm seized the railing, cutting me off. Instinctively I lunged the opposite way and the other arm came down, bracketing me. I looked up at that slab stone face.

  His voice remained calm.

  “If you ever touch my daughter again, I will beat the living dayl
ights out of you. I don’t care what you are, girl, boy, alien. You stay away from her, you sick freak.”

  I stared at the miniature gold cross gleaming against his throat.

  “She’s a good girl. Not like you.”

  In all my life I had never felt this small. Maybe small enough to get away if I ducked under his arm.

  “She’s my little girl.” Beer fumes bathed my face. He was actually teary-eyed. “My goddamn little girl. You keep your faggot hands off her.”

  I raised my eyes.

  The wolf raised its head.

  My breath was thick as smoke in the cold. I exhaled into his face. When the pall cleared I saw the muscle tremor in his jaw, his forearms. Smelled the acrid yellow fear coming off him. Fear of this tiny trembling person who could ruin something he loved. So afraid of what I could do with soft words and small hands that it took every bit of testosterone and menace in him to fight back.

  The wolf did not cower from the sheep.

  “There’s something you should know,” I said.

  I thought of all the things he wanted to hear. Nothing happened. We just kissed. She felt guilty and guilt blows sin out of proportion. She can still go to heaven with the other good girls.

  I told him the truth.

  “She wanted it,” I said. “She begged me to make her come.”

  Somewhere in the night a bell tolled. Oddly, I was on the ground, my cheek pressed to something icy and rough. Pine plank. The porch.

  Mr. Klein knelt beside me, frowning. “You all right?”

  My mouth tasted like melted copper. It took a while to process that he’d hit me.

  In my head was a haze of confusion and pain and a poem. One of my favorites, “Invictus.”

  In the fell clutch of circumstance

  I have not winced nor cried aloud . . .

  His lips moved but I only heard bleating. Everything was black-and-white save the red stain on the wood and my hands. I touched it with wonder. My blood.

  Under the bludgeonings of chance

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.

  I stood up and walked home, dizzy, aching, exultant.

  Alive.

  ———

  Monday morning, first day of my suspension, I woke late to an empty house.

  I showered, dressed. White pants, white hoodie. White beanie over wet hair. My lip was still puffy but I didn’t put makeup on. I wanted everything to show. Every glorious spot of color. Especially the reds.

  I dumped out my book bag and took it into my parents’ bedroom.

  Mom had driven her car that morning. Didn’t matter.

  Before I left I eyeballed myself in the foyer mirror. Aside from the dark petal of hair slipping over an ear I was pale as death. Ghost flower with see-through skin, my veins blue roots. A black iris blooming in snow.

  I didn’t smoke on the walk to school but did when I got there. Once more for old times’ sake. A dozen drags before fire reaches your fingers, the closure of that final crush against pavement, the cherry bursting into a hundred sparks.

  I entered through the backstage theater door that was always propped open. Thanks, smokers. No metal detector.

  Precisely six minutes until homeroom ended.

  Nearest girls’ bathroom. A cheerleader eyed me in the mirror. I swung my bag onto the sink with a heavy clank.

  She capped her lip gloss and hurried out.

  I didn’t bother barricading the door. Didn’t matter.

  Dad never wanted a gun. It was Mom’s doing. She couldn’t get it in her name because of her mental health history, so she convinced him: recent burglaries in the area, home invasions, what about the children. Dad caved but kept it in a safe. He gave me and Donnie the combination. Mom raged that she’d never kill herself but he had another fear: that she’d turn it on one of us.

  Funny, how he’d always worried about the wrong person.

  I walked down the hall two minutes before the bell, bag on hip, hand inside. Head clear. Just a touch of oxy to stop the shaking. I was surefooted as if I walked on four legs, not two. I passed classrooms where dull-eyed sheep baaed in their pens. When I walked into room 211 Luke would be standing up, torso exposed. Bells and locker slams would drown out the sounds.

  Zoeller was right. Letting go was control.

  Thirty seconds. Fifteen steps.

  I flicked off the safety and drew my hand from the bag.

  Something heavy and python-strong clamped around my chest. At first I thought it was a panic attack.

  Then it dragged backward, pinning my arms, and a voice in my ear that sounded uncannily like Zoeller said, “Put it in the bag. Quick, before the bell.”

  I aimed at his foot.

  “Don’t do it, Laney. You’re better than this.”

  “Give me one good reason not to.”

  His massive hand covered mine on the .45. “Because I’d miss you.”

  The bell rang.

  Zoeller’s arm uncoiled. His hand lingered a moment, released.

  I stood there holding a gun as kids spilled from doorways.

  This was it. Let go or keep holding on. Give in to the hate or swallow it for one more day.

  The world was full of people like Luke and Mr. Klein. I could take out one or two and billions more would line up to spit, mock, hurt me. Humiliate me. Hate me. Because I had the audacity to exist.

  It was full of girls like Kelsey, too. Girls who’d toy with my heart. Break it. And I’d let them.

  What was the point of it all? Why not kill one asshole and then myself? Why stick around for a lifetime of this shit?

  Because of my brother.

  And because of the psychotic boy behind me who seemed to almost care.

  Maybe all you need to pull you back from the ledge is to know someone would miss you if you fell.

  I put the gun in the bag. My heart beat like Plath’s heart: I am, I am, I am.

  Zoeller’s hands were on me again.

  “One foot. Then the other. There you go.”

  He walked me out into the sweetest sunlight that had ever touched my face.

  NOVEMBER, LAST YEAR

  It’s easier to tell truths in darkness. We let the candle die, let the apartment fill with a sea of shadows. Blythe and Armin sat on either side of me. I lay against his chest, one leg in her lap. Briefs, bras, panties, skin. Their hands were gentle.

  “Would you have done it if he hadn’t stopped you?” Armin said.

  “Yes.”

  Neither of them recoiled. Armin took a deep breath and my body rose and fell against his chest.

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” he said finally.

  There was a silence where I was supposed to say Me too.

  “You can tell us anything. We’ll never judge you.”

  It sounded like he had something specific in mind for me to tell. I gazed over my shoulder at Blythe, streetlight falling through leaves in urban camo patterns on her skin. The only tat I could make out was the new one: a girl’s red-nailed hand clawing across her collarbone. Below the wrist the skin became black fur that was actually, if you looked closely, iris petals.

  She called that one Little Wolf.

  Our truth or dare game had become my life story. I’d been telling them about senior year, ramping up to the grand finale of Mom’s death, but I danced around certain things because, as you’ve already guessed, I’m an Unreliable Narrator.

  Armin sensed my reticence.

  “Laney, I found something on my laptop I’ve been meaning to ask you about.”

  I said nothing. In my mind I twisted the air into a rope and strung it through my fingers like a cat’s cradle.

  “There are searches in my browser history I didn’t make. ‘PTSD’ and ‘suicide.’ ” His next words were thin. “ ‘Sexual assault symptoms.’ ‘Ra
pe survivor.’ ”

  “So ask,” I said.

  Shadows shifted over the wall, Rorschach monsters.

  “Was it you?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He touched my face. Pulled me in delicately, fragile as a paper doll. I let him hold me. Blythe’s fingernails dug at my thigh and I tensed the leg, making it hurt more.

  “Poor thing,” she said in a low voice.

  I buried my face in Armin’s neck and breathed in balsam and winter.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I should have known. The signs were all there.”

  Blythe’s fingers carved into the gracilis, the slim ribbon of muscle on my innermost thigh. She’d taught me their names, traced each one with the scalpel of a nail so I’d remember. Anatomy is poetry, she’d said. Then she showed me.

  “You don’t have to talk about this now,” Armin said.

  “I’m not.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “I thought I didn’t have to talk about it.”

  An incision of pain cut across his face. I watched him struggle with the need to know more versus respect for my boundaries versus clinical professionalism versus love.

  Blythe had no such inhibitions. “Brandt Zoeller,” she said, curling the name on her tongue and holding it like a razor blade. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

  Adrenaline jabbed my heart, a burst of intense aliveness. When she got wild it made me wild, too.

  Armin looked fretful.

  “If you have any empathy you’ll agree,” Blythe said.

  He said nothing.

  “Zoeller deserves it,” she said.

  Still nothing.

  “Christ, this isn’t the time for Hippocratic bullshit. Do you love her or not?”

  The big arm around my shoulders flexed. “Of course I do.” Then he touched my cheek, gazed into my eyes. “You know that, right? I love you, Laney.”

  In a typical college romance novel, this was the moment I would’ve been waiting for. The validation of all my shame and suffering at the hands of other men: a beautiful boy loved me. What had been done to my body didn’t ruin me for Mr. Right. Zippity-fucking-doo-dah.

  I looked back into those sweet brown eyes and said, “I love you, too.”