I Can Hear the Mourning Dove

by James Bennett

  Mother nods her head and bites her lip. “It might be easier for her than trying to start in a new school when she’s already behind.”

  “I think so. Grace has so much hospital time in the last year that she’s missed enough school to be out of sequence. If she can see herself getting better and succeeding in the real world, that’s worth more than the hospital setting can provide.”

  Mother still seems uncomfortable. Maybe Dr. Rowe intimidates her, the way my father always did. “It’s confusing,” she tells Dr. Rowe. “I want to do what’s best for Grace, but I never seem to know what best is.”

  “No one does for sure,” says Dr. Rowe. “I’m giving you my best recommendation, but that’s all it is.”

  Mother nods and Dr. Rowe goes on. “But just to give ourselves the benefit of both worlds, let’s set up the best possible support system. We have an adolescent group that meets Monday and Wednesday evenings in the hospital annex. I’d like for Grace to be a member of that group, if you’re both agreeable.”

  “That sounds good. What do you think, Grace?”

  “It’s okay.” It’s just fine with me if they go on talking and leave me out of it.

  Dr. Rowe can tell. She speaks to me sharply. “Don’t stonewall us, Grace. We’ve only got about five minutes left, and this is important.”

  “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “You must take your medicine every day, and on time. I want to see you in a week so we can monitor the medication again.”

  There is static in her voice, and I still have the knot in my stomach. “I’m listening,” I mumble.

  “The medicine will help, your mother will help, the hospital will help, and I will help. Even so, most of the help will come from you; you can be in control.”

  She means what she says, but it comes through her static.

  She says to my mother, “We’ll get Grace set up in the group and we’ll call you for follow-up. You’ll be hearing from us in a day or two.”

  We all shake hands and leave. It’s hot in the parking lot with a blinding sun. There is haze. I have my suitcase in one hand and my overnight case in the other hand and I fix my gaze on my toes.

  In the car, it’s baking like an oven and the seat is hot as fire. I sit next to the door and hug my knees.

  My secret, private nickname for the man in the next apartment is Mr. Stereo. Of course I would never call him that to his face or even speak to him. He is a huge man with powerful arms who could snap your neck like a twig.

  He has many friends in his apartment late at night and they play the loud stereo, sometimes till two or three in the morning. It’s mostly the bass that comes booming through the walls, as if someone were pounding on the walls with a muffled sledge hammer. It terrifies me. In the daytime, he sits out on his patio with his friend, where the two of them drink beer and play the loud stereo. They throw their cans on the ground. One of the speakers is next to them on the patio and the other is inside the apartment, but they leave their back door open. They are only six feet from our back door; a strip of gravel three feet wide separates his patio from ours, but there is no fence. It would help if we could close our windows but we don’t have enough money to run the air-conditioning.

  My mother has complained to the landlord and she has even complained once or twice to Mr. Stereo right to his face. He ignores her, but her courage astonishes me.

  I could never find the words to describe how repulsive this row of complexes is. My father could, but he is dead. He would hate this place.

  Suddenly, the sky says, Try. Try and find the words.

  I have made a niche for myself on the second-floor balcony, just outside my bedroom. I sit on a wrought-iron chair in the corner, up against the bricks, in the shadow of the eave. I drape blankets and beach towels over the railing. I am safe and out of view, but there are slits for me to look through.

  The sky comes on little cat feet. Try. You are not alone. The words will come to you. The sky is on fast-forward; the clouds are blown around, faster and faster, like the satellite pictures on the 10:30 news.

  The sky whispers in my father’s voice: Try.

  But why?

  Try. It’s important. The voice urges me on.

  I know the reason—the essence of the Surly People has to be identified and isolated. But how do I know this? Whence cometh this information? I have my diary and I will try to write it. It is my hand holding the pencil and moving it across the tablet, but who moves the hand? Who tells it what to write?

  8/28

  Dear Diary:

  14th Street is a dead-end street, three blocks long. On our side of the street are twelve identical, plain, rectangular brick apartment buildings. There are four buildings per block. The buildings do not face the street; they face each other, across blacktop parking lots. Mother and I are in the apartment closest to the street, in the sixth building. We are one and a half blocks from MacArthur Street, where 14th Street begins.

  I read what my hand has written, and it is nothing but dull information. It tells nothing of the noise or the filth or the trash or the sordidness or the ugliness or the way the Surly People trample on life.

  I start to cry. I hate it when I cry all the time, but does the sky think that mere facts will somehow come to grips with the essence of Surly People, the way that psychiatrists think a long enough list of symptoms will cure a mental illness?

  There’s no answer from the sky. In fact, the sky is all gone now; no motion and no whispering. Maybe the whispering is just my father’s voice in my own head; maybe that’s all it ever is and there’s no reason to be scared.

  My mother wants to know why I’m crying.

  I tell her I don’t know. I want her to love me, but I’m not worth it. I want to be left alone.

  “We ought to be going to the high school,” she says.

  “I’d rather stay home. Can’t you take care of it?”

  “I can’t register for you, you have to be there. You’ve been flat out for two or three days. You need to snap out of it.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Come on, get cleaned up a little bit. I’ll be downstairs.”

  I wash my face a few times to get the red out, and pull the comb lazily through my clumpy hair. There is a crack in our medicine chest mirror, running almost straight from the upper left hand corner to the lower right.

  In the kitchen, Mother wants me to eat something.

  “Please, I’m not hungry.”

  “Dr. Rowe says you’re less than a hundred ten pounds now.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother, I may be crazy wild, but I’m not anorexic.”

  “That’s not funny. I want you to have a little something. The least you could do is drink some orange juice.”

  I drink half a glass of orange juice and there is a sweet, nauseating lump in my stomach. I glance through the kitchen window; there are beer cans littered around Mr. Stereo’s patio, but he is not outside yet. It must be too early in the morning for him. He never seems to go to work, where does he get his money for the beer and the stereo? Could it be that Surly People are sustained by some energy force all their own, and they don’t need money?

  We are in the car and on our way out of the parking lot. There is a narrow strip of grass between the end of each apartment building and the curb. I suppose they’re called lawns but they are pitiful. At our house, when my dad was alive, we had a huge lawn and acres of fields and woods to walk in. The dairy farm was nearby and I loved the sounds and smells of the cattle.

  The buildings here are probably no more than five years old. They only look this way because of neglect. This is a young slum. In Dickens stories, there are old slums. At least an old slum has character.

  We are at the stop sign at MacArthur. There is an IGA grocery store on the corner and a huge parking lot. The parking lot is a congregating place for greasers and Surly People.

  We cross MacArthur and it is six blocks on Roosevelt to the high school. The houses on Roosevelt are quite
nice.

  The high school is new and very big. There is a huge parking lot and lots of athletic fields. The halls are confusing to me, there is no tape here, but my mother helps me find the right office. We sit in the office of Miss Shapiro, who is a guidance counselor. Miss Shapiro is very young and she wears a great deal of bright red lipstick.

  I am still flat out. My mother does most of the talking, which she doesn’t like to do, but she probably figures we shouldn’t take up too much of Miss Shapiro’s time.

  I am repeating the tenth grade; that’s the first thing they talk about. This leads to a brief discussion of my mental history and my periods of hospitalization.

  “Really?” says Miss Shapiro. She folds her hands on her desk and turns to me. “What seems to be the problem, Grace?”

  What does she expect me to do with this question? She asks it the way she might ask someone for a sloppy joe recipe. I have had every test known to man, psychoanalysis, and a couple of ECT series. What kind of an answer does she expect from me?

  “Excuse me,” I say, “but there is static in your voice.”

  “What did you say?”

  I feel humiliated. “The static. Can you not hear it?”

  She looks very uncomfortable, and turns back to my mother. I have this sudden thought, that if I rolled my eyes or stuck out my tongue at her, Miss Shapiro would be scared to death. I almost giggle, but I don’t.

  Miss Shapiro asks my mother the same question.

  My mother says, “Grace has been a resident patient and she’s going to be receiving outpatient treatment. If you’d like to know more about it, maybe some other time.”

  “Of course.”

  “Could we please finish the registration now?”

  “Of course.” Miss Shapiro has forms on her desk. She asks questions and writes down the answers. I answer some of the questions about medicine, but Mother answers most of the others.

  “And how about Grace’s father?” asks Miss Shapiro. Her pen is poised.

  “Deceased,” says my mother.

  Miss Shapiro says, “Diseased? He is diseased?”

  “Not diseased,” says my mother. “Deceased. He’s dead.”

  My giggling is starting, and I can’t control it. I am flushed all over. It’s the tension, but I hate it when I get this way. “Mother, he’s deceased because he was diseased.” I’m out of control now.

  My mother holds my hand. “Try a few deep breaths, Grace.”

  I can’t even catch my breath. I’m laughing out of control, trying to bury my face. Miss Shapiro is staring at me with round eyes. I can’t stop myself and there are tears rolling down my cheeks.

  Wednesday is the first day of school. I feel better, I think maybe the medicine is helping me. Mother and I both leave the apartment at 7:30 A.M. I really wouldn’t have to leave till eight, but I want to get past the IGA parking lot before the Surly People start to gather.

  I am very scared at school, but I keep myself out of the flow. I follow the halls as best I can. I stay close to the walls. Every room is numbered, I’m sure I can learn to use the numbers. I try to get to each class early so I can sit in the back and not have to enter a room after it’s full of other students. Most of the time is taken up with busy work and red tape; there are textbook rentals and other forms to fill out.

  The cafeteria is full of people who know where to go and what to do. I look, and my ears pound; how would I ever find my way? Would there be anyone who would like me, or want to sit with me? I would get scrambled, then everyone would know. The panic is in me and the blood is pounding in my temples. Mr. Greene saves me: he says I can eat my lunch in homeroom because he is grading pretests. I sit in the back of the room and open the container of peach halves which my mother has packed for me. I nibble a few bits and drink some of the thick, sweet nectar.

  Right after lunch is biology. The teacher, Miss Braverman, seems very nice, but there is the smell of formaldehyde. I hope we won’t be cutting open some poor creatures.

  My lab partner is a girl named DeeDee. She is attractive and poised; she seems friendly. She’s probably a cheerleader and honor student. I ask her about dissection and she says, “I don’t think there’s any dissecting until second semester.” The end of her answer pops with static.

  Miss Braverman is talking about the science fair, but I don’t know what that means. Besides, her voice has so much static all of a sudden and I feel myself getting lightheaded. The formaldehyde smell. On the shelves I can see rows of frogs suspended in little jars of clear liquid.

  Oh God no, please not now, not here. I try deep breaths but it isn’t working; I don’t trust my legs to try and leave the room. A gleaming scalpel blade slicing into the pale, white stomach of a pitiful frog. If only I didn’t smell that smell.

  I must be slumping down; the girl named DeeDee asks, “Are you okay?” That’s the last thing I hear. The mist comes just before the darkness.

  When I come to, I’m on a cot in the office of the school nurse. I know lots of nurses, but not this one; she seems pleasant enough, even though she’s blurry in the mist.

  “I got scrambled,” I tell her. “Can you tell me the time, please?”

  “It’s almost three o’clock,” she says. “Are you feeling better?”

  “I guess so.” She has a folder open. I can see the counselor, Miss Shapiro, in the doorway. She’s blurry too, but I recognize her. I wonder if the two of them have been reviewing my psycho history.

  “I called your mother,” says the nurse. “She’s going to pick you up in a little while.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  By the time Mother comes, I feel spent. We drive most of the way home without speaking. When she parks the car behind our apartment she says, “Don’t get discouraged, we’ll just take it one day at a time. Tomorrow will be better.”

  After supper, in my room. On my desk is the metal sculpture which my father made. It is Beauty and the Beast, welded out of metal scraps such as hinges, nuts, bolts, and washers. It is about eighteen inches high. Beauty has a nice shiny finish of bronze spray paint, but not Beast. I somehow feel sorry for his plain old rust. It might be that my dad meant to spray paint the entire statue, but I’m not sure. I put the statue on my lap and hold my arms around it. The sharp edge of the Beast’s hinge cowl is cold against my cheek and there are tiny granules of rust which come loose and stick on my skin. It was wonderful the way my dad could take trash or scraps and turn them into something lovely. The Surly People are just the opposite, they take whatsoever is lovely and defile it.

  You need to get started on the letters.

  When the voice comes so suddenly, it scares me. I open the file box in front of me. There is an old photograph of my dad and Uncle Larry when they were remodeling the kitchen in the stone house. Their shirts are off and their arms are around each other’s shoulders. Uncle Larry was killed in action in Vietnam. He died before I was born, but I have his fatigue jacket and I wear it nearly all the time. I look at the photograph and my dad is dead too. My eyes fill up with tears; I have to write the Pentagon.

  It’s important to get started.

  I am in control of my breathing. I wonder if Miss Braverman likes art; I wonder if I could ever be her friend. It’s an absurd thought, really; why would a teacher want one of her students for a friend? Especially me. But I can tell she’s very strong; it would be comforting to have a strong friend.

  Don’t let yourself get distracted. You have to get the letters written.

  The voice scares me and energizes me. I write to Nieman-Marcus. I tell them never to buy or sell furs. I tell them that every fur represents real suffering. I send them a brochure on the cruelty of speciesism, printed by the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals. The second letter I write is to Congressman Stonecipher. I tell him about cruelty to laboratory animals and urge him to fight for animal rights. I send him a brochure too.

  With no warning, the stereo starts.

  My breath catches in my throat and I
freeze. My clock says it’s half past midnight. Oh no, I have to write the other letter.

  Just as long as I don’t panic. I start the letter, Dear Pentagon, but I don’t know the name of a general. There should be a general’s name, it can’t be just Dear Pentagon.

  The bass is booming through the walls. If the walls should crack, then what? The stereo is louder and louder. I can’t let myself get scrambled, not again in the same day.

  I wrap a pillow around my head to cover my ears. Dear Pentagon, I want to make certain my Uncle Larry’s name is on the Vietnam Memorial. If someone could please check. There are so many names, one person could be overlooked.

  The bass is louder and louder. My room is starting to shake. His name was Braun. You could look under the Bs. If only someone could please check.

  “Mother! Can’t you do something?”

  I crawl onto my bed and hold the pillow tight around my head. I squeeze myself into a ball. “Mother!”

  My mother comes and sits beside me.

  “Can you hear it?”

  “Of course I can hear it. I’ve already called the landlord.” She is getting misty, with static in her voice. I can’t get scrambled again in the same day, that didn’t even happen in the hospital.

  “Mother, I can’t hear.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” she says.

  I am shaking and shivering in my fetal ball. She wipes my forehead and pushes the strands of damp hair out of my face. Am I going to live my whole life like this? It’s a desperate thought, no life at all is better than living like this. But I’m scared of dying too.

  Sometime, I don’t know when, the stereo goes off.

  On Thursday and Friday it goes better, but I really hate P.E. We have to change into blue nylon Speedo swimsuits in the locker room. I don’t like being naked in the presence of these people I don’t even know. I was naked when I cut myself. I’m vulnerable enough with my clothes on. I never wear a bra. My breasts are small and pointy, my underarms aren’t shaved, my skin is too white, my complexion is bad, and my hair is clumpy; why should these girls know what I wear or don’t wear, or where I shave or don’t shave? I choose a locker in the corner and change as quickly as I can, all hunched over.