The Source of All Things

by Tracy Ross

  As good as I looked on the outside, though, on the inside I was hurting. My home life was still tense and confusing. The worst part was that I couldn’t say anything about the way I was feeling. Since we’d come home, we were officially over the past. Mom made it clear that we wouldn’t talk, think, or cry about the events that had “turned all of us into monsters.”

  “It’s a new year,” she’d said over our first home-together dinner. “Everything’s going to be better.”

  But it wasn’t better; not for me. I worried about my dad when I went to bed. I closed the curtains and locked the deadbolt before I changed out of my street clothes. But if I became lost in a daydream and walked in my underwear from my bedroom to the bathroom, I’d get a guilty feeling, like I was intentionally trying to lead Dad on.

  I wanted to tell somebody—anybody—about the scary vibes that kept me awake, listening for footsteps at my door. But I didn’t have anything concrete to tell. Dad didn’t grope me, walk in on me while I was in the bathtub, or ask me to tickle his back, but I was experienced in sexual tension. I could feel it when I sat in the living room with my dad.

  Maybe I was expecting things my parents couldn’t demonstrate. Like the instinct to not make such a big deal about my appearance. I thought they should have known better than to talk about my face or my body. But my mom couldn’t get over how cute I looked since I’d dropped my baby weight while in Oregon, and she still asked my dad to do things like hook the eyelets of my prom dresses or squeeze a pimple that was bugging me in the middle of my back.

  As a sophomore in the mid-1980s, I had no way to express this to anyone, not even to Reed. It didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it anymore, anyway. In fact, I wasn’t even sure he still wanted to be my boyfriend. He flirted with other girls and sometimes said things that made me feel fat or stupid. I was hurt by his comment that when we had sex, my stomach rolled like a water bed, but I couldn’t accept being called stupid—especially since, after watching him struggle in his English composition class, I started writing his essays for him. His stunned teacher never understood how he went from Ds to A minuses in the course of two papers.

  For a little while, I went to a therapist, but I quit after a short time because he picked his nails while I talked to him and acted blasé and judgmental. Dad and I never attended joint therapy, so we never got to talk about our feelings for each other. I went to school and tried to feel normal, but I was reeling with self-hatred. With no outlet for my anger, I started drinking, smoking pot, and snorting cocaine.

  The beer and pot I got from Reed, but the cocaine I got from older kids during our declamation meets. Because I won so often, my declamation teacher let me party with the juniors and seniors. I drank with them, did cocaine with them, and sometimes even had sex with them. At meets, we’d out-orate other kids from other schools and then celebrate with beers in a senior’s hotel room. When we grew bored of playing quarters, though, we’d snort the fine white powder that always made me feel instantly lighter, more beautiful, and capable.

  The first time I tried LSD was at a party with Reed at Darren Bolster’s house. I was doing shots with my girlfriends, when he sat down beside me and showed me the small, white, perforated tab on the tip of his index finger.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The body and blood of acid.”

  He took my hand and led me into the bathroom, where I placed the piece of paper in the hollow spot under my tongue. I let it dissolve, swallowed hard, and waited for something to happen.

  Reed noticed the white paint bubbling on the bathroom walls first. I looked at my hand and saw a million pores, staring at me like eyeballs. We ignored the people pounding on the door, laughing, “Hurry up, or we’re going to piss on the floor!”

  “Go in the bushes!” Reed shouted back. It wasn’t even that funny, but we laughed until we were crying.

  A little while later, we went outside. The rain on the streets looked sequiny and bright. A half-dozen kids wandered with us, all staring out of unblinking, liquid-bottom pupils. I don’t know why it took me so long to notice the stars, probably because I spent half the night with my nose stuck in a tulip. They lined the yards like teacups full of weird inverted spiders. I sniffed them so hard and powerfully, I suctioned several seeds into my nostrils.

  After a while, we all started to come down. Reed took a bong hit to ease his reentry, while I sat in an armchair watching him smoke. I might have drifted into a jittery, uncomfortable sleep, but Reed grabbed my hand and led me into Darren’s mom’s bedroom.

  I didn’t want to, but I trailed behind him, reaching for but failing to grab on to his shirttail. Reed had told me a million times that if I didn’t start giving him more “sexual attention,” he’d find it from some other girl who liked to “do it” 24/7.

  On the other hand, Reed had stuck with me from “this close to prom queen” to girl with no respect for anyone or herself. Even though he could be rude and judgmental, it was important to me that he cared, that I could trust him.

  We lay on the bed, and he began rooting around for the damp spot on my panties. He whispered that acid made his body more—and less—sensitive at the same time, which also made it impossible for him to have an orgasm. I lay beneath him, watching his starchy black T-shirt gyrating above me. But courtesy of the acid, a memory was forming on my eyelids. It was an old family slideshow, filmed in Super 8. Chris and I were eight and four, and we were running around in circles on my Grandma Liz’s lawn. My dad stood in the driveway, watching us while sipping a Budweiser. Chris raced across the grass, and I chased after him, shouting.

  For a little while, I liked what I was seeing. It reminded me that we had once been happy, crazy little kids. But the longer I watched, the more the movie on my eyelids deviated from the actual movie my mom had stored in a cardboard box in our basement. I saw my dad put down his beer can and walk into the grass. I ran past him, screaming for him to chase me. Shiny, curly ponytails sprung from the sides of my head. They bounced as I ran, as my dad raced after me. He was on me almost instantly, but instead of snatching me up and hugging me, he stuck out a foot and tripped me. When I landed hard on the grass, he fell down on top of me.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw Reed and felt him sanding off the edges of my hipbones. “Yeah, baby,” he murmured. “I can feel your body tensing. Now let me feel you come.”

  But I was not about to come. I was about to spin off into the darkest place I’d ever been. I tried to tell Reed that he was hurting me and that he needed to stop so I could think about the meaning of the movie. But before I could explain anything, the door to the bedroom swung open, and five Antichrists stormed in.

  They rushed past the bed and started yelling.

  “It’s in here!” someone screamed. “Right here! I found it!”

  “Nasty cat shit!” another one shouted.

  They gathered at the foot of the bed, where Darren’s cat had left its smelly package, apparently while Reed and I were having sex. The smell was so pungent that it wafted out into the hall. The Antichrists all kneeled down and inspected it. Someone gagged, and someone else shouted, “Don’t puke! That’d be even grosser!” Then another one realized that Reed and I were lying under the covers in the middle of Darren’s mom’s bed.

  They walked over, surrounding us. “Dude,” said a kid named Justin. “Are you seriously boning her right now? That’s so rank! I’m about to hurl just looking at you.”

  Reed sat up, pulling the covers off my body. The boys’ eyes lasered over me, making me feel like a cow that was about to be branded. I rolled onto my side, smashing my face into Darren’s mom’s pillow. It was white, with a powder blue, scalloped edge.

  Fortunately, my movement made the boys stop gawking. They resumed their show of disgust. “Nasty!” someone yelled again, and they shoved each other out of the room, shooting final glances in my direction. The last person to exit was Darren, the leader of the Antichrists. He looked behind him, saying, “Come on,
Reed. Important meeting in the basement. Antichrists only.”

  As Reed got out of bed, he threw me a loving wink. He pulled on his shirt and Levi’s before following his friends. I lay where I’d been left, curled away from the overhead light. I tried as hard as I could to vanish from sight.

  Five minutes—or three hours—later (I couldn’t tell) I got up and dug around the bedposts looking for my clothes. They were all there, minus my bra and undies. Darren’s mom would find those later, reprimanding Darren, who’d reprimand me. I slid into my jeans, wishing they were softer and less scratchy, before shoving my arms into a faded green army fatigue coat my dad gave me as an early Christmas present the previous December.

  Night was morphing into morning when I finally left Darren’s house and started walking across Twin Falls. I hurried, hoping to sneak into my bedroom before my parents were up and drinking their tea and coffee. The sun broke across the horizon just as I turned onto Pole Line Road. This was the street I ran down when I left home, hoping to save myself from my father. I stared down the sidestreets at the rows of newly built houses and wondered how it happened that I was back in the place I’d started from.

  Did I have to descend further? For what? The following year, I got caught sneaking away from a journalism conference in Sun Valley to party with my friends. All we did was sit around and share a fifth of Bacardi. But when I returned to my hotel room, my teacher, Mrs. Barry, was waiting.

  “Well, Miss Out-and-About,” she said. “Where have you been?” And then, quickly, “Wait, don’t answer that. I can smell alcohol on you from here.”

  “What are you talking about?” I slurred. “I’m not drunk, but you’re crazy.”

  I was drunk, of course, and also incredulous. Mrs. Barry was the one teacher I hadn’t been able to win over since coming back from Oregon. Even though I was a three-time gold-medal-winning Young Poet and runner up in the Portland Trail Blazers Creative Writing Contest, I was one of the worst students in her class. Jessica Tingey could crank out three column inches of newspaper copy at lunchtime, while I couldn’t figure out how to string together the who-what-why-where-when of a simple story. Ironically, since I already considered myself a writer, journalism class was destroying my faith in writing.

  “Watch your mouth, young lady,” I recall Mrs. Barry saying. “You’re lucky tomorrow is the start of the weekend. But come Monday, I think we both know where you’re going. The principal’s office. With me.”

  I started to argue that Mrs. Barry couldn’t punish me because I’d already been punished in ways she couldn’t imagine. I started to say that neither she nor the principal nor any of the Twin Falls High School establishment had any right to hurt me any more than I’d already been hurt. But as soon as I opened my mouth, the words burned like bile on my lips. The only people I’d used my abuse against had been my parents. My MO since coming home from Oregon had been to let everyone believe that my life was perfect. It’s fine that I didn’t speak, because Mrs. Barry was in no mood to argue. She stood up and walked out, leaving me in my stupor. When the room didn’t stop spinning, I lurched into the bathroom, where I heaved Bacardi-scented vomit all over the linoleum.

  The following morning, I boarded the bus back to Twin Falls. A raging hangover manifested itself as a jackhammer drilling into my cranium. Mrs. Barry poured salt on my wounds by making me sit directly behind her. I did as I was told but used the opportunity to shoot lasers of hatred into the back of her permed, black-haired head.

  I wanted to reach out and tear those curls, yanking her head until she was looking at me upside down. I wanted to ask her if it took a brain surgeon to see that I needed someone to save me from myself. It wasn’t just the drinking and drug-taking. I still have a pale pink scar on my forearm from when I used a piece of wood to dig the letter R into my skin. I put cross tops, a pill form of speed, on my desk and popped them with sips of Diet Coke. How was it that none of my teachers ever noticed when I got so high my hair felt like it was standing straight out of its roots?

  Two hours later, the journalism bus pulled into the Twin Falls High School parking lot. I got out, found my car, and drove slowly to my parents’ house.

  When I arrived, I opened the door. I took two, maybe three, steps, and collapsed onto the carpet.

  “You okay?” my mom asked. She was sitting in her comfy chair, reading the Saturday paper. When I didn’t answer, she came over.

  “Trace? What’s the matter? Are you drunk?”

  Instead of getting up, I started moaning.

  “Tracy? What’s the matter? Talk to me. You’re acting crazy.”

  But I couldn’t talk to her, because I knew the second I opened my mouth I’d have to take on her feelings too. And I’d spent too many years making sure that she was okay at the expense of myself. Had I been stronger, I would have gotten up and walked into my bedroom before the feeling of drowning came over me again. But my legs and arms were full of lead. I wasn’t strong enough to lift them.

  The next thing I knew, Mom lay down on top of me, pushing her fleshy breasts against my neck. I tried to squirm away, but she held on tighter. When I realized she wasn’t going to let go, I went limp and gave in to her embrace.

  She cooed, rocking me against her. When she’d had enough of that, she sat me up and pulled me onto her lap.

  “I didn’t do it,” I whined. And then: “I did it, but it’s not my fault.”

  Mom must have sensed that I didn’t want to tell her more, because she stood me up and led me to her bedroom. We sat on her bed until the last, huge sob had shuddered through my body. As dusk fell, she walked me to my room, where, without asking, she helped me under the covers. She crawled in beside me, and slept with me all night.

  13

  Escape to Art School

  Angels lived in Twin Falls. I was looking at one in the face. Her name was Mayz Leonard and she was tan, although not so tan that I didn’t trust her. A halo of golden hair surrounded angelic features—high cheekbones, pink cheeks, red lips. Her eyes were the color of hazelnuts, not unlike my old black lab, Jigger’s.

  “I’m just going to pray over your knee,” she said.

  It was the middle of summer, 1987, and Mayz and I were sitting in City Park across from St. Edward’s Church. I was performing in the JUMP Company’s performance of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. JUMP—Junior Musical Production Company—was the closest thing Twin Falls had to a professional children’s theater. My first show with them had been the summer of 1986, with a chorus part in Bye Bye Birdie. A year later, I’d moved up in the world. I was going to play Dorcas.

  But several weeks into rehearsals, I attempted an aerial cartwheel in rehearsal and landed the wrong way, partially tearing a ligament in my knee. My whole body buckled, causing me to cry out in pain. Our director, Robyn McCracken, yelled at me to get up and keep dancing. I tried, but my knee dislocated again, sending me back to the floor, writhing and moaning. I guess Robyn hadn’t realized I was truly broken.

  Mayz did, though, and she rushed over to sit with me until my Dad came to take me to the emergency room. I’d never met her, but she’d been watching me. She was thirty-five and married, the mother of five beautiful white-blond kids under the age of nine. Our families both went to St. Edward’s Church, and she’d seen me when I slumped down the aisle to take communion. I pretended to sing Holy, Holy, Holy with everybody else, but really I was thinking Anarchy in the UK. It’s not like I was hard to miss. No other kid in the congregation dyed her hair purple or wore Doc Martens with white cotton prairie dresses.

  Mayz laid her hands on my bright purple, grossly inflated knee. It sat between us, pulsating in the heat. It was so swollen it reminded me of a jelly roll, all gushy and gelatinous. Looking at it also brought to mind how disgusting I’d let my body become.

  In the year since I’d returned from Oregon, I’d quit cross-country, dropped all of my extracurricular activities (except Declamation, which I continued because it allowed me to party), and ruined almost every f
riendship I’d had. When I started doing acid, every one of my “good” girlfriends dropped me like a hunk of moldy cheese. Then Reed joined the Army. With no motivation to be the coolest kid in Twin Falls anymore, I’d stopped exercising, dieting, and respecting my body.

  But for some reason Mayz didn’t notice the girl rotting before her. She cupped her hands around my kneecap like it was a baby turtle, like she didn’t want to hurt me. I wanted to tell her that she couldn’t hurt me even if she wanted to because I was already damaged beyond feeling. But she lowered her head, inhaled deeply, and started praying.

  I froze, doing my best to summon a picture of Jesus.

  “Sweet Lord,” said Mayz. “I don’t know why you’ve drawn me to this beautiful girl. But she is sweet, too. I pray that you’ll bring your light into her knee, and wherever else she has wounds. Look upon us, Lord, on this beautiful day with the sun glinting through the elm trees. Show us your mercy and cradle us in the mystery of your wound so that we may be healed in the image of your own suffering.”

  When Mayz finished praying she took another long breath. She tranced out for a good four minutes. I tried to decide if she was a spy hired by my parents to find out how bad I’d become or truly one of God’s messengers when she opened her eyes and looked at me like she wanted me to start praying.

  Oh, no, you don’t, I thought, the words coming to me all of a sudden. They rose up from the hot place in my stomach. I’d seen that look before, the kind that says something better than words can say it. But Mayz could go straight to hell if she thought I was going to pray to an invisible deity who obviously couldn’t care less about me.

  I gave up praying on the night that I ran to the Perrine Bridge. The wind had been howling like the breath of God, but I knew God had already forsaken me. At sixteen, shame ate at my insides like a fast-growing cancer. But there was no way I could voice my feelings of fear and loneliness to Mayz. I closed my eyes and hoped that she wouldn’t actually ask me to start praying.