“I’m not getting in one. Everybody in my family is cremated,” Bonnie says.
“Don’t you mean everybody in your family is a cretin?” I ask.
“Very funny. I meant when someone in my family dies, they burn them.”
“No problem. You get in your coffin. I’ll get some of that lighter fluid they say is soup and pour it all over you. One match and up you’ll go.” I wink at Bonnie Bonfire. Smoke comes out her ears.
“I’m not getting in one either,” Lily says, and looks like she’s going to cry.
“I’m kidding, Lily,” I say.
“I’m not going to die,” Lily announces, but she doesn’t look too sure.
“No, you’re not, Lil. I won’t let you.”
“So I’m not going to practice,” Lily says harshly to her shoes.
“It’s just a joke.” I laugh, but Lily’s face doesn’t look right.
“There is nothing funny about HELL!” Lily the evangelist shouts.
“Who…who said anything about hell?” I ask.
“My mother says lots about it. If she was here, she’d tell you too.”
“If she was here, I’d tell her where to go.”
“You’d burn for that,” Lily says.
Actually I think I’d get brownie points from God if I told Lily’s mother off. I’m going to burn for a million other things though.
Lily looks pink underneath her sweaty bangs.
“Forget about it…let’s talk about something else.”
The devil leaves Lily and she slumps in her chair.
I walk to the window and rest my elbows on the sill and put my head in my hands and cover my eyes like I’m counting to ten for a game of tag.
“The noise in here is enough to drive you crazy,” Katherine says.
I whisper to the window, “Well, we won’t have to worry about anybody getting carsick…’cause it’ll be a real short trip.”
Birkenstock clogs clomp into the dining room. I keep facing the window. I already know who it is.
“Please sit down.” Brown’s voice is cool.
I turn and slide to the floor.
“In a chair.”
“What? In a chair?” I repeat.
“Sit down in a chair.”
“You know, you just sit in a chair. You don’t have to say sit ‘down.’ The down is redundant.” I stay where I am.
Nurse Brown ignores me and turns to the others. “I have some news,” she says.
“I know what it is! The kitchen quit because they don’t feel their talents are being appreciated. And they have gone to cook for the Humane Society,” I say.
“Poor dogs,” Lily says, and shakes her head.
Nurse Brown clears her throat. “About the noise…”
“What noise?” I yell over the hammering.
“MARTY, SHUT UP!” Nurse Brown explodes.
Everybody jumps. Rose, always the last to finish eating, stabs her cheek with a spoonful of slop. She had used ketchup as cover-up for her eggs, but now she is wearing it as blush. I stifle a flinch and raise my eyebrows at Nurse Brown. I take out my imaginary chart and my pretend pen and make some notes about her little outburst. I mumble my observations, “Something’s crawled up Madame’s butt.”
“What’s that?”
“I heard Madonna was a slut. But I don’t believe it,” I say, nice and loud.
There are a couple of nervous giggles. Nervous because Brown is different today. And they’re not sure whose side it’s safer to be on.
“That’s enough,” she says, calm again.
They pick sides. The room is silent.
“Marty, I’m not going to do this with you today. I’m going to make my announcement uninterrupted.”
Hammering begins.
“The noise you hear is coming from the group therapy room,” Brown yells.
Right on cue, the noise stops. These guys are good. Maybe they’re former patients.
Nurse Brown adjusts her volume and continues, “We are renovating the group therapy room to accommodate a library and some new, more comfortable furniture. So, for the next three days, you will have GT here in the dining hall.” Nurse Brown looks around like she was expecting a cheer. “Rhonda is going to be delayed. She is counseling a new patient.”
New patient. Fresh bones.
“You can do your bathroom break in here.”
Let’s see. That’s ten girls. Taking ten minutes each to dissect ourselves in the mirror. To see where breakfast went today. Oatmeal to the backs of the arms, cottage cheese to the butt, butter to the belly, toast to the thighs, eggs to the ankles.
“Why can’t we go to our rooms?”
“I don’t want you girls wandering around. The staff is a little tied up right now.”
What don’t you want us to see? Maybe the staff is tied up tying the new girl down. Aye, Marty, could be we’ve got a fighter on our hands.
“Why don’t you all play a game? The games are in the cupboard beside you, Marty.”
“I don’t believe it.” I search the box for the third time. They are definitely not here. I start to laugh.
Jamie comes over to investigate. “Hey, is that CLUE?”
“Duh!”
“I used to have one.”
“A clue? Really? I can’t picture you with one.”
“Ha-ha-ha. I had the game, stupid….Where are all the pieces?”
“That’s what cracked me up. I think the assholes with the nametags took them…for our own safety, of course.”
Katherine starts to laugh and says, “Probably thought we would bash ourselves with the candlestick.”
Victoria smiles and giggles, “Or hang ourselves with the little plastic rope.”
Elizabeth yells from the bathroom, “Or slash our wrists with the knife.”
“Or blow our brains out with the world’s smallest revolver,” I add.
“We could be fierce figure skaters and whack each other on the shins with the lead pipe,” Nancy says, and demonstrates by hitting Bonnie with a toothpick.
Bonnie jumps up and hops around the room yelling, “Why me?”
One by one we all start laughing. We are so hungry for fat laughs, we’re like sharks in a feeding frenzy chasing tuna. You never realize how hungry you are till you take the first bite.
Jamie is the first to come up for air. “Maybe they thought we would shove Miss Scarlet and Professor Peacock up our noses and they would suffocate us.” She laughs and snorts so hard that if she had a game piece up her nose, it would have shot up into her brain. Maybe they had a point.
Lily squeals, “The wrench! We forgot the wrench!” and points to something that Catwoman is holding.
The laughing stops.
Catwoman’s left hand rests on top of the table. In her palm is a tiny perfect wrench made out of tinfoil. While we were laughing, Catwoman had been busy making weapons.
Katherine says, “We could hit Nurse Brown on the back of the head, but all that would do is give her a black eye.”
We all lose it. Again. Even Catwoman looks like she’s smiling.
Everybody starts checking the garbage cans and picking out the little silver thermal blankets that had covered our breakfasts.
“SPAGHETTI!” Victoria cries.
“What?” I say.
“Spaghetti! I’ll use some from dinner tonight.”
“For what?”
“The ROPE! If I lay one piece in figure eights on top and wrap it twice around the middle and let it dry, we’ll have the rope. It’ll even be the same color.”
“NO!” someone outside our little workshop yells.
All the elves stop. All eyes ask the same question. New girl?
Nurse Brown comes in and knocks on the door to get our attention. We ignore her. She pulls a rubber glove over her hand and snaps it on her wrist. It works better than the door thing. “Okay. There will be no group therapy this morning. Rhonda is still busy with the new patient. And I will be too.”
A fe
eding tube is draped around her neck.
“If anybody needs anything, you can ask Nurse Jane. Lunch will be at 12:00 as usual,” Nurse Brown says and leaves.
Whoever the new girl is, if she’s joining us for lunch, she won’t be needing silverware.
“It’s a WHAT?” This can’t be true. Katherine’s just messing with me.
“A guy.” Katherine is flopped on her bed changing her nail polish for the third time today.
“No way.”
“Yes way. I saw the hair on his arms.”
“So what? We all had that baby-hair-suit when we came in.”
“His was darker and thicker.”
“Maybe she’s just gorilla girl.”
“That’s not nice,” Katherine says.
“I’m not trying to be nice. I’m being scientific. Maybe he’s an it.”
“Why does it bother you so much that the new patient is male?”
“What are you? My psychiatrist!”
“No. It’s just…I don’t get it.”
“I don’t want a guy in here. I just don’t.”
“Knock, knock.” I try to sound cheerful.
No answer from the corpse. He’s lying on his back with the sheet folded up to his collarbone, exposing naked, pointed shoulders. Tubes going in and out of the holes in his body. You would think he’s an organ donor. Except that he’s been eating his heart, liver, and kidneys for months. So he bites as a savior. But he looks like Christ in his shroud of white linen. So still.
Silently I walk up to him. I’ve learned how to keep the tiles from talking. I put two fingers on his upturned wrist.
“What are you doing?” he cries, sitting up.
“Checking for a pulse.” I try to keep my voice steady. But he is freaking me out. Yellow eyes behind stringy long hair. His nose starts to bleed from his sudden movement.
Freak. Freak. Freak. I want to run and cry and throw up and cry. And then vomit.
But I don’t.
Breathe. Just breathe. Soundlessly. Drop your shoulders just like they taught you. Show no fear. You can take this guy. Do something different. Do something normal.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
No answer. He tilts his head back and opens his mouth slightly, as if he’s going to lick the blood crawling onto his upper lip. Instead he drops his chin. Closes his mouth.
And lets the blood continue onto his bottom lip, into the cleft in his chin, and finally one drop falls into his lap on the white sheet. I remember when I was so hungry, I’d suck the blood out of my own cuts. But not this guy. He won’t even allow himself to recycle.
He lies back. I can see up his nose and the glob of coagulation stuff that has closed his wound. He stares with unfocused eyes up at the ceiling. I used to do that. That shit used to drive everyone crazy…it’s driving me crazy. Crazy angry crazy.
I stomp out loudly. Try to slam the door behind me. But it’s rigged so it won’t shut. Takes me two tries to figure this out. Only the chain at the top of the door rattles. The nurse at the nurses’ station jerks her head up at the noise. I head for her.
“Is he alright, Marty?”
“Yeah. I fixed him. He wants a pizza and a chocolate shake.”
“Really?” the nurse asks.
“What do you think?” But I realize her “really?” isn’t a stupid question. Just a desperate one.
“Did he talk to you?”
“No.”
The nurse shakes her head and exhales. They never do this. Especially in front of patients. I wouldn’t want her job. I try to think of something to say. The best I can do is, “Why don’t you put him in the psych ward for a while? It worked for me.”
The nurse lets her face leak a small smile.
“What’s his name anyways?”
“Chris.”
Figures.
I go to the “library,” formally known as the group therapy room. It will always be the GT room. The group torture chamber, no matter how they dress it up.
The door is gone. And the doorjambs have been ripped off, taking paint and pieces of the wall with them. A gaping chapped-lipped hole. New, heavy square chairs wrapped in thick plastic line the walls to make a semi circle. At the back of the room, by the window, sits one unwrapped chair. It’s black. No, it’s blue. Blue leather. Hard to see the color because of the glare from the frosted windows.
I walk in and sit in the chair. It barely mumbles. Its blue skin is cold. I rub its arms. The smooth ride of my palm hits some rough spots. I lean over to look. I see dark blue with pale blue scratches on its arms, like the chair had tried to slit its wrists. I laugh when I figure out the real reason for the marks.
Rhonda pokes her head into the room. “What’s so funny?”
“The chairs were too fat to fit through the door.”
“That’s what’s so funny?”
“In here, it’s hysterical.”
“Yeah, I see why you would think so,” Rhonda says and goes to one of the plastic bagged chairs and flops into it like a stuntman landing on a crash pad. She sinks as the air escapes, making her look like she’s getting smaller. “Where is everyone?”
“They’re in bugging what’s-his-name,” I say, picking at the scraped leather.
“Chris. And you’ve met him, haven’t you?” Rhonda says, looking at me.
“Yeah. He’s a real talker. Couldn’t get him to shut up.”
Rhonda does her eyebrow thing.
“How old is he?” I ask.
“Eighteen.”
“God. He looks ancient. Like he’s thirty…more like thirty-three.”
“That old, huh?” Rhonda laughs.
“What’s he doing here?”
“You’re too smart to ask stupid questions,” Rhonda says seriously.
“How long has he got?” I look at my feet.
“Who knows? A week, maybe more. The human body is an amazing thing. You guys hate it, starve it, and torture it, and it keeps on struggling to survive.”
Images of POW’s invade my head.
“Care to come back to the conversation, or do you want to stay in your head for a while?” Rhonda asks.
“I was just thinking.”
“Do you ever do that? Just think? Somehow I imagine your thoughts entering like air into one of those long straight balloons. But then you turn it and twist it into some kind of animal and then you paint it black and white….
You should try letting the balloon float around for a while. Maybe even leave it pink.”
“Two and a half questions, Rhonda.”
Rhonda nods. “Okay.”
“One. Are you calling me an airhead? Two. What are you smoking and can I have half?”
“No. Nothing and no,” Rhonda says, and laughs.
“Where are the parents?”
“Whose?”
“Chris’s.”
“At home, I guess.”
“Hiding behind the newspaper and the stock market and fresh squeezed orange juice.”
“You think you’ve got his story all figured out.” Rhonda sits up.
“What?”
“Not everyone who comes here has shitty parents.”
“But Chris’s, they’re not coming, are they? Even though he’s dying.”
“His kidneys have basically shut down and he refuses dialysis,” Rhonda says, just stating the facts in the same tone she’d use to report we were out of cereal.
“Jerk.”
“Katherine said his being here upset you. Why?” Rhonda turns her head in my direction.
“Why can’t she keep her mouth shut?” I say, and get the look. “He pisses me off.”
“Every guy who comes in here makes you mad. I still haven’t figured that one out, but can you tell me why Chris sets you off?” Rhonda tries not to beg.
“If I tell you, will you promise not to hit me with it in group?”
“Okay.”
I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. Telling the truth. To staff. But I like
Rhonda. At least she has a sense of humor and does what she says she’ll do. Or won’t do. There is always Plan B. If she uses this against me, I can always kill myself.
I take a deep breath. “All my life I’ve played against the boys. I didn’t like to lose and they didn’t appreciate when I won. Not eating was a sport I didn’t have to compete in with them. The one thing I would always be better at. Anorexia is for girls.”
“And?”
“And now this guy comes in and he has beaten all of us. He had to one-up us.”
“That is really warped.”
“I know.” Well, I didn’t know it till I said it out loud.
Rhonda wipes at her eyes like I just threw sand in them. “Do you all think like this?” she says, and starts to massage her temples.
“I only know what I think. We don’t talk to each other the way you think we do. We’re too busy competing.”
“Do you honestly think Chris came into this unit to beat the girls at their own game?”
“No.”
“And by not eating, what do you think he’s gaining…I mean winning?”
“Nothing. But those girls are in his room right now, aren’t they? At his feet and at his side, moving his greasy hair out of his eyes with their fingertips. Begging him to eat. It’s worse than a soap opera….And he doesn’t even appreciate it.”
“Why doesn’t he appreciate it?”
“They’re not the ones he wants.”
“Who do you think he wants?”
“His father. To come down here and save him. So he can say, ‘It’s too late. See what you did to me? Go to hell!’ ”
“How do you know this?”
“I just know…don’t push it,” I say and try to lift my hands from the chair arms. But I have to peal them off the leather. I can see the fingertip dents I’ve caused. Rhonda looks at the sweaty little bruises. Then at me. I put my hands behind my head and stare up at the ceiling. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rhonda do the same.
She says, “So, what do you think of the new room?”
“I think if blue chairs and blue walls and blue Valium is all this place has got to offer, then we’re all going to end up like Chris, who is going to end up like one of these chairs–a blue piece of skin covered in plastic with a tag around one foot.”
More Than You Can Chew Page 9