I approached the window, reasoning whether I should crawl through the window. That sounded pretty fucked up though. Maybe I should, maybe it was the only way to get back inside. Or maybe I could go on a drinking binge, getting people to buy me drinks in the bars just long enough to have a warm place to stay. The cold snow around my ankles was beginning to soak through my socks.
Then I heard my mother’s voice coming from inside the house. Oh good, she’s in there. She can let me in. But why is it still dark in there? I got closer to the window, touching the edges, careful of the glass. I called to her. A cold wind blew the gold curtains till they billowed inside the darkness. It was only light enough to barely make out any of the furniture.
“Mom?” I shouted into the void and heard an echo.
Nothing.
It sounded like I heard shouting from the back—the sound of an argument. A cloud passed over the moon and all went completely black. Only the snow behind me reflected the streetlights, and lit the side of the house white. Then the cloud passed and the moonlight shone so I could make out some of the furniture, but it didn’t look right, somehow. Something was terribly wrong. The gold couch looked wrong. The gold wallpaper seemed wrong. I thought it was my mom in there, but something told me this was not my mom—that I had better not try to climb through the window. I touched the broken glass. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Mom?” I called one more time.
“I gave up on you a long time ago,” I heard a whispering, hushed voice say, and it sounded like my mom. I couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from, but I knew it wasn’t her. I knew it wasn’t her. It was just the wind, and my imagination.
I knew it wasn’t her, but I immediately I took off running. I ran toward Miriam’s, as if I could outrun these hallucinations. The mental hospital, that’s where I need to go. Maybe she can get me there. I don’t know how to get there on my own. It’s out by the lighthouse. I have no car. I’m on foot, I can’t get there; I just have to run.
Miriam's office was about sixteen blocks away. I had to run past Walker’s, the largest grocery store on New York Avenue. Then past the train tracks. There were three sets of train tracks in Oshkosh. Open Pantry on my left. Open Panties. Panting as I run.
Left on Main Street, slide around that corner so fast I slip and fall and get up again as fast as I can.
Miriam's office was dark. I guess I could wait, but not outside. It was too cold.
There was a Laundromat next door. I could wait in there. Thank God it’s open. I burst in the door and tried to calm down my breathing.
22
I found a quarter on the floor. Foolishly, I hadn't brought any cash with me, or my purse. I don't know why.
I put the quarter in the pay-phone slot and called my mom. When I did get hold of her I was going to find out what in the heck was going on. Don't tell me she'd gone somewhere and locked me out. Could that happen? I know she had things to do and all, like showing her home-interiors products, and visiting people. But still, she should be home soon.
I let the phone ring and ring and ring.
There was a load of clothes going round and round in a dryer, but there was nobody in there. I went and sat down in front of it and just stared. A red shirt in there fell into a repetitive pattern.
***
“Ames is here,” Gay had shouted. I think that’s what she shouted. I can’t remember.
I had heard something like that on my way out. I was so drunk I couldn’t even feel my feet on the pavement. Only the keys digging into my hands—that’s how tightly I had to hold them to keep the others from taking them away from me. I had had a fight with Ziggy. It got physical. That’s what I remember. And something had happened that day. There was some reason I had gotten so enraged.
I start glaring at Krishna. She plays that song and it is the final straw for me. I run over and try to grab that record off the stereo, totally intending to break it.
First of all, Ziggy had just been sitting in the same position all night at that party. He sits with his arms folded, near the entrance to the living room, staring out the window. I think he doesn’t even know what is going on. The song she chooses really pisses me off, more than any of her other choices. I had played “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” definitely an all-time Beatles classic. And the song she picks to counter it is “Cocksucker Blues.”
It is a special, bootleg version of an unreleased song by the Rolling Stones. Ziggy has brought it all the way from New York as a gift for Krishna. I try to rip it off the stereo. He is up within seconds. He grabs both of my wrists with one of his hands tight enough that I cannot get them loose. I have never encountered his physical strength before. I cannot, no matter how hard I struggle against him, tear my hands loose from his grip. I start kicking and trying to bite him. It has no effect. While he holds my wrists with one hand, fingers like a vice grip, with his other hand he is carefully, gingerly peeling my fingers off his record. Her record. What does he care so much about this bootleg version of “Cocksucker Blues” for, anyway? But it is the only version. There is no legal version. But he gave it to her. If it is hers, why is he still so protective of it, I am wondering, while struggling to get my wrists loose from his fingers that could strangle with no effort.
This is not when I grab the keys. First, when I finally get loose, which I am only able to do once his, her record is safely in his grasp, I run into Krishna’s brother’s room. I know right where to look; I grab the Sex Pistols off the alphabetized shelves that line the entire wall. I run back into the living room where everyone is laughing, drinking. I don’t even know if they have seen what’s been going on. I place the needle on a song called “Bodies” that has no melody. It is the worst, just a loud, fast guitar and some idiot screaming about a bloody abortion. Then I get right in Krishna’s face and scream at her, calling her a bloody abortion. I scream and scream and scream at her, falling eventually to the floor. I begin writhing around like I am in a psychotic state. Everyone is laughing. Everyone thinks I am putting on a show. But something had happened that day. Something I still can’t remember.
Then I grab my car keys and started running for the door. Ames must have showed up. I think that must be him standing in the bushes, in white pants. They are soaked with blood. I’m not sure who it is. I think it is one of her ex-boyfriends.
“Ames is here, Krishna, I think he wants his other body parts back!” I can remember Gay yelling. She is laughing near the window and pointing at him.
They try to follow me outside. It is total chaos. Someone is shouting angry obscenities. And I hear Krishna say, “What is he doing here? What a freak!”
I knew there was a scuffle. I remember that. It must have been one of her ex-boyfriends, wearing white, standing in the shadows. I must have ended up in the back seat of the car, somehow. I must have been forced in.
And then Krishna takes the wheel.
***
I had only ten cigarettes left, and only three more matches. I supposed that if someone else came in here I could borrow one from them. If they smoked that is. I lay back on a bench and lit the first match, and inhaled slowly on my cigarette, careful to savor every moment of it. Miriam would get here soon.
***
I look over to see what Krishna is reading. Whatever it is, it isn't English. It doesn't look like French either. I don’t know what the fuck language it is, but whatever it is she sure is absorbed in it.
"Ugh! I hate being in a body," she says.
The girl across from us picks up her lunch tray and, glancing sideways at Krishna, moves away from us.
"That girl sits next to me in Geometry class,” Krishna says without looking up. Then, turning toward me she says, "I make it a point never to talk to whoever is sitting to my left.”
Gay sits down to her left.
"What the fuck is this shit I’m eating?” Gay says. She stabs a fork in her formless meat, holds it up in the air, and stares with a puzzled look at it.
Three or four of th
e popular girls sit down near Gay. They scan what Krishna is reading and then say to her.
"You gonna tell me you hang out with these guys and you can't pass a Spanish test?” ask the girls.
"These guys?" Gay makes a sweeping gesture at us with the meat. "I don't even know these guys."
"That's right,” Krishna says, never looking up from her book. "Gay doesn't know us. Gay, you left your pot-pipe in my room last night."
All of the girls gasp, and their eyes widen. There seems like a crowd of them now. Ziggy pulls up a tray and sits down.
"Ziggy, the dialect doesn't change the essential meaning of the text,” she says to him, nonchalantly.
"Yes it does. It's makes them two completely different religions."
"My pipe? I don’t smoke pot. You must mean the one you were smoking that made you think I was there at your Bible study,” Gay says.
"No,” Krishna says, ignoring Gay and looking at Ziggy, "it's only got a few minor differences, but the essence is the same."
"The differences,” Ziggy says, “minor or not, are significant. Otherwise why not just read it in English?"
"Mainly just differences in pronunciation,” she continues.
"Geeks?” one of the girls whispers to the other.
Krishna looks over at them. Then she looks back down at her book. She holds her lips in a gesture she had that says with dramatic intentionality, “I'm biting my lip.”
"In certain dialects," Ziggy continues, "questions are answered with simplistic phrases designed to quiet the questioner. In others the questions are seriously addressed, showing respect for the learner, which showed they held certain cultures in lower esteem. Very hierarchical."
"So for all the supposed enlightenment of these people, they were still a bunch of racists then," I say.
“Not racist, classist,” says Ziggy.
"I'd like some enlightenment,” Gay says, in a mocking tone, "enlightenment as to what the fuck this meat is really made of."
Then she holds it up to the girls and starts whinnying with it, at which the popular girls giggle with delight.
Gay. Always popular with the popular girls. I shake my head at her and roll my eyes at her joke. “I can’t believe what a hypocrite phony you are,” I say to Gay. “And I can't believe you can read that,” I turn and say to Krishna. “I’m really blown away that you can read that. I mean, that’s not even our alphabet.”
Krishna shrugs.
"What's the section you’re reading about?” Ziggy asks.
"It's on Dukkha. The stuck mind,” she says.
"A mind stuck in the past?"
"Not awake, it says,” she reads, "refusal to awaken."
"Stuck, huh?” asks Gay, and she shakes me by the shoulder. “Wake up!” she shouts in my ear.
* * *
Now it was completely dark outside. The snow was really coming down. It had been clear all day and now this. How was I supposed to be out there in that?
Miriam was not there at her office. Not a single soul had come in to the Laundromat. I felt like it was my new home.
I walked over to the pay phone and dialed the operator. I told her I wanted to make a collect call. She put the number through and I waited a long time. Then she came back on the line and said there'd been no answer. I walked back over to the bench. I only had two matches left and I didn't want to have to walk out there in that cold to try to get another book of them. I started to have a really heavy, sad feeling deep in the pit of my stomach, like someone had kicked me. Like when you fall off the swing and land on your back.
And I was afraid to leave the Laundromat. If I left it, I might not get back in, like when I left my house. Why did I leave my house? It had been just a day, right?
I lit my second to last match and stood by the door smoking.
***
"She's out of her mind,” Ziggy said.
"No, she's not," Krishna said. "It's the world that's all distorted. She sees the truth."
"Is that how you define madness?” he asked.
They passed the bong back and forth, and the thing made that bubbling, gurgling sound.
They passed it to Gay, and after she took a toke she coughed so much they told her, "It's not the coughing that gets you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in."
"What are you guys talking about?"
"Madness."
"She's not mad, she's dead," Gay said.
"Huh?” they both said at once.
It was difficult to smoke a bong in the car, we discovered. Especially when the driver kept taking the curves so fast.
It was the aimless driving that took up most of our time. But the music was so great.
"What do you mean she's dead? She can't be dead. How can she be walking around talking to people then?” I asked.
"No that's not it," Krishna shook her head. "The world is just what you perceive it to be."
"Could someone turn the heat up?” I asked.
I almost spilled the bong water on myself, and bong water smells so horrible. My mom found a bong once and she was literally terrified of it—like her phobia of snakes. What did she call it again? She had the most peculiar name for the thing, as she held it in her pinched fingers and sneered at it in disgust.
"Oh, I love this song!" Gay shouted, and we all went silent. It was weird how none of us ever spoke during that particular song. But after the song was over, they went back to their debate.
"Well, what is happening then?" Krishna said.
"We drove out on the ice, don’t you remember?” Ziggy said.
"Oh yeah," everyone said in almost a whisper.
"Just let me out of this fucking car!” I screamed.
“Just drop her off here,” I heard Krishna say, and then she started giggling. They opened the door and I got out. I slammed it on them, and stood shivering and watching as the tires squealed toward the lake.
I could still hear their drunken, infernal laughter and nonsensical conversation coming from the car along with the smoke from the tailpipe that looked extra thick in the freezing air.
They stopped. I could see them from where I stood. They had dropped me off by the strip of road between the two strips of grass that bordered Menomonee Park, out on the outermost edge by the brick dressing rooms where we changed into our swimsuits as kids. Suddenly the car turned its headlights toward me. It headed toward me very slowly. They were driving my little blue Chevette. The drove toward me, not fast, still very slow. I didn’t move out of the way. I just stared at them. I thought they were going to run into me. But they swerved past me, and drove straight into the lake. I thought the lake was frozen. I was sure the lake was frozen. But they drove straight into the water.
They drove my little blue Chevette into the lake.
I ran toward the lake and jumped after them into the black depths. The water was ice cold. It should have been frozen. I thought it was frozen.
I swam down, and I could see the car. I got closer. I got so close I could see them inside through the window but they weren’t reacting like they should. They didn’t seem scared. They weren’t trying to get out. They were still laughing and partying and passing the bong. The car, my car, still sinking, I had to swim fast to keep up with them.
I knocked on the window.
They either couldn’t hear me, or they were ignoring me. I was frantic, I madly banged on the glass.
“Get out! You’re drowning!” I tried to scream, but all that happened was water went into my lungs, and bubbles came out of my mouth.
23
The three of them continued laughing inside the car, passing the bong and partying. I tried to grab the door handle and pull it open. I couldn’t, because the weight of the water was too heavy of a force. They finally looked through the window, put their faces right up to it, and when they saw me, this only made them laugh harder.
I yanked and pulled again at the door handle. The car was sinking fast, and pulling me down with it.
I suddenly noticed I co
uldn’t breathe. It was as if before that moment I could breathe just fine, but once I noticed that the car was pulling me down, that’s when I couldn’t breathe anymore.
In fact, I think I was breathing. I think I had been breathing before that moment. Breathing just fine. What happened? Maybe because up till then all I could think about was saving them.
But I couldn’t save them. The car was sinking and I couldn’t stop it. I had to let go.
I swam, frantic for air, up to the top and crawled out of the lake onto the ice. But that’s weird, I thought. When they went into the water, it was water, not ice. Not frozen. I pulled up onto the ice, only a few feet from the shore. I crawled along the freezing ice.
When I got to the shore I stood up. I started walking along the shore, looking up at the ghastly moon that shone cold in the middle of the liquid sky.
I stopped and stood still, shivering, looking at the lake. It wasn’t water. It was frozen. I watched my breath come out in clouds and continued walking along the shore.
A pair of headlights now crawled up behind me. I could feel and see them in the brightening snow, the warm light on the trees and the widening horizon. Because in the darkness the horizon just disappears.
The car stopped behind me. Seemed hesitant. I turned around. It was my dad’s car, the one he never let me use. He had named this car. It was his little black car with the stripe across the middle, the one just for himself that he got after we lost the blue car.
“Where are you going?” he said. He had rolled down the window, and I could see his face from inside the car, but in the dark I could barely see him.
“Where have you been?” I shouted at him.
“I’ve been right here. You’re shivering and wet. Get in the car, Janey Lou. You’ll catch your death.”
“Where are you taking me?”
I said this while walking around the car and opening the door to get in. I said this while still standing with my hands shoved deep inside my coat pockets.
The Oshkosh Trilogy 01 - The Dark Lake Page 12