We Contain Multitudes

by Sarah Henstra

  The chairs were bolted to the ground but they swiveled, which I thought was a curious design idea for an emergency room. Why did they think patients would want to swivel back and forth in their chairs? Was it supposed to encourage self-soothing? Was I supposed to swing myself gently side to side and imagine I was rocking in my mother’s arms? The hard plastic slope of my egg knocked against Shayna’s each time I turned it in her direction.

  “What’s the point of an ambulance if they just abandon us here?” Shayna said. “They may as well have left us at a bus stop.”

  “Why do you think these chairs swivel?” I asked her.

  “Your ribs will be healed if they wait much longer,” she said.

  “Maybe they’re designed to calibrate your inner ear,” I said, swiveling. “Or lull your pain receptors.”

  Shayna got up and went to the Plexiglas check-in booth. She bent to speak into the intake nurse’s microphone. STOP! said the sign taped to the window next to her head. DO YOU HAVE A COUGH WITH FEVER?

  I was enjoying the foggy, floaty feeling of the drugs in my bloodstream. It was like lying on an air mattress inside my own skin. Time passed unevenly, in little spurts with long lapses in between. The paramedics had found Lyle’s prescription bottle in my trouser pocket, and apparently the dosage wasn’t high enough to kill me, even if I had ingested more than those three or four pills I’d managed to lick off Bron’s kitchen counter.

  Shayna came back and sank into her egg chair.

  “You know what all the doctors are probably doing?” I said. “They’re probably all working on Dowell.”

  “Fuck Dowell,” Shayna said. “I should go unplug him.”

  “You think he’s on life support?”

  “Fuck if I know,” she said. Then, after a minute: “He’s not on life support. I’m sure he’s fine, Jojo. Bruises. At most a concussion.”

  After another minute she said, “It turns out Mom was a hooker.”

  I paused my swiveling, knocking my chair into hers. “Don’t say that.”

  “She was. She went to be a prostitute in LA.”

  “Did Axel tell you that?” I said. “Because if he did, he’s full of crap. It doesn’t even make sense.”

  “He didn’t say it to me; he said it to Lyle.”

  “What did he say, exactly, though? What were his exact words?”

  “He said, ‘She turned her own tricks, man. You can’t put that on me.’ And it does too make sense,” Shayna added. “She was a heroin addict. She needed money.”

  I resumed twisting my chair.

  “Jojo,” she said, “I’m really sorry about what I said to the cops.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m really sorry. I just thought Kurl would—”

  I cut her off. “It’s okay.” I couldn’t stand the way your name sounded in Shayna’s mouth. It jumped out from the rest of her words and hit me like a punch to the face.

  “I thought he’d get in less trouble, you know? If we said—”

  “I get it,” I said.

  “I’m sorry for lying, though,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Or it was the truth.”

  I felt her look at me. “No.”

  “Maybe it was.”

  “No. Did he say something to you? Kurl and I are not—no.”

  The swiveling had the opposite of its intended lulling effect. I had to vomit. I clutched my ambulance blanket around my waist and made a dash for the restroom but only got as far as the garbage cans.

  “Nice save,” a man said. He was wearing scrubs and had paper slippers over his shoes. He handed me a tissue to wipe my face.

  I rinsed out my mouth in the restroom sink and then locked myself inside one of the stalls and sat on the closed lid of the toilet with my forehead resting against the metal wall. I thought of Shayna, who had just apologized to me for lying while simultaneously lying to me some more. Who did not know I knew she was lying. Who did not know that I’d walked in on her having sex with you, Kurl.

  I thought of you hunched by Bron’s hot tub with your hands in the foam. Your eyes like black holes. Nausea ripped through me again, bile rising in my mouth.

  There was a knock on the stall door, and Lyle’s voice said my name. When I came out he threw his arms around me, then dropped them and apologized when I squeaked at his touch on my shoulders.

  Lyle was pale and teary-eyed with worry. “Are you all right? Are you all right?” he kept saying, and of course, seeing him upset made me start to cry as well.

  He’d brought pajamas, socks, and shoes for me, and he helped me get dressed, there in the restroom, while I cried.

  I was exhausted. I think I kept crying continuously from that point on, mostly from exhaustion and maybe a sort of relief, too, as though now that my father was on the scene I could safely fall apart. So I cried a bit on and off all through the X-ray process and afterward, waiting for a doctor to come and look at the X-ray and tell us that I’d fractured two of my ribs.

  We’d already learned all about the fractures from the X-ray technician, who was a short woman with a very tight pink set of scrubs and cornrow braids. She pointed out the harder-to-spot break, a hairline fracture in the bone under my right nipple, and she told us that they might tape the ribs but it wouldn’t help one whittle. Whittle is the word she used.

  The doctor didn’t tape my ribs, though. She felt around until the pain cut through the painkillers and I yelped. “Once we make sure they’re aligned, they’ll figure out the rest,” she said. “Bones know what they’re doing.”

  For some reason Shayna giggled at this, and the doctor seemed pleased. She seemed to want to egg her on. “You put two bones in a room together,” she said, “and in a couple of weeks they’ll be one bone.” Shayna laughed so hard I suspected she was edging into hysteria.

  On the drive home I rode in the back seat, half-asleep, queasy. Shayna had lit Lyle’s hash pipe but was refusing to pass it to him.

  He tried to joke with her: “Don’t stinge me,” he said. Stinge is the verb form of stingy invented by the Decent Fellows to describe the act of not rolling a joint fat enough, or underpacking one’s pipe or vape, in a selfish effort to avoid sharing one’s green.

  Shayna didn’t answer him, just unrolled her window to exhale so he wouldn’t even get any of her secondhand smoke.

  “It’s my green,” Lyle pointed out, but she remained unmoved.

  They’d given me new painkillers, proper ones, but I wasn’t allowed to take the first one until the morning. I had to sit in the back seat, lean forward and hold myself perfectly still so that nothing on my body would make unnecessary contact with anything in the car. It was exhausting, and after a minute I closed my eyes and rested my temple against the car window. I thought of your back, Kurl, how many times you must have leaned forward in a chair, and I fought the nausea that rose anew.

  Shayna had turned the music up loud, and when Lyle tried to turn it down a few notches, she twisted the knob even higher.

  “How did she die?” I asked.

  “What?” Lyle said, over his shoulder.

  I leaned farther forward and spoke louder: “How did she die?”

  “Who?” Lyle said.

  “Raphael,” I said.

  “Mom,” Shayna corrected me. She switched off the music. “Yeah. How did Mom die, Lyle?”

  “It wasn’t a bicycle accident, was it?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Lyle said.

  “What?” Shayna said.

  “I don’t know how she died.”

  “Stop lying to us!” Shayna yelled.

  Lyle pulled over. He unclipped his seat belt and turned in his seat so that he could look at both of us. “They found her in her room, in this motel in LA she’d been staying in. The guy… The man she was with had checked out the week before. He’d used a fake name anyway.”

  “Mom was murdered?” Shayna’s face was white.

  “No, Shay. No, the man was long gone when she died. She was…” Lyle st
opped, took a breath.

  “What, Lyle?” Shayna said. “Just fucking say it, will you?”

  “He’s trying,” I pointed out.

  “They did an autopsy, including a tox screen. She was on everything: booze, heroin, meth.”

  “An overdose?” Shayna said.

  “She also had pneumonia,” Lyle said, “so it could have been that.”

  “So she was sick,” Shayna said.

  “She was very sick, yes,” Lyle said.

  “And you just let her die.”

  “I didn’t—no, Shayna. I couldn’t—”

  Shayna cut him off. “Drive the car.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I never told—”

  “Drive the car,” Shayna yelled, “or I’m getting out right here!” When Lyle pulled back onto the road, she punched the knob to turn the music back on.

  At home I went straight up to my tent.

  “Do you need an assist?” Lyle called after me up the stairs, but I told him I was fine.

  “Drink some water,” he said. “I’ll swing by on my lunch to check on you.”

  My clock said it was 8:40 Saturday morning. Lyle had a full day of guitar students lined up at the music school.

  I was asleep almost before I could close the flap on the tent.

  Sleeping all day. This must be one of the ways people hide from pain.

  Yours,

  Jo

  Saturday, May 14 (continued)

  Dear Kurl,

  I finally woke up at 7 p.m. Merle Haggard was on the turntable, and I could smell Lyle’s spaghetti sauce on the stove. I stood under the shower a long time, letting the water sting my shoulders and back. I had the creepy feeling that the music and the food scents were terrible deceptions designed to disguise the fact that our house was cracked through the foundation and would, at any moment, collapse on our heads. As soon as I descended the stairs, I would see floodwaters engulfing the front hallway. The funnel cloud was just on the horizon, already veering toward us to peel off our roof and toss our furniture into the air like lawn clippings.

  Shayna brushed past me when I emerged in a towel from the bathroom. She was dressed to go out: short skirt, crop top, eyeliner.

  “How’s the hangover?” I asked.

  She slammed the bathroom door behind her.

  I stood there facing the shut door, and all at once I wanted to smash it in. I wanted to smash the door, and then keep right on going and smash my sister, too. I wanted to smash Shayna to pieces for all the times she’d shut the door on me, shut me out, shut me up. For doing whatever she wanted, without ever asking me what I thought. For taking whatever she wanted, without asking. For taking you.

  “How was it, having sex with Kurl?” I asked.

  There was no answer.

  “I’m just curious,” I said. I raised my voice in case she wasn’t listening. “Was sex with Kurl amazing?”

  Silence. It felt good, shocking her. Shayna didn’t know until just this moment that I’d seen her with you. It felt powerful, wielding that knowledge like a sledgehammer against her.

  “Did you plan it for a long time? Or was it a sudden breakthrough? ‘Oh, all I’ve really wanted all this time is to get with Kurl. Now’s my chance!’” I used a nasty soprano voice to imitate Shayna’s voice.

  “What are you talking about?” Lyle’s voice behind me made me jump. I had assumed he’d be downstairs in the kitchen, supervising his spaghetti sauce, not up in his bedroom. He had tired pouches under his eyes. “Shay?” he called. “What is your brother talking about?”

  “Fuck off, Lyle,” came Shayna’s voice. “It’s none of your business.”

  Lyle asked me, “What happened between Shayna and Kurl?”

  And just like that, my powerful sledgehammer feeling evaporated. I felt weak and sick.

  “What can I say?” Shayna flung open the bathroom door and came out. She stood in front of Lyle and me. “I guess I’m a selfish, fucked-up, piece-of-shit slut, just like her.”

  “Like whom?” Lyle said.

  “Like Mom.”

  Lyle gripped her arm. “Watch your mouth!”

  “What are you going to do,” she said, “throw me out on my ass like her?”

  He grabbed her other arm and shook her hard, until her head snapped back, then forward. “Shut your goddamn mouth,” he roared.

  She wrenched out of his grasp. “Don’t worry; I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll move to LA!”

  Then she was down the stairs and out the front door.

  I turned my back on Lyle, stalked into my room, and slammed the door.

  “Jonathan?” he said.

  “Leave me alone, Lyle,” I told him.

  Then I sat down here at my desk and started writing it out, all of it—every terrible thing that happened from the moment I first showed up at Bron’s party until exactly this minute. I’ve been sitting here writing for hours, Kurl. My head is aching, and my injuries are throbbing, and I honestly can’t bear to write another word. But I’m terrified to stop writing, too, because I have no idea what else to do. What do I do next? What do I do now?

  Yours,

  Jo

  Sunday, May 15

  Dear Little Jo,

  So I just got off the phone with my brother Mark. I’m sort of in shock about it. I mean there I was talking to my brother for almost half an hour. Hearing his voice say things I never in a million years thought I would hear. Not from Mark. And me saying things I never thought I would say, not to Mark.

  And then at the last second before hanging up he tells me you’ve been passed out on his sofa the whole time he was talking to me. It’s surreal.

  Mark says, “He’s still here, as a matter of fact.”

  It’s so surreal that I can’t really picture it. I can hardly picture Mark’s apartment to begin with—I’ve only been there once, and it was only for about five minutes when Sylvan had to drop something off. I mean he’s never invited me.

  Picturing you in there with him, sleeping on his sofa—I think I’d have to see it with my own eyes to really believe it.

  But Mark said he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to come over, not yet. He said he thinks you’re likely not ready. He said, “likely not ready,” and I lost my breath for a second, hearing, likely not ever.

  I’m not fooling myself, Jo. I mean I know it’s better this way. I know how thoroughly I destroyed it. Us.

  I’m just, I don’t know. I’m sort of giddy and stunned at the conversation. It’s not even anything we said specifically. More that the conversation happened period.

  Mark starts the call something like this: “So a friend of yours came into the Border last night. Jonathan Hopkirk?”

  This is already plenty enough information to strike me mute on the other end. Here I am, just over twenty-four hours after Bron’s party. I haven’t been arrested. I haven’t had to go to the station to give a statement. Bron is saying she thinks it’ll be okay unless Dowell’s parents decide to file charges against me or something. But I’m still absolutely certain that someone, somewhere, is going to call Mom and Uncle Viktor. I mean I may be eighteen, but theirs is still my home address. I’ve been waiting for Sylvan to show up in the roofing van, or Uncle Viktor himself, maybe, knocking on Bron’s door.

  Maybe I’m hoping it’ll happen. Maybe I’m waiting for it and I’m actually hoping it’ll happen. Because someone has got to get a grip on me. I have no grip on myself, so someone—Uncle Viktor is the likeliest choice, the usual one—has to do it.

  So Mark’s call comes through to the Otulah-Tierneys’ landline, and I’m thinking, Okay, I guess Mark will be the one. I guess for some reason the police have called my brother Mark.

  This will be harder, I’m thinking: all of that disgust and disappointment coming from Mark. It’ll be harder than Sylvan or Mom or Uncle Vik. The hardest. And after Mark’s done picking me up and taking me to the station and watching me get charged or whatever, he’ll hand me back over to Uncle Viktor anyway. But I’m ready
for it. I mean I’m braced for it.

  And then, instead of any of that, what Mark says on the phone is your name. Jonathan Hopkirk. He says, “A friend of yours came into the Border last night.” And I’m struck mute by it. I can’t say anything.

  How could you have been at the Texas Border, Jo? They’d taken you to the hospital in an ambulance less than twenty-four hours earlier. It made no sense.

  “I have to say he was pretty fucked up,” Mark tells me.

  Jo, I may as well try to tell Mark’s story the way he told it. I mean it wasn’t dialogue. I wasn’t saying anything, the whole time he was talking.

  So Mark says, more or less in these exact words: “Jonathan went right up onstage, right up to the microphone between songs. And it’s not like it was open mic night or anything either. The band didn’t know what to do with him.

  “He starts playing the mandolin, strumming away as if nothing unusual is going on. He leans into the mic and starts singing this bluegrass tune, ‘Mother’s Not Dead.’ Do you know that one?

  “Mother’s not dead, she’s only sleeping. It’s a classic, right? Bill Monroe played it all the time. You know how my office is way down the hall, opposite end of the building from the stage? Well, I was sitting at my desk and I heard him loud and clear. She’s waiting for Jesus to come. This high, sort of spooky-sounding voice. Well, I’m sure you’ve heard Jonathan sing before, right?”

  I managed to say “Yeah,” or something like that—I mean I could barely choke out a single word. You onstage at the Texas Border! Talk about homophobia. Talk about gay bashing. That crowd would have eaten you alive.

  Jo is not dead, I’m telling myself. If he were dead Mark would have already told me he was dead. Wouldn’t he? Or will that be the punch line of the whole story? Is this going to be Mark’s way of punishing me—making me listen to this whole story, the punch line of which is that Jo is dead, or in a coma or barely escaped with his life and found bleeding in an alley somewhere?

  I didn’t want to hear the rest of the story but I was listening so hard to it that I couldn’t breathe.

  Mark says, “I can hear some of our finer patrons are yelling at whoever this is to get the hell off the stage, so I go see what’s going on. Derek, the regular drummer, is looking irritated, shaking his head—he can be a real dick about any changes in the set list, that guy—but the guitar player has started picking out chords, playing along with Jonathan.