Juliet the Maniac

by Juliet the Maniac (retail) (epub)

  The maniac was back, laughing and covered with blood.

  They got Vinnie and he handed me a towel and put me in the van. Somebody called the town doctor, who worked out of a trailer next to his house fifteen miles away. I started to get real sleepy in the van. The towel was all wet and red with blood. “Stay with me, honey,” Vinnie yelled. I liked him calling me honey. It made me feel like everything was going to be OK, like I wasn’t a maniac.

  We got to the doctor’s and his face paled, which made me realize once again that I’d really fucked up. The blood had slowed down some and it didn’t hurt. It merely throbbed, a nice rhythm, predictable like a mechanical drum. I went into his office and he stuck a needle in my arm, which hurt a little, the only pain I’d felt yet, but then it went numb. He took out something like a staple gun, saying, “Stitches won’t be quite enough.” He went to work on my arm, applying the staples. I watched like it wasn’t even my arm, it wasn’t anybody’s arm, it was just some piece of furniture. Vinnie didn’t have the same reaction. “Oh God,” I heard him mutter. “I’ll be right back,” he said and left the room. Soon my arm was all stapled up, nine staples, and then three on one of the deeper smaller cuts for good measure. He disinfected the whole thing, bandaged it up, told me to come back in two weeks, keep an eye on it.

  I wasn’t supposed to take the bandage off, but when I got back everyone wanted to see it so I took it off anyway. It was shocking to look at, crusted blood and bright silver staples, with a sickly smear of iodine. It reminded me of something. I was no longer a maniac. I had graduated. I was a Frankenstein.

  MEMENTO

  None of us could get the bloodstains out of the carpet. Now there was a permanent trail of rust dots trailing from my room to the great room, DNA evidence of my monstrosity. The socks and the towel had to be thrown away. The scar eventually softened from staples to scabs to a jagged mark, a lasting souvenir that ensured I would never forget: I am a maniac. I am a monster.

  PATIENT LOG

  PATIENT NAME: Juliet Escoria

  AGE: 16 yrs 6 mo

  SEX: F

  DOB: 8/23/83

  DATE: 03/21/00

  HISTORY: Patient had severe incident of self-harm previous week requiring medical attention. Reported aggression, anxiety, sleeplessness, impulsivity.

  Reported side effects of lethargy, muscle pain, upset stomach, hair loss (mild) (cont.).

  PREVIOUS MEDICATIONS:

  Zyprexa—discontinued 01/99 once stabilized

  Wellbutrin—discontinued 03/99 (ineffective)

  Tegretol—discontinued 07/99 (risk of overdose/replace w Depakote)

  Paxil—discontinued 07/99 (replace w Remeron)

  Remeron—discontinued 8/99 (weight gain/replace w Zoloft)

  Buspar—discontinued 01/00 (somnolence)

  Trazodone—discontinued 2/00 (replace w Ativan)

  Ativan—discontinued 3/00 (replace w Trazodone)

  TREATMENT:

  Cont. Depakote 2000mg/nightly

  Cont. Zoloft 50mg/nightly (for anxiety/depression)

  Resume Trazodone 25mg/nightly (for insomnia)

  Begin Risperdal at 0.5mg/nightly, increase to 2mg/nightly over

  course of 2 weeks (for manic symptoms)

  Cont. group therapy, indiv. therapy

  FUGUE STATE

  Carly started doing something new with us called “relaxation therapy.” Twice a week, we went into the great room before bedtime. She turned off the lights, and we’d lie on the floor on our backs like we were dead. She told us to clench each muscle, foot to head, and then relax them one by one, her voice low and smooth. When we were done I felt liquid, melting into the floor.

  Sometimes she called us over to her office in the little house individually, to do personalized meditations. Her office was decorated exactly like you’d expect: a little fountain in the corner, crystals on the bookshelves, a bamboo plant on her desk. Gauzy curtain over the miniblinds, a sun catcher on the window that refracted soft rainbows onto the walls.

  At first we did the same things in the individual appointments that we did with everybody else—the muscle clenching, and also “baths” in different colors of light. She did Reiki over my still-healing arm, a heaviness from her hovering hand, like magnets. But then one day she asked me if I was interested in investigating my past lives.

  I didn’t know if I believed in that kind of thing. It seemed too easy of an answer, how people were always Cleopatra or King Arthur, and never some poor serf or a chicken. Still, it sounded cool, to be someone else, even if it was only “real” like a dream. So I said yes.

  We started with the relaxation of my body, foot to head. Then she told me she would count backwards from twenty. “Each number, you are going to be falling, falling, falling,” she said. “By one, you will no longer be in this room. You will be falling into the earth.”

  The falling wasn’t unpleasant. It was a sensation of surrender, like going to sleep. When I stopped, I found myself in a cave. I felt my way down, fingertips sliding on the walls, damp and cold. There was a door at the end, little and wooden. When I opened it, there was just more black. Carly told me to jump in. She said I would fall through time.

  And it worked. My body changed, and I was still a young girl but this time I was paler and smaller, with darker hair. I ran in fields with my sister, endless green and clouds; Ireland or maybe England. I could feel what it felt like to have a sister, something I’d always wanted, but it wasn’t like I would have thought—this weird knot of closeness but also repulsion, like smelling your own sweat. Time passed. When I was fifteen, my village deemed me a poet and a healer and treated me with reverence, while my sister was married off as soon as she was able to have children. In the mornings, we often sat together, not really talking, mostly just taking in the sky. I think we were both awkwardly trying to reestablish what we had together as children, running through the fields, but mostly all I felt in the air was resentment. Mine for her willingness to be reduced to such simplicity. Hers for me turning out special.

  And then one day I saw our whole village getting sick. I saw my sister, what would happen to her, the nosebleeds and fever spots, and then I saw her getting buried in a shroud. I saw the population of our village halved. Stupidly, I told the people what I had seen. No one believed me until it was too late.

  When it happened, of course they thought I’d caused it, that I’d summoned it from my hands as I treated people for headaches and cramps. They didn’t believe me when I told them it had come from the water. I was not a healer; I was a witch, and so they sentenced me to drown. On the day that I died, I felt the water come over me, heavy as lead, and even though I was underwater I could still see sunlight poking through. I heard my mother crying. I felt a burn in my chest, no longer breathing. A quiet knowledge that I’d done this to myself.

  FUZZY NAVEL

  I wasn’t allowed to go on the school’s first wilderness trip. Carly was taking only the boys. Up until then, we’d only done day trips, hikes around Mount Shasta, once an overnight camping trip at Lava Beds.

  This time, they’d be gone for two weeks, hiking and rock climbing in Baja California.

  It seemed unfair, especially since they planned to spend a night in San Diego before crossing the border. I tried not to think about it because it hurt, but I missed home, the warm sunshine, my parents, my friends. The things I missed most weren’t the things I would have guessed: the velvet brown of the hills, the smell of the air. Sometimes I missed it so much I could barely stand talking to my parents on the phone, the pain of imagining them in the living room with that big ocean shining in through the window like it was nothing. But no, I had to stay in Redwood Trails, because Carly only wanted to take the boys.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if the boys didn’t seem so gleeful each time they received a new package from their parents, flashlights and quick-dry cargo shorts and bathing suits. When Jason spent evenings with me, instead of talking and laughing loudly with the rest of the boys w
hile going over plans with Carly, I pretended not to care, only telling Jason to take lots of pictures.

  The school was so quiet without them, lonely, especially because there was no longer an Alyson. I kept to myself the first couple days, writing lonely poems and reading books. Eventually they felt sorry for us, because Rosie said she would take us to an animal auction that weekend. We’d each get a lamb, feed them, take care of them, go into town for local 4H meetings. It would be an educational experience, an exercise in responsibility.

  The auction was noisy and loud, held in a gigantic barn lined with bleachers, smelling of animal shit and hay. Animals were brought in, all types, cows and pigs, chickens, horses, and donkeys. The auctioneer spoke in the fast-paced garble that I hadn’t thought auctioneers actually used, previously assuming this was something that only happened in movies. I couldn’t even tell what was going on, couldn’t understand anything except for when the auctioneer yelled SOLD. People went to retrieve the animals they’d purchased, real redneck types, in flannel and boots and cowboy hats. Rosie knew what to do, raised her hand at the right moments, bought the lambs for what she said was a bargain.

  We wanted to hold the lambs in the van, but Rosie said we had to leave them in the back in their crate. We were going to house them in the empty chicken coop, which was inside a fenced-in pasture that had been cleared in the trees. We had to clean the chicken coop out first, though, scraping out old piles of shit and feathers, before finally putting down fresh hay, the baby sheep bleating in their crate the whole time, lonely and scared. I had wanted to let them out in the pasture while they waited, so they wouldn’t be claustrophobic and so we could see them, but Rosie said they were fine and it was too cold.

  Finally the coop was ready. Rosie pried the top of the crate open with a hammer, and the lambs spilled out, wobbly legs and downy ears. I picked out one as mine, pure white with a soft pink nose, and I was worried I wouldn’t get her because she was obviously the cutest. But they let me have her. She was so soft and fuzzy and perfect as I held her in my arms, my baby, my little lamb. I decided to name her Fuzzy Navel.

  We went back up to the house, boiled the bottles and long black nipples Rosie had bought at the feed store the day before. The lambs were still so little they needed formula every six hours, Rosie said, even at night—so we’d have to wake up to feed them, no matter how tired we were. Nobody minded.

  I woke up bleary-eyed to Rosie flicking on the light and clapping her hands until I got out of bed. We put coats on over our pajamas, headed down there with flashlights, the baby lambs bleating and needing us as soon as we opened the door. I held Fuzzy in my arms, her heart beating against her chest as she suckled from her bottle. Christina was feeding her lamb next to me, which was gray and scrawny, the runt of the litter. We still hadn’t spoken since I’d yelled at her about Luke. Her face looked so peaceful as she held her lamb in her lap. She caught me looking at her, smiled at me, a small, genuine smile, meaning nothing more than, Aren’t they just so cute? Fuzzy finally finished sucking, rested her head against my chest, breathed in softly, and fell asleep. My heart swelled in my chest, a clanging sort of joy.

  FORGIVENESS

  We were put in pairs, alternating days where we’d clean out the pen, put down fresh hay, disinfect the bottles, and, later, clean out the troughs once we began phasing them to solid food.

  Of course I was paired with Christina. The first day, we walked down to the pen, saying nothing, both of us looking at the ground. I planned on not saying anything the whole time, but it was necessary to speak, to decide who did what. I tried to keep it just to the tasks, telling her I’d go get fresh hay from the barn, but Christina stopped me. “Juliet,” she said. “Hold on.”

  I thought she was going to tell me to get extra hay or something, but she didn’t. She walked over to me, looked me in the eyes, her expression pained.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just want you to know I’m still sorry.”

  Her face was sad and vulnerable, and I knew I could hurt her. But I was surprised to realize I wasn’t mad anymore. She’d done a dumb thing that had broken my heart but without even trying I had forgiven her. “I’m sorry too,” I said.

  “Friends?”

  “Friends.”

  She smiled, hugged me around my neck in a way that seemed spontaneous and genuine, and strangely I could feel my eyes tearing up, grateful to have her as my friend again.

  THE BOYS ARE BACK

  When the boys came back, they were tan and dirty, covered in cuts and bruises from their travels. The photos showed them high on cliffs, running on the beach, building a campfire. They had funny stories—Jason afraid to jump down, even though he was just a few feet above the ground and better at rock climbing than anybody, Beto translating in Spanish when they were stopped by the federales for no reason, getting them off without even paying the customary bribe, because he’d managed to make them laugh, a joke he refused to explain, saying it was untranslatable. They all had new nicknames and inside jokes, Big Hoopty and something about a jinglefeather.

  They didn’t know about the lambs until we told them. As soon as they heard, they wanted to go down to the pen and give them their bottles but we wouldn’t let them. They were ours.

  OOPS

  The lambs’ tails had to be removed, Rosie explained. It seemed cruel, but she said it wasn’t really. If we left them on, they’d get crusted over with dingle berries, big ones, which could breed infection and actually be deadly. Cutting them off was easier and less painful than it sounded—we just had to tie rubber bands around the base and eventually they’d fall off all on their own, no pain.

  A few days later, I was playing hide-and-go-seek with Fuzzy. I’d sneak behind the coop or a tree and she’d come running to find me, baaing in a way that sounded like laughter. She’d found me crouching behind the oak tree.

  I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t even realize I’d done it until it was already over: tugged her tail, just a tiny bit, so lightly I was basically only holding on. But the tail came off in my hand. I yelped with surprise, and so did Fuzzy. There was a tiny bit of blood on the tail, a tiny bit of blood on the stump, but mostly the flesh was dead. I felt so guilty I left the pen right then, went back to the house, threw the tail in the trash. Later I went back down there, apologized, hugged her, rubbed her behind her ears the way she liked. Fuzzy didn’t seem to care. There was a tiny scab on her stump, which I gently dabbed with Neosporin twice a day until it healed.

  INTERROGATION

  It was Carly who sat me down, calling me into the office. At first I thought I was in trouble. I tried to think about what I’d done wrong, but right away Carly said I wasn’t in trouble. Then she said she needed to ask me some serious questions.

  It turned out that Hank hadn’t actually quit like they said. He’d been fired because somebody had reported him. Somebody said he’d inappropriately touched some of the girls. She wouldn’t tell me who that somebody was. And Carly didn’t use the word “inappropriately touched.” She used the word “molested.” As if we were children and Hank was some creepy uncle, rather than teenagers and a counselor we knew very well.

  I tried to figure out which girls, and then I did.

  Carly wanted to know if he’d ever done anything to me. She was looking straight at me, like she thought if she looked hard enough she wouldn’t miss the truth. I looked straight back at her, at her brown eyes and the beginnings of wrinkles on her forehead.

  “No,” I said. “He never touched me.”

  “What about anything else?” she said. “Did he ever say anything, or do anything, to you that seemed inappropriate?”

  I thought for a moment, weighing my choices. I considered the time Luke and I had sex in the van, which seemed so far away it was like it had never happened, a sort of fairy tale I’d told myself. I was no longer certain he’d stared at me, that we’d actually made eye contact in the rearview mirror.

  It seemed too risky to tell her, and Luke was long
gone anyway. I decided to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “I’m thinking,” I told Carly. I looked out the window so I wouldn’t have to look at her. She was still staring at me. There was a hummingbird at the feeder hung from the eaves, the first one I’d seen in months. It wasn’t a pretty bird, brown and white like a sparrow. Its beak was long and looked sharp. I made sure my expression was entirely neutral, flattened my eyes so Carly wouldn’t be able to read anything.

  “He swore around us,” I finally decided to offer. “He sometimes let us smoke at the AA meetings, and also drink coffee.” Minor offenses, I figured. Enough to get Carly off me, but not enough to get him in more trouble.

  But that wasn’t enough. “What else?” she said. She leaned forward in the chair, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, like we were girlfriends telling secrets. It annoyed me, made me not want to tell her anything—but I also got the feeling that she wouldn’t let me out of there until I fed her a few more stories. I told her about the chewing tobacco. I figured if nobody had told her about that already, then someone would soon—it had happened several times, over the period of a few months, to enough people that it was bound to come up anyway.

  “OK,” Carly said. “And what did you see him doing to other people? Or hear about him doing. It doesn’t matter if you know it was true or not. Any little rumor.”

  It came out of my mouth before I even had time to think about what I was saying, in a voice that was too loud and didn’t sound like mine at all. I told her what I’d seen that night we played Spy. I told her I had seen him with Christina in his car. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was they were doing but it looked like they might have been kissing.

  As soon as I finished talking I felt my face flush hot with guilt. “But I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they were just talking. That was back when Christina was really depressed. He might have just been trying to help.”