by Sims, Karina
As we’re driving down the bare road to my house at the very end of the street Carl says, “I’m sure Mike didn’t even notice, and his sister is cool.”
I nod, check the time under my glove. “What’s her name?”
He stops the car in front of my house and spins the dial through a dozen or so radio stations as I undo my seatbelt. “Oh right, her name’s Sophie.”
XXI
I used to be afraid of pain. The whole idea of having my head busted in, my face, legs, my tits torn to shreds—it scared me. I was afraid of the headaches and the tender limbs. The sensation of broken bones and split lips kept me in a place where I still used Hydrogen Peroxide and band-aids.
I didn’t want my shoulders or stomach carved up with scars because I was always holding onto the fantasy that maybe one day I would meet somebody special and the idea of us pushing our flawless bodies together on a bed sheet, it made me start eating better food. Plugging quarters into the wash machine twice a week, buying fresh makeup every four months. Late at night while masturbating in the dark, milky skinned sex scenarios, they got me brushing my teeth every twelve hours, and avoiding cigarettes. I took showers regularly and flossed twice a day. I bought soap that made me smell like flowers I’d never seen. In the dark, two fingers deep I imagined meeting some woman somewhere in some office with some air of intelligence about her, so the next day I started listening to talk radio, I started quoting the strangers floating through the radio waves as they discussed the dangers of earthquakes and devastating poverty in countries I never cared about. But every time I came out of the shower all shiny and new, my hair reeking of tropical fruit I couldn’t afford at the grocery store, every time I stepped out of the shower and wiped the fog off the medicine cabinet, I’d be staring into the same cold blue eyes I’ve been trying to cover up with green contact lenses. And no matter how hard I pressed that six dollar bar of soap against the back of my legs or the chin on my face, those scars wouldn’t go away.
Every time I read an influential magazine article about preserving our natural resources or saving the rain forest, no matter how many checks I fired off donating to various causes, I was still Amanda Troy. I could throw away my VHS tapes, the ones with the hair glued to the front so I knew which girl was being tortured to death, but I’d have a brand new collection at the end of the year, just piled up and there’s nothing I could do to stop that. There’s no amount of money I can give to the National Geographic Society or the Christian Orphans Fund that could stop the pain and suffering of all those half dead kids with AIDS and swollen bellies. There’s no amount of self control I can offer to end the cycle of dead bodies stacking themselves in the root cellar of my house.
Yeah, I used to be afraid of pain; I used to feel the fear enter into my mind like a beast pawing the limits of his cage. But I don’t anymore. Something broke inside of me a long time ago. When my mother was executed at the hands of innocent children who suffered at the hands of toxic adults, my soul, it became centered inside a prism of unmatching light, illuminating clear through the essence of my being. It’s not that I stopped caring, it’s not that I arrived at some conclusive realization that sent me spiraling down a slope of depression and misery. The part of me that broke was a mental barrier of relation and consequence.
We are all beings of nature. The results of unprotected sex and animalistic lust, we are not perfect nor ever will be, no matter how hard we try. We will always wind up second trumpet to the asshole we grew up next door to. As human beings, we are designed to die. Our hearts will fail; our lungs will deflate or swell up due to some genetic disorder or self inflicted disease, and to think otherwise is a definite sign your faith blinders are strapped too tight.
The greatest thing my mother did for me was to die, because she set me free in all ways. The worst thing my mother did for humanity was allowing me to be born, because people aren’t supposed to feel like they’re winning. They’re supposed to feel like they aren’t good enough and that maybe one day, if they say all the right things or buy enough lottery tickets, they will be rich enough to be put on that giant pedestal hoisted on the backs of the working class nobodies. All this hopefully before their tits start sagging.
When I get out of the shower and I wipe that mirror and look into my eyes, at me watching me, myself staring back into my own face, I wink. I look at my non prescription contact lenses; I put them over my old cold blues and blink until I look like the windows to my soul are warm and unscathed. I put on a shade of soft red lipstick and blot until the color on my smackers says tasteful. I smile two rows of whites that scream well adjusted. I blow dry my hair, brush and style it until I look benign enough to start a conversation with. By the time I’m dressed, you wouldn’t push me out of the way even if your wife was dying and I stood in the way of medical attention. Because I smell like I love you and I smile like I’ve got a soul and it’s one of the reasons Jesus bled to death.
But what you aren’t counting on is the possibility—no wait, let me rephrase that—you aren’t counting on the probability that there isn’t a soul. Maybe, just maybe, our sole purpose here on earth, it isn’t to achieve enlightenment or gain any favor with God, maybe all we are really here for is to alter the soil the same way the dinosaurs did. Maybe, just maybe, we too are an oil source for a newer and better future species. Maybe we are born and die and turn to nothing but the earth beneath us. Maybe there is no greater cause and maybe there is no God and there is no greater promise and you really are wasting your life because Jesus really didn’t feed the starving masses and maybe if he did die, he certainly didn’t die for you and your narcissistic desire to live forever inside a mansion inside a kingdom of eternal glory. Maybe, if we get past all the perfume and hair, the designer jeans and spinning jewelry, maybe we are just flesh and bone and that’s it.
I don’t know, I mean it’s possible. All things are, aren’t they? That’s what they’ve been telling us anyway. Go ahead and disagree because you have your faith and that’s cool, but I know, that deep down in your heart of hearts at the very bottom in those dark little pockets you’ll never admit exist, lie your doubts. I on the other hand, I have no faith, and I have no doubt, my spirit is free, my heart is clean. My own blood, my own tears have made me so, I didn’t have to be dunked in a vat of blessed city water or fed crackers every Sunday, pretending to eat flesh and drink blood in the hopes I’ll be allowed entrance through a pair of giant gold gates. I’m not worried about heaven or hell because I’m already there. I’m my own goddamn savior and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because I don’t have to wait until Jesus comes drifting through the ozone to tell me I’m OK. I’m not concerned.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that in the end, no haloed carpenter is going to come through the clouds, glowing with his arms out making this big fuckin’ entrance through the sky just for shitty old you. I’m aware of and completely comfortable with the fact that you have to save yourself. I know this scares a lot of people, and I don’t blame them. It can be scary to realize you really are all alone and nobody is going to hold your hand after you take the big dirt nap. I used to be afraid of dying, but now I don’t care. I’ve seen what happens; I’ve deliberately caused it to others just to see what happens in all manners of execution. And I can honestly say I am not afraid anymore, but bless you for being so.
Because when you come beating down that running path and you struggle with me and kick and scream and try and throw me off, you aren’t ready to die and that energy, that fight for life gives me a reason to live. Not a desire, but the passion you feel, it fuels me.
When women aged twenty to thirty get yanked into the bushes their first thought is, “I hope he uses a condom.” They aren’t expecting it to be a woman who will cut them into pieces and eat their flesh in her basement, because, statistically, people like me don’t exist. People like me don’t exist because people like me, well, you can’t see us because you can’t catch us. It’s not that we’re monsters; it’s just t
hat we look too normal for you to ever notice.
XXII
The sun in this room, it will pull your heart apart. The glare on the window, the transparent me staring back at the real me, this makes me want to die. I can’t move away from the empty bed at my side no matter how much my thighs shake and tremble. My mind won’t take me away from staring back at myself in the glass, my spirit self in an empty room of unhooked breathing machines and clean bed sheets pulled tight at the corners.
I put my hand on my arm, looking at the empty bed in the reflection of the glass and gasp when my fingers meet each other and my cheeks burn from salty beads slipping down the sides of my face, into the corners of my mouth and drip onto the numb scars on my chin.
I bite my tongue and feel the same strikes shredding all the way down my heart, the same stinging I felt when I slid down the walls of my foster home when I was young and mom was printed in halftone all over the newspaper.
My gaze never leaves the panes of glass burning my eyes blind with sun light, even when I trace the polished surface of the bedside table with my fingertips. The bare table that never changed the whole time Lilly was in that bed remains flowerless, undecorated, as it always was, dustless and blank.
I close my eyes and feel the fleshy burden of my wet lids closing together. I remember her.
When we’re finished smoking against the brick of the building at work, I kiss her forehead, ears eyes and mouth. I zip up her little red leather jacket. I tell her to have fun and I pat her on the ass as she dissolves into nothing and is gone.
I open my eyes, wipe the tears from my cheeks, and lay a pair of pussy willows down onto the pillow. I don’t look back in the window, I just fold my arms and leave the hospital with little Lilly’s words winnowing through the cavities of my heart.
XXIII
“What’s the best thing about a nine year old girl?” Harry is in his office, shouting into a telephone I doubt is even plugged in. The customer at my counter, the one fishing in his pockets for eighteen cents, he looks embarrassed. Harry’s feet slap the floor so frantically it sounds like he’s being strangled from behind. “You can slick her hair back and pretend she’s a nine year old boy!”
I slip the customers issue of Leg Show magazine in a bag and smile as he walks out of the store all sunken and depraved.
“What’s great about twenty eight year olds?” His feet slap the floor again like he’s choking to death. “There are twenty of them!”
For me, the worst thing about this whole phony phone conversation business isn’t the fact it’s extremely disturbing to the psyche that he would go on and on about awful things to himself while pretending he was communicating with another human being because that’s fine by me. No, what makes it so goddamn awful is he’s so fuckin’ bad at it. He doesn’t pause properly in between sentences the way you actually would while the person on the other end of the conversation is responding to your comments. Harry just keeps yakking away like a maniac. The way he’s going on and on, you don’t even need to see the phone cord is unplugged to figure out he’s only talking to himself.
That scuffing of his feet shambling the slick cement floor of his janitor closet office comes fulminating through his tiny space into the front of the store. “What do you call a good looking corpse? JonBenet Ramsey!”
I check my watch; my shift was over five minutes ago. I walk to the back, grab my jacket off the rack and almost run Carl over in the alley while lighting a cigarette as I pull my car out. “Amanda!”
I roll down my window and tap the ash onto the ground. “What?”
He walks around the side and slides into the passenger’s seat. “Wanna give me a ride?”
I tap my smoke out the window again. “Sure.”
When we’re out on the highway he points down the street I wasn’t going to take. “Down here.”
I drive for a few blocks while he fumbles with the radio and lights one of my cigarettes. “Where are you going?”
He blows smoke through a pair of grinning lips. “What? Do you mean ‘where are we going’?”
I stop at a traffic light, a twelve year old girl and her fat mother are lip syncing to some terrible song in the mini can next to me. I drop my cigarette out onto the street and roll up my window. “Huh?”
Carl shakes his head. “Well your house first, I guess.”
“What the fuck?”
His knuckles tapping his knees, he turns up the radio and air drums on the dashboard. “What the fuck, what?”
I just stare at him. The light turns green and I shrug. “Where are you going?”
He covers his eyes with his whole hand and laughs. “The dance dummy!”
“What dance?”
He turns the radio down. “The dance I told you about last week at work.”
“You told me about what? Dude, you didn’t say shit about some dance or whatever.”
“What the fuck? Yeah I did. I brought you coffee and everything. You were all zoned out, I had to drop the goddamn cup in front of you and say ‘drink’ to get your attention. Weren’t you listening?”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“No, I said ‘Oh’ not ‘No.’”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“So you remember?”
“No.”
“What?”
I light a cigarette. “I mean yeah I remember you brought coffee I just, I dunno, must’ve forgot.”
“Well no one really remembers coffee I guess.”
“No, I remember that, I just don’t remember the dance part.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
He scratches his chin and rolls down his window a bit. “So what’s up?”
“Oh, I dunno. Nothing I guess.”
“No I mean, are you coming or what?”
“To the dance?”
“Yeah”
“Oh.”
He points towards the direction of my house. “Just turn up here.”
“What’s with all these direction and shit? I know the way to my own house.”
He sighs and steals another one of my cigarettes. “Whatever.”
When we get to my house I shave my legs in the shower, put some vitamin lotion on my scars and throw on a tank top and jeans. I’d wear my shell shoes but they’re crusted with blood. Carl claps two VHS tapes together while I’m lacing up my Converse high tops and says, “Why do all these tapes have hair glued to them?”
I finish tying my shoes, walk over and snatch them away from him. “Don’t touch my shit.”
He shakes his head and says, “Bring a coat.”
I grab my favorite black hoodie, and we drive until we’re in the parking lot of the hospital. “Uh, what kind of dance is this?”
“Staff.”
“Why isn’t Alison here?”
“Because she doesn’t work here.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because Sophie is here.”
“She works here?”
“Coma ward. Yeah.”
“But I don’t work here.”
“It’s OK.”
“If it’s OK for me to be here then why didn’t Alison come?”
He shrugs, put his hand on the door handle. “Because she doesn’t work here.”
Being led through all these side entrances and ‘STAFF ONLY’ areas, staring at the back of your friend’s head, it’s like a bad dream you are inwardly panicking to wake from. The only thing worse than having a nightmare that resembles this sort of chaos is the horror that it is actually happening and unlike a dream you can’t wake up and make it go away. All your conversations have listeners and all your actions have real consequences.
After following Carl up a hundred stairs and down a thousand staff corridors we arrive in the psych ward common area, through a door I never noticed before.
Inside this big room, I have to open and close my eyes to make sure I’m not dreaming, or off in some field screaming and crying, high o
n copious amounts of LSD. The whole place is decorated, transformed into a disco ball dangling play pen for loonies. All sorts of banners are hung up across the walls. Happy Easter over the punch bowl, It’s a BOY!, by the medicine window. Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday hanging over the DJ switching CD’s, while committed men and women wearing pajama pants and felt slippers sip anxiously at the red contents of their tiny Dixie cups.
Carl points at a Get Well Soon banner by the couch I always read Cherry Blossom on. “Patients decorated most of it.”
I nod and scan the room for Sophie but I don’t see her anywhere, there’s too many people walking around, bumping into one another and mumbling to themselves. “Oh.”
“Yeah it was sort of an activity for them for the past couple days. Motivation exercise.”
“Oh.”
I follow him to the punch bowl. The King of France is there his little wash cloth cape still pinned to the back of his shirt. He sees me and walks away, his eyes full of tears. Carl smiles at a woman standing over the juice. “Hi Linda.”
She smiles and pours us both cups. He raises his cup to her, “Cheers.” We walk over to some corner of the room, him waving at people every two seconds, asking how they are.
I stare into the red juice, swirl it around in the cup and wonder if this is some kind of mass suicide plan. A way to thin out the load of crazies. “So, what’s the occasion?”
He waves at a girl who looks like she hasn’t bathed in weeks. “Hi Caitlyn!”
I’m filled with horror when she smiles back and her teeth and lips are stained red, I look at Carl as he lowers his Dixie, and he looks like he’s just chewed through his own leg. The more I glance around the room, the more I see that almost every single person—staff or patient, it doesn’t matter— they all look like vexed cannibals bobbing their heads to nineties hits.
I walk over to the trash bin and drop my cup in. Bright rays of white light burn into my eyes blinding me as I walk back to where Carl and I were standing, but he’s not there anymore and neither is Caitlyn, and a man twisting his t-shirt into a fabric handle is laughing at his hands and smiling at me with all that red punch stained on his teeth. Two fat men eating Nanaimo bars off napkins push past me. I stand on my tippy toes looking for that door Carl and I came through when Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” comes on.