So we go into the bedroom while Ally and Jasmyn and the other guys are partying in the living room. And Nathan and I do it. And I don’t care that my boobs are uneven and that my nipples aren’t the right size and that my stomach bulges a little. And I don’t care about the noises coming out of my mouth. I don’t even care that Anthony has opened the door and is standing there, watching. And I don’t care that Nathan has an ugly, pockmarked face and a scrawny body and crooked teeth. Because now, him fucking me … it’s as if he’s filling me back up with some kind of love.
I don’t go home for three nights. I figure this out only when I see my neighbour’s newspaper and it says Tuesday. I had lost track of days and nights. The next morning, I feel like hell. I’m sick at home for four days solid. Is that what seventy-two hours of partying will do to you? I throw up all over my bedspread. 3006. I am too sick even to watch TV— the light pains my eyes. So I lie in the dark, drifting in and out of sleep.
My mom, who looks like more of a wreck than me, doesn’t ask questions. I just tell her I have the flu and she brings me chicken soup from a package, and fizz-less Sprite, lays it on the floor on a tray. I tell her if I die, I’d like my body cremated and flung off the Eiffel Tower.
“That would be expensive to fly there,” she jokes. “How about the CN Tower?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” I groan. “It hurts my skin.”
Even when I feel better, I don’t want to get out of bed, so I fake being sick for two more days. I don’t want to go to school. Or eat. Or bullshit smile at bullshit people. I don’t want to get high. I don’t want to fuck. I don’t want to meet Ally after school. I don’t want to wear my ugly clothes or brush my ugly hair or look at my ugly face in the mirror.
Forty-Nine
I feel like I’m slipping away from my body. I can barely eat. I just want to fade away. My mom stops talking to me again. Ally and Jess are mad at me because I don’t return their phone calls. Fortune is long, long gone, probably moved on to screwing some other stupid girl who believes his lies.
I almost wish the police had come to take me away. I figure Rachel is having some family meetings to plan my capture, so I just have to be patient. Besides, I have more important things to worry about. Since Scott is gone and my mom stopped working and I got fired, there is no money to pay the rent. Even Freestyle has conveniently disappeared, the way he always does when my mom is in trouble. And since we no longer get a break from Giovanni, I’m sure we’re soon going to be evicted. I see the unopened bills on the kitchen table. I hear my mom crying on the phone to Crystal. We don’t even have one single Christmas decoration up in the apartment.
For some sick reason, I keep threatening my mom that I’m going to move into a group home. It’s cruel, I know. I don’t know why I do it. I get some cruel satisfaction out of seeing her squirm, even when she’s already down and out. It’s hard to admit, but I like having that power over her. In retaliation, she’s stopped talking to me, like she’s trying to give me a taste of what it’s like to not have her in my life anymore.
I keep asking her to make up with Giovanni, but it’s hopeless. She believes Scott will come back and pay for everything, and she doesn’t want to be screwing Giovanni when he does. But I know better. We need Giovanni. I find him in the underground garage, cleaning the air vents. He looks better than he used to. I think he’s lost weight. I sit on an overturned garbage bin and make small talk. Then I tell him that my mom misses him, that he should stop by.
“Don’t tell me shit,” he says. But I know he’s hurt, because I can see it in his eyes. She broke his heart, I’m sure. But he won’t ever admit it because of his male pride. It’s all so stupid. And we are going to end up in a shelter because of it. Someone needs to be the adult in all of this.
Fifty
I’m in the boat now, drifting down the river, staring at the blue, blue sky. I imagine myself floating like one of the white lilies that brush against the bow with a constant shooosh shoosh sound. I lean to the side and slip one foot up over the edge, bringing the boat’s rim close to the water. My stillness steadies the rocking, rocking. I stare into the murkiness. I long to disappear into the deep, deep dark, but the rippling reflection of the golden willows wavering in the breeze pulls my gaze back from the black depth. Then I see the reflection of my own face.
“Get out of the boat,” my reflection says.
But I can’t.
I’m caught between the fear of what lies beyond that dark depth and the lure of the beauty mirrored in it. Will I sink or swim? Reflect or get absorbed by the darkness? It’s a fifty-fifty chance.
All I know for sure is that if I stay in the boat, there is a certainty of death.
Long blades of grass. Orange, black, brown, green. Grass. Jungle. Trekking. Marching through the hallway-carpet-fibre jungle. I’m a tiger. Rooaarrrr. Ha! Stop. Giovanni’s office door. My finger to the plastic sign. Trace the letters, Su-perin-ten-dent. My head spins, spins, spins. So fucking high. How many E’s? How many shots? I hold on to the door frame for balance. Disgusting office. Wood panelling. Metal desk. Small, barred windows. Giovanni. His back. His balding head. Tools. Stink. Stink. Oil. Paint. Spread-eagle Miss July humping a red Corvette. Giovanni. Plumber’s ass. Gross.
Open my mouth. “Hi.” My word hangs in the air in front of me like a cartoon bubble. I reach out to pop it and then laugh.
“Melissa?” He swivels around in the old office chair to face me. The squeak squeak squeak pains my ears. My heart is racing.
“I want to do something for you.”
“What?”
Get out of the boat. Get out of the boat.
I said, “I wanna fuck.” “Jesus! Are you crazy?” Disgusted face. “Why are you here?”
Get out of the boat.
I shut the door behind me. Trip toward him, swaying my hips all sexy-like. All men are the same. All men are weak. I reach out to put my hand on his belt buckle.
Giovanni’s hands go up.“Hey! What are you doing, Melissa? Stop it. Stop.” But he doesn’t get up. Something in his voice makes me keep going. All men are weak.
Get out of the boat.
“It’s okay, I’m old enough,” I assure him. I feel powerful. I know exactly what to do. I am forceful. Like he’s my bitch. He’ll do what I want. “Don’t move,” I command.
I smell the stink of cigarettes. I smell his dirty hair, his greasy scalp. It makes me gag, but I cover it up with a cough. I do everything really, really fast so that he can’t stop me. I take off my jeans, roll up my top, and stand there in my pink thong underwear and my mom’s black lace push-up bra. I take his thick, callused fingers and put them on my stomach. Feels strange. Rough. I slip his hand into my underwear. He pulls it out. “Stop,” he says, breathless. I put my hand on his crotch. That’s all I have to do. He does the rest. We don’t kiss. We don’t talk. He doesn’t even take off his underwear, just opens his fly. I’m still sitting spread-legged on his lap. And I think we’re about to fuck.
“No. No. No,” he repeats. At the same time, he takes my hand and it touches his dick and I realize he wants a hand job. So I have to do it, but only for a few seconds before he pushes my hand away and tells me to get out.
I don’t know why, but I listen to him. I get off. I put on my clothes. And I walk out of the office.
On the way back up to the apartment, I feel totally great. Like I’ve taken care of things, even if he didn’t cum. I feel like I’m not someone who’s going to let life dump its shit all over me. I start laughing down the hallway, really loud. In the stairwell I feel so light I’m flying up the steps. I begin to shout. My shrill voice echoes off piss-stained walls.
“Fuck you, Mom!”
“Fuck you, Michael!”
“Fuck you, Fortune!”
“Fuck you, Rachel!”
“Fuck you, Giovanni!”
But then later, when the E is dying down, and I’m in the bath with the lights off and I think of Giovanni and his stink and his nasty old-man dick,
I start to cry. I cry and cry and cry till my face, my jaw, and my throat hurt. I’m so disgusted, I put the soap in my mouth and on my tongue and rub it on my teeth. I jam the bar under my fingernails and scrub. I put it in my ears, my nose, everywhere, just to get all of him off me. Then I immerse my body in the water, pull my face under, trying to keep all of me, all my skin, submerged. I try so hard to keep myself under the water, but I keep floating. No matter how hard I try to stay sunk, I float.
Fifty-One
When I open my eyes, there are white curtains closing in around me. Am I in a casket? I think it’s a dream. A good one: I’m dead. I close my eyes once more, for a few seconds. Then I open them again.
I’m in a hospital bed.
It’s noisy.
People shouting. Crazy people shouting.
Beeping.
Loudspeaker.
Pain.
I lift up off the bed. My stomach cramps. Throat raw. Jaw tightens. Nose stings. Dry mouth. Icch. What’s that taste? I run my hand along my tongue, and then look at my fingers. They have black on them. Black? Oh my God, I’m dying! I turn my head to the side and throw up. A pink plastic bowl appears under my face.
“You’re okay, Mel. Just let it happen.” My mother’s voice is faint, like she’s far, far away, only I can smell her breath and I see her hand holding the bowl. “The black is from the charcoal. It’s cleaning your system. You had a tube up your nose to aspirate.”
The memory of last night starts to come back to me. Me in the bathtub. Then Ally calling some time after that. Her coming to my apartment to get me. Then us going to a party. And the coke. The K. The pills. My head pounds. “Where’s Ally?” I manage to scrape the words up my throat.
“She’s at home. She brought you in. She’s a good friend. I’ll call and say you’re awake now.”
Yes, it’s all coming back to me … Giovanni. The party. The coke. The bathroom floor tiles.
Hospital? Fuck Allison for overreacting and bringing me here—and now for all the shit I’m going to be in. I lift my body a little and squint my eyes, catching my reflection in the metal paper towel dispenser beside my bed. I see my distorted face, my crazy hair, and my black-stained clown mouth. I flop back down. “I wanna go,” I croak.
“You will. The psychiatrist needs to see you first.”
I close my eyes. “Why?”
“To make sure you’re okay. That’s all. They have to do it.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know,” she answers.
But it’s obvious. This has happened to people I know before. They want to know if I tried to kill myself. Did I? I’m not even sure. I don’t remember. But if I had to guess, if I had to tell the truth, I’d probably say yes. Not really that I tried to kill myself, more that if I had died last night, I wouldn’t have cared.
And then it’s like all that energy that just woke me up has emptied, and I’m suddenly exhausted and can barely keep from falling asleep. My mother, on the other hand, seems to have been waiting for hours for me to wake up just so she can
give me shit.
“What did you take last night, Melissa?”
I roll over onto my side away from her.
“It’s bad timing, but Rachel’s parents called me yesterday. She’s not pressing charges.” I start to drift back to sleep. “Her mother called me. You’re lucky …”
I ignore her.
“Of course, you’ll have to pay for the car.”
I don’t answer.
“What did you take from work?”
Ughh … Let me not wake up again.
I pass in and out of sleep for what feels like days. I hear patients around me mumbling and shouting and yelping and groaning. I don’t even know if it’s day or night; there are no windows and the lights stay on all the time. But it doesn’t matter really, because I’m so exhausted all I do is sleep. Then, when I sneak open an eye, I see my mother on the chair drinking coffee, and I know it’s morning.
“Good morning,” she says cheerfully.
Is it a day later? I try to curl my lips into a smile. I feel them crack.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
How am I feeling? I am feeling nothing. After throwing up for so long, all feeling has erupted out of me. I think it came out of my mouth—all those black thoughts of death and anger and Michael and Mom. And now I just sort of feel empty. I’m achy and sore and just … broken.
I shrug a shoulder in response, unsure if she sees it or not from under the sheet.
“Well, just rest. And let me know if you want anything.”
Before I have a chance to speak, the curtain opens and a woman appears at the base of my bed. She’s tall and really pretty: blond hair, perfect bone structure, deep blue eyes.
“Hello, Melissa, Ms. Sullivan,” she says in a professional tone, and reaches a hand out to greet my mother.“I’m Claire Macbeth. I’m the social worker in charge of your case. I’m here to answer any questions and to begin a safety plan for you, Melissa.”
“Thanks,” my mom replies.
“I’m sure you’re wondering what’s happening here. Let me tell you about our procedure. Melissa, you were told this when you first came in, but you probably don’t remember. You’ve been admitted to the emergency department due to a drug overdose. You were barely conscious and had a weak heartbeat when you were brought in by your friend. We gave you a nasal tube and activated charcoal to aspirate the contents of your stomach. A potentially life-threatening combination of drugs were screened in your system, which quite possibly could have led to cardiac arrest had you not been admitted.” As she speaks, her beauty changes to ice and her blue eyes fade to a colourless grey. I turn and look away. Too many words. “You might be angry at your friend now, but it’s possible she saved your life,” she continues. “We gave you some medicine, so you’ll be feeling quite groggy for a while. We also did an internal exam and took some blood to check for anything of concern. In terms of demission procedure, first a child and youth counsellor will come and ask you some questions. And then the psychiatrist will make her assessment.”
“So, not much longer, then?” my mom asks. I look back at the woman to hear her answer.
“That’s correct,” she says in a clipped voice. She backs her way out through the curtain. “Hang in there, Melissa.” And then she’s gone.
At least a few hours later, the curtain opens again and a spiky-blond-haired guy in his mid-twenties appears at the base of my bed. I quickly close my eyes to pretend I’m asleep. “Hi, Melissa, Ms. Sullivan. I’m Warren, a CYC—that’s child and youth counsellor—here at the hospital. I’m here to ask Melissa a few questions. But first, before I begin, do either one of you have any questions for me? I know you’ve been in here a long time, and it’s not the most calming environment.”
I don’t move.
“We’ve been in emergency for too long. It’s too noisy. How much longer?” I hear annoyance in my mom’s voice.
“I apologize, Ms. Sullivan. We’re just waiting for the psychiatrist to make her assessment.”
“So, not much longer, then?”
“Hopefully not. It’ll depend on her assessment. When I go back upstairs, I’ll check in on her again to make sure she’s on her way.”
“Okay. Then I’ll leave you two alone,” my mom says, and I feel a squeeze on my foot below the sheet. “Do you want anything, Hon?”
I keep my eyes shut.
“No? Okay, then. I’ll be back later.”
“Hi, Melissa. Can I sit on the edge of your bed?” Warren asks, like he knows I’m faking sleeping.
I raise a hand and gesture “whatever,” then I feel the mattress dip.
“I know you’re not feeling great now, Melissa. I know the medicine we gave you makes you feel strange, and you don’t feel like talking about anything. But to be honest, the sooner we get through these questions, the sooner you can get out of this place. So I�
�m going to ask you to sit up and give me just fifteen minutes of your time. Then you can go back to sleep again. I promise.”
I wait a bit, half considering his proposal and half trying to muster the strength to lift up my throbbing head.
“Can you sit up, please?” he asks, a little more firmly.
I lift my head and push my way up to a sitting position.
“Thanks,” he says when I finally reposition myself and stare out at him from empty eyes.“Now, I’m going to ask you lots of things. Some questions will seem strange and others will feel really personal. Try your best to answer as many as you can. What you say is confidential, so your mom won’t know. The information is for the psychiatrist’s assessment.”
He starts right away, asking me tons of questions and writing down my answers. Who do you live with? Do you share a room? Do you have access to a gun? Do you have friends? Have you had sex? What are your grades like? Have you ever tried to kill yourself? Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever been pregnant? Do you take drugs? Marijuana? Cocaine? Heroin? Sedatives? Glue? Can you sleep at night? Do you have an appetite? Would you care if you died? Who would care if you died? Do you know why you are here? What do you want to do after high school?
It goes on forever, but this doesn’t seem to bother me. I just answer the questions, one after the other. I tell him the truth. I don’t care what he knows. And I tell him everything except for what happened with Giovanni.
“This last one is my favourite,” Warren says, finally putting down his clipboard. “If you could make three wishes, what would they be?”
Lesley Anne Cowan Page 15