Her jeans and shirt were still crumpled under the cot. Her mother always refused to pick up after her. She dragged them out to take to the hamper and felt something in a pocket of her jeans. She pulled out the little bark bag. Her breath escaped in a long trembling sigh.
She tucked the bark bag carefully into her pillowcase, drew the blanket over the cot, covering her pillow. She carefully examined each of the other pockets. All empty. The bark bag was enough. She had been there. And there was one person, at least, who would believe her. Who would understand.
Mr. Oberdorfer.
She went to school, stepping out carefully into the streets, memories and grief sitting under her ribs like small hard stones. It was all so strange! Her feet, confined in shoes, clumped unforgivingly over dead cement sidewalks. There was no fragrance in the air. And at school, the water tasted like rotten eggs. The noise shocked her. The classroom walls pressed in on her.
At lunch hour she couldn’t eat the cardboard pizza served in the cafeteria and went to find Mr. Oberdorfer. He was sitting at his desk in the empty classroom, finishing a sandwich. A little red thermos cup of coffee steamed in front of him.
“Mr. Oberdorfer, could I speak to you for a minute? Please.”
He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and indicated a chair. She didn’t sit down. She had meant to prepare the way, but she plunged in. “Do you remember the river of time you told us about?”
“River of—oh. Yes, of course. Einstein—”
“Well, I did it.”
“Did it?”
“I stepped across,” she said clearly.
He blinked at her and smiled faintly, brushing crumbs off his suit jacket. “I beg your pardon?”
“I stepped across. I crossed that time bend. Saturday—last Saturday, it happened to me!”
“Saturday,” he repeated politely. He nibbled at the fingernail on his little finger.
“Yes, Saturday. I was in the park,” she said, noting how pink his fingernails were. Did he polish them? “Mechanix Park. I was there, and then I was somewhere else. I was with the People. And—and it was just as you said.”
A feeling of dread seized her. Mr. Oberdorfer nibbled earnestly on his fingernail. She pushed on. “It’s all there. Everything. You said so, and it’s true. All there—” Her voice faltered. Mr. Oberdorfer wasn’t laughing at her, or getting angry, or irritated. But he didn’t hear her. She saw it on his face. The politeness. The slightly glazed vagueness.
Delicately he flicked a bit of fingernail off his tongue. “I’m sorry—uh—Alexandra, but I’m not sure what the purpose of this visit is.”
“I’m referring to what you said in class last week,” she shouted, suddenly so angry that she was shaking. Damn them! Damn them all! Why couldn’t they hear her? Why couldn’t they listen and believe? “I was sitting right there when you said it!” She pointed to her seat. “And you told us, you told me, that time has no beginning and no end. Do you remember that?”
He sat up straighter. “I know what you’re referring to. Our discussion of time as related to history. Why are you so angry? What a funny girl you are, Alexandra. Did you take everything I said literally? Did you really think I meant—”
“Yes! No. That is, I only sort of believed it. But then it happened to me.”
“It happened to you,” he repeated in a humorous voice.
“You said you believed, you really believed that someday someone would find out how to go back on that river of time, and—”
“Well, yes,” he said, and now he was smiling at her, almost affectionately, inviting her to laugh at her own silliness. “Yes, I do believe that. But that’s for the future. Something that will happen when we humans have greater control over senses that we’re not now even aware of possessing. Perhaps when we poor creatures have evolved to a higher stage. But as for right now—” He shook his head, still smiling. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I remember you were very taken with the idea.”
“Yes,” she said, backing away.
“That’s gratifying for a teacher. Often we feel we’re talking to a class full of blank faces and blanker heads.”
“Yes,” she said, again. She was at the door.
“Keep up the interest and the good work, Alexandra.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Any time,” he said, generously.
That was Thursday. She found it difficult for the rest of the day to breathe and behave normally. However, she tried. She made it through the day. She made it through Friday, and then through the weekend. She went on trying every day for another four days. Went to school, saw Lillian, smiled, sat in classes, made squiggles in notebooks, wrote meaningless words and answered foolish questions.
One night she got up late when everyone was sleeping. Only a small night light burned in the bathroom. She sat on the covered toilet seat for a while, shivering and thinking. Oh, the people here! They didn’t see or touch or sense one another. They didn’t listen or hear. They ran from rain, lived without stars, and had never learned to whistle like the birds. Madness. Madness. Madness.
She went to Ivan’s room and knelt by his bed. She shook him, whispering, “Ivan, wake up, wake up! I want to talk to you.” In the crib, Buddy snored.
“Huh?” Ivan raised himself.
“No one will believe me,” she said urgently. “Maybe you—” She told him. Finally, light began to leak into the bedroom from the street outside. “I didn’t make it up. It really happened. It happened to me, Ivan.” She wanted him to believe. She wanted to share it. The wonder. The pain.
He nodded slowly, and for a moment his eyes were as pure and open as the eyes of children, as the eyes of the People. They said, I believe you.
She threw her arms around him and cried in the language of the People, “This is a true thing, my brother.” But before the words were finished, he had shoved her away, his face had closed against her, and his lips were twisting into a safe, mocking smile.
“Boy, you are something! One minute you want to kill me, the next you’re hugging me!” He turned around and punched his pillow. “Are you crazy, waking me up in the middle of the night? Who wants to hear your weird-o dreams, anyway! Go on back to bed. And you’d better not go around talking gibberish in front of anyone else, or the little men in white coats will come for you.”
The next day in school she began to feel as if she were suffocating. The air was killing her. The walls were bending, threatening to topple and bury her. The clock on the wall ticked without cease. Tick . . . tick … tick … tick … TICK … TICK … TICK … TICK . . . TICK . . . TICK . . . They were all dead, ticking away, they had all been dead forever, they would all die, why did she care, what did it matter . . . TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK…
“STOP,” she screamed. She ran out of the school into the street and kept running, knowing she was running toward something she could never find again.
Chapter 33
Nov. 1, Friday.
Just had my first session with Dr. Davenport. Excused from last hour of school to go to him. Psychologist. He looks like Dustin Hoffman. Short, homely-nice. He told me, “You can say anything to me, Zan, I just want to help you. Want to talk about what happened in school last week? Why you screamed, and all the rest?”
“Freaked out,” I said, to see if I could shock him. Couldn’t. “Because it all seemed so wrong,” I said. “The walls and the clock and—”
“Yes,” he said. “Go on.”
I didn’t know where to start. Except I did know, really. Start in the beginning, my sensible little voice told me. So I did. With the diary first. Then the rock. I got as far as the part about meeting Burrum and Sonte for the first time when I saw it in his face. Didn’t believe me. I stopped talking. What was the use?
“Any more?” he said. Super calm, as if I were explosive, and might go off BOOM! any moment.
I nodded. “Some.”
“You don’t have to tell me now, if you don’t want to. I want you
to be relaxed, feel at ease. We’ll talk about everything. We’ll work on this thing together. So you can feel good again and smile and have fun and do things girls your age do, and not be bothered by clocks and—”
“You don’t believe what I told you,” I said.
He pulled at his lip. He kept tugging at his lower lip the whole time. “You’re imaginative,” he said. “Imaginative people are often under a strain. A kind of special burden. Of course we all have fantasies, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But we have to recognize them as fantasies. Recognize the difference between fantasy and reality.”
Yes, Dr. Davenport, I hear you. But you didn’t hear me. Not even when I told you about the bark bag. About my locker key and knife which I don’t have anymore. You said these things could be explained. That I had lost them, probably, that day, which would be natural, being upset and so forth. That I had made the bark bag (yes, I did, Dr. Davenport!), but naturally that I had made it here in the park, under stress so that I didn’t remember doing it and instead had “integrated” it into my fantasy. You like those words. “Stress.” “Integrate.” “Fantasy.” “Reality.” You must have said them a dozen times each.
So, now we’ve met. And, as you said, we’ve gotten to know each other. And we both know the point of my going to you. To get my head screwed on straight so I’ll stop telling stories to Ivan in the middle of the night, stop screaming in school, stop saying things were different there when every sane and sensible person knows there is no there. There is only here. Here. Here, forever.
Nov. 5, Tuesday—session #2 with Dr. Davenport.
“You know, Zan, your family is very distressed about you. Your mother blames herself that she wasn’t more severe with your brother when he violated your confidences—”
“I didn’t confide in him,” I said.
“No, no, I meant when he read your diary. By the way, how do you feel about your brother? Are you jealous of him? Do you feel that the family pays more attention to him than to you?”
“No,” I said. “Not especially.”
“Well, how about telling me more about that day at school, or about this place you think you visited? Whatever you want. Let’s talk about things.”
So we talked. I tried to tell him that something real had happened. I told him that I was sure my mother noticed I was changed the day I came back.
“How’s that, Zan?” he said. I can’t help liking him. He leans toward me as if he really wants to know what I’m thinking.
“I was away almost a year,” I said. “If you knew me before, you’d know something was different, too.”
“A year changes people,” he agreed. I thought for a moment, Oh God, he’s going to listen to me. Then he went on, “But, Zan, you went nowhere in fact, only in your imagination. No time had passed. You yourself agreed it was the twelfth of October when you left your house, and—”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, Saturday, the twelfth of October.”
I’m to see Dr. D. twice a week. I’m to go to school, except if I feel too bad, then I don’t have to go. It’s odd how they all sort of tiptoe around me now, just because of one good scream. And yet none of them know what it meant, they really don’t know, and they can’t hear me when I try to tell them.
Nov. 12, Tuesday.
Had my fourth session with Dr. D. I’m getting the picture now. It’s like a game, isn’t it? I mean, school and the family and the whole thing with the doctor. It’s all a complicated game and everyone has a part to play. Trouble was, I stopped playing my part. So now they want to help me so I can be good and play the game the right way again. And stop upsetting people.
Almost every time, Dr. Davenport reminds me how my parents are worried about me. It’s true. Every day, Dad asks me, “How’re you feeling, honey? You okay?” He’s nice to me. Mom, too, of course, and Cici. Even Ivan, though he’s sort of embarrassed by my being nutsy.
Nov. 21, Thursday.
I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t write things down. Get them off my mind. Here I am in the park, sitting on my boulder, my fingers frozen, writing like some kind of nut. But I have to do it this way. Too worried that they’ll find stuff around the house, read it, and there goes that. Then they’d find out that I DO BELIEVE AND I ALWAYS WILL BELIEVE THAT I LIVED WITH THE PEOPLE.
So, no more diary under the mattress. Not for me. Too chancy. Sometimes I do write little things down on scraps of paper at home, but I’m really careful not to let any of them out of my possession. Mostly, I write here, not in school either because kids are always reading over your shoulder or snatching your papers. And when I get through writing, where does it go? That really bothered me for a while. Then I got the solution, and it was so simple and so funny, too, that every time I go to the bank I have to laugh. A safe-deposit box to hold my scribbles! Seven dollars for a year, less than one hour with Davenport costs my parents. I keep the two keys to my safe-deposit box right on the chain with my new locker key and my house keys. Mom noticed them the other night, and I said something vague about a gym locker and she seemed satisfied.
Nov. 28, Thursday.
Okay! I’m through. Through with Dr. Couch. Nine sessions and here I am, certified normal again. I thought he might want to stamp it on the back of my hand—NORMAL—in blue ink. I could show it every time Mom and Dad get that worried look in their eyes.
The last couple times I kept thinking, What’s going on here? Why am I sitting here talking to this nice man when he doesn’t believe a word of truth I tell him, and it’s costing my parents, besides. I couldn’t see that it was helping me, either. I knew he didn’t believe me from the first time, and I knew nothing I said was going to convince ME that I was super upset over my diary and had imagined the whole thing about the People. And the money bothered me. I heard Mom and Dad talking about taking out a loan. And they were doing some fighting over money, too, but trying not to let me hear.
So, today, when Dr. D. said to me, “You can help yourself, Zan. I’ve told you before, I’m not a Freudian, I don’t believe in looking for long-ago traumas. God knows we’ve all suffered them. I believe in helping people here and now. I want to help you feel better,” and, etc, etc, etc. I broke in and said, “I do feel better. I feel all better. I’m fine. I’m okay! I’m not going to do anything like that screaming thing again.”
He looked sort of surprised, then pleased, as if he hadn’t really thought he could bring it off. “And what about the caves?” he said in a kind of testing voice.
“I know now it was all my imagination,” I said, the way he wanted me to. “Because of the diary, the violation of my privacy. It freaked me out, I couldn’t handle it.”
He was nodding seriously, yes, yes, yes. I kept on telling him what he’d told me in these past weeks. “It kept working on me, I was really upset and I can see now that I made up the whole cave thing as a sort of escape—”
“Yes, I thought as much,” he said. “You know, the human brain is a fascinating mechanism!” He sounded really happy for a moment, then he got serious again and stood up and came around his desk and shook my hand, saying, “Zan, it’s been a pleasure. You’re a sensitive, imaginative person, and I hope you do something, someday, with that imagination. Now, if you start feeling like the walls are coming in on you, and I guess we all get those feelings, sometimes, then you feel free to call me up. Okay?”
“Okay, Dr. Davenport.” We shook hands again, and he walked to the door with me and squeezed my shoulder for a moment and then closed the door, and that was that.
So there we are. Zan is cured. Zan is normal. Hip, hip, hooray.
Dec. 17
Woke up this morning thinking about Burrum. I do that a lot. Think about Burrum and Sonte and all of them at night, and in the morning, too, when I wake up. I’m pretty good now about not letting them get into my mind during the day. Pretty good at smiling and talking and being “myself” again. That’s what they call it. “Zan’s herself,” they say. “Zan’s settled down.”
&n
bsp; Dec. 20
My period has started. I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, and I noticed a stain in my panties. Blood. The first instant I was nearly sick with fright. Any time I see blood now, even a scratch, the first thing that comes to me is Sonte. Then I realized what it was. And this marvelous feeling went right through me. I thought Wow, Zan, you made it! I started to laugh like an idiot really happy laughing. I felt so good I wanted to think of a million funny things to make me go on laughing. Instead, I thought of Burrum and the Sussuru, and it came to me that I’d have to make my own Sussuru. If I didn’t say or do anything, nobody would ever know except me, and there wouldn’t be any celebration.
So I called my mother. She came into the bathroom and closed the door. “Mom,” I said. “Guess what? I just started bleeding.”
“Bleeding!”
“My period,” I said. “Mom, my period.”
Her face got bright, kind of full of color, and she glanced toward the door, like she thought Ivan and Dad would overhear. But the next thing was, she hugged me. “Honey. You’re on your way to being a woman, now. And I guess I should talk to you about things.”
I hugged her back. “It’s okay, I know about things.” It felt so good to hug and to know she was happy for me that tears came into my eyes. And Mom saw them and got worried. “Now, Zan, now, honey, you promised us, you told me you wouldn’t take things so hard, so emotionally.”
“It’s okay, I’m just glad,” I said.
“You sure?” she said.
“Sure.”
Then she went out. So that was my Sussuru.
Feb. 18
Cici’s moving out. Everybody’s crying and carrying on. Cici says she has to have a place of her own, she can’t go on like this, it’s driving her crazy just looking after the kids and not having her own life, and lots of other stuff. Mom is worried about Cici living alone, and what will she do with Kim if she works (babysitter, Cici says), and will she (Mom) have to quit her job, too, because of Buddy. I’m going to get my bedroom back, which means privacy and a place to keep things, even something locked if I want it. But I don’t care. I don’t want Cici to go, either. She’s family. It makes me sick to think of Cici going. I get that screaming feeling in my head again. So I came out here to the park to sit on the rock and write with my clumsy mittened fingers. Write it out so it won’t hurt so much inside, so it won’t go round and round in my head.
Saturday, the Twelfth of October Page 20