by M Sawyer
“No, Nolin, they don’t do that anymore.” His words were reassuring, but he looked even more worried.
“Are you sure?”
“They won’t shock her.”
“Could you make sure?”
Nolin thought of The Bell Jar. Her stomach churned. She imagined her mother on a cold metal table with wires in her mouth, her body convulsing with electricity like Frankenstein’s monster.
“I’ll ask the doctor when I talk to him again.”
“How long will she be here?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned to Nolin, biting his bottom lip. “Nolin...” he started. He looked at his hands clasped in his lap. “I need you to promise me something. Promise you’ll be good. We can’t have any more fights. No more trips to the principal’s office or phone calls from teachers. It puts a lot of stress on your mom and me. It can’t happen again. Not now. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Two young nurses, one in dark-blue scrubs and the other in hot-pink, walked past them, laughing. Laughter sounded strange. All Nolin could think about was the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” crawling on her hands and knees, around and around the walls of her room until the wallpaper wore through.
“Can I see her?” Nolin asked.
“She’s asleep. She won’t know you’re there. You probably don’t want to see her right now anyway. She’s doesn’t look good.”
“I want to see her.”
He nodded, lips set in a tight line.
Nolin pushed herself off the chair and opened the door.
The shared room was bigger than she’d expected, full of hanging white curtains to shield the beds from one another. A medicinal odor stung her nose. The cacophony of clicks and beeps grew louder like a swarm of hornets.
Her mother was in the bed closest to the door, asleep. A half-moon of black stitches curved from the end of her eyebrow to her hairline and white bandages peeked out the neckline of her gown. Nolin had never seen anyone lie so still. Carefully, she placed her hand on her mother’s chest to feel for her faint heartbeat. She wanted to hold her hand, but she was afraid to hurt her blistered fingers. There was still blood caked under Melissa’s fingernails. Nolin’s stomach turned.
Nolin wondered if Melissa had any idea where she was, in that odd room full of white curtains and injured women, if she knew her skin was a hot, bubbling mess, or that she might forever have fingernail scars running down her limbs and torso. Nolin knew her mother was sick. Her mind had a disease the way hearts or livers or kidneys get diseases. Something dark grew in her mind like an invisible tumor.
Her mother truly believed something was wrong outside of that dark place in her head. Melissa’s eyes always widened with fear when she caught a glimpse out a window. Nightmares racked her sleep. Her mind never knew a moment’s peace.
Nolin gingerly touched the back of Melissa’s hand. It felt like a bad sunburn.
Could something in her head hurt her like this? Could her mother have seen something and believed in it so much that she hurt herself?
Outside the door, she heard her father grumbling. Something about supervision and “turn down that damn water heater.” Nolin knew he thought it was all in her head. His crazy burden of a wife that dragged him out of work when things went wrong, just like her daughter. Things were always going wrong with the two of them.
Another woman somewhere in the room cried softly. Nolin’s father called her from the hallway, sharply. Time to go. She gently touched her mother’s hand again.
“I promise I’ll be good.”
Chapter 11
NOLIN’S HEAD ACHED from concentrating all morning, not on schoolwork, but on keeping her fists to herself. Max sat behind her in class, poking a pencil between her shoulder blades.
She wanted to turn around and punch his teeth down his neck. No, she was being good.
“Hey, Shrimpy,” Max hissed. “Do you ever eat? Look at this bony chicken wing.” Jab jab in the shoulder. Nolin reached into her desk and fumbled for the purple stress ball Mr. Clark had given her the previous year. She squeezed until her hands ached.
What a great day for Mrs. Carson to change the seating arrangements. Nolin swore she was being tested, punished, or both. Maybe she’d ask Mrs. Carson for a change after their grammar lesson. She’d ignore the rolling eyes and exasperated lecture that would probably follow.
“Huuuuggghh!” Max said, pretending to vomit. “Pukey pukey.” Jab jab.
A tiny ball of wadded paper hit her ear. She breathed deeply through her nose and out through her mouth, the way her mother did when she tried to calm herself.
One, two, three...
Another wad of paper hit her neck.
Six, seven, eight...
Lunch was a welcome relief. When she reached the cafeteria she collapsed on the bench at the lunch table. Two blond girls at the other end glanced at her, whispered to each other, then moved to a table farther away. She might as well have had the plague for how she repelled people. The girls watched her from the other table, giggling to each other and mimicking Nolin’s way of hunching over her food like an animal protecting its cache. It might have bothered Nolin if she hadn’t been so used to it.
She chewed her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The door to the playground opened and closed as students left, letting in pockets of natural blue light that made Nolin’s heart flutter. She hadn’t seen the sky since she arrived five hours ago. The school had no windows.
“Can I sit here?”
She hadn’t heard him approach. Drew set his loaded lunch tray on the plastic table with a click and ambled onto the bench next to her.
“Why are you eating alone?”
She swallowed her bite of sandwich. “I always eat alone. I have the plague.”
Drew chuckled. “You do not.” He popped open his chocolate milk and sipped straight from the carton. “Are you not coming out to recess anymore?”
“Nope. I gave up recess for Lent.”
“Really? I didn’t know you were Catholic.”
“I’m not,” Nolin rolled her eyes, but her mouth curled into a smile. “I just decided to skip recess for a while, that’s all.”
“So you don’t get in a fight?”
Nolin took a big bite of her sandwich.
“I saw Max poking you all morning,” Drew said. “You should ask Mrs. Carson if you can change seats.”
Nolin shrugged. “I don’t want to make any more trouble than I already have.”
Drew stabbed his lasagna with his plastic fork, looking down at his tray through a web of thick, dark eyelashes. His hair was a little long and curled slightly at the ends. He looked extra skinny in his too-big Spider-Man tee shirt and worn jeans. “I had fun with you the other day.”
Nolin smiled. The sensation in her cheeks felt unfamiliar. “I did too. We should do that again sometime.” Drew nodded, then shoveled a massive bite into his mouth.
“You know,” he said once he’d swallowed, “you could play football with us at recess.”
“I don’t think your friends would like that.”
“It won’t be Max, just some kids from Mrs. Andrew’s class.”
Nolin looked up to see Max dumping his tray and laughing with his friends as they slipped out the door. Her hands tickled. He deserved to get punched. Her stomach jumped in horror at her own terrible thoughts.
“I think I’d better stay in,” she said. “Just to be safe.”
Chapter 12
MELISSA’S ROOM IN the psychiatric ward had a window. Small, double-paned, but at least she had a view of the courtyard garden behind the hospital. The rain had just stopped. Scarlet and lemon-yellow tulips in the flower beds reached to the empty clouds.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had looked out a window without panicking. Aside from the ride in the ambulance, she hadn’t been outside in months, maybe even years. For once, she wished she could open the window to let air into the stuffy room. She wanted to smell th
e rain, soak it in like the tulips. Her hands pressed on the glass to feel the coolness of the outside air. She thought of pushing the glass out, wondered if she was strong enough. She’d stand before the window-hole, nothing between her and the sky. Maybe she could fly if she really wanted to. What a strange feeling. So different from wanting to shrink until she disappeared.
“Mrs. Styre?” A young male nurse with a long neck and huge Adam’s apple poked his head into the room. “You have visitors.”
The tapping of two sets of feet—the light slap of flip-flops, the heavier fall of a man’s shoes on the tile floor. Every sound in this place echoed.
“Leave the door open,” the nurse told the visitors in a low voice. Melissa heard the soft shuffle of the nurse’s sneakers as he left. He’d be back. He would casually pace the hallway until the visit was over.
“Melissa,” Paul said. She could almost hear his heart beating. It was drowned out by gravity of the presence beside him.
“I brought you some things,” said Nolin.
Melissa looked away from the window. Nolin’s mass of hair was restrained into a ponytail. Tendrils shot out from the crown of her head like wire springs. Her slight body was that of a child, but her lovely face was oddly mature, with well-formed features devoid of childhood roundness. Her molded cheekbones swelled under her large green eyes, her chin pointed under a bow of full, pink lips, and her olive skin was smooth and glowing despite a green tinge that she’d never grown out of. Melissa sometimes had the sense her daughter was an adult trapped in a child’s body. Sometimes, Nolin surprised her with her innocence. How she could she be such a gentle creature at home, yet a violent one at school?
“What did you bring?”
Nolin opened a canvas bag she’d slung over her shoulder. “I drew this at school and thought you might like it.” Nolin handed Melissa a rolled-up piece of paper tied with a strand of blue yarn. Melissa took it and laid it on the bed without opening it.
Nolin’s lips twitched. “Um, I also have some of your books in case you get bored. I didn’t know what you’d feel like reading, so I brought a few options.” Nolin pulled out Melissa’s box set of the Chronicles of Narnia, her old copy of The Hobbit, and a volume of Emily Dickinson poems.
“Thank you,” Melissa said, her voice hollow.
Nolin’s shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. Something about her darkened like tinted glass, but Nolin immediately straightened herself. Whatever had changed about her disappeared instantly.
Melissa noticed shadows under Nolin’s eyes, faint purple streaks like strokes of watercolor. Maybe she wasn’t sleeping well. Melissa could empathize.
She turned back to the window.
Paul cleared his throat. “Nolin, why don’t you go check out the playroom for a few minutes?” A pause. Melissa felt that darkness again. Nolin’s disappointment, anger at being dismissed. She could almost smell it. The door opened, and the flip-flops slapped out of the room and down the hall, taking that little dark cloud with them. Melissa knew Nolin wasn’t stupid. She knew when she was being dismissed. Melissa felt a twinge of irritation at her husband.
“Melissa, what the hell?” Paul stomped to her side; Melissa turned around to face him. His gray eyes were bloodshot as if he hadn’t slept in days. He looked so different from when she’d met him. His hair was graying and thin; premature creases lined his forehead. The purple shadows under his eyes gave him a hollow look, like something had been removed from him. His eyes pleaded with her. He didn’t look angry, but desperate.
“Can’t you at least try? She’s your daughter!” he hissed. “You act like she’s some stranger or something.”
Melissa said nothing. What could she say? She couldn’t defend herself.
For ten years, Melissa felt like two people inside. The mother, the part that understood just how special Nolin was, how brilliant and caring and selfless she’d always been, and the darker side that couldn’t stand the sight of Nolin, that hated the pain she stirred up. Melissa hated this part of herself, the layer that lived on the surface. She didn’t know how to pull it back down.
“I know we didn’t plan on having a child,” Paul went on. “I know she’s different, but she’s trying to make you happy.”
“I know.”
“At least humor her, for hell’s sake! She works so hard to make you happy, and you just keep sinking and sinking and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do! What do you want from us?” He threw his hands off her shoulders and turned away, pacing with his palms clamped to the side of his head.
Melissa wrapped her arms around herself. “This isn’t about Nolin, is it, Paul?”
He pressed his forehead into the wall, his back heaving with his breath. He rubbed his temples and turned around.
“Paul, I know you work hard. I’m sorry. I just… can’t change.”
“Why not? You used to be fine. Accidents happen, but people adjust. So what’s wrong with you?”
Accident. People adjust. What’s wrong with you?
“Well? Hey, I’m talking to you.” He gripped her shoulders then released her when she flinched. Her skin was still burned and bandaged beneath her hospital gown. “I can’t hold this together anymore. Not by myself. I need your help.”
She should have been furious. She was a sick, frail woman. Her husband accused her of tearing the family apart, as if she were in control. Like she could help what she was doing.
But she knew he was right. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t change what she was. Her condition was carved into her bones. The hallucinations, the depression, the voices...it would never go away. She’d never escape the face that haunted her dreams, the tiniest corners of her waking hours.
She was prepared to die this way. She only wished her family didn’t have to suffer as well. Though she’d considered the way out, even daydreamed about it, she knew the act of saving her family would tear them apart.
Paul leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers. His face was damp with cold sweat. The sharp smell invigorated her, inspired something she’d thought was completely buried. She pressed her lips together. Her arms itched to throw themselves around his neck. Maybe for a moment, they could be a normal couple, comfort each other, figure things out together like a husband and a wife should. They’d always pulled their yoke in opposite directions. Maybe once, just for a minute, they could act together.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Paul squeezed his eyes shut. “Please,” he said. “I need a wife. Nolin needs a mother. We both need you.”
What did they really need? A wife and mother, or a release from the burden of her?
“Bring Nolin by tomorrow,” she said. “I need to sleep now, though. My meds...they make me tired.”
Paul sighed and kissed her forehead, probably knowing she just wanted the conversation to end. He pulled her into his chest for a brief embrace, then turned and left the room.
The bag of Nolin’s gifts rested on the flimsy pillow. The beige canvas was decorated with a swirling circle design in green and brown fabric paint, like the ring of a tree. Nolin must have decorated it at school.
Melissa unrolled a colored-pencil drawing of a willow tree. Scratchy green strokes formed leafy vines that swayed in the invisible breeze, and subtle stokes of crimson breathed dimension into the dark green leaves. Deep blue in the bark of the trunk brought out the texture. Nolin’s drawing skills impressed her. How had she learned? Melissa sure hadn’t taught her. She placed the drawing on the bedside table where it slid back into a loose roll.
She’d never known Nolin was so creative. She didn’t know her at all.
Melissa looked through the novels, eager for a distraction. She selected The Hobbit and opened the stiff cover.
Her veins froze like tiny icicles up and down her body. Her fingers twitched, confused by the fumbled signals from her panicked brain. She wanted to slap the book closed and fling it across the room, and to press her hand to the page, close to the hand that had been ther
e.
On the first page was a torn slip of paper. It was streaked with dirt and bore scrawled, lilting handwriting. Melissa’s stomach dropped out. She clamped a hand to her open mouth to stifle a cry.
you never tried to find me
Chapter 13
A SPIDER SCUTTLED across the bedroom ceiling. Nolin could almost hear each tiny footfall as it moved in a zigzag pattern like a skier on a slope. Though the spring breeze from the window was cool, the roots of her hair were damp with sweat. Her clothes stuck to her back and the bottoms of her legs, and she’d kicked her covers into a wad at the foot of the mattress. Her breath felt hot and sour in her throat. She didn’t move, but watched the spider progress across the white ceiling.
She floated in the limbo between dreaming and waking, where she didn’t realize she was hot and sticky, or that the tiny dot she watched was a spider and not a comet or a fleck on the inside of her eyelids.
Groaning, she sat up. Her head felt like an overfilled water balloon. She rubbed her eyes and her tongue unstuck from the roof of her mouth like Velcro.
Water.
She stumbled to the door. Why was she so groggy? Was she sick? She didn’t remember ever being sick. She blinked sleep from her eyes and raised a palm to her forehead. Hot.
The door creaked as it opened. The yellow night-light flickered in the hallway. Brighter light from downstairs illuminated the stairway; her father was already up. Maybe he couldn’t sleep again, like her, and had gone downstairs to make tea. She tiptoed to the top of the stairs.
Then she heard her father’s voice, just above a whisper. She could hear him if she held her breath.
“I can’t leave.”
Nolin froze. Was there someone else downstairs?
No, no voice answered him. He must be on the phone. Why would he be on the phone in the middle of the night? She crouched at the top of the stairs, sheltered in the shadows, and peered downstairs.
Her father sat at the bar in his rumpled work shirt with his back to her. His head rested in his hand with his elbow propped on the counter, cell phone held to his ear.