A Vision of Fire

by Gillian Anderson

  She handed the pad back to Mrs. Pawar and after helping Maanik to the rug, she stood. Maanik was finally, thankfully still but Caitlin realized she herself was trembling. She placed her hands on her knees and took a long, deep breath before straightening.

  “Is it over?” Mrs. Pawar asked in a ragged voice.

  “I don’t know,” Caitlin said quietly, her head still spinning. “May I have a glass of water?”

  Jack London slunk out from behind the curtains. Dragging his belly on the ground, he slithered toward his young mistress. Suddenly the beagle lurched forward, seizing Maanik’s right sleeve and pulling with all of his strength. Maanik’s body jerked, her jaw opened, and with her eyes closed, she began to scream. This time there was sound.

  Caitlin grabbed Jack London, tried to wedge a finger in his jaw to get him to release Maanik’s sleeve.

  “What is happening now?” Mrs. Pawar cried. “Maanik!”

  “Mrs. Pawar, I need your permission to put Maanik under deep hypnosis.”

  The girl’s mother seemed entranced. Caitlin didn’t know if she’d even heard her.

  “Mrs. Pawar!”

  The woman blinked, looked at Caitlin. “Yes?”

  “Your daughter is in crisis. She must be stabilized.”

  “I understand. What . . . what about Dr. Deshpande’s medications?”

  “I said stabilize her, not bludgeon her. I want to employ depth hypnosis, Mrs. Pawar.”

  “I see. I—I will ask my husband.”

  “No time!” Caitlin insisted.

  The woman nodded. “I will just send him a text now.” With unsteady hands she pulled her cell phone from a pocket in her sari and typed.

  Caitlin finally managed to separate the beagle’s jaws from Maanik’s sleeve. He didn’t bite her but he did bark. “Is there somewhere you can put him?”

  “His crate,” Mrs. Pawar said as she stopped texting and took the dog. He struggled to get out of her hands as they left the room.

  Caitlin crouched on the floor next to Maanik. The girl’s screams were relentless, each one weighted with deep sobs. Her hands were motioning in a peculiar way—not scratching, not writing, more as if she were pulling things off shelves frantically. Somehow in the breaths between cries, she was murmuring something, and Caitlin leaned close to catch it. It sounded like “null zee.”

  Mrs. Pawar shuffled back into the room with the requested glass of water.

  “Thank you,” Caitlin said, then drained the glass. She was perspiring and didn’t want to dehydrate.

  “I have not heard back from my husband,” Mrs. Pawar said.

  “We can’t wait for the ambassador. I have to do something before she hurts herself. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Caitlin leaped up and dug in her purse for her phone. She set it to video and placed it on a pile of books, framing Maanik’s head and torso. She double-checked the positioning, then tapped record.

  “What—what are you doing?” Mrs. Pawar asked.

  Caitlin gently hushed the woman and motioned for her to sit back as she knelt beside the girl. “Maanik, remember the large television screen I told you about? It’s there right in front of you.”

  Caitlin guided the girl through the same steps of hypnosis as before and she was just as responsive. At eight she became heavy and tired and her eyes shut, but at five Caitlin did not tell her to sleep. Instead she asked Maanik to raise her right arm in the air and wiggle the smallest finger. The girl calmly complied.

  “That’s very good, Maanik. You’re doing great. You’re taking care of yourself by letting me help you. Now I’m going to make some suggestions and ask some questions and you do what feels right for you, okay? If anything I’m saying doesn’t feel right, you just let it go, don’t bother with it.” Caitlin waited for her to process the instructions, then said, “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

  Immediately Maanik said, “I’m fine, I guess.”

  Mrs. Pawar gasped from across the room.

  Caitlin was equally startled. She had not yet heard Maanik talk as a normal teenager. It was disconcerting but profoundly hopeful.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling fine. I’m going to ask you to picture a place that makes you happy. Imagine that you’re there—”

  “I don’t have to imagine it,” Maanik interrupted. “I’m there.”

  She had the classic teenager tone of, Why are adults such idiots? In this case, she might have been right. Caitlin was surprised by the response, but she went with it.

  “That’s great, Maanik. Where are you?”

  “I’m home,” she said, as if it were obvious. Then she said, “Oh, hi.” By the change in her tone it was clear she wasn’t speaking to Caitlin. “Hi, baby,” she cooed.

  “Are you saying hello to Jack London now?” Caitlin asked.

  “Who’s Jack London?”

  Mrs. Pawar sat heavily in a chair, as if her legs had given out.

  “Maanik, you can stay at home, you don’t have to imagine anything else or go anywhere. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “All right. I’m just going to ask you for a favor, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maanik, do you know that you’ve been having trouble lately? You’ve been very disturbed sometimes?”

  “Yes, I know I’ve been screaming. I can feel it in my throat and my sides hurt. My arms hurt, too. Not hurt, actually—ache.”

  “Well, I’m going to ask you to respond to a cue in the future, a signal. The cue will be when someone says the word ‘blackberries’ and touches your ear.”

  “Which ear?” Maanik asked.

  At least her cognitive functions were clear and focused—sharper than Caitlin’s. “Either ear. Does that cue sound all right to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So when anyone says ‘blackberries’ and touches your ear, you will respond by calming down, just like when I’m talking to you about the television screen and counting backward. Any other time you hear the word ‘blackberries’ it just means ‘blackberries.’ Is that clear?”

  “Okay, fine,” Maanik agreed. Then she cooed to whatever was not Jack London.

  Caitlin knew that a posthypnotic suggestion of this caliber was a much bigger step than the one she had discussed with the ambassador, but she felt sure she could convince him of the necessity. They needed a kill switch for all of the behavior, not just the scratching.

  “Thank you, Maanik. Now tell me a little about your home.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What are you seeing? Who is your baby?”

  “That’s my little guy,” she cooed, smiling. “He’s licking my hands. And”—her eyes moved under her closed eyelids—“there are the trees next to the door, I’m coming back from the hot pool, it’s nighttime, there’s some thokang down by us but high up the stars are out—”

  “There’s some what down by you?”

  “Wow, the stars are so beautiful tonight. There are so many of them!” The smile became almost blissful. “Khasaa.”

  Caitlin decided that keeping the flow going was more important than backtracking for every detail. “Your little guy, he met you outside of your house?”

  “Yes, he slithered up from the water as he always does.”

  “What does your little guy look like?”

  “Like thyodularasi,” Maanik burbled in a duh tone. She was speaking so quickly now that Caitlin couldn’t follow. It took a moment for her to realize that speed wasn’t the problem.

  “Maanik, can you use English words for me?”

  But the girl kept pattering in gibberish. She had begun to move her arms again, not frantically this time but in wide motions that didn’t seem to resemble anything. Caitlin thought of Jacob waggling his arms like a squid. Was Maanik just be
ing playful?

  Suddenly the girl sat up and her eyes snapped open as she craned to look up at the ceiling. Her speech sped up, as did her arm movements, except that her right hand was drifting toward the left, as if she wanted to scratch.

  Caitlin put her hands on her shoulders. “Maanik, tell me what you see in the sky.”

  The patter came faster now. Caitlin glanced questioningly at Mrs. Pawar, who looked like the sins of the world were written on her daughter’s face. Mrs. Pawar understood Caitlin’s glance but shook her head—the words weren’t Hindi. But there’s something Asiatic about them, Caitlin thought, yet not. If only Ben were here . . . And then Maanik was shouting at the sky, pushing up at it, and slapping her arms, trying to scratch through the gauze.

  “Maanik, English, please! Tell me what’s happening!” she yelled as she tried unsuccessfully to prevent the girl’s hands from making contact.

  Maanik started to scream again. Her whole body slammed down onto the floor as she bucked and thrashed, and suddenly from nowhere Caitlin felt like she was grabbed and thrown across the room.

  CHAPTER 8

  Caitlin was thrown back into a wall, and the breath was knocked from her. Her arms felt weak as water as she tried to prop herself up.

  If this is a personality split, she thought, please let increased strength not be part of it!

  Caitlin jerked herself onto her knees and reached out through Maanik’s flailing arms to touch her left ear. “Blackberries,” she said.

  The girl’s hands dropped. She took a violent, deep breath, as if she might scream to the heavens, and then exhaled slowly, until the in-breath came and a natural quiet rhythm took hold. Within seconds, Caitlin heard the soft deep breaths of sleep.

  After lifting Maanik onto her bed, Caitlin and Mrs. Pawar left the girl to rest and retired to the living room, where Kamala had made tea.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to wait a few more minutes, make sure everything is all right,” Caitlin said.

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Pawar as she sat in an armchair. “I am sorry to take you from your work.”

  “This is my work,” Caitlin said.

  Mrs. Pawar smiled, but only briefly. “What’s wrong with my daughter?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Caitlin admitted. “But we’re going to find out.”

  “We did the right thing? Just now?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The older woman sipped her tea. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our family.”

  “I was about to ask, Mrs. Pawar—were there ever rumors or whispers, about an aunt, a grandparent, a cousin?”

  “Whispers?”

  “Their mind, their behavior, habits—anything. I understand there would have been a reticence to discuss it.”

  The woman shook her head and looked down. “We do not speak of such things, but one knows. There was nothing.”

  Caitlin believed her.

  “Mrs. Pawar, I understand that you must keep this matter quiet. But if your daughter continues to have episodes you’re going to have to get her to a clinic for tests. She might have hit her head during the assassination attempt—”

  “The school nurse checked her, said there was nothing.”

  “There are conditions an MRI or CT scan can explore that a doctor cannot. I already mentioned this to Dr. Deshpande, and you may need to be a little more aggressive . . .”

  “I see,” the woman said helplessly.

  “Surely your husband won’t object if it’s necessary.”

  Mrs. Pawar regarded her. It was a look that told Caitlin: Yes. At this moment, given the Kashmir situation, he might resist.

  Jack London, released from his crate by the housekeeper, made the rounds, sniffing at their feet.

  “She seems so vulnerable, so fragile,” said Mrs. Pawar, “so unlike herself.”

  “She’s stronger than you think, and she’s not alone in this,” Caitlin said. “Whatever’s going on, if she shows any unusual signs of unrest, remember what to do: you touch her ear . . .”

  The woman nodded, more to reassure herself than anything, but Caitlin left the Pawars’ apartment with a knot in her stomach.

  During the cab ride back, she called her office to tell her receptionist that she would keep her eleven thirty. Then she texted Ben: Some progress today, I’ll call u tonight. Send me ur most secure email address.

  There was no immediate response, but she wasn’t expecting one. He would be at the talks. She watched the news crawl on the TV monitor in the backseat of the cab. The tensions between India and Pakistan were being described as “volatile,” with more troops being moved to the borders. The United States ambassador’s proposal for a demilitarized zone between the nations had been met with derision in India, whose pundits pointed out that Pakistan could not even establish a de-terrorized zone within its own borders. Meanwhile the local news reported that in Queens, fistfights were erupting among Indian and Pakistani neighbors. Police presence in the subways had tripled, and the emergency management department had been quietly checking on the state of the city’s old fallout shelters as potential neighborhood command centers. Nor was New York alone in its anxiety; across the nation survivalist and prepper groups had replenished their stocks of ammunition, causing a shortage, and disappeared off the grid. An Internet questionnaire called “If This Is the End, I Will . . .” had gone viral.

  Caitlin turned the screen off and spent the rest of the cab ride in uncomfortable silence. It seemed that war fears rode the air with their own wireless source: people. Maanik and her mother had given them a personal face for Caitlin.

  It was with a great sense of relief that Caitlin walked into her top-floor office on West Fifty-Eighth Street. She experienced such a sudden feeling of comfort that there was almost an audible click. After going through her routine—coffee on the thumbprint coaster Jacob made when he was five, purse in the lowest desk drawer, phone in the top drawer and muted, coat on the hanger behind the door—Caitlin reviewed her schedule, but her mind kept shifting back to Maanik.

  A diagnosis of schizophrenia was premature and sketchy, since schizophrenics understood that there was a “them” and a “me.” Maanik had no “me” during her episodes, at least not the “me” she’d been for sixteen years. But a diagnosis of dissociative identity ­disorder—a split personality—wasn’t accurate either because multiple personalities rarely had delusions. They lived in the real world. Maanik was obviously reacting to something that wasn’t there. A form of petit mal or grand mal was a possibility, yet sufferers would not respond to hypnosis the way Maanik had.

  One size did not fit all here. What was Caitlin missing?

  She wanted to see the girl when she wasn’t experiencing the cycle of behaviors. Even watching her quietly eat dinner would help Caitlin establish a baseline and get a firsthand sense of who she was.

  Give it a rest, Caitlin told herself. She had never healed anybody on day one, and besides, lingering over one case was a poor way to greet another. Her eleven thirty appointment would be arriving in about ten minutes and she felt the relief of . . . not normality, there was no such thing, but of having an established therapeutic history and many more months to devote to the work. Neither of these essentials was available with Maanik.

  Why was she so different from any kid Caitlin had ever seen?

  She had a sudden inspiration to search for her online, to see if there were any videos of her before the assassination. She kicked herself for not thinking of it before. She expected the Pawars to keep something of a lock on her public persona; the daughter of a diplomat had to have a strong concept of privacy. But there were several videos on her school website of Maanik engaging in debates as part of their Model UN. Caitlin clicked on one and noticed immediately how sure the girl was of herself. She certainly was not faking extroversion, which made these repeated inward collapses even st
ranger. In another video, Maanik was starring as the fiancée of an eccentric British aristocrat in a school play; at one point she gestured excessively and intoned, “I’m not diseased. I’m mismanaged.” Maanik rolled her eyes and the line got a huge laugh from the audience.

  She seemed utterly normal, entirely comfortable in her own skin, impressively so. There were none of the tics or hints of darkness that shrouded most of the kids Caitlin saw. Could the assassination attempt have done so much damage? If her father had died or been wounded, yes. If her mother had suffered some kind of collapse, perhaps. But those severe triggers did not exist here. The reaction simply was not proportionate. Caitlin needed to think this through further but her eleven thirty was knocking on the door.

  Hours later, after five more appointments and two conference calls, it was time to pick up Jacob. She could tell as she approached the front door of her building that the temperature outside had dropped considerably. She snuggled into her coat collar and caught herself humming “Let It Snow.” As she stepped outside her humming stopped and she suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. It ran up her backbone and tickled out along her shoulder blades like a small animal. Instinctively, she moved closer to the wall, stood still, and looked around.

  What the hell?

  Her heart was thumping harder; her breaths grew shorter. There seemed to be a cold wind against her arms but there was no motion in her sleeves. She had goose bumps.

  Get a grip, she told herself.

  She saw people picking up their cars from the garage across the street, a smoker by a tree in the tiny park on top of the garage, a group of college students hurrying by her, but nothing to explain the chill that remained. She felt exposed, pinned there as though these other people existed on another plane and she was alone. Or nearly so.

  There was also an unsettling sense of being watched. It was not a flash of exposure, like walking in front of a tourist taking videos.

  Barbara was right, she thought. She was so deep in other peoples’ issues she had lost her own protective skin.

  A burst of greetings startled her as students from the Roosevelt Hospital day program hustled out of the building and enfolded her in their group. Caitlin walked to the subway with them, pushing the noise and shapes of the city away, but not the creeping chill that danced along her spine.