by Cyndy Etler
“So my mother’s hus—I mean, my stepfather heard me open the dryer, and he ran at me. And I ran too, but I ran the wrong way. I ran into the bathroom. I trapped myself.”
As I’m telling the story, I’m back there. I’m feeling it happen, way more than I did when it actually happened. The cold toilet edge digs into my leg; the walls box me into place. The heat of my tears, the hate of my voice, the rip of his fist. The fight for who gets control of my z-z. Him or me. And the nothing, the nothing, of my mother.
I don’t know what my words are, exactly, but I’m telling them what happened in the Monroe bathroom that night. And when I was little, in the Stamford bathroom, with Vaseline. I’m standing here in this mongoloid warehouse room, sobbing. I haven’t told anyone what Jacque does to me. And now I’m telling hundreds of people, girls and boys. I look up at Scott and he’s looking back at me, that same priest-sweet way he did when I first got here.
“Done?” he asks.
I nod and collapse, my hands all over my face. And my group lifts me up with a “LOVE YA, CYNDY!”—so huge, it starts to fix me. They were with me just now in the bathroom. They understand what happened to me, and they love me. They all just said so. This is like, my do-over. That was the past. I got it out, and they understand, and they love me. And now, I’m okay.
The whish of my arms is drying my tears as I go hard, motivating. Every cell in my body knows that I’m swishing myself up and out. Out of those bathrooms, and out of this place. Any second now I’ll be flying. Watch.
26
NO TALKING OUT TO PARENTS IN OPEN MEETING EXCEPT FOR SAYING “I LOVE YOU”
Because it’s Friday night, our blood is moving fast through our veins. Friday night means getting to report concerns on people. And showing your parents, in open meeting, how much you’ve changed. And getting in people’s faces in review. You know that lightning ball that zips through your fingers when you break a thermometer? That’s what we’ve got for blood.
The fever got really hot in open meeting. Because I got honest with my drug list, I was chosen to do my introduction. And let me tell you, standing there in my big velour pants and my Chico shirt, booming through a microphone that “I’m Cyndy, I’m fourteen, and I do believe I’m a druggie!” felt great. Even though I don’t believe that, saying what they want me to feels great. Like joining a big club, taking a blood oath with my group.
Now we are One. Forever.
When my mother got the mic after my introduction, it set the room on fire. She stood up, her and my—my stepfather—and she cried, “My daughter’s back!”
I swelled with pride like that blueberry girl in Willy Wonka, because I knew exactly what my mother was saying: staff told her I don’t belong in here. She’s signing me out tonight! I screamed right back at her.
“LOVE YA, MOM! LOVE YA, DAD!”
And then everyone got the fever. Me, the group, the parents—we were exploding with it.
That was three hours ago. Now they’re pulling the wall closed again, blocking our view of our parents. I’m doing a really good job of not turning around to find my mother in the crowd, because no eye games with parents. Instead, I put my hand up in a C above my lap.
Even though I put in for talk, and I think I earned talk, I got nothing again tonight. But why should I care? In four more hours, I’ll be ancient history! Besides, I’m getting back at Sandy for saying I deserve nothing on my progress report. I’m putting in a concern on her. It’s perfect. I don’t even know how I came up with it.
The fifth-phaser’s squeezing herself in next to me, and I’m leaning close to her face, and it feels better than a stupid talk would’ve, anyway. It feels like it’s just her and me, on the right side, together.
“I have a concern about my oldcomer,” I breathe into her ear, behind the wall of my fingers. “It’s Sandy G.?”
“Okay,” she breathes back.
She tips her pencil over her pad.
“She talked behind backs to me.”
“She did?”
The fifth-phaser’s face is a millimeter from mine. Her eyes are big as clocks.
“Yeah, she did. She talked behind backs about one of the newcomers she had, before me. She said the newcomer had gotten honest in her M.I.—the M.I. was about how she’d had sex with her brother before Straight—but Sandy never reported it.”
“Oh, my God. This is like a double concern: she talked behind backs and she didn’t report her newcomer’s F.O.S. up the chain of command. This is really good, Cyndy.”
The fifth-phaser’s words make me feel perfect.
“Great job, Cyndy,” she says again. She’s, like, the sun and the rain as she pats me on the shoulder before standing and moving away.
And my arms are up, and I’m punching air like a prizefighter. God, does this feel right. I’m leaving this place on a high.
The accordion wall is zipping partway open, letting back in the flood of talkers. Because we want the parents to hear happy, singing druggies, we’re doing a new song: “Little Bunny Foo Foo.” I don’t know this one yet, so I’m just moving my mouth, listening and watching as the group goes nuts.
Little bunny FOO FOO!
Peace signs fly up behind heads to make ears. Fingers curl down twice for Foo Foo.
Hoppin’ through the FO-REST!
Fists go pounding down thighs.
Scoopin’ up the FIELD MICE!
Hands scoop the air above thighs.
And BOPPIN’ ’em on the HEAD!
Now everybody’s really having a blast, taking their scoop-shaped right hand and banging it over their left fist. I mean, BAM!
The words are pretty simple, so I sing it with them the next time around. And I get it. The smacking ourselves. It feels. Fucking. Great. We sing it four more times and I’m screaming, loud as anyone. I’m a part of this group! We’re alive! And we’re gonna do something tonight! Let’s fucking go!
We motivate like crazy to choose our next song, but someone behind the group is going even crazier. His finger snapping and gzshing noises are so loud, we all drop our hands and turn and look back at him. It’s this fifth-phaser, except he’s on a setback. He’s belt looped by an oldcomer, being walked back from his talk. And even though we all stopped motivating, he’s still going, jumping three feet off the ground. The oldcomer’s hand goes along for the ride in his pants.
I turn back to the barstools and see Lucy and Matt King wearing Skeletor grins. Matt does the tiniest finger flick, right to left, and the accordion wall is rumbled shut so fast, I duck my head. The second the latch clicks, Bang! Matt calls on the kid.
“John P.!”
John P. drags the oldcomer behind him as he roils toward the girls’ side, toward my sun-and-rain fifth-phaser. Who’s also his sister. She’s frozen at the edge of the chairs, but the other fifth-phasers aren’t. They move out and around her, a teenage barricade between her and the guarded doors. Three minutes ago she was taking my concern; now she’s practically got a hand in her pants. With the flick of a finger, she dropped from the top to the bottom.
Her brother doesn’t speak. He sprays. “I knew it! I heard it said in fifth-phasers/staff rap that you were needed for one-on-one, and I knew it wasn’t related to group! I knew there were inappropriate feelings! And now our parents tell me that while I’ve been on setback, you’ve talked on the phone? I cannot believe how full of shit you are!”
She’s not the sun anymore. She’s not the rain. She’s an unwatered plant, shriveled and dying. Because of no talking behind backs, I can’t understand exactly what her brother is saying she did. But I can tell she did it. Whatever he’s accusing her of, she’s totally guilty. I throw my hands up and motivate because I’m so mad—I trusted her! She’s a fifth-phaser! We’re gonna get ’er!
Sam Lancer grabs her by the belt loop and starts dragging her toward the bull’s-eye. Another fifth-phaser is taking the conce
rn notebook and pencil from her hand. The group is going nuts, and Matt King is laughing.
“Stop!” he shouts.
We put our hands down and watch as he slowly, sloooowly walks over to the girl, dragging his eyes up and down her body as he moves.
“So,” he goes. “You got a crush on staff?”
The whole group gasps—you can hear it. It’s the same sound as when you vacuum up your mother’s best earring. Fww-uck! Matt’s so close now, he could do spit therapy. But instead, he gets quieter. We all stretch forward to hear what he’s saying.
“And not only did you get a crush on staff, but you get a crush on staff that slips? On staff that’s goin’ back to drinkin’ and druggin’?”
John P. is motivating again, and so are some other kids, including me. Oh my God, we’re gonna get ’er! This is the best concern we’ve ever—but Matt just keeps going.
“And then! You talk to druggie staff on the phone?!”
The group is an earthquake. Nothing, nobody is still.
Except my fifth-phaser. She’s so still, she’s not breathing. She’s in shock. I know because that’s how I was last Friday, in my first review. But this time, the beast isn’t after me. This time, I’m part of the beast. This time is actually fun.
“Nah, put yer hands down,” Matt says.
He says it wicked quiet, but somehow we all hear him. And we all obey.
“You know what you did,” he says to the girl who used to be a fifth-phaser. “You don’t need this group to tell you.” Still standing three inches in front of her, he looks over at her brother. “Nice work.” He does that same finger flick, but this time, it’s left to right. “Get back on the side of group. Yer setback’s over.”
Then he looks back at her, searching for the best spot for the knife. “How long you been on your phases?”
“Twenty-one months,” she tells her shoes.
“Twenty-one months! And you didn’t know not to talk to druggie staff on the phone? After twenty-one months? Goodness! I bet even a spanking-new newcomer knows better than that!”
Nodding my head yes, I lift my arms up to agree with him, but Matt shakes his head at me, his eyebrows mean. My stomach flips. Okay, no motivating when staff’s talking.
“Twenty-one months. And on staff’s list for seventh-stepping next week! You were one week away from being out of here. Dang. Smooth move, ex-lax. You’re started over. Day one newcomer. Hope that phone call was worth it. Have a seat.”
She’s slammed down into the bull’s-eye with the longest, meanest “Loooooooove ya!” ever. And we, the group, the beast, we go psycho. We smelled blood, and now we want more.
The boys’ and girls’ sides never got sent to our separate corners, so I’m seeing how the guys bust ass. They’re sick! One tall, skinny kid is motivating with his head leaned back and his chest pushed out, like a foxy momma jutting her tits so you’ll notice them. Another dude has his right fist plunging in a Nazi salute while his left fist whips in a circle. His teeth are clenched in a grid; he’s in glorious pain. Since you’ve never been in group, you wouldn’t understand it. But we do. We do.
Both sides of group are ballistic now. The whole room is raging. And Lucy and Matt are sitting, dead calm, on the barstools. They’re cool as Moses, walking through the raging Red Sea. Then Lucy lifts a hand and snaps her fingers. And we all drop. Done. Silent.
“We’re gonna do something new tonight, gang. Y’all are so fired up, it’s gonna be a co-ed review. So what’re you waiting for? Go ahead! Bust yer asses! Who wants to talk to this group?”
Raaaaaahhhhrrrr! we scream back at her, but not with our mouths. We scream with our arms, our legs, our fingers, our bellies, our hair. People are spinning up out of their seats and balancing in thin air, with their knees just barely bent, so they’re not officially standing up with nobody holding their belt loop. They churn the air with their fists for a split second before crash, gravity wins, and their tailbone meets blue plastic. Chairs are coming unlinked and the floor tiles are a Slip’N Slide of sweat.
“You guys are lame!” Lucy screams. “Lame! We had to wheel out garbage barrels for phasers’ puke during bust-ass raps in St. Pete. But you guys aren’t even breathing heavy! What a bunch of fucking pussies!”
We crank the volume hard, to prove that we’re no pussies. I’m a human jackhammer, begging to be called on, to shoot to my feet and howl. To throw my head back and rip my throat open and scream out the hell, the power, the thank you! to this group for making me feel so good. So strong. So part of something. I’ve never felt so much a part.
That’s when I have my very first punch. My virgin fucking punch. I’m spinning my fists over my head when crack! My fist is kicked back, hard, by someone’s skull.
Oooooh! Fuck you, I’m gonna getcha!
Plugged in, mega-volt, I thwack. Every and any arm, chest, or head that’s around me, I crack it with my fists. And I get cracked. And I slip in our cocktail of floor sweat. I bang down onto my kneecaps, and jerk back into my seat. I thwack and I plunge and I crack.
A boy is stood up and blasted for being a whiny baby during exercise rap. He gets diaper therapy. He’ll have to wear giant Pampers in group, nothing else. A girl is stood up for wasting her host home’s shampoo and toothpaste. She gets T.P. therapy. Her oldcomer will hand her three squares when she poops, and that’s all the T.P. she’ll get.
And it’s good, it’s good, it’s good. We’re motivating, tasting each other’s blood, and it’s so good. Because when you’re busting ass, you’re flying. You’re strong, you’re safe. When another kid gets blasted, it’s not you. We’re busting our asses for Matt and Lucy and we’re gonna get ’em, someone, whoever gets stood up next. The sweat and the spit are flinging off our teeth and nails and—
“Cyndy Etlerrrrrrr!”
—and my stomach drops, like the earth disappeared from underneath me. Like I’m in that carnival ride, that giant tube you press your back against and it starts spinning, harder and faster, and the floor drops away and you spinspinspin hardfasthard and you’re pancaked on the wall and there’s no floor underneath you and you scream and you scream and you scream but there’s no mommy.
I stand.
“Why’d your father touch you, Cyndy?”
Lucy’s wearing her Satan smile.
“Whaddaya mean? I mean—”
The walls and the hands, everything is spinning around me.
“What did you do, Cyndy?” Lucy jabs.
“I—I mean, I closed my eyes, and I talked to God. I—”
“What’d she do, group?”
Raaahhrr! goes the beast.
The Nazi salute guy jumps up. “You little shit!” he goes, shoving boy-chairs out of his way. Oh my God, he’s coming to the girls’ side! He’s coming to get me! He’s so close, he could be kissing me, but he’s not. He’s screaming in my face.
“I couldn’t wait to call you out when you were whining! What did you do to make your father bring you to that bathroom? What flirty shit did you do to make him get the Vaseline? Or should we guess? A full of shit druggie slut like you—”
Lucy cuts him off. “Okay, back to the boys’ side! Thank you! Neeeeeext!”
Next is my demoted fifth-phaser. She loved me for my concern, now she’s screaming at me from the bull’s-eye.
“This isn’t about your parents! This is about you! Whatever he did, you brought it on yourself! Just like I did, to get this setback! You really think you can fool this group?”
“Thank you, newcomer,” Scott cuts her off. “Cyndy, I hope you heard what she said. You’re never going to get anywhere with this group while you’re blaming everyone else. You better get honest—not only with your drug list, but with yourself.”
But I—but I got honest. I can’t get any more honest. What else do they want me to do?
I thought I asked that out loud,
but Lucy doesn’t hear me. She picks up where Scott left off.
“You can relate again when you’re being honest. ’Til then, have a seat.”
Lucy’s words are like Joanna’s doorbell. They go from high to low, with a period after each one.
Have.
A.
Seat.
It’s the fall of the guillotine, a death sentence. A short, hard shove off the edge of the world.
27
NO SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE OR 98 ROCK FM
It never feels right when I have to be here in the front office, sitting in actual sunlight with the runner badge on. God. For the past sixteen months I’ve basically only seen those few seconds of sunlight a day, racing from the car to the building. By the time we leave, it’s dark out again.
I have to turn away when someone opens the smoked-glass office doors, because the world on the other side of them is terrifying. Cars and people and buses and a trillion other things that could take you straight back to drinking and drugging. And they all blaze like flashing DANGER signs in the light of the sun. At least it’s winter sun. How am I gonna deal in, like, June?
But I can’t think about that. By June, they will have seven-stepped me. So I won’t be a Straightling anymore; I’ll be a Straight “graduate.” But like…leaving Straight, and living back at my mother’s house? Not reporting to the building every day? Going back to my druggie high school? No way. I can’t even think it. I will freak right out.
I’ll think about the date, instead. It’s March. March 27, 1987. The runner has to always know the date. What if executive staff asked me the date for somebody’s intake paperwork? March 27, ’87. March 27, ’87.
That’s a good head-chant too. I can use it instead of the Odd Couple song. I guess non-Straightlings don’t need a head-chant, ’cause they don’t need to block druggie music from their thoughts. Or if they do, they haven’t gotten honest with themselves about it yet. For me, though, when I’m not in group, I have to sing the Odd Couple song in my head nonstop. I’m such a druggie that if I didn’t, all my druggie music would take back over my mind. I’ve tried and tried to let go of it, but still. The second I quit my head-chant, the druggie music comes right back.