Tripping Back Blue

by Kara Storti

  “Aaaaaah owwww!” she yells, but it’s not her snapping out of it, she’s just sinking further into the depths of herself. I’m talking to her, telling her that this is how it’s got to be, she’s got to cooperate, but she’s not, she’s not leaving me any choice. Her hands grasp the car door, grab hold of anything so she doesn’t have to do what I want her to do.

  “Come on, Faith, I’m not hurting you, just please—” More screaming from her, she’s hitting my face with her hands, there is no rationalizing, and boy, does it hurt, until she finally gives in and collapses into the seat of the car, but what happens next is worse. She immediately begins to shake, her eye half-closed, her hands stiff, her shoulders jerking, oh God, what do I do? My cell phone. Still no service.

  I do the only thing I can—hold onto her so she doesn’t fall out of the car or hurt herself. I think I can hear bones creaking, the convulsing is lasting forever. How much time has passed? How much can her brain take? Why aren’t her meds working? It’s happened before, I remind myself. It just has to pass. I buckle her up, I’m in the driver’s seat, start up the car, squealing out of the Dammertown projects. The car jars up and down; it’s like the pavement we’re driving on is more pothole than road and I’m scared I’m damaging her. Even though she’s not shaking anymore, her stillness is as strong as an earthquake. I need someone else who can take over while I gather my thoughts, gather myself. I need that oxy more than ever; it’s the one thing that would calm me down and give me the strength to deal. Without it, I drown.

  When she opens her eye, we’re halfway to the hospital. She’s groggy, but I feel her power, her energy, return in a punch.

  “Where the fuck are we?” she growls.

  “I’m taking you to Ellis.”

  “Like hell you are. I’m not going in there. I told you that—unless I’m legitimately dying, I don’t want to step foot in that hospital again. I’m fine. I feel fine. How would we pay for it anyway? You know Mom and Pop’s insurance blows.” She sits up straighter, pulls down the visor and checks herself out in the mirror. Combs her fingers through her hair. Reapplies lip-gloss she finds at the never-ending bottom of her purse.

  “I’m taking you,” I say, holding firm. I don’t give a shit how much it costs. If I had more money this wouldn’t be a problem, if I hadn’t lost what was hers all along, our lives would be better.

  “There’s only one thing I need, Phineas,” she says, quietly. I’m all ears, whatever she asks for, I’ll deliver. I want her to know this, I want her to know that even though I’m only a few seconds older, I’m still her big brother. I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t right away. Faith looks okay, more than okay actually. As her state is improving, mine is swiftly deteriorating. The craving for oxys intensifies even more. I wish I could knock it out of my head, get my brain right, be a better brother.

  “What do you need?” I ask finally. I turn my head to look at Faith who’s staring straight ahead, a tear that hasn’t dropped in the crook of her eye. You’re killing me sister, you’re killing me. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, and the tear tadpoles down her cheek and disappears.

  “I need to get the fuck out here. The fuck out of Dammertown.”

  “I know,” I say at a red light, the longest ever.

  Her sigh is miles long. “I have this terrible feeling that I won’t. I’ll get rejected everywhere. Harvard? What was I thinking? And I can’t afford to go to college anyway. We’re already in debt.” She looks down at her lap. Her one eye, man, it holds more soul than a pair of ten.

  I turn the car around at an empty intersection, away from the hospital, toward home. As far as I’m concerned, my mind is already made up. I need to get that money back, with surplus. Need. More than need, I would rather die, get a bullet to the head, than go without it. Not for me. For her, so she can get out of this place.

  “No way you’re giving up, sis. Think bright, Faith bomb.” I crack a smile, and wait. Her face is slack and then she cracks one back. A sheath of wind cuts through the windows and ruffles our hair. The light turns green.

  “Fuck you,” she says, smiling full watt.

  Saturday, March 30

  Chapter Three

  It’s a cool, daffodil-bright day at the end of March, and I’m walking up a path with a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of Snapple iced tea, and my pocket-sized binocs. The episode in the D-Town projects was a few weeks ago, but every night in bed I think of Faith convulsing. It’s not fair how her body betrays her. Like it’s out to get her. My mind, damn, it’s doing the same thing. The cravings are always right there, and I know they’re wrong, and I know they’re getting worse, but I manage to convince myself it’s all good in the hood.

  And maybe it is. Early Saturday morning is the perfect time for a Dammertown Cemetery visit, because I have the place to myself. I take my usual position at the top of the hill, overlooking the rolling landscape interrupted by granite and marble gravestones. I sit down on a dew-soaked wooden bench next to a pink mausoleum and a gated area of especially old graves. Look around to make sure no one sees me. Light up a Camel and let the nicotine run through. Pick up my binocs and wait.

  Faith’s doing all right, I tell myself. She’ll be hearing from colleges soon, and there’s no doubt she’ll get in to at least a few. Yet I’m still dirt poor, because weed isn’t selling like it used to. Heroin’s cheap and the high’s like nothing else; however, dealing that is butting up against some dangerous territory. Plus I promised Faith I would stay away from H—dealing it, muling it, and whatever else I could be doing with it. No more scumbag moves. No more act first, think later.

  Time doesn’t pass when I’m at the cemetery. It just is. I wait and everything else around me waits too, and it’s a good feeling to be alone. I’ve been bird-watching for years and nobody besides my family knows. It’s not exactly a manly thing to do, and if my friends found out they’d be calling me Hello Kitty in an instant. But something about birds, man, they get to me. Even the big fat crows with their horror-movie caws make me want to become one. I imagine peering through their beady eyes as wings sprout from my shoulder blades and wind rumples my feathers. My travel-sized bird book feels good in my pocket and at night I consult it like a bible, reading the descriptions and Latin bird names like verse, but I know most of it by heart. That’s one good thing about me: I’ve got a memory on steroids.

  Egrets (Ardea modesta). They were once shot by the thousands so their feathers could be used to decorate women’s hats.

  Peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus). They can reach speeds of 200 miles an hour when diving for prey. They use their balled-up talons to knock out their victim, then they catch the poor bastard before it hits the ground.

  Barn owl (Tyto alba). They can swallow a large rat whole. After digesting its meal, the owl coughs up a pellet containing the rat’s bones and fur.

  I’m reciting fun facts in my head because it relaxes me when I spot the albino sparrow. I’ve been looking for that sucker for months, because the first time I saw it I nearly dropped dead because of its colors. The lightest of powdery yellows and the strangest kind of fluorescent white you’ve ever seen, an LSD trip of a color. Eyes gold-ish brown, like mine. Then it was gone, just like that, and I was embarrassed about how upset it made me. Wrenched my heart out good and quick. But now it’s made an appearance again, even closer this time, only for me, I think, eyes just as gold, feathers prettier than I had remembered. My shoulders tense with excitement as I watch it sing on top of a gravestone.

  Okay, my day is complete, and it isn’t even seven a.m.

  Then I notice something out of the corner of my eye but don’t give it my full attention because of my crush on this stupid bird. It keeps trilling and my ears are eating it up and my eyes are full too. I could watch it, hear it, feel its presence for hours, but bird sightings never last long—you blink and there they go.

  My bird flies away into a willow tree and is gone. I shut my eyes and swallow down disappointment, slightl
y embarrassed that I have to.

  I see more movement in between a row of gravestones, just down the hill to the right. My mind registers that the thing I see is a person, a woman, hunched over, sniffing a tombstone.

  What the hell?

  I throw out the Snapple bottle in a nearby trash receptacle, and walk toward her. As I’m closing in, I see she’s not smelling anything at all, she’s snorting, Christ, she’s doing a line right there—I’ve got to laugh because she’s an old lady. I stop for a second, just watching with my hands in my pockets. She’s got white puffy hair, the usual old lady ’fro, a hurricane could pass through and it would still be in place. I get closer. There’s blush on her face and pink lipstick on her mouth, but it doesn’t look bad on her, and she doesn’t seem like those ladies who think makeup is the only thing standing between them and age. Late seventies, maybe eighty, I would guess. Not fat, but not that skinny either. When she comes up for air, she’s smiling and smiling, not even noticing me, and her smile shines so bright I have to look away. Grinning at nothing in particular, eyes closed, and her hands clench up and release, clench up and release, in that way people do when their emotions are too big to contain, because the heart can only hold so much. I wouldn’t describe what she’s feeling as happiness. I’ve seen happiness on people’s faces and this is something more. I’d describe it as bliss.

  I take in the mirror with the drug remains on the top of the gravestone and my mouth waters. I don’t even know what it is, and I’m craving it bad. The color is a brooding bluish-purple, a mysterious iridescent color you’d have to dive into the unexplored bottom of the ocean to find.

  Her eyes open. She sees me. She screams.

  I scream.

  Probably all the birds on earth fly away.

  I put my hands out, a gesture of peace, I’m not going to hurt you, crazy old bag, but she takes it to be the exact opposite. She starts to yell at me.

  “What did I tell you about sneaking up on me like that? My heart’s not like a cat, nine lives and whatnot. I’m sitting here, minding my own beeswax, and you decide to put another ten wrinkles on my face? Shame on you, Jimmy. You know better than that. Why don’t you go set the table for dinner? Give me some space. Air to breathe.” The woman’s face softens. “Eggs tonight, again, sweetheart.”

  Her voice trails off and she starts to teeter, and my instinct kicks in and I move forward quickly. She falls against me, her coarse hair brushing against my cheeks, her perfume harsh against my nose. I scrunch up my face.

  “Lady, are you okay?” I ask, trying to steady her. She’s breathing hard. I’m breathing hard too. I can’t help it; the drug is right there, a presence just as strong as that stupid albino bird. I hate myself for wanting it maybe even more than the birds, I hate myself for hating myself.

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh.” She gently nudges me away. She’s more anchored now. We stand apart.

  “Are you okay?” I repeat.

  “Course I’m okay, Jimmy. Why wouldn’t I be? You know how I get sometimes.”

  “My name isn’t Jimmy. It’s Finn,” I say as delicately as I can. She wipes her forehead with the back of her coat sleeve and looks around, the joy in her eyes sinking, sinking, falling, gone.

  “No, you wouldn’t be, would you.” She pats her pockets, alarm crossing her face, and turns around like she’s making sure that this Jimmy guy isn’t here. Her lips tighten. “I’m sorry, young man, but things aren’t like they used to be. I’m not what I used to be. If you can’t understand that, then why would you be in a cemetery?”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t know what to say. I’m going into default nervous mode—Latin bird names are scrambling up in my head . . . Collumba livia (dove), Turdus merula (common blackbird), Carduelis tristis (American goldfinch) . . . The reflection of the mirror shines on the gravestone.

  “Well, now. What did you say your name was? Finnegan? Phineas?” She’s examining me, head to toe, like she sees something worth remembering. Stop looking at me, old woman, I want to say. She pauses on the burn scar. I bring my hand up self-consciously. No one in town looks at me that way anymore, they know me, they don’t really see it, at least I think they don’t. Actually, girls kind of dig it, gives me character.

  “Yeah, it’s Phineas, but everyone calls me Finn.”

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Do you want to mind your business?” I say, and immediately regret my tone. She’s done nothing to me, but her looking at my scar doesn’t sit well. Last time I checked, I wasn’t a carnival sideshow.

  She raises her eyebrows. “Boys your age. Such attitude. Where does it originate? Is it those baggy pants you’re wearing? Is it those birds you’re watching?” She gestures to the bird book that’s only halfway concealed in my hoodie pocket. I press it against my stomach, pretending I can make it disappear.

  “You don’t have to be ashamed about it. I think it’s sweet.”

  “Whatever, lady,” I say. At this point I don’t care if I’m being rude because I just want this encounter to be over. I’m glaring at her so hard she gets the point and starts to walk in the other direction. I’m relieved she’s leaving.

  I watch her walk for a little and notice the bottoms of her pants are wet from the grass. I wonder if she notices this too. I also notice that the mirror and the coke—or whatever it is—is so close. I pick the mirror up from the tombstone and it’s heavier than I expected it to be, and there’s more powder on it than I initially thought. Mouth’s watering insanely now, the desperation for it is sad, then sadder, then saddest.

  I take a passionate snort.

  A jolt.

  Combustion.

  A memory.

  It’s so real it’s a kick in the gut. I’ve never had a charge that feels so so so good, a warm cushion around me, safe and soft and familiar . . . a release. An orgasm, not sexual—spiritual—seeps under my toenails, goddamn, pumps into my blood stream, runs through my whole body, oh, oh wow, every molecule of my being juiced up, maxed out, the climax lasts for years and years and years, I just want to sigh and yawn and stretch and swim in the thickness of my content. It’s not like weed or coke or pills, not even like heroin, it’s something else altogether. It’s pure, man, it’s organic. I can taste it, touch it, be in it again. Hallelujah praise be.

  My past. It swoops down and embraces me under its wing. One of the rare moments when I was completely, absolutely happy.

  Chapter Four

  I’m in the woods behind our trailer park, securing a fort I made between a tight circle of trees. I nail four thick limbs between four birches, and make a roof and walls with more branches I pick up. But that isn’t enough, no sir. I want more cover, in case of rain or another threat, so I get the idea of placing a thick layer of evergreen boughs over the branches. Finn, look at you go, I think, astronauts and basketball stars have nothing to offer; mountain man is my true calling. It’s late afternoon, and Faith is hunting for rocks for a fire pit next to the fort. We are eleven years old and getting shit done.

  Faith is very particular about the stones she selects. They are either too big or too small, too rough or too smooth, too dark or too pale. I pretend to mind, but I really don’t. This is before she lost her eye and we are happy. Her long, dark hair curls up around her shoulders, mine is shaggy around the ears, and our jeans have a constellation of holes in them. She mumbles to herself and chucks a rock off to the side.

  “This is harder than it looks, you know,” she says.

  We hear a noise. A rustling. Probably a squirrel, but we both turn toward the sound and wait. Thirty seconds pass and it comes out from behind a fallen, moss-blanketed tree. A tiny kitten, a puff of fur, gray and white, meowing at us. My sister is immediately in love but she doesn’t pounce, she doesn’t squeal, she just stands there and lets the kitten come to us. Finally it does, padding its way through a patch of ferns and soggy leaves.

  “Come here you little thing,” Faith says, bending her knees slightly and
leaning toward it. My throat clenches up. I’m not sure why. I swallow hard.

  “It might have rabies,” I say. “You don’t know where it’s been.”

  “Sure I do,” Faith says softly, so not to scare it. “It’s come to find us.”

  “Well, fine then. I’m not going to the hospital if it bites you and you start foaming at the mouth.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she says. I shut up after that.

  The kitten is in her arms in a matter of seconds. She brings it into our fort and sits down with it on her lap, talking to it like a baby, her vowels all high-pitched, each sentence a question. Are you hungry? Are you sleepy? Do you miss your mommy? Do you like your new home?

  I continue to secure the fort. Each branch and bough and limb is one step closer to awesomeness and the idea that I’ve built a sturdy shelter is giving me a rush—I’m convinced that this afternoon I’ve become an inch taller, a pound heavier, and the hair on my chest is ahead of schedule. Once I’m done with my masterpiece, I pick up where Faith left off with the fire pit. I find myself being just as particular with the type of rocks I stack up. I see where she’s coming from. They need to be just right.

  “Phineas,” Faith says from inside the fort. “Phineas. Come pet our new kitty.”

  “It’s not our cat.”

  “It is now. Come on. She’s just the most adorable little thing you’ll ever see. She purrs nonstop. Will you come inside and see?” Her voice is muffled. I’m guessing it’s because she’s nestling her face against the cat’s neck. I grab another rock and jam it into place. This is going to make for a great bonfire. I can picture my friends sitting around, roasting marshmallows, laughing, telling me how this place is all right.

  She raises her voice. “Phineas, please?”

  “Fine. Fine.” My reply is overdramatically exasperated. “If that’s what’s going to get you off my back.”