Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  The next day, Adam came back to the whole idea of words and how we use them. He says it wasn’t a bad idea for all of us to engage our imaginations and come up with new words that expressed our internal lives—“our rich internal lives.” I wonder where he lifted that from. Mentally, I was going to put Adam on contract for that expression.

  That Adam, he was certainly an optimist. Look, I’d seen what having internal lives did to my mom and dad. Like I wanted that. He gave us all homework. We had to come up with a list of words that expressed what we felt. No cuss words were allowed on the list. He really pissed me off sometimes. I mean it. Sorry, I can’t say he pissed me off. I have to say, he really makes me angry. That’s a really boring way to say what I feel. I am not fucking boring. Okay, okay, sorry, sorry. No more of that F-word stuff. I’m on contract.

  And there’s another thing I’m on contract for. It has to do with that 85% thing. See, I have to bring that number down. Adam says I isolate. He is addicted to telling me that I spend too much time in my head. It’s an unhealthy behavior. Look, I don’t see how not bothering other people with your screwed-up vision of the world constitutes unhealthy behavior. Okay, so I hang out in my cabin a lot. What’s wrong with lying on your bed and thinking? Like that’s a crime. Look, I can do that for hours. See, this is the way I see it: I got this gerbil in my head. And he’s always running around up there, stirring things up. I named him Al. So Al, he and I, well, we have this thing going. He stirs things up and I hang out with all the things he stirs up.

  Adam thinks I need to shut Al down. Letting Al run wild in my head is not good for me. And he wants me to talk more in group. He calls it sharing. “Can you share more in group?” Look, if I wanted to share more, I would. That’s the deal. You know, it isn’t as if Adam pushes me. Well, he does push me but in a very subtle kind of way. Well, maybe not all that subtle. He’s always trying to figure out some kind of game plan. That’s how I see him. He’s cool. He is. Mostly I like him. But not all the time.

  Sometimes, when I’m in Adam’s office, I study that picture he has of his kids. I guess I wonder what it would be like to have Adam as a father. I don’t think that I should think those things. Thinking about what kind of father Adam would be is an unhealthy behavior. That’s the way I see it. Adam. He even showed up in a dream I had. He was trying to talk to me but I couldn’t hear him. I kept trying to get him to talk louder. I could see his lips moving and his hands moving and he was trying to explain something to me. And then I realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with Adam. It was me. I’d gone deaf. I hated that dream.

  And what was Adam doing in my dreams? I mean, wasn’t it bad enough that he was always trying to get inside my head? And who wants to see what’s inside of my head anyway? There’s all these words blowing around my head right now: Zach winter remembering dreams summer forgetting blood Adam change change change.

  REMEMBERING

  In winter we yearn for summer. That’s what Rafael whispered last night as he watched the snow fall. He went with me to the smoking pit. He was talking more to himself than to me. He held his hand out and tried to catch the snow.

  I knew he was remembering. He looked sad and alone and I knew he was far away.

  “What were you like when you were my age?”

  “Like you,” he said.

  “Like me?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  I offered him a cigarette.

  He shook his head. “I quit ten years ago—and I’m not going back.”

  “Was it hard to quit?”

  “I’m an addict. Everything is hard to quit.” He laughed. He looked out at the falling snow. “When I was your age, I used to loiter around the liquor store and talk someone into buying me a pint of bourbon. I’d walk around and smoke and drink. I really liked doing that—especially in the winter when it was cold.”

  “Why did you drink?”

  “Same reason as you. I was in pain. I just didn’t know it.”

  I wanted to ask him why he was in pain—but I didn’t.

  “Life hasn’t been easy on you, has it, Zach?”

  “It’s been okay.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Yeah, guess so. Not that life’s been all that easy on you either.”

  “That’s no excuse for becoming a drunk.”

  The way he said it—like he was done with drinking. But he was also really angry with himself. “Maybe it is,” I said.

  “No, Zach, it isn’t.”

  “Does it have to be this hard?”

  “You’re a sweet kid, you know that?”

  I wanted to cry.

  “Sorry,” he whispered. “I know you don’t like compliments.”

  That made me laugh. I don’t know why, but Rafael was laughing too. Maybe just to keep me company. “Does it hurt—to remember?”

  “Hurts like hell, Zach.”

  “Will it ever stop?”

  “I have to believe that it will stop.”

  I wished to hell I could have believed him.

  SUMMER, WINTER, DREAMS

  -1-

  I wasn’t hungry. I went to breakfast anyway. I was late so the place was pretty empty. There was a guy sitting by himself at one of the tables. I decided to sit with him. I mean, it would’ve been uncool not to sit with him. I went into my head and tried to retrieve his name: Eddie. I was good at remembering names. The guy was about Rafael’s age and he’d only been here a couple of days.

  I put my plate across from him and sort of smiled. “Hi, Eddie.”

  “Hi,” he said. “Forgot your name.” He sort of frowned.

  “Zach.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He did not seem interested. I should have left the guy alone. Shit. Too late.

  “So what group are you in?” It was the best I could do to start a conversation.

  “I’m in the I’m-Leaving group.”

  “You just got here.”

  “This place isn’t my brand of gin.”

  I guess I just didn’t know what to say. I decided right then and there that I was going to make a list of people who came and stayed here less than a week. I mean, I guess I just didn’t get that. It sort of made me mad. But maybe it made me mad because they were doing what I wanted to do. Maybe they were doing the brave thing. They were going back home. I mean, what was keeping me here? I know I’m still a high school student, but I’m eighteen—and that makes me an adult. What was keeping me here? Why not just go home? Maybe I was just hiding out here.

  The guy looked at me for a while. “What the fuck are you doing in here anyway?”

  I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.

  “Do you believe in Jesus, kid?”

  I thought that was a really weird question. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “What’s he ever done for you? What’s he ever done for any of us?”

  “I haven’t thought about it that much,” I said.

  “I got some advice for you. This place will just take your money and throw you back out there again. It’s a fucking waste.”

  “So you’re just gonna go back out there and drink?” I didn’t know I was going to say that. Sometimes, I really wig myself out.

  “What the fuck’s it to you?”

  I looked down at my plate. I thought maybe he was going to hit me and I started trembling on the inside—just like I did when my brother was about to hit me. The anxiety was owning me again. God, I hated this feeling, hated it, and I just couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I made my legs move. I made my arms move. I made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up. I hugged the toilet bowl until all the words in my head stopped spinning. I got up and washed my face and breathed until I felt myself getting quiet again. I made my way to the smoking pit and lit a cigarette. Sharkey was watching me. “You okay? You look a little pale, dude.”

  “Something I ate,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. I hated the way he said sure. Sometimes I j
ust wanted to beat the crap out of Sharkey. Why couldn’t he just leave a guy alone with his anxiety?

  -2-

  By the time I got to group, I felt better. Better does not equal good.

  I kept thinking about Eddie’s question, about what Jesus had ever done for me. I took a deep breath and tried to exhale the question. Not that I really thought things worked that way. You can’t just breathe out anxiety. You can’t just breathe out confusion.

  There was a therapy they used around here. It was called Breathwork. Sharkey and Rafael, they did that stuff. Breathwork. Look, you just can’t breathe in and out and expect everything to be fine. Sometimes, instead of taking a deep breath, I counted. So I looked around the room and that’s what I did. Counted. For some reason, counting calmed me down. Seven people in group now that Mark was gone. Thirty days at this place and now gone back to his family. He left a sober man. Yeah, sober. But, I don’t know, I was sort of worried about him. Mark, he still looked a little angry, you know. And it was like he still had too much of the street in him. Like Sharkey. Maybe I thought he could never be tamed and that a house with a wife and kids could never make him happy because there was something too wild inside of him. There was too much fire in his eyes. You know, like he could light into you or anyone he ran into for any reason. That wild thing inside him.

  Yeah, what do I know?

  Look, I think too much. That’s the way I am. Worry, worry, worry. Worry and anxiety go together. It’s better now with the meds. But I don’t like taking them. They’re non-addictive. That’s cool. But, you know, it bugs the crap out of me that I have to take something to keep me calmer.

  When Mark left, we did our usual goodbye thing in group. Adam has these medals. They look like they’re made of copper—or at least that’s what it seems like they’re made of. On one side the medal says: To thine own self be true. And on the other side, there’s an angel who looks like he’s praying. I’m not into angels. Not that I know anything about angels.

  I’ve done a lot of thinking about that medal we pass around when someone leaves the group. I’m not sure about this To-thine-own-self-be-true stuff. Speaking for myself, I’m not sure what that means. Am I being true to myself if I want to forget? Am I being true to myself if I want to remember? The part of me that wants to live in forgetting is pretty real. So am I supposed to be true to that thine self? That medal wigs me out.

  So we do the ritual of passing the medal around. We hold it and we press something good into it. You know, like a good wish. Rafael pressed a lifetime of sobriety into it. That was cool. I mean, it wasn’t like a lifetime of sobriety was going to be easy—not in a world that pushed alcohol as a full-time hobby. But still, maybe when Mark wanted to take a drink he’d remember what Rafael had pressed into his coin. And, well, maybe he wouldn’t drink. I got the feeling Mark drank like my dad. Not good. Not a healthy behavior.

  Sharkey pressed music into the medal. That was cool too. I mean Mark was way too serious and Sharkey said, “Dude, you got to get that music into your head, into your feet. Music, dude, get it?” That made Mark smile. Sharkey, he could make people smile. He went around the world stunning people out.

  Sheila cried. You had to know her. She cried about everything. I mean, it just was not necessary to cry about everything. Okay, maybe she really liked Mark. That was cool. You were allowed to like anyone you wanted to like. Okay.

  When the medal got to me, I pressed peace into it. You know, peace is a good thing. Peace was good enough. Look, I felt bad about the peace thing. Stupid. Peace. Sure. I tear myself up.

  This is the thing, people are not supposed to come here and stay forever. They deal with their stuff and they leave. Or sometimes, they don’t deal with their stuff and leave. Sometimes they come, look around, and then leave. I mean Eddie was not the only guy to walk in and then walk back out. I was at dinner the other day and I was talking to this other new person. Well, I wasn’t really talking, but I said, “Hi.”

  And she said, “Hi.”

  And I said, “I’m Zach.” I was trying to be friendly and she looked really freaked out. She looked like hell. “I’m in Summer,” I said.

  “Summer?”

  “That’s my group.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “What’s your group?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

  Another member of the I’m-Leaving group. “Oh,” I said, “that’s too bad.”

  “Why is that too bad?” She sounded mad.

  “Well,” I said, “maybe it isn’t too bad.”

  “You like it here?”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “What’s so okay about it?” she said.

  “The food is good.”

  I could tell she thought I was really screwy. “If I want good food, I’ll go out to a restaurant and order a nice glass of wine to go with it.”

  To tell you the truth, that sounded pretty good.

  “My husband said if I didn’t stick it out here that he was leaving me.” She took a sip from her coffee and boy was she shaking. “He can go to hell.”

  I knew the score. She didn’t want to get sober. I didn’t blame her for that. Look, I was still thinking how good it would be to get my hands on some bourbon. There were worse things than being a drunk. At least that was my thinking. I said that to Adam once. “Really?” he said. “Make a list, of things that are worse than being a drunk.” Shit. More homework. Do you see why it’s best not to say too much?

  This woman, whose name was Margaret, eyes me up and down and said, “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you.”

  “You can’t always tell by looking,” I said.

  She studied me for a little while. “If I were you,” she said, “I’d pack my bags and get the hell out of here before something really bad happens to you.”

  I had the feeling that something really bad had already happened to me. And it didn’t happen here. But I didn’t say anything.

  “Look,” she said, “places like this can make you crazy. Really crazy. Get out while you can.”

  I wanted to tell her that depression and alcoholism and eating disorders were not communicable diseases. I mean, I didn’t know much, but I did know that. You know, it really doesn’t do any good to talk to someone who’s already made up their mind. But I knew if Adam got her in his office he’d say, “This is just where you belong.” I pictured Adam saying that to her. I pictured her wigging out. I got to smiling.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked.

  “We do that around here,” I said. “We smile for no reason.” I could tell I was beginning to freak her out.

  “I need a cigarette,” she said.

  “Listen,” I said, “be careful of the people in the smoking pit. Some of them have more than one person living inside them.”

  She did not like that one bit. She just sort of stomped away. Look, I don’t know what gets into me sometimes. It was not a nice thing to wig a lady out who was obviously already wigged out. Not a nice thing. Still, I was sort of laughing to myself.

  Later that day, I saw that lady get in a cab and leave. I saw her from the smoking pit.

  “We lost another one,” Sharkey said. “If I had any brains I’d be getting in that cab with her.”

  I wondered if Sharkey meant it. Maybe part of him wanted to just get the hell of out here. But the part that was staying, I was interested in that part of him.

  This was my new theory: not everybody was interested in doing the work. Rafael said that change hurt like hell. I think Rafael would know. That guy is in some kind of pain. Sometimes it almost hurts me to look at him.

  So even though not everyone stayed, me and Sharkey and Rafael, we stayed.

  -3-

  “Tomorrow,” Sharkey said, “the word is that we’re getting someone new in group. Another messed-up member of the human race.” Sharkey, he kept his eyes and ears open. It wasn’t hard to believe he’d spent a lot of time out on the streets
. I mean the guy knew everything about our little society. It was like he made himself an insider into every part of this place. He always knew who was coming and who was going. It was like getting to know everything about a place was in his nature. I wondered about that. What was in my nature? Isolating. I was hyper on the inside and dead on the outside. Sharkey was hyper inside, outside, hyper all over.

  I’m telling you, Sharkey was nervous as hell. Always pacing up and down. I loved watching him. He’d pace like he needed to go the bathroom or like a tiger that was trying to figure out a way to get out of his cage. He could be funny as hell. And he could be really scary. He tore me up, that guy.

  I stared at Sharkey as he lit up another cigarette and looked at his watch. He always had to know what time it was. What was up with that?

  Lizzie shook her head. “Any bets on how long she’ll stay?”

  “How do you know it’s a she?”

  “Because she’s going to be my new roommate.”

  Sharkey nodded. “I’ll give her a week.”

  “I say she’ll stick it out.” Lizzie put out her cigarette.

  “Since when are you so optimistic?”

  “Optimistic? Me? Look, Sharkey, let me tell you something. Just because someone sticks it out for thirty days or forty-four days or sixty days or ninety days, that doesn’t mean anything will change. Sticking it out isn’t the same thing as doing the work.”

  “Then what’s the point?” I said.

  “He speaks,” Lizzie said. “Wow. He knows how to pronounce words.”

  “Knock it off, Lizzie,” I said. “Just knock it off.”

  She laughed. I liked her. We were just joking around.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “What’s the point?”

  “Maybe that’s what we’re here to figure out.”

  I wanted to ask her if she was better. I mean, if she was getting well. I wondered if something changed inside of you. I mean, there was this talk about change all the time and I wondered how anyone would know if they changed. Did it feel different? What would that feel like? It’s not as if I could grow wings. It’s not as if I could ever fly. It’s not as if I could ever be anything beautiful.