Dora: A Headcase

by Lidia Yuknavitch

  “Dad?” I go.

  Just the sound of him breathing, amplified, recorded. Sounds … kind of like a horse. Some kinda fist swells up in my throat and my eyes itch. I stare at the H4n. Its glowing LCD display. Its two silver criss-crossing mics. The only other thing I know how to do. Way more than knowing how to be a daughter. I walk away. Why the hell am I holding my breath?

  I can still hear Christianmouth going. I look down the hall to the right. No one. I look to the left. Nothing. Everything smells like day old Lysol and medicine.

  My ass vibrates again. Obsidian. She texts: “wnt 2 c u.” My throat constricts. I close my eyes. Then and only then do I cry. Like a pussy. I hold the phone of her against my cheek. Some jackass in scrubs asks me if I’m OK and I nearly backhand him with the H4n and snarl at him with my chimp face.

  The idiotic fluorescent lights buzz down on my head. I feel alone and retarded. I want to sprint down one of these fucked up hallways, find smiley. I want to put my face in Obsidian’s hair. I want to press all of my skin onto all of her skin. But I’d just pass out. Wouldn’t I.

  This is the epiphany: there’s no mother here. She’s not there to say, hey Christian fuck, that’s my daughter. She doesn’t want to hear about your shitty-ass parenting skills. Her father just had a massive coronary and open heart surgery. Shove yourself up your own ass.

  She’s not here to tell Mrs. K., that’s my husband, ho bag. Step back before I irradiate you with my voice.

  She’s not here to make chimp faces with me.

  I run as hard and loud as I can all the way down to the big red letter exit sign. I look up. I open my mouth. “Are you my mother?” is what I try to say out loud. But nothing comes out.

  I cough. An odd sound strangles my throat.

  It’s my voice.

  She’s gone.

  15.

  I’M GROUNDED AGAIN. IT’S A LITTLE ABSTRACT AS TO why. Whatever.

  At home, in my room, I write on the walls with my purple Sharpie underneath my Nico poster: “Dear Francis Bacon: I don’t want to talk anymore since that’s not what mouths are for. I know a mouth is not a mouth. In your paintings? All the mouths are smeared senseless.” I cap my pen. I put it in my backpack.

  I have a Swiss Army Knife. The “Elite,” custom-made. It even has a cigar cutter. I stole it from Mr. K. a year ago. I pull it out of my backpack. I open up two of the blades. I lie on my bed as still as a dead girl. I close my eyes. I run the blades over my stomach slowly and softly. It’s relaxing. I can cut a new mouth anywhere on my body I want. My gut. My collarbone. My bicep. My thigh.

  I pull out the cigar cutter. All I see is Sig.

  Approximately one quarter of all myocardial infarctions are silent, without chest pain or other symptoms. Apparently that’s what happened with my dad. My mom says he came home from work that night, mixed a highball, loosened his tie, greeted her, walked into the living room, put on some Thelonious Monk, and in slow motion, “like he deflated,” sunk to the floor. They say his attack happened earlier in the day. That was just his body finally answering.

  They moved my dad to a normal room, though he’s still hooked up to creepy shit. My dad is in and out. When he sees my mom, he stares at her face, then looks away and goes to sleep. When he sees me, his eyes are all glassy. I can see two Ida heads in his peepers. It’s creepy and usually it makes me have to pee. We don’t stay long.

  Earlier today at the hospital I heard Mrs. K.’s laughter coming out of his room. So I guess he’s getting better. Her laugh sounds like … happy opera. It makes me happy and sad and pissed off all at the same time.

  My bed smells like teen spirit. I open my eyes. I look at the cracks in my ceiling. Then I pull up my shirt and look down at my belly. Stretched between my hipbones my belly looks like an awesome skateboard bowl. I lift my shirt up more and I cut a very straight line just under my rib cage on the right side. I can feel the crimson line of it coming to life under my fingertips. It’s not smiling.

  Now that I’m thinking about it, my mother didn’t actually say, “You are grounded.” What she said was, “The trauma of the current situation trumps your little shenanigans and your hoodlum friends.” It sounded icy. I think that voice kills hair and skin cells – like radiation. Because we rarely speak? She’s totally indifferent to my voice situation. Actually I don’t even think she knows. Isn’t that something? I suppose I could text her, but really, why? My silence? It’s what’s kept the house in order.

  I’m a little concerned however. All the times before, I was faking it. Using losing a voice when I needed it. Mostly anyway. Except for that time at the lake with Mr. K. when he jammed his cow tongue down my throat and I had to knee him in the nads. It’s been five days since my voice left. There isn’t really anything to “do” about it.

  Well, OK, that’s a lie. It might be that there is someone who could help me get it back … I have a new empathy for that little stuck cuckoo in Sig’s clock. Fat chance now though, huh?

  By now he’s figured out I’m the one who pumped him up with Viagra and cocaine. He’s a smart old guy. Probably it’s over between us, is my guess. Probably that matters but all I feel is a welcoming sting under my rib. I suck my fingers and taste metal.

  At ten o’clock my iPhone vibrates. Everyone’s meeting at Marlene’s. I pack my backpack and climb out of my window and down the fire escape as the last little tinkling sounds of ice cubes in a drink fade out. Mother’s self-medicating big time. As am I. Mostly Xanax.

  You know the first uses of Xanax were for panic disorders. The first pharmaceutical company to produce Xanax was Upjohn. Upjohn – isn’t that a hoot? Upjohn? I mean, did no one think of the connotations? The real name is Alprazolam. Which sounds like Flash Gordon or some superhero name. You know who told me all that? Sig. Why do I keep thinking of him? Is this weird hole in my throat me missing him? Fuck. Just shoot me.

  At the bottom of the fire escape I try to clear my head with dumb thoughts. My favorite idiotic drug name is Aciphex. Say it out loud few times. Endless fun.

  I can’t tell you how much better I feel when I’m not in the Nazi daughter box – our so-called home. Ten o’clock at night in downtown Seattle is über cool. Everything looks the color of a bruise. The storefronts and restaurants are rows of little well-lit caves. Every alley smells like pee, but it’s a familiar smell. A downtown smell. Smells like life. Sometimes you can hear the clopping of horse cop hooves. I hustle it down a few blocks to the 7-Eleven and buy a Pez dispenser with the head of Ernie from Ernie and Bert. You know, Sesame Street. When I leave the store I chuck the Pez and fill the dispenser with the Vicodin I lifted from the ER. They fit perfectly. It’s awesome. Obsidian showed me that. I put the Ernie headed Pez in my Dora purse.

  The posse meets up at Marlene’s for a junk exchange – and to hang out. I think they are trying to take care of me. You know, like a family would. If families existed. I guess they’re all pretending they have a sad little mute friend.

  Eight blocks, three homeless people, and a horse cop giving a frat boy a drunk walk the line test later, I make it to Marlene’s.

  When she opens the door, I smile. A lot. In fact I nearly bawl smiling. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Marlene in her Scarlett O’Hara green vintage velvet dress. With fan.

  “Lamskotelet!” She says, quivering her fan.

  Fiddle-dee-dee.

  Inside of Marlene’s apartment it’s us. Me, Ave Maria, Little Teena, and Obsidian, who is sitting on the kitchen counter. I can’t help it. All I see is Obsidian. Obsidian’s jeans have the knees worn out of them and her skin is brown as fine Albuquerque dirt. Her white T-shirt creeps up her biceps kinda James Dean like. Her black hair … blows the word “night” away. There’s not a guy on earth who could be more pussy whipped by this girl than I am. I lift up my shirt. She looks at my new little expressionless mouth. She smiles. She licks her lips.

  Marlene as Scarlett makes us all mint juleps. We spread our junk out on her kitchen table and divvy it
up. I throw my Ernie down and a few Xanax.

  That’s not all we throw down on the kitchen table. We throw down high-capacity SD memory cards. Terabyte portable hard drives the size of little wallets. All the recorded junk from the Sig scene. We stare at the table. No one says anything. No one asks about my dad, thank fuck. I collect all the recorded crap and shove it into my backpack and zip it as fast as humanly possible. I texted them all before I got there. “No voice.” They’ve been through it with me before. They know not to joke. But they look so serious. When I look around at everyone? I make a chimp face. Everyone laughs.

  “I got a month-long gig with the ivories at Tula’s on Sundays at 4:00 p.m.,” Little Teena announces.

  “Tula’s – is that the one with Mediterranean food?” Ave Maria asks. “I think my mom took me there. I think we heard Sax Attack Quartet or some shit there. My mom got loaded and they called a cab.”

  Obsidian laughs – but her laugh is a low roll that sounds like she’s always high or wise. “Sax Attack Quartet? Is that real?”

  I want to say, “That sounds just like Aciphex,” and then we’d all laugh, but I can’t.

  “Tula’s!” Marlene says with a thick southern belle voice – “ Wynton Marsalis once said ‘This is a cool place’ about that place!”

  I always knew Little Teena’s fingers would take him someplace someday. He’s actually an astonishing pianist. Once my mom heard him play on our now silent baby grand and she put her hand on his shoulder like he was the son she never laid. For her? That was deep affection. Or artistic respect. Or something. I keep hoping his hands will take him into another world.

  I risk moving across the kitchen closer to Obsidian. I brace myself on the counter on the other side of the sink from where she perches and inch my ass over toward her. So far, so good. I stare at her knees. Kind of I want to suck on them.

  You know, when you can’t talk, talking sounds different. Everyone sounds like a soundtrack of talking instead of like people. Maybe without a voice you’re hyper-attuned to listening or something. But it’s like there’s a distance between you and everyone’s talking – like they are on a stage and you are in the audience – and all their voices suddenly sound … like art. It’s comforting.

  Ave Maria talks about missing her fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth day of school.

  Little Teena talks about Hitchcock movies and Jimmy Stewart.

  Obsidian says her uncle is in jail for beating the crap out of his brother’s wife.

  “Harsh,” Ave Maria goes, and we all sip Mint Julep’s while Obsidian punches her own bicep. It makes a rhythmic thud. Like a slow heart.

  I don’t know why she does that but it’s mesmerizing.

  Then Marlene waves her fan in a great sweeping gesture collecting all our attention and suggests we watch Gone With the Wind on Blu-ray in the living room.

  I don’t say a word. I’m the hearer. The listener. The recorder. I inch a little closer to Obsidian. I can feel my butt getting wet from the edge of Marlene’s sink as I make my way over but I don’t care. I can smell her skin. She smells like rain. I want to climb her and grind her right there on the counter. Then I realize I’m close enough to touch because she puts her hand on my hand and momentarily I go blind. Deaf. Whatever. I don’t care. I surrender. Maybe I’ll just crack my skull open on the floor and not have to think anymore. I send up a silent wish to not god, but to Francis Bacon. I brace myself to black out and fall to the floor. I close my eyes and think about silent heart attacks – how loving someone could deflate you until you fell to the floor. I shut my eyes and hold my breath.

  But you know what happens?

  Obsidian puts her knees up in my armpits and shoots her legs out so I am sorta hanging on her like a rag doll.

  “Dora, honey?” I hear Little Teena’s voice.

  “Liebchen?” Marlene goes, skirt rustling nearer.

  I hear too a little soft coo high note in the background.

  Then not god, but Francis Bacon gives me shoulder pads. No; it’s Obsidian. She’s got her hands on my shoulders. I open my eyes. She’s staring straight into me. I don’t faint. She carefully slides down from the kitchen counter and hugs me. I put my arms around her neck. I put my face in her hair. I can smell rain. I don’t faint. I pull back. She smiles. I’ve never seen her smile like this. It’s a smile you can feel since before you were born. Up close? Her eyes aren’t brown like I always thought they were. There are little flecks of green in them, like a gem that turns colors only in certain light.

  “You’re OK,” she says to me.

  The “OK” rings in my head like art.

  Then with her arm around my waist, we follow Marlene’s voice into the living room to watch Gone With the Wind on Blu-ray like it’s the most normal thing in the universe.

  I mouth the words fuck yeah. And smile.

  There’s no father here. No mother. It’s like you can erase your origins and be anybody else.

  “Tomorrow is anothah day,” Marlene sings, way cooler than Vivien Leigh.

  16.

  JUST WHEN YOU THINK THINGS ARE AS CLUSTERFUCKED as they can get, they fuckgasm straight out of orbit.

  Yeah. Mr. and Mrs. K.? Turns out, they have kids. Two vile midget creatures. I swear they have fur on their paws. Wanna know how I know? They’re here. At the condo. The boy creature is trying to get a Tetra – those bullshit blue and red fish everyone on the planet has in their aquarium because they live and die quickly and flush easily – out of the aquarium with one of my mother’s beloved spoons, while the girl creature – what is up with that hair? Who puts a ponytail straight up on the top of a kid head? She looks like Cindy Lou Who. Only uglier. She stares at me. Picks her little creature snot nose. Throws it at me. Charming.

  Because my dad’s at home recuperating. Because Mrs. K. is “helping out.” Because my mother? You’re gonna love this. Apparently, now is the optimum supremo cool time to go stay with her great aunt in Vienna.

  I know. I can’t believe it either. Vienna? Seriously? Hello, but don’t you have a spare DAUGHTER lying around the house? All I got was a shitty-ass note on the baby grand that said “Ida, you are certainly old enough to take care of yourself for awhile. A nurse from the hospital will visit once a day. Your father has plenty of help. He needs peace and quiet. Be mature. This is a difficult time. Don’t get in the way.”

  Awesome. You know, I’d be crushed and all, but the more I’m around this family, the more I understand – things must always get worse, or the drama goes impotent. That’s the fucked up part about life. You have to keep stroking the family drama. Wouldn’t want anyone to feel, you know, good about their lives, or selves exactly the way they are. Wouldn’t want any bullshit Zen calm descending on the home. That’d be nuts. You stroke the drama with everything you’ve got until you run out of energy. Then you die. The end. Orgasm accomplished.

  Goddamn god. Or anti-god.

  Just look at those midgets. I walk over to the she-midget. I give her a little kick. She falls over and her face gets red like she’s gonna cry. Oh, but she doesn’t cry. She’s a crafty little midget. She licks the toe of my Doc, then looks up at me like that sly nasty Chucky elf dude in the horror flicks. Great. Our house is now possessed by short pudgy demons.

  The boy creature flips the Tetra straight over his shoulder with the spoon. I stare at it on the floor there for a second. Wriggling. Helpless. Out of its element. What’s the best option? Smash it into the carpet with my foot, or carefully return it to the tank? Does it really matter?

  I choose the latter. But not because I’m any kind of savior. Frankly I feel a tinge of guilt – here little guy, here you go back into your idiotic fake water prison with plastic plants and colored rocks and oh! A creepy miniature scuba dude! I’ll be in Vienna!

  The door to my father’s bedroom down the hall opens.

  I can hear her before I see her. The happy opera laugh. Then it’s that mythic mane of deep red hair and lips to match and ta-tas all up high and bouncin
g under a hunter green sweater. Then I get an extra treat. Boompappy. She turns and bends over to pick up a pearl drop earring from the carpet. Her ass fills the hall and blurs out all the surrounding setting. Thank you Francis Bacon for that beautiful ass shot. I bite the inside of my own cheek as punishment.

  I should hate this woman.

  Slut.

  Ho.

  Adulterer.

  Homewrecker.

  Instead I want to go make a series of T-shirts with each of those words on them and graphic drawings of her stripped naked. What? How should I know why?

  I really do need to get some professional help.

  Except I clusterfucked that one up myself.

  Mrs. K. walks down the hall toward me. She passes right by her own children like they are furniture. Bigger and bigger she gets. Like in a movie close-up. My head itches. I’m actually growing hair. Then she’s right in front of me. She smells like Hypnose. Made by Lancôme. Paris. A captivating fragrance for a charming woman with an intriguing attitude. It’s the same stuff Marlene wears. Goddamn it.

  What I want to say is, “Um, this is pretty uncomfortable. Can I go stay with my friends for a while?” What I’m afraid I’ll say is “Can I lift up your skirt and maybe sink my teeth into your big white ass? Just a little?” But I got no voice. So I stand there like an idiot with my hands dangling from my arms like big useless spoons. My mouth hanging open. I try to close it casually.

  Mrs. K. brushes a lock of hair away from her cheek and says, “Ida, be a dear, will you, and watch the children while I go get your father some medicine?”

  No shit.

  I look over at the creatures. Now I’m a babysitter? I wonder briefly what it would be like to sit on ‘em till they pass out.

  But it doesn’t end there. As she’s walking out the door?

  “Oh, and Mr. K. will be by later to take you and the children out for dinner. Isn’t that nice?”

  The door to my own home closes behind her. I feel a low rage boiling up from my ribcage. I stare down the hall to where my father is needing his peace and quiet. Peace and quiet? Is that what he needs? Really. Is that what he gave us? I look at the two kid lumps I’ve been left to command. I steer them toward the kitchen, where I literally give them a bowl of sugar cubes. They smack their evil demon midget gums and laugh. Their eyes immediately get shiny. I shake my head up and down and smile. Good, isn’t it. Have another.