by Rachel Cohn
No, no, no. That fantasy’s tired, needs to be retired. The dream does cost something; the dreamer eventually wakes up.
New dream.
Reset.
It’s a tree house party, hot hot hot summertime steaming up through the wilted honeysuckle outside, two baked sister-cousins inside. Sadness has swallowed them. They’ve made a pact to escape the sadness, together. Swallow it all away. “Do you think . . . after . . . will we be able to see the ones we’ve left behind?” the heavy girl asks the light girl. “No,” the light-of-body-but-heavy-of-mind girl answers. “We won’t be able to see their suffering. We’ll have evaporated. Just like that. What they feel won’t matter if we’re nothing.” The heavy girl can’t believe the light girl could so casually dismiss those who will be left behind. Surely there should be more debate. But the light girl is ready. It’s now or never. The light girl raises her pretty hand to toast their end, but the heavy-of-body-but-maybe-lighter-of-mind girl hesitates: “I’m not so sure.” Because really—if the dead cannot witness the mourning of the survivors who have fought for and sometimes hurt but always loved the departed, what’s the point of making such a grand statement? This is a mistake. Words. They need to share words, not pills. The hesitating girl throws a piece of rope down to the garden from the top of the tree house—a lifeline. She needs to get them out of here. OUT! Now! Please! Panicpanicpanic. She can’t stop this. It’s too late.
This is a weird game this round. Someone’s not playing fair.
What happened to the dream? Only emptiness.
Where is the tingle? Where is the floaty?
Go back to square one.
Read over game rules carefully. Just as suspected—the rules state nothing about cold/clammy/nausea/slooooooowwwwww breathing. Point violation!
Clearly it’s time to call in a referee. This game is not going right.
But requesting the lifeline is challenging when the numbness makes movement feel impossible. Bummer.
The rules should be rewritten.
Visitors
THE DREAM IS DEAD.
I am not.
Bex saved my life.
Now we’re stuck with each other forever. I think that’s how it works.
Before I resign myself to this fate, I’ll need some answers from her.
“Why did you name me ‘8 Mile’?” I say to her. She’s sitting in the visitor chair by my hospital bed, flipping through a magazine.
She glances up from the pages. “You’re awake. I didn’t realize. What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Why did you name me ‘8 Mile’?”
The expression on her face veers from tired to incredulous. “You wake up in a hospital bed after an overdose, and that’s your first thought?”
“Yes.”
Actually, my first thought upon stumbling into consciousness, as I felt the plastic hospital band around my wrist and looked around the sterile room, was, This is nothing like in books or movies. In fantasy world, the heroine wakes up, surrounded by loved ones, and precociously asks, “What happened? I don’t remember anything.” Usually she has a pretty ribbon in her hair and roses by her bed.
My hair is a tangled jungle, it smells like puke, and no one’s sent me flowers.
There is not one single moment I don’t remember. I remember my greed with the pill count; it was about gluttony, not about making a statement. I remember gluttony’s reward: panic and nausea, coupled with the complete inability to act on either. I remember the sweat pouring from my skin despite the freeze shivering my insides. I remember my heart not wanting to beat. I remember not being able to stand up to answer the doorbell. I remember feeling surprise to see Bex standing over me, dialing 911; I remember feeling even deeper surprise that I hadn’t remembered it was she whom I’d managed to call to say only, “Please help me.”
I should write that part down. Over time, I may forget that part. Or revise it to change the key players.
“WHAT DID YOU TAKE? WHAT DID YOU TAKE?” I remember trying to tell them, but they didn’t believe me. I will never, ever forget the terror as the medics stuck the tube inside my nose and ran it down to my stomach. I will never, ever forget the gagging from the tube, like a tongue depressor at the back of the throat, only a million times worse. I will always remember trying to push the doctors away, cursing them as torture monsters, while silently thanking them for doing the job for me—allowing me to live. I will always remember the black from the charcoal they used to pump my stomach. The charcoal got all over my face, their hands, my clothes, their clothes. That blackness brought me out of the nightmare and into this morning’s light.
I lived, but the black lingers. It’s still smudged on my hands, my hospital gown, the hospital blanket. It’s probably on my face, too—at least it’s still visible on Bex’s face.
“You are honestly the most confusing person I’ve ever met,” Bex says.
“I’m flattered,” I say. “But I really did not appreciate that name.”
She slams the magazine closed. “I called you ‘8 Mile’ ’cuz I thought you were clever with words, like that rapper. It was supposed to be, like, a play on words.”
“The play on words could also be taken to mean ‘fat girl.’”
“Well, it wasn’t intended that way. Why do you always assume the worst in people?” Her face, tinted with charcoal marks on her left cheekbone and right eyebrow, looks at me even more incredulously. “You don’t actually expect me to apologize?”
“It’d be nice,” I say.
She looks like she wants to hit me. Then: “I’m sorry. Satisfied?”
Satisfied. “I’m sorry too,” I say. And: “Thank you.”
This part’s cool. The dialogue is just like a movie.
Shrink: “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
Me: “No. I think this is a pretty sucky world we live in, and I don’t necessarily think there’s that much worth living for. But I don’t want to die, either.” I didn’t necessarily believe these words until I just heard myself say them. I don’t want to die.
The attending psychiatrist is here to determine my immediate fate—whether I will be released from the hospital, or admitted to the psych ward instead. Her questions, our dialogue, is meant to diagnose my level of “suicidal ideation.” I’ve read about it in books. Only now I’m the girl cast in the fairy tale, an 8 Mile princess with black marks and the smell of human waste tainting her skin.
Shrink: “Do you have access to a gun or other firearms?”
Me: “No.” But when D.C. becomes a state and I become sheriff, I’m running the NRA out of town.
Shrink: “Do you have a plan to kill yourself?”
Me: “No. I couldn’t go through this again. The only plan I have is to not find myself back here again.”
Shrink: “That’s a good plan.” She jots some notes on my chart, then stands up to leave. “I’ll be back later today to talk with you and your family about long-term treatment after I sign your release forms. You can go home this afternoon. But your work is only beginning. That is, if you truly don’t want to come back here like this. Any questions for now?”
So, so many questions.
But there’s only one I want answered by her. To directly ask those who care, who already know the answer, would be too hurtful to them. “Do you know how she died?”
When the shrink came in, she let me know she’d already consulted with Laura’s psychiatrist, and that she was aware of “the situation” of the other girl who was brought to this same hospital a few months back, only dead.
“Do you really want to know?”
I do know. Laura swallowed some happy pills and slipped inside a long, dreamy sleep, like a good, pretty princess.
But maybe there’s more to the story.
I nod.
The shrink says, “Laura died from choking on her own vomit. That’s how people who try to commit suicide with pills very commonly die. Not from the Valium, as Laura tried, but from her body trying to reject the ingestion. Commonly in t
hese situations, the stomach contents come up to the back of the throat, but the body is sedated to the point that the vomit slides down into the lungs. It’s the choking from that secretion going into the lungs that causes death. The suicidal person thinks they’ve chosen a peaceful end. In fact, they’ve chosen a particularly gruesome one. I’ve seen Laura’s autopsy report. Her case was not an exception.”
It’s like Buddy’s excited to see me here. He looks elated rather than burnt out, and doesn’t bother affecting a somber tone to his voice. He sounds very up!, despite the downer situation. “I’ve been waiting for you to hit rock bottom, kid. Was hoping you wouldn’t take it this far. Glad you lived to tell. Time to make that health insurance pay for itself!”
He hands me a stack of rehab pamphlets for residential treatment clinics in Maryland and Virginia. The top one is seemingly related to his tribe. It says “Narconon.” The next brochure promises: “Free yourself from cravings, guilt, depression.”
Propaganda. “Are you aware that Narconon is a front for Scientology?” I ask my father.
“No!” he says, surprised. He plucks that pamphlet from my hand and tosses it into the trash. “You’re too damned smart for your own damned good. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you.”
“I feel the same about you.”
We laugh the same laugh. It might be the one trait we share, besides addiction.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “So just get used to me already.”
“What about Mel?”
“She’s been called. She’s trying to make a trip home. . . .”
“I want you to stay.”
I’m not just using him for his sandwiches. Buddy chose to be here when it counted; he wants to be here. My mother does not.
There’s probably only one person in the universe whom I would allow to smother my face in kisses, and that person is my high school principal.
Kiss on my right cheek. “Oh, my God, Miles.” Double peck on my left cheek. “How could you?” Smooch smooch smooch on my forehead. “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for allowing her to live.” Her grande finale is a gentle slap to my chin. “If you ever get into trouble like this again and don’t come to me for help, I will personally take you out of this world myself.”
I hold up my arm for Dr. Turner to inspect my wristband, inscribed with my name as a patient at Georgetown University Hospital. “Looks like I’m college material after all,” I say.
She doesn’t laugh. “Guess what, wisemouth? You’ve also been elected the editor of the school newspaper. Congratulations. Between your recovery program, schoolwork and the newspaper, you’re going to be one busy lady this fall. Not so much time alone, hiding things—that’s my plan for you.”
“Our school doesn’t have a newspaper.”
“It does now. I’m thinking the first issue will be dedicated to educating the student population about D.C. statehood issues and volunteerism to that cause. Good luck.”
She’s serious, but she’s also fronting. She doesn’t want me to notice the person not here.
“Where’s Jamal?” I ask her.
She still won’t lie to me. “He’s pretty mad at you, honey. I couldn’t get him to come here today.”
Oh.
“Maybe later?”
“Maybe.”
She doesn’t sound convinced.
Jim.
This one feels worse than the catheter did.
I’ve already seen him sitting by one girl’s bedside, sobbing.
“I can’t do this again, Miles,” he says, stone-faced, to the other girl.
Do I still have a home?
I need to say just the right thing. I have no idea what that is. What could she have told him to give him comfort?
“Laura didn’t want help. I do.” I might fail. But I’ll try.
“Good.” His voice sounds cold. Defeated. “A counselor from a private clinic will be coming by the carriage house tomorrow to talk with you.” He, too, hands me a pamphlet. But it’s for a local treatment clinic for depression and substance addiction, an outpatient program.
I wouldn’t have to go away. I don’t want to leave D.C. Or him.
I want him to offer me a cigarette, some words of encouragement, I wouldn’t mind some M&Ms, he could throttle my neck, even—I’d take anything not to see the blank stare his gray face sends my way.
Silence.
I only wanted to slip inside my dream, not Laura’s. The OD part was an accident. “I didn’t mean to do what Laura did,” I say.
I only need one thing in order to leave the hospital. It’s not a home, or a counselor, or a program.
Longer silence.
“I believe you,” Jim finally says.
That’s what I needed.
A Ritual Last Smoke
ONCE UPON A TIME, A FRESH-FACED YOUNG GIRL, WHO’D just cheated death by having her stomach flooded with charcoal to pump out self-administered, illegally-obtained toxins, celebrated her eighteenth birthday at a small party thrown in the lavish garden on a beautiful-sad Georgetown estate.
In what she hoped would be her last act of chemical dependence (besides quitting nicotine and sugar—she figured those would be Steps 13 and 14, and she’d worry about 1-12 for now), the birthday girl had transformed her appearance. No, she had not miraculously dropped fifty pounds, or sacrificed her black wardrobe, or even let loose the lip ring that cut through her few attempts at smiling. She’d simply gone back to her roots.
“You look better as a blonde,” said Niecy, her hair colorist. Niecy had also been assigned the supporting role of Secondary Best Friend until Niecy’s brother, the boy moving to New York who would not come to the birthday party, forgave the birthday girl. It was a good enough exchange, for now. “Can I flat iron your hair too? Let me make it all smooth to really show off that fairy-light color.”
“No,” said Miles, the blond bombshell. She scrunched her hands in her wavy hair, to further curlify its fullness. “Big is the new beautiful.”
“Jamal sent you something from Giant,” Niecy said.
Miles did not have to ask what the boy had sent in place of himself. Her mouth could already taste it. Who else but him would know she wouldn’t want a fancy birthday cake from a fancy Georgetown patisserie, but would prefer their shared favorite—the grocery store sheet cake with the psycho plastic clown perched in the middle?
“Those cakes are so disgustingly sweet,” Niecy said. “I’m gonna have two pieces.”
“Will you tell him something for me?” Miles asked.
“He’ll come around, Miles. You know my brother. Can’t stay mad at a lady.”
“It’s okay. You don’t need to try to make me feel better about it. It’s probably better for us to be apart for a while. He’s got his exciting new life to start without me dragging him down, me in my exciting new life of an addiction treatment program and tagging along to AA meetings with my father. But could you please give this message to Jamal? Tell him: I already know the words. I just need to learn the beat. This tone-deaf white girl will try to make music out of recovery.”
She meant the message. She didn’t know if she would survive it. Her stomach had been purged and her body released—alive—from the hospital, and yet the cravings had the audacity to already set back in. She found it strange to feel so relieved not to have to hide the cravings anymore. To acknowledge them. She wished for Jamal to think her strong enough to make it through. She wished that for herself, as well.
“I will tell him,” Niecy said. “That’s a good message. Think you could reword it to rhyme? He’d like that. Now get on out of this carriage house. There’s a party waiting for you outside. Today is the day to be Miles.”
It’s not like a difficult girl who could count all her friends on one hand had a large gathering waiting in the garden to get their party on. She had a Niecy, a Dr. Turner, a Bex, a Buddy, a cake from Giant, some cheese sandwiches . . . and an old man smoking on a bench under a tree house.
Sh
e knew where to find him.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she told him. She was very, very tired—but never too tired for him.
He looked up and choked on his exhale. “Your hair!” he said. She could see the recognition in his eyes, but he didn’t say it: You look like our beloved gone girl.
She sat down on the bench next to him. She’d neglected to bring her cigarette pack outside; this craving she was in no way ready to sacrifice. But she’d have to wait for him to offer.
What he offered was this: “You and I have an appointment at the DMV tomorrow.”
“But I don’t want to drive,” she said.
“No one’s saying you have to. But you need to get a D.C. identification card.” She started to protest but he stopped her. “No, I don’t need to hear the enslavement of D.C. speech. It goes nowhere. You need to be able to register to vote.”
“Why bother? My vote counts for nothing.”
He shook his head in frustration. “God, Miles—”
“Do you believe in God?” she interrupted him. That all-powerful, omniscient He seemed a more worthy subject of debate than impotent D.C.
“You’ll be surprised to know, but I do.”
“Well, according to a disturbing percentage of fundamentalist voters in this country, He doesn’t believe in you. So I don’t see why I should register to vote when my voting in D.C. means nothing against their legitimatized votes.”
“Think about it this way. I doubt I will ever make those fundamentalists accept me or my choices. But I can subvert them at every possible turn at the same time. I can fight back. I can fund a school for queer youth. I can make friends with influential politicians. And I can pursue my agenda at those voters’ expense, too. All those vacuum cleaners with my family’s name on them that get bought by Bible Belt consumers are funneling money to my causes. There’s hope. And if you don’t have hope, what do you have?”
He had made hope possible for her.
She said, “I don’t believe in God, but if I did, I’d hope He would approve of your subversive methods. And I’ll do it. Register to vote. But not because I believe my vote will count. But because you asked me to.”