Lullabies for Suffering

by Caroline Kepnes et al.

  She didn’t answer. Kelly could feel that her body was warm and she was still breathing. Her T-shirt was torn and bunched up, exposing her filthy bra. The rest of her clothes were missing. She was completely naked from the waist down, and Kelly’s mouth trembled at that. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her onto his lap, and cradled her. He covered as much of her body as he could.

  She had needle marks in her arms, fresh and raw, and they nearly made him sob. They were ugly against her white, white skin.

  His traitorous brain filled in the blanks and showed him how Joy had spent her last seven days. Human monsters poked sharp needles through her soft flesh, into her fresh veins, injecting evil into her blood, telling her lies and filling her with poison love and a sinister high. If he had protected Joy, she would not have needed to feel that high. He would have given her that high.

  “No, Joy,” he said, and buried his face in her hair. Something foul had been rubbed into it, but he didn’t care. “We escaped your father. We’re here together. Come back to me. Don’t go away again and leave me alone. You’re all I have.”

  He tried to pick her up, but he wasn’t strong enough. She was deadweight against his twiggy arms, now starved of all their muscle. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her onto his lap, and cradled her. He covered as much of her body as he could with his hands, giving her as much privacy and body warmth as possible.

  “I’ll sing to you. Would you like that? How about a little Whitesnake?”

  He sang every old song he knew. He went through all of the classics, all of the old rock that he and Joy had listened to through the years. After he sang those, he did some country and even some R&B, although he didn’t know much. After that, he made up words to tunes he vaguely knew. Hymns and old tunes that his grandfather used to play on the phonograph when he was just a kid. The sun was just peeking over the city to assess the night’s damage when Joy finally stirred.

  “Kel…ly?” she asked, and peered at him through slitted lids.

  “I’m here,” he said quickly. He tried to smile but his mouth wouldn’t work. It opened and attempted valiantly to turn up at the corners, but he knew it was just a big, blank maw of darkness. He could swallow Joy and the stars and the world and the universe with the huge void inside of him. He closed his mouth and swallowed instead.

  “Joy. I’m glad you’re awake. I’ve been watching over you.”

  “Shin—y,” she said, and her hand moved toward her breast. It was clumsy and heavy. Kelly grasped her fingers. She pulled away weakly, and gestured to her chest.

  Around her neck and under her shirt was the necklace. The pendant was a star made out of something that looked like glass. It shimmered dimly in the light of the rising sun. It was beautiful and horrible and Kelly wished he could worship it and break it between his back teeth. He’d grind it up and spit the bloody shards onto the sticky sidewalk, hallelujah, all praise be to its name.

  “Yes, it’s here,” he said, and wrapped Joy’s nearly lifeless fingers around it. That despicable, coveted thing. “It’s beautiful. I hope you keep it always.”

  She turned her head toward Kelly’s chest and fell asleep. It seemed much more natural this time, a healing sleep instead of near death. Her chest rose and fell and her heart stretched and beat. Blood rushed back and forth, to and fro, hurriedly spreading disease and who-knows-what to every part of her body.

  “What did I miss?” the sun asked, shining over the city. “Today is a brand new day, full of beauty and promise.”

  Kelly traced his fingers down the needle marks on Joy’s arms, terrified of the holes in her skin, that an infection had been injected inside her, and the infection was about to spread and replace her soul.

  He let his tears fall.

  #

  They had been gone for several months. Kelly had hoped things would get better, but that was his usual, optimistic nature. Sweet boy. Poor boy. Boys like him had their souls ripped away and their hearts cubed and put through the meat grinder. That was just the way of it.

  Joy had turned into a bundle of sticks. Her eyes peered out from dark circles, and her lips were perpetually cracked. Half of the people she solicited roughly turned her away.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing!” Joy screamed back at them. She was usually so drunk she barely managed to stand. This particular time was no different. “Think some other girl is going to give you such a good blow?”

  “Joy,” Kel said, putting his hand on her shoulder. She jerked away from him.

  “What, you gonna preach at me now, you goodie-two-shoes? Tell me how I’m not taking care of my holy temple?” She gestured at her body with both hands, and her eyes were burning in the hollows of her sockets. Kelly knew she was spoiling for a fight, but he wasn’t going to be the one to give it to her.

  “I got a couple hours of work today. I have some food.”

  He handed her a small package wrapped in tinfoil. She grabbed it greedily.

  “Ah, thanks, Kelly. You’re so sweet. Always thinking of me.”

  “Always,” he said. “Come sit and eat with me.”

  He took her hand and led her to a spot near the wall. She sat down unsteadily.

  “I want to see you happy, Joy,” Kelly said. He kept his voice quiet and even, the same way he used to when talking with a scared cat or wounded pup.

  “I’m happy,” she said, her mouth full. “Food makes me happy. Hey, you didn’t bring me anything else, something else I'm hungry for, did you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Just that.”

  She finished and wiped her face carefully with her fingers. For a second he saw the Old Joy, the True Joy. She used to fastidiously wipe the blood from her face so nobody would know what happened at home. He knew. The entire school knew. Everyone in town knew, but that didn’t help her much, did it? It was all a façade. Joy pretended that everything was perfectly normal and so did the town. Whatever kept the status quo, right?

  He had never hated his home town as much as he did at that very moment.

  “What?” she asked, looking at him. “Why are you staring at me?”

  Kelly smiled, and it was real.

  “Just admiring your beautiful face,” he said truthfully.

  She laughed.

  “Stop it. I know what I look like.”

  “Like sunshine,” he told her. He ruffled her hair with his hand. “Like Joy.”

  “Like Hell itself came here walkin’, and I know it, baby. You think I don’t, but I do.” She leaned back and looked at where the stars would be without the city’s light pollution. “I used to be pretty.”

  Kelly slid closer to her and put his arm around her.

  “Don’t say that, bunny. You’re still pretty.”

  Her laughter sounded more angry than mirthful. The sharpness of it startled both of them. Kelly felt like it was a sharpened shiv that found its way beneath his skin and into the tender part beneath his ribs. She continued twisting it.

  “I see myself, Kelly. I know what I look like, how I act. Sometimes I’m so horrible to you, and it’s like I’m inside of myself, watching. I know I’m hurting you. I want someone to hurt the way I do, but nobody cares except for you. So I hurt you, and that hurts the rest of the world. But it isn’t right.” She took his hand in hers and looked at him intensely. “I do love you, Kelly Stands. Sometimes I almost forget it, but it’s true.”

  He cupped her dirty face in his thin hands.

  “I love you right back,” he said simply. “You’re my Joy.”

  “That’s correct, sir,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him.

  His lips touched hers and he remembered their sweet, awkward kisses behind the woodshed, or in the barn, or once in the supply closet at school. She was in there looking for board erasers. He had been sent in for paper towels.

  “Oh, sorry,” he had said, and shuffled his too-big feet in his too-small shoes. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

  She had whirled around,
her eyes wide, her blond hair spinning around her like a halo or firefly glow. He had never seen anything so startled or wild or pure. She slid past him to the door and her hip bumped his. His hand came to the small of her back to steady her, and he wasn’t sure how it happened after that, but suddenly his mouth was on hers and her arms were wrapped around him so tightly that he thought she was going to squeeze his heart until it popped like a balloon. Even if it did, it would erupt with sweet Joy-colored confetti.

  He kissed her now, leaning his body into hers the slightest bit. She responded, pushing her breasts against him and sliding her tongue into his mouth aggressively.

  He pulled back just a little, but she mashed her lips against his and moaned. It sounded like theatrics, not like his Joy. He felt her fumble against the button of his jeans. The fingers of her other hand slid searchingly into his back pocket.

  He ripped himself away, breathing hard.

  “What are you looking for, Joy?” He growled like a beast. Naïve Kelly had disappeared along with the memory of that day in the supply closet, of the sweetest kiss he had ever experienced. He felt his face furrow as he grimaced.

  Joy pressed herself into him again. “I’m not looking for a thing, baby,” she said, her mouth against his neck. She moved to his earlobe and bit gently. Kelly hissed in his breath and Joy took that moment to surge into the corners and hollows of his body. She was a liquid and he was a container that needed to be filled.

  He was drowning. He was drowning in Joy. Her hot mouth and clutching fingers made him want to sprint down the alley away from her and also hold her so tightly that she melted into his skin. They could share one body, become one person. She could run through his veins like the heroin she wept for in the middle of the night and they could both get high together.

  This thought splashed over him like filthy water from the gutter. His senses cleared. The heady vapor of Joy and her scorching kisses lifted enough that he realized her hand was in his pocket again.

  She was going for his wallet.

  “Joy,” he groaned painfully. “Stop.”

  She mistook his disappointment for passion.

  “Never, baby,” she said, and deepened the kiss. Kelly slowly slid his hand down her arm.

  “Yes, baby,” she whispered, and moved against him.

  He circled his fingers around her wrist, and then grabbed it roughly. Joy squeaked and the wallet fell from her hand.

  “What is this, huh?” he asked her. His voice was hoarse from want and pain. “You’re stealing from me? From me, Joy?”

  “Baby,” she began, but Kelly pushed her away and shot to his feet.

  “Joy,” he rasped, and there were a thousand emotions as he said her name. His eyes threatened to spill tears. He was going to be just another teenager crying on the sidewalk, another little boy bawling because of some girl. “Do you think I’d honestly keep anything from you?”

  She peered up at him from the ground. Her mouth moved like she was trying to say the words “I’m sorry” or whisper his name. Perhaps she was simply telling him to go to hell. He dashed his sleeve against his traitorous eyes. They threatened to expose him for the absolute child that he really was inside.

  “I’ve given you everything I have,” he said, and winced when his voice broke on the last word. “I don’t have anything left. I walked away from everything I had for you.”

  “Kelly,” she said, and sorrow and something shinier flashed across the surface of her eyes for just a second. Then the moment was gone, and her gaze drifted to the wallet on the ground.

  Kelly’s stomach went cold. He could imagine what they looked like to someone standing far away. They didn’t look like lovers at all. They looked like two destitute people who just couldn’t find it in themselves to care anymore.

  Kelly’s chin trembled slightly.

  “Do you remember,” he asked slowly, “the day of my asthma attack?”

  She didn’t move, but her body language told him she was listening.

  “You saved me that day, Joy. You ran out into the road and got help. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have died.”

  Her voice was low.

  “If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have been out there. You would have been at home where you belonged.” She climbed unsteadily to her feet. Kelly almost reached out a hand to help her, but what was the use? How could you hold a ghost? You can’t. You have to let her whoosh right through you on her way out the door.

  “You would have been home,” she continued, and her voice was rising, “with your mother who loves you, and your father who thinks you hung the moon.” She hit him with each emphasized word. He took the blows stalwartly. Her frail hands were too weak to do any damage to his body, but each time her tiny fists struck out, his heart shattered in half. The pieces of it became smaller and smaller until he thought his blood would cease flowing through his body without anything there to pump it.

  “You’d be home going to school and dating other girls and finally being happy, Kel. You’d be happier without me, I know it. Now don’t deny it,” she said as he tried to interrupt, “because I know what you want to say. But you would honestly be better.” Her hands fell to her side. They stood bathed in the sick glow of a neon sign.

  “I have to see you every day, knowing that you’re here because of me. Starving, because of me. Because I’m too selfish to make you go home. I can’t deal with it. I can’t look at you because it hurts too much.”

  He tried to say something. He was a beaten dog and she was holding a stick made of words. He cringed and shuddered at what she was going to say next, but he couldn’t leave. He just couldn’t. That wasn’t what a loyal dog did.

  “I’m a cancer, Kelly,” she said, and her voice was crystal clear. The slurring was gone. She was clear and wholly present for the first time in months. It terrified him. The sheer force that was Joy was almost more than he could bear.

  “Joy,” he said. At her name, her eyes flicked to his. They held each other’s gaze for a very long time.

  “A cancer,” she repeated. “Sure, it will hurt at first when you cut me out. You’ll have to heal. But then everything will be better.” She put her hand on his chest, curling her fingers into his shirt like she used to. Back when Battered Joy and Terrified Joy and Desperately in Love Joy were the same person, and he had been Her Kelly.

  He put his hand on top of hers.

  “I don’t want to cut you out. I want you with me, always. Even like this.”

  But the moment was gone. It had flown by as the best things always fly by, and she was gone. The heartbreak and craving were back, her body trembling in want of the next fix, her brain eaten alive by the insects swarming inside of it. The insects would keep swarming, desperate and hungry until they were fed the one thing they wanted. Needed.

  Her eyes fell back to the wallet still lying on the ground.

  Kelly teetered as though the world had dropped out from underneath him. That’s what it felt like. There was stability and his steadfast love for this beautiful, broken, bizarre girl, and then suddenly there was…nothing.

  “I don’t have any money in there, Joy. I used it all on food.”

  Her tongue darted across her lips. Too fast, like a lizard’s. Kelly was afraid that if she met his eyes again, he’d discover she had yellow, slitted reptile eyes.

  “On food, Joy,” he emphasized. He could see the cogs turning in her head as she studied him and the wallet, gauging how long it would take for her to swoop it up and pelt down the alleyway.

  “Take a look inside if you don’t believe me,” he said. His voice sounded like an echo of itself. He sounded utterly defeated.

  She cocked her head and looked at him. The craftiness on her face destroyed anything that resembled the old Joy. This wasn’t the woman he loved. This was just some desperate stranger looking for an easy mark.

  He slowly turned out his pockets, one by one. She watched carefully.

  “Look,” he said, turning around so
she could see him from all angles. “No money. No other food. No score, nothing to trade or sell. I’ve given you everything I have. All of it.”

  Her lips twitched as if in disappointment. Her skin was clammy, sweaty, her flesh in constant motion from a million muscle cramps inside. She slowly slid down to the ground by his wallet.

  He held his hand out to her, and held his breath. His hands were cracked and dry, the fingernails bitten. They weren’t the hands of a boy who could save her. They weren’t the hands of a boy who knew how to be saved.

  She picked up the wallet. She opened it. She looked at the picture shoved inside. It was the two of them, two years ago, smiling into a camera that some random friend had held. Kelly was grinning his easy, ridiculous smile and his arm clumsily draped around Joy. Her eyes were screwed up against the sun, her head thrown back in laughter.

  She looked for a long time. She traced her finger over their faces and clothes as if she had never seen them before, as if these were new beloved people who had amazing adventures and lives that she wanted to commit to memory. She’d sit at their feet and ask how they met and what their favorite flowers were. The boy looked like somebody she could marry and have babies with and trust to raise their children with love. The girl looked like someone she wanted to share her secrets with. They could sit in her bedroom at night, braiding each other’s hair and gossiping about the things that happened at school.

  “Do you remember?” Kelly asked. He hardly dared to breathe, lest this skittish animal bolted and broke away. “We used to be so happy. We can be happy again.”

  Joy finished opening the rest of the wallet and ran her fingers through the billfold and tiny pockets. She came up empty. She looked disappointed before regarding Kelly with a fake smile and blank eyes.

  “Hey, baby, maybe you could go out and score me something good. I need to get away from all of this for a while.”

  She slapped the wallet into his outstretched hand and walked away, disappearing into the cold darkness of the alley.

  #

  This time Joy had kept her distance for nearly a week, and each morning Kelly woke up alone instead of with Joy—Morning Joy—who was the most desperate, the most foreign and infected and sick and irritated. It was like a thousand mosquitoes were nipping her skin and she would do anything, sell anything, or take anything to make them stop. Kelly stood in front of a store that sold glass sculptures and he studied them through the window. Maybe if Joy was with him, she’d look into the glass and be cured from the inside out. The glimmer of glass made the stars shine beauty into his veins, and there was no room for anything else.