Larabee

On days when my leg aches, my heart aches more. 

I woke up this morning same as every morning, reaching for my crutches, swinging my leg down.  It shivered with a jolt of pain that then settled in as a quiet, throbbing ache.  Unable to stomp my feet, I pound my crutches on the floor, as if I’m stomping them.  Then the heartache comes.

It starts as an uneasiness in my belly, uneasiness which rolls into an iron, spiked ball like the kind you see on maces in medieval pictures.  The ball is dragged by a chain, up my throat, and lodges in my chest.  With very breath, I feel the spikes stab deeper, pushing into my lungs so I can’t get air, pressing into my heart so that I double over.

The leg pain is real.  The stomach-throat-heart-and-lung pain is in my mind, and that makes it worse.

Oh, Anne.  Why you?

Btw, this is a huge leap from the why me’s I felt first after the accident.  Back then, my leg hurt so bad, it was like a hot, sharp sword was thrust through my knee and twisted.  Twisted and twisted, like my brain, twisting and twisting through the events that led up to the accident that led up to my ruined leg and …

And…. And….

Deep breath.  Lying back down in bed, I make myself face the truth.  The accident ruined my leg, but it killed Anne.

And it was my fault.

Corinne

(selection from my new book, Secrets I Don't Dare Tell)

Secret #2

August 20, 2011

“I Didn’t Know It Would Feel Good.

The first time I ever threw up on purpose was after scarfing two pieces of birthday cake.  The first time I ever threw up on purpose, it was after I tried to get Tim to notice me.  The first time I ever threw up on purpose was also right after the first time I ever smoked pot.  These things really happened, though not necessarily in that order…”

Corrine

Corrine:  After our earlier argument, Cassidy and I piled our clothes in a line between us, a soft wall that is six inches high and as long as our bodies, which is the same thing as saying as long as our tent, since we are relegated to sharing a tiny pup tent, as usual on these family camping trips – or should I say, these family trauma dramas.

            We used to cling to each other during thunderstorms, when the rain always soaked through the walls of our tent, and the wind threatened to blow us into the lake.  We used to stay up all night by the light of our dim camp-lamp, talking until the lamp’s big battery died.  We used to, we used to, we used to.

            I used to…

            Well, never mind. 

            My nylon sleeping bag crinkles as I adjust to see my journal better.  I remember when I was fifteen, and it came in the mail from my crazy aunt in California, the fucked-up one, or so my equally fucked-up other aunts called Rachel.  I remember I was like, wtf, I mean the blank book was pretty with it’s heavy pages, torn edges, real flowers pressed into the cover.  But I’m not a writer, wasn’t then, anyway.

            Suddenly, the sipper to our tent goes up, and it’s my Uncle Tim, and without thinking, I close my book and start to unzip my sleeping bag.  He’ll say he wants to show me the stars or something.

            “Cassidy, come out!  I have something special to show you,” he says to my sister.

            My sister, not me.

            There was a note that came with the delicate book my aunt sent on my fifteenth birthday.  It said to the journal was a secrets book.  A place to keep my secrets.  At the time, I didn’t have any I dared write down.  But now the book is nearly full, full of secrets, all but the big one, the one I still haven’t written.

            And now Cassidy is going to have secrets of her own.

Lilly

“You like sushi?  I get it from the market on Folsom.  After five they sell everything half price—“

“Fuck you!”  I push the plastic container so hard it flips over onto the floor.

He just smiles.  A big, shit-eating grin.  Did I really sleep with this guy?  I don’t remember.  I DON’T REMEMBER!

Shouldn’t that count for something?

“It’s okay you’re clumsy.  Probably hung-over too, huh?” he says as he picks my California roll of the floor with long, hairless fingers.  Dainty fingernails.  Like a piano player. 

Did we talk at the bar at Chex Louis about how I played piano from the time I was seven?  Is that how we hooked up?

I DON’T REMEMBER!

“Please, can I just go?  Please?” I say.

He doesn’t answer, just picks at the wasabi that’s stuck in the carpet. 

“You seem like a really nice guy.  How about I take your number and we get together sometime.  Go dancing.  Whatever you want.”

He nudges the sushi toward me on the overturned crate that’s acting as my dinner table.  I keep looking at the door, and he notices.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he says, not in a mean way, just in a matter-of-fact tone that is way scarier. 

It’s even scarier when he takes one of the pieces of California roll and stuffs it in my mouth.

“Stop talking now,” he says, as he takes my flannel shirt off the bed and uses it to sop up the soy sauce I spilled on the rug.

Sophie

Sophie:  Sleep pulls at me.  It’s fingers are twined through my brain, refusing to acknowledge the persistant beeping of my alarm. 

            “Sophia Margaret Lewellen, what the fuck is wrong with you?” screams my mother, who also bangs on the thin wall between our rooms with her fist.

            Sleep recoils, and I jump up, turn off the alarm, spin around in fright – is Momma coming in?  Will she trade me for the wall as a target for her fists?

            All is quiet again.  I’m standing on the bare wood floor, a sliver of space between my bed and my dresser.  Looking to the side, I check myself out in the mirror.  I’m not vain, it’s not like that!  I just can’t help it.

            All I can see is my stomach, protruding out as though I’m pregnant or something.  I think I grew fatter during the night.  Dropping to the floor, I begin a hard-core set of calisthenics, mostly working on my abs. 

            It’s almost eight when I finish, and the bus comes at eight-fifteen.  The clothes I’ve laid out are uncomfortable.  Itchy leggings and a long shirt that looked cute on the mannequin in the store, but only makes me look fatter.  Tossing through my closet, I end up yanking a pair of holey jeans out of the laundry pile and shoving my legs into them so fast, my foot catches on the hole in the knee and pulls it wider.  Don’t care.  Slip into a Hello Kitty black shirt I’ve had since I was eleven and it still fits, it fits great, it’s tight, and my ribs even show, and I’m not going to look in the mirror again, not going to check if my fat stomach is sticking out because it’s already eight-eleven.

            Rushing to my laptop, I start to write: 

            “Thirteen today.  Alone.  Momma’s in bed.  She won’t be up until after I get home, and then she’ll be on the couch with her big, plastic red cup of wine, and there won’t be a cake, but I don’t mind. I wouldn’t eat it anyway.”

            My bedroom door swings open, slams against the wall.  I jump.  Goosebumps rise on my arms.

            “The bus will be here in two minutes.  Two minutes, young lady!  I’m not driving you, don’t think I’m driving you.  What are you writing?  Are you writing about me?  Why don’t you write about yourself? Why don’t you write that you’re as skinny as a baby bird because you won’t eat, and your mother does nothing except try to make you the best meals…”

            She goes on, but I’ve already shut my computer and I don’t care if she reads my stuff while I’m gone, I don’t care about her.  I don’t need to listen to her lies.  One day I will be a famous writer and I will leave here and leave her and right now, I’m outta here.  Grabbing my backpack and hoisting it onto my shoulders, I bend over from the weight, but that’s good, because the position pushes my head out in front so I’m like a pointy missile, aimed at my mother.  She moves aside and lets me pass.

            I hear the bus as I run down the steps from the third floor, past the second, where Mrs. Findley lives and I smell bacon and my stomach twists inside, but I wouldn’t ever eat bacon anyway.  I won’t eat anything that used to have a head.

            I won’t eat anything.

            The bus chokes and grumbles past me just as I get outside.

            So what, I’ll walk.

            Staring down at the sidewalk, I’m careful not to step on cracks, but I count them as I go, and I’ve just passed crack number one hundred and ninety-eight when I see the bird.

            A cluster of flies rises off it as I get closer.  Only its skeleton and a few thin strands of flesh remain on it’s torso.  The head is gone.  But the wings!  They somehow remain completely intact, outstretched as if it is ready to fly.  

Angelique

Angelique:  It’s raining.  Oh great.

Cupping my hands around the tip of my cigarette, I press my thumb on the flint wheel of my lighter.  The wind blows the tiny flame out before I even take my thumb off the gas.  I huddle tighter.

Someone in a hurry bumps me.  I don’t even look up.

Finally, the flare of light catches the cigarette paper, and I’m lit up and puffing furiously.

It’s three am.  She got me up at two, my phone ringing an electronic version of “We R Who We R” – ringtone muzak of Ke$ha.  I should change that – you can’t even tell what the song is when it plays.  But what’s the dif, when no one ever calls me, except my mother, when she wants something, like to be picked up from the hospital at two am.

A Mom and her kid come out through the big, sliding, automated hospital doors, and hurry past me.  The kid looks at me smoking and holds her nose with her fingers, scowls.

Really.

I didn’t even know my mother had left.  I was sleeping when she decided she had to come to the ER for an enema or some shit, to get, well, some shit.  

First, she tells me on the phone that she needs surgery.  So will I come?

Of course, I believe her.  She’s a pathological liar, and I know that, but I believe her.  I’m here, aren’t I?

But of course when I get here at two-thirty, pajama bottoms under a big, black sweater, I find her in an examinating room waiting for test results, and then the doc comes in to tell her they haven’t found anything wrong that a stool softener won’t cure in a day, but she tells him, “Ooooh Doctor, but it huuurts,” so now she’s getting dressed and waiting for her Demerol prescription, or Dilaudid if they’ll give it to her.

“I guess I’m no longer needed here,” I said.

“But you have to drive me home!” she cried.

“You got here yourself, now get yourself home!”

Honestly, Dilaudid for constipation?  I am so done.

Tossing my cigarette -- throwing it down hard -- I tuck my head down against the wind and rain, and head into the parking lot.  I don’t even have my license yet, all I have is a permit.  I could get arrested.  This is ridiculous.  I bark a short laugh at the insanity.

Ke$ha blares from my phone.  It’s her.

“I’m coming out now,” she says.

“Fine,” I say with an exaggerated sigh.  “I’ll be in the car.”

Candace

Candace:  My mother in downstairs in her studio, painting.  She knows I'm home, of course, but I'm supposed to be sick.  In my body, I mean. 

Well, I am sick.  But it's deeper than my mother thinks.

My mother paints oceans.  Literally, oceans.  Fishermen on a wharf, lines dropped into the ocean.  A whale spouting ocean water out of its blowhole.  A mermaid on a rock in the ocean.  Ocean waves, crashing on the beach.

She paints oceans, I believe, because of the oceans of ideas that crash and tumble, flow freely and crest in her brain.  Ideas that lead her to the studio to paint, or to her desk to write, or even down to the beach, to walk and take pictures.

Where are my oceans? I cry to myself.

Barely a trickle moves in me.

Oh, I do fine in school, usually -- or at least I've been known to do well, although lately, maybe not so well.  My mother doesn't know this yet.

My mother's oceans bring us food -- food for thought, and food on the table.  She's quite famous, perhaps you've heard of her?  Of course you have.

But no one's heard of me, and no one will. 

No one knows me, and no one will.

I'm quiet, and I'm still inside.  No ideas rushing through me to crash upon the shore.  No photographs, paintings, stories, sculptures, novels, symphonies or jingles.  

At best, I am an abandoned well.  

Deep and dark inside.

Just enough water to make it damp and uncomfortable to be in here.

Alone.

Just enough water to sustain me, for a little while, and then I claim sickness of my body, and lie in bed, crying dry tears, wishing to feel something other than this deep, dark hole, this deep darkness inside.

Caroline

Caroline is eleven and a half – a tween, and that feels like the worst age to be, the worst way to be ever, no matter how much everyone thinks her feelings aren’t real, or at least aren’t really important.

Caroline:  These are just feelings, that’s what my mother said.

She doesn’t know, or understand, or probably even care what feelings I’m having, but she says not to worry, not to get so worked up and anxious because they’re just feelings.

Like, feeling left out.

Or feeling like I can’t do anything right.

Feeling like everyone’s mad at me all the time.

Feeling like crying now, then, here, there and everywhere.

Seriously.  Just feelings, she says. 

Feelings aren’t facts.

So here’s how it started, I think:

First, the funeral for my Grandma Caroline, whom I’m named after, except she pronounced it Caro-line, and I pronounce it Caro-leen, which everyone used to think was me being creative when I was six and seven and eight, but now everyone seems to think I’m just being difficult.

My Aunt Lisa said, “Caroline is such a lovely name, why would you want to change it?” 

Then she started crying, and I felt like it was my fault, like I ought to be carrying on my grandmother’s name.

And then, I couldn’t muster up any tears at the funeral and my mother said sometimes she worries because I’m so cold and so wrapped up in only myself, except whenever I do cry she starts to cry because she says all she ever does is try to make me happy and…

Anyway, feelings aren’t facts, right?

So the facts are, I never really knew my Grandma Caroline, not like my cousins did, so I wasn’t sorry she was dead – not that I wanted her dead, just that I didn’t know her and I didn’t care that much. 

Fact:  I didn’t cry at the funeral.

Fact:  When they took out the food, the chicken wings were like slimy and undercooked and didn’t look like real buffalo wings, and the dip had spinach in it and when I started to cry then, my mother said to everyone that I just had low blood sugar, and she told me to eat something, and I said I wasn’t hungry, and she said to have a piece of pie at least, so I did, but it was lemon merangue, so it was all slimy, and I didn’t understand how I could be so hungry and there could be two tables of food out and still there was nothing I could eat.

Fact:  My mother told me to go to my room until I got a hold of myself.

First I can’t cry at the right time, then I can’t stop at the right time – or was it the wrong time, I don’t even know.

Fact:  As I half-stomped, half-slinked upstairs to my room, I heard my mother telling my Aunt Lisa that she (my Mom) didn’t know what to make of me, and my Aunt Lisa said, “She’s just at that age, where she doesn’t know if she wants to be a kid or an adult,” and my mother said, “I hear it only gets worse,” and she and my aunt laughed in a way that was like they didn’t really think I was funny, they thought I was horrible.  They thought I was too much trouble already, and how could I get any worse?

Will I?

Will I feel worse than this?

Hopeless, confused, abandoned, sorry, lonely, mad, sad.

These are only my feelings, but they sure feel like facts.