Laney

Laney:

"You—after all I—how dare—why won’t—you—YOU!”

            I heard my father in pieces, punctuated by grunts or the crash of something falling and maybe breaking.

            “I—I--- I---“ was all my brother Sam could get out.

            He was loud, but not very eloquent, as usual.  He’s got all these problems – like trouble putting his feelings into words -- related to his being “on the autism spectrum”, whatever that means exactly.  For some reason it pisses my father off but mostly I just find it annoying. 

            “I love cats!” Sam yelled suddenly, which was followed by the loud thump of a body hitting the wall upstairs, and I could picture Sam head-butting my father.

            Loving cats and head-butting were two of Sam’s “things”.

            My mother, who prefers to be called “Judy” ever since she quit drinking and decided her real name, which was Brandy, was a trigger for her – turned up the volume on the TV in the family room.  She pulled me close into a snuggle and we continued to watch Project Runway as if my brother and my father duking it out upstairs were perfectly normal, which it was.   

            There’s this book I read that said a bucket of water is a bucket of water to me, a vast ocean to an ant, a cool drink to an elephant, and to a fish it’s home – it all depends on your point of view.  So when I say “normal,” well, that was like my bucket of water, only in this case the bucket of water was Sam and my father rolling around on Sam’s floor upstairs and Judy and I watching TV downstairs with the volume up.

            As I said, to us, this was normal.  To the social worker who visited last week, the same scene would be dysfunctional and maybe detrimental to the welfare of the children, i.e., Sam and me.  To someone reading this, maybe in my memoirs someday or in a piece of fiction loosely based on us, maybe the scene was tense or sad or even funny.  On the other hand, to our neighbors we were just noisy.         

Like the fish in the bucket, to me, it was home.

Sigh.  Such was my life.  Thirteen and so jaded.  Tsk, Tsk, my grandmother would say.  Laney needs to find her joy, to make her own happiness, to get out of herself, she would say.  She has said, actually. 

“All that time in her room and how does she find anything in that scrap heap?  Anyway, do you know she is on that I-thing until one in the morning when she needs her sleep if she’s going to grow,” she said once to Judy, as if I weren’t there.

“Oooh, I like that one,” said Judy, pointing at the TV as a billowy white dress came down the runway.

“Eh, it’s all right,” I said.  “Kinda eighties prom dress.”

“Mm, maybe,” said Judy, shrugging and sipping her Diet Coke.

“That’s it!” bellowed my father as he crashed down the stairs like a bull in a china shop – not to be all cliché, but he was six foot three and four feet wide and our house was an old colonial full of tiny room and tinier stairways, so that’s what him moving around was really like.

“I can’t take this ANYMORE!  I’m DONE!” he said, roaring past the couch where my mother and I sat.

“Daaaaa….” said Sam, right behind my father.

I looked up as my father left, slamming the back door behind him, and Sam sank to the floor in a ball, pounding on his shins with his fists.  Sighing, I looked back at the TV and stifled the urge to tell Sam to melt-down quietly please, or else take his problems elsewhere.

So you see, to Sam, what I thought was “normal” was actually devastating. 

To my father it was the last straw. 

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.

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.