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Hate
has to come first. You will hate the doctor for pulling you out of your
mother and you will hate yourself for not fighting harder, even though
you will not scream until they slap you, hard, and then leave you alone
in a cold crib in a dark room. You will stay awake all night and listen
to the sound of the blood in your ears, then hear, “I don’t
remember another baby who refused to sleep,” and “She must
be afraid of the dark, all babies are afraid of the dark…don’t
be scared.” “I’ll turn on another night.”
This is the only way to get started.
You will not require anything of your parents. You will be a quiet child,
do what you are told, eat very little, and live on a beach somewhere,
so your mother can cover you with sun block before you search the sand
for small beautiful shells and sharks’ teeth. You will bring the
shells and teeth home, put them into a little pile on the front porch,
and spend weeks adding shells to the pile, memorizing their differences,
lining up the teeth according to size. Then you will wake one morning
and find the shells kicked into the sand and pulled back by the tide.
You will stand in the sun and listen to the ocean, and sneak out without
sunblock, run to the shore, and dig deep in the sand to find a way out.
Your mother will wake up, of course, and when she finds you not in bed,
she will call the police, who you will see as you walk home. You will
be eight years old. This is only the beginning.
Three summers later you will drive to Iowa to stay with your grandparents
for a week. Your mother will say, “this is the house where I lived
until I married your father….be good…you know how your grandparents
are…don’t make too much noise…and make your bed…”
Later, you will wake up to the telephone at seven am. You will be tired,
so tired, and curled up on the hide-a-bed in the basement. After you hear
the phone ring, you will imagine your grandmother narrowing her eyes and
calling, “Your mother’s on the phone…would you like
to speak with her?” You will not want to speak with her, because
you are so tired, so you will sigh, “I’ll talk to her when
she gets here.”
Now, it will help if your grandmother’s mother died from stomach
cancer, her brother hung himself in the family barn, and her father took
a boat to Belgium and found himself unable to return to the farm and his
nine children. She will stomp downstairs and you will hear, “You
wicked…if your mother dies before she gets here…if she’s
in a car accident…her ungrateful…unloving child who doesn’t
have time to say hello…too busy loafing about…I’ll think
at her funeral…why don’t you worry you little soul sucker?
Why don’t you care…?” She will go back upstairs, and
you will feel your stomach tie itself in knots, sweat will rise to your
forehead, and you will think about your mother’s car colliding with
a semi-truck on the highway…the trucker will be asleep…they
will not see your mother’s blue Volkswagen Bug until it is crushed
under the wheels, along wit her head and arm…thin rivers of blood…you
will run to the shower and turn the water on, and cry until your grandmothers
voice shouts…”How could you be so unreasonable…so unloving…after
all she’s done for you…raising you the way she did it’s
no wonder…and in my house…the very thought…” she
will seem to be blubbering.
Instead of getting out, having more friends, going to the movies and dances,
having boy/girlfriends, you will obstinately refuse to do anything but
sit and do nothing…Sometimes you will wander the streets of the
third new city you have lived in six years. When you do this, you will
not tell anyone what you’re doing or where you are. You will keep
your room extravagantly untidy…leave bowls of unfinished oatmeal
on the windowsill until mold grows on their surfaces. When your mother
asks what’s bothering you, you will scream endless diatribes at
her about your father. He doesn’t think you are a person; he makes
you feel like you’ll never be good enough. He never wonders what
you do; only how can you do this. You will swear like a rock star, and
then find an article about a teenager who was denied entrance into an
Ivy League college because of their frequent use of blue language stuck
to the refrigerator. Regardless of the fact that you will not have the
grades necessary for entrance into an Ivy League school, you will listen
to your father lecture on unbecoming language. Of course, you will say
fuck you very much and be grounded for six months.
This is when it starts to get exciting. Night after night, instead of
sleeping, your stomach will ache. You will think about your school bus…the
loud children…and the bus driver not able to hear the police sirens…and
the impact of the bus and the…car…and the cracks of heads…against
the windows…and the sound of the blood…in your ears…there
will be masked gunmen…at your high school…who steal jewelry
from the faculty…cover your head with a hood…hold a gun to
your back…visions of yourself falling headlong down the stairs…unable
to control yourself…you will crack your head on the cement…your
parents will asphyxiate in their blankets…the carbon monoxide will
build up in their room and…you will never see them again…and
the water…in the kitchen…it will poison your best friend…the
girl who will give you watercolors…after you tell her you hear voices…say
there is a razor in the bathroom…and that you can sit on the cold
tub and put the razor into your wrists…and slice VERTICALLY…so
they will know you wanted to die…you will be thankful for your bedroom…and
the books you read…and the records you play…too loudly….certainly
you will never be an astronaut…or fly to Mars…and be a colonist…
You will think that you are lucky.
untitled by Stanley Lieber
You will go to college somewhere, anywhere, and live with an ex-Jehovah’s
Witness, or a wiccan, or a drag queen, or a violinist. You will find that
drinking helps you sleep, that you like electronic music, Polaroid cameras,
and illegal drugs. This will infuriate your roommate’s older boyfriend,
who will like action figures and Looney Toons. You will argue with him
about child labor in Cambodia. He will say, “I don’t care
as long as it’s not my child.” You will throw your beer at
him and scream, “I can’t go on, you are arguing to win…at
best you win…at worst you lose…but I…I am arguing to
preserve my existence!” He raises his eyebrow…looks like an
alien…your stomach will hurt…you will leave the house…and
walk the streets…to wake up three days later…under a tree…you
will smell yourself…and feel something sticking into your hip. You
will find six Polaroids in your pocket of the dog shit in your neighborhood.
But where is the camera?
You won’t finish your degree. Instead, you will work in retail,
or at a restaurant, or behind the counter at a bookstore. You will have
a boss named Tyson whom you will find attractive despite his acne and
obsession with Star Wars, and you will spend every weekend at a bar, where
you will pick up writers/store clerks, writers/students, writers/factory
workers, and writers/rockstars. You will sleep magnificently thanks to
the alcohol, but will spend your days hung over and insecure, feeling
dirty and stupid and useless and worthless and ugly and beer-bellied…and
one night you will tell this to Tyson, and he will sleep with you, and
give you a book about aliens.
After you read the book, the beer will no longer help you sleep. You will
only think of aliens shining flashlights outside your window in the middle
of the night and you lying there in your bed, unprepared. You will think
they’ve taken you before, and start to search your body for marks
to prove you were abducted, and this is why you feel this way, this is
why you can’t be an astronaut, this is why you have the noise in
your ears, it’s their blood in you....but there are no microchips
in the skin on your legs…or your arms…or your stomach…or
on your face…there are only pores and little hairs that grow out
of the pores. You will pluck your way through the next two years and leave
your skin a blistered wasteland.
Tyson will be worried; he will take you to a professional. And then you
will take Lithium…have weekly blood tests…take Paxil…take
Xanax…which will help you sleep again…take Anafranil…take
Buspar…take Tegretol…and gain weight..and sweat profusely…you
will have arm pit stains…from morning to morning…you will
soak your sheets…but will not dream…you will get a promotion.
But you will marry Tyson to live in a dismal suburb and have a baby…and
watch television shows…where large families in beautiful houses
are happy people. But that will not be a mother…that will not be
a father…that will not be a child…that will not be a woman…that
will not be a phone call…to the airport…for a pilot…who
gets on the phone…after much shuffling…and tells you that
flying is like nothing…like a car ride…but with a blue highway…and
that people never panic…so far about the earth…in their tiny
upholstered chairs…with their cans of diet cola…until the
airplane flies too high…and you’re stuck in outer space…where
all the stars will look like assholes…and the oxygen runs out…people
will cry and hug each other…and soon the airplane will lose power…and
you will plunge into the ocean…
Your building will have two washers and two dryers. While the baby and
Tyson are at the park…you will do the laundry. On a Saturday. You
will think over and over to yourself: Those who do laundry on Saturday
nights never have arguments never have fights. Over and over. Up
and down the stairs with the baskets of baby diapers. You will leave the
detergent downstairs for five minutes, and then when you come back you
will find it gone. If you had a car and a credit card, you could drive
to Wal-Mart and buy new diapers and laundry soap, but you will not have
a car or a credit card, just three dollars to last you, the baby, and
Tyson for the next week. So you will grab a marker and a sheet of paper,
scrawl out a nasty note to the perpetrator, something like, If you
took my detergent I’m sure it was a mistake I’m not mad yet
but you’re pushing me and I push back so it better be back fucking
soon. You will reach for the tape you know you left on your desk,
but you will not find it…you will search the living room, but you
will not find it…you will remember you once saw a roll of tape in
the bedroom, and you will search the closet, then pull the bed away from
the wall , where you will find old Us magazines and an old copy of Fingerprints
of the Gods, but you will not find IT…You will look in the
bathroom, empty the medicine cabinet, watch the bottle of aspirin fall
behind the radiator, which you will search behind, and where you will
find the tape, so you will grab your sign, run downstairs, and slap it
up.
You will continue to lie awake, and notice the clock says three a.m.,
and that you have no window to look out of and watch your neighbor wash
his car, so you will get out of bed without waking Tyson, find your slippers
and your pants, lift your baby out of her crib, and she will cry, but
will not mean it. You will push her stroller up and down the streets of
your neighborhood. They say it is a safe neighborhood. There will be flags
on the front lawns, and the apartments all have dish washers and ceiling
fans. There will be no clouds in the sky, and the moon will be full. The
breeze…will be soft and cool on your face, and the tinkling of the
wind chimes will dance through the air…you will push the stroller
uphill…find an abandoned church…you will open the gate and
walk around the building…in that dark and fragrant night…there
will be something spooky about old churches…think of evil children
and the smell of roasted pork…as you look down at your baby…and
feel your heart grow cold and strong…your curiosity will be overwhelming…and
your fears will freeze and you hear the sound…of the crunch of dry
grass…around the corner…you will say so what…and keep
on walking…
No one will find you. [B]
JESSICA THOMAS
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