I wanted to get better. I did. I didn’t want to be the person my family all worried about.
But I flinched from their concern. I could feel myself shrinking inside my hospital gown, pulling away, closing in, closing off. Like when I was fifteen and my mother took me to the gynecologist for the first time. In my head, I knew I should be there. But I felt exposed. Anxious. Violated.
I had a problem. Obviously. That didn’t mean I wanted to talk about it.
I took refuge in being polite, cooperative, answering everything in my softest voice, not giving them anything they could use against me. Like the Mouse my sisters called me, small and secretive, I cowered, my heart beating rapidly inside my ribs.
As if, by being good enough, quiet enough, I could somehow escape their notice.
There was another doctor coming this afternoon, Momma said, to talk to me.
A psychiatrist, I thought apprehensively. “Are you and Daddy going to be here?”
“If you want us,” my father said.
I shook my head.No.
Mom sighed. “Well. I’m going to go home and change.”
“I can stay,” my father said.
I swallowed. “I’m okay. One of the nurses is going to help me shower, I think.”
He nodded, accepting defeat.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” my mother said.
“And then can I go home?”
“We’ll see.”
“Momma, I’m fine,” I said, but the lie didn’t work anymore, for either of us. “I want to go home,” I amended.
“We have to wait for your test results,” my father said.
My mother changed the subject. “Your sisters want to see you.”
I didn’t want my sisters. Their questions. Their well-meaning interference. I didn’t want to see myself through their eyes.
“Tell somebody,” our mother used to say.“If someone ever bullies you or hurts you or asks you to keep a bad secret.”It was good advice to four growing girls. But what did you say when you hurt yourself? What if the secret was mine?
I turned my head away. “I’m too tired.”
“Even to see Jo?” my mother asked.
Jo—fierce, loving Jo—would try to fix me. It was easier to hold myself separate, inviolate, apart.
“Maybe later.”
“Or Amy,” Mom said. “She flew in last night.”
“She didn’t need to do that. I’m not dying.”
My parents exchanged glances. I flushed. My seizure had scaredthem. It had scared me, too. For once, I couldn’t view my body as something under my control.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to see Amy.
And maybe then they would all leave me alone.
