I want to call in a helicopter to airlift me back to Bushwick, but that’s not exactly an option. I’d get slammed with a healthcare bill that I’d never be able to pay back. So I decide to just camp out here all night and make my own drugs. I’ll get high on delusion like the people at Mother Zion do. How hard can it be?
Standing up on the pine needle floor, I rock from side to side and get into full acting mode. I call up to God, only I don’t sayGod. That word has too many negative connotations ingrained into me, even if I’m playing make-believe. The Holy Spirit does too, so I go with something new, inspired by what the old lady said about Mary Magdalene and the divine feminine.
“Oh, divine woman,” I say in as solemn a voice as I can muster, cracking myself up as I go. “Please speaketh. Guide me toward the light.”
I don’t hear anything back, not that I expected to, but I’m still kind of disappointed. Maybe arms are like antennas and help cut through the static or something, so I hold my hands up in the air. Still no luck. It’s dead quiet. Just the birds and the wind and the squirrels and the hikers laughing obnoxiously from down below. It’s all so ordinary, nothing divine in the least.
My eyes start to prick after a while. My berry-colored contacts have been in for a while, so I take them out and start to put them back in their case, but it feels too orderly, so I throw them onto the dirt for an impromptu burial. I feel better right away, like my vision is crisper.
Night falls and I spread out on a pine needle mattress, plunking in and out of sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night I wake up to a whining sound. My first thought is that it’s Tara on the bottom bunk having a bad dream. Then, remembering where I am, I shine my phone flashlight until I locate the thing that doesn’t belong.
It’s this dark bundle a little ways away from me. I’ve lived in New York long enough to immediately assume it’s a bomb. But then the sound comes again, and two bright yellow eyes are staring at me, into me. It’s not a bomb at all. It’s a deer, a tiny fawn.
Turning off the flashlight so I’m not blinding the little creature, I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The fawn can’t be more than a couple weeks old, all covered in spots and seeming totally clueless about where they are or why they’re there. I can relate to that. We’re in the same boat.
The mom must’ve left them here while she went out searching for food. It’s weird to pick a spot right next to a human, but it’s actually quite a compliment to me. Animals always trust me. It makes me miss Mango and Squid and Arnie too, of course. I’m worried the fawn might be cold because the temperature is pretty frosty by now, even though it was hot in the day. I want to give her my sweatshirt, but that might spook her, and I can’t blame her. I even scare myself away sometimes.
The little thing is all tense, sizing me up. But eventually she falls back asleep; she can’t seem to help it. It’s pretty adorable and kind of reminds me how Arnie tuckers himself out by chasing his own tail and then plops down on my lap for a long nap. I think of my little niece and Jenni’s baby too. I haven’t been in their lives at all, and this feels like a mistake now.
I chew on some pine needles. They’ve got a nice crunch. Leaning my head back, I get a look through the shifting treetops up at the navy-black sky. It’s strewn with stars like someone went crazy with the saltshaker. There’s this one star that really pops out, the lead of the cast.
Things are bubbling up within me. It doesn’t feel soothing like hot lava; it’s just uncomfortable and makes me burp. I’m curious about what else I’ve got to burp up, what else is inside me that I don’t want in there anymore. Opening my mouth, I point it up toward that big star like I’m at the dentist wagging my tonsils. I’ve got no clue what I’m doing but I know it’s right, so I let the star shine down into me on all the parts I usually shove into the shadows.
The starlight doesn’t hit me all at once. It diffuses into a million softer particles so I can examine them one by one if I want to, which I don’t at first, but then I start to take a look.
I don’t like it at all. Even the smallest drop of light is too bright.
I shut my eyes for a while, but I can’t resist so I open them again just to take a quick peek back up at the light. It’s blinding but somehowI can see clearly, too clearly. There it is, all my shame splitting itself open or splitting me open. What’s the difference?
The shame about not being the sweet, obedient daughter my parents wanted. The shame about still having no clue what I’m doing as an adult, flying around like Peter Pan except I don’t actually know how to fly; I just crawl along the grimy sidewalk that I call the sky because admitting it’s the ground would break me and I’ve got too much shame for that, though I’ve always called it pride.
And below that but above it too, far above, far below, is the shame about how I’ve piled so many toxins into my body and let it be used as a toy. And how I’ve used other people’s bodies as toys too, total irreverence that I passed off as independence.
I’m writhing on the ground now, or at least it feels like I am. It’s hard to tell what’s happening out there versus in here. I can’t control my body; I can’t control anything. Maybe I’ve never been able to.
Keep going, dig deeper, my intuition says, and it’s good to hear that voice again, though it couldn’t come at a worse time. I’m out here looking for the divine woman or Mary Magdalene and I’m trying to keep the noise at a minimum.
“No thanks,” I tell it. “That’s enough for now. This isn’t a therapy session.” This makes my intuition laugh, like it’s in on something I’m not.
“What’re you smirking at?” I ask it.
Everything falls quiet in a loud kind of way. I look over at the little fawn, fast asleep, this little ball of untouched fur, so innocent like I used to be. Like I’ll never be again.
The sound of a piano thumps in my ears. It’s loud, too loud. A man’s face flashes, pieces of a puzzle fitting into place just so the final image can destroy me, or maybe just destroy the destruction.
It’s Mr. Hubert, my childhood piano teacher. The one whomade me hate that instrument for some reason I don’t remember. Except that I remember now. The repressed memories unpeel frame by frame, slowly yet too fast.
His hands are on me like it’s the very first time, reaching under my frilly pink dress. Touching, coaxing, telling me what a good girl I am. Me pulling away, looking away, closing my eyes. Him pulling me back in, telling me to look at him, that I can trust him.
I wonder for a moment if I’m hallucinating, if I’m inventing some dramatic trauma just to explain how fucked up I’ve become. But the starlight swears that what I see is true, and more than that, my body remembers in the way it’s shuddering and shivering and itching like I’m breaking out in hives.
I’m not in the scene anymore; I’m looking down on it, looking up on it, seeing myself as the little girl she was. The little girl who started dissociating every Monday from 4:30 to 5:15 p.m., deliberately losing track of time because she thought maybe it would be better or just less bad if she wasn’t counting down every minute until her mom rang the doorbell to get her.
The little girl whose parents thought she was being a spoiled brat complaining about piano lessons when they were shelling out money for her. The little girl who wanted to tell her parents what was going on but was too scared and soon felt like too much time had gone on. Because it was the little girl’s fault too—that’s what she thought. She could’ve done something; she could’ve stopped him. But she didn’t.
Then the scene spirals, it swirls, and there I am back in the first person again, no separation between the then and the now, the third person and the first. My body collapses in on itself like it’s finally realized there’s nowhere else to go. The only way out of this is straight through.
Everything is burning, a white-hot searing pain. All those old itches and triggers and hollow relationships. The way I can’t reallybe intimate with anyone or even make eye contact with men sober. It’s all here, it’s all here, unleashed from the underworld.
