The Merciful Scar

by Rebecca St. James

  Tha-a-a-t’s why she’s here. She’s a crazy person.

  “I actually liked having to get along with people I didn’t particularly care for and finding ways to work together. Because in the army, it can’t be all about me, it has to be about we.”

  She looked at me as if she were going to add more to that statement and changed her mind.

  “Marksmanship was my thing,” she said. “We were required to knock down twenty-three of forty targets on our final test and I knocked down thirty-eight.” Emma frowned. “Does this sound like I’m bragging?”

  “No. It sounds like you’re amazing. No wonder you didn’t need shooting lessons here.”

  She got quiet.

  For Pete’s sake, what was wrong with that statement? Seriously, she needs to mark which buttons not to push.

  Emma took in a long breath through her nose and closed her eyes. When she opened them she seemed to have gathered herself together. “Anyway, basic training broke me down and then built me up into something better. But my father’s never been able to see that. I got a leadership award at graduation from basic training, and all he said was, ‘That just shows me you should’ve been an officer.’”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “That’s what makes it so hard to accept this stuff I’m going through. He says I need to just get control of myself.”

  I watched her once again start to slide back into the cave she so often seemed to live in, and I didn’t want her to leave. I raised my cup.

  “To the healing of father issues,” I said.

  She stared at the mug for a moment, eyes cloudy, ready to retreat. And then she tapped her cup against mine and said, “Amen to that.”

  All right, who are you and what have you done with Emma?

  But I had a feeling that was the real Emma.

  The other subtle change—okay, maybe not so subtle—was in Andy. He popped up more often when I was working in the barn or hanging out with Petey and he no longer acted like he was doing something wrong by being there. Our conversations consisted mostly of, “Hey, Bo, how’s it going?/I’m good. You?” But at least there were no furtive glances over his shoulder as if he were afraid of being caught at something. No monosyllabic answers. No dark eyes darting to everything but my face. He was still no-nonsense when we went behind the house for target practice again, but he gave me a few of those grins that said, What could possibly be wrong in the world when you can smile like this?

  I, of course, being me, ruminated so much over why that had changed I was sure I looked like Hildegarde doing a number on her cud. I kept coming back to Joseph’s suggestion that Andy be honest with Frankie about whatever this he and I had going. Maybe Andy had made it clear to her that we were really just almost-friends. That would’ve eased her mind.

  Um, about what? Why would she care if you two were buds or not?

  I kind of hated that question, because on even further cud chewing the only answers I could arrive at were: (a) Frankie didn’t think Andy was good for me, or (b) Frankie didn’t think I was good for Andy. Even on the most casual level.

  You don’t think Joseph might’ve been making something out of nothing? If your father was right and he actually did serve a prison sentence, he might not be the most stable person emotionally . . .

  Every time I thought about that I came to the same conclusion: my father wasn’t above using everything he could think of to get me to leave the ranch. Including lying. There was no way Joseph had ever committed a felony. Frankie wouldn’t let him spend all this time with Emma, and Emma wouldn’t be turning into an actual human being as a result, if Joseph were an ex-con. Right?

  Why don’t you just ask Sister Frankie about all of the above?

  Because the other subtle change was in my relationship with Frankie. It grew deeper by the day, and I didn’t want to do anything to mess that up.

  Our daily routine was marked by chunks of one-on-one time. Our walks back from taking the sheep out and returning to get them later on. Our rides in the truck to go out and fix pumps and water troughs in pastures that I was sure stretched all the way down to Wyoming. The times when we wandered out into the garden after supper on the nights it was Andy’s turn to clean up the kitchen.

  We prayed—Frankie out loud, me still in the privacy of my head. Most of the time we talked. Okay, most of the time I talked and Frankie did those things she did best: she waited and she nodded.

  Each time we fell into step or found a bouncing rhythm in the truck’s cab, I peeled off another layer. I told her . . .

  About my mother’s “too nothing” and my father’s “too everything.”

  About growing up trying to impress Dad with stellar grades and impeccable behavior until by the time I left middle school I had an impressive résumé. And about my blonder, funnier, more blue-eyed younger sister testing every limit and getting no more attention than I did.

  About my parents’ divorce and my mother’s reversion to her Missouri roots after twenty-five years as a sophisticated San Francisco banker. And my father’s return to his twenties, or so he thought, with a woman barely out of pimples and crushes.

  About my one friend in Missouri, Carrie Cowan, who was a year younger than me and practically idolized me—and who started cutting because she found out I did. And about how I had to end the friendship and isolate myself in my guilt.

  About the crushing loneliness my freshman year because after settling me in at MSU, my father evaporated from my life again and went off to another project: marrying Pilar.

  And about Wes Rordan coming into my life at the beginning of my sophomore year and changing everything. About how I believed that if God really did love me the way Wes did, I could trust Him.

  By Day Twenty-Three I felt lighter, as if I no longer had layers upon layers to carry on my body. I’d told Frankie everything.

  Not quite everything.

  Everything that needed to be told.

  Because the thing was, during those eight days I never had the urge to hurt myself at all. The newest scabs had disappeared and with them the certainty that there was no other way to relieve the pain. I could leave in seven days knowing the scars would fade and that no new ones would take their places. That part of my life would be folded up and put away in the trunk of my confused past.

  I hope that works out for ya.

  Yeah, that tidy wrap-up lasted until Day Twenty-Four, when Frankie stopped nodding and waiting, and started the unfolding.

  We had just finished feeding the middle school bums that morning and I went back to the younger bums’ pen to do a last check on Petey before we headed out with the flock. The lambs had drained the vats and were all sleeping, tummies bulging, in a pile inside the shelter. All but Petey.

  She stood at the trough where I’d dumped the pellets earlier, nose buried in the leftovers, chowing down.

  “Look at this!” I said.

  Frankie stopped at the gate to Bellwether Middle and grinned. “How about that? Ya did good, Mama Kirsten. I think she’s going to be okay, that one.”

  I grinned back and dug into my pocket for my ranch notebook.

  “You about have that filled up, don’t you?” Frankie said.

  “I was about to ask you for another one.” I felt suddenly shy. “I guess that means I write down too many details.”

  “No, I think it means you’re working too hard. It’s time we changed your rhythm.”

  She’s gonna explain that, right?

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.

  Frankie joined me at the end of the pen and propped a foot on the bottom slat. She rearranged her hat so I could see all of her brown eyes. They were somber.

  Uh-oh.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I said.

  “Absolutely not. You’re just ready for the next step.”

  “Before you go on . . . I haven’t told you this, but I haven’t hurt myself since my dad was here, and even then it was only some scratching. I haven’t even wanted to. I m
ean, in case that makes any difference in what you were going to say.”

  “I hope you feel good about that,” she said.

  “I do,” I said, though I was a little disappointed that she didn’t seem any more impressed than she had the last time we’d discussed this.

  “You have every reason to feel good because now you’re in a place where you can look at what made self-injury necessary in the first place. You don’t have the triggers here that you had before, but the reasons, the really deep ones that scream under your skin, those are still there.”

  “I’ve talked about those, though,” I said. “I feel like I’ve peeled off all these different layers.”

  “You have. You’ve worked hard and you’ve been honest and the top layers are, like you said, peeled away. But what hasn’t been peeled away yet you’ve learned to distract yourself from with work.” She nodded at the red notebook I was still holding. “It takes me three months to fill up one of those.”

  “I thought that was why I was here.” My voice was going into that defensive octave I hated to hear myself use. “And I’m liking it finally. Especially taking care of Petey.”

  “Now it’s time to start taking care of you.”

  Frankie nodded for me to follow her out the gate. My boots suddenly felt like they were made of lead and I was sure it wasn’t from the mud and poop molded to their soles.

  “I would like for you to do two things,” she said. “One, I want you to spend at least an hour of your free time every day in the Cloister doing something to nurture yourself. You’ve been going at it so hard I don’t think you’ve even noticed what’s there.”

  A manual for this, maybe? Downloadable instructions?

  We rounded the barn toward the sheep pen. “That will give you cushions for the tough inner work you have ahead. Which leads me to number two. I want you to start acknowledging how the people in your life have made you angry.”

  “I thought I already did that,” I said.

  Look out, Kirsten. The hair’s standing up on the back of your neck.

  “I’ve heard sorting and I’ve heard analyzing and it’s all been very rational.” Frankie gave me the soft version of her grin. “But I haven’t heard any anger and, my dear, I have a feeling there’s a lot in there to be angry about.”

  I tried to focus on the sheep and on keeping Bathsheba from bugging Undie before she incited a dogfight, but I couldn’t shake Frankie’s assignment. By the time we got to the gate across the public road, I’d already run through the checklist of people in my life who ticked me off. But each time I felt the smallest flame of anger licking at me, the guilt poured in and doused it.

  My father was narcissistic and controlling and I hated that. But wasn’t he still the one who had rescued me from a dead-end life with my mother and given me the future that I myself had now essentially flushed down the toilet?

  My mother was so wrapped up in my sister that I was little more than an inconvenience to her now. But wasn’t she the one who came to the hospital and figured out what I had to do to get out of there?

  As for Wes, he’d betrayed me with my best friend and tried to hide it. But didn’t I partly bring that on myself by being so closed up he had to turn to Isabel for help figuring me out?

  And then there was Lara who, the minute she turned twelve and went out and had her nose pierced and lit up her first cigarette, had turned me into her personal bodyguard. Actually she wasn’t really in my life anymore. She wasn’t even in her own life.

  I crossed her off the checklist. But she still seethed under my skin.

  “You’re lost in thought.”

  I jumped as Frankie hooked her arm through mine. “I’m just going to do some inspection on the barn this morning, see where it needs to be shored up. You’re free to do whatever. I suggest some time at the Cloister but that’s up to you.”

  That was the very last place I wanted to spend time right now. That or any other place where I had to be alone with the thoughts she’d stirred up.

  “I want to check on Petey again,” I said.

  She nodded and waited. I let her wait.

  Joseph was also waiting—at the barn to talk to Frankie. They disappeared into its shadows and I sat on the top slat of the gate that led into the middle school pen so I could look down at the bums. Even Petey was snoozing from her Grand Slam breakfast. I focused on a rusty nail whose point had worked its way through the wood. Before I realized it, I was imagining it skimming across the palm of my hand.

  “Hey.”

  I had to grasp the slat to keep from jerking from the gate.

  “Nice reflexes,” Andy said. He joined me on the top slat. “You must be good at pinball?”

  “No, I stink,” I said. “You?”

  “Reek like a cow patty.” He gave me a melting grin, complete with nose crinkle. “So, Bo, have I told you I’m glad you decided to stay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That was so long ago . . .”

  “Nine days. I needed to find just the right words.”

  “What are they?” I said.

  “Hey, Bo, I’m glad you decided to stay.”

  Those were definitely the right words.

  So right my throat thickened.

  “Be sure and write those down for posterity,” I tried to say—and choked.

  “You okay there?” Andy nudged me with his side. “You need the Heimlich?”

  Yes, please.

  “No,” I said. “I’m good.”

  “Actually, I was thinking very good.” Andy pressed his lips against my forehead.

  Um, Kirsten, you’re breaking into a cold sweat.

  “Is Andy out here?”

  Andy didn’t move at the sound of Frankie’s voice but I slid off the gate and tried to figure out what to do with my arms.

  She saw. You know she did.

  Above me, Andy chuckled. At least until Frankie got rid of the startled expression on her face and said, “Emma needs some downtime and Joseph’s shoulder is giving him trouble, so we’re going to need for you to go with him to repair some fence. It’ll take a couple of hours, so be sure to bring water—”

  “No,” Andy said.

  It was the first time I had ever seen Sister Frankie at a loss for words. I watched her lips fall open.

  “I’ll do anything else you want me to do—you know that—but I’m not working with him. I can’t.”

  Andy slid from the gate and was over the outside one before Frankie moved.

  This one goes right to the top of the Awkward Moment list.

  I didn’t know what to do. Frankie followed Andy, and I could hear their muffled voices rising and falling just beyond the barn. No matter which way I escaped I’d have to pass them.

  But staying here was not a much better option because Joseph emerged from the shadow of the barn and stood staring at his boots. I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he was seeing.

  Yeah, but when he looks up he’s going to see you standing here gawking at him. Say something.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I meant something that made sense.

  Joseph stared at me for a long, searing moment. “Why are you sorry? This has nothing to do with you.”

  At that point I didn’t care if I had to pass the grizzly bear to get out of there. I half-tripped, half-ran to the main gate and somehow managed to get over it so I could take off for the Cloister. By the time I reached the front porch I knew I wanted to cut—and I didn’t know why—and that only terrified me slightly more than knowing that it wasn’t going to do any good. And where, oh where, did that leave me?

  I stumbled over Bathsheba trying to get to the front door, which opened so abruptly I fell straight into Emma. She set me out in front of her by both shoulders and scoured my face with her eyes.

  “What the Sam Hill is going on?”

  “Don’t let me cut, Emma,” I said. “Don’t let me.”

  “Okay.” Her voice was calm. “First tell me what it is you were gonn
a cut.”

  “Me,” I said.

  Nothing registered on Emma’s face at first. Finally she looked at me with soft eyes and waited. I could have been standing there with Sister Frankie.

  “It’s just so much easier to hurt myself than it is to face the mess I keep making of my life and everybody else’s.”

  “Did you just mess up somebody’s life?” she said.

  “I will if I—”

  Yeah, I wouldn’t go blurting out something about Andy . . .

  “I just will because I always seem to,” I said. “It’s me I’m angry with—doesn’t anybody get that?”

  “I might,” Emma said. “Tell me some more.”

  But I pushed past her and shoved open the door to my room and flattened myself to the floor so I could pull the first aid kit out from under the bed.

  “What are you doing?” Emma said from the doorway.

  I didn’t answer. I just grabbed the box and got to my feet. My skin was on fire as I staggered toward the bathroom. Emma got there first and planted herself in the doorway.

  “Please move,” I said.

  Emma shook her head. Her jaw was set like a lockbox. “You told me not to let you cut. This is me not letting you cut.”

  “I have to,” I said.

  “You don’t want to or you wouldn’t have told me to stop you.”

  “I don’t want to—I have to!”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I don’t break my skin I’ll break my heart. I’m afraid I’ll die, Emma. Please.”

  My voice sounded desperate, even to me, but I didn’t try to push her out of the way.

  Yeah, I’m not thinking that’s gonna happen. Good choice.

  “I think I get that,” she said, and she stepped aside.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I set the box on the toilet seat and waited for her to leave. She didn’t.

  “I promise I’m not going to kill myself,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “So . . .” I looked pointedly at the door.

  “I’m staying,” she said.

  I had never cut in front of anyone before, but I wasn’t sure I could convince Emma that she didn’t want to see this. Particularly since she didn’t actually seem to want to see it. There was no perverse curiosity in her eyes as she watched me disassemble a disposable razor and wash my hands. In truth, she looked like she might throw up.