I saw it. The perfect one. It was on the other side of the fence bordering the cemetery. I ran over and reached under the fence and plucked the most beautiful white lily I had ever seen. A lush, pure flower which doesn't worry with the cares of the world, for its creator takes care of it, come what may. Maw Sue always spoke of this. Her desire was to be like the lilies of the field, the wildflowers tended by God, nurtured by the rain, the warmth of the sun and the glow of the moon. Now…she was. She was free and wild like she was born to be, as nature intended, free from the confines of this crazy brutal life. Free of mind madness and interceptors, free of cares and worries, free of the curse. She was whole. Her fingers were now touching God. The connection was finished. The gap was closed and she was seven. Whole. Forever. Complete.
I dropped to my knees and wept like I had never wept before. The little girl inside the house inside me cried and cried, our tears matching with each droplet. I felt a hand reach for mine and squeeze it. It was Meg. I looked up at her and she was holding a blood red rose. It was the first time Meg had followed Seventh Tribe tradition.
“I had to,” she said, crying. “It was part of her and in some small way, I did believe, Cass. I did.” Her voice was soft and broken in bits, as if this was something she couldn’t admit all the way. It was good to see the old Meg, though—the one who used to believe—even though she rarely showed it now she was a teen. Together we got up and walked back to the car hand-to-hand and rose-to-flower. Dad was leaning against the car lighting another cigarette and inserting the pack under his rolled-up shirt sleeve.
“For the Mason jar?” he said with a half-smile.
“Yep,” I said with a sniffle and a whine.
“For the Petal People,” Meg said.
“For the Seventh Tribe,” I said in agreement. We looked at each other and smiled. From the front seat our mother was emotionless, blank, not there. Dad cranked the engine and we left. When we arrived home, I hung the lily with one of Maw Sue's clothespins I had taken from her closet and clipped it to a rope inside the darkness of my bedroom closet. Every day afterwards, I would go in and check it. And every day it would gradually form her face in the petals, her body in the stems, arms in the leaves, everything about Maw Sue and who she was. Weeks later when it was dry, I placed it inside my Mason jar next to Big Pop’s flower and May Dell’s, along with my mother who didn’t know I existed. Each night in the darkness of my bedroom, I lit a candle and faced the darkness. It was the deepest darkness I’d ever known. I tried to remember what Maw Sue taught me. I faced it. I sat in it and let it overcome me, rule me. There were times I was sure it would swallow me and I’d never come back. Without Maw Sue to ground me, to confide in and tell me stories, I felt lost. No storytelling or silence. No porch. No forest walks, no ceremonies, no rituals. No hope. Just mind chaos, and shadows. I had no idea it was the beginning of my descent into a deeper, darker pit than I ever imagined.
20
Mad Dog
In diving to the bottom of pleasure
we bring up more gravel than pearls.
~Honore de Balzac
Age fourteen was my kryptonite. It was a year of many firsts. First drink of alcohol. First cigarette. First kiss. I had crossed over into an exhilarating, exciting and scary world. My mind rebelled against me, worse than it had ever done before. Numbing it became essential to calming the storms wrecking me, and alcohol became my go-to. I should have seen it coming. I was forewarned. My family line was littered with substance abuse. Our trees were nurtured with alcohol, not water. It infiltrated the sap and cut off the roots. My father struggled with it, his father, his mother, and so on and so forth. The fermented apple fell straight to me. The seed embedded itself as a taste bud on my tongue. I wanted what I wanted. I learned to sneak it from the refrigerator. It was tiny sips of MD 20/20 at first, then swallows, then gulps. Its maddening effects grew on me. I grew braver and careless. I’d sneak out with wild boys who had their driver’s license and could buy alcohol, and we’d hit the back roads of life drinking and smoking and talking about adults who didn’t understand us. Over time, I just didn’t care. I forgot about Old Yeller. I should have known when a dog goes mad, they collar it, strap it and chain it.
It was 1977. I was wild as a March wind, wilder than my daddy predicted at my birth. Wilder than all his rebel Hollywood actors. The same kind of wild which would later put me in a psychiatric office at twenty-five.
Junior High was a year of tragic perceptions for a young girl already fueled by anxiety and moodiness. It wasn’t long till I lost my moorings. Scrambled classes, an unfamiliar environment and crowds of people. It became overwhelming and my mind fragmented, misfiring and short-circuiting. Simple tasks became unmanageable. I’d panic, fall apart, my concentration futile. Words spun in my head in a vortex of confusion. I lost my way to class, over and over again. My mind could not and would not maintain the information. I’d catch myself standing in the hallway looking around, fearful, surrounded by a sea of student bodies moving around me in slow motion. Where was my next class? Was it here or there—this building or the other? Why couldn’t I remember? English or math? This hallway or was it the other? I’d try to establish period one, then two, then three, or was it reversed? My life had been instilled with numbers and meanings, yet I couldn’t remember one of them. Not then, not now. I’d walk inside a classroom and it’d be the wrong one. The teacher and the students would all look up at me. Wrong class—wrong period—wrong time. I would run out embarrassed, more anxiety, and mind madness. It seemed the harder I tried to double down and focus, the more I lost control. I’d end up in the office requesting a copy of my schedule. Multiple times. The office girl would look at me as if something was seriously wrong with me. Little did she know—there was.
Keeping the schedule helped for a while, until the siege on my mind began. I lost it rather rapidly. The schedule and my mind. I deteriorated in torturous ways. In literature or math, I’d read the same passage over and over again. Line after line, nothing stuck. I had no memory of what I’d just read. My mind lapsed into another time zone with racing thoughts. It was a constant struggle to find my locker. I felt like a rat in a maze trying to find the cheese. The lockers and books and classrooms were playing hide and seek in my mind. Was it in this hallway? Or this one? Was my locker in this building or the other? My decline continued. I misplaced schoolbooks, notebooks, paper, pens, and homework assignments. My mind went on lockdown. This intensified the panic under my skin because I held no control over it. It held me captive like a slave. I felt embarrassment because I couldn’t get it together. I felt shame for being different than others. I was out of control. This began my phase of keeping to myself. The less contact I had, the less chance anyone would notice my struggles.
Episodes were sporadic in nature, lasting days or weeks, sometimes months, shape-shifting from cluster to cluster. I cycled from one to another. The depressive can’t-find-my-classroom Cass would go inside her cave and out came the extreme buzzed-out Cass, rising up cathartic with ideas, jet-fueled energy and creative enthusiasm. I’d whiz through homework as if it was nothing. But at night when I tried to sleep, making my mind rest was akin to those Viking battle scenes. My thoughts raced from subject to subject. My eyes stayed open simply because the Vikings wanted to fight a war inside my mind. The ceiling would spin, my mind pinging like a strange machine unable to shut off. After a few weeks in the mission mode phase, my manic clusters would grind to an exhaustive halt. The dark shadows would return to take me captive, pulling me to the depths of blackness. I’d lose my will to do anything. I lost interest in school, people, and places. I grew tired, depressed and my weary mind wished for death, decay and danger. I’d sleep and sleep and not get enough sleep, dull and drained and dying. I had no preconceived concept of what was happening. My mind wouldn’t let me think about the troubled seriousness of it. It was just the way it was. It knew feast or famine, all or nothing, do or die. The knob inside my broken mind did as it pleased, clickin
g on and off at will. I followed the mechanism of the machine.
21
The Sky Is Falling
What makes the desert beautiful
is that somewhere it hides a well.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
In high school, I learned to mask my broken knob inside my mind and masqueraded as a highly functioning basket case. It was exhausting hiding a state of neurosis I didn’t understand or control. In the darkness of my room at night, cloaked figures appeared as shadows whispering while my head spun with strange thoughts of death and decay. My moods cycled. I was tethered to madness. A mind bewitched. I felt different, awkward, and out of place. It was hard to navigate my way, isolated and alone, very much alone. At school, a maze of chatty students filled the hallways and I floated by in slow motion, invisible. Sometimes, I wandered outside until the bell rang trying not to get caught by a teacher, I was an island of loneliness surrounded by great bodies of water. No one was able to cross over or reach me. The misfit island of myself and the House of Seven inside me. Occasionally my mind would drift to the thicket behind the pine curtain where I heard the story of the son of God, the common mans savior who would save me from myself. I’d picture the little girl with faith and the locust crown of thorns. The ceremony, the words, the hope lingering in the mist of those morning walks with Maw Sue. Where was this girl? What happened to her, and why did she leave? But then, I knew she was safer inside the house and kept away from the monster.
One major victory for me in school was a job working in the library. It was the only stability I could cling to, when the broken knob would allow it. Reading stories gave me a temporary place to fit in an otherwise lonely world of existence. One day out of the blue, the librarian asked me if I would fill in as the lead character in a play for elementary students, and I said yes. In hindsight, I should have asked who my character was first. I was Chicken Little in the play The Sky Is Falling. Indeed. Falling, crashing, and burning.
I reported to the library for makeup and a costume fitting. We were leaving between fifth and sixth period, so I had to put the bright yellow makeup paste on my face beforehand. My only consolation was I didn’t have to wear the whole chicken suit around school, only the face makeup. The bell rang. I grabbed my books and headed off to second period. I immediately felt the stares. It wasn’t the normal, I’m not here, invisible glances as usual. This was different. I was dressed in bell bottoms and a blue T-shirt with white Keds, and my mousy brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail so it wouldn’t mix in with the yellow makeup. Odd looks, second glances, awkward gawks. Classmates, strangers, groves of students gave me the eye. Giggles, sneers and gasps. I realized something marvelous. No one had any idea who I was behind the makeup. I had everyone’s attention and it was riveting. I may have been Chicken Little, but I felt like a movie star. The yellow mask made me incognito, unrecognizable, disguised from the girl I was, the one I hated, the one with the broken knob, broken mind, broken spirit, broken life. It was strange and invigorating. People who never looked my way suddenly spoke to me, stopped me in the hallway and asked me questions. Curious spectators, drawn to me by a mask. Being Chicken Little transformed me into someone else, a youth bold in speech and words, confident and less shy, emblazoned and free, less modest, empowered.
At night while I lay in bed, I plucked the shy wallflower petals off my skin and told myself I could be anyone I wanted to be. Throw away the Chicken Little mask and make your own. Masks give power. Masks get attention. Masks are magic. Attention was what I had always wanted, craved, and needed desperately. Now I knew how to get it.
I found people I liked, admired, sought to be. I eye-plucked pieces from them like skin scabs and attached them to myself. When one person’s characteristics or mannerisms didn’t fit, I’d pluck another. By the end of the ninth grade, I was a collage of people pieces. My skin wasn’t me anymore. I was a little of Susan, a lot of Carol, a smidgen of Marie, buckets of Kathleen. More of her, and her, and her. A little of him, them and they. Somewhere along the way I convinced myself I never existed at all—Cass had disappeared long ago. There were times I heard the screams deep in the dark night to remind me. The little girl inside me, deeply hidden away, who knew the truth screamed and threw fits and told me NO. She was the real me and I was a fake. Stop it! she’d scream. I could not accept her words. I pushed her down. Deeper and deeper until her voice was muffled.
The mask of people pieces became me. I attached each characteristic, each pattern, or unique persona of others to suit myself like some mad teenage Frankenstein. I became all sorts of characters; geek, nerd, cowgirl, introvert, extrovert, metal head, rock-chic, punk, preppy, princess, slacker, and others. I remade myself, built a new identity out of people pieces. I lived a life that wasn’t mine to live.
I. Lived. A. Lie. The sky had indeed fallen, and Chicken Little had morphed into this people-pleasing, approval-seeking shell of someone she wasn’t. Cass became semi-popular, outspoken, a party girl. I ran with the wild crowd, boys who smoked weed, drank whiskey and did whatever the hell they wanted.
Half a year went by in a blur. People pieces aside, I had no idea who I was. Still. Half the time I didn’t care. I was just trying to hold the world up while it spun in my hands. My broken knob accelerated to maximum speed. Mask after mask didn’t fit. I teetered between highs and lows in virtually no direction, just following whoever happened to be in front of me at the time. Party at your house—I’m there. Bonfire in the woods—I’ll be there. I was aimless, drifting, and my chameleon nature of changing suits to fit others’ expectations and gain their approval had taken its toll. I had no real friends. I grinded to a halt. I fell into a state of catatonic drag. There were days I couldn’t get out of bed. Days I couldn’t do homework or find my classes. Days I just stared into the blankness of my own existence and cried. I hated looking in the mirror. I hated who I was. I hated my face, my body, my skin and my clothes. I hated my family, my life. Meg drove me crazy wanting to tag along with me when I left the house with friends. She was as hormonal and confused as me, but I didn’t have time to deal with her problems, I had my own. Our parents looked on as if we were strangers, moody teens invading their houses with pimpled faces and loud music and slamming doors. But they went about their lives as normal, and we stayed out of their way as much as possible. Basically, life in the late seventies for teens was raising yourselves. As long as you didn’t alarm the parents’ antenna of trouble—you could get away with just about anything. Seventies parents were occupied robots. And we were the kids left to their own ways.
There were times I just wanted to hoard up in my room, avoid places, people and things. Just thinking about any effort on my part exhausted me. Making decisions was torment. Yes. No. Maybe. Yes. No wait, okay, yes…no, no, never mind. If I did make a decision, which was a miracle, I’d later change it. Regret it. Or not make a decision at all. I simply could not get it together. I formally, officially, unequivocally hated myself, inside and out.
It changed in December at the skating rink. Jeff was tall and limber but muscled like a runner and caught my eye immediately. He had a splatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose and deep auburn hair like an overripe peach. His eyes were as green as a fresh blade of grass in spring. He noticed me when no one else did. He gave me one of those long lizard stares. It made me flinch. He was from Prairie Grove, a town twenty miles from Pine Log. I crushed on him hard. He was the first guy who paid me any mind at all, but since we were from different schools, we only saw each other at the skating rinks on weekends. We were talking on the phone when I eyed my mother’s car keys lying on the stereo like a shiny symbol—a northern star. My parents were gone for the day. Meg was with her high society friends and I was all alone. I hung up the phone, grabbed the keys, hopped in the car and drove to Jeff’s. I had no license but here I was breaking the law in my parents’ brand-new Lincoln Continental four door we’d named Alligator Ava. I was speeding down the highway like I knew what the hell I was doing.
To make myself appear older I put on Mom’s bug-eyed sunglasses.
I picked up Jeff and we drove to a nearby park and sat under a maple tree tucked away at the edge of the woods. After small talk he bent down and kissed me. My skin tingled and I laughed. Then he pressed me to the ground and kissed me some more. I melted into his lips and he made his way down to my neck, sucking and licking. He smelled like hot Dr. Pepper. I broke into goose pimples. His hips gyrated over mine and his hands roved between my legs, almost too quick, so I locked up. He felt my constriction and leaned up. “You are beautiful—those eyes,” he said, leaning down to kiss each eyelid. I loosened like a budding flower. My heart pounded. My body ached for something it had no words for—only an assortment of images and dark spaces, black bars. I wanted him to like me, love me. His tongue explored my mouth. It was an explosion of heat and fire. The house inside me burned. In my ears another flame erupted—my mother’s voice. Shame fell over me in a film. The spittle off her lips hit my skin, sizzled and branded the Scarlet Letter on my chest.
S for sexpot. I saw her steely blue eyes condemn my female prowess to the deepest darkest hell. Not able to handle the pressure of Mother’s shaming stare and her condemning voice, I pushed Jeff away. I took him home. He called and called but I would not speak to him. I stopped going to the skating rink. We never saw each other again.
Not long after, I found my group, my people. A place of belonging. A place of acceptance for the first time. I was one of those girls. The ones who don’t quite fit with the girl groups, not with the cheerleaders, or the dance teams, not with the geek band types, nor those cheery gossip girls and clickity fashion chicks. I seemed to fit right in with the boys. Rebel types. Smokers, tokers, drinkers. The hell-raisers, the ones most likely to be suspended with the exception of one, the peacemaker, Terry Bradbury. Terry and I became best friends. He was ruddy with freckles and had the lean body of a baseball pitcher, a sport he loved more than food. His hair was sandy and wired like the bristles of an SOS pad. He wore an Atlanta Braves cap and dipped snuff. I’d poke the knot in his cheek and kid him about it. He said he’d give up snuff if I gave up cigarettes. It was a bet neither of us cared to entertain. We had nicknames for each other: I called him Snuff and he called me Smokes. It was the purest friendship I’ve ever known. Genuine and authentic. We talked on the phone almost every night for hours, about everything and nothing. Terry was a knight to every girl, very protective. A lover not a fighter. A brother through and through. I didn’t remember feeling this safe with anyone, since Maw Sue passed. Looking back now, he was a Southern gentleman, a good, good guy I should have been attracted to—a guy every girl should marry. Every girl but me. I didn’t deserve a guy like him. He was too good. Cluster Cass had to pick the most damaged of all men, someone as damaged as herself, someone with black bars and snarling teeth. Someone who would prove she was of no value at all.
THE HOUSE INSIDE ME Page 22
