Paper Stones

by Laurie Ray Hill

  Walked her back to Marg’s car, holding her arm so she wouldn’t slip and kill herself. Her little red toes sticking out, freezing.

  “How come you don’t have that cast off by now?”

  “Slipped again.”

  “What and wrecked it all over again?”

  “It was pretty near healed, too.”

  “Just slipped, did you?”

  “Yeah.” She said it firm.

  “Where?”

  “On some ice.”

  I wondered. But alls I said was, “Why didn’t you let somebody else chase after me?”

  Marg had drove her. She was sitting there in the parking lot, waiting. Marg can’t walk around for fear of her father, who’s been threatening her.

  She didn’t have the car running. Marg thinks about the air. Don’t pollute the air, she says, or what are the grandchildren going to breathe? Marg, she’s had breathing problems since she was a kid and she knows what it feels like when you can’t breathe.

  When Josie was getting in, I could hear Marg asking, “Did you tell her?”

  No answer.

  So Marg cranks down the window. She says it in that voice that would have been good for a nurse. Just like she was saying, Now, here’s your medicine. You’re going to have to swallow it.

  “Rose,” she says, “that new man of yours, Dave Smith, eh. We heard he traffics.”

  3.

  THE NEXT TUESDAY, we’re all up there in the waiting room. Darlene’s been at it all week long, drawing her notion of the hotel. Every picture has a cat in it. Josie’s laughing, “A cat house!”

  I said, “Why don’t you put no people in it?”

  Darlene, she just rolls her eyes, like it’s cute to be so scared to death of people you got nobody in your life besides a white cat. Shy don’t half cover it, where Darlene’s concerned. She gets so she’s too scared to go to the store.

  Darlene was the only one I didn’t feel close friends with, by that point. I was trying. But it wasn’t happening.

  Tammy still hasn’t got her kids or herself out of the house. Dave’s still at my place. Josie’s not looking forwards to telling Meredith what happened to her this week. Her face is lit up black and blue again, so she’s going to have to say something.

  “Fall down drunk?” Sally asks her.

  Josie shrugs.

  I give her a sideways look. I’m really starting to wonder about all this falling down of hers. She won’t look at me.

  Sally is still on about pink paint. Wants to buy it on faith.

  Marg says, “For frig’s sakes, Sally, you’ve got to have a wall first, before you go and spend money on paint to paint it pink.”

  Meredith and her helper lumber in. I wonder where you get a jacket like what Meredith’s got on. How much would that cost to buy? Too bad she strains it at the seams. Even green shoes to match! Look like they’d punish your toes, though.

  (I asked Frances, the helper, once, where Meredith had grew up. To look at her, I thought she must be from the big city. But Frances said, no, actually, Meredith was a local girl. Did that ever surprise me! We only had one school in that town. Thought I knew most of the kids to see them. She could’ve been a few years before my time, though.)

  Anyways, I seen Meredith take a look at Josie’s new bruises.

  Of course she don’t say nothing. Squashes her lips together. Josie’s going to get a Question to Think About this week, for sure.

  I want to hear more about them stepping stones. I’m thinking, all right, Meredith, teach me something. It’s not like I keep screwing up on purpose. You show me, step by step, how to get from here to Happy Hotel. Show me step one.

  I could see that we needed a bit of time at first, to get to know each other. But by now it was high time we started getting some place. I was always thinking of the clock ticking. Jenny getting older. How old was I when my dad started?

  Meredith’s got glue and scissors and a stack of magazines. We’re to do a “collage of fear.”

  Don’t like the sounds of that.

  She’s going on. I’m sitting there with my ears shut.

  Looking at it now, I’d say I was being Defensive again. Shutting down when somebody was trying to get at my problems.

  I’m looking at my blank cardboard and stack of magazines. What in the world is a collage of fear? Everybody else is snipping away. It bugs me that even Tammy knows what to do. Tammy’s good-hearted, eh, but I think it’s fair to say that she is quite dumb.

  And me, apparently, I’m dumber.

  The leader’s helper, Frances, she leans over me in a cloud of deodorant. Wants to know if she could help me get started. Do I remember what I was afraid of when I was a child?

  “No.” (Shut right down.)

  “Maybe some of the pictures in these magazines might help you to remember.”

  I’m thinking, you can’t make me. You can’t make me go there. Leave me alone.

  The shadow that moved along the wall of the mop closet at school, under the little, high, wire-screened window of the boiler room. The shadow slid along to the mop closet. The floor-cleaner smell and the smell of the other thing, my father’s….

  I tell the helper I’m sorry but there ain’t going to be a picture in a magazine of what I’m thinking of.

  There’s nothing special about the magazines, eh. They’re just the ones you see every place.

  Frances, the helper, says, “It’s surprising sometimes.”

  She opens the first magazine. Lets the pictures flip by, in front of me. And there it is, an open closet! It’s too bright for the mop closet but I seen the shadow of a tall man on another page. I could cut it out and paste it on.

  It’s strange to make a picture of them long ago hours. The tall shadow with the bumpy jaw. The way it used to slide along the wall, coming for me.

  I trimmed the shadow. My hand knew the shape to make it. Funny it was right there in the magazine!

  All right. I get it. I’m started now.

  I can put in my present fears too, Frances says. She says if I just look at a picture and feel it could be scary, okay, put it in. I don’t have to know why.

  If I don’t have to know what the frig I’m doing, I’m good to go. I find a paved school yard. Like if there was no water behind the church.

  Where did that come from? No water behind the church? Stupid thing to think of.

  Good job I don’t have to know what I’m doing. I put that grey school yard in the middle. It takes up a lot of the room on my bristol board. All grey, cracked pavement. Nothing living. I find a guy that looks a little bit like my father. Glue him on to the pavement school yard. Give him a floor mop in his hand. I find a big, long, green jungle snake. Glue it on his crotch. I cut out instant mashed potatoes. Glue a lump of potatoes on Dad for his lumpy jaw and little sucked-in mouth. The shapes were right there in the mashed potatoes, the mouth and everything. I find floor polish. I can just smell that biting my airways! I find pictures of two little girls in blue dresses. Bit like me and my sister. I put us in the closet. Rip our heads in half. Look a lot like us now. Snake coming at us with its green, devil’s fork tongue.

  Turns out half the pictures in all the magazines are about stuff that can scare me, one way or another. You try that sometime. I’m telling you: don’t laugh till you tried it.

  How I felt when I was doing it—I felt like, wow, it’s all here! Boy, I was right back there! Three feet tall, dirty little blue plaid dress, down at the hem on one side. Ashamed of my chubby thighs.

  You can be so scared when you’re a kid, eh. That nightmare feeling. No way to wake up. Little heart just banging. Something coming to get you.

  The next minute, I snapped out of it. My brain kicked in and it starts thinking, what the frig was the point of that? I’m grown up. I’m not wearing no dirty dress. I don’t have to be scar
ed of no mop closet at this time of day.

  I asked Meredith, “When are we going to start doing the thing about the stepping stones?”

  She said that was a stepping stone we just done.

  What?

  “I meant like the steps to get someplace in our life,” I says. I was thinking of little Jenny. How long could I fool around like this?

  Meredith says, “Recognizing our early traumas and fears is an important step toward healing.”

  This didn’t make no sense. I thought she was going to tell me something practical. Do Step A and get to Step B. I was dying to go forwards. This here was going backwards if it was going anyplace.

  I told her I wanted to help my niece.

  She asked if my niece was being abused.

  “Not yet. That’s what I come here for. To find out what’s wrong with my family, how I can fix it up in time so my niece don’t ever get abused.”

  Meredith told me healing was a process. It was going to take some time. And she give me one of them smiles of hers, like she was smiling at a kid.

  What was the use in grown-up people sitting here playing with scissors and glue? How the frig was this supposed to get me out of the hole I was in at work? How was this supposed to help me with my men issues? How was I getting any closer to protecting my little sweetheart?

  I raised my voice. “I got serious problems!”

  “I know you do, Rose.”

  “How’s this playing around going to fix anything?”

  “It’s a process. You need to be patient.”

  “I come here for somebody to tell me what the hell to do about some big problems.”

  “No one here is going to tell you what to do. We’re here to help you with your healing.”

  I got burning hot. “I come here to get sensible help! Yous are not doing nothing! I already passed kindergarten!”

  Meredith told Frances, the helper, to go out to the other room and discuss it with me, one on one.

  I stomped out. Ready to quit.

  I’m tired, eh. Worked all day. Spending my evening over here to get some frigging help. I don’t need this horse shit.

  Frances, she don’t talk to you like you’re retarded. She listened to what was pissing me off. I told her I was wasting my time there, cutting out pictures. Meredith was treating me like a baby.

  “It’s hard to see any point in these exercises at first, I know,” she says, “but, if you can just hold on and give it some time, Rose, you might come to look at it in a different way.”

  “I don’t think I got much time. My niece is growing so quick. How can this look like anything but fooling around with crayons and glue? What I want is to quit screwing up. And help my sister quit screwing up so her daughter don’t get hurt like her and I did!”

  “This work we’re doing could help you to make good decisions, in time.”

  “Oh BS! We’re just playing around. How is that supposed to help me or my family? My niece is in danger. How is me sitting in my diapers cutting up magazines going to do anything for her?”

  Frances, she listened to me, patient. Asked some questions about Jenny and her mom. Told me my concern was wise. Told me it took time to heal. I’d start to see where this was all going, soon, if I could hang on, stay with it, give it a try. I remember she warned me, too, that I wasn’t going to be able to fix my sister.

  “Your sister would have to work on her own healing before she could ever change.”

  “You don’t know my sister Sandra. She’s never going to go to no group or nothing like that. She won’t even go to the shelter. She don’t believe in shrinks.”

  “Well,” Frances said to me, she said, “that’s her decision. The decision to heal is very personal. I know.”

  I looked at Frances. She’d said that last remark so quiet and ordinary.

  What I want to say to any of yous that are leaders, is: You got to see to it that you’re patched up good enough yourself, before you go trying to help somebody else. Oh, you might know all the steps. Meredith, she knew them. And the fancy names for them. But she could not have got me to take the first one. The just-lips smile. The high-horse voice. Fiddling with her bracelet. Pinchy little shoes shuffling around under the table. Weird face expressions. People like us are going to pick that right up, eh.

  I can see now that I was scared. Making that picture of my father in the old boiler room cupboard had shook me up. It’s like I opened the door a crack and this slimy, cold hand whipped out. Grabbed me hard, by the ankle. Tried to pull me in. Cold slime grabbing all up my leg, right up me, pulling me in, ready to screw me. I had to kick it off. Slammed the door back shut. Jesus! That thing was still right there!

  When you first peek behind that door you’ve been leaning against, when you draw them bolts and open up a bad past the first bit, that is so scary!

  Things that could make you shit for fear when you were four years old, they still can. We lock them things away, but they are still right there. When I found that out, I was shaking, shocked. Cold right up to the crotch. Just the thought of that boiler room!

  Meredith, she wasn’t no help. Seemed like she was scared too. Sending me out of the room so quick.

  Whereas Frances, here, even though she was just the helper, she didn’t seem to be scared. She didn’t have no big degree. But her voice was normal.

  I looked her up and down as she sat there. Face was normal. Shoulders relaxed. Hands resting easy on her thighs. Her feet there, comfortable-looking, in her brown socks and loafers, steady on the floor. That’s what calmed me down.

  Frances said she’d saw a lot of people take these steps and go forward with their life and go on to help others.

  Then she told me, in the same kind of an ordinary voice, with her hands relaxed and her feet still, that these same steps we were going through were how she got where she was, herself. Didn’t make no secret of the fact that she was a sex abuse survivor herself.

  Frances was the first person who ever come right out and said that to me. I’ll never forget how she done that. Sitting there like an ordinary person. Not making no big deal out of it. Just telling me the information.

  I stayed with Frances for some time, thinking about taking a step off the riverbank. Could I put my foot on that first slippery step? Both feet? Stand right in the middle of what scared me so bad when I was a little girl at Ferry Street Public School? What if I lost my balance? Fell in with the monster? Got sucked down into that bad old dream and drowned? I’d go crazy. Have to hide under a bed all day to keep that cold slime from running up my leg and getting in my underpants.

  Frances sat there listening.

  Jesus. I could see this wasn’t going to be no picnic. But, whatever we were in for, Frances’d been through it all before. It sure hadn’t made her nuts, so I figured it wasn’t going to kill me neither.

  I crawled back into the meeting room.

  Now, at that time, I never took my hunches serious. Started saying to myself, why did I think Meredith was scared? She gets paid for this. She’s got the big degree there. Nice enough. Seems to know what she’s talking about. I should trust her. Come on, Rose, I says to myself, don’t be foolish.

  I’ve learned better, since. If I get a hunch, now, that somebody’s scared, I figure they’re scared. That just goes to show yous how far I’ve came.

  They were going around the circle, telling about their week. I come in on the end of Tammy’s. Asshole has been getting moody again.

  You don’t need a calendar with Tammy’s asshole husband. Week one, he blows up. Week two, sweet as candy. Week three, hold your breath. Then kaboom! And it starts over. Perfect circle.

  Marg, she talks about it like he was a woman. “Asshole’s got PMS.” Or, “Asshole’s on the rag.”

  Meredith wants to know if Tammy has noticed any pattern in her husband’s behaviour. That’s too
hard of a question for Tammy. She says he’s been touchy, the past week. Rest of us groan.

  Josie’s a breath of fresh air at the break with her eyes twinkling there in her little black-and-blue face. Says she’s saw something else about the town. She gets out the picture of the little town and we’re under the light, hunched over Josie, trying to see the house she’s talking about. You can only see half of it at the near end of the street, but Josie, she’s hopping up and down.

  “Let Rose look. This is for Rose.”

  I’m sucked in as usual, squinting through the magnifying glass, steaming it up with my breath. Alls I can see at the near end of the street in the picture is one half of a fairly clapped-out clapboard house. Looks to be apartments.

  Then it hits me. Blue curtains. And, hanging in the window to catch the light, stars! Three of them.

  Josie’s sparkling them good-witch eyes on me.

  The way I seen her blue velvet curtains up in the night clouds over the Dollarama, with a window of sky and three pretty stars.

  I told her, I said, “You’re scary.”

  Josie grins.

  “You are!” I says. “You’re right scary. I should have put you in the scary collage.”

  The rest of them’s all chirping to know what’s up. But Josie just smiles at me. With them two black eyes, she looks like a raccoon, a raccoon that’s friends with like elfs.

  We get started again, after the break.

  Darlene’s heading into one of her times. Hasn’t picked up her mail now for so long that her box will be full and she’ll have to ask the lady at the post office. Darlene’s getting too scared of people to do that.

  Meredith gets Darlene to hold up her collage. Tries to help her dig into the root of the fears.

  Darlene’s got three men pasted on her bristol board, that she says all look like her cousin, and pins and knives and matches. Little girl about seven. Darlene’s ripped the top off her head. Couple of bathrooms. Kid’s nightgown ripped in half.