“I don’t like how it feels.”
“How what feels?”
“Skin. I don’t like how other people’s skin feels on mine.”
“Why do you think that is?”
I shake my head.
“Take your time, Sparrow. This isn’t a test. There’s no wrong answer.”
“I feel sick when I think about it.”
“Do you want to take a break? Do you want to stop?”
“No. I can try.”
She’s quiet, listening.
“When people touch me, when I feel other people’s skin, it makes me want to scream and cry and run away. It makes me…” I take another sip of water. “It makes me remember him. And I don’t want to. I want to forget. And if I don’t let anybody touch me, then I don’t have to remember. I can shut it all out, stuff it all away where I don’t have to think about it.”
“You’re protecting yourself.”
“Yes.”
“What you’re doing is absolutely normal, totally understandable. But let me ask you something. Is it possible that pushing away the people who love you might actually make you feel more isolated? More alone?”
I look out the window at the snow, then at the figure in the painting.
“I am alone,” I whisper.
“Tell me about that, about feeling alone.”
“Nobody understands how I feel. Nobody. I don’t think they’re even trying. Everybody—my father, Sophie—everybody talks about how I should focus on healing and moving forward. They don’t get it. They can’t, and they never, ever will. I think about what happened—about him—all the time. I can’t stop. It’s like a movie that plays in my head, over and over and over again.”
“So, the problem isn’t so much that you can’t forget. The problem is you can’t stop remembering. Is that right?”
“Yes,” I say softly. “I’m so scared. I can’t stop being scared. I feel like I’ve been afraid all my life.”
She comes to sit beside me, leaving her notebook and pen on the chair. Her eyes are filled with such honest compassion that I can’t make myself turn away.
I can’t stop smelling honeysuckle, the warm sweetness all around me, the honeyed taste on my tongue when we’d squeeze the blossoms bright in the summer sun, the way it twined all around the fresh fragrance of the water running over the smooth gray rocks. I can’t get the red, salty iron smell off my skin, the taste of blood out of my mouth. I still feel the cool leaves, the rocks and earth, underneath my cheek.
I slide out of the chair and onto the floor, pressing my face to my knees. Dr. Gray sits down beside me. She doesn’t touch me. I’ve tried so hard to hate her, but I can’t. She smells like my father’s white roses after it rains.
“Sparrow, you will get through this. There’s a long, hard road ahead of you, but I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. I will stay with you every step of the way, I promise. You are not alone, Sparrow.”
I want to push her away, tell her she’s lying, that nobody can help me.
Instead I rest my head on her shoulder and close my eyes.
30
A Memory
It’s the middle of January, and all the outside looks like the world in Dr. Gray’s painting. Snow, endless pewter skies, people huddled into themselves against the cold. I’ve been coming here for more than two months. Today I’m afraid. I can’t get warm.
“I keep having dreams about my mother.”
I look up at the painting, wishing I could vanish into that winter, maybe walk beside the girl in black. She could tell me her secrets, and I would be quiet. I would listen.
“Do you want to tell me about them?” Dr. Gray asks.
“Not the dreams so much, at least not yet. I feel like I want to tell you about what happened that last day, but I don’t know if I can get through it. I’ve never talked about it. Ever. To anyone.” My mouth is dry. My hands are like ice. I pull the white afghan around me.
“Then we’ll do what we always do. Go ahead and begin, and if it feels overwhelming or too frightening, we’ll stop and talk about something else.”
I look out the window at the heavy gray clouds massing over the mountains.
I close my eyes, and I am five years old again.
I tell.
* * *
“It was summer. I remember, because it smelled green. You know that smell? Like grass and flowers and blue sky, all at the same time.
“But I can’t go outside to play on my swings, because my mother is mad at me, and I have to hide. I never know what I do to make her mad, because she never tells me with her words.
“When I’m bad, she comes looking for me. I try to switch my hiding places around, and sometimes I find a new one, a good place that takes her a long time to find. Sometimes I use an old one that she doesn’t remember. Those are the best days, when I hide so long and so hard that my daddy comes home before she can hurt me.
“Some days aren’t very bad, and she only pulls my hair or slaps my face or hits the backs of my legs with her big wooden spoon.
“But other days she thinks for a long time before she comes for me, and those are the days that make me cry very hard, even though I try hard not to make a sound. When I cry, it lasts longer.
“Once she scraped the cheese grater on my knees and told my daddy I fell on the playground. They bled and bled, and I had to put five Grover Band-Aids on one knee and three Elmo ones on the other. Daddy kissed them when he came home.
“On the last day, I am hiding in my best, most favorite hiding place, the tiny cupboard under the stairs, where the bleach and the vacuum cleaner and the mops live. Sometimes there are spiders in the cupboard, but I don’t mind. Their legs are soft and tickly. They like the dark, same as me.
“I can hear my mother screaming, ‘Savannah! Savannah Darcy Rose! You come here this minute!’
“When she opens the door under the stairs, she grabs me by my hair and twists my ponytail in her fist so I can’t get away. My favorite blue hair ribbon falls to the floor, and my mother kicks it away. I fight as hard as I can. I always fight. But I am little, and she is strong.
“She pulls me into the kitchen and puts me on the floor. She pins my arms down with her knees. They are bony and sharp, and I am afraid that my arms will break right in half.
“She is screaming and I am screaming.
“My mother screams, ‘Open your eyes, goddamn you! Open your evil eyes!’
“And I do, I do open my eyes, because I’m too afraid not to. She holds them open with her long fingernails. They’re pointy and pink.
“She takes the bright plastic lemon from her apron pocket and squirts the cold lemon juice into my eyes. First the left, then the right, back and forth until the lemon is empty.
“It burns like bees. Stinging and stinging and stinging.
“‘I’m sorry, Mama!’ I scream. ‘I’m sorry I made you mad!’”
* * *
When I finish, my eyes are dry. Telling it in the daylight has been easier than dreaming it in the dark. I feel hollowed, emptied out, strangely calm.
“Oh, Sparrow,” says Dr. Gray, her eyes wide and sad. “Is there more?”
“Not really. That was the last time my mother touched me. My father came home early, because he had a bad cold and a big brief due the next day. He found us there, on the kitchen floor. My mother was screaming that I was a demon from Hell. He pulled her off me. I don’t remember much after that. We went to the emergency room. Two days later my father told me that my mother had died, that she’d been in a car accident. When I was twelve, maybe thirteen, I asked Sophie if that’s what really happened.”
I pause, looking up at the painting. Dr. Gray waits silently for me to continue.
“She told me that my mother had been walking in the middle of the interstate, near Roanoke. It was night, and there was fog. She was hit by three cars, one right after the other. She died looking up at Tinker Mountain.
“Anyway, Dr. Gray, you probab
ly already knew all this. Pretty sure everyone in town knows.”
She stands up and pours me a glass of water from the pitcher on her desk.
“Let me ask you this. Do you see any connection between what happened with your mother and what happened with Tristan? Any similarities in those two relationships?”
I can’t help it. I snort with laughter.
“Dr. Gray, I may be a hot mess right now, but I’m not brain-dead. They didn’t give me a lobotomy in the hospital, so yes, I see a connection. My mother was a monster, and Tristan was—is—a monster.”
“Are they different? The same?”
I can’t help it. I roll my eyes.
“I must have done something awful to deserve what my mother did to me. I know she was sick and troubled, but if she couldn’t love her own child, it must have been my fault, something terrible she saw in me that pushed her away, made her want to punish me. I just never knew what it was, or how to be different. I couldn’t figure out how to make her stop. I was too little.
“But I was all grown up when I fell in love with Tristan. I knew what I was doing. I knew he had a temper, but I made him mad anyway. I pushed him. I provoked him. I was a horrible girlfriend. I was selfish and self-centered. I’m not saying that I deserved what he did to me, but I share the blame. If I hadn’t made him so angry, none of this would have happened.”
I take a sip of the icy water, feeling it slide all the way down, cooling my parched throat. Outside, snow is falling.
“Sparrow,” Dr. Gray says gently. “You did nothing to deserve what your mother or that boy did to you. People get angry every day, but most of them don’t hurt their children, or beat up their girlfriends or their spouses, their boyfriends or partners. Most people handle their anger without physical violence. You share none of the blame for any of it, Sparrow, not then, not now, not ever. None of it. Do you hear me?”
I shake my head. I hear her, but she’s wrong.
“Listen to me. Your mother was troubled and ill, but it doesn’t excuse her. She set a pattern for you when you were very young, and your experience with her taught you that love is all twisted up with pain. But that’s not love, Sparrow. Violence has no place between two people who love each other. Violence has no place, ever, in any relationship. What happened to you was not your fault. Not even close. Say it.”
My head feels all swimmy, like at the party that night, when I felt like I was looking down at Tristan from far away. I say it, just to make her stop. I say it because I wonder what the words will taste like.
“What happened was not my fault.”
“Say it again.”
“What happened was not my fault.”
I choke on the words, so unfamiliar, so strange.
“How do you feel, saying those words?”
I look up at my friend in the painting, still standing between the cold stone walls, underneath the snowy branches, still alone. But maybe she’s walking somewhere. Maybe she’s walking away from something, happy to be going to another place, a place where she can be warm. Where she can breathe. Where something good is waiting for her.
“Like part of me is lying to myself, but another part is hoping it could be true.”
“Why are you hoping it’s true?”
“Because then I could lay it down. Then I’d stop blaming myself, telling myself all day, every day, that I’m a terrible person who deserves what she got. That I was a bad child who deserved to be punished. That I hurt him first, and I had it coming. That he was right and I was wrong.”
“Nobody deserves to be hurt, Sparrow. Not little girls and not grown women. Not boys or men. No one ever ‘has it coming,’ no matter what they say or do. On some level you know this. It’s why you fought and survived your mother. And it’s why you’re fighting so hard now to make yourself whole. Can you see that?”
Across the room, I feel the girl in the painting smile. In her world, maybe spring is coming and the snow will melt soon. She will take off her heavy dark coat and her tall hat and walk between the stone walls in a bright yellow dress sprinkled with tiny jewel-colored birds. She will turn her face up to the sun and breathe in the perfume of melting snow, the flowers waiting beneath the earth.
“I think I can. I’m not sure, not yet, but maybe I’ll get there soon.”
She smiles softly. “I know you will, Sparrow. I’m certain of it.”
What happened was not my fault. What happened was not my fault.
I ask myself if this could possibly be true. And my heart answers with joy and love and sorrow for the girl I used to be.
You are innocent. You are beloved.
Deep inside me, in the dark place where I keep all the things that frighten and haunt me, a small light glimmers.
I think maybe it’s hope.
31
My First Funeral
“There’s a big, old elephant in this room,” Dr. Gray says. “And her name is Carolina Jane Rose.”
It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m spending it with my shrink. Dr. Gray hands me the silver jewelry box and settles the white afghan around me, resting her hands on my shoulders. I lean back into her warmth, closing my eyes and breathing in the heady fragrance of the red roses on her desk.
At the sound of my mother’s name, my father recoils, as though someone’s just slapped him. His face flushes, and he takes off his glasses and leans forward, like he always does when he wants you to feel the full force of his Steely Lawyer Glare. Dr. Gray looks calmly into his eyes, waiting.
My father stands up, because there’s no way he’s going to say his piece sitting in a comfy chair. He’s used to commanding any room he happens to be in, and I know he’s feeling out of place and wrong-footed here. Dr. Gray makes him nervous. Still, that doesn’t stop him from trying.
“Dr. Gray, I know you’re only trying to help here, but we don’t talk about her. I don’t see what good it will do, bringing her up. It was a long time ago. We’ve gotten over it.
“Besides, don’t you think it would be a more productive use of our time to try to make Sparrow see that she needs to talk to the police?”
Sophie bites her lip and starts braiding the fringe on the hem of her sweater.
“Avery,” she says, so softly that I barely hear her. She clears her throat and says it again, louder. Stronger. “Avery.” Her fingers move faster, and she looks up at her brother. “Avery, don’t. Please. You aren’t in charge here, so deal with it and stop acting like a wounded bear. If this session is awful, let it be awful. It won’t be the first time. We’ll survive. We need to do all the hard things now. For Sparrow. And for us.”
“We don’t need to talk about her, Sophie, and I won’t.”
“Could we please let Dr. Gray decide? Come on, sit down and let’s get on with it.”
Dr. Gray takes her place in the chair across from me. She runs her eyes over my hideous hair, the scar under my lower lip, my thin arms, and my foot, still slightly swollen at the ankle. If I look at it hard when I’m in the shower, I can still see some of the bruises. She motions for my father to take a seat. I’m kind of astonished when he does. And I realize, in one of those sudden flashes of insight, that my father isn’t angry. He’s terrified.
“Sophie, thank you,” Dr. Gray says. “I hope today won’t be awful, but if it is, we will deal with it, okay?”
Sophie nods. Her fingers haven’t stopped. Now she’s braiding the braids.
When Dr. Gray turns to my father, her voice is soft. Gentle.
“I don’t want to make Sparrow see anything, Avery. She will come to her own decisions and conclusions in her own time. But here’s my question for you: Have you really gotten over it? Do you think Sparrow’s gotten over it? How well has it worked for this family, not talking about terrible things, pretending they never happened?”
My father doesn’t respond, but I can tell he’s getting more and more upset. His brow is furrowed and he’s breathing hard, through his nose. He’s twisting his grandfather’s heavy gold signe
t ring, the only jewelry he wears besides his watch, around and around his finger. I’ve never seen him do that before.
“I know you expected that all of our sessions would deal with Sparrow’s relationship with Tristan, and Sparrow and I have begun to do that. You can be sure that we will be talking about him in greater depth as we proceed. But first we need to go further back, and I think all three of you know it. There are patterns here. Everything is connected.”
My father closes his eyes and shakes his head. He runs his fingers through his hair, then rubs his eyes. He leans forward again, resting his elbows on his knees. He folds his hands and looks down at his shoes. He’s a wreck.
“Connected?” he says wearily. “That’s ridiculous. How could something that happened so long ago have anything to do with what that—that monster—did to my daughter?”
His voice breaks. He sits up and faces us again. He looks exhausted. When the going gets tough, facts come before emotions on Planet Avery. It’s easier to hide yourself behind a barricade of details and data, building it high, fortifying it a little more every day against a world of feeling. And that’s why he hates this so much. Because it’s what we’re here to do. Feel.
“Dad,” I say. “She’s right, so please stop. You’re making it worse. And honestly? If I have to do crappy stuff in here, you do, too. You don’t get a pass.”
My father is shocked.
“Sparrow, no. Stop right there.”
“No, Dad. I won’t stop.” I take a deep breath.
“Look, I know you feel super-guilty about what happened to me, and I don’t want you to be sad, but oh my freaking God, you think maybe we should finally, finally talk about her? I know she was sick, that she heard voices sometimes. I’ve always known that, Daddy, but you would never talk to me about it. I also know she drank way too much, and she swore she’d stopped. Everyone thought she’d be fine as long as she quit drinking and took her meds. But she didn’t. And you know what? I don’t give one single crap that she was sick or alcoholic; it doesn’t matter. Not to me. She was a nightmare. She was my nightmare, and she still is.
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