Sad Janet

by Lucie Britsch

  I was looking forward to going home and watching all the TV and maybe masturbating myself to sleep before I had to get up in the morning and do it all again. Not so bad, I guess, as groundhog days go. But no, somebody’s having a Christmas in July party. So now my night is corrupted by the faint hum of Christmas music, broken by the occasional ho ho ho, and it takes all my strength to stop myself from going up there to ruin their vibe by telling them all about my PTSD.

  So I lie awake in bed, listening to those caroling fucks, and I feel like a small child. When I was little I used to lie awake listening to the grown-ups living their exciting nighttime lives, clutching my flea-bitten stuffed animal and thinking, One day that will be me. Now that I’m grown up, it turns out that all I want to be is back in my bed with my stuffed animal.

  The Christmas in July people are doing a good job of talking me out of their cult, and I love a good cult.

  I put a pillow over my head and it helps a little, mostly because the suffocation almost kills me. It’s too hot—under the pillow, under the roof of my apartment, under the sun. I would open the window wider, but then I’d have to hear more people.

  People assume I must love summer because I work outdoors. Everything is better in the summer, Melissa once said, and I said, Tell it to the polar bears. People act like the sun can save them, when it’s killing us, really. People are idiots. I have a T-shirt that says that, but Debs won’t let me wear it. It’s okay: my arms haven’t seen the sunlight for years.

  People’s brains change in the summer. They go from gray gloop to neon pink, dumb and throbbing like a giant penis. I don’t know what I hate more: the sight of all that flesh or all the bad fashion choices. Shorts. Flip-flops. The number of people who think it’s safe to come to the shelter in flip-flops astounds me. I’m not even safe in my boots. They all deserve to get their toes bitten off.

  People try so hard to get me to like summer. A goth who hates summer, how original, my brother used to say as he headed out to meet his buds at the park, to drink beer and throw something at one another. I’m not a goth, you moron, I’d say, despite the fact that I was sitting indoors in a long-sleeved black sweater, reading, on a ninety-degree day. My mother never said, Don’t call your brother a moron, because she knew he was one. She never said, Don’t call your sister a goth, because she knew that if she ever dared to comment about my appearance she’d get a lecture on how you shouldn’t comment on anyone else’s body and she’d deserve it. And the fact that I kept myself wrapped up in sweaters protected her from having to see my boobs, which meant I probably wasn’t showing them to boys either, which must have been a relief to her. (She was wrong.)

  The heat makes me mad, but there are things I don’t mind about summer. I like ice cream, obviously, and nature isn’t so bad. Fresh air is pretty rad. I work outdoors, so I don’t want it too cold. I don’t even mind picnics. I have been to a park, despite what people think. Okay, so it was when I was a teenager, and I went there to drink and get groped by boys, but also when I went back as an adult, having forgotten how annoying park people are.

  What I don’t enjoy is feeling like I’m going to die. Which is how excessive heat makes me feel. Even when it’s not summer, I spend my life avoiding situations where I might get hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. What I really like is breathing—taking in cool, crisp air. So why would I celebrate the season of crippling humidity, here to crush my lungs and brain?

  So now it’s July, and people are already acting like such dicks. The sun really does make people stupider. Slow your roll, I want to say, you’ve got months.

  I lie in bed wondering who on earth wants to be thinking about Christmas this early. There’s the evil salespeople, of course. They’ve been planning their attack since the day after last Christmas. And this lady I used to work with, who started planning her holiday party five months ahead of time. This same woman did all her Christmas shopping in the summer sales. She was so smug about it, we all wanted to murder her. Mostly to steal her gifts.

  Then there was the old lady in our neighborhood who was always making jams and baking cakes in the summer, but for Christmas. My mother said she froze them, ready to send to the troops. I think she was the only person who hopes we’ll always be at war with someone.

  I don’t want to lie here thinking about some old lady who’s probably dead now. But I keep going, boring myself to death with my own thoughts, until finally I’m overtaken by sleep. Death’s cousin.

  * * *

  For a while there, I think my mum thought my entire aim in life was to ruin Christmas. Like once I was done at their house, I’d start visiting other houses, like I had a list or something. Which made me the exact opposite of Santa—he bringeth joy, and I taketh it away. No one else I knew could afford a house, so the laugh was on her, I guess.

  One Christmas, my uncle asked what was up with me these days. He just meant what was I studying or watching on TV, but I asked him if he knew about FGM. He did not, so I told him. That’s enough now, Janet, my mother said, and my uncle said, It’s okay, I read somewhere that women need to speak now.

  The first Christmas I was at university, I decided to get extremely drunk, even though I had to be at my parents’ house that evening for some lame party. I had somehow survived my first semester at college, and I wanted to cut loose, Janet style—that is, alone with a six-pack of beer. I was trying to be a good daughter, so I planned to be there for the party, but turns out I’m a bad daughter, and the responsibility was too much. I drank enough to make sure I fell asleep on the bus home and ended up not where I live. And I forgot to charge my phone, so no one could call me. My mother called the police, convinced I was dead. I was not. I was just wondering where the fuck I was and why no one woke me up. Of all the times to not get hit on during a bus trip. My father had to come get me—he was glad for the escape, really—but it didn’t matter because I’d already ruined Christmas.

  That year was all the proof I needed that I wasn’t a responsible adult and maybe never would be.

  The first time my brother brought his new wife home for Christmas, he asked me if I was medicated yet. I said, You might have a wife now, but your sneakers are still shit. He cared about stuff like that, so it hurt. My mother said, Don’t listen to your sister, your sneakers are very nice, dear. His wife just stood there like, What the fuck sort of family is this?

  Then there was the Christmas my brother’s kid couldn’t shit. It was traumatic for all of us. My brother and my mother seemed to think it was a medical emergency, and the kid was pretty upset about it himself, but his mother was actually pretty calm. She knew that stress only makes the body hang on to its shit harder. My mother kept saying, It’ll scar him for life, being constipated at Christmas. I kept saying, It comes when it comes, which is my motto for everything: shitting, sex, your period, all of life, really. The only thing it doesn’t work for is Christmas, because that comes whether you want it to or not, like most men. Finally, just as we were about to eat dessert, the kid takes a massive dump—right there at the table—and then he’s so happy he starts stripping off his clothes and running around, like little kids do. It’s maybe my favorite holiday memory.

  My father had a different reaction. As a plumber, he was used to other people’s shit, but on weekends and holidays he really wanted no shit at all. I think that was the year he realized he was going to have to start taking something if this was going to be his life from now on.

  When I still lived at home, I remember saying to my mum, Can it not be such a big deal this year? Christmas? And she looked at me like she so often did, like I was shit on her shoe, and said, I work all year for this, Janet. One day you’ll understand.

  A few years later I had the same conversation with my boyfriend. But it is a big deal, Janet, he said. Get over it. Then he started in with a full-bore lecture on why Christmas was so important, now more than ever, because of how awful the world was. It united people, he said
. Didn’t I want people to be united? You know, after all the unease? I remember laughing so hard at the word unease. Like he could still see that the world was on fire, but he’d decided it was all just a little discomfort, nothing we couldn’t manage.

  He was on to something, of course. No one wanted to riot at Christmas. The last few years had been hard on everyone. No country was left unscathed by corrupt governments. People didn’t even know what they were fighting for anymore, just that they needed to keep fighting until somehow their side won. Christmas seemed like the only thing everyone could agree on. Everyone loved buying shit and eating shit and watching shit, and there was a big fat white man in a red suit and we would forget that one of them had been on the news, arrested for doing inappropriate stuff to the elf-women who worked for him.

  Christmas was the only thing we hadn’t torn down.

  Why would I want to ruin Christmas? I asked my mother one year. I love Christmas.

  We always hurt the ones we love, Janet, she said.

  5

  One morning, a month or so after the ambush, I pull up to work and sit in my car for a few minutes. It’s the kind of moment when other girls might put on their makeup or text boys or whatever. I just sit and look at the shelter.

  The sign says Joe’s Shelter in peeling brown letters; there is no cartoon dog, nothing saying Welcome or Hi!, just the facts. This is us. We’re open to the public for two hours in the afternoons on weekdays and all day on Saturdays. That’s enough interaction for any of us, let alone the dogs, who obviously want a home but don’t want to be manhandled or examined with false hope too often. I feel sorry for the fruit when I do that at the grocers.

  People always ask us who Joe is, and we don’t know. Are you Joe? they ask, and we say no. Was Joe a dog? they ask, and we just shrug. Melissa thinks we should make up a story, tell them what they want to hear. She can do what she wants, we say, but we’ll just continue to shrug.

  For a while Melissa kept on about how Debs should change it to Debs’ Shelter, which sounded like a lot of work. I finally got fed up and said, Why doesn’t Debs just change her name to Joe? That really made Debs laugh, and she never laughs.

  Joe’s is a dog shelter, but really it’s a shelter for women.

  When I got the job, my mum thought it was a phase, like a gap year. Years later she’s still hoping it’s a phase, because according to her I’m too smart to be wasting my talents. I don’t know what talents she thinks I have. In her head I’m so different it scares me; I can’t even allow myself to think about it. The version of me that I know is trouble enough.

  My dad thought I’d never be able to hack it. Working outdoors in all kinds of weather, dressing in shapeless uniforms, going days with almost no human contact. All of which were selling points to me. He thought within weeks I’d crawl back to the world, throw myself at any job that was in a building with a roof and let me wear clothes that didn’t have dog shit on them. Don’t disappear, he told me as he saw me off. I didn’t know if he meant because my coat was so big, or my body was so small, or that he’d read about someone getting eaten by a dog at a shelter like Joe’s, but he seemed to sense that this was my way of removing myself from the world, and he wasn’t wrong.

  My mother gave me a half-hug that day, mostly because my giant coat was too big for a full one, but I know she wanted to cup my face in her hands and mourn for me, her baby, the one she’d lost a long time ago.

  * * *

  When I graduated, no one said, What kind of job are you going to get with a degree in postmodern feminist science fiction, Janet? But everyone was thinking it. Even my professors, who were writing their books, planning their escapes, trying to regain control of their lives that had been spiraling downward the moment they started teaching.

  I didn’t go to my graduation. I don’t like organized activities. Or having to wear a cape that isn’t for being a witch.

  My parents were just glad I hadn’t dropped out. They sent me flowers, but I couldn’t stand the responsibility of keeping them alive, so I gave them to my new neighbors. I’d done that before. I’d once made the mistake of telling another neighbor hiya, in a bit too friendly a way, and I was so embarrassed that I proceeded to avoid eye contact with her for the rest of our short life together. When I told my boyfriend, he laughed and told me I’d done the same thing to him when we met.

  At college I’d wanted to live on my own, in a cave, but there were no caves available. I ended up sharing a house with three girls I failed to bond with, and now I have to lug that failure around with me, with all my others, for the rest of my life.

  I had good intentions. But sharing a house with girls taught me a valuable lesson: never share a house. I was the funny semi-goth who only came out of her room to eat and shit, and I did both loudly, so they knew I wasn’t a ghost. She’s a goth, but she doesn’t dress like one, I heard one of them say outside my room. So she’s a goth in her heart, the other person said. He was a boy. Boys always got it. For a moment I considered seducing him in the kitchen later that night, but it seemed like a lot of effort.

  I did have one friend at school: Agnes. A Swedish girl who was always happy. She thought I was hilarious. Like it was an act. Like I was one of those girls who wants to be French, only I didn’t smoke. I say friends, but Agnes and I didn’t go shopping together or go on double dates or any of that. We just weren’t awful to each other like other girls were. People thought she was weird because she was foreign, and people thought I was weird because I was sad but not pretty enough to be one of those pretty sad girls who sings about it or writes on the internet.

  It was Agnes who suggested I see the campus doctor about feeling sad. She told me she’d seen a poster and it reminded her of this sadness of mine. I didn’t really think it was a problem, but I went just to be nice. As soon as I saw the doctor was a dude, I knew I should have left immediately, but then I thought of Agnes and how she’d seen that poster and thought of me, poor sad Janet. So I told him how sad life is, and he said he was sad I felt that way and did I have a boyfriend? I told him I had several. He gave me a prescription for Citalopram, but I threw it in the bin. He told me I should talk to someone, and I said I’m talking to you, and he said, Not me, but he meant, Please, not me, my wife is sad all the time and I don’t know what to tell her either, so just be a good girl and take the pills. He said counseling would be essential, too, but they were overstretched, it could take a year before I’d get any. I said that suited me fine.

  When I got back to the room, Agnes asked how it went. It turns out I’m the right amount of sad, I said, and she said she was sorry for doubting me.

  I made the mistake of telling my mother, and she said, Oh, I love Citalopram, but it gave me terrible gas. Then she said I better not depress Agnes and did she know ABBA? I said, They were her parents, all of them, and my mother just made the noise she makes like, You’re so weird, Janet, and you definitely didn’t get it from me.

  Then one of the girls in my house, Diane, started Citalopram and she hadn’t even seemed that sad. I mean, I’d only seen her from a distance, standing in the kitchen at two A.M. in her underwear making Hot Pockets, coming out of the bathroom in a face mask, stuff girls do. We once had a moment on the stairs when she told me she liked my coat. (I was basically just a coat, even then.) Another time, when she thought everyone else was out, she had sex with her boyfriend in the living room. She didn’t seem sad.

  I only knew she’d started taking Citalopram because I heard the other girls talking about it outside my room. I didn’t want to take them myself, but I was curious about what would happen if someone else did—say, a girl my age living in my house.

  What happened was they made Diane paranoid and agitated. She was convinced she was going to be kicked out of school and that we all hated her—even me; I barely knew her—and that her boyfriend, the one I’d seen too much of, was cheating on her. I remember thinking, Man, did I dodge a bull
et. I mean, I’ve felt all those things at one point or another, but I didn’t have to take a pill to feel them.

  If I hadn’t started self-medicating with food and alcohol years ago, I would have never gotten through college.

  Diane went back to the doctor, but he just doubled her dose and told her to keep going. By Christmas, Diane was a total wackadoo. The girls in the house all got super worried about her. They thought she might try to stab them in the night. Aren’t you worried she might stab you in the night, Janet? they said. She can try, I said, which didn’t help. I wanted to say, Maybe she should come off the drugs? But I wasn’t her doctor. I was just weird Janet, the goth who wasn’t a goth. I wasn’t enjoying it, watching Diane unravel, but it was confirming what I’d always felt—that prescription drugs are bad.

  Because our once happy home was now seconds away from being a horror movie, and they’d always considered me the most likely to murder them all, the other girls welcomed me into their fold. I was the only one who wore Doc Martens, after all, and if Diane needed kicking to death, I’d be the one to do it.

  So for a very brief window I was one of the girls, and girls tell each other everything, so I got a front-row seat to Diane’s unraveling. I didn’t tell the girls anything, but they kept on telling me shit all the time, like they thought, Oh, Janet is so sad and weird, we can tell her anything and she won’t judge us.

  The doctor suggested that Diane add another drug, Mirtazapine, to calm her down. And it did—so much that it took her an hour to crawl out of bed and another hour to crawl to class and she gained a stone and a half in a month and then her boyfriend did leave her and she was about to get kicked out of school.

  Finally she got so ill that her parents came and took her home. They asked us all what she was on, and when we told them, they said, Well, it can’t be that, she had a prescription, but it was that. I’d like to tell you that the doctor had his license taken away, but he’s probably still there telling girls about the rhythm method.