Unbeknownst to me at the time, a northbound “Bingo Bus” stopped when the driver and passengers discovered the crushed car. Some elderly folks on the bus felt certain that anyone in the car must be dead. The others, with faith, began to pray.
The headlights stopped. My eyes looked to the left, but the night was dark, and the lights blinded me. Between breaks in the music, voices yelled back and forth in the distance. I screamed internally, but tried to take deep breaths. The story of the song eased the torture.
The agony I endured came from the claustrophobia. At that moment in time, it was profound mind torture. In my experience with misery, I had imagined and debated many horrible deaths; death in a confined space moved to the top of the list. The anguish was insurmountable. Repetitive music alone could provoke insanity for some, but in my case, it was the only thing familiar and predictable. The music was my mind’s saving grace.
The headlights were interrupted, and my left breast underwent rough manipulation.
“Arhhh,” I said.
“You’re alive?” a voice asked.
“That’s my boob!” I yelled.
“Can you turn the music down?”
“No!” Pinned upside down, I hadn’t bothered to reach for the stereo.
“She’s still alive! Call 911!” the voice yelled.
“Help me!”
“Help is on the way,” he said.
He began to ask me questions, but I could only answer with cries. Moments later, the paramedics and firefighters arrived. Again, I was asked and prodded to answer the same questions.
The “jaws of life” began to tear at the mangled passenger door. The apparatus was loud and intimidating. PTSD only made it worse. Images of a huge blade ravaging my body and blood splattering throughout the car debilitated me.
“Stop! Stop!” I yelled. The loud noise came to a pause. Only the music played. Since I felt out of touch and a bit insane, the song’s lyrics persuaded me to push on. With sheer and utter confidence, I spoke again, “Hang on. I’m going to get out.”
“No, Jennifer. Do not move. We will come to you.”
Their demand was ignored.
With the unimaginable strength I had encountered and accessed once before, I began to expand every cell in my body. Metal began to crunch as I pried the aluminum coffin off me. Gently, I pulled my hand from its entrapment. In a skillful manner and with tremendous adrenaline, I busted the steering wheel away from me and began to crawl through the wreckage toward the passenger door. Each movement I made took pressure off my mind.
“Is she moving?”
“Jennifer, you will not be able to get out.”
“Stay still. You are trapped.”
The space was limited, but the cinder-block-sized gap to freedom failed to damper my will to succeed. Sideways, I shoved my head through the gap. The space was so small, it felt like the car was about to birth me.
“Pull my head,” I said. I did not want to wait another second to break free from my metal imprisonment. As the belly-up car birthed me, my eyes began to glisten by what I saw next. Nickels all over the black asphalt road were illuminated by headlights and red emergency blinkers. They looked like silver stars. The loud music, the sight of the nickels, and the chaos enlightened me.
In emotional shock, I stood up and shook off. My arms were held by paramedics, and a gurney was placed under me. Their sense of urgency was memorable.
The car was in a disfigured mess. Its underbelly faced the sky. Its pose was similar to downward dog, a pose in yoga named after the way canines naturally stretch their entire bodies. The front of my Mazda was down and the back was up.
Traffic had ceased and backed up. The occupants of the cars picked up my nickels. It made me happy to see that the coins were saved. The nickels had a better story now.
Inside the ambulance, I noticed the skin on my hands had been replaced with glass and asphalt. My head began to burn, and when I touched the top of it, I felt asphalt and a large chunk of glass. The afflicted area was the size of a slice of toast. As I picked at it, I removed chunks of asphalt with long blond hair attached. The more I messed with it, the more my hair dislodged from my scalp. Once I removed the hair and road chunks, I felt bits of glass lodged into my scalp. The paramedics gave me a small plastic bag to put all of my damaged hair and scalp in, while I questioned them about the injuries.
“How did the road get in my head?” I asked.
“It looks like your head went out the sunroof,” the paramedic said. “You’re lucky to be alive. People in wrecks like yours don’t normally survive.”
My forehead began to pound. It was wet with blood and covered in glass and gravel. Like a monkey searching itself for ticks or fleas, I picked at my skin the entire trip to the emergency room.
At the hospital, X-rays revealed no broken bones. A male nurse scrubbed my wounds for hours with some sort of steel ball. The pain from the scrub was intolerable; it made me want to pass out. The entire time, I begged him to stop. Reluctantly, the nurse stopped and warned me that I still had glass and gravel inside my skin. He applied ointment to soothe the pain, and he wrapped the wounds.
In total, about twenty-five percent of my hair and scalp was lost in chunks. Forty percent of my forehead contained gravel and glass. Eighty percent of the skin on the back of my left hand was completely gone. And I had multiple cuts, scrapes, and bruises all over my body. Three teeth were also lost.
Five hours post-admittance, I was released. Trevor rushed to the hospital to pick me up. When he arrived, I was so excited. We were at the point in our relationship when our feelings were fresh, and we didn’t know if the other person was really interested or not.
Trevor showed up with a smile on his face and flowers in hand. No one had ever given me flowers before, so I felt special. The flowers had a tiny card with them; I noticed it as we drove to his house.
As he sang along with “Sunshine on my Shoulders” on his stereo, I snuck a peek at the note. Trevor had written: Jennifer, I’m so glad you are okay. I don’t know what I would have done without you. I love you.
Okay, it didn’t actually say I love you. On the very bottom, in little letters, the card said I (drawn heart) U. He had drawn a heart to replace the word love. He also used a U instead of spelling out the word.
As I examined the words, I felt a surge of adrenaline rush through my veins. I gazed out the window and smiled and then looked back at the card to make sure I had read it correctly. I felt so loved, safe, and protected. When I saw how much Trevor cared about me, I surrendered all of my emotional fears. For the first time in my life, I felt true love. This feeling made me start to see the world differently. Everything I looked at was lovelier, and I was happier.
When we arrived at Trevor’s house, his mom, Mariah, was there with open arms. Trevor and his mom cared for me. His mom was gentle and warm. She welcomed me to stay in their home while I healed.
MY PARENTS NEVER EVEN CAME to the hospital. A friend, who notified my mom while I was being treated, said my mom was more concerned about the car than me.
When I called my mom about the accident later that night, she told me that I was kicked out of the house. I wasn’t welcome there anymore. She also said she heard about the accident from a friend who was on the Bingo Bus when it stopped. She said that some people on the bus figured the person in the car was dead, and others prayed. She didn’t know how I always got so lucky, when I probably deserved to die due to carelessness.
WORK GAVE ME THREE WEEKS to heal. Severe whiplash and a swollen head made me look less than desirable as Trevor cared for me. The physical pain was worth the emotional gain, though, and the loss of the car was worth the love.
It is horrible to have physical pain and emotional pain at the same time. It is better when you only have one. I have endured both during my life enough to know that my choice would be physical pain over emotional distress anytime. If you feel cared for and loved, you heal faster and better, maybe because you have a reason to recover
.
Nickels stayed scattered over the road for months to come. They were a constant reminder that it was not my time to die yet.
After about a month of healing, I returned to work. Right away, I noticed people treated me like I was fragile; they didn’t get too close. Maybe they thought I was bad luck and they didn’t want me to rub off on them.
Just days after my return, my manager approached me nervously. She told me she needed to speak to me. Awkward tension filled the air as I wondered what she had to say. Her body language told me she was uncomfortable. She took a deep breath, then exhaled her words.
“A rumor has been going around about you. It’s not good.”
“A rumor?” I asked. After all I have been through, why would someone say something bad about me? I thought.
Tears began to fill her eyes. “This is so hard.”
I really liked my manager, so I tried to comfort her and tell her it was okay.
“I don’t care! Nothing can be worse than everything I’ve already gone through. What is it?”
I stared at her with concerned eyes and a fake smile to ease her fear of my reaction.
She covered her face with her hands, then quickly withdrew them and blurted out her words.
“They say that you have AIDS!”
My Mazda RX-7 sports car before the crash
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Bottommost
Two years later, unemployed and in a daze, I clung to existence. In Trevor’s bedroom, my hands began to ache. I lifted my fingers from the colored construction paper and stretched them out. Physical pain annoyed me—unless I was in search of attention—so I had to rid myself of it. In the bathroom, I opened the medicine cabinet and discovered some powerful pain medication.
With cupped hands, I drank the sink water to wash the pills down. My face began to agitate me, so I splashed cold water on my skin and rubbed my worn-out eyes. As I lifted my head to look in the mirror, I began to tremble. My odd reflection drew me closer to the mirror, and I focused in on my eyes. Unlike eyes that reveal a soul, mine were vacant—completely void. My empty eyes spoke volumes. They were gloomy. In the darkness, I felt cold. The future could not be seen, only the present and past, and neither proved good. My eyes stayed riveted to the mirror until my attention was averted elsewhere.
My kooky lips engrossed me. They were a part of my face but suddenly seemed unfamiliar. My curiosity forced me to open my mouth wide, and what I witnessed was heinous.
My tongue flopped around uncontrollably, like a fleshy fish out of water with no head or tail. The bizarre display startled me. With a firm pinch from my fingers, I tried to calm the freakish mouth assault.
As I wrestled my tongue, a bright idea popped into my mind. An icy cold beer sounds good. I wonder if we have any left.
Sidetracked, my outrageous behavior ceased. I headed for the kitchen, grabbed a beer, and returned to the bedroom.
As I cracked the beer open, I examined my craft space on the floor and jumped back to work. With serious focus, I stretched out on the floor and concentrated fully.
Multi-colored construction paper, cut into index-card-sized rectangles, covered the planked hardwood floor. Neon markers were scattered about. Eighty handmade business cards patiently sat in stacks of twenty as I attempted to reach my goal of one hundred. Each card was different and unique—some contained art or stickers and others were simpler. Every card had a new font, but the messages read the same.
The business cards were made to help me find a new job caring for people with disabilities. My job title was written out on the top with my phone number under it. My plan was to hand them out and leave them in mailboxes, with the hope that someone would need my help.
Anytime Trevor walked by, I covered my project. We weren’t supposed to show each other our creations until we were finished. He interrupted his multimedia art creation to offer me a puff of his joint, but I declined because I didn’t smoke that stuff.
A couple hours later, I finished my business cards. My excitement was obvious. After I stood, I clapped my hands and did a quick dance in place. Then I stretched my tight fingers.
“Okay. I’m done. Close your eyes,” I said.
With a paintbrush in one hand, he stopped in his tracks and shut his eyes.
“Hold out your hand.”
Excited, he put his hand out and faced his palm upward. I placed a small stack of business cards in his hand.
My fingers wiggled wildly with excitement.
“You can look.”
He opened his eyes and drew the cards closer. He began to laugh as he glanced through the stack.
“Business cards!” He flipped one over to find it blank on the back. “These are badass.”
“Yes!”
He laughed loudly as he mouthed the words on the cards to himself.
“Good idea! If you say you are disabled, people will hire you because they will feel bad for you!” He tried to high-five me, but I was confused.
“What? No! What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your cards say that you are a disabled caretaker.”
“No! I’m a caretaker for the disabled. That’s why I wrote Disabled Caretaker!” I began to get paranoid that he didn’t understand.
“As I read the card, it appears that you are disabled.” He took a hit off the joint.
“Ahhhh!”
After I screamed at the top of my lungs into a dingy pillow, I cried and laughed as I ripped my hours of work into little pieces and threw them into the air like confetti. When every card was shredded, I grabbed the joint, breathed in deep, and sighed in frustration.
It was six o’clock in the morning. We had been up for two days. Our blood had been poisoned and could have contained battery acid, drain cleaner, lantern fuel, and antifreeze. We didn’t know, and we didn’t care. We were high on methamphetamine.
FOR A FEW MONTHS, WE did “speed” often and never left each other’s sides. Trevor hadn’t invited me to live at the house, but I somehow moved myself in. We had oodles of fun, and I loved my new carefree, rebellious lifestyle.
Trevor had such a zest for life. He partied every day and held a job on the side. He didn’t care about what others thought of him or us, and I loved that. He was a free spirit, and I was a loon. We meant the world to each other.
Once, we had sex in a random cave that we stumbled upon in the desert. The date was not as romantic as it might sound. A stampede of annoyed bats interrupted our sexy escapade and forced us to flee in terror.
Who knew there were caves in the desert? Trevor had been the expert on all the cool spots to have a good time. It never crossed my mind until now that I might not have been the first girl he brought to the rustic love dungeon.
Trevor and I could find excitement anywhere. We were never bored. For fun, we went on adventures in his Jeep. We plowed through streams and climbed daunting hills. There were no feats the sturdy four-wheel drive couldn’t conquer.
When Trevor’s mom was away from the house, we had pool parties and invited people over. We had barbecues in the backyard with Tyler and her boyfriend. The guys would jump off the roof into the pool as Tyler and I covered our eyes and clenched our teeth. Their dangerous behavior secretly exhilarated us small-town girls.
As I stare at the backyard pool from my treehouse, I see vivid images of Trevor. He was always by the pool with a smile on his face. If he wasn’t skimming for leaves, he was dancing with a margarita in his hand. He exuded happiness and positivity.
When we first met, Trevor was on break from his third year at San Diego State University, where he majored in criminal justice. He once told me that he came to visit his mom and got “stuck” in the desert. While we were dating, he worked as a waiter at a high-end restaurant and dabbled in artistic affairs.
For selfish reasons, I never encouraged Trevor to return to college. If I knew he would die of cirrhosis of the liver at age thirty-three, I’d like to think I would have used all my power to convince him to return to
finish his degree. On the other hand, if he had returned, this story would lose significant beauty and someone else would have never entered my life. This is where I see things happen as they are supposed to, and that everything is meant to be.
My employment never lasted for more than a month at a time. PTSD caused me to no longer think clearly. Constant thoughts of being murdered at work turned me into a panicky whack job. When I was a waitress, the images disturbed me so much that I’d tremble and drop plates. When I picked them up, I’d stutter and shudder.
My warped mind propelled simple gestures into a dreadful stratosphere. The chef polishing his knife had a secret plan to butcher me. The guy mopping the floor was most likely his accomplice.
I disappeared on the job often. If I didn’t sit on the toilet and convince myself to breathe, I would sit there and use my knees as a desk to write notes. At least once a week, I wrote a note to either my boss or a trusted co-worker revealing my killer. If I were to suddenly go missing, the notes blatantly identified my killers. The waitress order slips would help detectives locate my body faster, before it decomposed.
Needless to say, I felt a remarkable sense of relief after I quit a job. The two rituals that followed the release of responsibility were always consistent. First, I’d hyperventilate. Then I’d take a bath. Man, did I look forward to those baths.
Water had always represented comfort to me. Sometimes I secretly called it Mom. In the warm bath, with no presence of light, I escaped to a kingdom of solace, a place where shower water rained for hours onto my face while I curled up into the collective puddle below. The retreat of the bath was a place where tears could freely add to the level of my fluid submersion. In that place, I felt understood by the water.
The Girl in the Treehouse Page 15
