When My Heart Joins the Thousand

by A. J. Steiger

  “That doesn’t matter.” She grips her fork like a weapon. “I’ll spend whatever it takes. I’ll find a way. I want you to get better.”

  I tug on my braid.

  “I know it’s difficult, but please try not to do that,” she says. “You remember what Dr. Evans said? It’s better if you learn to control that now, while you’re young.”

  I sit on my hands. My breathing comes short and shallow.

  “I’ve already made an appointment,” she says. “We’re going to see Dr. Ash this afternoon.”

  There’s no point in arguing, no point in saying anything. The decision has been made. Once, a while back, I tried hiding under my bed when I didn’t want to go to an appointment. Mama forcibly dragged me out, ignoring my cries of protest.

  At four, we arrive at Dr. Ash’s office, and he asks Mama to wait in the room outside while he talks to me. I sit in the chair, tense and fidgeting. Dr. Ash has thinning blond hair, a lot of diplomas on his walls, and a plastic multicolored brain on his desk. He notices me studying the brain, smiles, and says, “You want to pick that up?”

  I nod.

  “Go ahead.”

  I turn it over in my hands. It’s like a puzzle, with different pieces that snap together. I take it apart, feel the hippocampus—which is small and curled up, like a shrimp—and explore the whorls and convolutions of the cortex.

  “Your mother tells me you read a lot.”

  “Yes.”

  He takes out a notepad. “What else do you enjoy doing?”

  “Drawing. Mazes mostly. And I like animals.”

  He writes something down. “Now, I’m just going to ask a few more questions. You were diagnosed with PDD-NOS a few years ago, and you received some counseling and treatment for it, but you’ve continued to struggle at school. Is that correct?”

  I nod, clutching the plastic hippocampus against my chest. Something about its shape is comforting.

  “And recently you were expelled. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I hit some boys,” I mutter.

  He folds his hands, and his thin sandy eyebrows wrinkle together. “And why did you do that?”

  I think about those bullies, laughing and saying their ugly, cruel words. My nails dig into my palms. “Because they deserved it.”

  He hums in his throat, taps his thumbs together, and studies me in silence for a few seconds. Then he asks a question I don’t expect: “Do you ever have the feeling that everyone is against you? The teachers or other students, for instance?”

  I think about the other children, whispering about me behind my back. I think about the girls on the playground who laughed when I barked like a dog, about the teacher who put me in a box. I think about the principal staring at me with his dark beady eyes, his words to the secretary, when he thought I wasn’t listening: There’s something unnatural about that girl. I gulp, my heartbeat quickening. “Yes.”

  He writes something else down on his pad of paper. “Can you talk about that more?”

  I bow my head. “No one cares about me. They all say they want to help, but they don’t.”

  “Mmm. Do you feel that way about your mother, too?”

  I hesitate. “No. Mama isn’t like that.” After a few seconds, I add, “But sometimes I think she only likes the other me.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “The other you?”

  “Yes.” My body rocks slowly in the chair as I grip the plastic hippocampus in one hand, groping for the words to explain. I miss the real you. “Mama says there’s another ‘me’ inside me. Sometimes I think Mama is talking to her.”

  “Well, that’s . . . interesting.” He clears his throat and writes something else down. “Alvie, do you ever see or hear anything strange? Do you ever notice things, for instance, that the people around you don’t seem aware of?”

  I think about the way that clinking glass scrapes along my nerves, the way ticking clocks echo inside my head and loud voices make me want to curl up into a ball and hide. No one else ever seems to notice these things. “Yes.”

  “Are they voices, or noises, or something else?”

  “Both.”

  “Do these things bother you or cause you stress?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Ash nods and writes down a few more things. “That must have made school very difficult for you.”

  My heart is beating fast. Maybe this, at last, is the doctor who will actually listen to me. Maybe he’ll be the one who takes me seriously and helps me instead of thinking that it’s all my fault. “Yes.”

  Then he leans forward and speaks in a low, serious voice. “Now, I need you to answer this question very truthfully, even if you think I won’t like the answer.”

  I nod.

  “Have you ever heard voices telling you to hurt someone?”

  The hairs on my neck tingle and stand on end. Something has shifted. He’s looking at me too intently. There’s something frightening behind his mild expression, like a panther crouched and ready to spring. I don’t know what’s changed or why he’s asking me a question like that, but somehow I feel like whatever I say, it will be the wrong answer.

  I look at the wall. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  I don’t say anything.

  He keeps asking questions, but I don’t respond. Finally Dr. Ash brings Mama into the room. She sits, clutching her purse strap. She’s wearing makeup today, which she almost never does. Her lips look like they’ve been drawn on in bright red crayon, and her moist eyes stare out from messy blue-black circles, like bruises.

  “Ms. Fitz . . . this might seem like an odd question, but can you tell me anything about Alvie’s father? You mentioned you haven’t been in contact with him for a while. What was he like? Did he ever exhibit any unusual behavior?”

  “Unusual?” She presses her lips together, smudging her lipstick. “He was . . . a little eccentric, I suppose. He had all kinds of ideas about conspiracies and the government and chemical trails in the sky. I never really understood the things he talked about. I never even graduated high school.” She gives a weak chuckle.

  “Tell me more,” Dr. Ash says. “Was he ever violent?”

  Her smile fades. “He never raised a hand against me or anyone else. He wasn’t that sort of person.”

  Dr. Ash simply waits, looking at her.

  “He had terrible mood swings,” Mama says. “When it got very bad, he would start shouting—railing against everyone and everything. He knocked over tables and chairs. It was . . . frightening. But he never hit me. And afterward, he would apologize over and over. He told me that I was the brightest thing in his world.”

  “I see.”

  “He left when she was only a baby. He told me that he wasn’t fit to be a father.” Her eyes drift off to the side. “It was very hard.”

  “Hm,” the doctor says. “And was he ever evaluated by a psychologist?”

  “No. Why are you asking these questions?”

  “I’m wondering if Alvie has any history of schizophrenia in her family.”

  “What? No. You don’t think she’s . . . oh God.” The blood drains from her face, and she clutches the chair’s arm as if she thinks she might fall off. “No. That can’t be it. None of the other doctors said anything about that.”

  I squirm in my chair.

  “It’s rare for this condition to occur in children her age,” Dr. Ash says, “but it’s not unheard-of. And it does run in families.”

  Mama presses a hand to her mouth and closes her eyes.

  “We might have caught it in the early stages,” he says. “I can’t be sure, since she seems reticent about answering questions. But based on some of the things she’s been telling me, and her history of violent outbursts, I think we’re better off erring on the side of caution.”

  “What should I do?” Mama whispers.

  Dr. Ash glances at me, then away. “I can write you a prescription for a new medication. In addition to curbing a
ny delusions or psychotic breaks, the drug should cause an emotional flattening—a desirable effect, in this case. It’ll level her out, so to speak.”

  I stare at my feet. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “We’re trying to help you,” Dr. Ash says.

  I feel sick. I thought he was different, but I was wrong. “I don’t need your help. I never asked for help. I just want people to leave me alone.”

  “Please, Alvie,” Mama says in a small voice. “Just do what he says?”

  I bow my head.

  “If you have any problems,” Dr. Ash says, scribbling something on a little piece of paper, “give me a call.”

  I take the pills. I don’t want to, but Mama begs me.

  Over the next few weeks, a black haze swallows me. I’ve taken medications before, but it was nothing like this. These drugs dull my thoughts as well as my feelings. I feel like I’m living and walking inside a bubble of water that muffles people’s voices and makes everything blurry and wobbly. I watch my own body from outside as I dress myself, eat breakfast, and sleepwalk through day after day. Nothing bothers me anymore, because nothing matters anymore.

  Somewhere deep beneath the haze, in the part of me that can still feel, I hate it.

  Every morning, Mama makes me take a pill with breakfast, and she makes me open my mouth to be sure I’ve swallowed it. I start to hide the pills under my tongue, then spit them out into the sink later, but soon Mama figures out this trick and starts checking under my tongue. So I start swallowing the pills, then sticking my fingers down my throat and vomiting them up in the bathroom. Then Mama overhears me, and after that she won’t let me go to the bathroom until two hours after I take the pill.

  It’s hard to think with the drugs swimming in my head, but I know I have to find some way out, or I’ll feel this way forever.

  When I finally stumble on a solution, it’s almost absurdly simple. I find some vitamins at the local drugstore that look just like my pills, and I buy several bottles with my allowance. While Mama is asleep one night, I dump all the pills down the toilet and replace them with the vitamins.

  It works. Mama thinks I’m taking the medication, and the haze slowly dissipates.

  Thank God.

  Once my head is clear again, I go to the library and do some reading on the drug that Dr. Ash prescribed me, and I’m shocked at the long list of side effects, some of them serious and life-threatening. These grown-ups are trying to kill me.

  No, I think, not Mama. Mama just believes everything the doctors tell her. But I have to be more careful in the future. Telling things to grown-ups isn’t safe.

  A few weeks later, Mama takes me back to Dr. Ash. I make sure to tell him that everything is fine, that I’m feeling better, that I’m not angry or scared anymore, and that I’ve been taking my medicine. All lies. He says that my behavior has improved dramatically and that I can return to school in the fall. Obviously I can’t go back to my old school, but Mama picks out another one—a normal public school with normal children.

  “You see?” Mama says, beaming. “You just needed the right medication.”

  When we get a refill at the pharmacy, I sneak out of my bedroom at night after Mama goes to bed, take the bottle from the medicine cabinet, dump the pills down the toilet, and replace them with vitamins again.

  For a while, everything is okay.

  Then things start to change. I notice Mama sitting at the desk in her bedroom more and more, looking through papers and writing things down, muttering to herself the whole time. The phone starts ringing more and more often. And whenever I go to pick it up, she says, “Don’t answer.” We start getting envelopes with big red letters saying FINAL NOTICE on the front. I know something is happening, but whenever I ask Mama, she just shakes her head and smiles and says, “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  One day, near the end of August, Mama comes home from her job with a strange look on her face. Her eyes are wide and glazed, her mouth open slightly, like she’s not quite awake. “Mama,” I say, “what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing.” She locks herself in the bedroom.

  I call to her. I knock on the door. At first, she doesn’t respond. Then I hear her feet shuffling across the carpet, and she whispers in a weak, hoarse voice, “I’m not feeling well, honey. I need some time alone.”

  For the rest of the night, she doesn’t come out, not even to eat. She doesn’t come out the next morning, either. I start to get scared. I knock on the door. “Mama. Are you okay.” After a few minutes, I knock again. “Mama.”

  I hear her voice at last, scratchy and almost inaudible through the door: “I have the flu. I just need to rest.”

  Another day goes by, and Mama is still locked in her bedroom. I don’t know how to cook, so I eat cereal out of the box.

  Just a little longer, I think. She’ll be better soon.

  Except I know it’s not the flu.

  The phone calls keep coming, shrill rings echoing through the house, until finally she comes out. Her expression is blank, her eyes puffy, her hair in a disarray. She shuffles over to the phone, unplugs it from the wall, then goes back into her bedroom and shuts the door again.

  When Mama finally comes out of her room, I find her sitting at the kitchen table, head cradled in her hands.

  “Mama . . .”

  Very slowly she raises her head. “How long has it been?”

  I hesitate. “Three days.”

  “God.” She closes her eyes and presses the heels of her hands against them. I wait. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I don’t know what to do anymore.” There’s a long pause. “I lost my job.”

  I approach cautiously, as if she were a wounded animal, and I sit down in the chair next to hers. “It’s okay. You can get another job.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  I place my hand over hers, because I don’t know what else to do.

  “I left you alone,” she whispers. Her hand trembles beneath mine. “I left my baby alone.”

  “It’s all right. I’m fine.” My stomach is a hard, tight ball.

  A tear drips to the table. “I’m so sorry, Alvie.”

  I tug my braid over and over.

  Her eyes focus on my hand, and she watches me. Then her head drops into her hands again.

  When she finally speaks, her voice is soft and hoarse. “I’m a failure as a mother. I can’t take care of you the way you need. I’ve never been able to do it. And now, I can’t even pay for your medication. Things were just starting to get better, and now it’s all over.” She hangs her head, long red hair swinging like a curtain in front of her face. Her thin shoulders hunch. “There’s nothing left. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay the electric bill this month. The air conditioner is broken. Everything is broken.”

  I tug harder on my braid, rocking back and forth in my chair.

  “Please don’t,” she whispers.

  I catch my wrist and force myself to stop.

  Then she shakes her head. “No, no. You can’t help it. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I don’t know what to do. Without that job, we have no health insurance, and I don’t know what you’re going to do without those pills.”

  But, Mama, I haven’t taken them for weeks and I’m fine, see?

  I don’t say this out loud, because I don’t know what will happen if I tell her what I’ve been doing. It might make things worse. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me,” I say instead, cautiously.

  She smiles bleakly. “Your father always said the same thing.”

  I don’t know how to respond to this. So I start to fill a teapot with water for chamomile tea. Sometimes tea makes Mama feel better, but it doesn’t always work. I have a feeling it won’t work this time.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers.

  I put the teapot on the stove. “I’m making tea,” I say.

  Mama stares straight ahead. Her face is limp, mouth slightly open, like she’s forgotten how to move t
he muscles. “I can’t keep going like this. I just can’t. But I can’t leave you alone.”

  I stop. A chill runs down my back. “Are you going away.”

  She’s silent.

  “Please don’t leave me,” I say.

  She looks up, a strange expression on her face. Her eyes lose focus. Then she smiles. “Don’t worry, honey. I’m not going anywhere.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A twitch has developed at the corner of my left eye. I note the involuntary fluttering of the muscle beneath my skin. It happens in fits, twitching for several minutes at a time, then subsiding for a half hour or so before it starts up again. I wonder if this is an early sign of an approaching mental breakdown.

  Chance is perched atop the back of my armchair; the upholstery is now peppered with talon punctures. I sit on my couch, eating dry Cocoa Puffs from the box with one hand and watching an old episode of Cosmos. Usually the show is effective at reducing anxiety—remembering the vastness of the universe helps me put my own problems in perspective—but today, it’s not working.

  A week has passed since I lost my job. I’ve turned in over a hundred applications, and so far, no one has called me. I’m down to my last few boxes of cereal, my checking account is empty, and despite my cleaning efforts, my apartment is always covered in mouse blood, feathers, and bird shit. By now, it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that I’m living in the midst of a biohazard. I douse the apartment with pine-scented aerosol spray to mask the smell.

  I reach into the box again, and my hand comes out empty. I upend the box, collecting the last bit of chocolate-flavored sugar dust from the bottom, then lick my palm clean. I feel disgusting. I am disgusting. But I’m not about to waste precious calories. My ribs are already showing.

  There’s a sudden, loud knocking. I give a start, and Chance’s head swivels toward the door.

  “Miss Fitz?” It’s Mrs. Schultz, the landlady. Her full, booming voice cuts through the silence. “Miss Fitz, may I speak with you?”