“Yeah. I’ve heard that.” I don’t think any of us at Lake Shit are feeling the unconditional love these days.
Day 10
Sunday, Day 10
MORNING
Sandy had a private meeting with Birdcage about her pregnancy decision. When she told him that she was going to keep the baby, he freaked and said she was making a huge mistake.
After Breakfast Elevator Report: Victor continues to monopolize the space next to me. I am beginning to lose all hope that I will ever touch Justin’s arm.
AFTER GROUP
I totally called it—Abby’s in my Group. She is royally bizarre. She sat opposite me in our Group circle wearing hospital PJs (so she must be on PSI I, unless she just likes wearing flimsy blue clothing with drawstrings). She has a short brown feather cut and looks to be about thirteen, although I think she may be one of those older people who looks younger, due to the fact that she kept referring to her “boyfriend.” I don’t get it. How can some head case that sleeps in a toddler bed have a boyfriend and I don’t? Am I that date–mentally challenged?
Her story belongs on Ripley’s Believe It or Not. She filled up our whole Group meeting with her blathering on about why she was in the hospital and why she had seizures. It was rather mesmerizing. If we had to vote at the end as to whether we believed her story or not, I don’t think any of us would have a clue how to answer. Judge for yourself:
“So, yeah, my name is Abby, and, as you probably know, I have seizures sometimes.” She began her story in her thick Chicago accent. “The seizures just recently started to happen, though. The doctors say it’s not epilepsy, or anything they can give me medicine for, ya know?” She ended most of her sentences with question marks.
Eugene was leading Group today, and in his gurgly voice, he prodded Abby to continue. “And why do you think you have these seizures, Abby?” He asked the question as though he was bored and didn’t believe or care about anything she was saying.
“Well, my boyfriend, Angel, he’s, like, really smart and really into Stephen King. When we first met, I had never even seen a Stephen King movie, ’cause, you know, I get scared when it’s dark and I see scary things on the TV, but he said if I was gonna be his girlfriend I sure better start watching ’em.” Abby was full of nervous energy and bounced her knees incessantly. “So every night, this was like two months ago, we watched a different Stephen King movie? We could afford it ’cause Angel’s stepmom works at the video store by us. We saw The Shining, It, Christine. His favorite is Carrie’cause he thinks she’s hot, but I don’t know why ’cause she’s all skinny and then gets that pig’s blood dumped all over her?” She quickly and dramatically reenacted the scene in her chair, first with the bucket being dumped on her head, then with Carrie’s eyes bugging and accusingly looking around the room. It was quite realistic.
“Angel starts saying how it would be cool if I had telekinetic powers, so I could, like, shut doors with my brain and shit? For my birthday he bought me this book on controlling minds and he made me practice, like, every day after school and then, like, every night watch Carrie?”
Eugene interrupted, “And where were your parents during all of this?”
“My parents are divorced, and my dad moved up to Sheboygan, Wisconsin? My ma works second shift, so she doesn’t get home until midnight. She’s never even met Angel.”
Eugene sighed and rolled his eyes in a “Well, there you go” way. “So, you’re practicing closing doors and watching Christine a lot—”
“Carrie, not Christine. Christine is about a car? Anyways, I start getting these terrible headaches from scrunching my mind up so I can concentrate.” She squinted hard to demonstrate. “Angel said closing doors was too big to start, so then I tried pencils ’cause I thought they’d be easier? But my headaches just got worse and worse. One day, I was staring at this pencil that Angel gave me for Valentine’s Day that had all these hearts on it.” She held out a fake pencil and stared. “It was, like, forty-five minutes, when something in my head just popped, and the next thing I know I’m in some really foggy place. I’m calling out Angel’s name, and he ain’t answering. Then finally I snapped out of it, and I was in a hospital bed. My ma was there, and she told me I had a seizure. Like I said, they couldn’t find anything wrong with me, so I went home. Angel and me kept working on my telekinesis. But he told me something that happened, and he told me not to tell anyone?”
Long pause. “Would you like to tell us?” Eugene asked.
“I was afraid of pissing Angel off, but it started to scare me. I mean, I didn’t want to turn into Carrie, standing at the prom dripping with pig’s blood? See, Angel told me that when I was having the seizure, I started talking. Only—it wasn’t me. It was a deep, mean man voice that kept saying, ‘I have Abby. You will not get her back.’ Angel thinks it’s the devil and that through my strong telekinetic powers I have brought him to me.” She nodded her head at the circle of listeners.
“Would anyone like to comment on Abby’s story?” Eugene looked around the circle.
Most of us looked at our feet. What was there to say? It’s not like you can really give someone advice about these matters. Then Tanya piped in, “As long as y’all don’t have a seizure when I’m trying to sleep, you can do whatever you want.” Always a charmer, that Tanya.
I was pretty much in shock about the whole thing. How was being in a mental hospital going to get the devil out of this girl? If he’s even in there in the first place. What if she uses her telekinetic powers to lock my side of the bathroom door so I can’t use the toilet? Are we going to have to get a priest in here and have some exorcism action? Is any of this for real? Believe it or not!
LATER
Tracy, I thought Sunday was supposed to be the day of rest, but not in this hellhole …
We had Study Time this afternoon, which is basically where I lie on my bed with The Crucible on my chest and fall asleep until someone comes into our room to check on us and I pretend to be reading. Sandy sat at her desk the whole time and wrote down different variations of her future married name:
Sandy Peterson
Mrs. Derek Peterson
Ms. Sandy Shelty-Peterson
I sat up and looked alert when Bettina barged into the room carrying a black babydoll with fake ball earrings punched into the side of its head. “This is your baby, Sandy. Your doctor says you have to carry it around, and feed it and burp it and change it. It’s gonna teach you just what it’s like to have a real baby.” Cradling the doll, Bettina walked over to Sandy and placed the doll into her arms. “Be sure you support her head, now.” Bettina looked at me. “Now don’t give her too much help. She needs to learn to do this on her own.” Bettina walked out.
Sandy and I looked at each other with furrowed brow (brows?). How is this going to teach her what it’s like to have a real baby? I know they make those Baby Poops-a-Lot dolls, or whatever, that you have to stick a key into to stop it from crying (just like a real baby!), but this is just like any other doll. Not to mention Sandy and her boyfriend are as white as powdered sugar, and unless she’s been having sex with a plastic black man, I cannot imagine this to be her baby.
“Let’s name her,” Sandy said. “How about ‘Mary Jane’?”
“That’s too Spider-Man. And those Mary Something names always confuse me. Is it a first name? Is it a middle name?” I thought for a second. “What about Buffy? Then she can kick ass.”
“She doesn’t look like a Buffy.” She didn’t look like a baby either, but we were still trying to name her. Then I thought of Morgan, that cute little girl you and I took trick-or-treating last year. Remember, Trace?
“Morgan,” Sandy said. “I like it.” She looked at the doll closely, seeing if the name matched. I told her the story of Morgan, how her mom was a black lawyer and her dad was a white doctor. They moved across the street from my house last summer. The first black person on our block. Not that it’s an anti-black block; it’s just more of a Jewish neighborhood. We deci
ded to have our first neighborhood block party to welcome them. The Sutcliff family that lived next door to them—an extra-blond, non-Jewish family who you never met—refused to come to the party. We knew that they were kind of white-trashy because they always had an extra car or two junking out on the driveway. But this was how we learned they were also racist. Even though the real Morgan was just a little kid, it made her seem stronger, knowing that she already had enemies to face. I thought it was a fitting name for that plastic baby.
“Can I hold Morgan?” Sandy tossed her to me like a football. I was glad to see that she wasn’t taking the babydoll too seriously, although I hoped she knew that throwing a real baby could get her imprisoned. I looked at the doll closely. It had plastic hair molded to the head, like on a Ken doll, with fake curls lining the forehead. All it was wearing was a babydoll tee (Ha! ’Cause it’s a babydoll! In a T-shirt!) and a tiny, real diaper. Is that how small babies are? It must be scary to be responsible for such a mini, fragile person. Sandy seems so carefree about the whole thing. If I were pregnant, I would be shitting bricks having a living thing rolling around inside of me. I know Sandy won’t consider it, but I think I would go the abortion route. There’s no way I’m ready for a baby, and there’s double no way I could handle going through all of the medical trauma just to put it up for adoption. I’m making myself sick thinking about this. I’m so glad it’s not happening to me. I just hope that it happens to me someday. Sex, I mean. And it’s not so consequential when it does. I’d settle for a first kiss at this point … .
POST-DINNER
Those ass-eyes won’t even let Sandy come down to dinner. They say it’s not safe for her new baby to be around so many germs, so Sandy’s stuck in the room and I’m left alone for another exciting dining adventure.
I noticed on the elevator that Justin was several people closer to me than normal. Of course, Victor took the coveted spot next to me (Me! I’m coveted!), but I’m hoping Justin will bully his way over with his imposing height. I can’t tell, because no one has ever been remotely attracted to me, but I think Justin might like me. Whenever he says something, he looks at me first to get a reaction. But maybe that’s because I’m always staring at him, and they say that if you are staring at someone that they automatically have to look at you by some freaky cosmic force. Like yawning because somebody else yawns. But what if he was genuinely looking at me? I think he might have been.
Our dinner conversation was pretty interesting. Without me saying anything, everybody already knew that Sandy had to carry around a doll baby. The Rosary Boys (i.e., Colby and Sean) were all, “Abortion is wrong. The Lord would be angry.” He’d probably be angry about that nasty scum-stache, too, but I’m not preaching. I was afraid Sean was about to pull out another rosary for me, but then Justin started talking about how it should be a woman’s choice whether or not she wants to have a baby. Not to be all ’50s gaga, but he’s so dreamy! I loooooove a feminist man.
Of course, all Phil/Shaggy could focus on was the sexual act that led to the pregnancy. “Damn, I envy that guy. Do you think they were naked?”
Matt O. put another spin on things. “I don’t know why anyone would want to bring another human into this crappy world. Look at us. I’ve been at Lake Shit for six months. Did you know that it costs our parents over a thousand dollars a day to keep us here? And the only reason most of you leave before I do is that your insurance runs out. I get to stay here because my dad thought it would make sense to buy the super-sized insurance policy. My dad would rather spend,” he paused to calculate, “$180,000 than look at my sorry ass. I don’t know if I’m pro-choice, but I’m sure as hell anti-child.”
Six months for $180,000! I cannot believe that. For what? Crappy food and out-of-date movies?
“My parents said I’d be out of here in a week if I got better,” Bobby said. “This is my third week, and nobody’s told me anything. At least they finally stopped changing my meds.”
“Yeah, it’s nice to see you actually sitting still,” Matt O. told Bobby.
“I’m out of here the second my insurance runs out,” Justin told us. “My mom called last night and told me I sounded good, like it’s because of Lake Shit, so they want me to stay as long as possible. I asked them how much longer I’ll be here, and all she could say was, ‘Not much. Your father hasn’t really given me all of the details,’” he spoke in a singsong mom voice. “I don’t want to see them either, then,” he mumbled under his breath while stacking up his Tater Tots with his left hand.
“How about you, Anna?” Matt O. asked.
“I have no idea. I don’t even know if I have insurance. My parents take care of all that, and I never paid attention. My dad’s a high school teacher. Do they get good insurance?”
“The best,” Matt O. answered. “You’re gonna be a lifer, like me,” he smiled.
I didn’t want to be a lifer. Six months. I don’t want to live in a sticky-walled room with thick window screens and no-lock bathroom doors for six months. I don’t want to have to put my fingers out every time I want to talk for six months. I don’t want to ride up and down in a no-touch elevator for six months. What if everyone at home forgets about me? What will life be like when I get out? What will I be like?
POST–FREE TIME
I had a very interesting chat with Matt O. tonight while we played a game of War. Justin was writing intently in a distant corner (with his right hand) in his notebook, and I didn’t want to bother him.
Alone with Matt O., it seemed like an OK time to ask, “So, Matt, why are you here? You never told us in Group.”
“Yeah, well, it’s kind of embarrassing.”
“You’re not hearing voices or running with the devil, are you? How bad could it be?”
We played War as he spoke. “My parents got divorced when I was little. My dad was real good about visiting and sending money and stuff—still is. My mom worked a lot and met this guy, Ray. He moved in with us a couple of years ago.” Long pause. The game continued. “He was always home because he was on disability for some factory accident with his foot. It wasn’t too bad having him around for a while because he made dinner every night.” Matt O. paused, and as he bit his lip I could tell something big was coming.
“You don’t have to continue if you don’t want,” I told him. My stomach flipped as I assumed the worst. Did I want to hear this?
“They say it’s not my fault, so I shouldn’t feel embarrassed talking about it. It’s kind of hard not to be embarrassed about some guy touching my dick.” He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t cry either. I bet I would cry if I had to say something like that.
“Ugh,” I replied. I felt gross. I don’t know if it was because a grown man had touched Matt, or if just thinking about the unknown world of penises made me nervously sick. I really couldn’t believe some sick fuck could do that to Matt.
“Yeah. That’s a good way to put it. My dad exploded when he came by one night to visit and caught Ray in the act. Beat the crap out of him. My dad pays for me to be here so they can ‘fix me,’” he said with finger quotes. “It’s still stuck in my head, though.”
“Is that why you’re still here after six months?” Is that what they do to kids who are sexually abused? Send them away?
“Not really. I mean, I’m a lot better. Of course it’s going to be in my head in some way. I kind of choose to stay here.”
I was shocked, but at the same time I could understand it in terms of my own feelings. How easy and comfortable it is here.
“Not that Lake Shit is so great, but my dad acted so weird to me after the whole thing. We used to be so close, and now he won’t even look at me. I think he’s embarrassed for me or something. And my mom will hardly admit that Ray did it.” Matt did an impressive one-handed shuffle and kept his eyes on the cards.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. My doctor tells me that’s common. I guess my mom doesn’t want to admit that she’d date such a dickhead. I don’t want to go home and liv
e with her again, and my dad has good insurance. So I’m here.”
He looked up at me and gave a shrug.
“At least you can talk about it here, right?”
“Actually, I haven’t really told many people. I must like you.” He smiled.
“I guess you’re kind of glad that no one’s allowed to touch you while you’re here?” Matt resumed our game of War. I flipped over an ace and took one of his kings.
“I wouldn’t mind it so much if it wasn’t some perv doing the touching. I liked it a lot when my girlfriend was doing it, you know what I mean?”
“Not so much,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Like you never had a boyfriend?”
“Nope,” I said. “War. One, two, three, turn over.” I got an ace in that War. “Sweet!”
“That’s hard to believe,” Matt O. said, “’cause you’re so pretty.” He straightened out his dwindling deck.
“Thanks, but I think you’re the first person to think that.” I was beating the crap out of him in the game. All he had left was a bunch of low-numbered cards and one ace. I hoped we would have an aces War.
“Doubtful,” he said, as I collected card after card of his twos and threes.
“I mean, I never thought I was ugly, but I’m, you know, kind of a pudge. Guys aren’t into that, except for those weird guys who are only into that and go on The Tyra Banks Show saying how much they ‘looooove them love handles.’” I guess I was trying to change the subject because I was embarrassed. No one’s ever said nice things like that about me before.
“Ace War!”
“You’re not fat. You’re …” Matt O. laid out his ace and three other cards. I knew I’d win this, since the ace was his only good card and that was already showing. “ … Juicy,” he said. “Turn over.”
Get Well Soon Page 6
