In Broken Places

by Michele Phoenix

“Don’t make any decisions now, Shelby, not while you’re in this state.”

  “But I can’t do it, Bev! I’m sick of this. I’m sick of being a foreigner. I’m sick of not being able to read any labels at the grocery store. I’m sick of being scared on the roads and of getting mail that doesn’t mean anything to me even though I know it’s important. I’m sick of having to beg people for help and being treated like a dimwit!”

  “Shelby . . .”

  “I can’t take it!” Another crying jag threatened to overwhelm me, so I got off the couch and began to pace, anger adding an edge to my tears. “I thought I was doing okay. I kept telling myself that this is normal, that it’s going to get easier. I keep telling Shayla that too, but how can I convince her when I can’t cope either? I knew it was going to be hard, but nothing like this. Nothing like this, Bev!

  “I haven’t even made friends with anyone aside from you and Gus. It’s like every moment I’m awake is consumed with trying to keep Shayla happy, and trying to be a good teacher, and figuring out how to direct a play, and cooking with foods I’ve never seen before, and feeling like an absolute idiot because I still can’t speak German, and . . . and I’m tired of it!”

  “Give it time.”

  I stopped my pacing long enough to give her a disbelieving look. “How much? I was expecting some tough stuff, but nothing like this—and I feel it all the time. On the outside and the inside. Like my organs aren’t even in the same place anymore. I can’t handle it, Bev. I thought I’d be able to, but I can’t!”

  “This is normal, Shelby,” Bev said from the couch, her own eyes bright with tears.

  “Well, it’s too much,” I said wearily, my sobs subsiding but my lungs still heaving. I sat at the dining room table and looked at my friend in utter despair. “It’s all too hard. The Germans are always staring at me and correcting me and acting like I’m an imbecile. Nothing is easy here—nothing! I mean, it takes an hour and a half to do a load of laundry! I can’t find a donut to save my life, I can’t buy clothes because none of them fit right, I feel guilty driving because gas costs so much, I only get to talk to Trey once a week . . .”

  Bev came to the table and pulled a chair up close to mine. “You’re transitioning. It’s supposed to feel this way.”

  “And then,” I added in desperation, “I go to the doctor this morning for a sore throat and he makes me strip to my waist—to my waist!—and he doesn’t give me anything to cover up with. Nothing. No paper robe, no sheet . . . I can’t do it,” I said again, shaking my head in resignation. “And I can’t do this to Shayla.”

  “She’ll recover too.”

  “Have you seen her since she started kindergarten?” I asked angrily, motherly protectiveness hardening my tone. “She’s come back every day so unhappy, Bev. The other kids won’t talk to her, the teachers refuse to listen to her if she speaks English. How is she supposed to learn when no one cares about her?”

  “I’ve seen her when she comes home,” Bev said with the kind of firmness in her voice that told me it was time to become rational again. “She comes straight to my house, remember? So I’ve seen it firsthand, and you know what?”

  I shook my head and swiped at my nose with the Kleenex she’d brought me from the box next to the couch.

  “The two of you are suffering from exactly the same adjustment pangs. Too much newness and weirdness all at the same time. Too many things that feel like you somehow need to survive them.”

  “I need to pull Shay out of kindergarten. It’s killing her.”

  “Give her another couple of weeks.”

  “Bev! She cries herself to sleep at night and begs me every morning not to send her back. It’s been like that for two weeks! How can I force her to do something she hates so much?”

  “You’re not forcing her. You’re allowing her enough time to get used to it before pulling her out of the one thing in her life that gives her contact with others.”

  My lungs spasmed a little and I swallowed hard. My eyes were pulsing with the intensity of my emotions, and my chest felt hollowed out. Nausea came and went like a veil across my eyes.

  “And I can’t stand the rain,” I said, every ounce of my rebellion in the words.

  Bev laughed and reached across to pat my hand. “Well that, my dear, is the one thing you really can’t do anything about!”

  I allowed a smile, but it didn’t feel very hopeful.

  “None of this is easy, Shelby. That much you’ve got absolutely right. And combined with everything else you’re coping with, it’s got to feel so overwhelming that you can’t see straight right now. But give it time. Just like Shayla needs a little more time before you decide whether to leave her in kindergarten or not, you need more time to see just how strong you really can be. You’ve only been here a few weeks, and I don’t want to depress you, but culture shock like this can sometimes take a couple years to put behind you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Great. That’s encouraging.”

  “Except that you’re doing it right. You’re trying as hard as you can and giving it all you’ve got, which is exhausting considering you’re juggling motherhood and teaching and learning to direct a play. You’ve been through monumental changes in the past few months, and you’ve somehow maintained your sanity.”

  I raised a dubious eyebrow.

  “You have,” Bev persisted. “This—” she pointed at my swollen eyes and salt-abraded cheeks—“this is sanity. It’s acknowledging that it hurts and that none of it makes sense. And once this passes, once you get your car back and Shayla starts to do better, once you master a few more easy meals to make and get a few more German phrases under your belt, it’ll start to feel better. Just don’t expect it to happen overnight.”

  She patted my hand. “What feels overwhelming now won’t be quite so confusing in a month and even less in a year. Every challenge is part of the process. Give the changes the time to become familiar, and give yourself permission to be scared or frustrated or confused. Just like you give permission to Shayla.”

  “Hans and Regina went to the pool,” I said in German.

  “Come again?”

  “That’s the one German sentence I know really well, and I’ll probably never get to say it.” The last words turned into a wail, and I launched into chapter two of Shelby’s Epic Meltdown.

  “Hey, consider yourself lucky,” Bev said. “The only sentence I know in French is Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”

  I put my wailing on pause long enough to give her a Huh? look.

  “From ‘Lady Marmalade,’” she explained. “You know what it means?”

  I shook my head. I had heard the song all my life without ever wondering about the French.

  “Well, it’s a surefire way of meeting the natives,” Bev said. “It means, ‘Do you want to sleep with me tonight?’”

  I laughed so hard I snorted.

  “Your nose is red,” I said to Trey. He was lying on the floor next to the couch, his bag of frozen peas still pressed against the livid traces of my father’s shame around his neck.

  “I’ve been sneaking out and doing a clown act after dark every night,” he croaked, his eyes closed. “Can’t seem to get all the makeup off, though.”

  “Oh, good,” I said, “’cause I thought maybe you’d been crying or something.”

  He opened an eye and glared at me. We’d never been very good at crying together.

  Mom and Dad were in the kitchen. They’d been in there forever. After I’d come to on the couch, Dad had sat there for a while in the pretty flowered chair. Then, while I went to the bathroom to throw up, he’d gone into the kitchen with Mom. It hadn’t been his idea. Mom had approached him, trying to keep her voice low so we wouldn’t hear what she said. But she was so angry that it was like her words had ultrasound. They weren’t loud, but we felt them vibrate in our bones.

  “Go to the kitchen,” she’d hissed, the words sharp and brittle in the silence of the living room. It was the kind of tone we
’d used on the dog we had when we were really little. We’d sent him to the kitchen too when he’d peed on the rug or chewed on the furniture. But I never, not in my most psychedelic nightmares, ever thought I’d hear Mom speak to my dad that way.

  They’d been in the kitchen for several minutes now, and all we could hear was the occasional word.

  “You want me to go put my ear to the door?” I asked Trey.

  “Only if you want to.”

  “My wrist hurts too much.”

  “Okay.”

  That’s when Mom yelled. She yelled so loudly that both Trey and I sat up like someone had set firecrackers off under our backs.

  “Get out!” she yelled. “Get out of the house and don’t come back!”

  I had never heard Mom yell that way before. Never. Not even when her brakes had given out when she was biking down a hill during a camping trip. Even then, she’d just kinda kept quiet and aimed her bike at the pond off to the right instead of at the trees to the left. She hadn’t even screamed when the bike had gone off the road, across a bumpy patch of grass, then right into the water. She’d just put her feet down when the bike sank in the silt and walked out of the knee-deep water, leaving the blue Schwinn standing there in the pond all by itself.

  We heard Dad go upstairs and rummage around for a while. Then he came through the living room on his way to the door, a garbage bag full of stuff slung over his shoulder, left the house, started up his Chevy, and just kinda poofed out of our lives.

  Mom told us over lasagna that night that Dad was going to be staying at his other house for a while.

  “He has another house?”

  She got that look like she’d said something she hadn’t meant to say. “He’s got a place to stay.”

  “Is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked at Trey.

  “You shouldn’t let him come back,” he said to Mom. I liked it when he said things in that tone of voice. Strong. Like he knew more than Mom did.

  Mom had been spending a lot of time moving the lasagna around on her plate with her fork, so I knew she wasn’t feeling too good. She let a long silence pass, the kind of silence that feels like smooth water. Like if you say anything or breathe or move, there will be a ripple and the smoothness will be gone. I don’t think any of us were in the mood for ripples. We’d had enough. So we all ate in silence for a few more minutes, enjoying the smooth surface while we could.

  “I want you to know that what your dad did this afternoon was . . .” She paused.

  “Bad?” I offered the word, but I knew it fell short.

  “Reprehensible.” Better word. Score one for Mom. “And I need you to know that I never would have let it happen if I’d been home.” Like she’d never let him cuss at us or yell at us or shove us around? But her intentions were good. I knew that.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” Trust Trey to jump right in.

  “They would have . . .” She put her fork down and rubbed at her eyes like she was sleepy. “They might have . . .”

  “They might have given him what he deserves,” said the boy with the purple-red bruises around his neck.

  Mom got teary, but she kept the drops from falling off the edges of her eyes. She’d always had a gift for that. “I don’t want you to think your father hates you,” she said.

  Trey and I exchanged eye rolls. Right. He loved us. He’d nearly loved us into oblivion, the pig. I didn’t say the word out loud because part of me still thought he was with us, listening to us, waiting to pounce on his kids’ major sins—like not eating zucchini or, you know, calling him a pig.

  “He’s got some problems,” Mom continued. “In his head. And he knows he’s hurt you really badly this time.”

  “I’m not going to forgive him.” I looked around to see who had spoken and realized it was me. “I mean—not for a very long time.” I knew in my head that it would be never.

  “If he comes back, I’m moving out.” This from Trey. I guess having the life choked out of you makes you see things in a more definite light. He had that look about him—like he meant it—and it scared me. If Trey left, I’d have to leave too, and I wasn’t quite ready for that.

  Mom stood after Trey’s statement and took her full plate to the counter. “We’ll see,” she said, her back to us, and we knew that meant she wanted him to come back. She reminded me, sometimes, of the fish we used to catch in the inland lake near the cottage we rented in the summer. It’s not like we were subtle about it. We didn’t have real fishing rods, so we’d wade in up to our thighs, fishing line and hook tied to the end of a stick. And we’d just walk around dangling the baited hook in the water, kind of like human trawlers, waiting for something to be dumb enough to bite. And there was this one sunfish—we called him Ringo—who kept coming back for more. He’d bite, we’d tear his mouth off the hook and throw him back in. Then, the next minute, while we waded around the edges of the pond and talked loudly and did everything you’re not supposed to do if you’re fishing, Ringo would come back. He’d bite again, get hooked again, we’d tear him off again and let him go again. After about an hour of this, we’d have to give up and go home. Neither of us could stand the sight of Ringo, his mouth and cheeks all torn up, coming back to bite our icky worms for the umpteenth time.

  Mom was like Ringo.

  10

  THE SILENCE in the auditorium was burdened with emotion. The rehearsal had been going well—so well, in fact, that I’d begun to design play posters in my head as it looked like the whole project wasn’t going to be declared dead on arrival after all. I’d instructed Seth to run through his final monologue, just so we could get a sense of it, and I’d asked him to make sure he put some feeling into it—which sounded like good advice from a play director, but this play director had no idea what she was talking about.

  Seth, however, apparently did. He walked through an imaginary curtain from the back of the stage and began his speech. “God creates us free, free to be selfish, but he adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in the world, and that mechanism is called suffering. To put it another way, pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

  The other actors scattered around the room quieted and turned toward the stage, where Seth was taking a deep breath, eyes closed, before going on.

  Meagan said, “He’s doing good,” from the chair beside mine and I nodded. He certainly was.

  “Why must it be pain? Why can’t he wake us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be awakened is the dream that all is well. All is not well. Believe me, all is not well.” He took another breath, and there was something ragged in the sound this time. A muscle contracted in his jaw as he seemed to brace himself before continuing, his eyes at once haunted and luminous. “Suffering . . . by suffering . . . through suffering, we release our hold on the toys of this world, and know that our true good lies in another world. But after we have suffered so much, must we still suffer more? And more? And more?”

  I was entranced. A herd of tutu-wearing elephants could have pranced through the auditorium just then, and I don’t think any of us would have paid them much attention. Because Seth—Seth who couldn’t hold Kate’s hand without turning five shades of red, Seth who never joined the other guys in stress-relieving rumbles during breaks between scenes, Seth who avoided looking me in the eye at all costs out of excessive timidity or guilt or who-knew-what—that same Seth was standing on the stage reciting his lines with tears dripping off his chin onto his chest. Much like the day I’d first met Shayla, I realized at that moment how deeply I loved him. Mind you, I wasn’t planning on officially adding him to my already-complex pseudo-family, but oh, how I loved this giant man-boy whose sensitivity and talent were so far beyond his years.

  Shayla was with me at rehearsal that night because Bev had a commitment elsewhere, so I didn’t have much time afterward to debrief with my young actor. But Se
th and I did sit for a few minutes in the last row of the auditorium after the others had gone outside.

  “Tell me about the monologue, Seth.”

  He shrugged and looked away, apparently enthralled by the white wall off to his right. He’d been a little shaken for the rest of the rehearsal, probably as much because of his emotional display as because of the reaction of his peers. They had walked around the auditorium for the remainder of the evening like pilgrims in a holy place—speaking in whispers, their eyes a little wide, their faces serene. And since it had seemed we’d reached something of a pinnacle, I’d called off the rehearsal a half hour early. Now the other actors were outside engaged in some rip-roarin’ game that had the boys screaming, the girls squealing, and the neighbors probably calling the police to complain about the noise. But I could hear Shayla’s high voice among all the others—I’d developed mom ears somewhere along the way—and I knew it meant she’d be tired early tonight, so I didn’t do anything to intervene.

  “Was it the text you were saying?” I asked Seth. “Or is there something going on in your life that makes it hard for you to be a part of the play?”

  “I . . . I used to have this . . . this thing,” he said. “And the lines I have to say are . . . Well, they mean a lot to me, I guess.”

  I wasn’t sure how to proceed. He was clearly still in a vulnerable state of mind, and I didn’t know whether further questions would help or harm him. “What do you mean by ‘this thing’?” I asked, giving him the chance to elaborate or be succinct.

  “It’s called pectus excavatum,” he said. He might as well have said it to me in Uzbek. I wasn’t familiar with the condition, whatever it was. While my mind tried to piece it together from the Latin terminology, he shifted in his chair and extended his impossibly long legs in front of him, still looking slightly away from me. “It’s a disease,” he said. “It means my chest was permanently caved in. My sternum and my ribs.” He shook his head and shifted again. “I couldn’t breathe normally or exercise because it was messing with my lungs and my heart. And I . . .” He trailed off.