“Thank you. I may be in touch later with more questions.” He awkwardly nods and disappears around the corner. Has he been waiting here to talk to me?
We all sit down in this dreadful waiting room. Izzy looks much older than her years tonight.
“Is he still in the OR?” Mom asks.
“Yes. Still working on him.”
Still working. That has to be a good sign.
“They’re doing an emergency craniotomy. The bullet only passed through one hemisphere, they said, but . . . there’s swelling.” Izzy breaks into sobs.
Hemisphere. Craniotomy. Bullet. His head. Oh my God. His. Head.
Mom grabs Izzy’s hand. “We’ll stay here as long as you need.” Izzy thanks her, dabs at her eyes, and mumbles an introduction to her girlfriend, Trisha, who barely nods at us. I can’t help noticing that so far, Izzy has yet to look in my direction.
“My father followed them upstairs, but they told him he couldn’t go in. I don’t know where he is now.”
We sit quietly for a few minutes. His head. His brain? I can’t think about it. I can’t. In the background, there is an elderly couple speaking softly to each other. I think they might be praying in Spanish. A young family of Asian and white people that look like zombies. Their toddler is the only one among them that makes a sound. In the corner, the television plays Hot Tub Time Machine, and to keep from feeling nauseated with dread, I spend a decent amount of time trying to figure out who the hell would’ve put that movie on in this waiting room. A nurse? An orderly? A punk kid scared and waiting just like the rest of us?
“Lily,” Izzy begins. I’m startled, but strangely comforted. At least she’s addressing me.
“Why were you fighting?”
The whole hospital collapses on me for a tiny second.
“It was . . . I—I don’t know.” How can I answer her?
She stares deep into me with desperation.
“It was stupid,” I say.
“But what did he do?” she asks me. Nothing to deserve this.
“Lily got into some trouble recently,” Mom suddenly interrupts. “Dari wanted to give her some sensible advice and I imagine she was being stubborn.” Mom turns to me with a stern look in her eye, but then lightly pats my hand. I am grateful for her adept lying skills, but I ease my hand away.
“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Izzy says again, dropping her head into her hands. Silent Trisha rubs her back gently.
This is an awful room. Death lives in this room. I hang my head low and close my eyes.
I don’t really know much about praying, but I’m going to do my best. Dear God, please take good care of Dari. I love him and he’s a good person (even though he’s always saying he’s an asshole). He has a lot of life yet to live. I’m sorry. Please help me be a better person. Thank you. Amen.
I open my eyes. All is quiet except for the sounds coming from the TV. I try to concentrate on the movie. George McFly from Back to the Future keeps almost losing his arm. John Cusack’s high school girlfriend stabs him in the face with a fork. It is wildly inappropriate for this movie to be shown in a hospital. I walk over to the TV and the DVD player. Sure enough, some crazy person has intentionally played it. I hit the stop button, but nothing happens. I hit eject. Still nothing. Is it stuck in there? Does this film play on a loop here? I try to turn the TV off and still, nothing works. I feel a strange buzz in my pocket. I know it must be my phone, but it doesn’t sound normal. Feels like it’s buzzing the drum intro to “Hot for Teacher.” I take it out and read:
Truth or dare?
What? OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod . . .
Are you OK, I type, hands shaking so hard I almost drop the phone.
What did I tell you about keeping your rage in check?
I scream and someone grabs me from behind.
“Lily? Lily, look at me.”
I turn to her and I scream again: no face. Dents where the eyes and mouth should be. A nose hole. Blankness.
“Lily?!”
Mom shakes me awake. Izzy and Trisha are no longer in sight. Uncle Ray hovers by the doorway anxiously. How long was I asleep?
“We have to leave,” he begins. “I can take you back to your mom’s or you can come with me to Brooklyn. Only thing is, I may not be able to bring you back for a couple of days. But it’s up to you,” he says. It’s a fake choice. There’s only one actual option.
“Fine,” I mumble, knowing I’ll have to go home to Mom’s. Knowing I’ll have to sleep in my bed. Knowing I’ll feel a hole like none I’ve ever felt when I pass the empty guest room.
* * *
If you could take back one thing you’ve done in your life, do you know what it would be?
I do now.
WITHIN THE FRAME
I am in pieces.
I am a sack of meat in a bed. Red.
I am other places too.
I am at a picnic by the river and the sun beats down. Baby blue, dark yellow. Me, Izzy, Dad, Lily, Savannah, and my mother ghost. We are the auburns and cinnamons and burnt siennas. The day is too bright. Izzy grabs my legs and arms and moves them around to tease me. I can’t stop her. We eat cold chicken, callaloo, and sweet potatoes, and we drink lemonade. Gold, green, orange, pale yellow. I can’t taste. I can’t chew.
We play a game. Dunk Dari into the water. The water is blue-green-brown. I can’t protest. Dad dunks me down and I can’t breathe and I choke and then Mother dunks me down and I can’t breathe and I choke and then Lily dunks me down. She pulls me down with all her strength, but I can resist her. I go down and bob back up. She can’t beat me. Victory = purple.
* * *
I am at the Louvre. I am with the Venus de Milo. She tells me her belief that someone has hidden her arms in the basement. Creamy white.
* * *
I am in the art room painting. Ms. Spangler whispers something in my ear about Rauschenberg and the Taj Mahal and her hot breath is too close. Eggshell, forest green, vermilion.
* * *
I am at home eating breakfast with the old man. I know he hates me. I know he lives to fight me. But, instead, he cries. He cries into his eggs with snot and whimpers and he almost touches me with his hand. But he doesn’t touch me. Brown, dark brown, yellow, more eggshell, too many colors. This painting has too many colors.
* * *
I am far too many pieces. I am far too many nerves, bones, cells, and brushstrokes. I can’t see the painting if I am the painting. All of me is tired. All of me is done. No more traveling. No more painting. No more breathing. No more looking for love and moms in all the wrong places. No more.
* * *
Tired. Brain tired. My mind keeps going. It needs to rest like my body needs to rest. Can it be switched off much like my body was switched off? Just to take a recess? I will find out.
Five, four, three, two . . .
One.
HUMAN
More than a month has passed. Winter break starts tomorrow. Dari is still in the hospital.
I visit him most afternoons. The first time I saw him, I covered my mouth so that his family wouldn’t hear the cry coming from my throat. He doesn’t look so good. There’s a bald patch on his scalp where they operated, his skin is sallowish and he looks so small. Like I could pick him up and fold him into a bundle on my lap. I can’t touch him. I can’t go inside his room. I can only see him from behind a glass window. I can’t bear the distance I’ve created.
But he’s holding on. That’s what his nurses say. “He’s tough. He’s holding on.” To what, I don’t know.
On my birthday, I requested we not have cake, but I blew out a candle. I keep coming in the afternoons to see if I’ll get my wish.
Nothing is easy anymore.
I thought once that I’d hit my own personal all-time low, but I was so wrong. There are lows, ugly depths of the human soul that a normal person can’t even fathom. I envy normal people.
Back when it happened, Dr. Maalouf suggested that I start seeing her t
wice a week instead of just once. I agreed, and I do, but sometimes . . . sometimes her need to see a way out of this, out of me, just doesn’t make any sense. I can never undo what I did to Dari.
I’ve been attending these meetings on Thursday nights at this old church in Harlem. I found out about them online. They’re for family members of African-American kids—mostly guys—who’ve suffered violence at the hands of the police. Most of them were killed. I go to these meetings and say nothing. Sometimes I bring cookies (sugar-free because I overheard a man there say he was diabetic). The group members just stare at me, but I’ve never said anything. I don’t have the right to.
Home. Things haven’t changed radically. My mother and I communicate. I love her though I hate her, and she probably feels the same way about me. She used to apologize at least once a day, but that’s petered out. Lately she keeps reminding me that she’s human, that she’s made horrendous choices and is bound to make more. I get it, though I wish I didn’t. She’s seeing a therapist now too. We both keep talking. When talking is possible. Talking once a week. Talking twice a week. Being human. We don’t know what else to do.
School is school. Word got around about my Tara fight, and now some kids are scared of me. I eat lunch alone, not giving the slightest shit. You can be here one second and vanish the next. My isolation is actually a gift. I can’t relate to anyone anymore. It’s like I’m standing on this cliff of existence now, right at the edge. Below is a five-hundred-foot drop into a canyon of broken, stony memories and pain from a future awaiting me. In the distance, I can just make out another cliff, directly opposite. This is where everyone else stands.
“Hi,” someone says to me during today’s solitary lunch. I look up surprised, wondering how she possibly made it across that canyon.
“Hey,” I reply.
Tracy sits. “I just want you to know, I never in a million years would’ve let that photo get published. I don’t care what people say about me.”
“I know,” I say.
“Also . . . I’m sorry, Lily. I think I’ve been kind of a bitch to you,” she says, staring down at the table.
I shrug. “Thanks.”
“How is your friend?” she asks carefully.
“The same.” I don’t feel right discussing Dari with her.
“We don’t have to or anything, but do you think we could be friends again?” she asks. Her voice cracking. I’m not up for an emotional lunch, but I’m happy she said it.
I nod.
“Good,” she says.
“I missed you,” I admit.
“Me too.”
I don’t know what prompted Tracy’s visit today. I have noticed her watching me at lunch lately. She sometimes sits alone too. Jackie has drifted off to the jock girls’ table, and who knows what’s going on with Marie? I do know that a lot of people were mad that Tracy turned Derek in. I’ve heard them call her “rat” in the halls.
Before lunch period ends, I stop by the art room. Dari’s unfinished painting hangs on the back wall. His sense of color is astonishing. I kind of prefer his simple sketches to this, but it isn’t finished. Yet. Yet. I shiver, imagining it as a memorial encased in glass in the main hallway for everyone to see. I close my eyes and shake the image from my mind.
“Lily?”
I open my eyes, hoping I didn’t look too stupid standing there with them closed, but not caring that much.
“How is he?” Ms. Spangler looks super worried.
“The same.”
She nods sadly. “Can you—one minute.” She walks briskly to her drawing table and pulls a card from her purse.
“It isn’t much, but could you pass that on? To someone in his family?”
“Of course,” I promise.
She makes an attempt at a smile and then returns to her desk to prepare for an incoming class. I head downstairs and as I start to put the card away, I realize it isn’t sealed. Why wouldn’t she seal it? I pretend for a few seconds that I have enough integrity not to read it, but I quickly give in to reality.
The cover has a shimmery, golden background and the design is nothing but a crude crown drawn in black. Looks like a child could’ve done it, but there’s something magical about it. Inside her message is short: Sending love and prayers. I’m very lucky to know this radiant child. When Dariomauritius pulls through this, please let him know that I could use an assistant with his level of talent. Barbara Spangler, Art Teacher/Artist
* * *
I’m tired of myself. Not in an I-hate-myself-and-I-should-die kind of way. That gets old. More like an I’ve-been-through-hell-and-I’ve-put-others-through-hell-which-brings-me-to-a-new-level-of-hell kind of way. The only thing I’ve come up with so far to confront this self-fatigue is to try to make some lives slightly less hellish. I need to move my body. I need to be busy. I need to do things that are absolutely NOT about me. I thought I’d never ever board the Staten Island Ferry again, but I was mistaken. I’ve been helping to rebuild some homes in areas still badly messed up from last year’s hurricane season. I like hammering nails into wood, picking splinters from my fingers, and getting pit stains in December.
The bell rings, signaling free period, and I head to the auditorium to wait for the other SI relief workers, but when I get there, I find out that the team is already on hiatus for the holidays. This seems like information I should’ve received beforehand and I’m momentarily angry that I didn’t, but the anger passes when I remember just how little attention I tend to pay to teachers these days.
I pass the gym, where I see a group of girls huddled together. A gym teacher shouts, “Let’s go,” and they all file in and I lock eyes with Tara McKenzie. Dammit. Tara finally got her wish after the fight and Mr. Crenshaw let her join another lab team. He moved me to Jamie Paulsen’s, and it’s fine—she hates me so deeply that she won’t even look at me. I don’t do squat in that class anymore.
Tara glares at me.
“What is this?” I ask, referring to the clandestine PE class.
“It was announced this morning. It’s women’s self defense,” she snaps.
“Oh, cool.”
“What? No! You cannot take this class. I’m taking it BECAUSE of you,” she shouts.
“McKenzie, you in or out?” Ms. Perry, one of the gym teachers, yells, and Tara runs inside. After a moment, I follow her.
I hide in the back because I’m not exactly dressed for gym, but I try to keep up. It’s mostly easy since this is the first class.
“Go away,” Tara whispers.
“No.”
“Why do you have to ruin everything?” she hisses.
“I’m not ruining it.”
Perry blows the whistle and everyone freezes. Crap.
“Problem, ladies?” she asks us.
I shake my head and Tara sucks her teeth.
“Maybe you two should be our first guinea pigs. Come on. Up to the front.”
Why was I dumb enough to follow Tara?
“All right. Rothstein, you be the assailant. McKenzie, get ready.”
I’m still in the process of getting ready when Tara screams, “BACK OFF!” and thunks me in the chest, sending me to the floor. Ow.
“Someone help her up,” Ms. Perry orders. Some girl I don’t recognize (freshman?) pulls me up by the hand.
“Switch off,” she barks.
We do, and this time I get ready, prepared to pounce, but not ready enough because Tara anticipates my steps and sideswipes my leg before I can do anything. I’m back on the floor.
“Come on, Rothstein! You’re not even trying! Switch again!”
I glance up at Tara. “Truce,” I whisper.
I get up again and this time I only pretend to attack her. I let Tara try all the remaining moves we’ve learned, including a choke hold, with no real resistance. Perry blows the whistle to rescue me from probable death. Tara mercifully releases me and I do try to block myself, but Tara punches me in the stomach and I fall over. This time I don’t rise. I can’t. I gaze
up at Tara. She’s smiling.
“Truce,” she finally says.
“Rothstein, I don’t know where your head is at, but it clearly isn’t here. Hit the showers,” Perry tells me in disgust. I shrug and do as I’m told. Stumbling a bit, because she did hurt me.
“McKenzie! Nice work,” Ms. Perry compliments. I glance back and see Tara following the moves with ease. Still smiling.
I walk into the locker room and long for a towel or a change of clothes.
My phone buzzes.
Call me ASAP. It’s from Mom. I sigh. Not another emergency, I silently pray to myself as I dial. She picks up before it rings.
“Meet me at the hospital.”
THE NATURE OF THINGS
Dari
I’m coughing. Get this damn thing . . .
Someone grabs me and restrains my hands. I’m just trying to get this damn thing out of my throat.
“Dario? D-Darius? I’m Nancy. Do you know where you are?”
Why is she holding me down?
“Can you understand what I’m saying to you, hon? Can you speak?”
I cough some more.
“Dari. My name’s Dari.” Feels like my mouth is full of dirt.
Her eyes light up like I said my name was Jesus Christ.
“Welcome back.”
* * *
My father talks incessantly about everything that they had to do to me. Three major surgeries and that may not be the last of it. He also keeps mentioning a lawsuit against the NYPD. Now that I’m not dead or a vegetable, he feels comfortable getting a lawyer involved. I haven’t said much, but I try to listen. If I weren’t so tired and achy, I might be able to appreciate the strangeness of my father’s behavior. He’s not only acting like he loves me, he’s acting like I’m his favorite child. Not the one who tried to kill him once. When I get out of here, I’ll most likely go back to his place. He might take it easy on me now. Hard to say.
He continues talking as I doze off. If I have any dreams, I don’t remember them.
I open my eyes, and it might be five minutes later or five hours later. The light outside seems the same, but that doesn’t mean much. Nurse Nancy leads somebody into the room.
The Truth of Right Now Page 25
