The Guardian's Playlist

by J Powell Ogden

  “At least we know where your sister is and what she’s doing!” my mom shouted back. “We might argue, but at least we talk!”

  “You do?” Hard laughter erupted from my throat. “Yeah?”

  Should I drop the bomb?

  Oh yes…definitely drop it…

  Yeah! They needed a little perspective!

  “Did you know she’s having sex with the boyfriend you forbid her to see? Mr. Mailbox Buster? Right here in this house? Did you know that, Mom? You’re so damn busy—”

  “Is that true, Claire?” My dad’s face had gone gray as mortar. “What the hell—”

  Claire narrowed her eyes at me and whispered, “You’re such a bitch.” She disappeared up the stairs then, so I answered for her.

  “Yeah, Dad! It’s true!” I shouted sarcastically. “You don’t even know what the hell is going on in your own home!”

  My mom crossed the distance between us in seconds and slapped me across the face. I heard Jason’s sharp intake of breath next to me. He grabbed me above both elbows just as my right hand was coming up to retaliate.

  “I told you once. Do not talk to your father that way! I can’t believe this disrespect—”

  “You have no right to judge me!” I said.

  “I’m your mother! I have every right—”

  “No! You don’t! Not after what you did to Michael!”

  She blinked. She had no idea I knew, and I couldn’t wait to tell her that I did.

  “I know you knew his mother was a heroin addict, and that she left him alone most of the time to fend for himself! And what did you do? Made a few phone calls? Let the county deal with it? He was only eight! Did you know he spent day after day thinking his mommy was sick and that he needed to take care of her? Did you know he watched her shooting up and crashing down over and over?”

  My mother’s anger turned to shock and then her shock turned to shame. That’s what I wanted to see, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

  Yes…make her suffer…like Michael suffered…

  “So then you dumped him at the hospital into the loveless lap of Social Services? Do you know what happened to him after that? Do you have any fucking idea?”

  “Catherine…I…”

  “They burned him, Mom. With cigarettes, Mom. And when he didn’t bend for them, they branded him with a fireplace poker. Not once. Not twice. Three fucking times! Did you know that? Did you ever bother to find out what happened to him? My friend? My best friend?”

  “That’s enough, Cate!” my dad shouted.

  “There were drugs in that house,” my mom said. “And then they moved him to a bad neighborhood on the other side of town. It wasn’t safe—”

  “No shit, it wasn’t safe! A boy was murdered right in front of him!”

  “Do you think one day goes by that I don’t regret all of it?” my mom said. “That I’m not sick inside about what happened to him? After he moved in with the Gardiners, I heard about the murder and—”

  It was suddenly all clear to me. The timing of her finding out about Michael’s abuse. Her determination to stop at nothing to care for Mina. Why she wouldn’t get the help she needed, that we all needed.

  “You can take care of your mother for the next hundred years,” I said coldly, “But it will never make up for you leaving Michael to die.”

  Her shoulders sagged, and all of the fire went out of her eyes. There. I’d cut her to the bone, but I didn’t want to stay to watch her bleed.

  “I can’t stay here anymore,” I whispered, suddenly very tired. I turned to Jason, and he reached behind him for the door handle, but my dad was in my face in a flash.

  “I forbid you to leave this house!” he shouted. And then he growled at Jason, “You take her from my home, and I’ll have the police all over you in seconds.” Jason looked at me, and I shook my head. I knew my dad’s threat was empty, but I’d watched my sister storm out on my parents, and I’d seen what it had done to them. I’d watched them worry that she would never come back or if she did, it would be in a body bag. It was something I’d swore I would never do no matter how upset I was.

  Jason let go of the door handle, and then Claire was at the top of the stairs. “Mom! Something’s wrong with Mina!” My mother’s eyes darted between me and the stairs. “You need to come now!”

  My mom turned and ran up the steps with my dad right behind her. I started after them but slipped in the puddle and almost went down.

  Jason grabbed my arm, asking, “Towels?”

  I nodded toward the pantry in the kitchen, and he left me leaning against the wall in the hallway while I listened to the drama unfolding upstairs.

  “Go call 9-1-1!”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s burning up! I don’t know…”

  Retching sounds and stifled moans cascaded down the stairs, and then Jason was back, chucking half his pile of towels at my chest. We bent down and began wiping the slippery floor dry, speeding up our efforts as the wailing of sirens got closer and closer.

  My dad shoved open the front door, and two paramedics raced up the stairs with a stretcher spanned between them. They spoke in calm rapid whispers, my mom’s taut voice interrupting with questions and information. Then I heard the springs of Mina’s bed releasing and the zip of straps being tightened as they prepared her for transport.

  She was ashy gray when they carried her down the stairs, curled up in a fetal position, writhing in pain.

  I turned away. I couldn’t watch. It was all wrong, all wrong…

  When the front door swung open, I looked back to see my mom hurrying out the door behind the last paramedic and my dad and sister grabbing their coats off the hooks in the hallway. I started to follow them out the door, but my dad braced his hand on my shoulder and said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Bug.” My eyes smarted at the use of my nickname. “Dry off. We’ll call you.” Then they were gone.

  I turned and headed toward the kitchen, I don’t know what for, but stopped when the extreme heaviness of my feet reminded me I still had my waterlogged boots on. I bent down to untie them, but my right hand wouldn’t cooperate. Blood had soaked through the bandage, and my palm was pulsing with searing waves of pain again. Why couldn’t Michael be here to…

  My throat tightened up at the thought of him, and I rested my forehead on my wet bended knee.

  Then someone was bending down in front of me, unlacing my boots.

  “Step out,” Jason said. He pulled the bindings loose around my ankle, and I pulled my soaking wet foot out of the boot.

  “What did you do to your hand?” he asked. His eyes were downcast. He was loosening up the laces of my other boot.

  “I…” Well, what the hell was I supposed to tell him? Michael, who was supposed to be dead, asked me to save a coyote that, by the way, he could talk to? I started to laugh hysterically and couldn’t stop, and then my eyes were swimming.

  Did I ever tell you that you’re amazing?

  Jason grabbed my wrist, pulled his grandfather’s knife out of his pocket, flicked it open and slit the bandana off my hand. The cut extended all the way across my palm and blood was still oozing into the deep crevice. I stopped laughing, and he looked up into my face.

  “You need stitches,” he said flatly.

  “No,” I said.

  “Cate,” he sighed. “With the amount of flexion and extension your hand does, that cut will just keep opening back up over and over.”

  I shook my head. “There’s no way I’m going to the E.R. Not with my whole family there hating me.” The blood started to overflow the edges of the wound and drip down my wrist. Jason rubbed his forehead.

  “Why can’t you learn to think before you go off like that?” He stuffed the knife back into his pocket and pulled off my other boot, then hauled me up by my left hand and walked me into the kitchen. My jeans were cold, wet and uncomfortably stiff, and my hair was plastered all over my neck and face. Water dripped down my back under my
sweater, and I shivered.

  “She deserved it,” I whispered, ashamed that I still felt that way with Mina so sick, but my hatred wouldn’t go quietly. It festered. It was at home in my heart. Jason stuck my hand under the faucet, turned on the water and started rinsing off the blood and grime.

  “Shit!” I cried.

  “Why didn’t you tell me your grandmother was living with you?”

  Because I’ve been avoiding that fact myself, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Instead I just said, “She’s dying.”

  He looked up from the water pouring out of the faucet with genuine concern in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Cate. Does she have cancer?” he asked, grabbing the roll of paper towels on the counter. He pulled off half a dozen, folded them over on themselves and then pressed them down on my hand.

  I sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Emphysema,” I spat and then breathed out slowly through my mouth.

  He glanced up, and I could tell by the knowing look in his eyes that I didn’t have to explain it to him. Then he picked up the paper towels and examined the wound, poking his fingers at the loose flaps of skin, before pressing the paper towels back down.

  “Ahhh! Shit!” I hissed.

  “Cate. You need stitches,” he said again, exasperated.

  “No! I can’t face my family again tonight! Just…wrap it up tight. There are bandages and tape upstairs in the hall closet.”

  He rubbed his forehead again, then went upstairs. I heard him searching roughly through the hall closet. He came back down with some gauze and first aid tape and wrapped them tightly around my hand.

  “Go get into some dry clothes,” he said, leaning over the table and looking me in the eye. “I’m going back to my house to get some supplies. I’ll be back in an hour.” Then he was gone, too.

  By the time he got back, I had changed into a dry T-shirt and a pair of sweats, and I was sitting in the kitchen with my chin resting on the table, my injured hand stretched out in front of me. Jason came in without knocking and dropped his backpack on the table. I felt the thunk vibrate through my chin. I didn’t look up.

  He pulled out a bottle of sterile saline, a sealed sterile packet of…something, a syringe…

  Syringe?

  I jerked my chin up off the table. “You’re going to give me a shot?”

  He looked up from the supplies and fixed his no-nonsense eyes on me. “You need stitches, Cate. We can do it with or without anesthetic. Now, if it were me—”

  “You’re going to stitch me up?”

  “Or I can take you to the E.R.” He stood there, waiting. Crap. This was the worst day of my life.

  “Cate,” he sighed. “My dad is a plastic surgeon. What do you think he and I do for fun?”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “I’ll give you a relevant example. Once, he gave me a box of suture kits, showed me how to use them, and then let me go at it on a stack of split Styrofoam cups. And when I sliced my leg open? He showed me how to anesthetize it and then let me stitch myself up.” He pulled his pant leg up and showed me a scar on his shin. “So, which is it going to be?”

  I thought for a moment and then stretched my palm out to him. I didn’t really care whether he could do it or not, but it seemed better than showing up at the hospital unwanted.

  He asked me for a bowl. I dragged out my mom’s huge silver bowl from under the sink and put it on the table. He cut the temporary bandages off my hand and rinsed the wound above the bowl with the sterile saline. He washed his hands and swabbed both sides of the wound and the top of the Lidocaine vial with alcohol, and then started to peel open the packet containing the sterile syringe, but stopped and looked up.

  “Before I do this, I need to know what you cut yourself with,” he said. I shook my head and looked away. Insane. That was me, and I didn’t need the whole world to know it.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not going to tell anyone if you…uh…did this to yourself. But I’m not stitching you up until I know. You might need a tetanus shot, Cate.”

  “What?” What did he mean? Did this to myself? And then I understood. “No!” I said defensively. “It was an accident!” He raised his eyebrows, and I rolled my eyes. The thought of telling him made me queasy, but I’d rather him know than everyone else, so I nodded reluctantly to my pink butterfly bag that lay in a sopping wet heap by the front door. He picked it up, dropped it on the kitchen table and started to dig through it.

  “Careful!” I said. He slowed down his movements. His eyes went wide as he gingerly pulled the arrow out. It was covered in blood from its tri-blade tip to its neon fletching.

  “What the…” The look he gave me was equal parts shock, worry and unbridled disgust. “So you disappear for several hours every day and somehow manage to lacerate your hand with an arrow that looks like it’s been through…something that was alive…at least at one point?”

  “I pulled it out of a coyote,” I said matter-of-factly.

  He shook his head, bewildered, as he dropped the arrow in the trash. Then he came back to the table and sat down next to me.

  “Cate…what’s going on with you?” His voice was strained. “It’s like you’ve disappeared into some world where no one can follow you. You’re obsessed with Michael. I told you…” His voice trailed off when he noticed my eyes glaze over. My thoughts had returned to the cool forest. He had no idea how close to the truth he was, and I blinked a few times and then looked away. He sighed and started to open the syringe, but stopped again.

  “Did you say coyote? Didn’t your friend J.C. get bitten by a rabid coyote a few months ago?” My heart skipped a beat as I grasped where he was going.

  I nodded.

  “Fuck, Cate.” He pulled out his phone.

  “This coyote didn’t have rabies,” I said anxiously.

  “That you know of.”

  After several long minutes skimming websites, he looked up and said, “The rabies virus is only present in saliva and brain tissue. Did it bite you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you should be safe. Unless…you didn’t pull the arrow out of its head, did you?”

  “His chest,” I whispered.

  He nodded and washed his hands again, sat down next to me and finished opening the syringe. He set the vial in front of him on the table and punctured the top expertly with the needle, flipped it upside down and drew up the anesthetic, and then he paused with the needle poised above the wound and asked, “Are you ready?”

  Then listen closely…

  I started to feel dizzy. I missed Michael so much. How could I have left him the way I did? Maybe I could go back to the woods tonight…

  “Cate? Are you still with me? Do you need to put your head down?”

  I shook my head, the corners of my eyes going damp, and looked away. “Go ahead…” I whispered, biting my lip hard.

  I felt a few sharp stings as he injected the anesthetic in several places on either side of the laceration, and then I heard him peel open the suture kit. Glancing back, I saw several curved needles with thread already attached and a pair of forceps and clamp. He mounted the first needle, and I looked away again. I felt him probe each side of the wound to make sure it was numb, and then he carefully tugged the needle through my skin and tied it off to execute the first stitch.

  “So…” he said quietly. “How did you know all that stuff about Michael?” I glanced back to see his brow furrowed in deep concentration as he threaded the needle through my skin for the second stitch. I was fascinated with his progress and nauseated at the same time.

  “Um…I found someone who knew him when he was in foster care.”

  His hands paused for a second before he whipped them around to tie off the second stitch. He nodded to himself and looked up at me. “I probably should have just told you myself what I knew,” he said, and I nodded. He should have, but I understood why he didn’t. He was quiet after that, executing what looked to me later like eight perfect stitches. When he was f
inished, he covered the stitches with a square of gauze and then wrapped first aid tape snuggly several times around my hand. I lifted my hand up off the table and flexed it a few times, impressed. With my hand attended to, the storm of emotions clouding my mind abated some, and the sting of embarrassment rushed in to take up the slack.

  “Jason…I’m sorry about dragging you into our family hurricane.”

  “You weren’t that bad.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Well…let’s just be glad there wasn’t a pool around.” He smiled grimly.

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said, his smile turning overly sweet. He gathered up all the waste and threw it in the trash. “Honestly, I think my family would benefit from a Category Four or Five hurricane. We never talk about anything…unpleasant.” He pulled out a couple of pill bottles and set them on the table.

  “Now, something for infection, something for pain, and something to help you sleep.” The Amoxicillin and the Motrin I could do, but I eyed the bottle of Valium like I thought it would bite.

  “Jason…I can’t. I don’t need anything to help me sleep.” He filled a glass with water and sat down across from me with his arms folded and relaxed on the table.

  “Cate. Look. Truth time. You were a basket case not…” He looked down at his phone, “ninety minutes ago, and you have no idea how strung out you look right now. If you don’t believe me, go look in the mirror.”

  I didn’t need to look in the mirror. I knew he was right. I was still shaking on the inside with anger and shame and bone-deep longing for Michael. I hesitated. The thought of forcing my body into a deep dreamless, sleep was appealing.

  Don’t do it…

  “No,” I said. “I can’t.” I’d promised Michael I would stay clean and taking Valium that wasn’t prescribed to me would be breaking that promise. Somehow, I was sure he would see it that way.

  “Fine,” he said. “I thought you might say that.”

  He pulled out an over-the-counter box of antihistamine capsules. I knew two of those usually knocked me out within an hour or so. I nodded. That I could do.