Now Leaving Sugartown

by Carmen Jenner

  “Give that to me,” Holly says and scoops up the magazine, muttering to herself about facts and vultures as she stalks across the room, shreds it in two, and throws it in the imitation fireplace.

  “That doesn’t work,” I mutter, but I doubt she hears me because Angel, a forty-year-old woman with fuzzy red hair and big Coke bottle glasses who thinks she’s J. K. Fucking Rowling taps away at her annoying-as-fuck typewriter, and Sid starts droning on about how she’s recording too much information.

  Sid’s big on conspiracy theories. From the KGB to aliens, he has “intel” on it. That isn’t why he’s here, obviously—though he really does have enough crazy to be permanently committed. Sid has transient global amnesia. I hear it’s temporary in most cases, but not for Sid. He talks nonstop all day, no hellos, no goodbyes, no can-I-get-a-fucking-cup-of-coffee-up-in-this-shithole. Just theory after theory. The nurses say it’s so he doesn’t forget, but I don’t know if I believe that. Like all of ours, Sid’s crazy just wants to be heard.

  I glance around at the rest of the patients using the facilities in the rec room. Isaac, a kid who’s barely eighteen and walks around with a chip on his shoulder that could honestly rival my own, slams his fist against the pinball machine again for losing yet another game. He has anger management issues, and Hulks out over the smallest of things. Clara and I fuck with him often, because it’s so much fun to watch when he loses his shit. And Lucy—an oversexed blonde, and certified nympho—is pestering the male nursing staff again.

  So on a scale of one to fucking-have-that-bitch-committed-now crazy, Clara is probably the best roommate I could have been lumped with. Though waking up in the middle of the night, listening to her hurl in the bathroom because she’s trying to choke back up the pills she swallowed with dinner is a little bit unsettling.

  Like me, Clara suffers from bipolar disorder, which ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem for her to go on living a perfectly “normal” life. Except that, like me, she’s happier using recreational drugs to control her disease. Unlike me, she’s put a blade to her wrists and tried to end her life several times, and she has long keloid scars running the length of her forearms to prove it.

  Unlike me, her parents don’t really give a shit about her welfare, and if she hadn’t checked herself into the Break Free Mental Health clinic, she’d likely be taking up a bed in Melbourne’s finest asylum for lunatics.

  “Hey, Mrs H,” Clara says to my mother.

  “Hi, Clara. How are you feeling today?”

  “Like a woman who needs a line of coke and a good, hard fuck,” she replies.

  “Well, sorry, I’m fresh out of coke,” my mother says. “And I hear ya on the fucking part. It’s been far too long.”

  “Bitch please, you had sex with a fucking rock star and a lumberjack. You’re set for life,” Clara says.

  “I had sex with a rock star twenty three years ago, and my husband’s not a lumberjack, though he does lumber and his name is Jack.”

  “He also plays with his wood all day,” I mutter, half-heartedly.

  “No fucking shit? When I get outta here, I’m coming to live with you bitches. Pinky and I can be roomies on suicide watch in the outside world,” Clara says, and I glance at Holly to tell her that is so not happening, but her glassy-eyed gaze steals the words from my mouth.

  It’s always going to be there between us. That unspoken question: is Pepper going to try and off herself again? No one believed me when I said that at seventeen I hadn’t been trying to end my life, or that I wasn’t just seeking attention. I just wanted a way to ease the pain, but all everyone saw was a scarred, broken girl with too many thoughts in her head and not enough sense to rein them in.

  Clara turns her focus to the window. I know what she’s looking for—or I should say, who she’s looking for. None of this is new; it’s been the same every day for three weeks.

  Holly visits me at nine. Clara sits with us; she takes the window seat opposite me, and even though I can see the sleek, black truck pull in, she proceeds to give the room a run down on what Sam’s wearing as he walks to the front door of the Break Free house. Since I vetoed his place on the approved visitors list—telling the staff that he’s a trigger for me to want to start cutting—everyday he’s denied the right to see me, and so he calmly walks back to his truck and waits for visiting hours to be over, until he can pump Holly for information.

  I’d added Holly’s name to that list too, but my mother is damn persuasive when she wants to be, and so here she is, every day without fail. In the three weeks I’ve been here, Jack, Ana and Elijah have all found their way to see me. Coop flew home from the US and he’s visited a bunch of times too. Watching him and Mum together was weird. Like I could see how much chemistry they had. I guess for most people sitting in front of your biological parents and seeing the traits in them that make up who you are isn’t that odd; a lot of people see that stuff every day. But this was the first time I’d seen them in a room together since I was a little kid, and oddly, even though things had been amicable but tense between them when I was growing up, I could see how much they’d loved one another, and partly still did, I guess.

  Of course, realising that my crazy was what had brought the two of them together this way made me feel like shit, so while they reminisced and Clara listened with rapt attention and huge awestruck eyes at being in a room with my dad, I’d stared out the window and watched Sam. He couldn’t see me; they were made of special reinforced glass in case someone felt the need to actually break free from the poorly-named rehab centre and jumped through a window on the third floor.

  The one way glass might have ensured ambiguity for Break Free patients, but I couldn’t just see Sam standing out in the parking lot; I could feel him. And it hurt. It still hurts, watching him walk away every day without getting to touch him, or talk to him. It hurts as badly as his betrayal of putting me in here. It hurts as much as realising that the morning he’d brought me here, his making love to me was a goodbye. Maybe not one he intended forever, but one he’d said knowing what he was about to do to me, knowing that it could be forever because he promised, and I’d believed him, and he’d betrayed me.

  “What’s he doing?” Clara asks, and my head snaps across to look at her, and then out the window at Sam.

  He’s leaning against his truck, holding a piece of paper in front of his chest that reads: Little, I know you’re watching.

  My heart lurches against my ribcage, and my brow furrows as tears prick my eyes. Sam fishes a stack of papers from the bed of his truck and holds them up one after the other for me to read.

  I’ve loved you since you were fourteen.

  I’m not sorry, because I couldn’t lose you.

  I made the only decision I could live with.

  Even if it means you hate me.

  Even if you never speak to me again.

  Know this: I love you.

  I’ve always loved you.

  I can’t breathe without you.

  You can push me away.

  And you can run …

  But I’ll always come back

  Because I’ve got you, Little.

  He doesn’t look happy or triumphant when he’s done, he just tosses the paper into the bed of his Ute and leans against it, staring up at windows he can’t see through. Holly is sitting on the chair beside Clara, bawling like a baby, and my crazy roommate has her palm up against the glass. I stand before the sobs can rip from my chest.

  “You need to talk to him, Pepper,” Holly says, stopping me in my tracks. “This isn’t his fault. He’s falling apart; he’s distraught that you won’t see him.”

  “He betrayed me,” I snap, and the wretched tears spill over my cheeks. “He promised he wouldn’t send me to a hospital, and he lied.”

  “If you want to hate someone over this, hate me. I’m the one who suggested it. I’m the one who should have done it a long time ago.”

  I gape at my mother. Fuck. Hearing your mother say that she should have had you
committed really packs a punch. I stagger a little, and she hurries to explain herself. “You needed help, Pepper. Everyone was so afraid that it would set you off, that you would try to commit suicide again, that we were all too afraid to seek that help, so we fed you pills that you hated taking, and we didn’t push you into hospitals because we were afraid that would make it worse. I was afraid you’d think I abandoned you. I didn’t have the tools to help you, baby. That’s on me, not Sam.”

  For a second I just stare at my mother, and then I unleash years’ worth of pent-up hurt and betrayal. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself; I’m not fucking brave enough for that. I just dealt with my monsters in the best way I knew how—”

  “Are you forgetting Sammy was the one who found you?” My mother is yelling now, too. Granted, she’s not bolting out of her chair the way I did. But you can’t yell at Holly Harris-Rowe and expect her to walk away quietly. If you do, then you’re as delusional as I am. “He’s the one who had to watch you bleed out over your bed. Do you know what that would have done to him if you’d died? Do you know what that would have done to any of us?”

  I throw my hands up in the air and scream, “I wasn’t trying to kill myself!” And then I lunge at Clara and snatch up her arm. She tries squirming away but I push her sleeves up and hold her in a vice grip until my mother stares in mouth-gaping horror at the long scars on Clara’s forearms. “This is what a suicide attempt looks like, Mum.”

  I let go of Clara and she skitters away from me. Lifting the hem of my skirt, I expose my thigh and grab Holly’s hand, running it up the long row of scars beneath my tattoos, and over the more recent ones that I’d made in Coop’s house that were now scabbed over. “This is just a girl who’s a little bit fucked up and likes to cut herself open to bleed out all the bad blood.”

  The nurses are on top of me then. Estelle, one of the women who’d taken me from Sam’s truck and subdued me on my first day, seizes my arm. “Okay, sugar, calm down. Let’s get you to your room where you can work on some of those breathing techniques Dr Aldous has been teaching you.”

  Brandon, one of the three male nurses at Break Free, flanks my other side, but quickly backs away when he realises I’m not going to fight.

  Because at Break Free we’re all about allowing our patients the freedom to make the decisions right for them, or at least I think that’s how the mantra goes. It’s complete crap. If we were allowed to make the right decisions for us, Clara would be slitting her wrists every which way from Sunday, and I’d be high and rolling around in a pool of my blood while my razor-wielding hand lazily swept from one side of my thigh to the other.

  No. The right decisions for us aren’t the right decisions at all; they’re the things that got us locked up in the first place.

  In my room I lie on the bed and close my eyes. I see Sam and his words in my mind’s eye, and the tears I held back in front of the others fall thick and fast until I feel like my heart is being ripped from my chest.

  WHEN I wake, I’m not greeted with Clara’s usual morning ritual of vomiting in the bathroom before seven am. Instead, she’s staring up at the ceiling. I roll onto my back and stare up at it too.

  “You’re crazy,” she mutters.

  “Uh, hello … pot, meet kettle.”

  “No, I mean you’re really fucking crazy.”

  “I think we’ve established this already.”

  “You have all these people that love you. People that want to see you get better and you’re blaming them for being brave enough to do what you couldn’t.”

  “Shut up. You don’t know shit about it.” I sit up. Throwing the covers back, I stalk over to the wardrobe to find my clothes.

  “Actually I do, because everything is so much easier to see from the outside. He loves you, and no matter how much you push at him, Sam is still going to be there; you’re just too fucking dumb to see it.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You have family that loves you, Pepper. I have no one.”

  I pull out a pair of shorts, bra and panties and a T-shirt with a picture of a sad-looking pink doughnut on it and the words Don’t know, donut care, and turn around to face her. “Maybe because you’re a fucking lunatic who shoves her nose in other people’s business? Business you know nothing about.”

  She smiles. She’s still not looking at me. Instead, she’s speaking only to the ceiling this entire time. “In an hour’s time you’re going to regret saying that, but I forgive you. I know you think he’s better off without you, which makes what you’re doing oddly sweet and wildly fucking romantic, but no one is better alone. Not really.”

  I just stare at my roommate. Am I that obvious? Is that the reason why Sam isn’t giving up on me, because he knows that no matter how hard I try to, I can’t give up on him?

  I hate him for putting me in here. I hate him for breaking his promises to me and I hate that I have to wake up at six o’clock every morning to some crazy suicidal girl riding the Bipolar Express as she vomits into our shared toilet. I hate their stupid group therapy sessions and the one-on-ones with the Mental Health Adviser. I hate that they force me to take their pills, and that they check my tongue afterwards, as though I were a little kid that couldn’t be trusted. I hate that Mum comes to see me every day, even though she must die a little each time she enters those doors. I hate that Sam stands out in a parking lot every day, knowing he won’t get a chance to see me, but that I will see him, and that I might take some comfort from that.

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” I march into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I take the fastest shower on record, vowing to myself that I will not fall apart again. When I’m dried off, I dress quickly, and pull my hair into a ponytail, and then I open the door and leave the room without another word.

  I sit with Sid at breakfast, coming in on a tirade about how all those Mensa kids are being brainwashed and how their DNA is being harvested for some super smart human-alien hybrid. I listen without listening, and wonder if Clara is right about not being alone.

  At group everyone shares their feelings, but I’m not sure I have enough of my own today to share them with others, so I sit quietly and watch the clock, waiting for our afternoon “yard” time.

  When I do finally step outside, I sit on one of the wooden benches in the gazebo and look out onto the garden with the warm sun on my face. I close my eyes, seeing the glint of afternoon sun burn against the inside of my eyelids. Someone sits beside me, too close, but I can’t open my eyes because I know that smell, and that heat, and the feeling inside my heart all too well, and I’m both afraid and ecstatic that he’s beside me.

  I take a deep breath, and a tear escapes the corner of my eye and rolls off my cheekbones. He slips his fingers into mine and I try to snatch my hand away, but his hand clasps mine too tightly.

  “Don’t cry, Little.”

  This of course makes me cry harder. My face crumples and he slides his free hand into my hair at the nape of my neck. “How did you even get in here?”

  “I had a chat with Estelle yesterday. She’s not so bad when she’s not dragging your girlfriend away from your car, kicking and screaming,” he mutters. “Holly says you’re doing well.”

  “I’m in a mental hospital, Sam. Define well,” I deadpan, and for the first time I look at him. Everything melts away, all the hurt, and the feelings of betrayal, and the good intentions—they all just vanish as I stare into beautiful blue eyes that have always been a beacon of light in the darkness for me. He’s always been my way out.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like shit,” I reply honestly. “You?”

  He chuckles, but it’s a sad sound, and it about breaks my heart. “Same.” Sam looks out over the garden. “It’s nice here.”

  It’s not nice here. It’s better than an insane asylum, but nice doesn’t really cut it.

  “Do you still …” He pauses, closing his eyes for a beat before he continues. “Do you still feel the need to
hurt yourself?”

  “No. They make you take pills for that here,” I remark with a sardonic smile. “Now I just wanna hurt everyone else.”

  He laughs, and with his lips twisted up in a smile, he doesn’t look as emotionally spent. “I think that’s normal for you.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Won’t be long and you’ll be ready to come home.” He presses his lips to my cheek, and I lean into his touch. “I miss you so much, Little.”

  I try to pull away from him, but he cradles the back of my head with his hand and kisses my neck and cheek, my jaw, and then finally my lips. It’s not passionate; it’s suffocating, because it hurts too much and the pain is too raw.

  “Stop.” I turn my head away and wrench out of his grip, standing and moving to the opposite side of the gazebo. “Go home, Sam. Go back to Sugartown.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  “I don’t want you here. You put me in this place. You promised and you broke it; you broke my heart, you bundled me up in that car and you’d said goodbye before I could even grasp what was going on.”

  “You think that was easy for me? It broke something inside me to see them dragging you away from me like that. It killed me to bring you here, to hand you over to someone else because I couldn’t make it right anymore.” He rakes his long fingers through his hair. “Damn it, Pepper, I couldn’t fix you. Since you were two years old I’ve been the one to fix you when you were broken, and my hands didn’t work anymore. They weren’t fast enough, smart enough. I couldn’t be what you needed, not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how to.”

  “And I don’t know how to forgive you.” I whisper.

  That’s not true. I hate that he broke his promises, but I understand it. I understand everything he just told me. I understood it before he even opened his mouth, but in the end it doesn’t matter because this is the only way to ensure that he will believe me; this is the only way to set him free, and even though the very thought of a life without Sammy Belle in it makes me want to make like Clara and slit my arms open from wrist to elbow, in the long run, this is the best thing for both of us. Sammy deserves better than this.