Chapter 12
The first taste of greasy pepperoni pizza in several weeks was like heaven as the slightly congealed cheese felt intensely flavorful in my mouth. I had four pieces before I was satisfied enough to stop. My stomach felt like it was sticking out as the buildup of food stretched it tightly. I took a large sip of my coke through the red striped straw as the bubbles danced on my tongue. I let out a tiny burp as the cheesy taste invaded my mouth again.
"You are so rude," Lydia laughed at me as she turned to me and slanted her head. She was sitting next to me in the red vinyl booth at the arcade.
"I have not had real food in so long!" I exclaimed as I rubbed my hand on my stomach. "Oh man, I am so full and I don’t even care."
"Just don’t eat anymore. No one wants to see you barf it all up." She giggled as she poked me in the arm.
"This food is staying put! After all that crappy hospital food I need this good fattening stuff. It’s important to my well-being." I smiled as I pushed her lightly to move so I could get out of the booth.
"Gonna play games on a full stomach? That’s risky."
"Come and play with me. Unless you are afraid a bloated full girl that just got out of the hospital might beat you."
"Hah, I do not play arcade games. This greasy table alone is below me. But for you, I am willing to sit in this disgusting hole." She got out of the booth and gave me a sarcastic grin.
"Whatever. I gotta beat Dad anyways." I walked enthusiastically with a bounce in my step over to my dad who was standing on an army simulation with a fake machine gun in hand. His eyes were intense as he moved his shoulders side to side and scoffed at the virtual enemy with each shot.
"Let’s play something together, Dad."
"Sure thing. I bet we can be the best duo on the dance game."
His eyes were perked as he looked past me at the empty Dance Dance Revolution game. It was the game that he and Janey always played together. The minute they stepped onto the mini-dance floor with its flashing colourful lights, they turned into these jovial amateur dancing queens.
"Dad, I don’t think I’m a good enough dance partner for you," I said as I looked at the game with an unnerving twitch in my stomach. Big shoes to fill, shoes I didn’t want to fill as my little sister sat at home sulking in her hatred of me. Dad tried to make her come.
"What do you mean you aren’t coming?" I could hear his deep growl from downstairs as he stood at Janey’s shut door earlier that evening.
There was a muffled cry through her door that I couldn’t make out. Then I heard the door swing open with force, the door knob slamming against the adjacent wall and footsteps heavy on the creaking floor of the older house.
"Get up!" he roared.
"I’m not coming!" Janey screamed and I knew the tears were streaming down her hot red face.
"Get up, get dressed and get in the damn car now."
"You can’t make me come." I could picture her arms crossed now as her eyebrows furrowed deep above her piecing glare.
"Don’t test me."
"She’s a stupid bitch who doesn’t belong in this family after all she’s done. Ship her off to the mental hospital."
"I don’t want to hear you talking like that about your sister. She’s had a hard time. Now get off your whiny butt and get in the damn car!" his voice echoed in my ear like sharp prongs in my ear drum.
"Go to hell! I hate that bitch. All of you can just go to hell!" Her voice ripped through the air as shrill as metal forks scratching on a porcelain plate.
Growls and stomps like thunder and I could hear her yelp. My heart raced and I ran up the stairs to see his hand gripped tightly around her bicep. His angry eyes stared into her venomous glare. Tears were dripping on hot red cheeks. Stalemate. I felt the intensity growing as no one moved. I couldn’t breathe, I feared making a sound. Slowly, I inched my way back towards the stairs until I stepped on the creaky spot and the floor boards cried. They both looked up at me, startled, their eyes like hawks as they glance at each other angrily and broke off the attack.
"Fine. Stay!" Dad snapped as he let go of her arm and stomped past me and down the stairs. I heard the front door slam shut and then an engine roared.
My eyes were still looking towards the stairs when I heard Janey’s door slam shut behind me. I didn’t need to turn around and look at her door closed to me. I let out a choked sigh as the warmth of tears felt like they were flushing out my eyes. I walked downstairs and got in the car.
"You’re a good enough dance partner for me any day," Dad said at the arcade with a clownish smile, his graying blonde hair out of place after all the lively video game simulations.
"If you say so," I replied sheepishly.
Soon we were dancing on those brightly lit colourful squares as pop music blared through my ears and my heart beat in tune to the fast paced rhythm. I jumped to the right, to the left, my feet managing not to tangle in themselves, as my dad moved in synchrony next to me. Our arms were sailing in the air as we "got jiggy with it" (as my dad liked to say). I smiled wildly, my cheeks stretched as far possible, when I noticed him looking at me with his crazed sweaty smile. His eyes were lit up with the colours of the dance game.
"We rock!" He panted as he continued to move. Forward. Left. Right. Forward. Back. Left. Right. Arms sailing beside him as his smile lit up his glowing face.
"Yeah!" I said breathlessly, my eyes feeling radiant.
That night we beat the high score he had with Janey after all their years of dancing together. I was having a great time until he looked at me and said "You’re even better than Janey at this!" My heart sunk into my stomach and my stomach sunk into the rest of my guts. I smiled at him as the shame ate at my insides and I thought of my little sister sitting at home alone after disowning me from her life. She inadvertently disowned my dad too. I had become his favourite once again and she the black sheep. My heart continued to sink as I drowned in my own guilt.
"Ha! We beat your high score," Dad scoffed as he ran into Janey’s room after we got home. "Me and Annalyn. We were on fire tonight and you missed it. You should have been there." His teasing tone set fire on her face as I stood there watching meekly from the hallway.
"That was our game. How dare you play it with her." Her voice whined as the corners of her lips drooped like drippy syrup. I could feel my heart thumb an extra loud beat with each word she spoke.
"Well, you should have been there. We had a great time." His voice mocked her with a jovial trivialism. He laughed out a wicked taunting chuckle.
“What? Now she’s better than me. How come the insane girl is now the golden child? She should be dropped off on the side of the street like an unwanted deformed puppy,” Janey said sharply.
“You are just jealous. I don’t have time for that kind of crap. Brighten up and come down stairs for some Balderdash or sulk here by yourself like a little baby. I don’t care anymore brat.” Dad turned around and stalked out of her room as he put his arm around my shoulder and led me down to the living room.
“Don’t listen to her. She’s getting into that teenage brattiness,” he said. “All of you had bad attitudes at that age and you and Lydia grew out of it.”
“I don’t know Dad. I kind of feel bad for making her feel like this,” I said with a whisper of tears.
“Hey, don’t worry. She’ll get over it. Like I said, it’s all teenage brattiness.”
“Ready for some Balderdash!” Mom said cheerfully as she saw us emerge into the living room.
I sat down between her and Lydia on the creamy white sofa. Dad took a seat in the recliner to the right of us. The game was laid out on the coffee table ready to go.
“Okay, first word is gasteromycetes," Lydia said in broken syllables as she read from a card.
The object of the game was to make up a definition for a big fancy word most people would never have heard of. One person gets the card with the actual definition and writes that down. Then all of
them go into a pile and get read out and we all have to guess which one is the right definition. It’s a game our family has been playing for years. I wrote down my fictional definition for the word after thinking it over for a few minutes. I decided the most convincing… and creative… definition would be ‘scientific name for the extra set of entrails in a Mexican buffalo fish.’
“Ready?” Lydia asked. We all nodded and she collected our papers and started reading them aloud. “Okay, first definition: the name of a wildebeest-like animal commonly referred to as an Australian goat sucker that stalks goats and sucks the blood out of them.”
I giggled and ended up snorting out my water. My nose stung as I watched the droplets fall from nostrils to my pink pajama pants. “A goat-vampire. Sure, those exist.” My eyes rolled heavily as the sarcasm oozed from my cocky tone.
“Hey, it’s possible,” my dad said as his eyes shifted to the left and my suspicions were satisfied as to whose definition that was.
“Next,” Lydia started, “A type of plankton that lives in the ocean off the coast of New Zealand.”
Hmmm... that sounded scientifically sound.
“Fungi which have their spores borne inside of a fruiting body, such as in puffballs,” Lydia read. “And finally, the scientific name for the extra set of entrails in a Mexican buffalo fish”
I thought carefully as I wondered what the real definition of gasteromycetes was.
“We already got that word a few games ago. It’s ‘Fungi which have spores borne inside of a fruity body,’” Janey said as she appeared at the open set of French doors that lead into the living room.
“Oh, sweetie, come and play with us. It’s been awhile since we all played together,” my mom said as she went and hugged one arm around her shoulders and lead her towards the leather navy blue chair on the left side of the couch.
“Yeah, sure,” she said timidly as her meek eyes drooped to the floor and avoided eye contact with any of us. She took a seat in the chair and wrung her hands as Lydia gave her a hard time for ruining this round.
“Okay, let’s start another round,” Mom said with a sunny smile. We played for another hour as I forgot the trouble I had caused my family and just had a good time with them. Janey and I never looked at each other during the night and I think that was a good thing because none of us could bare another confrontation. At 11pm we all headed off to our rooms. I sat in my bed and read Jane Austin until I fell asleep from the drowsy pills I had to take each night for supposedly being crazy.
The doorbell rang, waking me from a deep foggy sleep. I looked at my alarm clock. It was six past noon. I curled up in the covers, hugging the comforter to my chest, as I yawned. The sun was seeping through the narrow opening in the curtains and leaving a line of sunlight in my shadowed room. I closed my eyes and remembered the dream I had earlier that morning. I was running away from the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carol. I ran through an open field of grass as he chased me and soon I ended up at a stone table like old ruins. I stumbled onto the stone table flat on my back as the cat pounced on me. Suddenly he disappeared partially so that only his black stripes showed. Then he pawed at my face, sheering my tender skin apart, while he told me the Red Queen was coming to chop off my head. I giggled a little under the covers as I remembered how terrified I was of the Cheshire cat as a small child. I worried he would be hiding somewhere. Thick black stripes made me nervous until I was a little older.
There was a knock at my door, startling me out of my reminiscing. "Come in."
"Hey," Lexie said with a smile and nervous eyes as she came through the door and shut it behind her. "Sorry to wake you. I figured you’d be up by now."
I shrugged. "The drugs they give me really knock me out at night." "Oh." Her face went dim and she looked down as she took a seat at the end of my bed. "So, I hear you’re doing better than before." "Um, yeah. I don’t think I was ever not okay, but okay, I guess better is true now that I’m home again. I can’t wait to go back to the apartment, to school, to work. It’s been so ridiculously stupid the last few weeks."
"That’s something I wanted to talk to you about." She fiddled with her thumbs.
"What?"
"I..." she hesitated as her thumbs fiddled faster, "I just think maybe it isn’t a good idea to go back to the apartment right now."
"Why not!" I yelled.
She stared at the beige carpet below her socked feet as she flexed them. "Well, a lot has happened. I mean we can’t just forget everything that has happened and go back to the way things were."
"Yes, we can. And we will," I said.
"I don’t want to ruin our friendship over this. You have to understand that I care about you. It’s just that so much has happened and I don’t think I can take care of you if you get sick again. And I have to worry about rent. You might not be able to pay your share and I need to get a roommate who can, someone I can count on financially." Her voice quivered a little as she spoke, her eyes darting between the floor and me.
"That’s crap. I can pay rent. I don’t know why you think I can’t. I’m dependable. I’m the same person I have always been." I shook my head as my throat felt a lump growing. "How dare you come in here and act like I’m some incapable mentally ill person. There’s nothing wrong with me. You are supposed to be my best—" I choked on my words.
"My best friend. How can you treat me like this?"
"I’m still your best friend. I am trying to look out for both our interests here. You have to understand. Please." I could see her eyes welling up as she looked at me pleadingly.
"Best friends don’t kick each other out. Don’t tell each other they are insane. Don’t act like... like things are different when they aren’t!" I darted off the bed and went to the door. I stopped just as I was about to throw her out of my room. My throat swelled as the tears emerged from my stinging eyes.
"I can’t even begin to describe how I feel at this moment. First my sister disowns me and now you come here and basically give up on our friendship because they label me as a sick person, as mentally defective. Can’t you just trust me, trust who I have always been? How can you even begin to believe what they say about me when you know me?" I looked at her with my furrowed brows and stone cold eyes. "You know me."
She shook her head as she stared at the floor. I saw her chest moving with each puffing breath she took in. After a moment, she started shaking her head harder and looked at me with tear-filled eyes. "You say I know you. But the person you’ve been in the last month is not the person I know and love." Her voice was steady as she breathed deeply and kept shaking her head rhythmically. "You say that you haven’t changed but all I see is a changed person. If you can’t look into yourself and see that, how can I trust that you are well? If you have no concept of how sick you’ve become, how can I begin to think you can take care of yourself?" Her eyes sparkled tearfully as she stared at me, her face crinkled up around her eyes and mouth. I stopped for a moment and speechlessness pervaded me. I stared into her with hard eyes that felt like they were bulging out of me. The lump in my throat was so large I couldn’t speak, or at least I felt I couldn’t speak anymore. I wasn’t even sure my brain knew how to speak in that moment. I was so frozen that no inch of me moved. Slowly my head started to move from side to side. Slowly, rhythmically. My breathing increased. Panic was soon seething inside of me as I felt the neural impulses in my body darting around. My hands trembled. I brought one up to my chest and felt the beating striking loudly against my ribs. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. My throat felt like it was swelling up with the giant crying lump. My heart ached as the walls of my chest grew tight.
"Oh, I just..." I tried to speak as the screeching voice reached out from my lungs. "I can’t do this. I can’t I can’t I just can’t take this. Why do people hate me? Why are people abandoning me? Why? What the hell? What the—?" I rambled out each word until I was gasping for air and trying hard to breath. "My sister hates me. You hate me. Oh my
God. What is going on with... my life?" My face felt hot as I put my wrist up to it and gently pressed it against my cheek. I felt something odd and I looked at my wrist to see the scar across it, still red but healing well. My eyes grew painfully wide.
"Annalyn?" Lexie said gently and I saw that she was in front of me now, lightly touching my trembling hand that lay dangling at my side. "I tried to kill myself you know. Of course you know. Everyone knows," I rambled. "I tried to slice my wrist with my mommy’s sewing knife. There was blood and then I was... I don’t know. Happy sort of. Things were better. It’s like I realized something after that. It shook me awake and I knew I had to enjoy life. And then I was just so happy that nothing mattered but having fun. I thought I was so important to the world because I had been touched by God, by Mother Nature. It all sounds so ridiculous now, you know. I wanted to forget. And I still don’t really understand exactly what I was thinking or doing." I looked at my wrist as my hand shook and then I looked at her with wide tearful eyes. "Am I really mentally ill? Am I a monster?" I fell to the ground as my legs suddenly gave out beneath me. I hugged my knees and rocked back and forth as the butterflies flew in loopy-loops in my stomach. "Am I a sick person? I am aren’t I? I’m... defective. Sick." My head shook so fast and I crumbled inside. "How did I get like this?" My heard fluttered hard and painful. "Answer me!" I screamed as I grabbed onto Lexie and shook her, my eyes tearing into hers.
"Stop. Please. You’re not well but you aren’t a monster. Just don’t do anything to hurt yourself. I couldn’t live without you. I couldn’t live knowing you killed yourself. Please." Her voice was shuddering as she spoke, tears streaming down her red face, eyes fearful and crinkled. "I don’t know what to do anymore. How can I live with myself knowing I am a sick person?" I hugged my knees tighter as she sat in front of me holding onto my hands tightly.
"You aren’t a bad person. You have to believe me. Please don’t hurt yourself."
"I’m sorry about everything. I shouldn’t move back into the apartment. I can’t be trusted."
"Give it time. You just need to heal. I love you though. Don’t ever think that we aren’t best friends because of this. Soon it will be in the past. We’ll be heading on with our lives; we’ll be career women going places. This is just a blip in the road for you. We’ll get through it." I watched her eyes dart back and forth slightly as she stared into my eyes. I could tell she loved me but this whole thing, how could it be a blip on the road? How could I just move on with my life?
"Are you going to be okay?" Lexie asked as she took my hand in hers and caressed it lightly. I nodded as my heart said no. I wasn’t going to be okay. But she deserved so much more than this. I had to let her go on with her life; go on from me, go on from this. I had to let her move on from the pain I was causing her. I had caused them all so much pain and it ripped apart my guts and made me bleed tears inside. "I’m really tired. I think I want to lie down now. I’ll talk to you later, okay?" I said as I got up and grabbed a tissue to wipe away my tears. She suddenly grabbed onto me tightly into a hug and I let my arms drape around her.
"I love you. I’ll talk to you soon, sweetie," Lexie said as she squeezed me tightly and then I let her go.
I sat on my bed as I watched the door shut behind her. I cried into the tissue as it got saturated and flimsy with my tears. I choked and sobbed as my body shook. The door opened, startling me.
"Dad?" I asked as he slipped into the room and shut the door behind him. He came and sat on the bed next to me.
"I wasn’t trying to listen in," he said in his hard voice. "You heard?" I whimpered with a wrinkled forehead.
"People are always going to give people like us trouble, Annalyn.
It’s part of being labeled mentally ill. There’s always going to be a stigma and that is why I have always kept my past secret. I moved away to get away from it."
"I don’t want to move away."
"I’m not saying you have to. But you have to understand that people are afraid of mental illness. And maybe we aren’t mentally ill. Maybe there is nothing wrong with us. It doesn’t matter now that we have the label. People are going to be against us and that is a part of life now. You will have to know it, accept it and move on."
"I don’t know how."
He sighed and continued to look ahead of me sternly. I could feel him trying to be a caring father against his cold exterior. He didn’t know how to be warm. He could be fun, he could be mean and angry. But loving and warm isn’t something that came easily to him. As I sat there next to him, it stopped mattering that he looked stern, felt cold, was sitting there rigidly and avoiding eye contact. I knew he cared and he wanted to be there for me.
"Dad?"
"Hmm?"
"How am I supposed to move on with this horrible scar across my wrist? Everyone will know what I did." I held in the tears and tried to be strong and matter of fact.
"I have a scar on my abdomen, Annalyn." He said in an even tone. I looked at him with confusion in my eyes. "I tell your mother that it was from getting mugged. I have this whole story worked out about how I was seventeen and walking to a friend’s house at night and this guy comes out and tries to steal my wallet and stabs me in the abdomen. The story has always horrified her that she never questions it. She doesn’t ever bring up the scar or the story. She doesn’t want to talk about it or know anything more about it. Every time she looks at it, I can tell it scares her. So we never talk about it."
"You weren’t mugged were you?" I asked in a quivering voice. "No, I wasn’t. I was like you once. I hated life and I didn’t know what to do so I tried to end it all. That’s when I ended up in the psychiatric ward. Well, after I spent time on a medical ward for my injuries."
"Dad..." My eyes teared up as I looked at him.
"It’s okay, Annalyn. It was a long time ago and I’ve never hurt myself since. It was a dark time and it’s in the past. Look at me now. I have a life, a family. A wife I love, three girls I love. I got on with my life and now I have a scar that I just pretend isn’t there. You will do the same."
"What do I tell people?"
"You were gutting fish with your dad and the knife slipped." He laughed in a deep perturbed way as his belly shook. I smiled hesitantly as my forehead wrinkled. "You’re smart, you’ll think of something to tell people. If it’s scary and creative enough, they won’t even question it. Now get some rest, okay."
"Okay," I said meekly as I watched him leave. I sat on my bed and hugged my legs tightly as I looked out the window. The sun was trying to shine through the rain clouds that had gathered overnight. It was bright even against the grey clouds. I buried my head in my knees letting the tears wet my pink pajama pants. I could feel my skin crawl a little as I felt a slight shudder inside.
I sat there and rocked back and forth on my bed as I hugged my knees and my stomach began to flutter wildly. Butterflies were attacking me inside. My heart was thumbing against the walls of my chest like shards shoving themselves into me with each beat. My lungs felt like they were being squeezed and my face smothered. I jumped off my bed and ran to the window and opened it for some fresh air. The cool breeze of autumn flowed into my lungs and feathered up against my cheeks. I choked against the lump in my throat as the tears began to flow. I sobbed as my body shook and I let my head fall into the palms of my hands.
My dad had tried to kill himself in a horrible and gruesome way. I couldn’t shake the image of a knife sticking out of a bloody wound in his guts as he lay there bleeding almost to death. I wondered who found him, who saved him from the edge of death. I wondered if he was happy that he had lived or if he had regretted anyone finding him and bringing him back to the despair of life. For awhile, I had been happy to be alive after I slit my wrist. But as I sat there abandoned by my sister and shunned by my best friend, failing out of school, labeled as insane, I wondered if it was really worth it sticking around.
Would my life be doomed to the footsteps of my father, his temper
and moodiness and stormy life? Would I have to escape this reality and find a new life somewhere else, another province, new people, disconnected from the past? The wind tickled my face as the tears trickled down in a long line of wetness. Maybe if she could forgive me, maybe if she could understand, if I could have my sister back, maybe then I could go on. I left my room and found myself standing at her door with my knuckles getting ready to knock. My stomach fluttered hard, butterflies scraping their wings on the sides of my guts. I let in a shaky breath and knocked lightly, not able to put much strength or confidence into it. "What?" she said in a sour voice. I hesitated knowing she wouldn’t let me in if she knew it was me. I opened the door and quickly slipped in, closing the door behind me. I saw her face droop and her eyes tighten. She didn’t speak, just stared into me with knives.
"I need to talk to you. I know you hate me, you don’t want to speak to me. I know you think we are no longer sisters. But we have a bond that goes back almost thirteen years. I can’t let you forget it, bury it; pretend it was meaningless because I did something stupid. I am not the only one you know," I said unsure of my words.
"What do you mean?" she said in a raspy voice spilling over with unsaid emotions.
I went over and sat on her bed and patted it lightly but she didn’t come. I looked down at my feet for a moment, bare foot with unadorned long toe nails, and then I looked up to find myself staring at my reflection in her vanity mirror. I paused as the lump in my throat grew and my eyes began to pulsate with tears trying to force their way out. "I am not the only one who did something stupid like trying to kill themselves, you know. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. I just want to find a way for you to forgive me."
"Who?" she said in a whisper.
"I really don’t know if I should tell you." My stomach filled with an anxious quiver.
"Why did you come in here then? Just tell me," she said bitterly. I stared at her, though still seeing my reflection in the periphery of my vision. I saw the tear drip down my face and as I looked at her, I saw the aching inside of her. I didn’t have to be psychic to feel her pain. We had a connection and despite her abandonment and my betrayal, I still knew her pain, felt her weeping inside. I knew her loneliness. I wanted to soothe her and what I had to say was something that would only disturb her. But still, maybe it was the thing to make her understand. I sat there pondering what I should do as I stared at her bitter longing face. It demanded answers. Answers that I knew I had to give. "I don’t want you to tell. Not mom, not Lydia, and especially not Dad. Whatever you do," my voice broke, "don’t tell Dad I told you." "Okay," she whispered in a sob and I knew she sensed the pain of what was to come out of my mouth.
"It was Dad. He was seventeen. He lived somewhere else. Had another life. But he hated it and he was sad, like I was, and he tried to die. Someone saved him. He spent time in the hospital, first in a medical ward for his injuries and then in the psychiatric ward like me. Maybe it runs in our family. Maybe it’s like minds. Maybe I’m doomed to follow in his footsteps. His family never understood and he had to leave, start a new life. Maybe I have to too. I can’t stay here knowing you hate me, knowing you’ve given up on us. Maybe," I choked on my words as tears flooded my eyes, "Maybe I should just do what he did and go away." "No. That won’t solve anything. You can’t just run away from your problems."
"How can you say that when you are the one that doesn’t want to be around me anymore, when you are the one giving up on me?"
I sobbed. "I hate you. I hate you so much for what you did but I still love you." She looked down and twiddled her thumbs. I could see drops of tears falling into her lap. We sat in silence for a few seconds and it felt like forever, but my voice was frozen.
"How?" she said so quiet that I almost didn’t hear her. I looked at her shocked and fearful as I felt my face twitch nervously, my brows furrowing together. I swallowed deeply and let the reflection of myself pervade my consciousness. There I sat about to tell my sister the most horrible thing she may hear.
"You have to tell me," she insisted in an almost calm manner.
"If you want me to, really want me to, I will. But this isn’t something you want to hear. I wish I hadn’t heard it. I wish I could go back to the innocence of childhood and never have to know the hell of life. Why does it have to be so unfair that some should know such darkness and pain and others have happiness and easy lives?"
"Just tell me," she whispered as she looked at the ground. "He um... stabbed himself in the abdomen. I don’t know the rest. I didn’t ask. I never want to know. I hate that I know this."
I looked at her as she stared at me straight faced and frozen. There was silence as neither of us moved, not our faces, our muscles, any part of us. Then she looked down.
"Why would you kill yourself?" she asked as if she were completely innocent of the pain that I knew she was beginning to know. "Life is hard."
"That’s not a good enough answer!" Her face went red as she shot an angry glare at me.
"What do you want me to say?" I raised my voice, though still trying to remain calm.
"That there is a good reason. That it is a good choice. That it is worth it to hurt your family if it means escaping the pain. I want to know that what you did was worth it!"
"Why?" I cried. "Why would you want something so horrible to be worth it?"
"Because then I know that you had a good reason for almost leaving me."
"It wasn’t a good reason. It was stupid, rash. I didn’t think it through at all. I was just angry and emotional. I was depressed. I wasn’t well. I hate that I did it and every day I try to move on from it but it never goes away. The consequences will never leave me alone. I did something stupid, everyone knows. That will follow me for the rest of my life." I felt hot tears on my face.
"Then why the hell did you do it! I need to understand. I can’t keep going on knowing you didn’t care about me."
"I did care about you. There was a momentary lapse in judgment where I forgot who I really was. I just felt the pain and needed it to end. It wasn’t about you. It wasn’t about any of the things I love. It was just about the pain and it needed to go away. And then I realized how stupid it was. I knew it was a mistake right away. I could have finished the job. I could have cut harder. I didn’t! I stopped!"
"It doesn’t matter, Annalyn. You still did it. I want to understand it. To know it would be worth it.”
"Maybe one day you will be in my shoes and you will understand. It is hell to feel that much pain. It doesn’t matter that there was no reason for the pain. It doesn’t matter that it was just some biological dysfunction. I was hurting so much. If you felt that much pain, you would understand. I couldn’t think about anything else. I was sick!"
"Well, maybe I’ll just fucking kill myself! I hate you. I hate what you’ve done to me. You’ve taken away my childhood, my innocence, my happiness. Do you have any idea what the hell you’ve done to me?" "How could I have done anything to you? I hurt you, but I didn’t take away anything from you. Nothing is my fault."
"How can you say that? You don’t even have any idea how screwed up you’ve made me. You screwed me up Annalyn."
"Stop talking like some dark screwed up teenager. You’re twelve. You’re still a kid. You’re innocent and sweet and this little girl that I love so much and just stop acting like you’re so much older and so much more screwed up than you are. Please."
"Why can’t you see? Why are you too blind to see beyond yourself? You are so selfish. I can’t understand how you can be so selfish. Don’t you even care about me, how I’m feeling? My pain?"
"What pain? Tell me. I want to know. I just don’t think you know what kind of pain I am talking about."
"I hate life. I hate it so much. And I hate you. I never did. I never felt this way before you had to go and make such a big deal about how unhappy you were. I was happy. I was so much better off and you just made it all so crappy. And to make things worse, you won’t even accept r
esponsibility for it."
"I want to. What can I do to make it better? Please, just tell me how to make amends."
"You can’t."
"I have to. There has to be something I can do. Just give me something. Tell me. I want to go back to the way things were. To swinging under the maple tree on sunny Sundays. To playing jump rope and singing blue bells. Teaching you hopscotch and then putting Band-Aids on your knees after you fall and kissing them better. I want to go back to being the older sister you can always count on. I want to go back to being the sister you love and look up to. Just tell me how, please." She sobbed as her whole body shook and her face turned a bright red. "How the hell should I know. You screwed everything up. You figure it out."
"I just don’t know how. Please help me." I whimpered in broken gasps.
"I’m not the one who is supposed to be helping you. You help me, Annalyn. You make me better!"
"Stop asking things I can’t do!" I cried.
"Do it now! Take away this pain. Make it go away!" She screeched loudly.
"How?" I whispered as I stood up and tilted my head pleading with her.
"Just make it all go away!" Her shrill voice stung my ears and I cried harder and sobbed into my hands. "Make it all go away. I need it all to go away!"
"Please stop this. I don’t know what to do. Just stop this. Love me again. Be my sister again. Let’s just go back. Please please please." "Get out. You can’t help me. You don’t want to. So go. Just go!" she screamed.
I left solemnly as my eyes pleaded with her for forgiveness. As soon as I was out the door, it slammed shut in an angry bang of thunder. I sunk down to the ground and leaned against her door as my body shook with painful sobs.
My nerves entrapped me in a sea of chaos as I sat there on my bed feeling choked. My head was swimming with rampant thoughts. What if she never forgave me? What if she never spoke to me again? I felt a tremor in my heart as my thoughts raced of Janey. My soaking wet eyes crinkled up as I shut them tightly, praying to God, to anyone, to some sort of power out there, that my sister would forgive me. A tingle crept down my spine. I couldn’t shake this feeling that she was lying in bed in the next room unable to sleep as she thought of our fight. I needed to reconcile with her so badly. It didn’t matter that it was almost three am.
As I reached her bedroom, I smiled at her name colourfully decorating the door with glitter that sparkled in the golden glow of the nightlight my parents kept in the hallway. I slowly turned the knob and peaked into the room. She was completely under the covers except for a stray arm that dangled out from under the comforter and lay milky white in the moonlight. The room was almost completely dark except for a strip of moonlight that drew itself down the centre of the room and over her arm from the open slit in the curtains. I wondered if she was awake despite the crisp cold silence in the room.
I walked up to her bed and whispered her name but she didn’t stir. Disappointment sank into my heart to know that she was fast asleep while I was awake so desperately needing her forgiveness. I swallowed past the lump in my throat as I turned to go away. Something stopped me and I turned back around. I couldn’t let her sleep so peacefully as I intruded in her room without saying it. "I’m sorry," I whispered knowing she was either listening angrily while she pretended to sleep or she was fast asleep and would never know I said it. Maybe she’d hear it in her dreams and think of me.
I stood there for a moment and she didn’t move. The comforter never moved and my heart dropped for a moment as I held my breath and watched for her breath, realizing it had never come.
"Janey?" I whispered loudly. "Janey?" I said in a distraught voice. "Janey!" I screamed. "Janey!"
I ripped the covers off the bed and dove to her, trying to shake her awake. I grabbed onto her tightly shaking her as I hugged her still body.
"Janey! Wake up! Wake up!" I cried shrill and realized the front of my shirt was soaking wet. "No, Janey. Just wake up. Wake up wake up wake up..." I panicked. "No... No!" I screamed as my heart ripped out of my chest and pounded against the walls of the room, echoing the terror inside of my head.
The lights flooded the room and painfully into my eyes. I turned around in horror to see my parents’ dead shocked faces staring at me, wide mouthed, wide eyed.
"Mom!" I cried as the tears sheered their way down my face in a river. "Momma! Oh mom!" I sobbed painfully as my chest shook.
Mom and Dad stared for a second, for what felt like an eternity, and then I heard mom’s shrill scream like a horror show.
"Out of the way!" I heard him yell as I felt my body torn away from the bed. "Janey!"
"Call an ambulance, Neil! Call for help! Call! Call now!" She screamed over and over.
I sat there on the plush carpet staring forward, not knowing if I was even breathing, or if my heart was beating, if I was alive. I sat there until I was moved out of the way and into the hallway by someone. I don’t even know who. I sat there. Frozen. Chilled. My throat was thick and lumpy and I felt like I couldn’t swallow it was so dry. So I didn’t try. I didn’t do anything but sit there. There was no movement inside me, but there was a rush around me. Sirens at first. Then men in paramedic uniforms. And more men in uniforms. Different ones this time. Police uniforms. Dark coloured. I heard their radios. I felt their presence. I didn’t know what was happening but I felt people’s presence around me and I just sat there because I didn’t know how to do anything else. And then one of them came to talk to me. He kept asking me what happened.
"I..." I shook my head and tried to speak. "I just... I..." I sniffled loud and harsh and tried to swallow. "Mom? I want my mom," was all I could say.
I could hear her crying loudly in her bedroom as my father sat with her. I heard the sound of his gentle hushes. My whole body was chilled and I felt myself shivering until a blanket was thrown around my shoulders and I was nudged to move from the spot on the hallway floor I had felt cemented to for what felt like forever.
"Why don’t you come with me?" I heard a regretful voice tell me as I was gently guided down the hall. I felt like I couldn’t walk, yet I was stepping forward with each of the officer’s steps. I numbly made it down the hallway to where my parents sat in each other’s arms as the other officer spoke to them.
"Mom?" my mouth quivered and she held out her arms as I fell into her, hanging onto her tightly as I shivered against her warmth. Her body shook against mine as she sobbed. My father’s thick arm draped itself around us.
The officer kept talking to my father as he tried to answer questions. My dad’s voice was hallow and sad as it spoke in a broken quiver. I tried to follow what they were saying but it was all a blur. I didn’t need to ask if my sister was okay. I knew she was gone. The smears of red on my shirt from when I tried to shake life into her haunted me as I sat there getting my sister’s blood all over my mom, who was probably already covered in it anyways. My hands were red with her blood that had started to dry. It was a dark crimson red. It was as lifeless as her and my hands shivered in it. Mom held me and I held her and my father held both of us.
I remember when Lydia got there. Mom broke away from me and I heard Lydia’s screaming and crying as mom and dad talked to her down the hall from me. My brain was starting to work again because I actually heard some of what they were saying and I could comprehend their words.
Dad in a weak voice... "Stabbed herself with a kitchen knife in the stomach.... Bled to death...." sobs... "she died right there while we slept... she died alone..." uncontrollable sobs.
"My baby is dead. Oh my baby... Oh my baby... Neil..." deafening cries.
And then it was silent except for the whimpers and cries. There was nothing left to say. Just tears and screams and thoughts about how this could happen. Why? Why! It screamed inside my head. My sister was dead. Janey was dead.
Dark clouds lingered over the graveyard as I stood next to my sister’s grave. It conveniently started to thunder as we stood there saying goodbye. Rippling
drums in the sky echoed the mood of the four of us as we hovered over the six foot hole to an eternity of loneliness in the dark. The dirt had gone muddy as the rain spit on us, dappling tit tit sounds on the two large black umbrellas we huddled under. A minister stood before us, holy book in hand, and read words that blurred over my foggy mind.
She would be in peace. That is what people assured me as they patted my shoulders gently at the memorial service earlier that day. I just sat there on the front pews next to my parents and Lydia refusing to move, to eat the food, to talk to people, to acknowledge reality in any way whatsoever. I sat like a cancerous lump growing irately in the pew and stubbornly refusing to move. I sat there through sad soulful songs, through people reading poems they had written and poems by famous people that they felt would move people. But I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t be moved emotionally any more than they could move me out of that pew and breathe life into me. I didn’t say anything during the memorial service. I couldn’t speak past the lump in my throat and only managed to nod every so often. And then the kind words about her stopped and it was over. People said goodbye and I’m sorry and they left. Lots of people were there but they were all leaving because it was over and she was gone and this was life, our life, over now. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for your loss.
Once the people had gone and the doors to the room where we had sat in rows before her casket had been shut, I was told it was time. Mommy held my hand tightly with her cold fingers wrapping around mine as they trembled together.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for your loss. It repeated in my head over and over as I stood up, dizzily, and walked over to the white metal casket with brass adornments. It reminded me of a white horse, beautiful and pure, that a princess might ride off on into the rolling hills on. My sister would be buried in the mud in it instead. Messy sloppy slimy dirt soiling this beautiful masterpiece of a casket where the most precious girl lay, supposedly in peace, to rot away in. I ran my hand against the cold steel and traced my fingers down over the brass handles.
"Open it," I said in a raspy whisper filled with the congestion of days of tears.
Lydia’s hand rubbed my back and soon she was pulling me into her arms as she sobbed. Mom hung onto Dad and the four of us stood there as they opened the casket. Mom broke down and wailed into my Dad’s black suit. I could feel Lydia shaking against me. I pulled away from her and walked right up to the white velvet puffiness and saw my fragile sister laying in it silently, still, peaceful.
I traced my fingers against her forehead. It was a pale grey almost, but dusted with makeup. Lots of makeup as if it would hide the sorrow in her dead face. She looked plastic as I stood there before her, like a wax figurine that had been pumped full of embalming stuff and made up all pretty by the funeral people. Her hair had been trimmed as it lay wavy on her shoulders and she wore a pretty pink eyelet dress with white glossy ballet flats. She looked far from the preteen that wore jeans and a t-shirt and liked to swear when she thought our parents weren’t around. I kissed my sister’s cold forehead before whispering in her ear.
"I’m sorry," I said as if it would ever mean anything now.
We cried and said goodbye and huddled against each other and the casket was closed, never to see her again.
I shivered as I stood at the side of her grave after the memorial service, shivered inside and out and my mind quivered as the images of that waxy-like body lay before me. My family watched as her casket descended into the ground. Six feet under and gone from our lives forever. My dad grabbed a pile of muddy dirt and let it fall from his hand into the grave, tarnishing the white casket, dirtying up the white horse that would keep her safe for the rest of her death. We each took our turn and when I reached down and grabbed a handful of slimy mud, I felt like I couldn’t get back up. I gasped and pleaded in my head, begging for this nightmare to end. Let her be alive to scream at me again. Let her be alive so we can fight, so she can yell at me, tell me how much I betrayed her, let her release all her anger and pain onto me. Let her tell me how much she was hurting, how desperate she was. And then I save her and we make up and we are all okay again. Let it happen. Please.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for your loss. It repeats again and I drop dirt onto her grave, mud falling from my fingers and into oblivion. I get up and we walk away. We turn away. We turn away from her and she is dead and there is nothing I can do. Nothing any of us can do.
Entangled in Darkness Page 14
