Let's Call It a Doomsday

by Katie Henry

  We walk out of the residential streets and across an almost endless green lawn, past the Legion of Honor, into groves of cypress, bushy and tall. Then, suddenly, I hear it. I surge past Hannah, and now she has to rush to catch up with me. The ocean. I didn’t know we were going to the ocean. The forest breaks, and there is the sky again, a haze of gray fog with cool blue underneath. There is the sea, dark waves and white foam, stretching so far it could be the whole world. Sea is a word with no known origin. Sea is a word that simply is.

  Ahead of us is a part of the coastline I’ve never seen before. So much of the San Francisco waterfront is built up with piers, wax museums, and theme restaurants marketed to tourists in fleece jackets who expected California to be much warmer. This place, with its jagged, burnt sienna cliffs and silence, feels different. Pristine. Untouched. Wild.

  “What is this place?” I whisper to Hannah.

  “Lands End.”

  I wonder if there’s an apostrophe in its name. Is this land’s end, the stopping point of a singular place? Or is it the end of all lands?

  “This way,” Hannah says, and starts toward the shore. We’re so close to the water that the salt sticks in my taste buds, briny and inviting. Hannah leads me to a big, deserted cliff. It’s not one of the taller ones, and not as sheer of a drop, which I appreciate. Still, I’m careful to stay far back from the edge.

  “This is my first memory,” Hannah says, and I can barely hear her over the wind and the waves.

  “What?” My hair whips around my face. I pull it back.

  “This is the first thing I remember,” she says, louder. “I think I was four. We came here, my whole family, after spending the morning at the aquarium. We stood at one of these lookouts. And I wanted to go down to the water, so I could see the fish. I wanted to get closer. Danny held my hand, and said I didn’t have to see them, because I already knew they were there. But I still wanted to. I still wanted to get closer.”

  For a moment, we stand in silence, watching the waves crash against the smaller rocks below. They seem to hit harder each time, more force behind each saltwater swell. It must be high tide. When I look over at Hannah, her gaze is not out on the horizon, but down on the rocks.

  “Come on,” she says, lowering herself off the side of the cliff and onto a ledge.

  Oh no. “Wait, stop, what are you doing?”

  “Getting closer.” She takes another step down, fingers gripping the plateau I’m standing on.

  No, no, no. “Fine, there’s a trail to the beach, use that!”

  She ignores me and takes another step down.

  “Hannah!” I shout. This is not safe. There were signs at the trailhead asking us to specifically not do this thing.

  She looks up at me, eyes determined and bright. “I’m going,” she says. She doesn’t have to say “with or without you.” I hear it anyway.

  “Oh my God,” I mutter, lowering my foot carefully down. It’s not blasphemy. It is a genuine plea for Him to not let me die on this cliff. My foot wobbles, and I yelp, clinging to the edge of the rock with all the strength in my hands.

  Turn back, you’re going to fall. You’re going to fall and you’re going to die.

  I take another cautious step. I’m so close to the air, so close to falling. I wonder if this is how Hannah felt that night she jumped from the car. “Stop, I can’t do this!”

  She’s several steps ahead of me, but she stops and twists her head back. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, you can. Your body knows what to do, you just have to let it.”

  Give up, turn back, you’re going to get stuck on this rock and the Coast Guard will have to lift you out via helicopter but only if you don’t die first, which you will.

  I take a shaky breath in and hold it. One step. Another step. My feet find the footholds, my fingers curl around grips I can’t see. Another step. Another inch.

  You can’t do this.

  “You’re doing great,” Hannah calls back, though she couldn’t possibly know that. “Almost there.”

  You can’t do this.

  Two more steps, and there is nothing I hear but the roar of breaking waves. There is nothing I see but the rocks in front of me, the next place to put a foot, a hand, a shaky knee.

  You can’t do this.

  I can’t. But I do. One foot in front of the other, tiny step by tiny step, I climb down the cliff.

  Up ahead, Hannah has reached a plateau. She steps off it onto a freestanding rock just a few inches farther into the water, then holds out her hand for me. I take it, and she helps me over. I sink to the flat, damp rock surface, heart pounding and mouth dry.

  “What the hell, Hannah?” I yell above the waves. “We could have fallen! We could have died!”

  “But look at that.” She nods her head back the way we came. Keeping all my limbs firmly on the rock, I twist back. The cliff above us looks almost impossibly tall and steep. “Look what you did.”

  Something incredibly irresponsible, and potentially fatal, involving at least three of my greatest fears. It was a terrible idea. It was beyond dangerous. But looking back, I can’t help feeling a swell of pride.

  Hannah sits down on the rock, closer to the edge than I am. “Over here.” I crawl on my hands and knees to join her. Out in the distance, a wave ripples in, curling taller, reaching toward us. It’s so close, and I wonder for a moment if I’ve traded death by falling for death by drowning. The wave crests and explodes several feet below us, and the spray mists us with salt water. It stings my eyes. It freezes my nose. It prickles my skin, and something deeper, too. I wipe my face dry, but then there is another wave, another wall of mist. I breathe deep, tasting the salt, feeling something inside me split open, a seam loosening, stitches unthreading.

  The water swells and breaks, again and again, covering me in water and brine again and again, and I let it. I let myself feel my finger pads gripping the rock, my hair whipping in the wind, my legs pressing down on stone. I’ve spent so much of my life terrified of my body, all the ways it could fail or betray me. But Hannah told me to trust my body, and I did. I climbed down a cliff, and I didn’t die. I stumbled, but I didn’t break. I trusted that I could save myself, I trusted myself, and I make a silent vow that it won’t be the last time. I’ve spent so much of my life thinking the things I wanted must be wrong, because I was the one wanting them.

  A life that is different than my mother’s.

  Lia Lemalu’s hair in the sunlight.

  Tal’s hand on my arm, warm and gentle.

  Until the world ends, until the earth collapses in ice and storm, and throughout all eternity, I will trust myself. I will trust in the things I feel, because I am the one feeling them. I say these things in the name of Ellis Leah Kimball, I say these things in my own name, because I will not get another.

  Amen.

  Twenty

  “IS THERE ANYTHING you’d like to talk about today?”

  Most of the time, I shrug. Sometimes, I say no. On the rarest of occasions, I mention something minor, something we both know doesn’t really matter. Today, I say:

  “Yes.”

  Martha struggles to hide her surprise. “Great! What would you like to talk about?”

  Something I’ve lived with for years and years. Something that’s wormed its way into every waking hour. Something I want to be rid of for good.

  “There’s this voice,” I tell her. “There’s this awful voice in my head all the time and I can’t get it out.”

  I think about telling her what happened in San Francisco. How the voice inside my head told me I’d never make it, I’d die, I’d fail. How I ignored it. How I climbed down anyway. But she might think me rappelling off cliffsides was a cry for help, or evidence that I’m a danger to myself. She might tell my parents. I can’t let anyone take that day away from me. I need it. When the end of the world arrives, I will need that day.

  “What does the voice tell you?” Martha asks.

  “‘You shouldn’t have said that, you shouldn�
��t have done that, your friends hate you, you don’t have any friends. . . .’” I trail off at the look on her face. “Just that kind of stuff.”

  Martha stirs in her chair. “Can you describe the voice for me?”

  “Describe it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s . . . mean.”

  “Okay,” she says. “What else? What would it look like, if you had to give it a shape?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess it’s like this demon. Not a joke one, a scary one. Like a demon from one of those terrifying Renaissance paintings about Judgment Day and hell and they’re all clearly drawn by the same dude and all you can think is, holy crap, what happened in that guy’s life to make him paint this stuff?” I take a breath. “Do you know who I’m talking about?”

  “Hieronymus Bosch?”

  “Um, it’s like Where’s Waldo, except in this version Waldo is naked and you find him inside the mouth of a monster with a bird head and no torso.”

  She nods sagely. “Hieronymus Bosch.”

  “That’s what it’s like. Some horrible nightmare in a painting, except I can’t close the book or leave the museum,” I say. “It’s like a demon that climbs onto my back every morning and curls up on my chest every night. It’s like a monster that remembers every stupid thing I’ve done and says all the things my mom secretly thinks.”

  Why did you say that? You shouldn’t have said that, she’ll think your mom is awful and she’s not. She’ll think you’re an ungrateful monster, and you are.

  “I didn’t mean that,” I say, scrambling. “About my mom. My mom isn’t a monster, she’s just . . .”

  Critical and overbearing and disappointed in you, they’re all disappointed in you, confused by you, sick of dealing with you. Why shouldn’t they be?

  “I’m sorry,” I say, talking too quickly, talking so there isn’t silence. “I know I’m being ridiculous, I’m self-aware, at least I’m self-aware, but—”

  “Have you ever talked about this before?” Martha asks.

  I think back. “When I was thirteen, I told my bishop. I didn’t really mean to, it just sort of happened. I told him that I had these constant thoughts about how awful I was, how no one liked me and it was my own fault. I guess I wanted—” I falter, remembering. “Never mind.”

  Martha extends a hand. “Go ahead.”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “Whatever you wanted,” Martha says, “it was not stupid.”

  “He told me the voice I heard was the Adversary. He told me Satan was trying to keep me from living the Gospel and staying active in church. He said to ignore it, and I tried, but all I really wanted was . . .” My voice box crumples. “I wanted him to tell me the things I was hearing weren’t true. He never said any of those things weren’t true.”

  “Ellis,” Martha says quietly. She waits until I look up from the carpet. She locks her eyes on me like a laser. “It’s not true. None of it is true. The things you’re telling yourself are not true.”

  “Things I’m telling myself?” I balk. “I can’t stop that voice, it just keeps talking, I don’t know where it comes from.”

  “I think maybe you do.”

  I twist around and look out the window, at the tree, at the peeling bark on the tree, at the lines and the grooves in the bark. Anywhere but Martha. She waits for me, but I don’t turn back around. I make my eyes go glassy, my heart go numb, my body go anywhere but here. When Martha finally speaks, she sounds miles away.

  “It’s not Satan,” Martha says, and my eyes refocus. “There’s no demon, or monster, or fallen angel.”

  My body pushes back, drags itself from outside the office, outside the universe, and plants itself back on the couch.

  “The voice in your head is coming from you. Just you.”

  My heart stirs under its cold covering. It beats. Wrenches. Bursts.

  I dissolve into a river of tears. A tidal wave, a tsunami, the kind that could wash away San Francisco or the entire world. Apocalypse by salt water. Martha reaches over and places something next to me, but I’m crying too hard to see what it is. I’m crying too hard to apologize for crying. When the tidal wave finally dies down to hiccups, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “What do you think these tears are about?” she asks.

  My eyes burn. My face burns. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually cry.”

  “It’s okay to cry.”

  I know that. It’s not like I was raised to be stoic and unfeeling. If anything, I was the oddball who shed zero tears during our yearly family viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life, the girl who never cried when she shared her testimony at church or sobbed around the campfire on the last night of girls’ camp.

  “I just don’t, usually.”

  “Why do you think it happened now?” Martha asks.

  I well up again. “You said it’s me. The voice is me.”

  “I said it’s coming from you,” Martha says. “Not that it is you.”

  “There’s no difference.”

  “There is,” she insists. “That voice is you speaking. But you are more than that voice. And you are much, much more than the things it tells you.”

  “I don’t like feeling this way,” I protest. “It’s awful. I hate it. And you think I’m doing it to myself?”

  “I think you’re experiencing very painful intrusive thoughts. I think you’re engaging in a lot of self-critique. Yes, self-critique,” she says, off my look. “But ultimately, this is a good thing.”

  “A good thing?” I cry. “It’s a good thing that I’m ruining my own life?”

  “It’s a good thing because it means you aren’t powerless. You are powerful. It means,” she says, and leans in, “that you can tell that voice to shut the fuck up.”

  My mouth drops open. “Martha!”

  “You don’t have to use any words that make you uncomfortable,” Martha assures me. “But for me, there are some things my nicest words just can’t express.”

  I might slip into the lighter forms of swearing, but it’s always with a twist of the intestines, a healthy sense of shame. I’ve never really considered that you could find strength in words like that. Defiance. Righteousness. Power.

  All words have power. Not just the polite ones.

  “I want you to close your eyes,” Martha says. I do. “And let that inner critic loose.” I open them again, panicked, and she holds up her hands. “Just for a moment.”

  I close my eyes again. It doesn’t take long.

  Martha feels sorry for you. Martha is paid to be nice to you and she can’t wait for this session to be over. Martha feels sorry for you and she shouldn’t, because everything that happens to you is your own fault. She said it herself.

  “What’s that inner critic saying?” Martha asks.

  “That if I’m sad, if bad things happen to me, it’s because I brought it on myself.” I leave out the parts about her.

  “Is that true, Ellis?”

  Yes.

  “I . . .”

  “Are you able to control the actions of others? Is that something you can reasonably blame yourself for? Are you in control of the entire world?”

  You want to be. You are powerless and weak and every single thing you do has catastrophic consequences for the entire world.

  That doesn’t make sense. I can’t be both powerless and all-powerful. It doesn’t make sense.

  “Are you responsible for every bad thing that happens in your life?”

  Yes.

  “No.”

  I hear Martha breathe. Not a gasp. Not a sharp intake of oxygen, like she’s surprised. A sudden exhale of carbon dioxide and satisfaction. “Good,” she says. “You’re right. That’s exactly right.”

  It’s such a small compliment. But it warms me from the inside out.

  “Let’s do one more,” Martha says. “I want you to picture your family. Your father, your mother, and your sister.”

  “Am I with them?”

  “Not just yet
. Picture them all together, looking back at you. Hold that image.”

  I draw them up individually in my mind.

  My dad, in his white coat.

  The look he gave you when you told him the world was ending.

  My mom, standing straight and tall.

  “We handle you with kid gloves.”

  My sister, all charm and poise and goodness.

  “Why do you always have to make things worse?”

  “Are you picturing them?” Martha asks, and I nod. “If they could be here, in this session with you, if they could hear what you’ve told me, what would they say to you?”

  You ruined so many dinners. You ruined so many car trips. You ruined so many moments, little and large, you forced us to accommodate your fears, your needs.

  We love you, but only because we are good people. We love you, but not because you are lovable.

  You are an anchor around our necks, you are dead weight in our arms, you are, you are, you are—

  “What would they say to you, Ellis?”

  “A burden!” I burst out, keeping my eyes shut as if that will keep the word shut away, too. “They’d say I’m a burden.”

  We sit in silence for a moment. “Is that true? Are you a burden to your family?”

  Yes. But when the end of the world comes, you won’t be. You’ll know things they won’t. You won’t be a burden. You’ll be their hero.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You love your sister. You spend time with her, you’re kind to her, you treat her with respect. Are you a burden to her? Is that a fair thing to call yourself?”

  Yes. But when the end of the world comes, you’ll protect her. You can be the sister she deserved to have all along.

  But everything Martha said was true. I do love Em, I do watch her dance, and braid her hair. Maybe—maybe the world doesn’t have to end for me to be the sister she deserves.

  “I guess not,” I say. “No.”

  “Are you a burden to your parents? Is that a fair thing to call yourself?”

  Yes. Yes.

  “Yes!”

  Martha goes still. “Why? Why are you telling yourself that?”