This disability seemed to be about Beth. Not anything she’d said but her having kissed me. It interfered with my capacity to sort things, to keep them cordoned off in my head. That was the other thing about the weekend – things had begun to bleed through. They started seeping into each other until they overlapped in a way that was difficult to control, impossible to put away.
Seeing her again made all this harder and I feared if she touched me some of it would open. That the bleeding and seeping would turn to leaking. That I’d be unable to stop it, and somehow this would give us away. Though I couldn’t be sure what this last thing even meant.
Soon after I’d sat down she said, “I’ve been thinking about you. Thinking what we should do.”
She glanced at me after saying this but I kept hidden. I shrugged into Gail’s coat, shrunk into it.
“There are steps to getting you out and I think we should start on them. First we’ve got to get you out of seclusion. As long as you’re there, there’s no way.”
Now I was the one looking at her and looking carefully. She believed what she was saying. I could tell that much. She believed it’d be that simple. Just follow the rules and that’s the end of it.
I wanted to stop her right there, say you don’t understand, you don’t know what’s involved, who’s involved. I couldn’t do it, though. I was afraid if she knew she’d back off. That she’d be safer to me not knowing the risk, not knowing what or who she was up against. That maybe, just maybe, if she didn’t know, it might work. She might pull it off.
So this brought me to how much did she have to know, and then to how much could I tell. The curious thing was how much I wanted to tell – to tell her all of it. Same as I wanted to tell her what happened to me every weekday night.
The things stopping me were too hard to make out. Every time I thought I knew what they were and so could face them, they changed form. Then I’d have to re-group, re-evaluate. These things kept me mute. And the single thing running underneath, choking off speech, was his belt around my neck.
Beth quit talking. I realized she’d noticed how intently I was watching her. When she quieted, I began thinking things, and below that feeling them, and pretty soon my eyes clouded over. Once my eyes glazed, she put her arm around my shoulders and shook me a little. With that, what I’d worked so hard not to feel began running up and down my thighs – nervous and wanting to stop and stay put somewhere.
“Hey,” she said. “What is it?”
I started laughing. Not a real friendly thing to do, but I guess that was the point. I wanted to do the exact opposite – cry – or the thing in between, which seemed this moment to be kissing her. Laughing meant I’d taken the coward’s route.
“I’m sorry.” I managed to say this much and then managed to take her hand.
“Look,” she said. “I’m going to try and get you out of that box. I don’t think you can handle it in there too much longer.”
This some way bruised me. It seemed a stupid part of me wanted to prove something dumb. To prove I could take it in there the rest of my life if that was needed. To prove I could take anything. At least I kept shut about this. I didn’t stand up or bluster. At least I kept myself from doing the half dozen or so things I wanted to do.
We walked back holding hands. Most of the way anyway. As we came into sight of the building she let go and this carried the same shyness or shame that the kiss had. She came into the box with me again. I liked that she’d called it that. That she’d left off using their word for it. A word I didn’t like because it made it sound like some fucking retreat or something. Someplace a nun would go.
She didn’t stay long, though she had time to. And she stood a little ways back from me instead of right up against me. Her doing this made me realize we didn’t exactly know each other. That she’d come out of nowhere for me and me for her. That we’d gotten in deep with each other, and fast. That we’d gotten there out of nothing but feeling and need. I had with her, anyway.
I had no way to know anything about her. But still it seemed I did know. Knew that underneath all her command she carried something I’d hooked and was sorry for. Though I wasn’t above using it. I was that desperate for help.
Of course, seeing it this way was easier than seeing how it was. That was all about what she’d hooked in me and kept pulling at. Whatever that was seemed too messy to name. Like if I let it spread out from my chest, it’d take over my body. It’d maybe get to my mind.
It was already hard enough to cope in here. I couldn’t contend with something like that. And so instead of letting it up, I pushed it down. I put it into my belly and then lower until it could be all about pressing against her. All about her body. The things I wanted to do to it and do to her, and with her, and have her do to me. But not here. And so we stayed standing in this way that caused problems – a little apart with her holding my hands and her eyes holding mine, and me trying to keep pace until I had to look away.
Gail saved me. She came to get her coat and I let go of Beth. And then she left. She slipped away while Gail and I talked. She did this without a word, and so left me wondering if she’d ever come back or was she finished? Had she seen some of the same stuff that I had and wanted to get away from it? Or had I maybe just been some way too mean?
Eleven
Beth must’ve pulled somebody’s string besides mine because by the end of the week they’d moved me. It was still lockup but that beat the lockbox and so I couldn’t quite complain. This didn’t mean I had company, though. The others on the floor were the lifers. Women so old they’d had actual surgery. Others, a little bit younger, had the chemical kind, daily.
This meant you heard the same things over and over. Watched the same shuffling. Except for one woman, a little one, who moved fast and hit her palm with her fist over and over, saying, “Whip, whip. Cut, cut.”
This was stuff you could no way ask about, but Gail told me some of it. The ones who’d been cut had had it done early – thirteen, twelve. They’d been here ever since. Likewise the ones in their fifties and sixties – once their trouble started they’d never been given the chance to escape it.
So this wasn’t a place where people got better. This was a holding pattern and these women holdovers. Given my patron, none of this should’ve surprised me. But still it did – the kind of place in old movies. The kind that didn’t exist anymore and so how could any of us? The perfect place to lose someone for ever.
So this explained what I was doing here. And maybe it explained Beth’s wanting so bad to get me out. These next few weeks she spent coaching me for this. A big moment before some committee of doctors. I hadn’t seen a doctor since I’d landed here so it surprised me to hear them mentioned. Surprised me anyone actually ran this place.
When the day came, I sat at the foot of a long wooden table and went through the motions. Ten or twelve men I’d never seen in my life asked me ten or twelve different questions. And afterwards, since I’d had no expectations myself, I worried about Beth. About how hard she might’ve hoped. And, too, I worried what might happen now that they’d noticed me.
Beth had stayed behind with them, so Gail took me back. She sat with me on my bed – at least I had an actual one of those now.
When Beth came in, she was all red-faced and shaky. She kept saying she didn’t understand. That she couldn’t see why they’d said no. How the reasons they gave didn’t make sense.
I looked to Gail but she’d already gotten most of the way out the door, so I looked back at Beth. She paced the small room. Kept walking back and forth from the now-closed door to the window. It was open with a cold breeze coming through the metal grate.