My roommate’s name is Keisha. She’s twenty-five years old but looks almost forty. She’s fat and wears a scarf over her head and sucks on a lollipop.
Keisha’s mom is on crack. I know this because Keisha said, “My mom is on crack.”
I can no longer cry. The drugs must be working.
Keisha says this place is all right, better than a lot of other places. I tell her I like her beaded bracelet around her ankle, and she says she’d make me one.
I lie there in the dark. If sleep ever happens to me again, it will feel like a small miracle. Keisha is snoring. I prop my leg up against the wall and run my hand through the bars of light that fall on the wall. I wonder how long I’ll be here, and then my body starts itching inside for a cigarette. I grind my teeth and turn over a couple times, feeling like I want to beat the shit out of somebody. There are places where they let you smoke, but this is not one of those places. I get up and walk over to the nurses’ station and say I can’t sleep. The woman behind the counter has a fat, friendly face — like a waitress in a diner who you think probably spends all her time in the back eating banana splits — and she gives me two pills, and I swallow them without asking what they are.
I lie in bed and start to cry again. Where the fuck is bottom? Is this finally it? I miss Peter’s sleeping body. My head is a dusty room cluttered with sad, broken things from another time. I remember our first year, when I would make dinner for him like a good wife. When I would rush around making sure the apartment was clean, and he would come home tired and shitty. He would kiss me on the cheek and stuff his face and tell me how great dinner was.
Does Peter know I am in here? Do I even want him to? Would he think, Of course she’s in the loony bin. Of course I’m glad I’m not with her anymore. He is out there in the world having fun. He is out there in the world, and whatever he does is no longer my business.
I miss being someone’s wife. I am divorced, a failure, a reject. Someone had picked me and then thought, Whoops, this isn’t the one I want. I had been given a million chances, and I was cavalier with all of them.
If you’re the woman, you’re the one who everyone pities. The one everyone secretly thinks is the failure.
When I wake up, I open the drawers and find all my stuff is gone. I look for my shoes that were right next to the door, and they’re gone too, so I walk up to the nurses’ station. Glad-Ass won’t talk to me till I’m on the other side of a fat white piece of tape. I get behind the tape and tell her all my stuff is gone. And she tells me, in this tone like she’s already said it at least a million times, I’ll get my stuff back when I earn it. I tell her I don’t understand. She says I’ll get points for following rules; little by little, I’ll get all my stuff back. I nod, thinking, These people are fucking nuts.
They treat you like you are five years old. You are being told what to do by people who are obviously stupid.
Doesn’t being here confirm what I always knew deep down? What everyone always knew? I am batshit crazy.
There’s a point system. You get points for finishing your food. You get points for participating in therapy. You get points for making art in art therapy. When you get a certain amount of points, you get to make a phone call. When you get a certain amount of points, you get to check out certain things from your own stuff to use during free time.
The windows are tinted, and it always looks gray outside.
In the mornings, they fill us with sugar. Three fluffy brown pancakes we drown in syrup and slather with globs of butter, falling apart all hot in our mouths. Then we drink thick whole milk that clings to our bellies like cream. Then there are glazed donuts and Lucky Charms and Frosted Flakes. I eat two of the pancakes, but soon my stomach feels like it’s sticking together, with the milk holding it down like lead. Keisha stacks her pancakes and makes sure they are lined up perfectly around the edges. I watch the little hairs, all sticky and shiny, on her pretty lip.
We’re not allowed to have razors, or anything with caffeine, or candy, drugs, or gum. If we are caught with any of these things, we will be punished.
All the girls’ legs are so hairy. I touch the fur on my own and wonder how thick it’s going to get, and how nice it’s going to be when I finally get to shave it, watching the long, soft hairs fall away and leading the razor up, making a path through the forest of hair.
This place is for teaching you about structure. Everyone knows structure helps.
You get used to the routine. You yawn ten minutes before lights out. You wake up ten minutes before the nurse comes in to wake you up. Your stomach growls right before the lunch tray comes.
You hardly ever see your shrink, a fresh-faced young guy with black hair and retro eyeglasses. He is supposed to check in with you once a day, but it’s more like every two or three days. You wonder what his cock is like. You have been with enough men to know that no matter what someone looks like, they are capable of being a total freak. He is intelligent. You can tell by the eyes. How some people, like the nurses, have eyes that are dull, just dull and glazed over, like nothing is happening behind them. But the shrink’s eyes are contemplative. You wonder what it might feel like to get on your knees and unzip his pants, to feel his hand resting on your head as you take him in your mouth. How he would sigh. You miss making people feel good. Time is so slow. It hasn’t been that long. It feels like forever. It’s been nine days.
You tell him how you were married once and had your shit together. You tell him all you have to do is finish your thesis and then you will have a master’s and maybe could teach. You tell him you’ve been keeping a journal. You tell him the divorce was for the best. You don’t know why you keep lying. Sometimes you tell him you’re a liar, but he never questions what you say.
When your mother visits, you just end up fighting. You try and fail to explain, without screaming, how awful this place is. She says it’s good for you to be here. You tell her she has no idea what the fuck she’s talking about. This place is not good for anyone. She’s never known what was good for you because she doesn’t know you. She has an imaginary daughter she has mistaken you for. How could you be someone you aren’t? She cries, and you feel horrible.
That is the only time she visits. Over the phone, she tells you it’s difficult finding someone to drive her. You ask her why she brought you to DC if she wasn’t going to visit. If you were in New York then at least your friends could have visited. You tell her this is all bullshit anyway; you weren’t even trying to hurt yourself. “I take a few extra Xanaxes because I can’t sleep, and you lock me in a fucking nut house!”
“I’m doing the best I can!”
“Yeah, and my husband divorces me. Did you ever think of coming and staying with me like a normal mother would have instead of telling me to get over it? You don’t understand what it’s like. You don’t just get over something like that!”
“There were needles in that apartment. You think I’m an idiot! You think I don’t know you had that guy staying there?”
You hang up the phone because you don’t know what to say.