“Oh! My turn!” She spoke in baby voice, and leaned her head onto Daniel’s shoulder. “I’m Marcy. Daniel’s my boyfriend so you bitches better stay away!” She laughed while glaring at the circle. “No, I’m kidding! Of course I’m kidding. Well, not about the fact that he’s my boyfriend, he IS my boyfriend, but about staying away from him. No wait! I do want you to stay away from him … Daniel! Help me!” She blushed and shot an angry look at Daniel because he wasn’t doing a thing to prevent Marcy from being herself. Caroline cut in.
“Morgan?”
“Hi. I’m Morgan.” The boy was all monotone. “I used to live with my dad, but he killed himself so now I live with my mom, who’s a drunk. Good times.”
And on it went, and the nearer it drew to the new kids, the more horrified I became. Every confession offered up a perpetrator, the parent who wronged them, either physically or emotionally, but no one had anything wrong on the inside of them, like I did. And I never expected that one day I’d be forced to publicly expose my secret defects. That’s precisely what made them secret—they were never to be revealed! Also, I wasn’t entirely clear on what I had; no one was, which was precisely what made my issues so vexing. My first life memory is of the weird thing happening to me, and I knew, based on the mockery I received from my siblings and dad, and from the myriad doctors I visited, that it was not normal. I was born with a basketball net slung over my top ribs, and it was in there that the world dunked its balls of dread. When impending doom is your prominent emotion, there’s no room to feel much else—for example, hope. My normal responses to normal things were abnormal. I reacted to temporary partings from my mother as though they were final. Every time I had to leave her for my father’s house, or anywhere, I felt threatened with annihilation, an experience so fierce and real, it choked me, pricked me dizzy, conked my chest in, and made it hard to breathe. No matter how many times I left and returned, my body could not retain the part about returning. Each time was the first again, and several times a week I separated from my body, easily as an invertebrate from its shell, and slipped toward the ceiling, to watch, safe and distant as an omniscient narrator in a twentieth-century novel, my external self suffering the slow, sensational process of dying. It happened when I felt overwhelmed, when I was called on in class, when I had to take a test. When it happened in public, I had to control the internal hysteria, which meant I could not also engage in the world, and in those moments, depending on the circumstance, either I nodded my head, didn’t speak, or left quickly. Sometimes I did all three. Fear and my reaction to fear created the reliable pattern that led my life and gave it shape, but no one beat me or locked me in closets, no one burned cigarette holes into my forearm or pushed me down uncarpeted stairs, and as the revelations rolled around the circle, I felt a twisted envy, awed by the traumas sustained by these kids, jealous that what Ian and Caroline wanted, these kids had to deliver.
When it got to Tea she rolled her eyes. She wasn’t buying it. I didn’t realize that not buying it was an option. She was cool and I was terrified. I had nothing to offer. As Tea started to speak, I felt myself grow dizzy, and begin to float away. My lungs were collapsing, deflating into flat shriveled tapeworms.
“Honestly, I feel sorry for all of you. Your lives totally suck. I’m not sure how this is supposed to make you a better actor. All it’s doing is depressing me.”
“You don’t get it,” Daniel said.
“Well, that’s one thing we can agree on,” she shot back, and turned to me with a big smile. “Your turn!”
My brain was all white noise and I felt caught in its fuzzy, thick middle. As they waited for me to speak, I heard a stomach grumble, a throat clear, legs reposition, a sniff, and its subsequent swallow. Their nervousness for me activated my concern for them, and in order to alleviate them of their discomfort, I had to say or do something, even if it wasn’t what I meant to say or do. I felt my school uniform growing damp against my skin. When I shook my head no, I imagined myself in their eyes and decided never to return. I looked to the person next to me and said, “You go.”
As the next person spoke, Ian stood, walked around the circle, and stopped at me. A moment later, I felt his hot breath on my neck.
“Hey, come with me a minute, okay?”
Another wave of heat and sweat careened through me as I stood, hoping my movements did not mirror the wild collapsing inside me. I followed Ian out of the room, on my two stale candy-stick legs, and into the main hall, prepared for the worst, knowing the impending humiliation would ruin my entire life, but not knowing exactly how. What he said to me, and how attentive he was, threw me so off-guard, swallowed me in such relief, that I didn’t even bother to correct his incorrect assumptions. He thought I was hiding something, holding onto an enemy war code that he desperately wanted to break. He’d misconstrued my panicked no as a secret and I had a choice: maintain the mystery or come clean. While his misinterpretation of my withholding added validation to my concerns that I was always wrong and everyone else was always right, his intense focus triggered something bigger than my imminent fear. I got a hit of something I’d never tried and it swelled me with the best feeling I’d ever had. Unfiltered male attention; I wanted more. He put his hands on my shoulders and gave me a brief massage.
“You’re tense,” he said. “You need to loosen up.”
When he finished, he slung his arm over my shoulder and headed us back to the atrium. “Maybe smoke a little weed. You’ve smoked weed before, right?”
“Of course,” I said, all duh to override the truth.
And then he opened the atrium door and we walked back through it together.
Tea never returned, but I did. I liked acting, and I liked Ian, and while he had nothing to worry about, I wanted him to worry about me all the time. Each session started with the same group therapy, where I refused to speak, inciting more worry; except for his offers to find me weed, I was growing rather fond of his concern. After the late-afternoon teen confessional, the unoriginal, clichéd acting games and writing exercises, Ian and Caroline would take a cab to the village. Since I was the only kid member who lived downtown, they started offering me rides to their apartment on 12th Street and Sixth Avenue. I remember the very first cab ride because Ian said he was hungry for dessert. When Caroline asked what he wanted, he leered at her and said, “Boston cream pie.”
She giggled and smacked him, and he winked at me, the forced conspirator, who was nearly certain, but not entirely positive, that she understood. They treated me as someone who already had life experience. On the other hand, they seemed eager to be my life experience. They never failed to remind me that I could call them at any time of day or night. If I needed them, if anything bad was happening to me, if I was in trouble, if my parents were hurting me, they were the people I should call. When weeks and months passed and I still hadn’t called, their concern grew and their attention to me was amped so high, the other kids complained and I began feeling obligated to give them what they wanted. I was furious that my parents didn’t pull out my hair or toss me from windows. How else would I be pushed to call on my volunteer saviors and have them rescue me like they wanted when no one was threatening me with harm?
A few months into the fall, Ian called me at home. He wanted to see how I was doing. I was doing fine. He detected an edge in my voice. No edge, I told him. I didn’t have to pretend with him; I shouldn’t feel the need to hide. Okay, I said, adding nothing. Whatever it is, I can handle it. Whatever is happening to you, I can help you. I’ve been there before. What do you mean? I asked. My parents, they hurt me too. What do you mean? I asked. I mean, you’re not alone, runt, he said. (I was hurt by the term “runt” but tried not to spiral into an unhinged insecurity by reminding myself of Wilbur, the lovable pig in Charlotte’s Web—also a runt!) I know your pain. I see what’s happening to you. You do? I asked. I do, he said. I wanted him to tell me what he saw, because I needed material in order to have something to tell him. His calls became frequent and so did his questions. He even started coming over. Whenever I mentioned a guy, he’d ask me if I’d slept with him.