I don’t move. Let him do what he wants now, I think. It’ll be over soon.
He yanks me up by my arm and scans my eyes. “Shit!” he curses, then panics and runs to the refrigerator.
Almost instantly I feel lightness in the air, a floating, and then my head begins to spin in a centrifugal force like on the Gravitron ride at the carnival as I sense the downers spreading through my bloodstream. Grabbing hold of walls and doorways, I stagger back to my bedroom, uninterested in John’s banging in the kitchen, and collapse back on the bed. The room and ceiling whirl wildly around me; my body is the only thing in the room not moving.
John’s distorted features appear near my face. He is kneeling next to me on the bed. “Here. Drink this!” he demands in a low, short hiss, pushing a glass filled with half a dozen or so raw eggs in my face.
I shove the glass away, my hand feeble and lame, almost spilling the slimy liquid.
“Drink it!” he orders again, his face swollen red with anger. Then, in a second that I don’t understand, Thor’s little face is sandwiched between John’s large calloused hands. “If you don’t drink this right now, I’ll squeeze his fucking head till his brains pop out!” The brown of my tiny Chihuahua’s eyes bulge out of his skull; he is terror filled in John’s viselike grip.
“Stop!” I cry.
Thor lets out a paralyzed yelp, his face crushed brutally tight.
John keeps squeezing.
“Okay!” I wish the pills will take me faster, but they don’t.
“No. Don’t hurt him, John. Stop!” I let out a sob. “Okay!”
John drops Thor like a worthless river rock and thrusts the glass to my lips. He tilts my head back and pours the slippery fluid down my throat.
Falling back on the bed, I look up at the ceiling and smile. I already see stars, like the heavens have come. John is pacing back and forth from his office to my room. Those eggs aren’t going to work, my body tells me. The pills are beginning to take a stronger hold. The room swirls… stars spin… sounds fade away…
“Are you dying yet?” a male voice rings like a bell tone through space…
Since birth, a voice answers from deep inside my core.
“Are you near?” The male voice is impatient.
I don’t know… I’m afraid to look.
As if sucked through a vacuum of time and space, I become aware of a shape—my body—spiraling, consumed by a black hole abyss. Then, without effort, body and mind are one again and spontaneously the vomiting begins, purging my entire body, from the roots of my hair to the veins in my toes.
The next morning I feel rough, like I’ve been run over by a semi. I awake not knowing where I am. It takes me several minutes to pierce through the blurriness of my vision and see Sharon standing at the foot of my bed, dressed in her uniform for work. She asks curtly, “You up?”
I raise my throbbing head. Whaaaa—? Quickly, I lie back down. The pounding is immeasurable, splitting my temples. I gather my bearings as best I can. Slowly I remember the night before. Oh no. John. I wince. I’m still here. Despair consumes me. The vomiting—all over the floors, the walls… Thor! Where’s
Thor? I lift myself up on my elbows with difficulty. My skin. What are these bumps all over me? I am covered in red, swollen welts that look like bee stings and itch like mosquito bites.
Sharon brings in a pail of soapy water, a mop, and rags. “I’ll do that, Sharon,” I rasp. “I’ll get that.” She throws me a dirty look and walks out. She had to have heard everything. She must know the Darvon is missing. As I worry, I laboriously set about cleaning up the smelly mess. Then I numbly walk into the living room to face her. “Sharon, I’m sorry. Ssssorrry for the mess.”
“Here. Put this on your skin.” She hands me a tube of ointment. “It’ll help you with the swelling and itch.” She stares at the television as if she is using it to hypnotize herself away from this moment; the flashes of light and conversational tone of the narrator take her to a safe place for a moment. Her eyes still mesmerized with the glow of the TV, she robotically recites the physiological reasons for the welts on my body. “Your circulatory system was in the process of shutting down when you took the pills. You puked before the major vessels were affected, but the capillaries near your skin collapsed—they’re the first to go—and that’s what’s causing your reaction.”
“Oh.” I blink. Is that all she’s thinking? I wonder, amazed. I scan the house for John and notice with relief his leg sticking out of the blankets of his king-sized bed. A few minutes more, her eyes still fixed on the TV, Sharon picks up a white envelope from the counter and presents it to me. Then, walking into her bedroom she turns and, for the first time, shuts her door.
It is a letter. My hands are shaking, and my skin is crawling with itching bumps. Nervously I open it and cry. The long, sharp points and curves of her handwriting are like daggers in my open wounds. Through the blur of my tears, I read.
Dear Dawn,
How could you do such a thing? I am a woman who respects life; nurtures and cares for it. My career in nursing is a reflection of how deeply I feel about human life. I have always believed that I taught you that and that you understood and believed the same. To treat life with such poor regard—to do this to yourself—is to me, an insult to my kindness in letting you live here in my home. I am extremely disappointed in you, that you would have such little respect for me and especially for yourself! We will talk more when I get home from work. There has to be some changes from the behavior I have witnessed last evening or you can no longer have a home here. I hope you can see my point and can find the strength to look into yourself for this utter failure of character. This must never happen again.
Oh my God! I weep. She doesn’t know. What am I going to do? Now she’s mad at me, and she doesn’t know the truth! The feeling of being a caged animal returns; it is a sharp, gut-wrenching awareness. My skin, my chest, my buttocks, my back, and legs burn and sting, walls close in on me, and my brain shuts down. This isn’t happening, I chant, willing time to reverse. Everything is really over now. No! This can’t be happening! But it is happening, and I know deep down my time in what I used to call home is over.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Worst Day
The underground parking lot of the Holiday Inn on Hollywood Boulevard is dark and piss-stained. John wants to lie low before we check into the place; he is scanning the lot for easy hits. Lately, he’s helping himself to anything worth trading that isn’t locked or bolted down, using me as a cover.
It’s over—our time as a family with Sharon. The dinners, the holidays are just a blur and a topic John doesn’t want me to talk about. It is John and I now, living in seedy motels and in the Chevy Malibu when there isn’t enough money for a room. The van is gone. It has been traded for an old postal truck that never runs and has been abandoned back in Glendale. Here, in the backseat of the car, our belongings are shoved into black, plastic garbage bags. On the floor is a bowl for Thor’s water. At least I have Thor. The few precious pieces of knickknacks left in our possession I wrap in T-shirts and a brown paper bag, which I set carefully next to me in the front passenger seat. I am scared of John now, all the time, but he is all I have and the memories in the bag are, to me, a small portion of the dwindling proof that our love really existed.