It didn’t take long for Ellen to collect the guidance she’d received from Festus and turn it into a humongous adolescent crush. With that came the insomnia.
At first, she blamed it on Leander. She’d wrapped up his body in a towel, then in a plastic bag, and carried it out to the unheated garage. It wouldn’t thaw for some months yet. In the meantime, she determined to try and bring him back to life. Every few days she went, uncovered him, and prayed. He was hard and chill, but his fur still held a faint scent of comfort.
At night, however, Ellen heard eerie echoes of whistling and chuckling. She couldn’t fall asleep; maybe Leander was resurrecting right now, and he was cold. If she didn’t go get him and bring him in, he might resurrect only to freeze to death all over again! The thought of entering the dark garage in the middle of a lonely frigid night was too much. Imagine walking on the icy cement floor, approaching the corner where she’d tucked him underneath an old planter. Imagine unwrapping him, finding him dead and hard as ever – or, somehow worse, his bright eyes open, his breath quick, his squeal of recognition.
While she lay in bed trying to sleep, Ellen thought of Festus. She thanked me for him. His face with its frank eyes hovered over her. She tried not to think of anything but his face and his hands, and struggled against the notion of kissing him. All of that made her sick. What she wanted to think about was him, being next to him, hearing his reassurances. It made a certain warmth spread all over her limbs.
Once, after the heat had ebbed and the thought of Festus was all wrung out, another urge overcame Ellen.
It was strange. Something sidled into her mind and replaced the healthy face of her teacher: she wanted to hurt her own body. Shocked, she cringed from the notion, rolling over and closing her eyes tight.
Maybe if I go to sleep, she thought.
The next night it happened again. The small window in her basement bedroom looked out parallel to the driveway. Beyond that, if she tilted her neck to the right, she could just see the black sky, the points of starlight, and sometimes a low-hanging moon. Ellen was lying in bed toying with recollections of Festus. He’d been so funny today! All morning he’d been making kids stand on their chairs when they yawned, and borrowing everyone’s pencils and mixing them up on purpose, inserting odd words like “obnubilate” into the spelling test. (Ellen had gotten it right.) He’d even made her giggle all the way through her daily nervous breakdown, giggle with tears in her eyes.
The warmth cascaded over her, making her shiver. She smiled at the sky from under her lashes, curling her toes under the blanket. But then, she already felt the glow receding. Her fingertips and toes came back to normal. Soon her arms and legs followed. Everything was cooling down. She tried to summon the face of Festus again, but it was like eating leftovers.
Instead, Ellen suddenly heard a clear voice: What would it feel like to be blind? She squeezed her eyes shut. No, the voice continued in a sneering tone, but what would it feel like to really blind yourself? All it would take is a couple tablespoons of boiling oil, or an awl if you wanted to be quick.
Ellen shuddered. But she skirted on the edge of the fantasy, enjoying the way it made her skin crawl. What would it feel like to burn yourself with the i-i-i-ron? continued the voice. A thrill ran over Ellen like cold wind. She rose from her bed, determined to test the idea, and turned on the curling iron. Then she sat on the floor of the bedroom in her long johns and undershirt, knees tucked under her chin, looking out the window at the stars. They were hard, twinkling, white. Ellen knew that far away, they were blazing suns. Around those suns orbited planets, some of them possibly like Earth. Maybe even, she thought, there is some other thirteen-year-old girl sitting under a window gazing out at my sun and thinking about how she’d like to change herself. How would she like to do it? Would she cut her skin? Would she knock her head against a wall, if they have walls on that planet?
I whispered, Maybe she would just write a poem about it.
Ellen quivered. She picked up the hot curling iron. It was the same as if she were going to style her hair, but this time it was two-thirty in the morning, her bedroom was silvery grey, and there was a girl on another planet watching her. My white bird fluttered around the scene in a panic, while the rosy glow around Ellen’s heart ebbed to nothing but a dark ember.
Pressing her lips together, Ellen pressed the rod of the curling iron to her arm.
Almost immediately, as the searing heat came alive, she pulled away. She whimpered. Then a hot flood of tears poured from her eyes as she started to cry. Along with the burn, there had come an overwhelming surge of longing. She hated that longing. It felt so weak. The flame in her heart surged as she felt it overcome her.
Angrily, she unplugged the iron and beat it against the floor repeatedly. She threw it across the room. It smashed the wall and clattered to the floor. Ellen wasn’t worried about waking up her parents. They wouldn’t come down here to her bedroom, even if they heard a noise. They never did.
The next day, Ellen couldn’t bring herself to get undressed for a shower. She stayed dressed in her long johns and undershirt, piling on more layers. Two more shirts, jeans, three pairs of socks. She rinsed her hair. It was the same the next day, and the next. She changed only the outer layers of clothing for five days in a row. On the weekend, she finally took a bath.
Ellen tested the new urge many times that winter and spring. I am so thankful I made her to be somewhat melodramatic and full of hot air. Every time she took a weapon to herself, she whimpered and put it down, picking up a pen instead. She was too chicken to put any pressure on the blade of a knife once it rested against her skin. The most she could muster was a quick test of heat. Barely a blister. Only a whole lot of bad poetry.
Something did concern me about these little tests, though. As the long dark nights progressed, Ellen moved closer and closer to a source of inner intensity over which she held little control. She sat on the floor, writing hot and disturbed things, her eyes hollow. The live flame in her heart grew dimmer; its light no longer danced around her face.
She avoided showering and bathing as much as possible, changed her clothes only weekly. Waking up late and haggard in the mornings, she knelt by the bathtub and dunked her greasy head in the water. It became a nearly impossible task to change her own clothes; without thick layers on, her skin felt sanded down to bare nerves.
All this would have been sufficient; after all, there was nothing too harmful in any of it. Most adolescents act like weirdoes and experiment wantonly with the nastiness of their bodies. But Ellen’s depression hovered like a broken helicopter over a spinning whirlpool of disruptive, incessant craving. She’d discovered an absolute drive to self-destruct, and there was nothing she could do to ease it. In her rocking chair, she’d always found solace from the terribleness of other people. This dark well of need was situated inside herself. I watched in anxiety as she descended into it, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before she was incapable of clambering out.
Upstairs, Marisol and Georgie slowly barrelled through the last, crumbling wall of their marriage. At Christmas, George had started buying his own groceries and shoving them at the back of the fridge, on the bottom shelf. Cherry yogurt, extra old cheddar cheese, diet Coke. Chips and crackers at the back of the cupboard. He hid them there and didn’t share with anyone. At night when the kids were asleep and Marisol was absorbed in her novel, he snuck out the snacks and went downstairs to watch television alone.
The food surrounded him like a fortress. As he sat eating, the food piled onto a layer of futility in him that he was at a loss to explain. He still missed smoking dope. Religious fervor had proven a paltry substitute. The praise songs and fanatical hand-waving of Pentecostalism diminished the anxiety on Sundays, but throughout the week he felt his whole body and soul sinking into emptiness.
Besides, Marisol made him go to the Mennonite church twice a month, where they seemed to know how to drag all the fun out of worship with their laborious hymns, solemn prayers, and black head coverings. Mennonites made believing seem like hard work.
What was the point of it all, if not to make you feel good in the end? Filled up. Absolved. Relaxed. The only reason he’d become a Christian in the first place was so that he wouldn’t have to worry about stuff anymore. He was going to Heaven; he believed in Jesus Christ as the number one way to get to God; the gospel had set him free, so to speak. Yay.
For some reason, Georgie felt he lacked the so-called benefits of faith. Something was missing. Nothing made him feel the same wandering, shrouded sense of easy fulfilment as a big fat doobie at four-twenty in the afternoon; nothing. He didn’t want much, just to be left alone by his shrew of a wife and his inconsiderate children. Nobody thought of him or cared. Nobody thanked him. It didn’t matter how hard he worked or how much money he made; it all went into a big hole. The stash of food was mere compensation.
At first, Marisol paid no heed to her husband’s hoarding. She even smiled. She saw the cherry yogurt at the back of the fridge and thought, We are being tolerant of each other, he works hard, he deserves a treat.
Then Ellen’s gymnastics meet and Bonnie’s piano lessons and Charlie’s soccer cleats came up. “Dear,” said Marisol, sidling up to her husband, “there are some payments to make.”
“Payments, what about payments,” he answered dully. “What else is new.”
Marisol felt the first spike of resentment. She breathed.
“For the kids’ activities.”
“The kids’ activities.”
“Yes.” She gritted her teeth.
“How much?”
“Well, with the gym meet and the lessons and shoes, it comes to about two hundred.”
“Two hundred bucks! How did children get so expensive? I thought all they did was run around and play in the street. Well, anyway. Write the cheques, what else am I supposed to say?”
“It’s good for them to have stuff to do,” Marisol said, trying to sound bright.
“Why do I always feel like a big fat billfold, opening and closing and opening, I’d be a good accordion player,” he mumbled, scratching his neck.
Marisol stalked to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and dug into the stash of forbidden food. She pulled it all to the front and stacked it on the top shelf.
Not long after, Georgie came home from work to find the four children eating his extra old cheddar cheese atop his special crackers. Four cans of diet coke fizzed happily on the table.
“What’s this,” he spluttered.
“What do you mean, what’s this.” Marisol regarded him coldly. “This is food that was in the fridge.”
“Is it too much for a man to ask, to have a few things to himself around here?” Georgie stormed. He approached the table and began stacking up the cheese and crackers in his hands.
“But Daddy.”
“Dad!”
“Daddy . . .”moaned the children, their mouths full.
Bonnie hadn’t even moved or glanced at the father. Then her eyes sidled up and gave him a look of such withering hateful boredom that all at once Georgie threw the crackers and cheese in the air. Crumbs and bits flew everywhere. When the morsels landed, Charlie and Ellen stretched out their quick hands to gather them up. Bonnie sat there, still glaring silently. Keanan tapped his foot and looked out the window, humming.
“Eat it all, then!” shouted Georgie. To his own surprise, bright tears reared up in his eyes. He left his family in the kitchen and pounded to the bedroom.
Marisol stood with her arms folded smugly. Her face gleamed. There he went.
She watched over her children as they finished the snack. Their faces were eager, intelligent, hungry. Walking round the table, one by one, she touched their bent shining heads protectively. Gone was the indulgent smile of a gentle wife. The husband’s true colours were back, and so were hers.
If he wanted to withhold, then she would show him the meaning of the word.