The Memory of Light

  “They moved Jeannette to the other side on account of she upgraded. This side of the mental ward is the low-grade side — us mentals who aren’t an immediate danger to themselves or others. Of course, we can get like Jeannette at any moment. That’s why the windows don’t open and there’s no mirrors anywhere and two to a room and a nurse checking in every half hour. One night I woke up to these grunts, and when I looked under the bed, there was Jeannette, butt-naked, chewing her finger off. She upgraded.”

  I close my eyes. I feel like I stepped off the moon and am dropping through space, and I grab on to the side of the bed. When I open my eyes, Mona’s there beside me. She holds on to my arm as if to keep me from falling.

  “It’s gonna feel weird for a while. Like you’re not really here.”

  “Yeah,” I say. That’s right. I’m not really here. I died last night and this is just a dream. That’s a good way to put up with life while you have to. It’s just a dream.

  “Take a snooze. I have to work a couple of hours at the beauty shop, but I’ll come get you for dinner. You coming to the GTH tomorrow?”

  “GTH?”

  “Group Therapy Healing, or as I call it, Gripe to Heal. Who knew complaining could make you sane?” She grins at me. “There’s three of us, E.M., Gabriel, and yours truly. E.M. is here because a judge sent him for beating the daylights out of one too many people, last one being his own father. And Gabriel? God only knows what ails him. But that’s the group, plus Dr. Desai. We just talk about stuff.”

  “Oh,” I say, grabbing my head. Dr. Desai mentioned group therapy earlier, but it is not only actual talking that hurts. The very thought of listening and being polite, of having to say “please” and “thank you” to others, makes me cringe.

  “I know what you mean,” Mona says. She pats my arm a few times. “But you got to force yourself to talk even if it’s hard. Don’t worry about what you say. For some reason that I’ve never been able to figure out, talking helps, even if it’s nonsense.”

  “What’s there to say?”

  “There’s all kinds of talking going on in your head. Just let some of that junk come out, who cares what it is. Look at me. If it’s in my head, it’s out my mouth.”

  “I noticed,” I say.

  Mona laughs. “That’s good. So there’s a little humor in you. You were trying to be funny, weren’t you?”

  I shrug. I’m not sure I was.

  “You think my watching TV will bother you?” she asks. “I like to watch reruns of old sitcoms at night before I go to sleep. There’s this guy in the cafeteria who says he can get me some of those remote control earphones. You watch much TV?”

  “Some. When I can.”

  I can tell by her face that she understands what I mean — that there are times when nothing works to numb the pain, not even mindless TV. “Nice thing about sitcoms — you can watch them while you’re mental.”

  “Mmm,” I say. Maybe sitcoms are like the poems I liked to read when things got really bad. Even when my brain stopped working and words were hieroglyphics, the images and rhythms kept me company.

  “You cut your own hair, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Mona’s look is serious, professional. She tilts my head left and right. “I could maybe even it out a little if you want me to. I’m a cosmetologist. You wouldn’t know it by the way I look right now.” She pulls a strand of her hair and examines it. “Yuck.”

  “Who cares?” I say. “We’re mental.”

  We look at each other for a moment, and then she grins at me again. I have a feeling that our backgrounds are very different. My family is wealthy and hers is probably not. I’ve lived a life of ease and comfort and she hasn’t. But right now we have at least one thing in common: We are both here at Lakeview, failures at the thing called living.

  Later that day, Mona and I go to the fifth-floor dining room. She tells me that unlike other floors of the hospital, patients in the psych ward do not get trays of food delivered to their individual rooms. Instead, we all eat in a common dining room, including patients from the upgraded side of the floor. After we pick up our trays of food, Mona heads straight for a table where a young guy is sitting. I follow her. The pain in my head has diminished and I’m not anxious about the talking that’s bound to come. Listening to Mona’s chatter has somehow made me feel strangely (and gratefully) numb.

  “Hey, you,” Mona says to the guy as we sit down. He has a rocklike head that was shaved not too long ago but is now growing black, bristly hairs. Tattooed, massive muscles bulge out of his T-shirt.

  “Hey,” he responds, his eyes on me.

  “E.M., meet Vicky,” Mona says.

  He nods without smiling. I nod back, also without smiling. I think he expects me to be scared of him, and maybe I should be. But I’m not. How nice not to care what someone thinks of me.

  “Where’s Gabriel?” Mona asks.

  E.M. tilts his head in the direction of the dining room’s doors. We all turn to see another young man with an elderly lady in a purple terry-cloth robe hanging on to his arm. He takes her to an empty table and pulls a chair out for her. Then he goes to the tall aluminum rack of trays and brings her one. He removes the lid from her plate and unwraps the cellophane from the plastic glass of fruit punch. Then he picks up another tray, makes his way to our table, and sits. He bows his head for a few moments, then leans back and smiles at each one of us.

  “Hi,” he says to me. “I’m Gabriel.”

  “Vicky,” I respond. I manage a small smile that mirrors his.

  “She’s my new roomie,” Mona says.

  “Welcome,” Gabriel says. His eyes are intense in a friendly way, like someone trying to remember where they might have met you before.

  “How’s your girlfriend doing?” Mona asks him, casting a sideways glance at the lady with the purple robe, who is quietly muttering to herself.

  “Gwendolyn,” Gabriel says. “Today she finally told me what her name was. I asked her if people called her Gwen, and she said that she prefers Gwendolyn.”

  “Dude, be civilized. Use your fork and knife,” Mona tells E.M., who has picked up the chicken thigh with his hands and is taking big bites out of it. E.M. ignores her.

  “I like that name, Gwendolyn,” Gabriel says, and smiles at me again.

  I look down and stab a single green pea with my fork. I read a poem once by a poet named Gwendolyn Brooks. Something about sweet sleep and the coolness of snug unawareness. I try to remember the exact words but I can’t. It is only the poem’s feeling that I recall.

  “How’s your first day going?” Gabriel is still talking to me. I hear his voice as if from a distance.

  I try to answer, but my throat closes in on me and I begin to cough. After I peel off the top from a plastic juice container and take a sip, I say, “Okay.”

  “You’re with Dr. Desai?” It’s Gabriel again.

  “Of course she’s with Dr. Desai,” Mona says. “Who else would she be with?”

  “When I got here, I had some guy could barely speak English,” E.M. says with his mouth full.

  “That’s just temporarily,” Mona says. “Eventually all people like us get assigned to Dr. Desai.”

  “People like us,” Gabriel repeats, smiling.

  “Kids our age.” Mona gives him a look.

  “It gets better after the first day,” Gabriel says to me.

  “Especially the talking about your messed-up life,” Mona adds. “That definitely gets easier once you start doing it.”

  “Like that was ever hard for you,” E.M. says.

  “Duh, yeah! It’s not easy for someone of my perfection to admit slipups.” Mona winks at me.

  “Slipups.” E.M. glances at Mona’s wrists. “That’s a good one.”

  Before Mona can respond, Gabriel asks, “How long will you be at Lakeview?”

  It takes me a moment to realize Gabriel’s speaking to me. I am a little dazed by the speed and tone of the conversation — a gentle but
blunt sincerity. “Till tomorrow morning.” I push my plate slightly away from me.

  “Isn’t that crazy?” Mona says. Then to me, “You need more time.”

  I look around the silent table. I can see in their eyes that they all know why I am at Lakeview.

  E.M. speaks first. “Did someone find you or did you call for help?”

  “E.M.,” Gabriel admonishes softly.

  “Don’t be such a brute,” Mona says to him, less softly.

  “Just asking a simple question,” E.M. replies.

  “What difference does it make?” she asks.

  “None,” E.M. responds, and leaves it at that.

  Gabriel says to me, “The thing you gotta know is that you don’t have to answer any questions from any one of us, or even talk if you don’t want to.”

  I clear my throat. “That’s what Dr. Desai said to me when I met with her.”

  “She says that to everyone. But try sitting in front of her for fifty minutes without saying a word.” Gabriel struggles to open his milk carton.

  “Fifty minutes?”

  “If you stayed at Lakeview, you’d meet with Dr. Desai for fifty minutes every day,” he explains.

  “Fifty minutes go fast,” E.M. says. “If you don’t feel like saying anything, just close your eyes. That’s what I do.”

  “Really? What does Dr. Desai do?” Gabriel asks.

  “I don’t know.” E.M. shrugs. “My eyes are closed. Sometimes when I open my eyes, she has her eyes closed too.”

  “That’s so sweet,” Mona says. “You and Dr. Desai taking little catnaps together.”

  E.M. glares at her.

  “You never cease to surprise me.” Gabriel is looking at E.M. and shaking his head with something that resembles admiration. “You’re not napping when you close your eyes, are you?”

  A tiny grin appears and disappears on E.M.’s face. “You gonna eat that?” he says, pointing at Mona’s tapioca.

  Mona pushes the tiny white bowl toward E.M. “What difference does it make if someone asks for help or not?” she says. E.M.’s eyes are solely on the pudding. “E.M., I’m talking to you.”

  “What?” E.M. looks up.

  “So I changed my mind and called 9-1-1 in the middle of trying to kill myself. What difference does that make? Do you think I was just doing it to get attention or something?”

  “Remember your rule?” Gabriel says to Mona. “No heavy-duty stuff at dinnertime.”

  “It’s not heavy-duty. I’m just interested.” Mona holds her right arm with her left hand, and I realize she’s doing that to keep it from shaking.

  “There’s no difference,” E.M. says calmly. “Whether someone finds you or you change your mind, in both cases you want people to feel sorry for you. You’re being cowardly, running away from your problems. That’s weak. It takes courage to keep going when life is rough.”

  Finally, I think. Truth.

  “That’s not always the case,” Gabriel says. He waits until E.M. looks at him. “I agree with you that it takes courage to keep going when life is hard. But a person who kills himself can be ill. When you’re ill, you can’t deal with problems the way healthy people can. Not being able to have courage and hope is the illness.” He sounds like some kind of wise old man dressed in a kid’s body, but he doesn’t seem to be faking it.

  E.M. shakes his head. “No matter how bad things get and no matter how sick you are, you still have a choice. You can’t tell me you don’t. Lots of people have it real bad and they don’t give up. That’s what courage is, man. Going on when everything’s against you.”

  “How can you possibly not get it?” Gabriel says. There’s emotion and conviction in his words but no hostility. “You’re talking about an ability to control your thoughts that may not be possible for a person who’s mentally ill. Haven’t you ever been overcome by a force more powerful than you? When you beat up all those people who made you angry, didn’t you lose control then? You’re here because you can’t control your thoughts.”

  E.M. is quiet. Then he says, “Sometimes when I beat people, I was in control.”

  More silence follows. I just witnessed something real, not fake, something personal to everyone here, including me. My head feels strangely clear. Somehow words come out.

  “He’s right,” I say, looking at E.M. “There’s always a choice. I could’ve stopped taking the pills. I didn’t want to.”

  “Do you want to die?”

  The directness of E.M.’s question takes my breath away.

  “Maybe that’s not the right question,” Gabriel says kindly. “Maybe the real question is, do you want to live?”

  He’s right too. They are two different questions: Do you want to die? and Do you want to live? But in the darkness of my mind, not wanting to live and wanting to die don’t seem like two things you can pull apart. They’re wrapped up in the no more that I feel right now.

  Gabriel goes on. “E.M. there wants to live. I want to live. Mona wants to live so she can be with her sister, Lucy. Do you want to live?”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Not wanting to live is an illness. It can be cured,” he says with certainty.

  “It’s a weakness,” E.M. responds.

  “Emilio, stop,” Mona says.

  They all look at me again. I clear my throat and try to speak, but the words in my mind have no external sound. I don’t want to live. I want to die. It’s all the same. I don’t want anything. I simply don’t want.

  I fix my eyes on E.M. because it feels as if he’s the one drawing out the words. “I agree with you. Not wanting to live is a weakness. People are poor, hungry, homeless. People in physical pain — they suffer, really suffer, and they don’t try to kill themselves. They find strength somewhere, even just a little, to keep them going. I had … have, everything….” I picture my room at home, and I can’t speak for a moment.

  “It’s okay,” Mona says.

  “A family,” I manage to continue. “People who care for me. A home. Much more than most. Somewhere in me I probably had the strength to not kill myself. But I was tired of looking for strength. Tired of being strong. That’s what I did to make it through … each day, go through the motions of being strong. I put on strong every morning. I’m sick of faking strong.”

  I look down at the table. I have said more about how I feel to these strangers than I have to anyone for as long as I can remember. I should feel disgust, shame, embarrassment, all kinds of familiar things, but I don’t.

  “Vicky,” Mona says, “you can’t go back home tomorrow. Can’t you stay?”

  All eyes are on me, silent. As if my answer matters. As if leaving Lakeview would be a personal rejection of them.

  “Dr. Desai wants me to stay two more weeks,” I say.

  “And?” Mona tilts her head.

  I imagine for a moment what my father and Barbara would think of E.M. and Mona and Gabriel. These are definitely not the kind of people they would like me to associate with. But they are more like me than anyone I know, in some way I can’t quite put into words. There’s something fragile about all of them, like they’re holding on to what the world expects of them by some brittle branch that can break at any moment. And none of them seems concerned with hiding it, with pretending that they’re something they’re not. If I go home tomorrow, I will need to pretend. I don’t see any way around it.

  Maybe I can stay here and give the pretending a small rest.

  “I’ll ask my father,” I say.

  “Yes!” Mona claps her hands. Gabriel nods approvingly.

  “If you can survive rooming with Princess Psycho, you can survive anything,” E.M. says.

  “Yeah,” Mona says, not offended one bit. “Stick with us, kid, we’ll show you how to survive.”

  My father’s first question when he and Barbara come the following morning is “How do you feel?”

  I answer him.

  The second one is “Why did you do it?”

  That one I can’
t.

  “But why, Vicky? I don’t understand.”

  I shrug. Shake my head. We are in a room near the main entrance to the hospital, waiting for Dr. Desai.

  “Was it the pressure of school?”

  “No.”

  “Was it the fiasco with the debate team and Cecy?”

  “No.”

  Was it that boy, what’s his name? Jaime? Was it the fact that Juanita is going back to Mexico at the end of the month? Was I not getting along with Becca?

  No, no, no, no. To all his questions, I answer no.

  I was thinking about this last night after dinner, and the truth is, there was no one spark that lit the dry jumble of words in my head into the fire that brought me to the bottle of pills. Why do people kill themselves? Doesn’t it always boil down to pain? There is pain in the body or the heart or the soul or the mind or all of the above. Body pain is obvious. Heart pain is the pain that comes from others, when they love you too much or not enough or the wrong way. Soul pain comes from feeling your life is one big waste. Mind pain is what I can’t figure out. It’s like when you throw body, heart, and soul pain into a blender, then you add a cup of disgust at all that you are, at all that you’ve become, at all that you will ever be.

  So with my father’s question, the only answer I have is because it hurt. The words that settled forever in my head, the ones that kept rising endlessly out of nowhere, the words that others spoke, they hurt. All of it hurt, inside and out, everywhere.

  But I can’t say any of that to my father.

  “Well,” he sighs, “we all make mistakes sometimes. Let’s go home and see if we can figure this out.”

  I don’t know what to say. The thought of going home scares me. I am grateful for the forgiveness I hear in my father’s voice, but in my experience, our house is not a good place to figure things out.

  “We called Dr. Saenz on the way to the hospital,” Barbara says. “He’s the best young people’s psychiatrist in Austin, and he has agreed to see you even though he’s not taking any more patients. His office is in one of our buildings, so he’s doing this as a personal favor. He can see you as early as next week. I can pick you up after school and take you.”