“Thanks, Momma,” I said. I wished Helen had slept in. I could get off to school without talking to her, and then I wouldn’t have her voice and all the other voices she was fighting with in my head. It helped me get 100 percent on my spelling and math tests if she wasn’t around when I was eating my cereal.
“He’s coming for us. So I’ll save you.”
“Good.”
She put the salt and pepper shakers up to her ears and listened to them. “Nothing there.” Then she dumped a load of sugar into her bowl and listened to that. “Only one voice.” She picked up her spoon and clinked it on the glass. “I can hear the voices, but they’re quiet today.”
“That’s good,” I told her.
Her head snapped up. “I’ll take you with me, girl kid, away from Command Center, but not Trash Heap. I won’t take her.” She took an eyeliner and small mirror out of her pocket and drew an eye on her forehead in brown. “Now I can keep a better eye on that small thing.”
I shuddered. Sick and scared.
On Thursday she smashed the TV because she was being watched.
On Friday she tried to beat up a cow.
On Saturday afternoon, in town, she whacked seventy-five-year-old Mr. Shiminsky with a spatula because he had “coughed,” and that was a signal that it was he who had tried to take her kidneys last night in her bedroom.
That afternoon I ate three cupcakes and tried to calm the nervousness that stalked the better part of my childhood on the farm.
I knew something bad was going to happen.
Two weeks later, on a sunny, serene Saturday morning, Helen tried to cut off her hand with a piece of glass.
I was curled up in bed next to Sunshine, who had crawled into bed with me, as usual. She smelled of lemon-scented shampoo and soap. The light was flowing through my window, highlighting the dust fairies dancing around. The Schoolhouse House was quiet, the birds chirping. I remember those birds. Later I would always associate the early morning chirping of birds with fountains of blood.
I woke up to the sound of shattering glass. Helen had broken her window with a hammer. I got up carefully, not waking up Sunshine, and ran for my door. I heard Grandma and Grandpa pounding down the hall at the same time that Helen started hollering, “Get out of me, Punk! Get out of me! I know you’re spying on me!”
It is not normal for children to see their mothers covered with blood. These images stay with you, burned and red and jagged, pricking at your innocence like a butcher knife against skin.
But there was Helen, a spurt of blood greeting my eyes. She was on the bed wearing a queen’s outfit that she’d worn onstage on Broadway. She even had a crown on over her dirty hair.
She held up her wrist as blood spilled out. “Hey, kid. It’s coming off. It’s not mine. The short spy, Trash Heap, put it there, I think.”
Then she passed out onto her bed, the blood seeping into the mattress.
I dropped to the floor as Grandma and Grandpa flew in. The last thing I remember is Grandpa picking Helen up and running out the door, blood flying everywhere.
Weeks later, when Helen drew an eye on her forehead and on her chin, because the government was spying on her and she wanted to “spy back,” I took Sunshine upstairs to our bedroom to play with the dollhouse Grandpa had made us. She sat in my lap. At first she wouldn’t play with any of the little dolls. I did it all. I walked the plastic girls around, put them at a table, had them take a nap. She watched me, her shoulders down, her body hunched in on itself, her unhappiness palpable.
“I love my charm bracelet, Sunshine, that you gave me, and I love you.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You’re pretty. Your hair is gold and sunshiney and yellow.” I pushed one of her curls back. I had put her hair in a little ponytail with a pink ribbon that day. “You’re the prettiest three-year-old in the world.”
She leaned her back against my stomach, and I gave her a hug.
“What’s wrong, Sunshine?”
She turned around and rested her cheek against my chest. I put the mother from the dollhouse back at the kitchen table.
“What’s wrong, Sunshine?”
She hugged me close, her tears flowing into my shirt.
“Why are you crying?”
She didn’t answer.
“Sunshine, what’s wrong?”
She said a few words, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
“What? What did you say?”
She lifted her head, her big blue eyes drowning with tears. “Momma hate me. Punk hate me, too. She told me. And Command Center hate me, too. Why everyone hate me?”
I was stunned. It felt like my heart had been hit with a nail gun. “Sunshine, Momma has a sickness in her head. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She doesn’t understand. She says bad things, but she’s not bad. She does love you, but she’s messed up….”
Sunshine wasn’t buying it. “She hate me. She say I going night night soon. Good-bye. Command Center take me, that what Momma say. Night night.”
I hugged her close and rocked her back and forth.
She picked up the momma doll and threw her across the room.
Grandma overheard that conversation. I knew because I heard the stairs creak, and then I peeked out my window and saw Grandma running to her garden. When she got to the middle of it, she leaned her head way back, hands over her face, and cried, eventually sinking to her knees near the lettuce.
Grandma and Grandpa were up against a wall and the wall was bending, curving, squeezing them. Our family was going to be suffocated by that wall if it didn’t smash the life out of us first.
After many discussions that I eavesdropped on, and many tears, they took their last option: electroshock therapy.
Helen was going to be tied down to a hospital bed and electrical currents were going to be shot through her brain.
Not generally something one wants to do on a Thursday afternoon.
When we got Helen back from being electroshocked, she did not appear to recognize any of us for days.
I don’t think she even knew where she was. She’d been gone for three weeks. Grandpa flew her to Seattle to a very expensive place for the mentally ill whose families have lots of money.
Grandpa gently helped her out of the car. Grandma went right up to hug her. Helen pulled back, hands up. “Don’t touch me,” she whispered. “Not now. No touching.”
Grandma backed off and brought her right into the house, fussing over her.
I said, “Hello, Momma.”
She tilted her head, quizzically. “Yes. Hello, girl kid.”
Then she studied Sunshine, who said, “Hi, Momma,” in a quiet, little voice, her lower lip trembling.
“What is that?” Momma asked, pointing at Sunshine. “What is that? Is she wearing a worm? I think she’s trying to kill me.”
The electroshock therapy and yet another round of new drugs did nothing for Helen except flatten her out for a bit. Grandma had to mix the drugs in with her food because she refused to take “tiny spy pills,” so who knew if she was getting the right amount of drugs with her strange or nonexistent eating habits.
For the first few weeks it was like watching a zombie who had a penchant for ball gowns and chicken wire.
Helen didn’t protest as much. She didn’t shout to her voices, although sometimes I saw her lips moving, a whisper coming out now and then, her made-up words slurring with the real ones, as if she’d forgotten those, too.
She did remember one word, which she whispered to Sunshine often: Night night.
Night night.
About three months after she had her brain electrocuted, Helen started seeing Command Center taunting her.
The first time it happened, we were eating dinner. It was Chinese food, I remember that. I had opened up a fortune cookie, and it said, “Accept your blessings.”
That night she let Grandma shower her. Grandma had gotten into the shower with her bathing suit and Helen smelled nice afte
rward. She’d even sniffed her hair. “I smell lemon,” she told me several times. She put on a blue flowered dress, a red velvet cape, her boots with the chicken wire, and a tin foil necklace.
Helen looked up from her fortune cookie and released a bloodcurdling screech.
It about gave Grandma a heart attack. Her wine spilled all over her lap, and Grandpa jumped straight up, ready to protect his ladies.
Sunshine moaned in fear, scrambled off her chair, and hid behind me. I couldn’t move I was so scared.
Helen climbed on the table, her face twisted with rage, and yelled, “Shut up, Command Center.”
I hugged Sunshine close to me, her skinny body trembling.
“Get back in the hole. You’re not taking me with you, gosh dammit!”
She picked up a dish and threw it at the corner. “Get out of here. No one wants you around.”
She picked up another dish and threw it.
I told Sunshine to run upstairs to our room, and she did.
Grandpa and Grandma tried to reason with their daughter, but she wasn’t listening to their pleas, their entreaties to calm down, relax.
She rearranged her foil necklace, then raged, her fists clenched, “Oh, no, not you, too, Punk, not you! Get out of here.”
“Momma, it’s okay. Nothing’s there. No one’s there—”
“Oh, you don’t know that, you don’t know that at all. He’s invisible to stupid people, but I see him.”
I felt my stomach clench with hurt. Stupid. I was stupid.
“Punk, I can see you,” she hissed, ignoring Grandpa’s hand as he gently tried to get her off the table. “You’re hiding behind that couch right there. I see you spying on me. I can see your red eyes! I can see your green nails. Get rid of him, Command Center, or we’re done. Put your cloak over him! I’m telling you right now!” She arched back, her hands out like claws. “Damn shit. You’re a damn shit.”
Grandma tried to calm Helen, but it wasn’t working. Grandpa said, “Sweetie, come on down. I’ll take care of them.” Nothing.
Then Grandma held herself up to her full height, stood in front of Helen, and said, “Command Center, leave. Punk, out of the house, right now!”
“Yeah, get outta here!” Helen yelled, her thumb in the air pointing toward the door, as she swayed back and forth on the table. “They’re still here, I can see them. Command Center is behind the lamp, and Punk is under the couch. I can see his red eyes!”
Grandma ran around the lamp, punching her fists, peered under the couch, and said, “Punk, get out of here!”
“I am not a slut!” Helen argued. “No, I’m not! Quit shouting at me! Make the others shut up! I said, I’m not a slut! You can’t torture me with your knives!”
Grandpa said, in a threatening, mean voice I’d never heard before, “Punk, I’m going to get my gun. Now get the hell out before I shoot you.” Grandpa went to a wall, grabbed one of his grandfather’s unloaded guns, and aimed it at the couch.
Then Grandma said, “If you don’t leave, Command Center and Punk, I will cast my spell! Do you hear me? I will cast my spell.”
“Yeah, she’s gonna cast her spell,” Helen yelled, punching the air with her closed fists. “You’ll be turned to dust!”
I watched, confused, bewildered, scared. Before my eyes, Grandma and Grandpa seemed to be morphing into Helen.
Grandpa ran forward and pretended he was shooting Punk and Command Center. Grandma waved her hands around while she was casting her spell, and Helen declared, “It’s three against two. It’s three against two!”
Now, why did that work? Was Helen exhausted because she’d been up all night? Maybe. Was it the medication, perhaps, recalibrating something in her mind? Were her demons suddenly, for a reason we’ll never get, mentally scared off? Was it Grandma praying not for total healing but simply for peace this one night that did it? Who knew?
But it worked. It absolutely worked.
Helen abruptly froze, then bent to stare at the lamp, climbed off the table, and peered under the couch. She blinked a couple of times and fiddled with her necklace “They’re gone,” she whispered, in awe. “They’re gone. They’re away.” Grandma and Grandpa each put an arm around her and laid her on the couch. “Finally, they’re gone.”
Grandma pulled two blankets up to her chin, and Grandpa stroked her hair. Helen closed her eyes and Grandma got her a fruit drink, mashed up her medicine, and had her drink it. “I’m not a slut, and I’ll bet the damn fried shits will come back to kill us on the cliff,” she said sleepily. They would, we knew they would—they always did—but Helen went right to sleep.
Grandma collapsed on the floor, and Grandpa stumbled to his chair.
I went outside and swung on the porch swing and tried not to let my mind crack open.
About fifteen minutes later Grandma came out to visit me. I was still shaking and asked her if she’d actually seen Command Center and Punk. I knew she would say no, but that’s what living with someone with schizophrenia can do. Every day the whole situation tests your sanity. Every day you question what’s real and what isn’t, and you teeter on the edge of keeping your mind together.
I snuggled into my grandma’s warmth as she reassured me she hadn’t heard or seen anyone else, because they weren’t real. A few minutes later, Grandpa came out and sat with us, his arm around my shoulder. He dropped a kiss on Grandma’s lips.
“Hardship, honey, builds character. Having struggles in your life, dealing with your mother, will make you a stronger, more courageous adult. Learning how to find joy in the little things, the stream that runs through our property, the mountains, art, animals, the weather, this will set you up for a life of gratefulness, and that will give you happiness. People who don’t have to deal with heartache, or don’t allow themselves to reach out to other people who are enduring heartbreak, end up being shallow, superficial, boring people, sweetie. They never truly live. They never get what life’s about. They never become full, compassionate, caring people able to live with wisdom and grace.”
We rocked on the porch, amidst the darkness and the sprinkling of stars, the white shining moon, the howl of a coyote, the whinnying of the horses in the barn, and the meow of a cat.
“Praise the Lord,” Grandma said. “I try to thank Him all the time for what we have and ask Him for strength to deal with what we don’t have.” She sighed. “But I’ve never thanked Him for Punk and Command Center. Damned if I ever will. Punk’s got those weird red eyes and he’s slithery, and Command Center is obnoxious. Such terrible manners! A horrible house guest!” She winked at me.
Grandpa chuckled. “I feel sorry for Punk’s wife. He’s creepy. I wouldn’t want to sleep with anyone with red eyes.”
I giggled.
Grandma said, “Yes, and Command Center is so noisy. I’ll bet he’s single. Who would ever marry him?”
I giggled again, and then I said to them, “Punk’s a punk!” And for one shiny moment I thought I was clever. My grandparents laughed at my joke.
“You’re right, Stevie. Punk is a punk!”
Schizophrenia is never pretty. It’s a disaster, plain and simple.
But it is easier when you have a grandma and grandpa to sit with, on a deck outside the Schoolhouse House, near a garden full of flowers and vegetables, their hands in yours.
25
Portland, Oregon
I had put the Dornshire letter into an unmarked manila envelope and dropped it off at the post office.
Legally, and playing by the rules, we were required to disclose everything to the other party during the discovery part of the lawsuit with the Atherton family’s attorneys.
But I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if Crystal found that letter, she would destroy it. She would not disclose it. She would do a skinny-ass victory dance in her high heels, close the door to her office, and shred it faster than you could say, “You lose, Danny boy, tough luck.”
And that would be it. My goodness, that would be it.
Would the Athertons lose their case without the Dornshire letter?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
It was a tough case. They did sign off on the medical paperwork, acknowledging the danger of the operation, and Crystal would make sure that the jury felt the evidence was “squishy” on whether Danny’s problems were because of a natural, although unhappy, outcome of the operation or the placement of the breathing tubes. She would have medical witnesses paid to say it was the former.
With the letter, would the Athertons now win?
Yes.
They would win. Slam dunk.
I opened my garage, pulled out a plastic sheet, dropped an old chair on it, and started my questions.
“Are you happy? What does that word mean? Should we strive for it? Should we be content with contentment? If you’re not happy, how do you become happy? Is happiness a choice? How so? Is it necessary to live a good life?”
The chair’s name was Stacey. I don’t know why. I painted it yellow and later would paint a fat raccoon on the seat eating a chocolate bar and grinning, and I would attach willow branches in an arc above it.
I don’t know why.
In the morning, on my deck, I found rain boots with red roses on them and a ribbon. The card said they were from Jake. I smiled. Inwardly, I did a jig.
At night I dreamed I was in a cozy house in a huge tree in the sky with a well-tended vegetable garden, golden sunflowers, pink roses, petunias, and marigolds. From the house you could see the sun rising up and down, pastel colors waving across the sky. There were other houses in the tree, and me and Sunshine would fly to visit our friends and neighbors, glittery wings on our backs. Butterflies would sail past and wave their wings at us, bluebirds sang trilling songs, and hummingbirds darted to and fro. We had tiny pink pastries and tea in blue and white china cups.
It was all lovely until a black cloud came and settled on the tree and shook it. The houses fell out of the tree, and the black cloud reached down and ripped our wings off our backs. We tumbled to the ground and smacked it and died, and I knew I should have saved Sunshine. It was my fault.