The Door Girl, Part 15

I remember coming home from school one day and watching soaps with my mom. I can’t recall if it was Days of Our Lives or One Life to Live. But I do remember that a woman had been kidnapped and was being held by her captor in some sort of a dark cellar that actually contained a large steel cage she was kept in.

        One day, he let her out to eat and she took the fork he had given her and stabbed in in to the fatty tissue of his hand. As he stood there, grappling to get the prongs out, she ran up the stairs and in to the freedom of daylight. There were cars and sunlight and people and life. I remember imagining what she must have felt like.  

I was the man with a fork in my hand and Sarah Davey was free. I could never fault her for running.

The Door Girl, Part 14

Rage made its way in to my heart. People will ask me what losing my mom felt like and it’s a hard question to answer. When life is one way, it never occurs to you that it is supposed to be any other way. How could it be? And you, me, we…could never be anything different but what we were. Choice was never an option.

        I sat in the trailer many days playing Super Mario Brothers.

        I am twelve years old and I’ve finally made it to the last level. I play video games for hours upon hours alone. I cannot beat that damn dragon. I try and I try. I continue to fail. A hard-bristled hair brush is sitting next to me on the bed. The little man in the red hat who is me dies again and I scrape the brush against my cheek, gently at first. But each time I die, I progressively scrape it harder. I pour myself in to the game; I will beat it if I have to bleed to death. My face begins to burn, but I continue to tear away the skin because I am a worthless piece of shit who can’t even beat an imaginary foe. I keep fighting to win, my face raw and bleeding.

I lose. Again. And I have nothing to show for it except a bloodied face and a racing heart. My grandmother walks in and asks what the hell I did to my face. I tell her I was mad that I kept losing the game.

“Don’t you ever goddamn do that again,” she stares me hard in the eyes.

        

       

The Door Girl, Part 13

It wasn’t that we didn’t look for her. It was more of an understanding that she didn’t want to be found. We didn’t call the police and she didn’t have any close friends to call.

Mother was a solitary creature. She grew roots in to the ground by being alone. I think, in some imperfect way, we all realized this. People were hard. Long lines were hard. Losing keys was hard. Life was just too damn hard and Sarah Davey had to escape.

We knew that to bring her back would be like going out and looking for your pet bird that had, one magnificent day, taken flight out of the open window--impossible and pointless. She wanted to be free. She needed to run away like plants need oxygen.

And as much as it tipped our hearts out, we knew that to rope her in and bring her back would destroy both us and her. Mother was a caged bird set free. The hardest part was that the rest of us were all still stuck in the cage, the open door swinging with the wind.

The Door Girl, Part 12

Going to church with grandma was torture. That little Pentecostal church looked so inviting on the neatly kept street it was set back on. But the things I was taught there haunted me. I was taught of fiery furnaces and what a sinful creature I was. I believed it, every word.

Walking out the door one night before a revival, I happened to notice a threading needle on my grandma’s dresser. I quickly grabbed it and shoved it in my pocket being careful to place it in such a way that it wouldn’t prick in to my leg as I sat down. Upon entering the sanctuary, I took a seat in a pew all by myself.

Brother Proehl, the preacher, spoke of the one who had redeemed us and we sang “Amazing Grace” with gratitude that God had saved the wretches that we were.

As I sat there, listening intently to every word, I dug the needle out of my pocket and fingered it delicately.  The skin on my hands felt tough and ugly.  I began to dig away at the callouses, or those that I had imagined.  We sang the words, “What can wash away my sin?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus.  What can make me whole again?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”  The more we sang, the deeper I dug that needle in to my fingers.  Red began to seep out of my veins and I tucked my hands under my thighs to hide what I had done. 

This blood was real; this pain honest.  The blood and pain of a man who lived almost two thousand years ago, however, meant nothing to me. 

No matter how many layers of skin I pierced through, there was no way I could ever strip away the iron clad wall that I had constructed around my heart.  And no matter what I was taught in church about the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, no one but me was going to offer up retribution for the sinner that I was.

The Door Girl, Part 11

My life support was gone. She was gone. And within a short amount of time, I learned the art of filling up that hollow well inside of me. That hole was a place deep inside of me that was bursting with truth and pain. It was a seeping wound, constantly growing new cells of healing only to be ripped open anew. That place had a name, an address, a definite location in the pit of my stomach. If I chose to, I could delve my hands down and lift out that round heavy stone that dwelled inside of me—the way one digs their hands down in to a pumpkin and scoops out the seeds, digging their nails along the flesh of the inside. Instead, I held it inside of me. I woke with it, ate with it, spoke with it, bathed with it and slept with it. I read with it, rowed boats and wrote words with it. Everything I did, I held the stone heavy in my stomach and guarded it like the soldiers at the tomb of Jesus. It was my cross and the thing that slowly killed me day and night. But it was also the thing that taught me true compassion and made me embrace the humanness of mankind. This burden had become the most beautiful and the ugliest thing inside of me. 

The Door Girl, Part 10

There was an abandoned trailer at the beginning of the “U” shaped road. The bottom of it was all stripped down, probably by some guy in a pick-up truck looking for scrap metal. The door was roped off with caution tape, which meant nothing to us. Walking in to that trailer, I felt like Pip from Great Expectations walking in to Ms. Havisham’s old dilapidated mansion. It was a mansion to me. It was a place for us—my newfound family. We lived in that ramshackle shed all the year long. We found broken bottles and spun them until we began to quiver with nervousness at who would have to go in to that dark closet alone and get kissed, as though it were a punishment. All of us orphans who corded ourselves together on that beautiful string of discord. The ones who fed us and bathed us and were supposed to check our backpacks—they were all phonies. We knew what real family was and we redefined it for anyone looking from the outside. We were different colors, different genetic makeups—all struggling against that same tide, holding on to one another praying we didn’t drown the one holding us up.

The Door Girl, Part 9

Aunt Cassie lived three trailers down from Grandma in a park called Silver Lake. That’s because it was on a body of water, but it was actually not so silvery after all. It was more green and swampy with fat carp swimming around feeding off of dead things in the water.

But to the kids who lived there and myself, it was a dream. Here we were, all poor and dying inside living on a body of fresh water with nothing but time. We played Marco Polo, sang Rockin’ Robin as we rocked back and forth in innertubes and at the end we plunged head deep in to the water. There were adults everywhere who felt sorry for the tree dwellers like us, but we…we were living the American dream. So to any adult out there who feels sorry for those poor kids who come from divorced homes and are on welfare, don’t. Unless they don’t live on a lake. Then buy the damn kid a new bike and call it a day.

The trailer park was brown and lumpy. There were mounds of dust and brown dirt everywhere like the place was under construction—like new ground was about to be broken and beautiful homes were going to be built. The truth was, however, that the whole landscape was disintegrating. Aluminum panels hung on hinges and the land itself was constantly losing itself in battle to the tide. The place was falling down around us and we watched it burn, the fire glowing in our eyes. It was madness, appallingly, disgustingly magical. And it was ours.

Late at night, we would sneak down to the lake while our keepers slept. We passed notes between trailers to decide on a time to meet at the shore in between all of the “circle yes or no” notes that we sent. I usually had a boyfriend by about 7 pm and then had broken up by midnight. Yet another of the many games we played. Make up, break up and do it all again tomorrow.

The water was warm on those nights from rolling around in the sun all day. We twisted up our pajama pants to the top of our sunburned legs and pushed up our sleeves until they cut off the blood supply to our arms. No one lollied or said it was too cold. We all just splashed in, never minding that we might have to explain how our pajamas got wet.

“Marco,” one cried.

“Polo,” another…

We bobbed our heads under water and above to try to win a game we didn’t care about winning. We just cared about being together in the middle of the night. After, we walked, arms brushing back to our trailers and said goodnight as we parted ways. As I lay in my bed, with a broad smile on my face, the knowledge erupted that we were kings of our universe and no one could tell us any different.

The Door Girl, Part 8

When I arrived at home on my bike, the door was ajar and the smell of marijuana mingled in with Pine-Sol wafted out in to the night air.

My grandma and Aunt Cassie busied themselves around our little townhouse.

“Junie,” my grandma rasped in her smoker’s voice, “Go throw your pajamas and clothes for church in to a bag.”

Aunt Cassie stood there with one hand on the kitchen table and the other holding a joint.

“Your mother’s at it again,” she sneered, looking at me with lowered eyelids.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Jesus H. Christ, Junie!” my grandma blurted out. “How the hell should I know? How the hell should anyone know what goes through your mother’s brain?”

A memory from three years prior began to play in my mind like the reel of an old film.

Tommy was a hillbilly if there ever was one.  He was from the deep South and had a thick, syrupy drawl.  He always ate his apples sprinkled with salt and ate pizza with anchovies.  Besides strutting around the house all day with his farmer’s tan, he drew.  Pencil sketches lay scattered throughout the townhouse of nude women. 

Coming home after school one day, I open the door to find Tommy sketching lines on canvas that mimic the curves of my mother’s body.  She sits in a chair, her white, slender legs crossed at the knee.  Her silky brown hair hangs down her back and spills over her bare shoulders.  She looks at me and smiles with her lips sealed together, unashamedly.  Her dark eyes are filled with obvious desire and I hate her.  The hate is heavy and thick, just like Tommy’s words. 

Tommy loves to rub his penis against my skin.  As I lay on the couch one day with a blanket, he climbs in behind me and pretends that Tom and Jerry is the funniest damn thing he’s ever seen.  There goes Tom, chasing after that mischievous little mouse again.  Tommy slips my pants down around my thighs and pulls me hard against him.  He places his rubbery penis between my legs and squeezes them together as he moves back and forth.  I stare forward, unmoving.  My mother walks in the room, picking things up, putting them away.  Jerry has thumped Tom on the head, leaving a thimble-shaped lump.  Jerry scampers off to his little hole in the wall until the next time Tom comes hunting.  And I lay there, wondering why Tom can’t just leave that damn mouse alone.

And I know that grandma is right and that not one of us understands the madness that is mama.

The Door Girl, Part 7

Not being sure if mother was dead or alive, it seemed fitting to ride my bike to the hospital only a few blocks away.  I wasn’t going there for help. I was going there because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I didn’t know who to tell or if there was anything to tell at all. And so I sat in the hospital lobby and watched television. Unfortunately, there was never anything interesting on like Andy Griffith.  The evening news was all the receptionists ever had on, but I sat there just the same. 

There were four things I liked about hanging out in the hospital lobby and here they are in corresponding order:

1) The secretaries never asked me why I was there or where my parents were.

2) If I scrounged up enough change, there was a vending machine that sold Doritos (still my favorite, by the way).

3) The couches were semi-comfortable and the TV was always on.

 4) I seemed to always be the only one hanging out in the lobby.

The four things I didn’t like about the hospital were that:

1) I thought the secretaries should’ve been friendlier. That is part of their job description, after all. If I were a secretary, I would smile at people, especially children and give them suckers.

2) The news was the only thing ever on and it was dreadfully boring. Considering I was the only one who was watching it, you would think the secretaries would have asked me if I had a preference, like Family Ties or Fresh Prince of BelAir.

3) The place always smelled like piss. Always. I understand that it was a hospital, but they could have made more of an effort to mask the odor and make it not smell like a nursing home. And my mother had worked at a nursing home so I knew I was very accurate in my comparison of smells.

4) The gift shop closed at 6:00 pm and by the time I got there, the lights were always off so I couldn’t see what was inside of the windows.

The cafeteria was on the second floor, and so I would ride up the elevator to where the vending machines were, down the hall and to the left.  I could smell the leftover food and the smells of all the rehabilitating alcoholics that stayed on that floor, just like Mother had two years prior.  I didn’t know it before then, but depression and desperation had a distinct stench.  It smelled of meatloaf and dark rooms where dust settled on telephones.  It smelled of canned peas and mommies who did not check backpacks and husbands with folded hands and heads hung low.  All of these things seeped down in to my stomach.

I would plop down on the couch, a porous being soaking up sounds, sideways glances and doggedly training myself in to a white blur of emotion.  The women behind the counter would keep their heads bowed and were ever-so-careful not to make eye contact. 

            So, I sat there watching the news and eating Doritos and not knowing where my mother was. Looking back, I think of instinctual feelings in such a situation: fear, sadness, confusion, loneliness. But I didn’t feel much of anything. Just a numbness…a lack of feeling and ignorance of knowing what one should feel.

            The question of where my mother was barely entered my mind. I had learned long ago that she was vapor in my hands, always just beyond my grasp. Her physical presence was missing now, yes, but the idea of a mother had died long ago. The expectations of hugs and chocolate chip cookies were long gone. The desire for her to just show up in my little existence was a fantasy. The craving to be touched by her, loved by her…those feelings were, shovel by shovel, being buried in a deep black hole. Her missing body was really the last thing that was on my mind. Her heart was what I had craved.

            From the couch inside the hospital lobby, I watched people ambling off the elevators after visiting their loved ones, studied the pattern on the carpet of the floor, listened to the janitor humming as he emptied the trash. These are the things I thought about that night in the hospital.

            I witnessed the sun begin to slide its way down and wondered at how the streetlights flickered on just as the night began to swallow the light of day, letting me know that it was time to go home and get tucked in for bed.

The Door Girl, Part 6

I decided to use this strategy for myself after mother’s disappearance. I read once that if a certain situation is too painful for you to process, you tell yourself a new story to cope with the pain. Like, if your boyfriend who you were madly in love with breaks up with you and you are absolutely sure it’s because you have small breasts, you tell yourself that he had to leave because he was so in love with you that he wanted to marry you, but he didn’t have any money and so he had to forge his way in the world and he would eventually return to you—with perhaps enough money for you to get a boob job. This helps you not to hate yourself for still having to buy bras in the little girls’ department at Kmart. And it helps you to swallow the bitter pill of rejection.

So when my mother was suddenly gone, the first story I told myself was that I fucking hated her. That she was a drug addict and probably living in some hell-hole shooting up. Those were the words of the story I said out loud to my friends when they asked where she was.

The words I said in my head were that I fucking hated myself. That I was worthless. The pain of being a teenage girl without a mom was like being an apostle without Jesus. And I sure the hell didn’t have the Ten Commandments of “How to be a Pre-Pubescent Chick.” I just had a hole—a mom-shaped hole. And the ever-present fear of how I would ever learn to use a tampon when that dreaded day came.

And so I told myself a new story to assuage the pain. I was able to do this with all of the knowledge I’d gleaned at Al-Anon over the years. This story went something like this:

My mother is an addict. When people are addicts, they live in an addictive fog. The only thing they see, crave, dream about is the drug. Addiction is a heavy cross to bear. It is the thorn in one’s side. I must not take it personally because she doesn’t want to be like this. I am valuable and worthwhile, but my mother just can’t see that because she isn’t thinking clearly. Her struggles have absolutely nothing to do with me and I must learn to separate myself in order to not let the pain of missing her affect me. I will be strong and self-composed. I will astound everyone by being a perfect student. I will be practical and thoughtful. I will, at all times, be self-controlled. I will follow all the rules. I will be the opposite of my mother.

That was the new story I told myself.

But inside, the dying had begun. No matter what story I told myself—the true, the false, the empowering, the destructive—they were all threads wrapping around the part of my soul that allowed me to feel, slowly but steadily stopping the pulse of the thing that made me human.

And that first day, the day she disappeared, was the first of many ways I committed suicide. Unknowingly and against my will. It was a suicide of the heart.

The Door Girl, Part 5

Four days later, Aunt Cassie’s fiancé, Jack, laid before us in a casket. His father wept in a corner while his mother gently rubbed his back through her own tears. Pictures of Jack filled up the dimly lit room. People spoke in hushed tones about what a wonderful young man he was and wasn’t it a shame that he was robbed of such a promising future.

And there was mother, in her yellow dress. She had her dark brown hair combed back and pulled in to a French twist. Her makeup was flawless. If I had to use one word to describe her on that day, or on any of her “good days,” it would be “magic.” She carried herself in a way that others wanted to know her, men and women alike. She was confident and easily captivated those she was engaged with.

As she stood there, I couldn’t help but envy the fantasy that she lived in. Mother had decided that Jack’s death was a celebration. She had decided that she wouldn’t cry a single tear or feel a single thing. When reality was too difficult to swallow, she simply created a new one. Just like that. With the snap of her fingers.

The Door Girl, Part 4

All that to say, these little escapades my mother went on had happened before. So please, dear reader, do not think me entirely heartless at my aloof reaction to Sarah Davey having gone missing. Again.

The time before that, Aunt Cassie, my mother’s sister, was about to get married. It was four months until the wedding and Auntie found her fiancé dead from a blood clot in his leg.

My mother, upon hearing the news, ran out of the house crying. We spent the rest of the day searching for her. Never mind Aunt Cassie’s fiancé! Where was poor mother? We, my grandmother, aunt and myself, plodded through town looking. We called her pharmacist thinking maybe she had gone to him for something to numb the pain. There was no sign of her anywhere. Later that night, as we all sat around grandmother’s table not worrying about Aunt Cassie, my mother appeared in the doorway in full make-up and a beautiful yellow A-line dress, belted at her petite waist.

“I shall wear yellow,” she stated in a queenly tone, her face upturned. “For dear Cassie’s beau is about to join our dear Lord in heaven. This, my loved ones, is the best day of his life and I shall wear yellow in honor of this joyous occasion. God be with him.” And we all crossed ourselves, including mother, and wished Aunt Cassie would stop crying already.

Later that night, we all sat around our table, which was actually an empty carpet spool a friend of mother’s had found on a curb.

“Ma, can I have a smoke?” I asked.

“I guess,” my mother said, “but only because it’s a special occasion.”

She handed me one and the four of us: my grandmother, mother, aunt and I sat blowing rings of smoke. That day, my mother consented. Last week, she told me if she ever found me smoking, she would beat my ass, make me sit on the front porch and smoke an entire pack and then eat the butts.

“And then you will never want to smoke again!” She added with lips pursed, eyebrows raised, and a slim cigarette between her fingers.

It was a world of relativity, but one I knew how to function in. One day things were black, and the next day they were white. I never questioned the rules, but simply shifted along with them, like a mallard floating along with the ever-changing tide.

In that moment, we were like beads on a string that was slowly unravelling. If the beads fell off, they would simply scatter on the floor; they would become orphans unto themselves. And so we clung on to the insanity that bound us together with white-knuckled hands. We filled up our lungs with nicotine and tar and everything bad for us and smiled inwardly that we were all on the string as one.

The Door Girl, Part 3

Months before her disappearance, mother had met a new man. I hated him with every little part of me. Probably because of the way he looked at her, but more because of the way she looked at him. It made me want to throw up having to watch them ogle each other from the cigarette smoke-filled backseat of the car. It was actually inappropriate to look at a man like that in front of your daughter. I think if a policeman had seen it, she would have been arrested, or at least have to pick up trash on the side of the road wearing a bright orange vest.

Upon returning home from school one day during this time filled up with shooting hearts and rainbows, I found the door unlocked and nobody inside. I kept thinking that she would show up any minute, but she didn’t. So I pulled down a can of tomato soup from the cabinet, opened it, heated it in a saucepan and ate it for dinner. I put the pan in the sink, put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, said my prayers and curled up in the bed that we shared.

But she was not there for me to lay my hand on and feel the rise and fall of her shoulder to be sure she was still breathing. This was something I did each night after my father died, terrified that she too would leave me without warning. And so I laid there, listening to my own breath, making sure that I was still breathing. Wondering if I would, in fact, continue to inhale and exhale without my mother lying next to me.

When I awoke in the morning alone, I realized that I had continued to exist throughout the night without the one I thought I needed to survive. I would go on living without the one whose scent made me feel safe. My heart continued to beat without feeling her hands on my back. I, in fact, didn’t need anyone else to survive. Just me, breathing in and breathing out. That was the time in which those wild tendrils of self-protection had grown green shoots out of the fertile dirt of my heart. All they needed was some more watering and they would bloom like wisteria up a picket fence. 

The Door Girl, Part 2

The day I found our townhouse empty had been a relatively quiet one. I spent the morning at the park, 12-years old, spinning on the merry-go-round and balancing on railroad ties. Trains rarely came through, but the feel of the wrought-iron pressing in to the soles of my shoes sent signals up to my brain remind me that I was, in fact, Wonderwoman.  I was brave enough to defy death; nothing could bring me to my knees in this world.
I stepped, one foot in front of the other, ears perked for the rattling of an engine. At which point, if it ever did happen, I would lunge off the track and crash into the dirt, rolling myself to safety in a mire of dust. I was brave like that, always testing fate and silently screaming back at the world that I was invincible.
We resided in the upper part of the town house. There was a shabby aluminum door on the right that opened to a flight of stairs that led to where my mother and I lived.
I skipped up every other stair, counting under my breath, "1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13!"
"Ma?" I called. "Ma, you here?"
No one answered.
The birds chirped outside our perfectly clean windows and the leaves that hung from the trees outside were bright and green, a reminder that new life was everywhere.
I made my way to my mother's room, which was strewn with panty hose. This was not completely out of the ordinary. Sunday mornings were hell. Whenever we would be getting ready for church, she could be heard yelling, "Goddamn it! I don't have one fucking pair of panty hose without a run in them. Now I'm not going to fucking be able to go to church!" These words, oh, these words made me grin and my chest expand as I hated sitting through that service every Sunday. And that, my friends, is exactly why I had been at the park balancing on railroad tracks instead of eating the blessed body and blood of our Lord. It was exactly the reason why I was kicking up dirt at the park next door instead of listening to what a sinner I was and how I was going to burn in hell for all eternity if I didn't believe what I was told.
That part never really made sense to me. It kind of felt like me telling a blind person that the sky was blue. And although that person had no concept of blue, couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it—being told that if they didn’t grasp it, they were going to be burned to a crisp in a sea of fire—because they just couldn’t wrap their heads around that concept. Like death was a suitable punishment for not understanding something. It all just felt a little too threatening for my taste.
I looked over to my mother's closet and there was a single pair of panty hose fashioned in to a noose in a frenzy of hangers. If I had to tell the story of my mother, Sarah Davey’s disappearance, which I suppose is what I’m doing right now, I would tell you that my mother had spent the morning searching for a pair of stockings. I would tell you that amidst a torrent of four-letter words, she had told me just to take my ass to the park because it was another day we would not be spending with our beloved Savior because she couldn’t find a fucking thing to wear. Those were the things I knew. The part I didn’t know was that as I tested my strength on the monkey-bars, my mother was losing her ever-loving mind.
The noose was there, but she was not, which was kind of the good part of the story, but also the mystery. She had the wherewithal to make such a contraption, but seemingly, grew tired of the whole damn thing and just walked out. The whole damn thing being life.

The Door Girl, Part 1

There are a million avenues from which people choose to commit suicide. They can tie a noose around a beam. They can overdose on pills. Or they can violate their conscience to an extent that the throat of their soul will be slit wide open.

In the latter case, one has a physical body to perform necessary functions: eating, walking, sleeping (intermittently), feigning life. But the spirit is dead; the individual exists as a hollow shell. And there is no greater sadness than the shell of a human being walking around.
Suicide of the soul: the words "living hell" made palpable.

But this doesn't only happen with the sad individuals who live within the margins of functional society. It happens to your mother, dentist and even to you.

Do you have a pain that sears your heart both day and night? Have you endured morning after morning of burying your head under your blanket in order to defy the sun's proclamation that a new day has begun?

You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But I will tell you my own story, simply because I am exhausted by its incessant nagging.

The words nip at my heels begging for attention, like a dog hounding his master for a bone. They won't allow my eyes to rest even after the moon is glowing high. They have no shame about intruding on every last minute of my day, demanding without apology that the words be given life. I have tried to silence them, but they are relentless. The only way the words will stop their bludgeoning is for me to bleed them on to paper.