When music and family collide...
Pills
I stare at the discarded book under my bed, D’Aulaires’ Norse Gods and Giants. My favorite illustrated book in childhood. Spears of memory pierce through my perpetual fog.
My Apple Shirt is grumpy today, pouting and whining in the corner and I pick up and cradle my cotton candy tie-dye shirt instead. Cotton Candy is delighted to see me, but at the last second I must put him down and get my Office Shirt, hanging smugly from my rough closet door. Cotton Candy cries, and I mourn for him but it goes away quickly because I’m going to work for Grandpa to-day! I sing and sashay around my room, my arms wrapped around Office Shirt as we waltz a perfect number to the orchestra Teddy plays in the corner. Barbie applauds from the window sill and Ken glares at me balefully but Fluffy barks and wags in excitement from his place of honor on my nightstand.
Mother calls, “Jay, you get your ass down to the car, you’re going to make me late for work!”
The performance ends. I bow and whisper, “Thank you! Thank you!” and my friends wave good-bye, for to-day I am going to work. I would stay in my room a thousand years and perform a thousand plays, but I have to leave because I am going to work to-day.
As I bounce in the car, I sing to best the radio, I wave to the stop lights, and Mother mutters, “Christ Jay, you didn’t take your pills today?”
I try to calm down so Mother’s angry face will go away, but then I see the big 7 at the gas station laugh at me and I have to laugh along. The 7 laughs, the 8 sings, the stoplight winks - everyone is just so happy to see me, all my old friends from childhood. It’s Saturday, it’s Saturday, I can be a kid today, it’s Saturday and I don’t know how Mother can be mad in such a beautiful place, no others to impress, no need to pretend to ignore 7 and 8 and Office Shirt and Barbie. I am a kid, Johnny the Kid! and it’s such a relief to shed my schoolnormalkid façade that I giggle.
The car screeches to a stop and my nose kisses the head rest in front of me, but the pink will go away eventually and then Mother races away from my wake and I go inside to Grandpa’s shop in my smug Office Shirt and I wave to Grandpa and Rachel smiles at me, Helen of Troy, and I go to account for the shop. I don’t always like accounting, my face pouts and Office Shirt sniffs, because even though the 7 laughs and the 8 sings, the 5 scowls with vampire teeth. 9 is safe. 9 is home, 9 is content. It’s a good feeling, the number 9. Rachel helps with the receipts and inventory and I bounce to be so near her. When I leave shop behind, even Office Shirt is happy and I want to skip to the car but Mother looks angry still and I think it will make her angrier.
“Jay,” she says curtly when I hop in the car, “Janice has some friends over. I want you to try to control yourself, I know that you have control over some of this at least and I don’t want you to embarrass Janice in front of her friends. But you really need to take your pills everyday.”
Office Shirt gets smug again, and the yellow light sighs a little as we go under and home to my sister. She and her friends stand in the singing kitchen. Yellow dances on the cupboards and the blender for smoothies hums a symphony of joy while the blue flowers on the wall dance. On the counter, the medicine-orange bottles sit and I shiver as I walk past them to the fridge, walk a bit faster, shoes squeak in urgency, speed-walk past the orange-bottles with the pulsating black clouds that surround them, that spread and reach out to touch me. I ignore them, their dull fog reminiscent of Hel, and am so relieved to get past safely that when I see the numbers on Janice’s friends’ homework I nearly blubber with joy about numbers, oh sweet numbers, the 7 that laughs and the 8 that sings that the 5 with vampire teeth and the 9 that is home and the 2 that sleeps and the 4 that growls. They laugh, I impress them, I spit jokes and they guffaw, open mouths like penguins, penguins wait for dead fish and I feed them. Rachel’s little sister Belle is there and I pounce to make her happy to make Rachel happy. I remember what it is to impress littler girls, and I strut my feathers as yellow and blue dance and I think normal thoughts while Janice and Mother begin to grow red in the background.
But then Janice asks me to follow her and I know I’m in trouble and in the hall she turns and she looks at me with her Zeus face, gray hair and beard dancing erratically with the static charge of thunderbolts.
“Jay, what is wrong with you! You’re supposed to be the responsible one, not me, you’re the oldest but what, you’re too immature to take your pills?! Leave my friends ALONE, just sit up here and do whatever it is you do.”
She storms away, waters receding, and I move slowly back to my room. Fluffy wags plaintively, Barbie stares worriedly, Office Shirt is sad when I take him off. Cotton Candy looks at me hopefully, but then stops when she sees my face. I tickle the radio and sit on my bed and Music strokes me, her fingers in my hair, massage my head, whisper enchantments in my ear.
I wake, sad, and whisper good bye to my friends, to sad Barbie and gleeful Ken, to tailbetweenthelegs Fluffy and sulking teddy, for I am going away to-day. I want to stay, but I want Mother to smile, Sif of the Golden Hair, and Janice to laugh, Aphrodite, I want them to like me. I march slow to the kitchen, a march to the gas chambers, a march behind the chemical shed, a funeral march and creep tentatively to Hel. Fenris stretches and bares his teeth and I shiver, Loki sneers from the cupboard; a fine trick Loki, to let me ramble yesterday. Mischevious, foul jotuns; I shiver and move faster to the fog, to Hel, to Utgard, to Hades and the river Styx.
I open the bottle and swallow my tail.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Memory fades and the black haze surges to take its place. The black haze that comes every day. The black haze I swallow. I leave the book under my bed. I walk down to the kitchen. I think that maybe it should hurt to remember: my happiness, their unhappiness.
It doesn’t.
“Hey Jay,” Janice calls. She is happy.
“How was school today, hon?” Mother asks warily from the kitchen table. Janice stares blankly at her homework, suddenly tense. They treat me a snake with its venom sac removed. No longer fatal, but I can still bite. I should be angry, I think. But the black prevents even that.
“Fine.”
I go to the counter to start my homework. Mother left some laundry out last night. My red shirt hangs lifeless from the back of the counter chair. I fold it. As an after thought, I pick up my old tie-dye rag of a shirt. I toss it in the trash. I walk to my room, laundry in my arms. I put it away. I sit on my bed and do my work. Mother brings an orange bottle into my room and places it on my dresser. Pills. She hums.
I do my work. The log of 5000 base 8… 5 nCr 4 times .9 to the 16th times .7 to the 34th… 4th root of 16728…
I finish my math homework. It is early. Light still shines on my bed. It is hot. I get up and turn on the radio. I stare vaguely out the window. There is nothing to do. I wonder if I should go watch TV. I am unsure. I do not know of any good shows.
The music plays from the speakers. An Evanescence song. I listen to the words.
“I can’t hold onto me, wonder what’s wrong with me
Lithium, don't want to lock me up inside.
Lithium, don't want to forget how it feels without...”