Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets (8 page)

The music was loud enough to mask the words but not the anger.

Despite three solid years of this kind of simmering anxiety followed by bursts of fighting, I still got a little shock in the lungs when I heard yelling.

One thing I had stopped doing: turning the volume down to hear the details. The details never came through clearly enough anyway. The Banshee would yell something about curfews. My sister would yell about clothes. The Brute would smash his palm against a wall. And often the fights would never really end. Or they never ended with words. There was plenty of yelling. Yelling, though, seems to negate the meaning of words.

Understand too that I am more familiar with the sound of my family’s angry voices than their laughter.

So I was on my computer, doing some homework or downloading music while listening to music. I was in my pajamas. My room was cold because I shut the heat vents to cut down on the dry air. I get nosebleeds. It’s intolerable. I wore socks to retain heat. My feet were pulled under my desk chair. I remember lots of pointless things about the way the night felt.

I heard little peaks of yelling over the peaks of music. I listened but I didn’t listen.

But then there were sounds that didn’t belong—
vicious
sounds. Alarming vibrations tendrilled through the house. Prolonged yells from my sister coming from downstairs. I should hear her running upstairs, slamming her door. I should hear pounding on her door. I should begin to hear the concluding yells as Jorie shuts down.

I muted the music and listened. I was afraid to get caught listening, but the sounds from outside my safe little room were loud, mixed up, unnerving. I heard glass break. I heard the Banshee yell, “You are an embarrassment! I can never explain you to anyone!”

Jorie screamed something over and over.

I pressed my ear against my door and heard feet drumming up the staircase. I thought we’d gotten back on track. Jorie got to her room. My parents followed up the stairs. More yelling about respect and criminal charges and ambulances.

Then something huge crashed in Jorie’s room. I pictured—for a quick, guilty moment—her pinned under her bookshelf. An accident, but one that could defuse the entire house immediately. Everyone will apologize. Everyone will get along.

I hadn’t done this in a while, but I started to mutter a hope or maybe a prayer. I wanted this all to go away quickly and without comment.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!” Jorie screamed.

The hallway walls took a few shots from someone’s fists. I should’ve opened the door to look, but I couldn’t. I felt the doorknob in my hand, but it felt like Saturn—like a gas giant that would mist between my fingers.

THUMP

THUMP

THUMP

THUMP

THUMP

THUMP

THUMP

THUMP

Some of the thumps ignited a yelp of pain.

I looked out my door, and since the hallway was clear, I moved to the stairs. I peered around the corner and saw my father drag Jorie out the front door by her hair and her arm.

He’s not a very strong man. Jorie’s not a very strong girl. Their movements were jerky, vulgar. It’s not the way bodies were supposed to move together. But there it was.

I saw all this happen. I saw Jorie sobbing on the front lawn. She tried to get up and stumbled. I expected her to run back inside the house or yell or something.

But there she was on the lawn.

And there I was, looking down as my father shut the front door and my mother bawled in the kitchen. All of them oblivious to my presence.

A better brother would have done something. Instead, I ran back to my room to continue being invisible. In a way, this was not a lie.

No one mentioned the episode until three nights later when I asked why Jorie wasn’t at dinner.

“She’s eating elsewhere,” my mother said.

“From now on,” my father said, a scratch on his face where a scratch never existed before.

After putting the box of secret pain back in Jorie’s closet and fashioning a terrible bow, I go back to my room. The sweat of bad knowledge keeps me from pretending that I just have too much caffeine in my system or that I’m worried about schoolwork. I wish I had normal anxieties. I wish I had athletic skills so I had an outlet for all this mania in my blood.

I lie on my back.

I lie on my stomach.

I lie on my side.

My room is hot, but it’s really me, or something inside of me, that cannot get cool. I can’t slow my mind down. My head’s all wrapped up in my stupid family.

I go on the Internet. Derek posted a video of a baby on its stomach that farts, letting loose a puff of baby powder. I note that this is funny but do not laugh. Otherwise, there are just stupid status wars and complaints about school projects.

I write Jorie thirteen and a half e-mails but only send the one that asks how she’s doing, not the ones that admit I’m still doing nothing.

IN THE MORNING
, the ceiling tree greets me but doesn’t seem as masterful. I contemplate it for a moment, and then my father’s irritating knuckle-rap on my door stirs my anxieties.

“Get up.”

“This is my barbaric yaaaawwwwwwwp!”

“What?”

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable!”

“What the hell are you doing in there?”

“I’m up!” My attempt to irritate my dad has ended up irritating me as well. Go figure.

At school, Derek talks about his pizza shop job and how the middle school girls come in to giggle about his sideburns over shared drinks and reheated slices.

“Are you hiring?” A job might be exactly what I need.

“You need a job?”

“I need to be out of my house a bit more.” This is the most I’ve ever admitted about my feelings.

“Do you have pizza shop experience?”

“I have eaten in them.”

“That might be enough.”

He smiles, but I don’t know if he’s serious or if I’m serious.

For most of the morning I am drowsy thanks to an entire weekend of insomnia and anxiety. This Monday feels worse than a Monday.

I run into Beth after lunch and tell her that even though Jorie said she didn’t have anything, I snooped in her room again.

“Did you find anything?” she asks.

“I found something.”

Her face glows.

“But we can’t use it.”

“Crapplejacks!”

There’s a pathetic silence.

“What is it?” she asks.

“It’s something that I think she wrote for you, for the
Amalgam.
I think it was supposed to be her . . . barbaric yawp.”

“Like Whitman?” Beth curls her lip. It’s clear she’s not a fan, but at least she knows what I’m talking about.

I can’t be sure if I know my sister’s real intentions. It doesn’t seem normal for someone to do something so private and then want to tell everyone. But as someone who thinks about suicide—particularly the thrill of who would find me and how guilty they’d feel—I guess there’s always something public about secrets.

“Can I see it?” Beth asks.

“I’d like to let you, but I think it became more a private thing than a piece for the
Amalgam.
You know? It just felt like it was one thing and then became another.”

I fully expect and prepare myself to accept that Beth will now no longer need to talk to me. Because, honestly, this is the only reason she said hi to me in the first place. To get Jorie’s final piece.

Nanoseconds pass and I panic.

“I did have an idea.” I hesitate—if I tell her about my ceiling tree she might dismiss me as the loser I feel like 94.5 percent of the time.

“Uh-huh?”

“I take photographs. I thought maybe I could write some poems that have photos to go with them.”

“Like a photo-essay? Or a photo-poem, I guess?”

“Yeah!”

“We don’t print on glossy. So the photos would look cruddy.” She does this thing with her eyebrows and her lower lip that is too adorable to describe accurately. “Actually. There have been requests to publish artwork. Most of it is bad tattoo stuff. Line flowers with thorns. Comic book chicks. That kind of stuff. But it could be worth doing if you have photos.”

“I can show you some of the photos. It’s nature stuff, but I can do whatever.”

“Yeah. Yeah! This might work.” I can see her mind working.

“It’s amazing to see someone who actually gets excited about stuff like this. Writing and art stuff.”

“According to my parents, I started reading when I was, like, two years old. I love books and stories and poems. My friends only sort of tolerate it. I brought a book on a class trip once and my friends made fun of me. There aren’t many people who would even think of putting photos and poems together for any reason other than maybe if they wanted to burn things. So, I feel like maybe you and I were meant to know each other!”

She smiles a smile I believe and then darts off to class before I can ruin it by saying something goofy.

THE GLOW OF MY CONVERSATION
with Beth doesn’t fade. The malfunctioning parts of my brain try to find reasons to be discouraged, but the fact is that Beth sees me as someone special. Nothing more—yet—but nothing less.

Like Walt says:

I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,

To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is enough,

To pass among them . . . . to touch any one . . . . to rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment . . . . what is this then?

I do not ask any more delight . . . . I swim in it as in a sea.

While in my reverie, I pass Gina Best in the hallway. I’m probably too confident, but I think I should talk to her. I should find out why Jorie beat her up (though rephrasing the question will be necessary if Gina is to tell me anything).

Gina Best doesn’t look like she has fought or will ever fight anyone. She looks like she will be a broadcast journalism major and then a talk show host and then end up involved in a murder-suicide after cheating on her husband. She’s tall and athletic—meaning her arms and legs are thick but not flabby. She’s got big brown eyes and perfectly straight teeth and no sign of ever having dealt with braces or acne. Most people probably didn’t even know that she and my sister were best friends way back in elementary school. Gina slept over at our house four weekends in a row once.

Gina and Jorie stopped hanging out with each other in eighth grade when Jorie got mono and stayed home from school for half the year. When she came back from her quarantine, Gina was best friends with someone else and they just never got back in line with each other. Jorie ended up listening to lots of hip indie music; Gina went with a crowd that loved hip-hop. There could have been a ton of other reasons, but that’s what Jorie told me.

I skip three classes tracking Gina and working up the nerve to talk to her. I’m not worried about school at this stage. I’m worried about me and Jorie. I need us to be under the same roof again because if we’re together we can help each other. All I confirm from following Gina around is that she smokes, has plenty of guy friends, and is what everyone would agree is gorgeous. Even though I spend the day staring at her back, I cannot deny that the way her body is crafted deserves an award. Whitman would say something about her hips and bosoms. Looking at Gina would make anyone think about the act of reproduction. And isn’t that the point of the Ginas of the world? To make sure we keep on making more Ginas so people stay interested in making more Ginas?

Like Walt says:

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

Gina eats during a different lunch period than I do, but the mass of people makes it easy to blend in and watch her with her friends. It’s all the kinds of people that reject Jorie. These girls are not poetry readers, not girls who cut themselves, not girls who would wear heavy metal band T-shirts or belch after chugging soda.

Or maybe they are. Who am I to say they’re not?

Toward the end of lunch, Gina heads for the doors that lead to the courtyard, leaving her friends behind, so I catch up with her. This is yet another moment when I have no idea what I’m doing.

“Excuse me. Gina.”

When Gina spins, her hair flips cinematically. She recognizes me and we both stand there quietly for a moment.

“What do you want?” she asks.

I come right out and ask her why Jorie beat her up.

“Because she’s some kind of crazy person, clearly.” Gina walks, I follow. She offers me a cigarette; I decline with a wave of my hand.

“I know that you guys haven’t been friends for a long time—”

“That’s not true,” she says. “We’ve always been friends. I thought so, anyway. We just haven’t been
best
friends. We just haven’t hung out aside from in classes. I never hated your sister and she certainly had little reason to hate me.”

“Oh.”

Gina smokes without concerning herself with where the smoke ends up, which means I inhale far more than I’d like.

“I talked to the vice principal about the day of your fight,” I say. “He said that the day before, Jorie got into an argument with Mrs. Yao and that she threw a laptop at her.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that.”

“Really?” I say. “Mrs. Yao didn’t report the incident. To anyone.”

I try to read Gina’s face.

“Well, I heard about it,” this marvel of bone structure and skin tone says. “I heard your sister freaked out in the library at some kids and then Mrs. Yao came over to break it up and then your sister threw a laptop at her or something.”

“But that’s not what Mrs. Yao says.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you about this, so why are you bothering me?” Gina inhales so hard on her cigarette that I can hear tiny tobacco leaves burning.

“I want to find out if there’s a way to get her unexpelled.”

“Not likely to happen, James. She sent me to the
hospital.
”