Finding a Voice (2 page)

The song Mom hummed became progressively louder, until I knew the song and she began to sing short refrains of
Sweet Child o’ Mine
at the top of her voice. There was more chopping and more cupboards opening, but unfortunately
no chicken-turning. The chicken, frozen as it was, began to burn, but I didn’t know whether to intervene or let her continue to play her adopted part of domestic parent. I felt the familiar tension creep up my spine, the tension that sent my body into flight mode when I no longer could predict what would happen next.

That was the worst. The depression was comfortable at this point. The crying and imagined illnesses were exhausting, but familiar. The curses and hurled put-downs hurt my soul, but I was tough enough to heal. Even the euphoric happiness that inevitably led to a sudden plummet into darkness was bearable. But this, this knife-edge of control that Mom occasionally found – whether it was in silence, or feigned camaraderie – could only be devastating.

The chicken began to burn in earnest, and still she focused on chopping and humming.

‘Mom?’ I tried hesitantly. ‘I think the chicken is ready.’

Wham!!! The frying pan, chicken first, flew across the room with such velocity it seemed someone twice Mom’s size had thrown it. I jumped up, even before the pan hit the wall opposite me, and instinctively edged to the door.

‘Where were you!!’ she hurled the words as an accusation, definitely not a question. ‘I can’t handle the worry! You
know
I can’t handle the worry!’

And I was out the side door. Out the door, counting the steps. Mom could survive this fleeing. She would know that
I would be back, calm enough for both of us. But though I couldn’t process much in my flight mode, I did understand that she couldn’t survive a normal adolescent after-school visit to a friend’s house. What had I been thinking? Who knows what she was up to now, and it was all my fault.

Eight hundred and ten, eight hundred and eleven. I reached the river, high with the recent rains. And now I stopped counting, skirting the river bank, making my way up the kilometre or so until I reached the sandbank that was my front garden when the weather was good. Behind this was a little glen, enclosed with dense cedar trees, but open in the middle. A little oasis that nobody else seemed to know about. But the best part of all was the little log cabin on the far side of the opening. It was barely big enough to even count as more than a shed, and it was mostly falling down. But it was my haven. And there, entering the door and not even making it to one of the ancient chairs, I collapsed, letting out great heaving sobs in the only place in the world where I could.

W
hen I woke the following morning it was underneath a blanket of dread. It hadn’t been an easy night. Eventually the guilt of leaving Mom in distress had cut through my own pit of misery and I had returned home in the near dark.

I found Mom pacing the house, half-prepared dinner still strewn across the kitchen, mumbling to herself.

‘I’m not fit to be a mother. Look at the state of me. Can’t even cook a dinner. She was right. She was right. She was right.’

She had discarded the red pumps and was marching in bare feet, despite the sharp remains of a glass that seemed to have followed the pan after I made my exit. Likewise, her hair was free from its clip and was beginning to look a bit wild from her frantic hands running through it.

I was prepared. I’d left my own emotions in my hideaway, and now I could throw myself into making things all right for Mom. I just had to find a way to calm her down, and I could do it. I’d been doing it my whole life.

‘She is always right.
Can’t be a mother
, she said.
You’ll ruin
her. She’ll end up like you
, she said.’ Mom was still ranting. At least this was a theme that I recognised well.

‘It’s okay, Mom! I’m not ruined. Grandma is wrong. See, I’m okay!’

I walked calmly to her and took both her hands in my own. I tried to hold her gaze, but her eyes were still frantic, scanning the room wildly and she dropped my hands to pick up the dishcloth she’d spotted. She then sprang across the room to scrub the streaks of dripping brown sauce that crisscrossed the refrigerator. It was as if I was not even in the room.

‘Please, come sit down, Mom. Remember how I need help with homework?’

I gathered up my books from the table and looked through them, finding the page I had been handed in English class earlier that day. If anything could pull Mom from the dark topic of
How Grandma had felt it would be best for Mom to give Jo up for adoption
it would be thinking about
Which tribe in
The Lord of the Flies
would you have chosen to join? Why? What do you think the two tribes represent?
Literature was her life. I only wished that my class was reading something a bit lighter; a little comedy would have been better than the darkness of
The Lord of the Flies
.

But nothing had worked. Not the promise of discussing my assigned book as allegory, not the pancakes and sausages that I made to replace the ruined dinner, not cleaning up the
mess that Mom had left, not imploring her to join me on the sofa for the sitcoms we liked to watch together to wind down our weekdays.

Instead, Mom continued to walk the house, if you could call it walking. It was more like she was terribly late for an appointment in the next room, and then when she would arrive there she would remember that she had left the iron on back in the last room she had been in. The mumbling eventually stopped, but running her hands through her hair did not. Her only acknowledgement that I was there was the occasional pleading look and, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m your mother.’

By ten o’clock I was starting to get very worried. Even on a good day Mom could have times when she acted as oddly, but only for short periods and I would know how to get her back to the routines of the day – eating the dinner I usually cooked and watching some television, both of us complaining about how bad the shows were.

This was too long. This was all too familiar.

By eleven o’clock I was rooting through Mom’s bedside table, looking through the boxes and bottles that were the lifeline that kept her on this side of reality. I knew what I was looking for; I was looking for a small, clear, zip-lock packet.

This was against ‘The Rules’. The cupboard was supposed to be locked, and the key kept hidden from me. It was part of Mom’s home-care plan, the one that allowed me to stay with
her, despite the risks identified by our social worker. Teens and medications for hallucinations and wild mood swings are apparently seen to be a dangerous combination. The drug I was looking for was especially to be kept out of reach.

I was breaking another rule as well – the rule that I was to call the mental health crisis team nurse when Mom wasn’t well. And Grandma. I wasn’t to be in the house when Mom spiralled away from the sane world.

The thought of making that call made my stomach churn – I couldn’t do it.

For a moment I hesitated, hearing the words the social worker had said to me the last time we had met.
You know your mom will be unwell again, don’t you, Jo? You can’t stop it. We’ll just be ready for it
.

But she had been so well for almost a year. This
was
all my fault, wasn’t it? I had stepped outside the pattern that kept Mom on track when I accepted an invitation to Sarah’s house.

And besides, it wasn’t exactly easy to tell when Mom was actually going over the edge – as opposed to her normal weirdness. It was just a bad night.

So instead I searched through the myriad of drugs until I found what I was looking for – Ativan, the tiny miracle pill that promised sleep for us both. And just as I had hoped, when I handed it to Mom in the little plastic medication cup, she had taken it placidly and placed it under her tongue,
grasping the promise of her fears and anxieties melting away until the morning at least.

But things were not better in the morning. I knew it the minute I opened my eyes and heard the vacuum start up in the living room. It was a definite bad sign. When Mom was as well as she could be, she never stirred from her bed until noon.

Ever since I could remember I had got myself ready in the morning and laid out Mom’s meds before I left for school. I didn’t exactly know what they were supposed to do. Sometimes I didn’t even know the names of the meds if they were new to the mix. What I did know was that when she didn’t take that multicoloured handful of pills every day it was a sure way for our lives to quickly spiral out of control.

And even when she did take them as they were supposed to be taken they never seemed to be a miracle cure for long. I feared the vacuuming at 7a.m. was a bad sign – a sign that the mix of medications would have to change. I didn’t remember a time when bad things didn’t happen before the change of pills happened.

It was a long, long day.

In history I had to madly finish the math homework I hadn’t completed the night before.

At lunch time Sarah walked toward me with an expectant smile and a wave, and I could only manage a half smile and a shrug. I thought about veering down a side hallway to avoid
her, but she was right in front of me before I could.

‘Hey, Jo,’ she greeted. She stood waiting for me to say something back.

‘I’ve gotta go.’ I tried to think of some place I needed to be, some excuse to get me away from this. Finally I just pointed down the hall to my left. ‘This way.’

Then I just ran in the direction I had pointed.

I felt sick and guilty and worried all at once – a wave that started in my stomach and rose to set my heart beating fast.

I didn’t know why I hadn’t been able to just say ‘hello’. Yesterday it had been all that I hoped for – the promise of a normal friendship, of being liked. Today – that hope seemed to be the very cause of Mom’s problem, like if I talked to Sarah I was somehow going to make her worse. Again, I heard the social worker’s words
You can’t stop it
. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to go back and find Sarah, but somehow I just couldn’t.

In the end I took my sandwich and my English binder out to the very back of the school where I knew I would meet no one and I could avoid analysing my feelings. I tried to scratch out a decent essay for English class. The couple of bites I attempted to take of my sandwich were so ill-received by my stomach that I gave up on eating.

The afternoon wasn’t much better. I was asked to read a passage aloud in English and couldn’t seem to get past a sentence at a time without stumbling on words. In PE it was
field hockey and I couldn’t even keep up with the play, never mind have any hope of actually being a contributing team member. I didn’t have to look up from the ground to know that the girls assigned to the side I was on were rolling their eyes.

By the time I walked in the door at home all I wanted to do was turn on the TV and turn off my brain for a couple of hours.

The phone was ringing and Mom was not answering it, so I did. Big mistake.

‘Hello?’

My heart started beating faster when Grandma answered, ‘Well, I was wondering when you might arrive to pick up. How are you, in any case?’

‘Yeah I’m good, Grandma. And you?’ I hoped I sounded calm and unconcerned.

Much as I feared Grandma’s quick and harsh judgements that she threw like daggers without thought to where they landed, I was always amazed at how accurately she was able to assess how well – or how unwell – Mom was. And today something had obviously happened to make her want to check on her daughter’s well-being.

‘I’m as well as can be expected,’ Grandma snipped. ‘Where is your mother? She isn’t answering the phone.’

‘Um, well I just got in from school. Shall I find her for you?’ I really hoped she’d say no. I wasn’t at all sure that
Mom was well enough for what we both jokingly called ‘The Inquisition’.

‘I’ve three hang-ups from her today. She isn’t at her programme, obviously.’ She was referring to the drop-in mental health centre where Mom was welcome to come each afternoon.

I wanted to jump to Mom’s defence. It wasn’t a ‘programme’. It was an optional support – as needed. But nothing was optional to Grandma. I doubted she had ever so much as missed brushing her teeth twice a day, because it was what you were supposed to do.

‘Grandma, did you know I’m still second from the top in English?’ It was a tactic that sometimes worked when she was honing in on Mom’s shortcomings. Divert attention.

‘Good, but you’re to call the first sign it’s needed, Jo.’ She was onto it, knew that Mom was not coping so well today, but she knew better than to ask me how Mom was. I always said, ‘Good.’

Mom was fast asleep in her bed, blinds drawn, two duvets piled on top of her, curled into a ball when I found her. I was relieved – somewhat. At least I could relax in front of the television for a while.

I left her to sleep, quietly crossing the hall into the living room to watch television. The curtains were pulled in here as well, making the room seem darker and more closed than usual. It was a small room anyway, but on all sides the furniture
was penned in with bookshelves that reached far up each wall. It wasn’t exactly a library. The books were mostly tattered paperbacks, many with missing front covers and all of them filled with notes, highlighted passages and sticky notes protruding from their tops.

In the middle of the floor today there were at least a dozen books off the shelves. There was a short pile of four books, several opened and face down on the carpet, and a few more scattered around the room. I knew better than to move any of them. There was always a method to the madness and touching those books was a sure way to send Mom into a frenzy.

Once, I had met an old friend of Mom’s, a friend from her university days. I can remember that he had come for dinner and he and Mom had drunk lots of wine.

At one point Mom had left the room to go to the toilet. The friend had turned to me, where I was sitting quietly in the corner chair trying to be invisible so I wasn’t sent to bed, to say, ‘Your mom is an encyclopaedia of literary facts, but it’s not just theory or theme to her – never was. Her
world
is literature. I don’t think she exists outside of the stories she reads.’

It was the sort of conversation I had been raised on. I loved that Mom never talked down to me; she had always talked to me like she would any adult. I didn’t care that only a few words of these sorts of talks made sense to me most of
the time when I was small, even now sometimes.
I don’t think she exists outside of the stories she reads
had made sudden and utter sense to me, though, even several years ago.

I was just settling in to watching an episode of a sitcom I had seen several times before, when Mom appeared at the doorway, looking panicked.

‘I can’t find it!’

‘Can’t find what, Mom?’ I asked, feeling slightly annoyed that my moment of peace was gone.

‘The answer. What ties us all together. It should be here – and I can’t find it!’ She swept her arm around the room, indicating her menagerie of books.

‘Mom, you’re tired. You’ll find it tomorrow.’ I had no idea what she was looking for, but I had learned over time, and many mistakes, not to ask, not to go there. ‘No, I won’t, Jo. That’s my problem. There’s me. There’s you. There’s her. I can’t make it fit. I can’t find anything to make the three fit!’

‘What can I do, Mom?’

‘That’s just it, Jo. I can’t give you the answer!’ Her words tumbled out, speeding up more and more. She was pacing again and tapping her hands on her thighs as she did. Her hair was still uncombed, her clothes unchanged, mascara still streaking down her cheeks.

My stomach clenched and churned. I had hoped it was a glitch that some solid sleep would have sorted. Sometimes it did.

Instead, Mom got more animated and panicked as the minutes of the evening ticked slowly on. Again, nothing seemed to engage her – not dinner, not conversation, not quiet, not even shouting at her, as I finally resorted to when she sent the medication that I offered her in the cup flying with a deliberate sweep of her arm. At this point it was midnight.

‘Stop!’ I shouted at her. ‘Can’t you just stop, please?!’

She just paced on into the kitchen. And I burst into tears. I felt so exhausted and scared and I didn’t know what else I could do. Except press the panic button – call the crisis team nurse to say Mom wasn’t well. And I couldn’t do that to her – no matter how angry I might be with her. I wouldn’t call unless I had to. And I didn’t have to yet.

So I went to bed and sobbed into my pillow instead. And as worried as I was, I still fell into a deep sleep.

I woke up with my light still on, so I couldn’t immediately tell what time it was. What woke me was the sound of some sort of siren. It wasn’t until I figured out it was still night because it was dark outside my window that I realised the siren was Mom and she seemed to be wailing.