Clown Girl (18 page)

I said, “First degree—is that the worst, or the best? With murder, it’s the worst.”

“With burns it’s the opposite. If this were murder, it’d be third degree.” He opened a drawer and took out a small silver hammer.

He tapped my knee. My leg bounced.

I said, “Now you’re giving me the third degree?”

He said, “They’re first degree. Definitely first.”

I said, “Funny thing is, once I was working on my second degree, a master’s in Clowning, but they kicked me out of school for drinking the helium.”

“You make a habit of taking helium?” He motioned for the nurse to add that to her notes.

“Doc, I thought it would raise my grades—”

This whole conversation was a mistake. But I couldn’t stop. I was scared, nervous. Jittery and infected with one-liners, locked in a comic’s logorrhea. The jokes were my second mistake, after handing over the pills. They were my third, if you count catching the yard on fire. But my biggest mistake was what came next: I tried for honesty. I said, “Listen, I’m a clown, this is what I do. Skits, and juggling. Sometimes it backfires.” I swung aside one melon on the dangling boob suit, reached in my bra for the ever-present union card, and pulled out a small flurry of family photos. My parents on their pier, Rex in full flame. A folded napkin fell to the floor. I reached again, found the union card; it lay tucked close to my heart.

The nurse picked up the napkin. “Is this yours?” She unfolded it and read it out loud: “EKG = Nazis.” She turned the napkin over and read, “Christ was a Christian clown. Work on tying Madonna.”

“EKG equals Nazis?” the doctor read again. He caught the nurse’s eye.

She turned the napkin sideways and read, “Every clown is Christ.”

“Ah, the heart of the matter,” the doctor said. The matching caterpillars of his eyebrows raised. “A Christ complex. Delusions of grandeur. Persecution.” He nodded slowly. Put his reflex hammer back in the drawer. The nurse tucked the napkin in a folder, then turned away and disappeared behind the curtain.

Here’s what I know now: never let a misunderstanding go unclarified in a hospital, same as in a school, jail, or prison. Never carry a diary with you, not even a day planner if you write notes in it. Don’t say, “Yes, that’s mine,” to any odd scrap of nothing, to what might have been interesting in the free world.

The hospital, it’s a gateway. The path to incarceration.

Your best bet is don’t even write anything down. Ever. Most of all, don’t go near the hospital unless your problem is obvious as a bullet or a broken leg, and don’t go more than once. Otherwise you’ll learn about a two-doctor hold, Doctor Two-Hold, a seventy-two-hour detainment—and seventy-two hours can be longer if it’s late at night or over a weekend.

Two nurses came to escort me down the hall, one on each side. The Fat Ass clung to my waist like a sinker. The boobs were a yoke around my neck. We came to a set of double doors where a sign said
L-Ward
, in big purple letters above the doors. One nurse pushed a button. With a click the doors swung open. We moved through them. I heard the soft click a second time as the doors locked behind us.

“You’re in a safe place,” a nurse said.

Another, behind a desk, said, “We’ve got a little paperwork. Standard admitting procedure.” They showed me to a small room with windows on three sides. The windows were blocked with cream-colored blinds. “Have a seat.”

There was one chair, the only thing in the room. The Ass barely fit in the curve of the molded orange fiberglass. The admitting nurse handed me a clipboard of paperwork and a purple crayon.

“A crayon?”

“For your own good.” She smiled. “No sharp edges.”

I balanced the paperwork on my knee, used the back of my arm to hold a flopping boob out of the way, and used the crayon to fill in the date, my name, and social security number. “You start with the easy questions, I see.”

The nurse smiled again. “If you need me, press this button.” It was a silver knob on the wall. She backed out of the tiny room, pulled the door closed.

The crayon stuck against the blisters on my palms, and the whole writing kit made for big, sloppy letters. Then came the real questions: True or false.
I believe sometimes violence is justified, when a person is asking for it
.

I crayoned in,
Define ‘asking’?

True or false:
The world is against me.

Sometimes?

A dark shape moved just beyond the windows, outside the room. I reached to part the blinds. My hand hit glass before my fingers reached the blinds, like a mime routine. An invisible box. I spread my fingers over the cool window. The blinds were on the outside? I crouched low and tried to squint through the narrow slats. The Pendulous Breasts swung forward as I leaned. I could only see bits. A security uniform. I went back to the questions:

I believe I am a danger to myself and/or others
.

People can hear my thoughts
.

Nobody understands me
.

I worry about my health—sometimes, always, or never
.

At the bottom of the page there was a handwritten prompt:
What does the following mean to you: EKG = Nazis? Please explain
. Also:
Christ is a Clown? Explain
.

“Hey,” I said, out loud. “What is this? Who else read my napkin?” I tried the door. The door was locked. I was locked in. I tapped on the window.
Tap, tap, tap
. And again I was the lobster in an aquarium, a prisoner in the tidy side of hell. I hit the chrome knob to call a nurse.

The door swung open, knocked into me, and threw me back, and the sweaty doctor fell fast into the room, backed by a nurse. He said, “You have a right to request a lawyer. Would you like a lawyer at this time?”

I said, “Lawyer? What, am I being sued?”

He said, “We think you should stay here for a while. We’d like to keep an eye on you. We’ve decided you’ll be admitted.”

“Admitted?” Like a hospital was a club I’d been hoping to join.

Admitted, detained, arrested. Murmur, palpitate, flutter. Language was a thin line being drawn, the deciding factor, nothing more than a name.

“We’ll treat the burns, see that you’re OK,” he added. “You’ll get a few nights rest.”

“A
few
nights?”

They didn’t care about my burns. Superficial, they called them. Minor. First-degree blisters. But what this new language changed was the name of my ward. Now
ER
became not
ICU
, but
Psych
.
Psych
at the top of my folder.
Psych
on my record. Psych would be the place keeping me from going back to Baloneytown, to the house I’d rather not be living in anyway.

I saw it now:
L-Ward
. Those big purple letters over the doors.
L
stood for Loony Bin. The Mental Motel.
L
was for that barely audible click of somebody else controlling when the doors opened.

In the made-for-TV version of my life this is when I’d start swinging. I’d fling an arm back to push the guard’s hand from my shoulder, lift a knee to his crotch as he lunged my way, and run down the hall, robe flapping, slippered feet slick against the shine of the linoleum. I’d kick and scream until Prozac or its next of kin showed me how much I needed the hospital’s help.

Instead, I felt tiny. My shoulders were small. My arms were sick with the grip of burns. The IV gear in my hand was only a plastic tube and tape, but it felt like a needle under the skin and that thin line of plastic gave the hospital control.

I said, “No no no. No thank you.” I couldn’t run if I had to, with the boob suit heavy around my neck. I could only waddle; the Ass slapped my butt with each step.

“It’s in your best interest.”

“Interest? Lock-up? I have zero interest in being locked up.” I said, “A hospital’s a terrific institution—”

A nurse said, “I know, I know…and you’re not ready to be institutionalized yet. That’s what they all say.”

Shit. I needed new material. It was a variation on a line from Mae West. “You beat me to the punch.”

She said, “Punch?” and made a fast note.

I said, “You beat me to it.”

She stepped back. “Beat?” She made another note.

“Rather aggressive language,” the doctor said.

“I mean, you stole my lines.” I peeled the Pendulous Breasts off my neck and dropped them to my hand. They reached the floor; I bent an elbow and lifted the boobs far enough to dangle.

The doctor and the nurse both jumped back. “Armed,” the doctor called out. “She’s armed. Security! Somebody call security.”

The nurse ducked out the door. The doctor stayed between me and the exit.

“Armed?” I said. “What’re you talking about? You’re crazy.”

The doctor said, “Just stay calm. Stay…calm.” He pulled an amber vial from a deep shirt pocket and shook pills into his palm. My Chinese BBs? He swallowed the pills without water, like a bird choking down an unwilling minnow. Security came up behind him. The nurse hid behind Security.

“What’s the problem?” the guard asked.

The doctor, suddenly brave with backup, cleared his throat, deepened his voice, and, like a line from a favorite old movie, growled, “Drop the weapon.”

“The weapon?” I held one thing. “This?” I swung the boobs. Everyone jumped back. The boobs slapped together like massive numchucks, like a toy a psychiatrist would have on his desk—particularly a Fruedian. They poured grains of sand to the floor as they slapped and swung, and gave off a cloud of scorched polyester.

“We don’t want to use force,” the doctor said.

“What do you mean, armed? These are boobs. I’m not armed, I’m boobed.” Another one-liner, that nervous habit.

“Whatever it is,” the doctor said. “Let’s not argue. Just drop the, ah, what you’d call boobs.”

I let go. The Pendulous Breasts fell to the floor.

The doctor relaxed. His shoulders sagged. “That’s a girl. Now we’ll just move slowly, OK. We’ll take care of your burns, see to your needs. And the fire department has a few questions. Soon as we get you admitted, they need a moment of your time. They’re waiting outside.” He slid along the wall toward me.

Beyond the door, I saw them: blue uniforms, a line of men. The fire department. I felt a cold sweat on my back, and my palms steamed.

“After you talk to the fire department, we’ll give you something to help you sleep. Show’s over. The curtain will drop. And it’ll all be different when you wake up.”

The nurse stepped in, ran an alcohol wipe over the inside of my elbow.

A shot?

“Clean up the burns,” the doctor said. “Then prepare the meds.” He had a file close to his chest. Written across the top, in large red letters, it said,
Possible danger to self and others
.

The firemen shuffled, impatient.

The nurse bent over her tubes and bandages. She said, “Doctor, there’s a fly in this ointment.”

One fireman came forward, the smallest of the pack. He moved fast in his blue uniform, and I saw then it wasn’t a fireman at all—it was Jerrod. The streaks in his hair were muted under the hospital’s lights, but they were still there, gleaming and golden. The lines around his eyes were more weathered than ever. He needed sleep and looked serious, maybe sad. I smelled cinnamon and spice over the antiseptic air, the apple streusel cloud of sweetness. My friend. He flashed a badge.

My only hope.

He reached for me.

“We need her downtown. Right away. She’s dangerous.”

Dangerous? He grabbed my arm. His grasp wasn’t gentle. Shit. He pulled me forward. Something in my neck sprung with the whiplash of his yank. “You’ll have time for questions.” He waved to the firemen. “You’ll all have a chance. She’s not going anywhere. We’re managing this city’s clown problems. The bashing, the improv—we’re on it.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “Not on purpose.”

He said, “You’ll have time to tell your side of the story.”

I said, “The boobs! Please.”

I couldn’t stand to lose another thing. First my chicken, then the dog. First Rex, then our baby. First my parents, then everything else. “Just grab the boobs.”

Jerrod jerked to a quick stop, leaned toward me, and whispered, “Grab whose boobs?”

“Mine.” And fast as his hands came toward me, ready to comply, I pointed at the two lumps of burnt sandbags on the floor. “Not mine—those. Those are my boobs.” The boobs were scorched and crumpled as well-worn paper lunch bags.

“Ah, pyromaniacal evidence,” Jerrod said, loud enough for everyone to hear. He darted forward, grabbed the boobs in one hand and held me by the elbow with the other. He held my arm as we marched down the hall. The firemen got out of our way, though not fast enough or far enough to escape the jiggle of the Ass as it jostled side to side. It knocked into firemen as Jerrod pulled me past. The swing of the Ass was like two heavy hands, a gun to my back.

17.

Evidence, One and All; or, Life’s Bloody Picnic

SOON AS THE CAR ROLLED I KICKED OFF MY BIG SHOES. The burns on my arms pounded in rhythm to my heartbeat. The one-liners slipped away like a winter coat I didn’t need in the spring of being sprung. It’s against Clown Code, or at least against my own code, to ride in the back of a cop car—don’t even get in a car if the door handles don’t work from the inside and the windows won’t roll down—but this time the ride was an act: My Big Escape.

I hoped it was an act. I’d barely escaped. “Jerrod?”

He said, “Relax.”

OK.A prisoner in custody would ride in back. I got it, that was my role in the shtick. I lay across the seat and rested my head on the scorched Pendulous Breasts, two big, leaking pillows. The seat smelled like the K-9 unit, animal and damp.

“I have a fever,” I said.

Jerrod drove through the sprawling acres, the endless prairie, of the hospital’s lot. He said, “You’ll be fine. I’m taking you over to the evidence room.”

What was that? I sat up fast. The bunched Ass held me at a cocked angle. “So now I’m evidence?” I pushed against the iron grating that separated the front and back seats, and tried to right myself. “Thought you’d take me home.”

He said, “That too. Maybe. First, we’re holding some evidence you’d be interested in.”

“Evidence of what?”

Through the metal grating, in the rearview mirror, his lips parted. “It’s a surprise.”

So he had evidence of my arson effort, my Big Girl Suit, Herman’s pot plants in our shed? Maybe he had the juggling torches, the turp can, a melted wig, charred grass. I was a dog on the way to the pound, the perp with the turp. “I don’t know if a cop springing evidence on me is the kind of surprise I need.” The snaps at the crotch of the Fabulous Ass chafed my sweaty thighs. Ash residue was like minute shards of glass caught in the elastic at my elbows and waist.

Jerrod rolled his window down.

I wanted evidence of my own bed, and a cool shower. I’d been up for a day and a half, through the fire and out again—reborn by fire, a Hopi Indian yellow clown might say. I reached inside my pants with both hands.

“What’re you doing back there?”

The IV works in the back of my hand snagged. My throbbing arms were sticky with ointment. Jerrod’s eyes darted back and forth in the rearview, between me and the street, me and the street.

“Eyes on the road.” I tugged at the crotch snaps on the Fabulous Ass. Jerrod looked at me in the mirror again. I said, “OK, if that’s how you want it, watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat. A bra down the sleeve, roast beef from a deli case.” I tugged, the snaps gave, and my hands slapped against the inside of my pants. With a wiggle and a shove, I pulled the Fab Ass out past the waistband. “Ta da!” I dropped it on the floor, fluffed the burnt pillow of the Pendulous Breasts, lay across the seat, and closed my eyes.

THE EVIDENCE ROOM WAS A WHOLE CINDER BLOCK WAREHOUSE behind an abandoned grocery. We drove down the alley and parked in front of an unmarked door.

“This is what they call the Annex. There’s Impounded Cars.” Jerrod pointed to a narrow, gated parking lot between buildings.

One long white car in front had the windshield broken out and doors pocked by bullets. Walking without the sandbag weight of the Ass for the first time in hours, I was light as an astronaut. I made my way toward the car corral barefoot over rocky macadam, free of the big shoes.

“I’ll warn you, the cars get grisly. Baby seats, flattened roofs, things you don’t want to have on your mind.” He bent to work his key in the lock in the shadow of the doorway. “That white sedan was a high-speed chase. Maybe you saw it on the news.”

“I don’t watch the news.” A silver cross on a piece of yarn dangled and glinted from the sedan’s mirror; the car itself was a white ghost.

The evidence room was huge and dark until Jerrod flipped a switch to bring it all into full color. Everything was under plastic, with yellow tape and orange labels.

“Check this out.” He pointed to a plastic-wrapped door that’d been taken off its hinges. “Bullet holes from both sides.” He lifted the door away from where it leaned against a wall. “A big drug bust, about six blocks from here. That shoot-out didn’t even make the news.” He held the blown-to-bits door in his hands and dropped the weight back and forth to look at one side, then the other. “And look at these locks.” He ran his hand over the plastic, over a row of dead bolts and sliders. “They knew somebody’d be coming.”

The cement floor was cool and smooth under my bare feet. I brushed a finger over the door’s ragged metal edge, where a bullet’d cut through. Maybe Jerrod shot one of the bullets. “Were you there?”

He nodded and shrugged, then leaned the door back against the shelves. “I was working.”

I followed him down an aisle. “So you could’ve been shot?”

“Had my vest on. But that doesn’t protect a guy’s head, I guess. Weed whacker?” He grabbed a plastic-wrapped bundle.

“Ah, now there’s a civilized weapon,” I said. “The great weed-whacker massacres.”

“You’d be surprised. But think about this stuff. It’s the real deal. People’s lives, death. Yard work. Somebody could write a book about evidence and the stories behind it.” He picked up a plastic-wrapped golf club and swung, following through, then looked up toward the fluorescent lights as though watching a ball sail. “Everything turns up here.” Under an opaque sheet, there was the gleam of chrome. He pulled the plastic back to show star-shaped hubcaps glossy as the liquid roll of mercury. “Your punk neighbor Willie’d love a set of rims like that.”

The burns on my arms hummed with the buzz of the fluorescent lights. I was tired, bleary-eyed, and fevered. I asked, “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“Not for hours.”

We passed racks of stereos, a shelf of TVs, answering machines, and car parts. “California King.” He pushed one hand against a mattress that rested against the wall. “Try it out.” He dragged the mattress to an open space. The mattress hit the linoleum with a smack that echoed through the warehouse. “Go ahead. You look tired.”

“Exhausted, even.” I bent, ran a hand along the plastic, and pressed the plastic flat to look through for the rest of the evidence of whatever crime had brought the mattress to that warehouse—bullet holes, blood. All I found were tiny blue flowers embroidered into fabric and an ordinary white tag, the old
Do Not Remove Under Penalty
. “What’s a mattress in for?”

“Could be anything,” Jerrod said. “It’s a pillowtop,” like that was an explanation.

The mattress was inviting as a hammock. I’d been up all night. Gravity called, with its own unbreakable law. I stretched out. The mattress was solid and springy, better than a hospital mattress, better than my futon. Still, it was strange to lie flat in a warehouse without a sheet or blanket, with no right place for my hands. It felt like a visit to the acupuncture clinic before the needles started. One hand was stiff, under blisters and the IV gear taped to my skin.

It was strange to lie down in a room, a big room, with a man who wasn’t Rex.

Jerrod sat on the mattress and bounced up and down. He said, “Look. You’re hardly moving.”

“Rock me to sleep.” I closed my eyes.

I didn’t notice he’d gotten up until his voice came from farther away. He said, “Maybe you need a teddy bear.”

Something slapped me gently on the shoulder. I opened my eyes to a flash of yellow. Plucky, the rubber chicken! There she was, in all her glory, with her tattered red comb and the black indelible ink heart on her bumpy yellow chest, unmistakably herself, mine. Ours. I sat up and held Plucky in both hands.

“Where’d you find her?”

He shrugged, looked away, then back. “The first time I met you. On the street. Some kid dropped it, and I picked it up after you left. I tried to tell you, but you ran.”

“I never thought I’d see her again.” I held the chicken by her slender neck. Her yellow feet dangled, and I swear her rubber beak showed an open smile like a crow on a hot day. “You get the reward.”

He waved a hand. Laughed. “Nah. It’s nothing. And hang on—”

He headed down an aisle.

I sank into the mattress, curled up with Plucky, and sang her a little chicken song, all clucks and trills.

Plucky, that souvenir, me and Rex, our first real date. Our useless rubber, a shared joke. Between clowns, a shared joke is a shared prayer. Jerrod had given me a little piece of Rex back.

“Behind door number two…” The tools on Jerrod’s belt jostled. He jogged down the aisle and pushed a lawn mower. I sat up. He stopped in front of Plucky and me on our raft of a mattress. “Take it home.”

“My lawn mower?” I hardly recognized it. “Don’t they need it, as evidence?”

“In theory, but nobody’s working on the case. It’s a dead end.”

Herman only had a charred patch for a yard. “Jerrod, I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Sniff, trust me—take the lawn mower now, or the next time you see it some rookie cop’ll be cutting his own grass. This stuff piles up so fast, we can’t keep inventory.” He waved a hand at the endless shelves, then leaned on the mower like a man finished with a job well-done. The lawn mower tipped back, a bucking pony.

What to confess? “I burned Herman’s yard. All the grass. It’s gone.”

He shrugged and tapped a foot against the blade guard. “Heard a little about that…and…” He pointed at me, my charred clothes and hair. “I’m no farmer, but don’t they burn fields sometimes, to get a better crop next season?” He tipped his head sideways, half question, half answer, eyes squinted, both elbows on the mower.

“I won’t be around for next season’s crop of yard.” I ran my blistered hand along Plucky’s rubber comb. “I just may be kicked out.”

He stopped tapping his foot against the back of the mower. “Kicked out? That’s harsh, Sniff. Got a place lined up?”

I shook my head.

He pushed the lawn mower aside and said, “Well, take the mower back to the old Baloneyville Coop anyway. Maybe it’ll be your ticket back in. If not, I’ve got an extra room…”

I shook my head again before he even finished the sentence. No way. I couldn’t live with a cop. Rex’d never come back if I roomed with an officer. He wouldn’t come within miles.

“OK, well, listen. We’re not done yet. This is just like Christmas, right?” He let go of the lawn mower and headed down the aisle again.

“See you later, Santa,” I said, and bounced Plucky against my toes. Her yellow legs dangled like wilted flowers. The plastic over the mattress was soot-stained now, and I pressed my blistered fingers into it. Then, from the piles of confiscated goods, there came the tap dance of toenails skittering over linoleum. Chance swam toward me. She ran down the aisle and it was a dream. My dog, in full health, coat glossy and eyes bright! Ka-zoom! She ran into my lap. My little football, she almost knocked me over. She stepped on the rubber chicken, knocked into the IV gear. I put my face to her fur.

Then I had it all again—my firstborn chicken, my baby dog, and the lawn mower. Jerrod came down the aisle with the urine funnel in one hand, like a lucky horseshoe. He put it on his head and crouched into a duckwalk. In the other hand he had a gray metal tackle box, and held the box out as though for balance. When the funnel fell, he picked it up and tossed it Frisbee-style. It skidded across the mattress and hit the end of a shelf that rattled and reverberated like a gong. I laughed out loud for the first time in, what? Decades, ages, eons? The first time since Rex left. There was such luxury in having everything back all at once.

“What more could I want? Thank you. It’s crazy, better than Christmas.” I ran my hand over Chance’s fur. That sweet dog. “You’ve fattened her up.”

Jerrod sat on the mattress behind me. Then we were a family on a Sunday morning in bed—Chance, Jerrod, and I. The mattress shifted. Jerrod lifted my hair away from my neck. I didn’t turn, but I wanted to, to put my arms around Jerrod, hold on, and say thank you. How nice it all was! I stayed frozen. Cautious.

Jerrod ran his fingers over the thin, torn cotton of my striped pants. He said, “Give me your hand.”

“Is that a proposal?” I turned toward him, safe behind a joke.

“Well, marriage is beyond what I had in mind.” He opened his gray tackle box. Band-Aids rustled out. “Give me your arm then. How’s that?”

I held out an arm and couldn’t help but smile.

“The other one. With the IV in it.”

He wrapped his hand around mine, held my hand the way he’d held it on the street the day I fainted. He used three fingers to hold the IV works against my skin and with his other hand gathered a corner of the tape. “Trust me,” he said.

“You’ve done this before?”

He ripped the tape off fast, leaving a burnt feeling, a zap of lightning, the ache of a deep bruise, hot and sudden.

“Shit.”

He said, “Now I have.”

I smiled. “Just like getting a bikini wax.”

“Really?”

I laughed again. “How would I know? I’ve never had a bikini wax. I’m a clown, not a beauty queen.”

Jerrod rubbed my skin until the pain quieted, then slid the IV out. Blood ran, dark and red. He pressed against the spot and blood seeped between his fingers.

I said, “I’m disease-free.”

“I believe it.” He kept pressure on the back of my hand.

“And why? You barely know me.”

With my free hand I helped him pull the backing off a Band-Aid. Between us, blood dripped onto the plastic that covered the mattress and mixed with soot. Evidence. Jerrod put a square of cotton against the back of my hand and drew the Band-Aid over it. He opened the aluminum package of a disposable damp cloth and ran the cloth over my soot-covered arms. The cloth was cool and smelled like baby oil.

“You’re a nurse,” I said. The Band-Aid tightened when I closed my fist, then relaxed as I opened my hand again.

“Just a little professional development training.” He ran the damp cloth down my arm, sent shivers down my spine. “I had the chicken and that white plastic horseshoe all week. Just found Chance yesterday. But I’d been looking forward to this, to returning everything.” He said, The best part of my job is when I can make somebody happy, and get it right.”