Peeling the Onion (14 page)

'They'd send you to a psychiatrist if they thought you were crazy,' Lynda says, making everyone a calming chamomile tea for breakfast. 'The neuropsychologist will just be checking for brain damage.'

Thanks, Lynda. Very reassuring.

Mum's anxious to get going. She needs a detour into Rathdowne Street for a morning
caffe latte.

'I'll go mad if Lynda makes me any healthier,' she explains, adding an espresso to prove it.

My mum the addict.

For the neuropsychologist I don't have to undress—she just peels away my mind, asking about my memory, my concentration, my paying attention, what kind of student was I before?

If I had to choose my own sessions of hell, I'd take naked body over naked brain. Naked body you've still got somewhere left to hide, but this is it, nowhere left to go—this is Anna, all pinned out on the dissection bench.

Commonsense questions; general knowledge—so far so good. She tells me a story and I tell it back. Kindergarten games, getting harder, designed to trick, to make you feel worse when you bomb out. Lists of words, books of pictures—choose the ones you've seen before. The words are easy; the pictures impossible.

Lists of numbers, to add and remember and add again but I've forgotten which one I'm remembering, which one I need and which one to forget, I can't even add the numbers, 'nine and six are fourteen,' I say, it doesn't sound right but by then she's said two more numbers, slippery ones, they slide through my mind, through the blackness and I hold my head in my hands to stop the swaying. 'Sixteen,' I say—it's a good number, as good as any—and hear her close the book. And sigh.

'Well, Anna,' she says at last, 'I think we're starting to see a pattern here. The brain is an extraordinarily complex machine, and when it's injured . . . '

. . .
it can shut down so it doesn't have to hear anything it doesn't want to.

Maybe I should care about this poor little brain, this sad, damaged little brain, but it doesn't seem to matter. Nothing seems to matter except sleep; I just want to let myself sink into the woolly blackness and never wake up.

Mum and Dad say I've slept for three days, that's enough. They say I have to get up and go to school, as if one class a day could make any difference to my life.

I'll get up tomorrow. Today I need to sleep.

'You win!' I shout at Mr Sandberg, 'I'll drop everything except English and maths till next year.'

'Let's hope your attitude improves by then,' he snaps, but still lets me slam out of his room without a detention.

Home and back to bed.

Mum and Dad are wide awake and arranging a nightmare: a pow-wow with all the chiefs and the killing reports to decide what to do about me. They've been phoning the insurance officer, phoning doctors, phoning teachers, phoning therapists. Busy busy busy. I wonder if Mum will bake a devil's food cake to celebrate this particular hell.

I want my life back. I want to be me, the way I was the morning we set off for the tournament, five and a half months ago.

Now mornings are black. I lie very still and pretend I'm still asleep. The day stretches out in infinite bleakness—when I move the pain will start. My bed is kind; it doesn't expect anything of me.

'Anna!' Matt shrieks. 'Your boyfriend's here! Do you want him to come in and play? How come you're still in bed anyway? It's nearly teatime.'

'I'll be there in a second.'

I look awful. Pull on jeans and a jumper, brush my hair—don't look much better. Feel worse.

Hayden's standing back, looking stiff and unnatural. 'You want to go for coffee?'

Shouldn't my heart lurch at the sound of his voice? Shouldn't I want him to hold me tight against him till the cold lump of ice inside has melted and I'm me again?

'Are you going to tell me what I've done?' he asks, starting the car, 'or you going on with this silent treatment?' Not tender, not angry, just matter of fact.

Can't you see there's nothing in me to say?
Misery seeps through me like black tears, like the radioactive dye, through bones and hair and soul. When the car stops my hand is on the doorhandle, but I can't remember what I'm supposed to do with it. Hayden says something—teasing? teaching?—the words are blurred as jelly on a hot day. Then the metal latch reminds my hand what to do, my legs remember how to get out, how to walk into the cafe, and my body follows. Going out with my boyfriend. I dig up a smile, and paste it on my face.

'I know you've got problems,' Hayden is saying, 'do I know you've got problems! But you're not the only one with feelings.'

We're back at the house, he's leaving and I should call him back, if I can just explain everything will be okay.

But the swirling fog of my brain is whirling too hard and too black, wiping away caring, wiping away sorry, and when it's wiped the blackboard clean I see the words written and know that Hayden is better off without me because my life has already ended. And Luke—why did I kiss Luke? Don't want to think about it, it's too hard, too much; I can't understand anything any more except that there's no way out.

I say I'm asleep when Hayden phones, tell Jenny I can't talk, tell Luke I'm going straight in to study when he drives me home from school.

There's a letter from the insurance people on my father's desk. The words leap out at me: permanently impaired.

Which word is worse, permanent or impaired?

Impaired's an ugly word. Worse than handicapped. Disabled. Invalid.

Am I disabled?

How could I be? I'm still the same person—just can't do a few things—like walk much, or stand up for more than a minute, or sit for too long, or . . .

When do you stop being normal and turn into a handicapped person?

You'd have to know it if you were disabled. Wouldn't you?

'Invalid' is a funny word. You say it one way it means a sick person. 'Enfeebled,' says the dictionary, 'or disabled by illness or injury.'

Say it another way and it means not true. Not valid. Worthless.

Why didn't my neck go back that extra fraction of a millimetre? Why the freak chance that stopped it just short of snapping the cord? It would have been so much simpler.

Everyone would have been sad, but they'd have got over it. Matt wouldn't be such a ratbag. Bronny wouldn't be such a hypochondriac. Mum wouldn't have an ulcer and Dad would be his normal placid self; Jenny and Caroline would still be friends. Hayden might feel guilty, but there'd be nothing to remind him all the time; he'd be okay by now too. Luke would have found a decent job. They'd have all been much better off without me.

Six months was the deal, God. You haven't got long left to keep your side of the bargain. Our lounge room is overflowing with grim people with grimmer reports. Mum and Dad, Mr Sandberg, the insurance officer, Brian the physio, Julie the OT, the two tutors, and Dr Fuller, our GP, who's carrying a foot-high file of reports.

Hairy Legs the insurance officer is running the meeting; she wants to get started. We're all here, she says, for one reason.

'We all want the best for Anna. Now the purpose of coming together tonight is to pool our information to help Anna and her parents plan a suitable treatment and school program for both the immediate and medium-range future.'

Dr Fuller offers to start by summarising the reports from the various specialists I've visited. Heavy grey sounds, words carved on slugs of lead, thump past our heads. Vestibular disturbance, cerebellar symptoms, attention deficit, short-term memory, concentration, sympathetic nervous system, subtalar disruption, traumatic spondylisthesis, chronic pain . . . Like blood-filled water balloons, the words burst and seep across the cream Berber carpet.

A minute's silence as he finishes the last report. 'Well,' says Mr Sandberg, 'that sounds like enough to be going on with!'

Hairy Legs is not amused.

Physio Brian talks about the new type of exercises he's worked out for me. He's still hopeful, he says. He wants to continue seeing me twice a week.

OT Julie says that my thumb appears to have stabilised but that she'd like to do another home visit and school visit. She mentions aids and adaptations, posture and ergonomics, computer and tape recorder alternatives to my shaky writing; maybe a visit to the Independent Living Centre.

That's what Caroline meant about special treatment! Poor Caroline, having hands that don't shake.

Mr Sandberg asks if I have a lawyer. Hairy Legs says this is not the appropriate time to discuss legal questions. As the insurance company's representative she will ensure that I receive everything I'm entitled to.

Mr Sandberg looks sceptical.

'The most important thing to decide right now,' Dad says, taking charge, 'is schooling.'

'I decided last week,' I interrupt. 'I'm finishing English and maths and doing the rest next year.'

'You could have told us!' Mum snaps; even Dad lets the mask drop for a minute and looks hurt—humiliated in front of the crowd.

'I forgot.' Nobody understands that none of this matters, it's just a going-through the motions, if you don't exist behind your body then it doesn't matter if you finish Year 12 in one year or twenty.

'Any plans for what you want to do?' Dr Fuller asks.

'Teach phys ed.'

I'm not stupid. I know what their faces will say to that. No one's got the nerve to say it out loud.

They've got the nerve for one more thing, though. 'Is Anna seeing a psychologist?' Julie asks, avoiding my eye.

'If Dr Fuller feels it's appropriate,' says Hairy Legs, 'the insurance will cover it.'

I can't stay quiet any longer. 'You think talking to someone is going to make me feel better about this? My body's wrecked, my life's screwed—I am NOT going to see a psychologist!'

You can dissect my body, my brain, on the coffee table with the tea and banana cake, but you can get out of my mind, that last little inner bit of me, Anna me.

C
HAPTER
11

I
t's been the coldest July on record. The coldest, the wettest, the greyest, though the weatherman doesn't measure grey. August looks as though it'll be the same—Mum complains that her bulbs are late; on the river side of the fence the wattles can't be bothered to bloom.

Cold and bleak, inside and out.

I can't hibernate forever. I'm floating through the world in a mist, on the wrong side of a glass barrier; I can see people but not touch them. School friends keep it light and breezy, their eyes twitching past me; tutors keep it light and easy, a little work and a little chat—Martin's writing a book, Baby Becky can sit up. Mum and Dad, Bronny and Matt, Hayden, Jenny, and Luke—they haven't given up on me and sometimes I think I could reach them if I could just remember how to try.

Three weeks till my birthday—the birthday I wasn't going to have unless I was better. I haven't changed my mind. I've put up with this for six months now; I don't see how anyone can expect more than that.

Jenny comes around with a stack of books from her mum: self-healing; do-it-yourself miracles. I flip through the first one: meditation; understanding your motives for not being well—
motives?
What kind of motive could you have for pain?

'Everything that happens, happens for a reason,' I read. 'Nothing is an accident.'

So what the hell would you call it?

If you are injured by a car racing through a red light, you must ask yourself why you planned to be at that intersection at that time? You will have had a reason for arranging that meeting and choosing the particular injuries or illnesses that resulted. Only when you find that reason will you be able to heal yourself.

I feel like throwing up—preferably on the book. 'Crap! What complete and utter crap!' How could I have willed Hayden to drive at exactly the speed he did so that we'd get to that intersection at exactly the same second as Trevor Jones—let alone how I went about willing a dickhead I'd never met to drive down a road I'd never noticed. It's too stupid to think about. But I can't stop myself from reading a bit more.

Even children who are abused by their parents have made that decision, when as free souls they chose parents whom they knew would abuse them. For the soul is wise and chooses the life that will teach it the most on each stage of its journey.

Worse than stupid—evil. The sickest thing I've heard since the neo-Nazis tried to claim the Holocaust was a myth. It's not only okay for Trevor Jones to slam into me and ruin my life, it's even okay for parents to torture their children, because that's what the children chose as an interesting lesson! In fact whatever horrendous thing you want to do to anyone else must be okay, because their soul planned for you to do it, no matter what their body thought. According to this wanker.

I'd have never made a bulimic—I can't throw up on command. But there's always another solution. It's not a very big book; more of a fat pamphlet. I shred it into tiny pieces and flush it down the toilet.

The world is so empty. Too drained for anger. I'm hollow inside, except for the tears. They ooze out when I don't expect them; ooze like mud, muddy misery.

Hayden and I are sitting together on the sofa, not quite touching and nothing to say, watching a holiday program with my family. The presenters are sailing the Whitsundays in a charter yacht; after the break they'll have a go at rock climbing in the Grampians.

No one else is crying.

How can I even know who I am when I can't do anything?

Jen won't give up on me either. Now she wants me to try and tell her exactly what's wrong.
My life, basically. Too much to think about.
But she keeps on pushing till I find part of an answer, 'You know how tragedy is supposed to make you find yourself? The theory that I should be stripping away all the layers and finding the real me? But what if there isn't one? I'm so scared that if I peel everything away there'll just be a big empty hole with nothing inside.'

'You're crazy!' says my friendly psychology expert. 'There's plenty inside you—you're just too down to see how real that person is. Trust me; I wouldn't choose a big empty nothing as a best friend.'