The Finer Points of Becoming Machine (3 page)

It's late at night and I am writing this by the creeping yellow light coming
in through the broken plastic blinds that cover the clouded-with-dirt window. I just kind of scribbled nonsense tonight in my journal so I wouldn't get in trouble for not writing anything. But something is inside me, trying to claw its way out of my chest and onto this paper.

I'm afraid to write though. I know about child protection laws and I'm afraid of my parents. And what happens if I tell the truth and nobody believes me? Then my parents will beat me when I get home for
almost getting them in trouble.

I close my eyes against an unwelcome thought; my father.
He's angry at me for being awake. He thinks that hitting me will somehow lull me to sleep. I'm crying and he starts screaming at me to shut up and go to sleep.

I'm what… twelve here? I could never sleep very well. I've always had insomnia. When I was very little, the doctors my parents took me to, after nights of listening to me scream in my sleep, said it was ‘Night
Terrors'. They said to let me keep the light on if it helped. They still didn't let me keep the goddamned night-light on though. Bastards.

Anyway, I'm not sure I had ‘Night Terrors'. I think I was probably so traumatised from listening to my parents fight all the damned time. I think that it really did a number on my brain, so that even in sleep the fear and the bad thoughts wouldn't go away.

To be quite honest with you, talking to Ricky earlier really kind of messed me up some, and for what reason I'm not sure.

I've heard my friends, other kids, talk about getting knocked around by their parents. Hell, half of my friends had similar situations as mine to endure – parents who should never have got married and sure as hell should never have had us. And who fought all the time, fists and all, leaving us wrecked, sad, depressed, and way too old for how young we are. I'm sixteen and feel ancient. Thoughts and memories race through my brain now, that I don't want to
remember. And, since I'm falling apart, my little mantras don't work any more.

Let's say, theoretically, (and the reason I say this is because if it
wasn't
theoretical, you could call the police, and then you could take me away from my family, and I wouldn't want that any more than I like being in this hell hole
…
) that I have a friend. She's grown up in an abusive home. Her earliest memories are of listening to her parents scream and yell at each other. She's watched her father slam her mother's head into a metal filing cabinet at some age too young to recall. She's watched her mom put on layers of make-up until it just looks like she has permanent dark circles under her eyes. You know, like those older ladies you find at the drugstore buying pancake make-up in the attempt to hide those dark circles
…

And she hates herself for it. You see, this girl blames herself for it. Partly because she thinks it wouldn't have happened if she wasn't born. That's what her father says anyway. And partly because she didn't put
a stop to it. She never was strong enough or could get out of the house fast enough to stop any of it, and she is so sick with guilt that… let's say that maybe she's even tried to kill herself, that's how sick it makes her. And now she's sitting in some dirty mental hospital, scribbling pathetically in some journal trying to sort out all the mess in her head
…

I have to stop writing. I re-read what I've just written, and even though I haven't said my own name and even though I put
theoretically
on paper, I wonder – can they still call the police? Can they still put me in some foster home? And if they did, would it be worse?

I chew on my pencil, deep in thought. I ponder this very seriously, but at a distance, like it's some mathematical puzzle that I need to solve rather than it being, well, you know, my life.

I come to a decision. I nod to myself, thoughtfully. Yes. It
would
be worse to be in a foster home. I mean, my parents are
divorced, have been for about a year or however long it's been, right? So what the hell is my problem? Why does this still upset me so much? Shouldn't I feel better now? Shouldn't the sounds of fists meeting flesh have started to fade?

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?
I press so hard with my pencil as I write this that I rip through part of the paper. Great, I think to myself frowning. Even when I am trying to get everything out, something falls apart. Like paper.

I'm having an internal debate about whether I should turn this journal paper in or not when another unpleasant thought assaults me.

I drop the pencil and cover my ears and curl up into a tiny ball to protect myself.

I'm sitting in the living room, watching some stupid cartoon about some girl who has a terrible life with horrible stepsisters and an evil stepmother who make her clean all the time. The mice are singing some song
about how a dream is a wish your heart makes, or something like that. And then my parents come home. They're drunk. My mother looks slightly panicky. They hand the babysitter too much money and shoo her out of the door quickly. They immediately go to their bedroom, and the door slams shut.

I hear arguing. I sigh – I think I'm eight or so here. I turn the television up, trying to ignore them. They get louder. I turn the television up some more. This is never going to stop. I remember thinking how I may as well get used to it. I am trying to focus on these little mice and the blonde girl and how she wants to go to a ‘ball', whatever that is. I think it's where people dress up and dance funny.

My dad comes out and is too nice, and tells me to go to bed. ‘But dad
…
' I start, and stop just as quickly when his face turns cruel and mean. I can hear my mother crying in the other room as I walk by.

‘But I have to say goodnight to Mommy
…
' I start again.

‘She'll come in later and tuck you in. Get your ass in bed. NOW!'

I run off to bed. He shuts the lights out, ALL of them, and closes the door.

The way this house is set up is that my room is adjoining my parents' room. And cheap tract housing doesn't tend to have thick walls, so I end up hearing way more than I ever want to hear from that cursed room.

The sounds are getting louder, the screaming is louder, and Jesus, my mother's screams are always the worst part. It's like hearing a dog being beaten and not being able to do anything but feel sad when you hear the pathetic yelp, and hating the bastard who is doing it.

My mother sounds more terrified than usual. Something, this time, is very, very wrong. I can't remember being more afraid, a vice has gripped me and I can't move, only listen as the sounds grow louder and more grotesque. Things are breaking, and my
father is screaming like he is someone else. I hold my little brother and sister as they beg me to do something, to stop it.

‘If we pray hard enough God will listen and He'll stop him, and daddy won't kill her.'

I keep trying to sneak out of my window to get help. This one is bad and I am afraid. Really afraid. But the son of a bitch keeps coming and checking on us and I am too terrified to do anything but pretend to sleep. Once he almost catches me, but he is too coked-out to notice that I am in a different bed than before.

I keep at the window, but it is child-proof and I can't get it unlocked. My tiny fingers cannot twist the metal tab hard enough to get the window open. Even if I could, he'd definitely hear me before I made it through to the backyard, over the six-foot tall fence and to the neighbour's house on the other side.

So we pray in vain. We pray and we cry ourselves to sleep to the sounds of things
breaking, our father yelling, our mother's sobbing pleas.

Next day we wake up and all stand in a line at the door and kiss our father goodbye as he goes to work
…

No. No, I'm not going to remember this…
NO NO NO NO NO!
I start saying to myself, softly at first, but growing louder.

My roommate stirs. Oh Jesus, I'm about to get a code called… why won't
this
particular memory go away? Why this one, of
all
of them?

I start repeating. ‘No, this isn't happening, this did NOT HAPPEN TO YOU, THIS DID NOT HAPPEN TO YOU…' over and over again.

If I tell myself this enough, it usually goes away. They are mantras that protect me.

I tear up the cursed pieces of paper that I now blame for stirring up these thoughts, rip them into teeny tiny shreds, hoping to
rip the thoughts up too. It's not working.

Good goddamned job Emma, you started writing and now look what it did to you, now you're sitting here crying and sobbing all over again, and where have all your tears got you?

‘SHUT UP!'
I scream at myself. My roommate wakes up.

‘EMMA!' she yell-whispers at me, her hair tousled by sleep and her voice low and hoarse. ‘Shut the hell up before the nurses wake up or the orderlies in the hall on the rounds hear you. It's late and I'm tired, and to be honest, I really don't care what the hell you're saying! Just shut up and go back to sleep!'

In a final fit of drama, she throws herself back down on the bed and covers her head with her pillow.

I am still curled up in a ball, shreds of paper lying around me. I'm not quiet, like she wants, but at least I'm whispering, and she doesn't say anything else.

I repeat one of my mantras. ‘This is not happening. This is not real. This did not happen to you. That was someone else.'

Normally, like I said, this set of phrases I can repeat
ad nauseam
until the thoughts fade back to black, back to the dark part of my brain where I keep these horrors, and I try very, very hard not to think about them.

Tonight this memory is not going away though. Tonight, just like I did those years ago, I end up crying myself to sleep, praying for the thoughts to go away.

Sleep didn’t claim me until I saw the gentle changing of the night sky to early morning, and only then did the demons of the night release their hold on me as they faded into the night. I closed my eyes, and it seemed like just a few minutes later it was time to wake up.

Exhausted I half-heartedly combed my hair and brushed my teeth. My roommate glared at me, obviously still irritated from the night before. I sighed and wished I could have cared more, but it would have taken energy I simply didn’t have.

As I walked down the hallway, I heard
a noise I hadn’t heard before and it took me a few steps to realise that I had begun to do what I called the zombie shuffle. Horrified, I made an extra effort to pick my feet up when I walked, and straightened my bony shoulders, determined to cling to whatever shreds of dignity I had left.

When we finally entered the main room, I shuddered. Someone had turned on the heat either too late or not high enough, and it was freezing cold. The cheap slippers did nothing to block the icy chill from the floor, and as I settled into the uncomfortable plastic chair to await the crappy food we were here to eat, I awkwardly picked up my legs and crossed them, balancing precariously on the chair, hoping to warm my feet by tucking them into the crooks of my legs.

Bored and tired orderlies brought the food into the room, long since gone cold and never really edible in the first place. I’m not hungry, but I’ve learned that if you don’t eat, you get in trouble. As I’m already underweight, I have to choke down at least
part of the rubber eggs and congealed oatmeal, since I’ve been threatened with intravenous feedings if I keep skipping meals, and I’d rather choke down a few bites of this crap than to have yet another needle stuck into my painfully sore arms.

I don’t remember feeling pain like this in quite some time, and I’m not sure it’s quite like anything I’ve ever felt – the feeling of holes in your veins and so many cuts in your arms they outnumber the skin there. It’s a different kind of pain from the type of pain that beatings deliver, and I’m not used to it.

I find myself staring at my arms often; like a train wreck I find it impossible not to stare at the mess that’s laid out before me, even though it’s sad and tragic and disgusting.

The meds come. The evil nurse is gone, the one from the day before is still here and I am relieved by her semi-friendly presence. When I take the paper cup of water, I am surprised by its coldness. I
look up at her and she smiles. She had apparently gone to the effort of filling the water pitcher with filtered, cold tap water. When the cold water hit my dry mouth, I breathed a silent prayer of gratitude. This kindly nurse patted me on the shoulder and I actually smiled at her gratefully, before I walked off and got into my chair for morning group therapy.

I’m having a hard time staying awake during this session. A box of tissue is being passed around like a cookie plate. I pass. I don’t have the energy or the tears to cry after last night’s painful ordeal of remembering the past.

When it gets to my turn, Dr X looks at me and gives me the ‘It’s your turn’ look. I clear my throat and fidget with my pants, and I begin to talk about my parents’ divorce. It’s as close to the truth as I can get without revealing too much about what’s really going on.

‘My parents began their divorce when I was twelve years old,’ I begin.

Dr X interrupts me. ‘And how old are you now?’ he asks.

‘I’m sixteen.’ I respond flatly. He looks slightly confused. ‘Their divorce lasted… for four years?’ Dr X asks me.

‘No, for about 3 years.’

Dr X shakes his head slightly. ‘Continue, Emma.’

‘My parents didn’t have a good marriage. They fought all the time. And I mean, really fought. You know, threw things, screaming and yelling all the time.’ Ricky nods understanding. I continue.

‘Finally, after years of dealing with them fighting, they decided to get a divorce. But you know, every month they’d stop the divorce and try to work things out. A month later they were back to square one, and they’d start the divorce all over again.’

I carefully measure my thoughts, my words. The wrong slip of the tongue could
land me in foster care.

‘And how did that contribute to your being here today, Emma?’ Dr X asks me.

I pause and think of how to answer his question. ‘It led me here because… I was depressed about the divorce and their fighting I guess. But I didn’t really realise it, you know? I was the oldest child and I was so busy taking care of everyone, my mom, my siblings, that I forgot I had feelings too. And one day I just snapped and couldn’t deal with it any more, and that’s how I ended up here.’

Dr X nods his approval at my
cooperation
in this session. I yawn tiredly. I’m so tired my eyes are tearing up, and I wrap my arms around myself to keep warm.

The session ends. We colour. We go to education and I practise math problems that I remember from the fifth grade – or it might have been the year after that, when I was eleven. Whatever… I stare at the sheet of paper for a very long time, not so much
because I can’t do the problems, but because I’m having a hard time seeing.

The pills have kicked in, and brought with them a wave of almost comfortable numbness, or at least apathy, and that’s fine with me at this point. Free time comes and everyone is doing something but me. I’m sitting in my chair, at the end of the room, with my notebook, when a nurse comes in and tells me that I have a visitor.

I blink. ‘Who is it?’ I ask, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

‘Your mother,’ she replies.

I am torn between excitement and
self-disgust
. I am escorted into the visiting area, and I sit nervously while I wait for my mom to enter.

The door opens. My mother walks in, shoulders back, make-up obviously just redone to hide the fact that she was crying. Maybe nobody else knows or notices, but I
know. I’ve seen her cry my whole life, and I know how she looks when she tries to hide it.

My mom and I stand there, face to face. Finally, we hug. She hugs me tightly, forgetting her composure, and her touch feels protective and warm at first, and then it’s like she switches off, and then I’m hugging a statue. Awkwardly, we let go of each other and when I look at her face, she has the mask back on, and then she’s not really my mom any more, not the mom I know, soft and loving and pretty.

We sit down. Small talk ensues. How are you doing in here? Are they treating you well? How is the food? How are your arms doing? Is the doctor nice? And then, the question that I was half expecting but still wasn’t prepared for.

‘What are you talking to them about Emma?’ I stare at my pyjamas under my mom’s scrutiny. ‘Uh, nothing really. Just ya know, how I’m feeling, and how the medications are, and stuff like that.’

She nods, not really believing me. ‘I heard you attacked a nurse Emmy. Why did you do that?’ she asks sadly.

I can’t tell her. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m afraid she won’t believe me, but I don’t say a word.

My mom is fidgeting with her bag and finally gets so frustrated she explodes. ‘What is WRONG with you Emma? You were supposed to get better when I got away from your father. And now this? You’re COMPLETELY embarrassing us Emma. Do you know how that feels? How that makes me look?’

I grit my teeth and, for once, I stand up for myself.

‘No Mom, I don’t know how that makes you feel. And for once, I don’t give a shit.’

My mother gasps at my language. I’ve never talked to her like this. On cue, she starts to cry.

‘Oh
stop
it already.’ I continue. ‘It was always about you, and always about dad. It was never about us, about us kids. We couldn’t feel anything, we couldn’t have friends, we had to be your perfect little children to show off to your friends and now,
now
, you find out that things weren’t so perfect, but you refuse to take ANY blame for it.’

My mother starts to cry. ‘Oh, my God, you hate me, I’m such a bad mother…’ she starts before I interrupt.

‘STOP IT! Not
everything
is about you, OK? This is about me.
This is about me,
do you understand? I couldn’t be everything you wanted. You wanted to pretend that Dad never happened, that the years of fighting and all the horrible things we saw and heard and covered up because you
asked
us to, never happened. And maybe
you
were able to, but I wasn’t. And neither were my Paul or Rosemary. And I tell you what, you’d better watch
them
close, or they’ll end up in here just like me.’

My mother stares at her purse, clutched tightly in her lap. My words have struck her to the core and she can’t even look at me right now. Finally, she remembers she has a voice.

‘Is that really why you’re in here Emma? I thought it was because your boyfriend…’

I see the pain in her face and I can’t help but feel like an asshole for what I’ve just said. But I can’t lie any more either.

‘Mommy, it wasn’t him. It’s everything. It’s everything I saw and everything I hid and the fact that when you got remarried, you forgot about me. I was your little helper, but not your daughter. It’s about losing my brother. It’s about things I can’t tell you in here right now, but if it makes you feel better, you can blame it on my boyfriend.’

My mom looks at me and calmly says, ‘I’ve called your father.’

My blood runs cold. ‘Why… would you do that?’

‘Because you’re his daughter, and I think that he should know what happened. He says he’s got some appointments and trips he needs to cancel, but he’s worried about you and wants to come and see you.’

I never really thought about punching my mother before, but the thought crosses my mind. I grit my teeth and cross my arms.

‘You don’t want to see him?’ my mom asks me, surprised.

I stare at her as if she just told me that she’s convinced the earth is flat. ‘Mom, what do you think? I mean, really? With everything that’s happened, what do you think?’

She stammers. ‘I just thought, you could… you know, use your family right now.’

I’m furious. I don’t remember being this mad at her, this frail, beautiful, fragile, kind human being before. But now, I want to choke her.

‘MOM. I… really… REALLY… wish you hadn’t done that.’

‘But why?’ she asks me, like she’s confused.

I stare straight into her beautiful hazel eyes and steel myself.

‘Because, mother… because of big sunglasses and lying to schoolteachers and inventing car accidents to cover up your black eyes and broken ribs. Because we sat there and starved when
he
wouldn’t pay child support. Because I sat at the goddamned door with a baseball bat and a telephone in case his threats against you rang true and he did come to do what he threatened to do.
That’s
why.’

My mother’s mouth drops. ‘Emmy… don’t say those things Emmy. Remember, we don’t talk about those things.’

‘Yes Mom. I remember. That’s why I’m in here, looking like this.’

An orderly knocks on the door and announces that visiting time is over.

My mother and I look at each other awkwardly, and hug.

‘I love you,’ she says.

‘I love you too, Mom.’

‘You aren’t telling them too much are you?’ she asks, afraid.

I sigh. ‘No Mommy, I’m not.’

She’s visibly relieved. She leaves the room.

The orderly comes and escorts me back into the main room.

I just sit and laugh to myself.