A Blue So Dark (19 page)

The Sylvia Plath effect refers to the phenomenon that creative writers are more susceptible to mental illness. Especially females who write poetry. I am such a goner.

ctober 28, I scrawl in one of Dad's journals. I fed Mom an orange and some chicken broth. It's the only highlight of the day.

I pace, I watch, I pet. The clock ticks.

I try to eat. I gag when food hits my tongue.

October 29, I write. I think if I could justget some sleep, I could wake up with an answer. Id be able to figure this mess out. But sleep doesn't come-not for me, not during the day, or even in the dead of night. Sleep plays hide-and-seek with me. I hunt for it, rolling fitfully on the couch, or curl ing under a blanket in the chair by Mom's bed. I even try to crawl into bed with Mom, taking up Dad's old place, hoping that having another body so close to her-warm and breathing and real-will help her turn toward something solid and true.

But it doesn't. And lying next to Mom doesn't help me catch a single wink, either. Sleep is crafty-it's sneaky-and even as I call its name, it refuses to show its stupid face.

Somewhere close to midnight, after having paced through every room upstairs, I wander down into the basement. The whole place is just as cluttered and scattered as Mom's brain. I hate the junk we've hung onto-a bicycle with no wheels, canvases Mom's gessoed, half-used tubes of oil and acrylic paints, laundry baskets full of dirty clothes, even an open two-liter of flat Coke sitting on the bottom stair. But what's the point of cleaning up? It'd be like shoving a metaphorical Kleenex into the bullet hole that has become my life with Mom.

I kick at the dusty, stray branches of an artificial Christmas tree, finding an old journal beneath the plastic greenery. Little does Dad know, I don't usually fill the pages up with Mom's every waking mood (and the fact that I have been taking notes on Mom's condition lately shows just how deep my fear is starting to sink). No, for the most part, I sketch in the journals, and write poetry. Just like a junkie who will get high on anything-even glue.

I plop on the once-loved orange velour couch that's now sprouting stuffing, and open the journal to find Jeremy staring up at me from the first page. Last summer, I'd penciled in his gorgeous face, his beauty mark, the wind blowing his hair across one eye. Looking at the drawing, everything I wish I could tell him explodes through me. And even though it's honestly the last thing I want to do, I'm scrawling a poem right over his cheek ...

Morning, October30, I scrawl in my journal. Mom still hasn't spoken. I keep putting Neosporin on her feet where the matches hit her, and even though the burns look sore, she doesn't flinch. I gave her a sponge bath, and I realized she'd gotten her period. I finally got the bloody sheet out from under her, and rolled her onto a clean one. I've never had to change Mom's pads before, and it scares me. It scares me so much. Yesterday, I could only get her to drink some fluids. How long can a person go without solid food???

I sigh and look over my shoulder at Mom's mural. Everything is so bad. Everything seems so wrong, so wrong, and my stupid words in a journal that nobody reads-what good are they? But I have nobody on my side, nobody, and my pen is moving again, because writing is all I have left ...