A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me (15 page)

“That's what they do,” she said. “They lie. They steal. And they never admit it, so they're a thousand times worse than us. I don't know why you can't get that through your head.”

“So I can't trust anyone?” I asked. “Ever?”

I was being sarcastic. What she was saying sounded ridiculous to me, but she didn't get it.

“Nope,” she said. “Nobody. But at least here, with our own, we know what the rules are and nobody lies about them.”

When Dad got home, his reaction to the story was pretty much the same as Calliope's: that it was my own fault. Partly it was my fault for bringing the toy, but mostly it was my fault for not having protected it, and for being surprised when a bunch of straights fucked me over, and for letting that push me into losing control.

“Cops are the worst thieves,” he said. “Politicians and lawyers the worst liars. Priests and teachers molest children. The only reason those people have so many rules is so they can break them to fuck people like us over.”

That didn't sound like it could possibly be true. The implications were just too horrifying. But I wasn't really in a position to argue the point.

*   *   *

I didn't go to school the rest of that week. When I finally went back the following Monday, Lynne was rude and brusque with me all day. I was ready for that. I was ready for the note she gave me at the end of the day, too, to take home to my dad.

“I'll need him to sign this, and you bring it back,” she said.

“Fine,” I said, taking the paper and walking home.

The note told Dad he needed to come in for a conference. Later that week, he met with Lynne, Suzie, the school principal, and Booker, the fourth grade teacher who sort of ran the GAOP program. The meeting was after school, so I had to go home and wait for him. When Dad finally got back, he looked tired.

“They wanted to put you in special ed,” he said.

“Like, for retarded kids?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, not exactly for retarded kids. They said you need too much attention, and you take time away from other students. They said that, in special ed, teachers would have more time to spend on you. So it's not so much that they think you're stupid, as that they just can't handle how smart you are.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn't really buy that interpretation, but it was one of my dad's necessary fictions. “What did you say?”

“I told them you're smarter than they are, and that the only reason you're acting out is because you're bored. I told them I'd sue if they tried to put you in special ed. That there's a stigma attached to it.”

“What's a stigma?” I asked. “Like, when you can't see?”

“That's an astigmatism. Kind of the reverse idea. An astigmatism means you can't see things. Lack of the ability to identify a mark. A stigma is a mark that doesn't come off. It means even if you're plenty smart, people will assume you're retarded because you're in special ed.”

“What did they say to that?”

“They didn't care. Educating children isn't much of a priority for them, really. So I asked to talk to Booker privately and we came to an arrangement.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The facts of life,” Dad said. I assumed this was a euphemism for some kind of threat, though I wasn't sure what Dad could have threatened Booker with that would stick.

“So now what?” I asked.

“Now you go to counseling at Seattle Mental Health every other week, to deal with your anger issues. And you keep going to GAOP.”

“What's Seattle Mental Health?” I asked.

“It's a shrink. You're supposed to go to a shrink.”

I wasn't sure how being crazy was less of a stigma than being retarded, but nobody was asking my opinion.

*   *   *

Dad and Phillip were still dating, but they usually went out instead of staying home, so I didn't see as much of Phillip as I used to. He was still working as a nurse, but he was getting a more advanced nursing degree from Seattle University. This only mattered to me because SU had a swimming pool, and SU students were allowed to use it and to bring guests. Once or twice a month Phillip loaned Dad his student identification so Dad could take me to the SU pool.

This was how Dad and I met Dr. Epstein.

The SU pool had a high dive that I liked to walk to the end of. Then I'd gird my loins and jump off. It was only about fifteen feet to the water, but standing on the end of the thing gave me vertigo. The problem was that most of the people who used the SU pool liked to swim laps. So, before I could jump into the pool, I had to look under the diving board and make sure there weren't any lap swimmers under me. I couldn't do this from the end of the board because I was too dizzy and I was afraid I'd fall off. The fifth or sixth time Dad took me to the pool, I leaned over the railing above the ladder to see if there was a lap swimmer under me and just flipped right over the rail.

Dad was sitting on the edge of the pool a few yards away, and he watched helplessly while I fell fifteen feet and landed flat on my back, on the concrete floor that surrounded the pool. He said afterward that the worst part was that I bounced. He'd never seen a person bounce like that before. Didn't even know it was possible.

When he got to me, my eyes were rolled completely back in my head, and he yelled at the lifeguard to call 911, but the lifeguard was already running over to me so Dad got up and ran into the office and started punching frantically at the phone, but nothing happened.

“How the fuck do you get an outside line on this thing?” he shouted at the lifeguard. But she was bent over me running through her first aid checklist: airway, breathing, circulation.

“The phone's not working!” Dad screamed at her. “How do I make the fucking phone work?”

“Dial 9!” she shouted back at him.

He dialed 9. Nothing happened.

“It's not working!”

“Dial 9, then dial 911!” she yelled back.

Dad punched in the number and finally got through to an emergency operator and ordered an ambulance.

That was Dad's story of the incident forever after: me bouncing, my eyes rolled back in my head, not being able to get the phones to work, and not being able to get the lifeguard to answer his questions.

I woke up as they were taping me to a backboard. Being taped down hurt. The tape on my forehead hurt. When I tried to move my head, the tape pulled at my skin. That hurt. My head hurt. Everything hurt. I started to panic. Suddenly Dad was in my field of vision.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You fell off the high dive,” he said.

“Mr. Schmidt,” one of the ambulance guys said. “Why don't you follow behind us in your car? We'll meet you at Harborview.”

They rolled me out to the ambulance and drove me to a hospital. At the hospital I got rolled down various hallways and left sitting like a piece of abandoned furniture outside the doors of various offices while I waited to be X-rayed, poked, and prodded. The outcome was as surprising to me as it was to everyone else: there was nothing wrong with me at all. No fractures, no sprains. Once they were sure my spine was okay they cut me loose from the backboard, and I realized that most of the pain I'd been experiencing was from being taped to a piece of wood. When they rolled me onto my belly there wasn't even a bruise on my back where I'd landed. I'd been knocked unconscious, but I didn't have so much as a goose egg where my head smacked into the concrete.

After what seemed like a couple of hours of exams, I was taken to an overnight bed, wired up to some machines, and given an IV drip that hurt like hell. The nurse told me it would only hurt when she put the needle in, but for some reason it just kept throbbing.

Dad was ushered in a few minutes later and sat down in a chair next to my bed.

“You're okay,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

As we sat there in awkward silence, a young guy in a lab coat came in. He was immediately interesting to me: he had dark, curly hair and he was wearing a tiny little hat on top of it, held in place with a bobby pin. He had an oversize metal clipboard in his hand. It was the bobby pin that got my attention, for some reason. He had enormous features, and a slightly stooped posture that may have been explained, at least in part, by his efforts to keep a cup of coffee he was carrying in his other hand from spilling. He was smiling when he came in, and he kept smiling the whole time he was in the room.

“Hiya,” he said, as he set his coffee cup down on a counter next to the door. “I'm Dr. Epstein. How you doing? You're Jason? And Mark. Nice to meet you. So I'll just get right to the good news—you're fine. Remarkable, really. You fell fifteen feet? Onto concrete? Knocked unconscious? No bumps, no bruises, nothing. Never seen anything like it. Kids! They bounce, huh? Amazing. I guess you're not one of those kids who bruises easily, huh? Amazing. Really. So I'd like to keep you around overnight, just for observation, but I'm pretty sure you're a-okay. You got any questions? Anything you're wondering about?”

“Huh?” I said.

“How do we pay for it?” Dad asked.

“You got no insurance?” Dr. Epstein asked.

“No,” Dad said. “And no money.”

“Don't worry about it,” Dr. Epstein said. “We got a program, no sweat. Probably why they brought you here. Swedish was closer. But we do all the free work. We got some paperwork you'll need to fill out, but don't sweat it. Hey, you want a free bus pass?”

Now it was Dad's turn to say, “Huh?”

“There's a program with Metro, you get a bus pass if you're disabled. Fifteen bucks a month, unlimited rides.”

“I'm not…” Dad said.

“You broke?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” Dad admitted.

“You're disabled. The kid, too. You need a note from your doctor. That's me. I'll leave it with the kid's discharge papers tomorrow. How you doing, kid? You doing okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Head hurt?”

“No,” I said.

“Back hurt?”

“No.”

“All right. Hold on.”

He took a little flashlight out of his pocket and walked over to my bed.

“Look at the light,” he said. He flicked it into my eyes; flick-flick, flick-flick. Then he moved it side to side in front of me, and I tracked it back and forth, up and down. He put his light away and held my chin up so I had to look him in the eyes. He frowned contemplatively, like he was evaluating me for something.

“Knock knock,” he muttered.

“Who's there?” I asked.

“Interrupting cow,” he said.

“Interrupting c—”

“Moo!” he shouted.

I giggled and he let go of my chin.

“He's fine. You're fine, kid. Mark. Mark, is it? Right? You want a cup of coffee?”

“It's a little late…” Dad said.

“Come on, we'll talk,” Dr. Epstein said, making a few notes on his metal clipboard, then picking up his cup of coffee and holding the door open while he waited for my dad, who gave me a quick kiss on the head before he followed the doctor out into the hallway.

“You on AFDC?” Dr. Epstein asked as Dad followed him out.

“We're on the wait list,” Dad said.

“Yeah,” Dr. Epstein said. “I can move that along for you. Come on. Bye, kid! You're looking great.”

And then they were gone. I lay there alone for a couple of minutes before I realized there was a TV mounted on the wall near the door, and that I had a remote sitting on the table next to my bed.

 

21

I started at Seattle Mental Health. My therapist's name was Grace. She was nice enough, but definitely more of a them than an us. Her dry brown hair was cut to shoulder-length with bangs. She wore light makeup, no jewelry, and one layer of clothing on each part of her body: a sweater and a skirt. Slacks and a tunic shirt. Always solid colors. No textures. Her shoes were simple flats. Her face was smooth and unlined. If someone had asked me to draw her I could have done a good likeness without having to take my pen off the paper more than two or three times.

Seattle Mental Health turned out to be a complex of new buildings about a half mile from our house, near 15th Avenue. The buildings were laid out like a series of small houses, connected by hallways and covered walkways. It was all very 1970s urban renewal, with high, sloping roofs and wood exterior siding. Grace's office looked out onto a small courtyard with a covered patio and a few young maple trees. There wasn't much in her office itself: a desk, three government-issue chairs, a box of toys, and a bookshelf full of children's books. When I came in for my first appointment, Grace told me we were just supposed to talk. We could talk about whatever I wanted.

“Can I play with those while we talk?” I asked, gesturing at the toys.

“Sure,” she said. “As long as you keep talking to me while you play with them.”

That seemed fair, so I got down on the floor and started sorting through the box. Somewhat to my surprise, Grace sat down on the floor across the room from me, leaning up against the wall near her desk and putting her writing pad on her knees.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked.

“Anything you want,” she said.

“You know why I'm here?”

“Why do you think you're here?”

“Because I yelled at my teacher,” I said. “And I said a bad word. A couple of times.”

“Was it fuck or shit or…?” she asked.

I paused in the act of picking through the toy box.

“Fuck,” I said. “And … motherfuckers. And fuck you.”

“So I guess you were pretty mad.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What were you mad about?” she asked.

I told her the whole story, from beginning to end. When I was finished, she was quiet for a while.

“Yeah,” she said finally. “I guess I might have said fuck a couple of times, too. If that had happened to me.”