I'm Down: A Memoir (29 page)

She silently handed over the knife. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“No,” I said, unsure whether I was lying, “I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Okay, okay.”

“Say you promise,” she said, and looked at me expectantly.

I didn’t know what to say and said, “Um . . . I still really have to pee.”

“Say it,” she said.

“Okay, Marni. Jesus . . . I promise not to tell anyone.” And Marni slumped out of the bathroom.

The next day I got into the car with my mom, both physically and emotionally exhausted. I threw my bag in, and she asked, “So, how was sailing?”

I didn’t want to get into it, so I just said, “Tiring.” And climbed into the backseat and fell asleep until the car’s pulling into the driveway woke me.

Mom and I walked into the front door and she instinctively ran to the bathroom, arriving as Anora was pouring the last of a gallon of milk into the bathtub.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Mom yelled as Anora finished off the bottle and tossed it aside. “What are you doing?” I caught up to Mom and stood behind her in the bathroom.

“Mish!” my sister said.

“Hey.” I waved.

“You haven’t answered my question!” Mom said to Anora.

“It’s a milk bath,” she said. “Yvonne said it keeps your skin young.”

“You’re eleven,” Mom said.

“You’re never too young to start taking care of your skin,” she said, as though quoting Scripture. “Oh yeah . . . Mom can you get me some cocoa butter when you go to the store?”

“Aren’t you just gonna undo all that skin softening when you go in the chlorinated pool?” I pointed out.

“Huh?” Anora said, then, “Hey, Mish, do you want me to leave my milk bathwater for you when I’m done?”

“I don’t want your cold dirty milk water.”

“Anora!” Mom said, getting back to the matter at hand. “I don’t care what Yvonne says, milk does not grow on trees!” She tried her best to seem intimidating. “We need it for cereal!”

But Anora wasn’t the least bit fazed by Mom’s order and said a placating, “Okay,” before taking off her clothes and getting into her bath.

I went to my room and tried to go to sleep but thought about Marni instead. I didn’t know what to do. I knew Marni needed some help and although I wanted to give it to her, I was smart enough to know I was in over my head. I was even a little angry at her for inviting me over and sucking me into her problems under the guise of sailing. I felt bad for being angry, but didn’t she know I had my own problems? I was deep in my thoughts when my sister started hollering for the lotion as though if someone didn’t bring it to her right away, she was going to die of dry skin. I got back out of bed and found it for her in her room.

“Here.” I handed her the bottle in the bathtub.

“I miss you,” she said.

“Let’s have this conversation later.”

“Why don’t you come back to Dad’s house? It’s super yucky there without you.”

“I would think it would be better.”

“Well, it’s not,” she said. “It’s yucky and Dad and Yvonne are always mad at each other, and all I do is clean and take care of the babies.”

“You could live here, too.”

“No way. I couldn’t do that to the family. I mean, don’t you feel terrible?”

“Nope,” I said.

______

On Monday at lunch I looked for Violet. Her divorce self-pity was preferable to Marni’s creepy secret. Unfortunately, Violet was absent, and Marni caught up to me in the lunch line. We sat down together and it was instant weirdness. The fact that I was the keeper of her secret made her feel much closer to me than she actually should.

“Hey, Mishna.”

“Hi, Marni,” I said, suddenly feeling engulfed with responsibility.

“I’m really depressed,” she said. “I have been since you left.”

“Oh?” I said. I just didn’t want to get into it. “You should probably talk to the counselor or something.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think sometimes I just cut so I can feel something.”

“Lilith!” I said, seeing her across the room. “There’s Lilith.”

“I thought maybe just you and me would have lunch,” Marni said.

“Well, I already waved.”

The rest of the week Marni tried to have lunch with me, and every day I pulled a third into the mix. I felt bad for her, but I knew that if we did any more hanging out one-on-one, I wasn’t gonna be able to keep her secret for her. It was too heavy.

By Friday, things with Marni had calmed down and she didn’t seem to have the same sense of urgency. For the time being she was acting like herself, and promised me twice during the week that she wouldn’t cut again. But now Violet still hadn’t come back to school and Lilith was worried.

“Calm down, calm down,” I said as Lilith paced the hallway outside the cafeteria. “Why are you so worried about Violet?”

“Are you kidding?” Lilith said. “Her parents have their
heads so far up their asses that she and her brother and sister could light the place on fire without them noticing.”

“Really?” I asked. “Are they that bad? I mean, I’ve spent the night there a lot, things never seemed that weird.”

“Have you ever met her dad?” Lilith asked.

“No,” I said.

“Well . . . ,” Lilith said.

“I never thought that was that weird. I guess it’s weird. I don’t know.”

“Of course it’s weird!” Lilith said.

I was getting impatient with this conversation. I didn’t want to play witch hunt with Lilith. I didn’t know Violet’s parents well enough—and I guess that was her point. “Well,” I said, and sort of changed the subject, “have you called over there?”

“Of course,” Lilith said. “No one picks up.”

“Well, I’m sure everything’s fine. She’s probably just sick or something.” I was irritated and walked away.

That weekend I spent alone. Anora was at Dad’s and I didn’t feel like socializing. And for the first time in a while I thought about Dad’s house. I guessed part of Marni’s problem was that her parents weren’t really involved
and
she was an only child. And I guess Violet’s parents weren’t around enough, either. The one thing I could say about Dad’s house was you were never lonely there—he didn’t work too much, and the house wasn’t uncomfortably nice. You never thought you might get in trouble for sitting on something or breaking anything, because everything was shit being held together with shit. Plus Anora was there, and Andreus and Yvette were awesome kids, really. At least everyone at Dad’s house seemed like they were trying to have a good time. As a matter of fact, I had always been the killjoy. I guess I never appreciated just how hard it must have been to live with me. And for a few minutes
I missed being a big sister and I missed Dad and I missed the old house. That was, until my new friend Kendra called and asked if I wanted to help her pick out a new dressage horse.

On Monday there was still no Violet, and Marni was gone from school, too. It was bizarre. My friends seemed to be disappearing like teenagers in
Friday the 13th
. I walked up to Lilith in the hallway, who was putting on black eyeliner in a mirror with a picture of Morrissey taped to it.

“Hey, Lilith,” I said. I could tell by the look in her eye she was waiting to tell me something. Her lip was almost trembling with anticipation.

“You heard from Violet?” I asked.

“Oh yeah!” Lilith said, almost pissed off. “Her fucking parents didn’t even notice she’d been walking around with pneumonia for like three weeks!”

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“That’s not the half of it,” Lilith said. “She was, like, telling them she thought she should get her lungs checked out. Like for two weeks. The girl has asthma, for fuck’s sake.”

“Oh, my God,” I said slowly. I knew that cough sounded nasty, but I had no idea. “Is she okay?”

“No!” Lilith said. She loved this kind of stuff. It gave her an excuse to be righteous. “It gets worse. . . .” She closed her locker door and turned to face me. She took a deep breath and paused for maximum effect. “Her lung collapsed. She’s in the hospital.”

“That’s like pretty bad, right?” I said.

“Yeah!” Lilith said. “It’s really, really bad.”

“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head.

“What’s not to get? No one in her whole fucking family cares about her. . . . I told you.”

“I know you said that, but I didn’t really get it,” I said apologetically. “I mean get it, get it. I’m sorry.”

“Urgh!” Lilith grunted indignantly. “Her stupid parents are fighting with each other in her hospital room. You know, it’s sick! Truly sick.” I felt sick. And I felt like the crappiest friend that had every lived.
Why can’t Violet just have problems like being hungry with the phone turned off? Or plain ol’ no money?
That would be a simple problem that I would understand and could help out with.

The next week Violet was back in class, looking a little worse for the wear, and avoiding the smokers on the stoop out front. But Marni was still nowhere to be found. And as much as I kept thinking I should call over there and see what was up, after Violet I was scared that it might be something horrible—like she was killed in the passenger side of her mother’s car on a drunken late-night run to Jack in the Box. But no news was forthcoming and by the end of the week, I saw that as a good sign—and cynically reassured myself that if something tragic had happened, they would have called an assembly. But the fact that I was even worried about these people was weird to me. I had spent the last six years being jealous of them.

A few weeks later I had a swim meet. Mom had dropped me off, and I didn’t ask her to stay. Though inhaling chlorine in a damp environment was my idea of a great Saturday, she worked seventy hours a week and I respected her desire to take a nap or eat sitting down once in a while. She provided, she fed, and she went to the trouble of making my life about as free of drama as humanly possible. We had a good thing going as long as I didn’t ask her to stand up to Dad for me.

I walked into the host pool and saw Lilith, who was on another team, sitting against the wall with her teammates. Normally I would walk over and say hi, but seeing my sister over by my teammates was more compelling to me. She was walking
around the pool deck in a T-shirt with African colors on it and a silhouette of an Egyptian monarchist couple holding their newborn African prince. And as I walked up to her, she threw her arms around my neck and said, “Sissy!”

She had come with Dad, whom I hadn’t seen since I’d left, and I looked over and noticed him taking a seat in the bleachers with the other parents. He looked lonely and out of place. He took a seat near a girl named Teagan’s parents and started a conversation with them even though I knew he didn’t like them. When he saw me, he got excited and waved as though nothing had happened between us. I waved back. I was happy that I existed to him again, but it also felt weird—like I didn’t want to let down my guard. And for the rest of the morning, as I warmed up, stretched, and prepared for my events, I could feel him watching me and wanting to be included. And I knew he was proud and sad.

When it was time for my last event, he grabbed me on the way to the block like he always did when he came to a meet. He squared off my shoulders to him and looked me in the eye and said, “I want you to come off the block real fast.”

I didn’t know how to handle it, so I just said, “Okay.”

“Then on that second lap, don’t give up,” he said. “That needs to be real fast, too.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“Then the third lap—” But I stopped him. I felt myself loving him as he was standing there, and I needed my bad feelings back or I was going to cry and ask him if I could come home. Instead I let my anger at him well up like nausea. I thought about the van incident and the business with Yvonne and the shirt. And I could feel new resentments growing inside me like muscles, making me strong.

“I know what I’m doing, Dad!” I said. “I don’t need you to tell me how to swim.”

“I’m your father,” he said.

“Yeah!” I said. “Well, I’m the swimmer, and I already have a coach! Go coach Anora!” I saw him getting hurt and then angry, and I was scared for a moment. But he didn’t lash out at me.

He just threw up his arms and said, “A’ight,” and turned and walked away. I walked the other way, inflating my anger, pumping it like lead as I walked past my coach over to my lane and got on the block.

I did poorly—not only that, I was conscious of what I was doing wrong as I was doing it. I was hovering over myself in my lane watching myself late on the start and then taking one stroke too many on the turn, all the time thinking,
That’s gonna cost you at the finish.
And to add insult to it, when I went to get out of the pool, there was Lilith standing above me. And no matter how much I knew she understood that everyone has a bad race sometimes, no one wants to eat it in front of their friends.

“Hey,” she said.

“I really bit that.” I was embarrassed and hoped she didn’t think that was the best I could do.

“Eh,” she said. “Let’s get some chips.”

I looked across the pool and saw Dad and Anora palling around in the bleachers. And I was glad Lilith was with me because I wanted to look popular.

“So,” I asked awkwardly, still half-looking over at my sister and Dad as we walked over to the concession stand, “how have your events been going?”

“Killer,” Lilith said, “I got a personal best in the hundred fly.”

“That’s cool,” I said. “What’s next for you?”

“That’s it till finals,” she said, tearing open a bag of barbecue Lay’s.

We sat on a bench by the trophies, eating chips, when she
casually said, “Oh, so guess what . . .” and I knew whatever she said next would be bad news. Lilith then told me that she had heard through the grapevine that Marni’s parents had put her in the nut house.

“What?” I asked. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Well, they called it something else, but basically they had her committed.”

“Not a theraputic community?” I asked. “Like where Jenna got sent for stealing her dad’s prescription pad?”

“No, dude. Not rehab. Crazy-hab. Institutionalized, like the song.”