The Lava in My Bones (19 page)

“Then I'll send something.” That evening I wrote my most desperate letter ever, pouring all my weakness into your newfound strength. I recounted everything; the honey, bees, Estelle, and my crimes. “You can save me, Sam! I know it. You can do anything. You were able to escape our home in Cartwright. Do something, please!” I sent the letter, not sure if anything would come of my urgent appeal to you.

The doctors continued to swab sweat from my skin, examine their cotton pads, and shake their heads. They treated me with compassion and saw me as a victim trapped in a body from which she couldn't escape. Yet I didn't want to escape my body. The only emotion I now felt was hatred. I despised Cartwright and didn't care if I sweated honey forever. So many people had been so cruel to me that if I became normal, any kindness from them would be hypocritical. I'd experienced the heartlessness of the Estelles of this world, and in this town they were the majority. I closed my eyes, concentrated on my heartbeat, and thought: honey-pump, honey-pump, honey-pump, let honey flow to all the surfaces of my body; let me be a sleek, glistening eel of sweetness, and make my bees come back.

Imagine my amazement two weeks later when Mother hurried in with her hair all undone and said, “Sam has escaped.” She stammered, “He's running wild through the forests north of Toronto. He ran out of the asylum at night when no one was looking. How could this happen? We should sue those blockheads. The airports, train stations, everyone has been notified and Sam seems to know this. The police say he avoids towns and highways and is travelling through fields and forests. The doctors believe he could be dangerous. He is heading east toward Quebec.”

A jolt went though my whole body.

“Twenty-four hours passed before they noticed he was gone. Those nincompoops! They should be forced to take a bath in your grandma's outhouse! Sam was becoming arrogant in the asylum, and this is the result.”

I couldn't stop shaking. Sam! You were running east, toward Labrador, toward me. It was because of my letter. You know I will help you. We will help each other. The guilt you felt at abandoning me in Cartwright has surely been nibbling at you for years. You will release me from the trap and redeem yourself at last!

I immediately pictured your sparrow chest heaving, your string-thin thigh muscles straining as you climbed over wood fences, ran between walls of wheat, jumped over crabgrass-strewn ditches. Run, brother, run! Run, brother, run! Scrabble across stone-studded fields, through bulrush-bladed marshes Throw your body before skidding, horn-blaring cars as you hurtle across the steel-fenced freeways that slice our country into fragments, but run, brother, run and come to me, come to Labrador and free me! We can escape from Canada forever!

At night I ignored Mother's recommendation to pray but instead recited, “Run brother run, run brother run,” non-stop for two hours.

Then the next day, Mother told me troubling news. “They found out that Sam received a letter from someone in Europe—probably the dizzy broad who started all his problems. Whoever it is has changed her mind and wants to see him again. She's invited him back and he's escaped so he can head straight to the lion's den.”

Was Mother right? Had you escaped so you could return to Europe? I wouldn't believe this. It was me who had inspired your flight, wasn't it? Aren't I the person on Earth you love most? I still repeated, “Run brother run brother run,” obsessively, relentlessly, blindly.

By early spring the doctors were beginning to believe there was a psychological reason for my condition. “When people are anxious, the body's sympathetic nervous activity increases,” a specialist said. I was getting tired of these explanations. “Epinephrine secretions from adrenal glands increase and these act on sweat glands. Not all types of emotional experiences cause this process. We need to discover which ones create it in your body.”

One morning a woman psychologist wearing butterfly-wing glasses stepped into my room. She had long discussions with me about my family, my experiences at school, my hobbies and friends, or lack thereof. She even interviewed Mother and Father. The next week I was glaring down at the parking lot, where Mother talked excitedly to a blonde woman who looked like a frilly parakeet on stilt-like high-heels. Her full skirt exaggerated the abrupt indentation at her waist, and the exposed skin on her upper back gleamed like marble. One of her thin arms moved like the stick-leg of an insect. I wished I could move my arm like that, so delicately and with such elegance. The woman rotated her head and I saw her spindly nose and pencil-thin lips. It was Estelle! She was dressed up—to impress the doctors. She handed a large bag to Mother, who then marched into the hospital.

That afternoon, three doctors entered my room. One of them said, “Sue, we're going to try a new psychological technique that we're hoping will have a beneficial effect.”

The doctors glanced at each other. A fourth man stepped into the room. He carried a frilly pink, low-cut, sleeveless dress, the kind Estelle would wear on her birthday.

“
No!
” I screamed. “No!”

One doctor stepped forward and grabbed my shoulders, the other shoved a needle into my forearm. Immediately my limbs felt heavy, my vision blurred, and I felt myself crumpling downwards onto the shiny tiled floor.

I don't know how long I was unconscious. I was not sleeping because I didn't dream. There were no sounds or images, just an impenetrable blackness like the darkness at the bottom of the sea.

Eventually the black faded to grey. Even with my eyes shut, I knew something had changed. I inhaled, but a weight pushed against my chest. My lungs couldn't fully expand. My breasts were pressed together and something hard pushed into the sides of my stomach. I slowly opened my eyes and noticed a white-pink haze below my chin. My shins and thighs felt cold, but my hips and torso were warm. I touched my cheek with one hand and when I lifted it, no glue-string dangled. I lifted one arm, and my armpit made no
thwuh
sound. I sat up abruptly; my head spun and, feeling nauseous, I beheld a ruffling sea of rayon flowing from my neck down the front of my body and all the way to my knees. I gasped—not a full gasp, my tightened corset wouldn't allow that. Below, I saw black, narrow, high-heeled shoes that pointed inanely toward opposite corners of the room. I moved my head from side to side. It felt heavy, and my ears were cold. I carefully raised my hand and with one fingertip discovered that my tangled locks had been twisted into a
shellacked labyrinth of solidified loops and curls.

To anyone but me, the dress was astonishingly beautiful, made by Esther during a moment of inspired ecstasy.

The white-walled room seemed to waver. I lay back on the bed and shut my eyes. Wherever they were, the doctors delighted in their discovery.

A week later Mother held my right elbow as I drifted through the parking lot. Car hoods shone like gleaming shells of giant insects. Mother's lips moved, but her voice was muffled. A car door opened like a mouth.

Through the car window I watched as we floated by the hospital entrance. The whole staff stood beneath the portico, their arms waving slowly like seaweed in water. Beside them stood a row of television cameras with leering Cyclops eyes.

At home I stepped into the kitchen. Father got up from his chair, smiled, and embraced me. I heard him say I was prettier than ever. Mother manoeuvred me to my room. She gave me a glass of water and told me to sleep.

I woke up thirteen hours later and discovered that I was still wearing the dress. Murmuring, Mother entered my room. She wet-sponged my neck, knees, thighs, armpits.

The day I returned to school, the streets were silent, but when I passed the bungalows on Maple Street, curtains opened and heads peeked out. My high-heels
pick-pocked
unsteadily along the ground. There was no snow anywhere since we were having
another warm spring. I hated the way the dress showed off my small breasts. A breeze blew between my legs. The rocks I stepped over seemed like eyes staring up my dress.

As I neared the school, I heard boys whistle. “Hey, cutie,” they yelled. Were they serious or mocking?

A crowd had gathered in the schoolyard. The tri-colour flag flapped limply in the wind. At the front, Estelle was doubled over, her laugh like a high-pitched smoke alarm. She shrieked, “That's too funny! She looks like a piglet dressed up for the circus.” A thunder-roar of laughter followed from the crowd behind her.

“Too bad we can't stick nothing gross on her anymore,” someone said. “There are some good caribou turds on the football field.”

“We're safe from her. That's what counts.”

In class I watched from my seat at the back. Two of the bee-mauled girls glared at me and muttered under their breath. None of the boys spoke to me. Though Jimmy had returned and was clearly unharmed, the old story about us lived on. If I hadn't hurt Jimmy, I'd hurt someone they hadn't heard about yet.

Entering the cafeteria for lunch, I tripped on my new heels; my blonde-dyed hair tumbled over my face. Even the janitor tittered. Boys watched intensely, their stares like barnacles on my skin. I ran into the hall to catch my breath.

When the final school bell sounded, I took off my shoes and dashed barefoot down the street. In the middle of the field where I'd first met the bees, I saw the sky was a solid, stubborn blue. No bees would invade it. My pores had closed like a million tearless
eyes, and my honey-springs had dried up.

So it had happened. My honey had stopped for good. Some time ago I would've shouted in joy. But now I wanted the bees; they were better than any human being. The poems Mr Schmidt read to us said the touch of another person was the greatest thing of all. I didn't believe this. I silently promised that if the bees returned, I wouldn't sic them on anyone.

Mother greeted me cheerfully when I got home, but I raced up the stairs and slammed my bedroom door. I tried to take the dress off but discovered that metal wires ran beneath the cotton shoulder straps; the chest section was solid brass secured with knobs in the back, and concealed under the thick fabric of the waist was a corrugated iron belt. The dress was girded with metal from Cartwright's new steel foundry.

I rushed down to Mother and shouted, “I want this off now!”

“Really, Sue. We mean for the best. Don't you see that?” and I saw that sadly she believed she was helping me. What Mother next said would become her mantra: “Do you want to end up like Sam?” She added, “He's been spotted north of Ottawa, charging across a highway and into the woods. God knows what he's up to.”

News of your journey inspired me. For a moment I felt buoyed into a region of hope. Run, brother, run, brother, run, and rescue me from Mother, Estelle, and the shorn rocky roads of Cartwright. Take me far away!

Mother had spent all afternoon rooting through my dresser, closet, even my bedclothes. As she'd done to you, Sam, she went through my books with a marker, crossing out lines that weren't
Godly or when characters swore or spat. From my
Classic Fairy Tales
she tore out the pages on which mothers were presented negatively. She tried to justify herself: “Sue, I want to clear the bad things from your mind so you don't get depressed like your brother.” You fled from Cartwright at midnight right after stealing $200 from our kitchen, so at bedtime, Mother made use of the new lock on my door. When I needed to pee during the night, I had to pound on the wall; Mother would cheerfully escort me to the toilet. She didn't worry about me being out during the day because I couldn't run away without money.