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Tales
from the Rabbit House: Sparrow’s
Song
Ch. 1 Beauty Marks
i'm going to go ahead and go
boldly
because a little bird told me
the jumping is easy, the falling is
fun,
right up until you hit the sidewalk,
shivering and stunned-
Ani Difranco, “Swan Dive”
The irony is that of all of us, I am probably the
worst at expressing
myself with words. I would rather have a bow in my hand, because then
I’d know where to begin. Arnica tells me to start where I am. So if I
begin where my body is, where my heart calls home, I have to begin with
the Rabbit House. With my eyes on this page, I am breathing in a
combination of smells that can be no other place: pine shavings, burned
sagebrush, bread baking, and the smell of the living beings here.
Arnica walks in and out from the garden, the topsoil on her clothes and
in her nails mixing with her already earthy scent. Cyan works with her
sketchpad on the living room floor near me, smelling faintly of
baby-powder. She looks out the window to where Arnica is working. She
closes her eyes tightly, looking at a place where the colors are more
vivid, then opens them and makes marks and shadings on the page that
look like they are bursting right from her fingertips. They are both
trying to stay focused right now to help me gain some focus, because
they want me to begin this whole story. In truth, it really started
with the Doghouse, and I still don’t have all the pieces of that story,
and don’t know if anyone does now.
Why should this frighten me as
much as it does? Either I already know you, reader, or I probably never
will. So I don’t fear showing you my “beauty marks”, as Cyan calls
them. I fear putting any of this into words at all, because I know how
quickly a description can reduce us to less than we are. When I tell
you about all our little quirks and oddball experiences will you reduce
us to whatever label, or “ism,” or (Goddess forbid) diagnosis you find
most useful? If you keep reading our story, remember this: our selves
are greater than the sum of our fears, and our family is greater than
the sum of our selves.
So I’ll let you begin where my
mind is, and where all this began for me: with darkness, smoke, and
fire. People have told me that finding my way out was a miracle. That’s
stupid. I just jumped off the balcony- and I had always been good at
finding my way out of situations. What caught me were two miracles
named Jinx and Natalie. But what amazes Arnica, and Cyan, and pretty
much anyone else who has ever tried to wake me up in the middle of my
sleep, is that I woke up at all. It amazes me too.
It was my first year of college, my
first year of freedom, and the second day of my first Christmas
vacation alone. I paid for all my classes and academic costs from the
scholarships I had earned in high school. Maybe if I had gone to
another high school people would have been impressed that I got a full
ride at a state college, but not the people at my private high school.
Kids
whose parents could buy their way into the Ivy Leagues just considered
me that weird girl who freaked out and went away to “therapy” her
junior year. And it was a state university in the south, so I might as
well have been a leper to some of them on my graduation day. It was not
that my father, the board-certified specialist in internal medicine,
couldn’t have afforded it, I just didn’t want to be beholden to him for
anything. Yet he insisted that he had to do something for me, whether
from guilt or a desire to save face, so I asked him to help me pay for
a private room in a private dorm.
The privacy part was really
important to me, enough to compromise on my plan to break out entirely
on my own, and I also needed to be on his insurance if I was going to
afford my medication. The medication is the first of my Beauty Marks to
introduce to you and what made sharing a dorm room an unpleasant
option. Shawna, my stepmother, made a point that a lot of students were
on Prozac now. Not at all the same thing. Prozac never got a person the
condescending politeness that my meds did. Anti-depressants were one
thing, but tell people you take anti-psychotics and people actually
feared you. I didn’t need that sort of treatment from my stepmother and
I certainly didn’t need it from someone I was sharing a room with.
And Prozac doesn’t make people wet
the bed like my meds do, which brings me to Beauty Mark number 2.
It was really a matter of the deep
sleep that it puts me in each night. I have always had a bladder that
was the bane of road trips (“Again? Didn’t we just make a stop?”), but
my meds make me sleep right through it. A few times a week, and more
often if I stayed up late studying the night before, I would wake up
(and not without an alarm clock) absolutely soaked- definitely not a
fun situation for a roommate. At home I had a waterproof mattress cover
and would wash the sheets myself after I got home from school (Yes,
“myself,” we had a maid. And I’m proud to say that only my father and
stepmother really needed her- not that they ever actually needed her.
But my room and my laundry were my concern alone. Thank you very
much.) After the first week at the dorm, I decided I didn’t want
to gain a reputation as the chic who always hung out in the laundry
room, even if it was supposed to be a good place to “meet people.” So
by the second week I started wearing disposable diapers.
Wearing them to sleep was not the
bad part, but the steps to make sure no one knew about this (Beauty
Mark 3- or is it really just 2 1⁄2 ? I’m already losing count here)
caused me some stress trying to pass for normal. For example, my story
of The First Time I Bought Adult Diapers:
I took the bus of course- I left
the car my father had bought me with him, since I lived just a block
from the school- to a medical supply store that I hoped was a safe
distance from the university, with a big sporty duffle bag so people
would think I was coming back from a gym. I was worrying myself
nauseous that I might end up in classes or having mutual friends with
someone working there. Not as embarrassing as the alternatives, I kept
telling myself.
The saleswoman who approached me
was probably about 40. It was no doubt obvious what I was looking at,
since all of the incontinence products were in one area.
“Can I help you find something?”
“Uh, I need…” trying to think of
the right word since I didn’t figure she would refer to them as diapers
to customers, “some adult undergarments.” I know that sounded stupid.
“Are you looking for a pad and
pant combination or diapers?” Okay, prove me wrong.
“I don’t know for sure.”
“Well, is this for a man or a
woman?
“A woman.” If only my bed could
stay as dry as my throat was getting.
“What size is she?”
I looked around the store. “Uh, my
size…” I almost whispered. “It’s for night time.”
“Well that definitely narrows it
down a bit,” she said, not missing a beat. “You’re kind of petite, so a
medium would probably not work as well- it’s best to get the smallest
you can comfortably wear. We have one that I think would work well. It
costs a bit more than Depends, but the advantage is that the tapes
really are re-fastenable on this one, so you don’t waste as many.”
Gee, that’s just great,
lady. “Okay I guess I’ll try that” Can we just hurry up and get this
done with?
I buy two bags, which is almost a
two-month supply, and the most I thought I could carry back in my
duffle bag. As I was paying, she touched my arm.
“You’d be surprised. You’re not
the only one your age who needs these sometimes.”
I was feeling both relieved to
hear that and annoyed at her for being too familiar. Why don’t you just
set me up on a blind date while you’re at it, lady? But I just said
“Thank you.”
A block away I threw up.
Okay, hardly a traumatic
experience compared with other things in my life, but it’s just
something you have to understand if you want to understand That Night.
The diapers actually made life a lot easier for me. With the
course-load I was taking, I needed that extra time I would have spent
on laundry.
So the Beauty Marks so far: mental
illness, the meds that help me get my life back from that, the
bedwetting that those meds cause, and the diapers to deal with that.
The others are just how lonely I actually was- though I didn’t
recognize it at the time- and my cello.
I knew no one when I came to the
university, which was of course part of the Plan, coming from the East
coast to the South. Being part of the crowd hadn’t mattered to me much
in high school, at first because I was more involved with what was
going on inside my head, and later because I was just focused on the
Plan for getting out. Once I got to the university I did what I could
to find my friends and my niche. I joined clubs, I went to football and
basketball games with people from my dorm (even though the game itself
bored me to death). I was invited to parties, which always felt
terribly awkward, since with my meds there was no way I should be
drinking, aside from the fact that I was 18 and would probably lose my
scholarships if one of the parties got busted (although it never seemed
to stop anyone else). So I would end up in a room full of drunks as the
only sober one, not finding anything as funny, and nothing loosening my
tongue of stone.
During the day, I was able to put
my past misadventures behind me. I kept telling myself I had my shit
together. I was meant to be there. I could blend in when I needed to.
But when night came I was blended to invisible. I would study until
everything closed but the coffee shops, the convenience
stores, and the bars which I couldn't be in and didn't want to be
around at that time of night. Often I would sit out on the patio
balcony of my second floor
room, watching the stars. There wasn’t much else to look at, since it
overlooked a paved alley and the dumpsters. It was the right
place for me at the time, floating between the stars and things thrown
away. So I would often fall asleep watching an old movie in the
TV/video player in my room.
But I always had my loyal friend
to look forward to during the day, which brings me to The Story of My
Cello:
When I picked her out she was huge
for me. I was probably too small for a full-sized cello, or at least
that’s what my stepmother told me. Shawna was very new in my life at
that
time, and my contempt for her had not yet grown, but I knew she had
never played a cello and had no idea what she was talking about. Okay,
my cello still looks big when short little me carries her around (my
cello, not my stepmother), but it didn’t matter. I was in love.
Of course, along with the
private Episcopalian elementary school came the other mandatory
trappings of suburbia: soccer, ballet, tutoring in foreign languages (I
was not just the only one in the house who had conversations with the
maid, I was the only one who could), and Suzuki music lessons as soon
as I could hold an instrument. So at the age of 11, we were getting my
bow re-haired at Mr. R’s shop. He asked us to call him Mr. R, since
everyone managed to mispronounce his Czech name, which I can’t quite
remember now. I wish I could remember it, because sometimes I wonder
what has become of him. The label he always put inside his cellos had
no name, just a picture of his family crest and the year. (“My family
made these hands that built it. God grew the tree for a hundred years-
who am I to put my own name on it?” he said once when my father asked
him why.) I spotted it in the corner of the shop, in the place that an
11 year-old- and a short squirrelly one at that- would want to look. I
noticed the tuning pegs first: they were a lighter color than the body
of the cello. Then I saw the tailpiece, which was a story in itself. It
was made of the same wood as the tuning pegs and on it was carved and
stained the image of a bird on a branch, with lightning in the sky
behind it. I started to trace the lightning with my finger.
“My brother tells me I should
leave out the lightning,” said Mr. R, “but what does he know? He only
makes violins.” Then he let out this hearty laugh that made me laugh
along with him, though I wasn’t sure if I just missed some joke.
“You see, the wood came from my
old country. This tree was in the woods in Czechoslovakia when I was a
boy. I played beneath this cello- before it was a cello.” And he
laughed again. “My father always said this would be the best wood for
one of his instruments, but the time was not right then. He said he
would wait until all his children had grown before he cut it, and he
would cut in the winter, he said, when the birds were not nesting
there. But that time did not come for him.” He paused for a moment.
“But two years ago my brother- he still lives there because he is the
stubborn one and I am the crazy one- he calls me and tells me that
lightning has struck our tree. So, I say to myself now is a good time
to visit my brother. So, anyway, that is why there is a sparrow on this
one. We always loved the sparrows because although they were some of
the smallest of the birds, they survived by being the clever ones. So
then what do you think of it all?” He looks at me. ”Is my cello for the
birds?” and he laughed once again.
Evidently, Mr. R must have wanted
me to have that cello, because for my next birthday, my father bought
me a full sized one. It seemed Mr. R had talked him into buying that
very one.
I learned to love my cello even
more when the voices started. At around thirteen the windy rumble in my
head became a sort of critical narration, which in the course of a year
became a litany of harsh male voices. They told me how worthless I was,
that everyone around me knew what I was thinking and laughed when I
suffered. I believed that people were watching me in my bedroom at
night, that people could hear my thoughts but acted as if they didn’t.
I was the test subject.
But when I played, I couldn’t hear
the voices. I didn’t care about the thoughts that people were stealing
because nothing mattered then but the music. I would start with
something rhythmic and lilting that would keep me from wanting to
scream. When my fingers were warmed up I would work on the most
difficult piece I could play at the time without stopping, something
that demanded my full attention. In my isolated part of the house I
would often play from when I came home from school until I could fall
dead asleep, without leaving any silence for the voices to fill. I
started to fall behind in most of my classes, but I became an
exceptional cello player. Later that would be what helped me pay for
college.
So these are the elements of this
beginning and what I went to sleep with that first night of winter
vacation.
My father and Shawna called me
that
night. Yes, everything is just fine here. I think finals went pretty
well, I’m glad I got calculus done with this first semester though.
Yes, they taped our recitals. I’ll try and get you a copy. Sure, I’ll
be plenty busy here, lots of practicing I want to do while the dorm is
almost empty. Oh yeah, several people have invited me to parties. No,
it’s no big deal, you know I don’t care that much about Christmas
anyway. Yes, I have the phone number to your hotel room on the island
programmed into my cell-phone if I need anything. I’m looking forward
to your package too. No, really, I’ll be fine. I’ll hear from you later
then. Yeah, me too. Bye.
I know better than to ask if they
have heard from my mother, but that is another story. At the time, it
is a story tucked far under in my mind.
The dorm is eerily quiet after the
last two days of everyone packing up for vacation and breathing a
collective sigh of relief that finals were finished. I honestly have no
idea what I will be doing with my time, with the exception of playing
cello. There are no parties. Nobody who I’ve associated with for any
length of time, in the dorm, in the string ensemble, or otherwise, will
be in town during Christmas. I had decided I was going to make this
place as much of a home as I could. What the hell would I do in the
Virgin Islands anyway?
So that night I eat some curry
from the Thai restaurant a block away (the dorm cafeteria is already
closed) and think about inviting someone to my dorm room for Christmas
who might be in a similar situation. Maybe if it gets too bad I will go
do some chintzy thing like listening to public caroling or see the
lights in the city park. I have the number to my therapist and
psychiatrist at the university health center, which I don’t visit too
often. I would have had the number anyway because the Resident Advisor
on our floor made sure everyone had the number to the counseling center
before finals began.
Christmas vacation is not going to
be that different from the rest of the time, except that I will be able
to sleep in late. There is no need for my alarm-clock-on-steroids. I
count out my dosage of meds from the Tylenol bottle I use to camouflage
them with so I won’t raise any eyebrows if I’m out in public. I wash
them down with some cold root beer from my little dorm fridge. Then I
rosin up my bow and tune my cello. Usually when I practice in my dorm,
as opposed to in the music building, I put my mute on the bridge. But
tonight there is probably no one around to hear as the sound rings down
the hall. I half-hope that someone will hear it and come keep me
company. My fingers guide me, playing on their own while my mind still
wanders, being both sentimental and annoyed at my own sentimentality.
Then I realize that I have been improvising around phrases from a
Christmas carol (which in mercy to you I will not name so the bloody
thing won’t get stuck in your head too).
“Okay, that’s enough of that,” I
say to my cello, “but thanks for being there.” Then I put her back in
her hard-shell case, and loosen the bow hairs before putting my bow
inside and closing the clasps.
I think a bubble-bath might be
nice right now. I can use the extra time on my hands to indulge in some
of the simple pleasures I lacked time for while school was in session.
Then I think better of it, because I know that if I sleep in late like
I plan to, when I do get up I will most likely have wet myself and need
another bath. So I make it number one on my “to do” list for tomorrow.
I walk out onto my balcony and finish my can of root beer. Four days
until Christmas and not a flake of snow. That was another good thing
about going to school this far south; there were actually people
wearing t-shirts today. I got by with a long sleeve shirt, plus a light
jacket at night. Coming from the mid-Atlantic coast the heat here in
September was worse than I was used to, but this kind of winter weather
was just fine with me.
I come back in and shut the
balcony door and the blinds. I switch on the TV, more out of force of
habit than anything, and start taking off my clothes to get ready for
bed. I just toss them wherever- another nice perk about not having a
roommate. I take one of the diapers out of my closet and go to my bed
to put it on. The packages they come in have these diagrams of
genderless people diapering themselves standing or sitting, but I can’t
for the life of me put one on right (without being weirdly lop-sided)
unless I lay on my back. I pull it under me, shift around to make sure
it’s symmetrical on my butt (I’d like to attribute this to my sense of
aesthetics, but honestly I just don’t want a wedgie), then I pull it up
between my legs and tape it snug. I have to admit that after a few
months of doing this, this process has become something of a comfort in
my nighttime rituals, and makes it easier to fall asleep. Of course, it
helps that I don’t go to sleep worried about the mattress, but it’s
also kind of like the safe feeling of having a blanket on my shoulders
when I sleep even when I’m not that cold. I put on a long, soft
over-sized t-shirt that goes down far enough to cover the diaper.
I brush my teeth, while It’s a
Wonderful Life is playing out in the background on the TV. I come back
in and lay down on the bed.
“Hey George Bailey,” I say to the
black and white image of Jimmy Stewart, “Why can’t I find someone like
you to take this blonde blue-eyed failed debutante basket case and go
fight for the little guy by my side.”
“And Clarence,” I demand of the as
yet wingless angel on the screen, “Where the hell are you?” I curl up
in my blanket, and I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I
remember is the alarms screaming me awake.
The image I hold in my mind of
that night combines my own memories and other people’s memories that I
have used to fill in the blank spaces. I have difficulty telling the
difference now. In my recollections and dreams there are parts where I
don’t know if I am seeing through someone else’s eyes or whether I had
simply stepped out of my self at the time. So know that when these
things happened, they felt like a chain of disconnected events, and
only now do they come together in one piece as That Night.
The alarms jolt me awake. Oh shit,
I’m going to be late for finals. No, that was last week. I can shut
this off and go back to sleep. I rub my eyes and reach for the clock.
The alarm continues as I hit the clock, and I realize I can’t see the
clock face. I can’t see anything at all. My hands are reaching for my
lamp when I suddenly realize what the sound is. The fire alarm is going
off.
I run to the door and immediately
trip on the blankets and clothes that are around my bed. My knee stings
from the way I land. Then I crawl the rest of the way to the door and
am still on the ground when I unlock and open my door. In the red glare
of the emergency lights the hallway is empty of any human presence. At
either end of the hall smoke is billowing darkly from the stairwells
and making the hallway outside my room hazy near the ceiling. The smoke
must be coming from the first floor. My only hope is the balcony.
Everything that happened from the
time I woke up to the time I got out probably took two minutes maximum;
it takes a lot longer to describe everything that my brain and body
were doing and perceiving during that adrenaline-charged event. I do
not remember feeling fear when this was happening. I suppose my brain
was treating this as a bad dream that I had to act on long enough to
wake up from it. Then on the way to the balcony, I crawl forward as
fast as I can manage, and hit my head on my cello case. The kind of
memories that a mind reaches for at times like these can be incredibly
random, like reaching with your eyes closed into your little survival
toolbox, hoping to come up with something useful. With my head dazed
and stinging, I remember a “what
if” game we played at one of the dorm socials to get to know each other
better. We were asked to think of what we would grab from our rooms if
there were some natural disaster and could only bring what we could
carry on our backs. What I told everyone was that I would take my
cello, which I now grabbed by her handle. What I told myself at the
time was that I’d be in deep shit without my meds, so now I get up and
crawl over the bed to grab the Tylenol bottle my meds are in. I smell
the smoke in my room now and begin to cough. I should be out of here
already. With a surge of adrenaline pushing me forward, my meds in one
hand and my cello in the other, I manage to slide the glass door to my
balcony open a few inches. Then I shove the door hard with one push to
the side. In my panic I use so much force the glass breaks when the
door slides all the way open.
I run to the rail and scream. I
don’t remember what. I can hear the emergency vehicles arriving on the
other side of the building, but can see no one anywhere I look beneath
me. I hear a roaring behind me and feel black smoke coming from inside
my room and gushing over my head. I try, from sheer instinct, to close
the glass door behind me against the smoke, but it won’t move and the
glass is all broken. It would have done no good. The smoke just keeps
coming. I get as low as I can so I can have clean air and think about
the utility pole. It is just five feet away, and the dumpster two feet
from that, but about ten feet down. Oh God, if I can just be tall for
five minutes of my life, right now would be a real good time. Now or
never, I tell myself as I step up and straddle the railing.
And I drop my cello.
I do not even realize my screams
are audible over the alarms and the fire until I see two forms running
toward me. It looks like they are carrying equipment on their backs,
but they take off what they are carrying and drop it in the other side
of the alley. I watch as the larger one, cat-like, jumps up on the
dumpster then begins to climb the utility pole using metal hand-rungs
sticking out the side.
“Grab my hand.” He screams, and
reaches out both arms as he grips the pole with his legs. I lean over
farther and drop the pill bottle down below. I grab his arm and push
off with my legs. Then I jump and grab him as he grabs for the pole.
From below it never looked so high up, but looking down at the cement
and asphalt alley, it looks like the drop could kill me.
“Hold on. Hold on.”
I’m holding like I never have
before in my life. He moves down the pole with me on his back. With the
building burning some five feet away, our descent seems immensely
slower than his climb up. I know, right then, that my added weight is
not making this easier. I know if I can just relax for a few moments
this could be easier, like learning to swim, but I can’t relax at all.
I’m just picturing my self dead on top of my cello. I don’t know until
later that my fingers were also gripping his shoulder so tightly they
were leaving bruises. God, remember what I just said about being taller
for five minutes? Scratch that.
When he reaches the lowest rung on
the pole, he says, “Jump onto the dumpster.”
He is between me and the dumpster, so he shifts his weight so I can put
my feet on the bottom rung. I don’t remember if I even look before I
jump, nor whether I actually jump or just lose my grip. Next I crash
into a heap of cardboard boxes and the corner of the some of the boxes
hit my in the ribs and knock the air out of me. I am about halfway down
in the dumpster and covered in Christmas-tree tinsel. To my surprise,
the other person who came to the alley is already in the dumpster,
pulling me to my feet from behind.
“Sister, I know it hurts, but we
gotta get out of here,” she says. “There’s sparks falling from the
building.” She jumps from the dumpster, then reaches her hand back in-
and pulls out my cello from among the boxes. I try to jump out after
her, but it is not as easy as she makes it look. I end up straddling
the edge for a few seconds before she helps me out.
“I’ve got your instrument, but I
think you dropped something else.”
“My meds,” I say. I start looking
around on the ground. The man, who must have just jumped straight off
the pole, sees what I’m looking for and grabs it off the ground.
“Come on.”
They run to where they left their
gear, the woman still carrying my cello. I run after them, my bare feet
striking the pavement. They put their gear back on, which I now realize
consists of large backpacks and bedrolls. They are both roughly my age,
or maybe a little older. The woman is broad and muscular, with dark
dreaded hair and a glint on her face where her nose is pierced. His
hair is naturally light, or at least his facial hair is. His mohawk is
a green and blue and is the most color I can see in the alley with all
the asphalt, trash and smoke around me. It dawns on me what I must look
like to them right now. I have tinsel and who knows what other trash in
my already dusty-blonde hair. My shirt is torn in less than modest
places. My diaper is visible to both of them. I must have wet myself on
the way down, because I’m feeling warm and wet down there, like the pee
hasn’t all soaked in. I smell heavy with smoke and dumpster drippings.
I feel bruised in so many spots that all my limbs just feel heavy. And
on top of all that:
“Oh shit. You’re really bleeding.”
She holds my hands in hers as I drip blood into her palms. I start
coughing and my hands reach reflexively to cover my mouth. Then, just
as quickly, my knees buckle and I fall. My face lands on her hip, but
before I fall completely, I feel his hands reaching under my legs and
behind my shoulder. He picks me up in his arms, and I remember seeing
the moon above me. The smoke starts to cover it in the sky. I see his
face, which is suddenly brighter as flames start to roar from the dorm.
“Natalie, run!”
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