I need to vacuum the carpet tomorrow. That was my grounding thought, what I centered on. Nothing else mattered, nothing else was real except the fuzzballs on the carpet and Joan Ozborne singing ‘St. Theresa’ from my computer speakers behind me. Just slow, easy does it, think about the rug, think about the perfect shade of pine green that Paula’s mother’s vacuum is, think about the Systems Binders you need to make tomorrow, just anything but his voice.
When I’d get like that, to that crisis point, I’d always look back on the day or night, trying to see where things went wrong, maybe think what I should have done. It was like at home in the grim doldrums of a fight, and not knowing if I should have said sorry, should have tried to make everything better. All I could think was, it’s a good thing I didn’t go to bed back there at 1 o’clock. We started talking about instinct and animal behavior, but that was hours before, and now Paula was sobbing and shaking, and Rex angry and righteous.
Like I should talk; I was crying silently and fighting the growls that occasionally rumbled from my chest. Bastard. I’ll kill him. My head reeled inside, as much with dizziness and confusion as with the headache I’d never really managed to get rid of. I’m too tired, I’ve gotta go to bed, there’s work tomorrow but I can’t leave her alone with him. I wanted to vomit, to purge the rolling nausea from my core and forget the buzzing gray his voice was invoking. Stop it. Don’t do this to her…don’t make me think it either. I need to stay sane.
He was unrelenting, guiding her to his path, and I could see the pattern that I knew too well. She was stuttering now, and when you’re talking about Paula, that’s the worst possible sign. I should have seen it earlier, should have turned the conversation right away when I noticed her rubbing her palm and that look of desperate desolation in her eyes. But no, I only argued for her side, and that drove everything deeper. He was like a pitbull that knew the hold of its jaws meant life or death. He hurt her; he made her cry. Now I was crying too.
It was all too unreal, like some kind of confusing movie that you see late at night; like waking from that bizarre fever-dream when you have the flu, the blurred reality of sickness and malaise right before you know you’re going to be sick. How did we get here? I was lying on the couch and petting my sleeping kitten. He was sitting on the floor talking about how he hated people. She was on the computer talking to Alex and occasionally sticking her tongue out at me. What happened? What went wrong?
All she wants is nothing, oblivion, stasis. She doesn’t like people and she doesn’t want to exist. I’m so selfish, I’m so wrong; I want her to exist. Just because I’m so fucked up, selfishly wanting edification from everyone, she has to go against what she truly wants. The thought made me start crying again. Paula wants what I fear; that gray/black state of nothingness, of death. The ultimate rest, and I realized a disturbing parallel that made me want to curl up in a ball and sob like a baby. There’s sleep, the Little Death. Always it’s struck me as tragic the way she sleeps and I never knew why before that moment. It was like she was trying to find that oblivion every night. To die and rise again. My arm was shaking.
I wanted to jump on him, push him away from her even though he was too strong for me to hurt. I wanted to find that guy who hurt her long ago and shove a ten-inch bowie knife through his temple after I’d cut off his cock and balls and shoved the whole bloody mass in his mouth. She’d cry all the harder if she knew I was thinking that, and I bowed my head as the waves of guilt made me reel. He was talking again, filling the room with his swirling words and suffocating the cats, I knew it. Everything seemed so wrong, so painful, and I couldn’t close my eyes without feeling that horrible sinking. I need sleep, I need to rest. He has to go now, I can’t take this and neither can she.
“Back off! Leave her alone!”
I finally leapt to my feet and stood in front of her. His eyes flashed fire at me and he barked the command as he pointed at my chair.
“Ginger! Sit down! Now!”
The Imperative Command. I had to follow it, I had no choice. How dare he! How dare he think himself my master and superior! Then there was silence, oh blessed silence. I heard nothing but the soothing voice of Richard Thompson singing ‘Crawl Back’. The fish swam absently through the underwater roots of the plant in the vase on the windowsill. There’s a fish there, and that thought struck me as so abstract and absurd that I almost started to laugh. The plastic container of Ring-Pops was closed and upside-down in the middle of the carpet which needed to be vacuumed, and the three-wick candle had burned down, filling the room with its now-sickening perfume.
“Why don’t you go to bed? It’s late.”
“I’m fine.” I can’t leave her alone with him; God only knows what he might say, and what she might believe.
“It’s almost 3am, you need to get up in three hours, hon. You don’t need to be here anymore. I’ll be fine.”
No, you won’t. “I know it’s almost 3, and I’m telling you, it’s ok.”
I met her eyes, something I only do when I need to convey important things. That way I don’t have to search for the words, and she gets my meaning directly from my eyes. Her eyes were red and worn from crying, and they winced slightly because she’s always afraid I don’t get enough sleep. I tried to bring across the severity of my thoughts, but finally looked away, mumbled something, shoved my hands in my pockets and slunk like a lowly servant to my room.
As soon as the door was closed I turned off the air conditioner and began to pace frenzied back and forth in the small room. There was no going back now; he’d won, he’d brought me into that bright insanity I so feared and now I was at the whim of a mind alien to me. How dare they send me off to bed like a child! This is my house and here I have no master save myself! I growled out loud now, snorted, bared my teeth and snapped. From the other room I could still hear his voice and hear her crying. He’s hurting her and I’m trapped in here!
The fury slowly gave way to exhausted guilt and despair. I changed into my sleep clothes but refused to get into bed. Whimpering like a puppy, I sat Indian-style on the floor with my blue blanket wrapped around me, and I wept. My masks are deliberate, and I knew it all along. That makes me a manipulator of the first degree, although with it comes the loss of self and apathy we discussed. He’s a fool to think he understands the way she thinks, just as I’d be a fool to think that I did. One’s mind must be one’s own or one has nothing.
And I, to see her there, see what he was doing to her, and do nothing, for that I wanted to die. The voices were lighter now, talking, laughing, though I couldn’t hear their words. So, she trusts him still. After all, it’s him she goes to when she’s had it with me, and why not? I’m a bastard. No, he’s taken her on the roller-coaster just like my parents used to do: tell you what’s wrong with you, tell you why you’re bad, bring you to tears and the willingness to hurt yourself, then while you’re weak offer you absolution for your ‘sins’ and consolation from doing and seeing things their way. Yet she had him to talk her down, while I sat alone in my room, crying like a scolded child; left to face my madness myself.
I began to pace wildly again. Realizing that my room and this place had now been christened by my insanity and twisted reality made me feel even worse, but there were no knives in my room. That might have to change at some point. Punishing my fist is what I always fall back to, and because they’d hear me if I hit the wall, I took it out on my hand with a sturdy glass cup that used to hold a candle. The pain shocked me and helped my focus, brought me back to the ‘real world’, if one could call this night-room that. It had been an hour since I was banished to my room, and I finally worked up the courage to open my own door.
I’m not a child and I can stay up just as late as the big kids. I want to sleep out here, with everyone else. Now they were messing with the computer, and hardly noticed as I flopped down on the couch and lay there, rigid and seething with anger. Then he acted like everything was normal, and he hadn’t brought her to tears and me to the edge. Go, get out of here. This isn’t your home, this isn’t your place. Go home to your own den and leave mine. She knows that something’s wrong though, but she’s too tired and drained to deal with me…good. She needs her rest, and she owes me nothing, I’m just a bastard that she puts up with, just another wretched imp howling for her attention and wanting my way over hers. Let her have oblivion; let her be happy for once.
The big couch is warm and comfortable; my favorite place to be. It was getting hard to fight sleep, but I kept blinking and twitching my feet to stay awake. Finally, he left, after hugging her and coming over to the couch to hug me.
“Bye, Ginger-head, don’t be angry at me.”
“I’m not angry,” delivered in my favorite monotone for when I’m not sure how to react or respond.
When he was gone, she turned off all the lights and the room turned to comforting darkness with only the glow of the computer screen to glitter in the eyes of the kittens as they wrestled by the closet door. Now I could relax, now I could drift off. Sleep was beginning to win, but it was so hard to break the shell of silence that had settled over the place.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Rex’s right, I’m a bastard. I didn’t do anything. I knew you were upset and I didn’t try to stop him. He hurt you, he made you cry.”
“This all doesn’t even involve you. He was only trying to help me, and he did.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t.”
She didn’t seem to hear that, and it was probably just as well. Yeah, what right did I have to be upset? What right did I have to cry? This was all her issue, not mine, and I felt doubly guilty for having the gall to let my own problems and insecurities bleed through when she was so distraught. But I still had to tell her, tell her that it was ok and that no matter what, I didn’t want anything from her. And, that if she could ever be happy with anything other than nothingness, I’d find a way to get her whatever that might be. Rex’s wrong, I’m a good friend…I care about people, and I care about my friends. I care about him even after what he did tonight. Some things are better left alone, better left in the minds of the souls they haunt, never to be brought to the surface.
Now I only had a few minutes left before sleep claimed me for good. The couch was so warm and I was so comfortable I could have slept there for all eternity. No, best not to think like that.
“I have more I want to say, but I’m tired now.”
“What?”
“I have more I want to say, but I’m tired now.”
“We’ll talk later, after you get some sleep.” And then I was absolved.
“Ok.”
Sweet sleep. My head was buzzing fiercely; I was going to feel this in the morning, and probably for the whole rest of the next day.
“Why don’t you go sleep in your bed?”
“Too cold in there.”
“You won’t be able to hear your alarm-clock from out here.” She was right.
“True.”
Stumbling blind, I shambled into my room and threw myself into bed. He burns, burns as hot as an autoclave and twice as harsh. I am disintegrated and washed away by his fire, and the sin is even greater because he was not even burning me. I am a bastard. It was 4:30am, technically tomorrow. Some people are already starting to wake up and start the day. It’s tomorrow. I can’t forget to vacuum the carpet.
