Suicide Kills, part 7

An hour later, Marigold came to the smoking room.  When she came in, Veronica, Jerrilyn, and Ike all three got to their feet and extinguished their cigarettes.  I started to do the same, but Jerrilyn fixed me with an expression that said, ‘Sit the fuck down.’
                So, down the fuck I sat.

                After they left, Marigold took a seat across from me at the round table. She lit a menthol cigarette, then blew the smoke away towards the door. It was apparent the theme song from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly did not apply here, but I’d be damned if we were going to hold hands and sing kumbaya. I lit another cigarette with the end of the one I had just finished and waited.

                "So," she began, the word hanging in the air.

                "So." I responded.

                "So, Brittni, why are you here?" Marigold asked, her voice soft and her eyes bright with sincerity.

                I felt cornered. I‘m not a people person when I feel cornered. It was time for me to set the tone. "Well, why the fuck are you here, Mari?"

                "I told you about the drugs," she snapped, "but I haven’t heard one damn thing about you."

                "And that makes you entitled? Because you admitted to everybody you’re a crackhead?" I once had a therapist tell me that getting mad was like building a fire. The more ‘angry logs’ we add, the hotter it gets, but we’re the ones who stoke the fire. We control how hot it can get.

                Yeah, I thought he was full of shit, too.

                "You think that’s my only problem-"

                I snickered.

                "-being addicted to drugs?"

                Eyes narrowed, I said, "You really don’t want me to answer that."

                "No, you know? I think I do." She said, her voice hard as nails. "I think I want to know why you said the shit you said earlier. I want to hear the reasons come out of that smart little mouth of yours."

                To any outside observer, we hated each other. To us, we were scraping out an infected wound. It had to be done so it did not get worse.

                I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and took a puff on my cigarette. "Okay, I give. You spent almost two hours talking about how perfect your life was. You talked about how much you enjoyed being pregnant and how you and your husband fell in love, but then you jumped ahead to the present and detailed your drug addiction to speed. Where’d all that time go?"

                When she did not answer, I continued. "Trying so hard to convince us your life is great is a sure sign that it’s not at all what it seems. I think the stuff about your kids is true. You really are proud of them and they have a lot of accomplishments, but I also think when they were little you were out of it a lot, hooked on some kind of drug like pot that glazes your memories. That’s why you took up speed, to wake yourself up. You also had to have gone through something else to have been taking that drug when they were kids. Most women don‘t love pregnancy as much as you did and then suddenly take up recreational drugs." I finished, and took another long drag.

                Picking at her fingernail polish, the cigarette forgotten between her fingers, Mari’s eyes were focused on the surface of the table, though I doubted that was what she was seeing. I’d struck oil.

                "You remind me of myself when I was your age." She said, finally.

                "Well, shit. I’d better check in to rehab, now. You think they have pre-addiction programs? Worth a look." I said, sarcastically, and instantly wanted to take the words back. Holy fuck, Rathbone really should have warned me about that conscience thing. Wasn’t that his damn job?

                "Oh, shut up." She fired at me, though there was no anger in her voice, only annoyance. "Brittni, your ass needs to listen to me, okay? I’m here because I am choking on a bunch of feelings and emotions I never fucking dealt with. I just smothered them with alcohol and drugs, but that also put me in places where the same shit I was running from happened all over, again. And I am pretty sure you know exactly what I am talking about."

                It was my turn to look down at the table. Please, I thought. Don’t continue. I don't know if I'm ready. Really, I don't.

                But she did. "When did it happen to you?"

                And there it was, the thing I hadn’t told Jerrilyn or Veronica, hadn’t mentioned in front of Ike or Maria Rosa. Yet, Marigold knew.

                Tension seemed to flood out of me, leaving me weak at the loss. I began talking, telling her of what I had gone through. I told her of the man who had raped me repeatedly at fourteen. How it almost happened again at eighteen, and once more at nineteen. "This is going to sound really weird, but I thought it was kind of like winning the lottery in a really fucked up way. Once it happened, there was no chance of it ever happening, again. But I was wrong, extremely fucking wrong."

                My lungs burned and my mind was screaming at me to stop, but my heart went on. Wait, wasn‘t that a Celine Dion song? That‘s it. No more VH1 for me. "The last time happened a few days after the attack on nine eleven just a few months ago. I was dating a guy at the time and the morning afterwards I called him, hystAaronal. During the night I had regained consciousness at some point and was alone, naked in bed. Time, I had no sense of it whatsoever. I don’t know if it was minutes or hours that I laid like that, but I was completely numb to everything. Then it just…bubbled up and exploded inside me, this wealth of...of...badness I could feel like a badger caged in my ribs, tearing everything inside to shreds."

                I clasped my hands together to stop the shaking and went on, "The detective acted like I was a whore who deserved it. There was nothing I could do. My boyfriend told me he could not deal with the fact that I had been raped." I laughed, bitter at the memory. "He! Fucking, he could not deal with the fact that I had been raped. I was the one it happened to, god damn it. Not him."

                "Brittni, I-"

                "No, Mari. Let me finish, okay?" I said, not knowing what she was going to say, but fearing she was going to tell me it was okay, that I could stop. I wanted to keep her from giving me that permission. I needed to go on. "I was on some medicine for my migraines and living in the same apartment complex as the two neighbors who raped me. I locked myself in my room for months. The medicine gave me severe mood swings that went from depressed and hating myself to depressed and hating the entire fucking planet, with no happiness to speak of. It was a nightmare. A couple days ago, I took all of the medicine I had." I did not tell her how I called my family to say goodbye, how I could hear my mother screaming my name, begging me to stay with her and not fall asleep, crying as she tried to rouse my father so he could call my roommate. There was too much pain there. I left it alone.

                "I woke up in here. My family was all here and my grandmother was shaken to her core. I...had...done...that. Me. My best friend called me out of her mind in anger, furious. And my parents were loving and supportive, as always.
                "When they moved me up to the crazy floor, my ex-boyfriend showed up. I had talked to a man who was both a doctor and a lawyer just a few minutes prior and he’d told me I needed to check myself in. Then he told me someone was there to see me.
                "My ex stood at the door, like he was afraid to come any closer, as if somehow crazy was contagious. At that moment, I did fucking wish crazy was contagious. And then he asked me why I had tried to kill myself.” I took a long drag on the cigarette, still bitter at the memory.

                "It was the first time in my life I can remember laughing with absolutely no humor whatsoever.   "You think I’m in here because of you? I told him. Really? You want me to tell you that it’s not because of you that I’m in here? Are you that fucking shallow? Well, I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I’m not here to ease your fucking conscience.
                "He left." I said, somewhat sheepishly. "I stuck my tongue out at his back, but what he really deserved was a swift kick to the nuts." I said.

                Aaron still sat in his little chair by the door, pretending not to listen as he read his huge, bulky, romantic drama. I could see his eyes glittering when he glanced up for a second. He really loved that Danielle Steele.

                I turned my attention back to Marigold.  Twisting her lips hesitantly, she finally asked, "Do you hate men? For what they did? What they took? I mean, I don‘t see how you could trust men, if so many had hurt you like that, had done that to you. Do you hate them?"

                How insightful her question was dumbfounded me, because so much of what I had been through was taking. Taking, taking, taking to the point I did not know how to receive when someone gave me something priceless, like friendship. Faces popped into my mind, the answer already forming on my lips. "No. I don’t hate men. When I was eighteen and almost got raped in Las Vegas by a guy named Stefano, there was another guy I had met named Troy. He knew what Stefano had attempted and he was protective over me, though we hardly knew other. Troy took my little brother and his little cousin and I out to the movies and things.
                "It’s funny, because Troy was intimidating, you know? He wasn’t very tall, but he was wiry and tattooed, with a bald head and thick goatee." I laughed, softly. "He worked in an ice cream shop, though. Really. With the little hat and apron, everything. He was so gentle. He didn’t pressure me to kiss him or be anything other than a friend. I remember one day after spending the previous several days together from morning until night, I almost thought I owed him some form of, I don’t know," I hesitated, embarrassed, "like physical reward, I guess? I thought that was how I should show my appreciation, or something. He refused me, so sweetly, though at the time I was humiliated at my behavior.

                "The night before I left we were all at a Karaoke bar with my biological mother and her friends. Troy sat next to me, and in the middle of some really shitty Mariah Carey, he turned my chair toward him.
                "Taking my hands, he said, I need to tell you something. I want you to know before you leave that I love you, that I’m in love with you.
                "I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn't in love with him and could not stay in Vegas, but he stopped me. He said, I know you’re not in love with me, but I want you to know when you go home there’s somebody in this world that loves you, just for who you are.
                "A part of me fell in love with him, then. He wasn't my type or anything, but what he gave me was, I don't know, not something you encounter often. He loved me to love me, and not take anything from me or demand anything in return for his love. It's still hard to believe, even now." I said.

                Marigold looked stunned, but no more than I had been when Troy revealed his feelings. What he gave me was so special there’s not even a name for it, nor an emotion. It’s just a beautifully tender memory in this rude midget’s heart, but at least it proves I have one.
                But I wasn't done. "I’ve carried that with me ever since, but it's nice to carry, not painful like some other things I've been through.
                "About seven months ago, another guy named Demarques made a serious impression on me, too. At the club, I saw him all by himself and desperately trying to act like he was just waiting for somebody or didn’t care. I struck up a conversation with him and found out how incredibly shy he was. Going out to the club was a decision which had been weeks in the making! He had never even had sex.

                "I started inviting him over to hang out with my friends and I, to the movies, etc. He finally made a few friends, too, and I was really happy for him, hearing he‘d gone out with friends of mine when I didn‘t have to arrange it. After he was sent somewhere else for training, I didn’t think I’d hear from him, again. But a little over a week after the rape, I got a letter in the mail. It was from Demarques. His words echoed Troy’s from almost nine months prior. He did not know what had happened. He sent the letter because he wanted to. In it, he said if it hadn't been for me, he would have hated Texas, and now he’d always remember it as one of the happiest times in his life. He also wanted me to know how much he would always care."

                I grew silent, having lost all bearings within my own head. I had really been fucking blind, sinking into misery as I did. These two men, these two beautiful men, had given me precious gifts and wanted nothing in return. Why had it taken me so long to connect these two things?

                Marigold sat quietly, waiting for me to find whatever I needed to say.

                "I hadn’t thought about how similar both of those situations were until just now. I feel like a moron. Two of the most amazing guys I‘ve ever met, and how the fuck? How did I deserve to be so lucky for them to be in my life at the wrong place, but the exact right time when I needed them? And why the hell couldn’t I see that sooner?"

                "Hindsight is-" Mari began.

                "Hindsight is not 20/20. This has been in hindsight for months and I only now just picked up on it." I snapped, then immediately sought her pardon. It was myself I was mad at.

                "Do you think you’re supposed to hate yourself, Brittni?"

                "What? Hate myself? What do you-" But then it melted, all of my rebuttal. Locking myself in my room, overdosing, avoiding friends, hurting family-it was all some ridiculous attempt to convince other people I wasn’t worth the effort. And those very same people were the ones who kept telling me I was worth the effort. It was about time I accepted that, and, even if I did not feel I deserved it, I could still try to become the person the ones who loved me deserved. I opened my mouth to voice this to Mari, but was startled by a loud, piercing scream from someone in the hall.

                Somebody who sounded a lot like Veronica.

                Aaron bolted, forgetting about us. I immediately thought of the lizard queen, Debra, and jumped to my feet to hurry to the door. Mari was on my heels as I stopped. I heard her swift intake of breath at the scene before us.

                Veronica wore a bright pink spaghetti strap sleeping top with a pair of light purple sleeping pants decorated with cute little dogs. Her face I almost did not recognize bare of all makeup, with her hair hanging limp to just above her shoulders. The smooth complexion on her cheeks was a mottled red from struggling with two orderlies, one of which was Aaron. A refrigerator with tits and tennis shoes strong-armed her other side, maneuvering her onto her back. Veronica breathed roughly, her nostrils flaring, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes. The Debra knelt by her side and stuck her in the hip with a needle.

                I cringed. She wasn’t a criminal. She was crazy, but manageably crazy. What’s so scary, so unbelievably toxic about that?

                I wanted to pull both of the orderlies off of her, which was not feasible in any way. Might be okay in theory, but it could only end with one of us saying, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Looking at Aaron, I knew that person was going to be me.

                I decided not to crack skulls. There’d be plenty of time for it, later.

                Jerrilyn stood at the corner across the hall, crying. A bump to my back told me Marigold had seen her, too. We both made our way to her, creeping along the wall like the orderlies might sense movement and attack. Never know. I mean, they were pretty well-fed, and all.

                "What happened?" I asked, quietly.

                Jerrilyn never took her eyes off of Veronica, speaking out of the side of her mouth, "It was her phone time. She spent the entire thirty minutes trying to get a hold of Jaime. She called the house, his cell, his sister, and still couldn’t find him. After she was done, Debra gave her a message saying he had an emergency and left the kids at his mother’s. Veronica thought she did it on purpose."

                "She did do it on purpose," Mari said, harshly. "I’ve only been here a few hours and I can see that shit."

                Um, excuse me, Mari? The resident bitch position has been filled. There’s a corner. All you need is some crack, and looking at The Debra, she has plenty to share. Go grab some.

                "She did do it on purpose." I repeated, feeling like a sidekick. "I think she gets off on it. Must be how she stimulates herself through that camel toe."

                Marigold pinched the back of my arm. I looked down at the spot, offended, then cut my eyes to her. "Hands off the merchandise, lady. This pays the bills."

                "Shut up, Brittni. It’s not funny." Jerrilyn whispered.

                Suddenly, I’m the bad guy. "I know it’s not funny. What can we do, though? Debra’s got drugs. Lots and lots of drugs."

                "And she’s not afraid to use them," Marigold added. Much better. She should be the sidekick. I liked that arrangement more.

                The orderlies lifted Veronica’s drooping body and carried her to her room. Debra shot a look at a fellow nurse that said, I told you so. What a dry, clapping cunt. Content and superior with the havoc she had instigated. Who does that? And to crazy people, no less?

                Shit. Maria Rosa! I was supposed to call her, tonight! I spun and ran down the hall to the phone. The Debra would be Dealt With later.