thatcraftykid
“Change is the law of life.
And those who look only to the past or present
are certain to miss the future.”
– John F. Kennedy –
Part Three
“Process of Becoming”
“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.
Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.
This is a kind of death.”
– Anais Nin –
~ Always On My Mind ~
Care for an extended metaphor?
My mind is a ball of green Play-Doh. As I continually roll it between my palms, swirls of brown often appear, sometimes blue or red or silver. Black. Once, believing they’d contaminate my green, I resented the other colors. I pressed them down inside, smoothing the surface over with my thumbs. If I didn’t do the job right and someone noticed, I instantly became defensive out of what amounted to shame. Not shame for being a mutant in general or one with poison skin in particular. Shame for the other half of my mutation, the half that made the other colors stick. The half that has never let the echo of David’s internal scream fade completely away.
An hysterical sort of certainly overtook me the moment I’d seen David’s empty eyes slide back under twitching lids. I’d done that. I’d kissed him, and the result was his body, laid out on my bed, unnaturally stiff and gasping for air. The first words I’d stammered after my parents had burst into my room were a lie, one I’d been quick to retract with a confession that was more a plea for understanding than an admission of guilt. On the same breath, I’d choked out, “Don’t touch.” Anyone. Ever. A rule to live by. I’d always found rules so lame.
But I was convinced.
My parent’s hadn’t been. They’d thought the shock of David’s seizure had caused me to go a little crazy. Even after blood tests revealed an active mutant gene, they’d had trouble believing that alone validated my frantic refusal to let anyone touch my skin. But who else did they have to believe? There wasn’t a doctor in Meridian who could make up rules any better than mine. Hospitals are notorious for their reluctance to treat mutants, ostensibly for insurance reasons. Anderson Regional was no different. David they kept. They sent me home.
There, the atmosphere was tense, strained by pity. An utter tragedy, the community at large had opined. Star basketball player in a coma and a poor girl’s life irrevocably altered, all because of a genetic disorder. Too heartbreaking. Condolences poured in. I didn’t want to hear them. Mom gave me daily summaries regardless. Tuning her out was simple, at least. I had David’s memories to get lost in.
Lost is the right word. The more I agonized over what I’d done to David, the more the line between what was mine and what was his blurred. The David in my head was a secret until well after the real David had recovered. I came to regret not keeping him that way. I thought I never should have told.
I certainly hadn’t intended to. I’d been digging in my closet for a pair of shoes, exaggerating the noise it took to find them in an effort to drown out my mom’s voice. I was definitely not in a communicative mood.
“Grandma D’Ancanto called while you were sleeping. I told her you were taking a nap. She’d have a fit if she knew we were letting you sleep in until three in the afternoon. Jan Hilliard stopped by – ”
“Where are my Flyers?” I’d interrupted, not taking my head out of my closet.
“Pardon?”
“My PF Flyers. Like Chucks, only from The Sandlot. You ordered them special, remember? It was a whole big ordeal. They got lost in shipping and Dad had to – ”
The image my synapses had connected with “Dad” had been of a gray-haired bear-like man with a full beard, not a medium-sized man with a receding brown hairline and a moustache. My father.
In frustration, I’d flipped a wedged sandal against the back of my closet.
Used to my mood swings but sounding unsure, Mom had replied, “I don’t know, honey. Maybe they got mixed in with the garage sale stuff?”
“Great, Mom. They were my favorite pair. Thanks a lot.” Lying beat explaining any day. I’d stomped to my feet, waving toward the door with one gloved hand. “Can you just leave, please? I have homework.”
“Don’t you want to hear what Jan had to say? She’s been to see David’s mom.”
That had gotten my attention. A tingling of dread beginning to spread through me, I’d prompted, “Well, what did she say? Did she ask?”
“Yes, she asked. David’s memory is fine.”
“Fine? Completely? No gaps?”
“No gaps.”
“Can he still play basketball? Can he name the presidents backwards and forwards? Did she ask him?”
“I told you, his memory is fine. Why does it matter if he can – ”
“Because I can,” I’d interjected, leaning against the wall for support. “I can name the presidents backwards and forwards – I shouldn’t be able to do that. A few weeks ago, I could sink twenty-one crumpled paper balls into my trashcan – in a row – from all the way over here.”
“I don’t…I’m not following you, honey.”
The backs of my eyes had burned. “I took things from him, Momma. Likes, dislikes. Memories. I have to make sure it wasn’t for good, okay? Make sure for me.”
Mom was silent.
“Please?” I begged. I could hardly get the word out.
“Anna Marie…”
The way she’d said my name and the openly alarmed expression on her face had caused my stomach to lurch. Shame. I’d known the feeling well.
“Honey, I don’t – Do you think I need to…to call someone for you? Someone…professional?”
My insides had curdled. This had been the first time Mom had even suggested that the magical healing properties of family solidarity wouldn’t be enough to see me through to the daybreak horizon or whatever other footsteps-in-the-sand clichés kept her hope alive. I had no hope, just an overwhelming urge to preserve as much of normal as possible. To do that, I had to prove to her that I wasn’t schizophrenic. So I had to bury David. I had to learn to push thoughts out of my mind.
The one thing I appreciated about the headscarves and hoods my dad had me wear was the blinder effect. It was awkward to turn my neck and my peripheral vision was partially obstructed, so the only direction I could really see in was straight ahead. In the hallways of my school, I walked chin down, eyes up, and let other people worry about keeping their distance. Complete tunnel vision, that’s how I got through my days. I wallowed and cried, sure, but only when I was by myself.
I was by myself a lot. Natalie tried to be a good best friend, she did, but there was no feigning normalcy with her. What did we have in common anymore? She was so high-energy, and I was doing my utmost to transform myself into empty space. I was a void at our lunch table, sucking all the usual fun out of everything. I took to eating in a lonely corner down the band hallway. In exile, I’d felt comfortable. Well enough.
Well enough was decidedly not enough for Dad, not by a long shot. It was sort of amusing to me, how rationally he’d reacted to the fallout from David’s coma. “We have to face facts,” he’d assert whenever anyone got too unreasonable. He never verbalized what those facts were, only that we all needed to face them.
He set the example by giving up his decade-long friendship with David’s dad like it was nothing. That was just the way my dad operated. Simplify everything, and, while you’re at it, make yourself useful. Moping wasn’t useful, he was quick to point out. Sarcasm, also not useful. Reprimand after reprimand, so hypercritical and so like him that I sometimes broke down into tearful laughter while he was still mid-sermon. Needless to say, that wasn’t useful, either.
Aunt Shirley, Mom’s sister, was my savior on the Dad front. She gave me an afternoon job taking inventory and ringing up orders at the bar downtown she co-owned with Uncle Nuts. Not only did a job classify as useful, Aunt Shirley and Uncle Nuts were two people who knew how to let well enough alone. She’d squeeze my shoulder and tell me I was doing a good job, even on the days I played games and not much else. Behind her back, Uncle Nuts would serve me Amaretto Sours, and we’d pretend they were lemonades.
The bar increasingly became my haven as things at home with Mom declined. Arguments with Dad were par for the course, but I couldn’t stand arguing with Mom. So, naturally, I ended up picking more and more fights with her. I hated that she was different now. She’d used to be fun and accepting, but the need to see me healthy and happy had consumed her. She, in turn, hated that I’d ceased being the adventurous, optimistic child she’d spent seventeen years raising.
For both of us, the sky had fallen with the onset of my mutation. Three and half months later, the ground crumbled under its weight. Spectacularly.
Mom touched me. She’d known not to. Impulse had won out anyway. Beyond reason, she’d thought that maybe nothing bad would happen to her because I was asleep or cured or a liar, anything that would mean she could have her daughter back. Instead, she’d gotten a thirteen-hour hospital stay. When she’d woken up, she’d given Dad this wonderful, drowsy smile. As her gaze had slid from my red-rimmed eyes to my forehead, it had waned considerably.
Dual memories of the conversation we’d almost had about the David in my head had looped through my mind. My shame had crashed down in the pit of my stomach, along with it her fear. That night before, in the seconds between when she’d put her fingertips to my cheek and when she’d hit the ground, my skin had poisoned her hope. A return to normalcy was no longer a foreseeable future for either of us.
The fallout was rapid. I was no longer welcome at Meridian High School, since the superintendent of my high school had decided taking a hard stance against my “unfortunate but jeopardizing condition” was a good way to get people to forget the rumors that he was embezzling from the district. I worked fulltime at the bar, turning skittish as Southaven Mutant Treatment Clinic in Blackhawk increasingly became a topic of conversation between my parents. Then the day came when I was told a Dr. Rao was coming to the house to layout some options for me.
I left that night. I got caught and sent to Southaven. I left again and again and again, until I finally got far enough to be gone.
Whatever lessons I should have learned from running away aside, the one that stuck was that if I couldn’t put up a convincing well-adjusted front, I’d be sent away, whether it be to some obscure clinic deemed “the best place for me” or out onto the streets.
That’s why it’d been so simple for Mystique to trick me with her Bobby routine. I’d messed up and proven that I didn’t even fit in with other mutants, so I had to go. It was a terrible feeling, being told I wasn’t wanted by someone I’d thought was a friend. But, in the context of my life, it’d made perfect sense.
Bobby, who’d, at that time, still had a loving family tucked neatly away in Boston, hadn’t see the logic in it anywhere. “You should’ve known better,” he’d said after the Logan in my mind had receded and I was no longer too strange to be around. “This is your home. No one’s ever going to make you leave. Not if I have anything to say about it.” He’d given me a grin then, his blue eyes and his affection appealingly clear. I’d basked in his stability even as I’d begrudged it. Trusting stability was something I had to relearn. That was a weakness.
God knows, if there’s one thing that frustrates me in this world it’s my own flaws. The many dents and humps on the surface of my Play-Doh mind invariably catch my eye just when I think I’ve finished molding the perfect sphere. Sometimes, I just want to give up already. I want to squeeze the Play-Doh between my knuckles, toss the whole mess over my shoulder, and start fresh. That was the appeal of letting Warbird take over for those two weeks in New York City and the seven months I’d been comatose after. She’d been the mental equivalent of saying, “Fuck it,” and plopping my ass onto the curb.
No start-over-fresh Play-Doh for me when I’d eventually woken up, though. Just the old version, with plenty of green on the surface but a more volatile swirl of other colors pressed down inside. My continual rolling slowed. The ease at which I’d let Warbird overtake my sense of self shamed and alarmed me.
I didn’t let it show, obviously. That wouldn’t be very well-adjusted of me. I kept the surface smooth enough, but I avoided my usual introspective habits. I did manage to content myself for a while. Rooming with Scott in Washington, working at the White House – I really had felt useful. Stable.
Then Logan had come back from Vietnam. Two years he’d been gone, and his return on the morning of my twenty-second birthday had launched me into a state of pure joy. We’d hugged and he’d touched me the way only he could, skin to skin, and I’d cried and laughed and gone to work riding high. That feeling tricked me into believing I could be this happy every day, from now right on down to blessed eternity. I’d forgotten the rules of happiness dictate that, no matter how great my surroundings looked, I couldn’t really be happy if I didn’t like myself.