“He’s not in the hospital anymore. He wasn’t injured. So where is he?” I demanded.
“I don’t know exactly . . .”
“Yes you do, Sheriff. Come on. Where is he?” I insisted.
“Georgia!” My mom patted my arm and told me to calm down.
Sheriff Dawson shoved his cowboy hat on his head and then took it off again. He seemed distressed and reluctant to tell me.
“Is he in jail?”
“No. No, he’s not. They’ve taken him to another facility in Salt Lake City. He’s in the psych ward.”
I stared, not really understanding.
“It’s a mental hospital, Georgia,” my mom said gently.
My parents met my stunned gaze with sober faces and Sheriff Dawson stood abruptly, as if the whole thing had just gone beyond his pay grade. I found myself standing too, my legs shaking and my stomach swimming with nausea. I managed to make it to the bathroom without running, and was even able to lock the door behind me before I threw up the piece of pie mom had pressed upon me when she’d dished up a piece for Sheriff Dawson. Pie made me think of Kathleen Wright and tranquilizers.
Moses
“CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT THE ARTWORK MEANS?”
I sighed heavily. The Asian doctor in the tan blazer, wearing the self-important spectacles she probably didn’t need, considered me over her rims, her pencil poised to make notes of my mental deterioration.
“You need to talk to me, Moses. All of this will be so much easier for both of us.”
“You wanted me to tell you what happened at my grandma’s house. That’s what happened.” I tossed my hand toward the wall.
“Is she dead?” the doctor asked, staring at my grandmother’s death scene.
“Yes.”
“How did she die?”
“I don’t know. She was laying on the kitchen floor when I came home that morning.”
I should have known she was going to die. I had seen the signs. The nights leading up to her death I’d seen him hovering around her, the dead man who looked like the man in Gi’s wedding photo. My great-grandfather. I’d seen him twice, standing just beyond her right shoulder while she slept in her chair. And I’d seen him again, just behind her as she’d rolled out her pie crusts Wednesday afternoon when I headed to the old mill to finish the demolition. He had been waiting for her.
But I didn’t tell the doctor that. Maybe I should though. Then I could tell her someone stood behind her shoulder, waiting for her to die too. Maybe it would scare her to death and she would leave me alone. But there wasn’t really anyone standing beyond her shoulder, so I held my tongue as she waited for me to speak.
She wrote in her notebook for a minute.
“How did that make you feel?”
I wanted to laugh. Was she serious? How did that make me feel?
“Sad,” I said with a sorrowful frown, batting my eyes at her ridiculous, clichéd question.
“Sad,” she repeated dryly.
“Very sad,” I amended in the same tone.
“What went through your mind when you saw her?”
I stood up from my chair and walked to the wall and leaned against it, completely shielding my grandmother from her clinical gaze. I closed my eyes for a minute, reaching out just a little, parting the waters just a crack. I focused on the woman’s shiny black head, her hair pulled back in a perfect, low ponytail.
She asked me several more questions, but I was concentrating on raising the water. I wanted to find something to make her run, screaming. Something true.
“Did you have a twin sister?” I asked suddenly, as an image of two little Asian girls in pigtails and matching dresses suddenly surfaced in my mind.
“Wh-what?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“Or maybe a cousin the same age. No. No. She’s your sister. She died, right?” I folded my arms and waited, letting the images unfold.
The doctor pulled off her glasses and frowned at me. I had to give it to her. She didn’t rattle easily.
“You had a visitor today. Georgia Shepherd was her name. She’s not on your list. Do you want to talk about Georgia instead?” she parried, trying to derail me.
My heart shuddered when I heard her name. But I pushed Georgia away and thrust back.
“How did that make you feel, losing your sister like that?” I asked, not breaking eye-contact with the doctor. “Was she crazy like me? Is that why you wanted to work with crazy people?” I gave her a wild-eyed, Jack Nicholson smile. She stood abruptly and excused herself.
It was the first time I’d ever done something like that. It was strange and oddly wonderful. I had stopped caring if I was believed. If I never got out of the psych ward, I was fine with that. I was safe there at least. Gi was gone. Georgia was gone too. I’d made sure of that. It was the only thing I could do for Georgia now. She’d seen them put me in the ambulance. I’d fought. But as my eyes swam and the world spun, I’d seen her horrified, paint-streaked face. She was crying. And that was the last thing I saw before the world went dark.
Now I was here. And I didn’t care anymore. It was all spilling out the cracks. Georgia teased me about my cracks, telling me I was cracked so the brilliance could spill out. And it was spilling out, brilliant and brutal.
And so it continued for the next few weeks. The hardest part was when the therapist or doctor hadn’t lost anyone. There were people like that, and I had no one on the other side to use against them. To say I had the entire floor rattled would be putting it mildly. They tried to fix my cracks with medication, just like they’d done all my life, but the medication made the cracks wider, and short of putting me in a stupor, nothing they tried made me stop seeing the things I could see. And I started telling them all exactly what I could see. I didn’t do it out of love or compassion. I did it because I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass anymore. I didn’t break it to them gently either. I hit them over the head with it, Georgia style. In your face, tell you like it is.
Georgia