How long have I been lying here in the dark? In the eucalyptus fog? On the heated table beside the little white jellyfish? Don’t know. Time’s not here. She said, Why don’t you lie here and we’ll get started? And I thought, Haven’t we already started? I said, This is some facial. And she said, Treatment. It’s a treatment.
Treatment, I repeated. Of course.
There are sleek black discs taped to either side of my face now, at my temples. The discs feel somehow connected to the small jellyfish tank, because the moment she pressed them against my temples, the creature began to glow even brighter. Like a dimmer switch turned all the way up. For the extractions? I said. Exactly, the woman said. For the extractions. She was about to leave when I felt her hand on my shoulder. You may find you’re in a bit of a fog after this. You may find you have some blanks.
Blanks?
Letting go is so worth it. You’ll see tomorrow in the mirror. Now just lie here. Are you comfortable? And the only answer to that was Yes. My entire body under the blanket was so terribly comfortable. I was warm to my core. I was floating, floating there on the table. I didn’t know where I began or where I ended. I didn’t know my own body from the fog, from the bell. There was a smile on my face. A soft one that caused no wrinkles. My eyes were closing and opening on the small, pulsing white jellyfish. Light as a wish. And that’s how she left me. Come back, I whispered. But my lips weren’t moving at all.
Above me now, the ceiling rolls back, look at that. Like a sunroof or a tarp over a swimming pool being rolled back. What’s there? A sky full of stars? Not quite. A glass ceiling, awash with blue-green light. The light of water, of aquariums, fills the dark, steam-thick room. Through the steam, I see them floating by. Red, pulsating, trailing tentacles. Giants compared to the small, glowing white creature beside me. I must be right beneath the Depths. The tank goes far beneath the main floor, so I must be deep under. Wow. It’s terribly beautiful up there. Primordial is a word that floats alone in the lagoon of my mind. I’m in the lagoon of my mind now. Deep in the lagoon, there’s a black box. A black box with many locks, like metal teeth. It lies there on the lagoon floor, half covered in silt. I feel the box open its black mouth.
And then?
I can’t feel my body at all anymore. The heated table is getting warmer. The room is getting darker, the only light coming from the blue water above. The little jellyfish shines beside me like a star. The steam has grown thick, thick. I’m rising up from the table. Drifting up toward the glass ceiling, to where the giant red jellyfish float. Nothing beneath this body I can’t feel but air. The sleek black disks are still attached to my temples, throbbing along with my pulse. I should be afraid. But I’m so comfortable. And the red giant jellyfish are so beautiful up close like this. Look at them drifting redly in the water. They’re putting me in the mood to drift myself, to dream. And there, suddenly on the glass, something like a film begins to play. Like the aquarium glass has become a movie screen. Oh, are we watching movies? I want to ask. But there’s the problem of my mouth again. How it won’t move the way I want. How my lips feel dead on my face.
I look at the glass screen. I see a young girl tiptoeing down a dark hall. She’s wearing a white frilly dress. She’s ugly. The dress is ugly too, but the girl doesn’t know this. She’s ten years old. How come you know that she’s ten? asks a voice inside.
“I just do,” I try to whisper.
Look. Now she’s in the doorway of a blue-and-white bedroom. Her bedroom? No. Not her bedroom. How come I know that? Because she looks guilty.
Also you just know, don’t you? says that inside voice. You know the way you know your own bones. You know the way you know your cells, your breath.
Yes. I can see the red jellyfish through the glass screen, through the scene of the young girl as she creeps into the bedroom that is not her own. Looking both ways. Looking all around her now. What are we watching? I think. And that question is hilarious. As hilarious as the question, Is this a facial? I’m laughing though my mouth isn’t moving. My mouth is frozen open wide like the black box inside my mind. The black box is where the movie of the little girl is coming from. The film projector is my eyes.
You know what you’re watching, says the voice. You’re watching you. You’re the little girl, aren’t you?
Yes.
Sneaking into this bedroom that isn’t your own.
Not my own, not my own.
Whose? Whose bedroom is it? Tell me.
I look at the little girl there on the glass screen. The answer is a bubble leaving the mouth of the black box. The answer is a single word. Out with it.
“Mother’s,” I say with my dead lips. The word leaving my mouth fogs the aquarium glass, fogs the film being projected by my eyes. But I still see the girl outside the room that isn’t hers. The giant red jellyfish moving through her little body. I feel my mouth stretching open.
“I’m in Mother’s bedroom.”
13
I’m in the dark hallway with Mother. Mother’s gloved hands are on my shoulders. Her face hovering over mine is like a pretty, pretty cloud. She’s telling me that she has to go out now. She won’t be long. But don’t wait up. All right, Belle?
“All right, Mother.”
“And don’t go snooping around in my room while I’m gone. Especially you know where.”
I nod. I know where.
“I won’t.” I’m lying, of course.
“Promise?”
“Promise. Where are you going?” I ask even though I know. I know by her clothes and her hair and her perfume that smells of violets and smoke. She’s wearing the white suit by Yves Saint Laurent today. Her hair’s done into an old-timey wave like the women in the black-and-white movies Mother likes to watch at night, and sometimes she lets me watch with her. It’s Nicholas, her hairdresser, who Mother calls a genius, who did this wave for Mother so that her hair is like a soft cloud of S. He tells her every time she sits in his salon chair that she’s his very own Elizabeth Taylor. He told her this today when we went to get Mother’s hair done for tonight. And Mother smiled at herself in the mirror. She loves when he says that. I watched the smile creep across her face from where I sat in the waiting area, flipping through a magazine called Sky. Tom Cruise was on the cover, and I knew there’d be more pictures of him inside. Who’s Elizabeth Taylor? I asked her. Someone beautiful, Mother said, out of the corner of her red mouth, as if that were all I needed to know. Someone beautiful, I repeated to Tom Cruise, his smile white and blinding. There were more pictures of him inside. Quietly, I tore out the one I liked best.
After mother got her hair done, she let Nicholas give me a trim—just a half an inch, just the bangs, she said—and I hated when Mother said this. It was like she was sentencing me to myself, which is not a place I want or asked to be. I wanted Nicholas to defy Mother. To give me the S he gave her. In my dreams, he does just this and then we run away together, hand in hand. But today, Nicholas just gave me the trim Mother said to give me, talking to Mother the whole time about something called “the single life,” making Mother howl with laughter while she smoked her Matinée 100 in the next chair. He didn’t tell Mother to put her cigarette out. He didn’t tell me I was his anything. Nicholas smells like shampoo and his eyes sparkle and his hair is very crisp. For a while, I had what Mother called a crush. Though I told her nothing, she knew. She knew by my face alone, which Mother says she can read like a book. Every page. And she said, Nick doesn’t go that way, Sunshine, sorry. I pretended not to know what Mother was talking about. And Mother read that page too.
“Mother,” I ask her again now. “Where are you going?”