I slump downstairs, take the last step twice, and collapse in Mom’s recliner. The sponge stays. I’ll rinse it off later but will never stop seeing it soaked in my blood.
Mom asks me about schoolwork. Even in the midst of her car-crash trauma, she’s remembered my Macbeth assignment is due tomorrow. The ball shape my body is in tucks up a little tighter. I wish I could tell her that it’s been sent back and I’m just waiting on my grade. But I can’t. I couldn’t write my own name right now, let alone one thousand five hundred words. I force a hum, which she seems to take as a good sign because she doesn’t push further. Why would she? I’m a great student; all my assignments are in early, never late. Not until now. I’m grateful when the conversation moves on and she starts talking to me about a TV show that she’s watching. I pull the knitted blanket off the back of the chair, drape it across my body, and sigh with relief when she finally mentions that she’s coming home.
I sleep away Sunday in a sorry attempt to forget about the angry sting that radiates down my thigh.
It’s Monday, the beginning of a new week. A fresh start. A clean slate. The chance to do everything I didn’t get to do on Friday . . .
Or not.
I don’t remember the last time I felt this bad.
Wait.
Yes, I do.
It was the day after the last time I found solace in scissors.
Instead of embracing productivity, I act like a slug, dragging my butt around the house, trying to bury myself in a black oversize sweater. I’m in mourning mode. I make the couch my bed and fry my brain with daytime TV. Misery covers everything in a thick layer of lead, making even the simplest task heavy and hard work, so I just don’t bother doing stuff. On the plus side, I’ve become a pro at not looking out of the windows, having been transformed from diligent watcher to barely-able-to-hold-my-own-head-up bystander in a single slice.
Dr Reeves phones the house around lunchtime. At first I let the machine pick it up, but then she starts muttering about maybe, possibly, probably moving her last client’s appointment to Tuesday morning and signing off early to come over and check on me.
Hell. No.
That would be the worst. I look like I just woke up from a decade of being dead; smell a little like I have too. There is nothing invisible about my illness right now. She cannot see me.
I roll off the couch, crawl over to the phone, and call back.
Faking perky is easy. I make up some BS about keeping my brain busy with homework and go all Stepford-Wives-excited over a cheese soufflé I just cooked up. Both lies, but she’s blissfully reassured within ten minutes, and I resume living like a mannequin on the couch.
On the third morning, I wake up, open my eyes and snarl at the ceiling. An orchestra of blackbirds is fine-tuning their vocal cords right outside the window. I turn my head, snarl at them too. They’re lucky I lost interest in archery before I could buy a bow and arrow. Stretching sleep from my limbs, I roll over and look at the clock above the fireplace. It’s 11.00 a.m. Wow. I’ve really got to move. I don’t want to – depression is a cold concrete slab crushing my chest – but Mom is due home today. The room needs airing, and I have to make myself look less like the living dead. She can’t know how badly I’ve been regressing.
There was a time, back when my friends stopped calling, that I exchanged words for grunts and lived in my pyjamas. I spent so long coddled in soft cotton, it’s a wonder it didn’t fuse to my skin. Pants were reintroduced into my routine at about the same time I stopped looking for control in a pair of nail scissors.
Still, I lie on the couch for another ten minutes, snuggling up to my blankets and listening to the sound of my stomach growling. It must think my throat’s been slit. I’m starving, but my insides have been too tight, too sore, to eat anything. It’s like recovering from a stomach bug. My internal organs feel delicate, like they’ve been bashed around. That’s accompanied by a soft swish of uncertainty, but if I don’t eat, my periods will stop. I don’t want that to happen again. That’s when Mom first called Dr Reeves and, besides making an appointment, she recommended these rancid shakes that I had to spend a week forcing down my throat.
Petulance makes cleaning up last a century longer than it should. I stomp around with a piece of toast hanging from my mouth. Drag away one chunk of bedding at a time, back to my room, which has been sandblasted with sunlight and transformed into an oven. I tuck in the corners of my duvet with malcontent and beat my pillows to a pulp before laying them neatly back on my bed. A couple of bats fly out of my closet when I open the doors. It’s a cave in there. In total contrast to the rest of the room, it’s colder than a morgue, too out of reach for the sun to touch. I loathe every frozen fibre as I pull on jeans and a skinny sweater.