I am a woman. I am a friend. I am a lover. I am a lover of beauty. I own a store. I earned my MBA from Loyola. I earned my store. I am happy. I wish I wanted something more than what I have. I wish I were more creative. I wish I could paint or write or sing. I have nothing new to say. Maybe I love old things. Maybe I’m okay.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Fictional I Statements: Joel
Joel:
I am a father. I am Joel Edward Samson. I am a musician who should be a better musician. I am a father who should be a better father. I love my son. I am trying. I have not done anything I thought I would when I was little except live in Chicago. It is not glamorous. I want a better life for my son. I want him to respect me. I want him to love me. I want him to think I’m cool and smart and everything I wanted to be when I grew up. I need to change. I need my son. I am scared of what might have happened if Jack hadn’t come along. I am scared of dwelling on that, and of that coming to pass. I am scared of not giving him a better life.
I am a father. I am Joel Edward Samson. I am a musician who should be a better musician. I am a father who should be a better father. I love my son. I am trying. I have not done anything I thought I would when I was little except live in Chicago. It is not glamorous. I want a better life for my son. I want him to respect me. I want him to love me. I want him to think I’m cool and smart and everything I wanted to be when I grew up. I need to change. I need my son. I am scared of what might have happened if Jack hadn’t come along. I am scared of dwelling on that, and of that coming to pass. I am scared of not giving him a better life.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
V. Take pills
Her breathing is heavy, it comes slowly like the air is mercury, uneven, using all her energy. Blankets have melded into her; their quilted stitches have stitched themselves into her lids, and they travel, like insects looping through undense air, the stitches form themselves first on her body and then on her eyelids. In the distance a door slams. The looping both gives her a visual focus which gives her something to do and agitates her stomach. Which is empty but still rejects its phantom contents. Her eyes stay closed. She wants to disappear into sleep. On the coffee table are an empty aspirin bottle and water glasses. There is more warmth nearby, wet red warmth on her forehead, and then it is gone. Her consciousness is a watery furnace. She has only seen red for days.
VI. Dear
‘Vee,’ her grandmother had said, lying in fluffy repose, her kindness having earned her a bed near the window, from the nurses who were kind to her indeed. The word came like baby’s breath, like the space between words, but it was all she could do; it could have been an accidental union of her teeth to lower lip. Vee knew it was her name. ‘Nan?’ she’d said, her hand gripping Nan’s as tightly as she could without shattering it. ‘I’m here, Nan.’ Her grandmother’s hair was as thin as a spider web. Her skin looked ready to dissolve into dust. ‘I’m listening.’ Her grandmother had been in hospice for a month. She weighed less than seventy pounds and had not opened her eyes in a week. Vee leaned closer.
‘Let me out…here,’ her grandmother said.
Her breathing is heavy, it comes slowly like the air is mercury, uneven, using all her energy. Blankets have melded into her; their quilted stitches have stitched themselves into her lids, and they travel, like insects looping through undense air, the stitches form themselves first on her body and then on her eyelids. In the distance a door slams. The looping both gives her a visual focus which gives her something to do and agitates her stomach. Which is empty but still rejects its phantom contents. Her eyes stay closed. She wants to disappear into sleep. On the coffee table are an empty aspirin bottle and water glasses. There is more warmth nearby, wet red warmth on her forehead, and then it is gone. Her consciousness is a watery furnace. She has only seen red for days.
VI. Dear
‘Vee,’ her grandmother had said, lying in fluffy repose, her kindness having earned her a bed near the window, from the nurses who were kind to her indeed. The word came like baby’s breath, like the space between words, but it was all she could do; it could have been an accidental union of her teeth to lower lip. Vee knew it was her name. ‘Nan?’ she’d said, her hand gripping Nan’s as tightly as she could without shattering it. ‘I’m here, Nan.’ Her grandmother’s hair was as thin as a spider web. Her skin looked ready to dissolve into dust. ‘I’m listening.’ Her grandmother had been in hospice for a month. She weighed less than seventy pounds and had not opened her eyes in a week. Vee leaned closer.
‘Let me out…here,’ her grandmother said.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
IV. Scarlet
Ben gets lost after work and finds himself in a series of one-way streets leading away from home. Vee snores to the title screen of High Fidelity.
Tara sits in the passenger seat. She is calm. ‘This city was designed by a madman,’ she says, gazing out the window. ‘It’s true. Charles Erwin III was the city planner. In 1888 he proposed using one-way streets in this part of downtown, for the purpose of reducing traffic and promoting walkability. That’s why all these storefronts are here, but they never lasted, because people got lost walking around them. It’s kind of a labyrinth, which contributes to the high crime rate. It’s twice as high as the rest of the city’s neighborhoods combined.’
Ben stares straight, clenching his jaw to keep from scratching her eyes out of her freckled face.
‘The city accepted it, obviously, and began building right away. He designed one more park, the Arboreum, and then committed himself to a mental hospital. He was never released.’
She’s still. She doesn’t have the nervous energy a lot of people have when sitting with a stranger. Her small hands lay carelessly in her lap.
Ben is calm on the outside but raging inside.
‘Isn’t that interesting?’ she says.
‘Where do you live?’ he asks curtly.
‘Keep going. I’ll tell you when to turn. What’s odd is, he, Erwin, never had a crazy moment until the day he committed himself, and then he was never lucid again. His madness was complete. Some people say he was one of the earliest recipients of ECT, though there aren’t any records of that being used in the U.S. until almost fifty years later.’
‘Mm.’
‘We’re going to turn left at the next intersection. Thanks again for driving me. I think I’ll take the apartment.’
Ben’s fiddling with his tie, feeling the rage boil within him, like lava about to erupt; it’s the kind of anger he finds a morbid pleasure in keeping hidden.
‘Fuck you,’ he says under his breath.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Fuck you. You had no fucking right. You’re a manipulative, selfish slut.’
‘I’m sorry you feel that way. I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do.’
‘Give me the pills.’
‘No.’
‘Or you won’t get out of this car.’
Still calm but with a quiver she hands him the baggie.
‘Thank you. We’re here.’
‘Get out.’
Ben gets lost after work and finds himself in a series of one-way streets leading away from home. Vee snores to the title screen of High Fidelity.
Tara sits in the passenger seat. She is calm. ‘This city was designed by a madman,’ she says, gazing out the window. ‘It’s true. Charles Erwin III was the city planner. In 1888 he proposed using one-way streets in this part of downtown, for the purpose of reducing traffic and promoting walkability. That’s why all these storefronts are here, but they never lasted, because people got lost walking around them. It’s kind of a labyrinth, which contributes to the high crime rate. It’s twice as high as the rest of the city’s neighborhoods combined.’
Ben stares straight, clenching his jaw to keep from scratching her eyes out of her freckled face.
‘The city accepted it, obviously, and began building right away. He designed one more park, the Arboreum, and then committed himself to a mental hospital. He was never released.’
She’s still. She doesn’t have the nervous energy a lot of people have when sitting with a stranger. Her small hands lay carelessly in her lap.
Ben is calm on the outside but raging inside.
‘Isn’t that interesting?’ she says.
‘Where do you live?’ he asks curtly.
‘Keep going. I’ll tell you when to turn. What’s odd is, he, Erwin, never had a crazy moment until the day he committed himself, and then he was never lucid again. His madness was complete. Some people say he was one of the earliest recipients of ECT, though there aren’t any records of that being used in the U.S. until almost fifty years later.’
‘Mm.’
‘We’re going to turn left at the next intersection. Thanks again for driving me. I think I’ll take the apartment.’
Ben’s fiddling with his tie, feeling the rage boil within him, like lava about to erupt; it’s the kind of anger he finds a morbid pleasure in keeping hidden.
‘Fuck you,’ he says under his breath.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Fuck you. You had no fucking right. You’re a manipulative, selfish slut.’
‘I’m sorry you feel that way. I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do.’
‘Give me the pills.’
‘No.’
‘Or you won’t get out of this car.’
Still calm but with a quiver she hands him the baggie.
‘Thank you. We’re here.’
‘Get out.’
II. Memory
‘Vee,’ her grandmother had said through motionless lips, her skin delicate and clinging to her bones like crumpled silk, her breath a miniature burst of moist warmth in the surrounding dryness of a hospice room, ‘Vee,’ using the name she’d adopted as a teenager, and then proceeded to tell her something.
III. Your brain
Ben’s come home with a bouquet of red roses for Vee on the third day she’s sick; he sits with her, tells her he loves her and hopes he doesn’t come down with it too. The next day at work he meets a woman named Tara, while Vee is lying on the bathroom floor watching the ceiling enclose her and periodically sitting up to vomit, missing the toilet once.
‘This is one of the nicest in the complex,’ says Ben, a leasing agent, holding the door for ginger Tara, lithe for her height. ‘Corner unit, cathedral ceiling in the great room, balcony overlooking the pool.’
She turns and her freckles make his stomach jolt. ‘It’s nice,’ she says, looking at him, not the room.
He swallows and walks farther in. ‘New carpets, all walk-in closets…’
She prowls into the kitchen where he tries to show her new appliances. ‘Show me the balcony,’ she says.
And there, overlooking the pool, where he can see his own building’s roof a few blocks away, she pushes him against the railing; she’s soft and orange-hued; she runs her little hands up his back and says in his ear ‘I have something for us.’ Her small fingers with their clipped nails slip in between his shirt buttons and stroke his prickling skin. In her other hand she produces a plastic bag with two little white tablets, each with a little ‘i’ on it.
At this moment is when Vee misses the toilet; a chunk of watery vomit spews onto the floor before she rests her chin on the bowl’s rim, eyes almost shut with fatigue, and then a new wave of full-body gagging wracks her, and more liquid hits the bowl. On her eyelids the wavy gray pattern of brains wiggles across and forms a lifeless maze.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
I. Fever
Pastel streaks bristle thick and harsh on the other side of eyelid veils, behind which everything is red and spangled, kinetic static. It is drawing shapes and they revolve. The heat is unbearable but also pleasing. It would be more pleasing if she could find a position to endure it in. Prone is not low enough. She needs to sink into the cushions but the spangles are too hot. She moves. Her body is a long lump of clay. Melting it sticks into the couch. It is coarse and scratches where her skin is exposed. The red black is soft but sharp. She turns. Her eyes are bristly. Behind her her head is molten and thick.
They open. Her vision is liquid but cooling. The ceiling has shapes in it but fading. Sweat coats her burning skin and then the blankets.
Later she stands up and all her weight has transferred to her head. In the bathroom the cold faucet gives like a spring and the walls are caving in. She falls back onto the bristly couch.
Ben is asleep in the other room. He is blue and under a sheet. Above him the square digits say 4:44.
When he comes home from work the next evening she has eaten soup but is unconscious, the title screen of a DVD looping in the corner.
They open. Her vision is liquid but cooling. The ceiling has shapes in it but fading. Sweat coats her burning skin and then the blankets.
Later she stands up and all her weight has transferred to her head. In the bathroom the cold faucet gives like a spring and the walls are caving in. She falls back onto the bristly couch.
Ben is asleep in the other room. He is blue and under a sheet. Above him the square digits say 4:44.
When he comes home from work the next evening she has eaten soup but is unconscious, the title screen of a DVD looping in the corner.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Plea
‘I mean, I don’t have anything against my parents. I don’t. Nobody expects to get divorced, or have all the shit that happened to them happen. I’m not here to get back at them, or anything like that. And no, I don’t blame myself, either. I mean, would this family be as fucked up as it is now if I hadn’t, like, “joined” it? I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter. This isn’t about that. This is something I need to do for myself.’
Q.
‘I need to know the names of my birth parents.’
Q.
‘My name is Caitlin Shelley. I’m seventeen. I was adopted from Seoul, Korea, when I was four months old, by Bob and Christine Shelley. I have two older brothers, neither of whom was adopted.’
Q.
‘Yes, I understand that there’s a policy. I’ll be eighteen in October, and I have two reasons why I need to get around that right now. One is that neither of my parents is capable of giving parental consent. The other is that I don’t know 100% for sure whether I am seventeen, do I? I won’t know until I see the situation around my birth in Korea. So, until I see my records, I can’t be sure how old I am.’
Q.
‘I haven’t seen Christine in a few months now. Last I heard she had an apartment in Grand Rapids, but I never had an address for it. She hasn’t called. As far as I know, Brian and Anthony don’t know where she is either. This is all confidential, right?’
Q.
‘Bob is at home. He’s always home. He looks the exact same when I leave for school in the morning as when I get home, except drunker. He might leave while I’m at work, sometimes, because when I get home from that, his door’s always closed, and he has a porch off his bedroom, so he could leave if he wanted. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, though. There’s always food in the house, it’s a safe environment, et cetera. Listen, by confidential, you know I’m not telling you this to rat them out, right? You’re not going to do anything…okay. This has nothing to do with them. I’m telling you these details so you’ll understand why I need to bypass the parental-consent thing. My mom is M.I.A., and Bob is far too inebriated to sign anything and have it hold water. Plus, he is just not in a mental state to handle this.’
Q.
‘When he lost his job, he kind of lost it. Mentally, I mean. He’d been working for the city for like twenty years, he was in a really respectable position, when he got laid off. I guess it was pretty traumatizing. He did the city budget, so he was well aware of how money is allocated, what jobs are in danger, et cetera, and when the new mayor was elected four years ago, he handed him this new project, and it involved noticing that his job was being cut. It was horrible, for him. He had one kid in college and two kids at home, and a good job, and a normal marriage, at the time. Anthony was a freshman and all of a sudden we couldn’t pay tuition anymore. It was around then that Christine’s breakdowns got worse, too. She’d stopped coming home regularly even while my dad was still working, and he thought it was infidelity, so he was already on the edge, but then we found out she was…very unstable. She spent six months in a mental hospital. Yeah, in-patient. She checked herself in, and I went to see her, and my dad did too, but it was like she didn’t know me. That really hurt my dad too, I could see. Then she started accusing him of all this stuff that didn’t happen, and we got scared, both that she had all these false memories and that somebody might take them seriously, so he stopped going, and I didn’t have a way of getting there, so I did too. Stopped going, I mean. Honestly it was easier not to. I felt bad, and I would’ve gone, if she’d given any indication that she wanted me to, but she never called and asked. It was like we just didn’t exist to her. When she checked herself out, she didn’t tell us. That she was leaving or where she was going. Sometimes she calls Anthony. Somehow my dad managed to divorce her. It’s all very weird. Ten years ago I would never have thought this was possible.’
Q.
‘Anthony seems fine. I don’t really talk to him. He stopped coming home for holidays like his freshman year. It was like college became his family and he didn’t need us anymore. Brian, kind of the same thing, but he was always quieter. He was around for Dad’s…decline, but he was always quieter. He moved out a couple years ago and comes home occasionally, but he doesn’t really share. With me. I have not idea how he is.’
Q.
‘When I was little, things were normal, though. We took vacations, we ate dinner together. We have a pool and had friends over, I went to summer camp, I played soccer and took dance and violin lessons, all that stuff. I got braces and had surgery on my knee when I broke it, and they were always more than happy to pay for it. I got the same treatment as Brian and Anthony. They talked to me about being adopted, and about Korea, and told me they’d take me there someday, maybe for high school graduation. Which is now approaching, and no one’s mentioned it. I doubt Christine will make it there at all.’
Q.
‘I mean, that’s how it is, right? It’s fucked up. But that’s life.’
Q.
‘I applied to a couple places. The guidance counselor pretty much forced me to. I don’t really want to go to college. I’m definitely moving out this summer though. I work at Costco and I might be able to go fulltime after school’s out. I’m trying to save money so I can go to Korea. I might take some classes at GCC. I just don’t see the point of spending all that money, and taking out loans, when I don’t even know what I want to do.’
Q.
‘Well I know what I want, I want to find my birth parents. I want to live in Korea, at least for awhile. Maybe a year or so. And college doesn’t exactly fit into that plan.’
Q.
‘No, I haven’t told him. I don’t even know if he’d hear me over the TV. And it might just make things worse. He’s been taking Prozac for a year now but I don’t think it’s doing anything. I mean, I feel bad for him, but no wonder he can’t get a job, when he just drinks and mopes all the time. Anyway, no, I’m not going to tell him, until I know for sure that I’m going to Korea. He doesn’t need to know.’
Q.
‘I think he would have been hurt by it ten years ago, in a fatherly kind of understanding “I’ll support you whatever you do, honey” kind of way. Now, though, like I said, 180.’
Q.
‘I want to find my roots. I’ve been asking myself these questions nobody else can answer. Who am I, where do I come from. What diseases am I susceptible to. Does Alzheimer’s, or male pattern baldness, or even like low blood pressure, do those things run in my family? I need to know these things.’
Q.
‘Because what am I going to do until October? Fuck around and pretend college is right for me, or just sit and wait till I can look at my own file? Six more months of just waiting? I want to start planning my trip to Korea, do you see? And no, I’m not going to go off and so anything rash, I’m not booking my flight just yet. I’m being rather adult about this, given that no one else in my life is. I want to start learning the language, and get accustomed to the culture. But the first step is knowing my real name. Which I understand might not be in the file. But I have to know that.’
Q.
‘No, I’m not running away from anything. I’m very grateful to have been given this chance, to live here in Michigan, to grow up with brothers and loving parents and have the opportunity to go to college if I want to later in life and all that jazz. But I can’t settle here, I can’t accept all this shit that’s happened as the only life I have—when it’s like I have a whole other life, and family, in Korea, that didn’t happen, while this one, this degenerating, fallen apart, suddenly not-so-great-anymore one did, you know?’
Q.
‘I need to know the names of my birth parents.’
Q.
‘My name is Caitlin Shelley. I’m seventeen. I was adopted from Seoul, Korea, when I was four months old, by Bob and Christine Shelley. I have two older brothers, neither of whom was adopted.’
Q.
‘Yes, I understand that there’s a policy. I’ll be eighteen in October, and I have two reasons why I need to get around that right now. One is that neither of my parents is capable of giving parental consent. The other is that I don’t know 100% for sure whether I am seventeen, do I? I won’t know until I see the situation around my birth in Korea. So, until I see my records, I can’t be sure how old I am.’
Q.
‘I haven’t seen Christine in a few months now. Last I heard she had an apartment in Grand Rapids, but I never had an address for it. She hasn’t called. As far as I know, Brian and Anthony don’t know where she is either. This is all confidential, right?’
Q.
‘Bob is at home. He’s always home. He looks the exact same when I leave for school in the morning as when I get home, except drunker. He might leave while I’m at work, sometimes, because when I get home from that, his door’s always closed, and he has a porch off his bedroom, so he could leave if he wanted. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, though. There’s always food in the house, it’s a safe environment, et cetera. Listen, by confidential, you know I’m not telling you this to rat them out, right? You’re not going to do anything…okay. This has nothing to do with them. I’m telling you these details so you’ll understand why I need to bypass the parental-consent thing. My mom is M.I.A., and Bob is far too inebriated to sign anything and have it hold water. Plus, he is just not in a mental state to handle this.’
Q.
‘When he lost his job, he kind of lost it. Mentally, I mean. He’d been working for the city for like twenty years, he was in a really respectable position, when he got laid off. I guess it was pretty traumatizing. He did the city budget, so he was well aware of how money is allocated, what jobs are in danger, et cetera, and when the new mayor was elected four years ago, he handed him this new project, and it involved noticing that his job was being cut. It was horrible, for him. He had one kid in college and two kids at home, and a good job, and a normal marriage, at the time. Anthony was a freshman and all of a sudden we couldn’t pay tuition anymore. It was around then that Christine’s breakdowns got worse, too. She’d stopped coming home regularly even while my dad was still working, and he thought it was infidelity, so he was already on the edge, but then we found out she was…very unstable. She spent six months in a mental hospital. Yeah, in-patient. She checked herself in, and I went to see her, and my dad did too, but it was like she didn’t know me. That really hurt my dad too, I could see. Then she started accusing him of all this stuff that didn’t happen, and we got scared, both that she had all these false memories and that somebody might take them seriously, so he stopped going, and I didn’t have a way of getting there, so I did too. Stopped going, I mean. Honestly it was easier not to. I felt bad, and I would’ve gone, if she’d given any indication that she wanted me to, but she never called and asked. It was like we just didn’t exist to her. When she checked herself out, she didn’t tell us. That she was leaving or where she was going. Sometimes she calls Anthony. Somehow my dad managed to divorce her. It’s all very weird. Ten years ago I would never have thought this was possible.’
Q.
‘Anthony seems fine. I don’t really talk to him. He stopped coming home for holidays like his freshman year. It was like college became his family and he didn’t need us anymore. Brian, kind of the same thing, but he was always quieter. He was around for Dad’s…decline, but he was always quieter. He moved out a couple years ago and comes home occasionally, but he doesn’t really share. With me. I have not idea how he is.’
Q.
‘When I was little, things were normal, though. We took vacations, we ate dinner together. We have a pool and had friends over, I went to summer camp, I played soccer and took dance and violin lessons, all that stuff. I got braces and had surgery on my knee when I broke it, and they were always more than happy to pay for it. I got the same treatment as Brian and Anthony. They talked to me about being adopted, and about Korea, and told me they’d take me there someday, maybe for high school graduation. Which is now approaching, and no one’s mentioned it. I doubt Christine will make it there at all.’
Q.
‘I mean, that’s how it is, right? It’s fucked up. But that’s life.’
Q.
‘I applied to a couple places. The guidance counselor pretty much forced me to. I don’t really want to go to college. I’m definitely moving out this summer though. I work at Costco and I might be able to go fulltime after school’s out. I’m trying to save money so I can go to Korea. I might take some classes at GCC. I just don’t see the point of spending all that money, and taking out loans, when I don’t even know what I want to do.’
Q.
‘Well I know what I want, I want to find my birth parents. I want to live in Korea, at least for awhile. Maybe a year or so. And college doesn’t exactly fit into that plan.’
Q.
‘No, I haven’t told him. I don’t even know if he’d hear me over the TV. And it might just make things worse. He’s been taking Prozac for a year now but I don’t think it’s doing anything. I mean, I feel bad for him, but no wonder he can’t get a job, when he just drinks and mopes all the time. Anyway, no, I’m not going to tell him, until I know for sure that I’m going to Korea. He doesn’t need to know.’
Q.
‘I think he would have been hurt by it ten years ago, in a fatherly kind of understanding “I’ll support you whatever you do, honey” kind of way. Now, though, like I said, 180.’
Q.
‘I want to find my roots. I’ve been asking myself these questions nobody else can answer. Who am I, where do I come from. What diseases am I susceptible to. Does Alzheimer’s, or male pattern baldness, or even like low blood pressure, do those things run in my family? I need to know these things.’
Q.
‘Because what am I going to do until October? Fuck around and pretend college is right for me, or just sit and wait till I can look at my own file? Six more months of just waiting? I want to start planning my trip to Korea, do you see? And no, I’m not going to go off and so anything rash, I’m not booking my flight just yet. I’m being rather adult about this, given that no one else in my life is. I want to start learning the language, and get accustomed to the culture. But the first step is knowing my real name. Which I understand might not be in the file. But I have to know that.’
Q.
‘No, I’m not running away from anything. I’m very grateful to have been given this chance, to live here in Michigan, to grow up with brothers and loving parents and have the opportunity to go to college if I want to later in life and all that jazz. But I can’t settle here, I can’t accept all this shit that’s happened as the only life I have—when it’s like I have a whole other life, and family, in Korea, that didn’t happen, while this one, this degenerating, fallen apart, suddenly not-so-great-anymore one did, you know?’
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