Chapter 44 Jessa
JESSA
The phone is picked up on the first ring, and I’m expecting Dad, but it’s Mom who answers, voice edged with anxiety and fear. “My god, Jessa, are you all right? We are so worried, where are you?”
I take a deep breath. I’m gonna stay calm, since I have no real plan. I have no idea what to say. I’m safe but not all right. I’m not sure if I want to come home, but I know I will. I can’t live like this anymore. I can’t do what we’re doing anymore.
“I’m okay, Mom; I’m with Bird.”
“Oh, thank the Lord,” she calls out away from the phone, “Hon, she’s with her friend Bird.”
“Put her on speakerphone!”
“What? How? Is it this button?”
I hear her hitting random buttons on Dad’s cell. I roll my eyes and wait for him to inevitably take the phone from her and switch it over to speaker.
“Hey, Jessa, we’re both on now,” Dad says. His usual cool tone is not there, and I’m not sure if those are tears in his voice. “Are you okay?”
“Hey, yeah, I’m okay. I’m gonna spend the night with Bird.”
“Sure, hon, but there was a lot of blood in the house, and Mack was—”
“How is Mack?” I divert the question and look down to the wicker bench outside the brownstone.
“She’s stabilized, she’s okay, she was actually scared about you when they let us speak with her. What happened?”
“I grabbed the knife before she got to her arm this time. Unfortunately, grabbed the wrong end.” I let out a pathetic laugh for my pathetic joke.
This isn’t funny. I was seconds away. She could have died.
She could have fought me and I could have gotten hurt worse.
What I’ve got hurts like a real sonofabitch and might need stitches, since it’s oozing through the bandages Bird gave me.
“Jessamine, are you really okay?” My mom is either laying it on thick, or she actually cares. I mean, if they spoke with Mack at the hospital where people could see… they’re more out there than in the past.
“No, Mom. None of this has been okay. Mack is really sick. We have to talk about that.”
“We can definitely—”
“Now. We have to talk now, because otherwise we’re just gonna go back to our pattern of ignoring how bad it is, and I don’t want to come home too late or any of the other nine million nightmares I have about how she dies from this.”
There’s a long pause. I can hear breathing, so they didn’t hang up. Probably sharing a look with each other before telling me this is “adult stuff.” Fuck this shit.
I’m about to hang up when Dad chimes in. “You’re right, Jessa. She is really sick and we have been minimizing it. There’s a lot of things people say and do around mental illness, and I guess we were trying to protect you and ourselves from it, and Mack has been paying the price.”
Unexpected. Even more so that Mom doesn’t contradict him.
“We talked with her, Jessa,” Mom says. “We’re going to get her specialty care. The place she told you about. She may not be home for a few months, but we can go visit her after the first couple weeks.”
I don’t know what to say because they’ve never listened this well, to me or Mack. Maybe they were protecting us or maybe they were ashamed, but all that is nothing. This, here. Them saying they’ll get her what she needs. It’s hopeful. It’s healthy in a weird way. Maybe I can live with that.
“That’s… that’s really good. That’s a great decision.”
There’s an awkward silence. But then I realize something I need from them. I need it for myself. To be okay.
“One more thing…”
“Of course,” Dad says.
“I want to start seeing a therapist too.”
“Are you sure, Jessa?” Mom, of course, the doubting Thomas.
“I’ve been scared for a long time that I’ve got what Mack has. And honestly, I think it might help all of us to see someone together, too, but I want to find out if I am bipolar, and start learning how to live with it before it gets as hard as it is for Mack.”
Another pause. Big ask. They’re gonna say no.
“Okay,” Mom agrees. “We’ll do it. Anything to keep you girls safe.”
I’m surprised that there are tears running down my face. Relieved, definitely. Fear and years of holding back, letting go in a quiet, cold stream. Running the final remains of my heinous eyeliner job down my cheeks, turning icy cold in the winter air.
“Thank you,” I say. “I really needed that.”
“When will you be home, Jessa?” Dad, getting to the important facts.
“Sometime tomorrow afternoon. As long as Y2K doesn’t end us all.”
“I think we’re safe. At least at home will be safe.” He means all our home computers will remain working, but I’d like to think home will be safe too.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Happy New Year, Jessa,” Mom chimes in.
“Happy New Year to you both. See you in the next millennium.”
I close the flip phone and look at the clock face on the front.
11:53. Almost midnight. I’m sure Bird will spend the moment with her dad.
I don’t blame her for it, but it is a lonely way to ring in the New Year.
Cheerful conversation escapes from within the house, muffled out in the yard, all those people just like me, but happy, proud.
I smile to myself, feeling that little bird of hope deep inside sing just a tiny bit.
The cold in the air finally breaks and a light flurry of snow starts up.
It catches in the streetlights, white flecks in the golden glow, magical almost. For a second I would like to be at a crossroads in a magical land.
For a second it feels like I am at a crossroads in a magical land.
But this is my life, and I am at an actual crossroads, and I think I made the right turn this time.
I pull out my Discman and the new earbuds Dad gave me for the holidays. Inside the player is my newest mix. My I Love You mix, just for Bird. I cue it up, the very first song. But before it spins, the lamplight is blocked and I’m looking up at the best part of this past year and the next. Bird.
She hits pause on the player. It’s sexy, the confidence and ease in the motion. I pull out my earbuds.
“I thought you were gonna be with your dad.”
“I think he understands the importance of the New Year’s kiss. After all, what we’re doing at midnight tonight is a sign of what we’ll be doing for the next year.”
“Ooh, superstition. I wouldn’t have pegged you for that. Are there resolutions, too?”
She sits down beside me, interlaces her fingers through mine, leans her body against my side, her head on my shoulder. “Spend more time with you doing anything but fighting?”
“Wow, you have the same exact resolution as me,” I joke, looking out at the snow coming down thicker, fluffier, adding a beautiful shine to the night.
“So,” I say, and lean my head against hers. “Ready for the end of the world?”
I turn my phone toward her. 11:59. Sixty seconds left.
“I talked to my parents,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“They’re finally doing the right thing. And I got myself okayed for therapy.”
She squeezes my hand. “I’m proud of you.”
And she is, and I’m so fucking proud she’s proud of me.
Something in my chest, in the place where the black hole lives, turns the other way, growing and expanding with warmth, happiness, potential.
It feels like I have light in me and it’s opening out to the world and I learned how with her, somehow I learned how to love myself more from loving her.
Muffled chanting comes from all directions, counting down from ten. At eight, Bird says quickly, “One more resolution?”
Seven.
“What?”
Six.
“When we go back home, I want us to be together. Out and together,” she says, talking fast, trying to fit every last word in. “Because you set me on fire—every part of me—and I can’t keep hiding that, Jessa.”
“Okay,” I answer, not only because I want the same thing but because she has set me on fire too. Every part of me.
And then we whisper along with them: “Three, two, one.”