4. Maya
4
MAYA
“ D amn you.” I don’t know how many times I’ve said those words on the drive home. As it is, I barely remember the drive. One of those examples of a person’s body moving on autopilot. Muscle memory. Going through the motions of finding my way while my brain was too overwhelmed to process a thought.
It still is by the time I pull up and put the car in park in front of my house. My father’s house—it hasn’t felt like mine in years. Not since…
If my heart pounds much harder, it’s going to burst out of my chest and paint the inside of my car. For one brief but very real moment, I sort of wish it would. I don’t want to go through this anymore. I’m tired of it, tired from it. How long can a person carry a burden before it becomes too much to endure?
And how long ago did I reach that point? Because right now, sitting in my car and absolutely certain I’m going to die here, I have to wonder if I’ve already reached my breaking point. I have to wonder if it’s not already too late for me.
I don’t know what to do with everything buzzing in my head, making my stomach churn. It’s too much, I can’t breathe. There’s something sitting on my chest.
“Mom! Didn’t you hear me? I need your help!” I can hear myself in my head: selfish, immature, a complete brat. Demanding Mom jump when I snapped my fingers. Over what? Oh, right. The fucking protein bars I couldn’t find in the pantry.
Like I needed something else to add on top of what Tucker’s kiss did to me. It’s like I’m falling apart. I don’t know who I am. I can’t trust my thoughts. I can’t trust the things I want. I can’t trust myself anymore, a thought that is completely terrifying and goes well with how cold I am inside. Always.
There’s one small ray of light in the middle of all this darkness: Dad’s car is gone. I can sip a little more air into my lungs through the pinhole my throat has closed into. I don’t have to face him and his pretenses. The way he goes overboard, acting like I’m the most precious thing in his world. Especially with Mom gone. I’m all he has, or so he says.
Most people would consider themselves blessed to live in a house like this. I never really did appreciate it back when Mom was alive. When I could feel things; when I was a whole person. I was too young and stupid, for one thing, not to mention how normal it all seemed. Everybody I knew lived the way I did, so there was nothing special about it. Nothing to be grateful for. There are so many reasons why I wish I could go back and strangle that younger version of me. The insufferable little brat.
I’m still holding onto the steering wheel so tightly that my fingers ache so I slowly uncurl them. I should get inside and in bed before he gets home, even if I’m not really tired, even if it’s still pretty early. I would rather lie in bed all night wide awake than run the risk of seeing him. How much of my life have I wasted coming up with ways to avoid him? How much of my time is spent living around him, in spite of him? It’s depressing —and maybe I would be depressed if I was capable of feeling anything.
Instead, I walk blindly up the front steps and use my key to unlock the door. There is something satisfying about the sound of my footsteps in the large, high-ceilinged entry. It’s like the house is hollow—the way I feel inside. The house understands. The house was the only other witness to Mom’s death.
The thought makes me move faster, almost running up the stairs like I can outrun the past. There’s no such thing. I can’t forget it. I can’t change it. I can’t handle it. It’s too much.
At the same time, I feel like I’m screaming into the biggest, thickest pillow imaginable. It doesn’t matter how hard I scream or how loud. How much my throat hurts, how I exhaust myself. There’s no sound. Just like there’s no feeling.
And I need to get rid of it somehow. I need to be free so I can breathe. So I can exist. By the time I reach my bedroom, I’m not running anymore. I’m flying, throwing myself into the room, slamming the door and flipping the lock, savoring the sound.
That doesn’t mean I can breathe or that the pressure in my head goes away. There’s only one thing that will help me now, and I stumble for the bathroom, barely flipping on the light before reaching the vanity in three almost drunken steps. I’m falling apart. I feel it; I know it. It has to stop. I have to end it.
Reaching into the back of the bottom drawer, I feel around until my fingers close over a small packet tucked behind a box of tampons. No chance of them being found by Dad where I hid them. The weight in my hand, light as it is, brings me a measure of peace. I know what to expect. I know what I need to do.
The blade inside gleams in the lights over the mirror. It promises so much—a new, sharp, virgin blade.
Just one more time. I always tell myself just one more time. Whenever it gets to be too much, all the pressure, all the memories crowding in on me. Just one more time. I’ll learn to handle my shit from now on. I won’t do it anymore.
But it always comes to this. Standing in the bathroom, propping my foot on the closed lid of the toilet and sliding my dress over my thigh in search of uncut skin. Just one more time.
I take a hitching breath once the cool metal makes contact. A little more. That’s all it will take. A tiny bit of pressure. Funny how in this moment, the last one before release, I can almost savor the sensation. The anticipation. Holding my breath, knowing what comes next.
And then I press down. Drag it across my skin. The thin line appears like magic, the pain so much better than the nothing I feel otherwise. All the tightness in my chest, all of the pressure and the tension filling me up like poison gas dissipates, vanishes, draining out of me like the blood now trickling from the thin cut.
I’m weak, trembling by the time I set the blade on the marble countertop. I have to lean against the sink, gripping the edge in both hands, before closing my eyes to savor the relief. Thank god. I didn’t think I was going to make it. It’s always like that.
Slowly, my heartbeat returns to normal. The tangled mess that was my brain smooths out. I can even look at myself in the mirror, staring at my reflection. Noting the flush on my cheeks and the hard glittering of my eyes. How many times now? I barely remember the first, when I spent at least an hour considering cutting myself. Hurting the person I hated most. More than Dad, who betrayed me in such a heartless way, before I had to go out and do the only thing I could think of to take some control of my life.
Did he feel? Does he know?
My eyes close, and I have to turn away from the mirror when I remember Tucker’s kiss. Really, it’s a good thing he touched my leg when he did. Otherwise, who knows what could’ve happened? Speaking of people I hate. He’s not quite as far up on the list as my father, but he’s pretty damn close. Somebody without the decency to let it go, to leave me be.
I can’t think about that now. I don’t want to think about anything. I want to forget, dammit. I want to simply exist for a little while with no monsters lurking in my head. Is that too much to ask?
I’m no closer to an answer to that question by the time I turn on the shower and pull my dress over my head. The blood on my thigh is already congealing, and the hot spray will wash it away. Just like always. It’s so convenient, so easy to pretend it never happened.
But there is no forgetting. Not for long, because what starts as a cut ends as a scar.
Once I’m undressed, I step into the large, stone tiled shower stall. It’s easier, safer to tune out and let my body take over for me the way it did during my drive. Going through the motions of something I’ve done so many times. Letting the water run over my skin, hoping it will wash away everything that leaves me with this sense of being dirty. Broken. Guilty. I can pretend while running a soapy mesh sponge over my arms that the effort will mean something this time. That somehow, I’ll feel like a new person by the time the suds pour down the drain. Someone whole, someone fresh and good.
Always, I come to the part where it’s time to wash my legs. To let the mesh trail over the roadmap of my agony. Each scar a symbol of one more time I lost the fight. One more time everything got to be so much, there was no hope of release except to slice my skin and let the blood flow. So many times. An ugly, shameful map that leads nowhere. I’m exactly where I started.
Soon there are tears mingling with the water coming from the showerhead. At least I can cry. I can feel again, if only for now, even if it’s sadness and shame forcing the tears from my eyes.
It was my fault. It was all my fault.
Turning off the shower, I wring out my hair before opening the glass door and reaching for the towel hanging from a hook just outside. Wrapping the thick, fluffy terry cloth around me is comforting, at least a little. Like being hugged. Like Mom’s hugs. I can’t help but remember having a bad day sometimes and the way she would pop a couple of towels in the dryer when she knew I was getting in the shower, so they would be warm and toasty for me.
There were so many things I took for granted. There’s nobody who cares anymore whether I have a warm towel, or whether we have my favorite protein bars or if I would like a sweater they’d found while shopping. I lost so much I never knew I had at the time. Why is it like that? Why can’t we appreciate what we have while we have it?
I need to stop thinking so much about her, but tonight it seems impossible. She weighs heavily on my heart. I miss her so much. She would know what to do about Tucker, about so many things.
But then, if it hadn’t been for losing her, I wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with Tucker to begin with. So many things would be different.
To think, I imagined myself lying awake in bed tonight since it was too early to go to sleep. By the time I’m in my pajamas and crawling into bed, I’m exhausted. Wrung out, empty. Sliding between the sheets and resting my head on the pillow is nice, but there’s always going to be a part of me that doesn’t think I deserve it. Even this comfort is too much.
My punishment? Easy. Closing my eyes and drifting off to sleep. Descending into a nightmare that happens to be my memory. The sounds of crickets chirping outside and the faint whoosh of cars passing on the street fade into silence that is only punctured by my heart beating in my ears.
“Mom?” I would’ve sworn I heard her coming down the stairs, telling me to give her a second. She’s wearing sandals after having a pedicure, and I’ve heard them slapping the floor ever since she got home from shopping while Dad’s at work. Was I imagining hearing them on the stairs while I was digging through the pantry?
“I’m freaking starving, you know.” My voice echoes through the kitchen once I leave the pantry, then walk out to the hall leading to the center of the house. Maybe she got distracted or something. “You always move stuff! Just tell me where you put them. I want to take one with me to ? —”
At first, I’m sure it must be a joke. That’s how unthinkable it is. That’s how impossible.
That is not my mother lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, with her head turned to the side so her wide eyes can stare blankly at me. Her beautiful, strawberry blonde curls fan out around her on the tile.
Except the patch of hair that’s much darker. Deep red. Like wine.
Or blood.
“Mom?” I’m frozen. I can’t move. If I move, that means this is real, and it isn’t real. She’s pranking me. Reminding me not to be so impatient. After all, what would I do without her?
She’s not blinking. She’s not breathing.
“Mom!” I hurl myself across the floor, sliding partway when my legs give out. Almost crawling to her, shaking her, screaming until my voice gives out. Demanding. Insisting she wake up and talk to me. She cannot be dead. There is no way she’s dead.
But she is dead. She’s staring at me, but she can’t see me. She’ll never see anything again, and all because I was screaming for her to find something for me. I made her hurry up. She probably slipped and fell because she wanted to help me.
Ice begins to spread through my veins, starting at my heart and growing, expanding, filling me up. I can’t handle this. There is no way I can handle this. It’s too much.
“Help me!” My shrieks go unheard.
I’m the only one left alive in the house, after all.