Today I’m excited to meet with Casper. I want to tell her about Crafts, and what I drew and what drawing means to me. I think that will make her happy. But when I push open the door, she’s not alone. Dr. Helen is with her.
The turtle is hiding inside the sunken ship.
Dr. Helen turns around when I enter the room and says, “Oh, Charlotte, please sit down, here.” And she pats the brown chair I always sit in. I look at Casper, but her smile isn’t as nice as it usually is. It looks…smaller.
Dr. Helen is a lot older than Casper, with lines at the edges of her eyes and rouge that’s too dark for her skin.
“Dr. Stinson and I have been reviewing your progress, Charlotte. I’m happy to see you’ve made some strong strides in such a short time.”
I don’t know if I’m supposed to answer her, or smile, or what, so I don’t say anything. I kind of start pinching my thighs through the flowery skirt, but Casper notices and frowns, so I stop.
“You’ve been through so much, and at such a young age, I just…” And here, weirdly, she stops, and kind of sets her jaw and says, very sharp, to Casper, “Are you not going to help at all with this, Bethany?”
And I’m still absorbing Casper’s name, Bethany Bethany Bethany, so it takes a while for me to understand what she’s telling me.
I say, “What?”
Casper repeats, “You’re being discharged.”
Dr. Helen talks then, about a special sort of psychiatric hold that allowed me to be treated at the hospital, and about my mother having to meet with a judge and sign papers, because “you were a danger to yourself and others,” and insurance, and my Grammy, who I haven’t thought of in a very long time. All the words kind of bang around my brain as my heart squeezes into a tinier and tinier thing and I ask about my mom, but it comes out in a stutter. I bite down on my tongue until I get a faint, metallic taste of blood.
Casper says, “Your mother’s not working right now, so there isn’t any possibility of coverage. As I understand it, some of your stay has been covered by your grandmother, but she’s unable to continue due to her own health and financial care issues.”
“Did something happen to my grandmother?”
“I don’t know,” answers Casper.
“You talked to my mother?”
Casper nods.
“Did she…did she say anything about me?”
Casper looks at Dr. Helen, who says, “We’re working as hard as possible to locate resources for you. In fact, Bethany, how are we doing on the bed at the house on Palace?”
When Casper doesn’t answer, Dr. Helen flips through the pile of papers on her lap. “There’s a halfway house that may have room for you, possibly as early as next month. They specialize in substance addiction, but that is one of your subsets. You’ll need to stay with your mother before then, of course, since you can’t stay here. No one wants you back in your previous situation, no one.”
Previous situation: meaning, homeless. Meaning, Dumpster diving. Meaning, cold and sick and Fucking Frank and the men who fuck girls.
I look at the turtle. His legs twitch, like he’s shrugging at me: What do you expect me to do? I’m a goddamn turtle trapped in a tank.
Outside the window, the sky is turning hard and gray. Fucking Frank. A halfway house. I’m being sent back outside.
When I say it, I sound like a little baby, and that makes me even madder. “It’s still cold outside.”
Dr. Helen says, “We’ll do everything we can, but is there absolutely no possibility of long-term reconciliation with your mother, even with counseling? She’s agreed to house you until a bed opens at the halfway house. That says something to me, that she’s trying.”
I look at Casper in desperation. I think her eyes are the saddest things I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Very, very slowly, she shakes her head from side to side. “I don’t see any other option, Charlotte. I’m very sorry.”
Once my mother hit my ear so hard I heard the howling of trains for a week. I get up and walk to the door.
Casper says, “We’re not abandoning you, Charlotte. We’ve investigated every possible option, there just isn’t—”
“No.” I open the door. “Thank you. I’m going to my room now.”
Casper calls after me, but I don’t stop. My ears are a sea of bees. Our rooms are on the fourth floor, Dinnaken Wing. I pass by Louisa and go into the bathroom and stand there for a while. Louisa says my name.
Then I step into our shower and pound my forehead into the wall until the bees die.
When Casper comes running in, she grabs me around the waist and pulls at me to get me to stop. I take her beautiful yellowy baby bird hair in my hands and I yank so hard that she cries out and pushes away. I slide to the floor, warm blood trickling down to my mouth.
I say sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.
Feathery strands of her hair flutter in my hands. I’ll never be beautiful or normal like Casper, and just like that, just realizing that, out everything comes, all she ever asked of me.
I tell her: After my father died, my mother curled up into something tight and awful and there was no more music in the house, there was no more touching, she was only a ghost that moved and smoked. If I got in her way, if the school called, if I took money from her purse, if I was just me, the yelling started. She yelled for years. When she got tired of yelling, she started hitting.
Casper blots my face with a cloth as I talk. Louisa wrings her hands in the doorway. Girls pile up behind her, pushing, trying to get a look.
I say: She’s been hitting me for a long time. I say: I started hitting back.
I say: Please don’t make me go back outside. I tell her about the man in the underpass, he broke my tooth and broke me, and it hurts swelling out of me, but I give it to her, all the horrible words in my heart—about Ellis, about Fucking Frank.
I stop. Her eyes are watery. I’ve given her too much. Two orderlies muscle through the crowd of girls. There are little pinpricks of blood at the roots of Casper’s hair, little blips of red amid the yellow. They help her up and she doesn’t say anything to me, just limps away.
