Aria turned on the water faucet to a trickle. She felt the soothing relief eat away at the static of her anxiety. Her breathing slowed. She felt alive in this moment, mesmerized by the blood making its way, in streams that looked like watercolour, down the drain. Relief was all she wanted.
But the relief was short-lived. Having heard Aria hurry from the garage to the bathroom, Mrs Johnson gave in to her curiosity. She opened the door slowly. Aria was startled by the noise and tried to hide her arms. But it was too late. “Aria!” she gasped, rushing over to the bathtub.
She pulled at Aria’s arms so she could see them clearly. Once she was confident that none of the cuts were deep enough to need stitches, her panic turned to exasperation. She stood with her hands on her hips, shaking her head back and forth, and paced the length of the bathroom, muttering to herself. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked in an angry tone, looking at Aria out of the corner of her eye. “What have I done? What have I done to deserve this?”
Aria flushed with shame as she went on. “I’m taking you to see someone, this has got to stop!” she barked. She turned her back to Aria for a minute and then turned back to face her. “Do you think this is the right place for you? ’Cause I just don’t know anymore.”
“Yes,” piped Aria, suddenly overtaken by the very real threat of being abandoned again. She began to sob.
At the sight of her tears, Mrs Johnson began to cry too. She shook her head, trying to conceal the contortion of her face. She turned to leave the room and through the sounds of her cries she called behind her, “You clean it all up and for God’s sake don’t show anyone.” Her footsteps and sobs sounded down the hallway to her room.
Aria’s world was spinning. As if a perfect mirrored reflection of Mrs Johnson’s sobbing, she cried into the container of the lonely bathroom. She knew she was on thin ice and had been for quite some time.
The Johnsons had been planning to adopt her shortly after fostering her, just as they had done with her younger sister. But Aria’s frequent behavior problems had caused them to delay, and now, Aria was facing the possibility of being given up entirely. Her deep fear of being forsaken bubbled up with each sob.
She sat in the bathtub, crying, until she was shivering and the blood had stopped running from her forearms. She turned on the warm water. It stung as she cupped it over her arms, washing them clean of congealed blood. She dried them off and wrapped them sloppily in paper towel, anchoring it to her arms with uneven strips of duct tape. When she was done, aside from the warmth of it having been used, the bathroom looked as if nothing had taken place. She dumped the bloodstained towel down the laundry chute and walked to her room to find a long-sleeved hoodie to wear.
That week, Aria found herself contained within the astringent walls of a psychiatrist’s office. She flexed her feet. The leather couch squeaked under her weight. She filled out the patient intake form as the man sitting across from her studied her. When she handed him the completed form, he set it on his desk and proceeded to talk. “Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Aria said. “I’ve been hurting myself.”
“It says here that you’re in foster care, is that true?”
The psychiatrist shifted in his chair, adjusting the glasses on his nose as he awaited her answer. Aria nodded.
“Why are you hurting yourself?” he asked.
“It feels better. Everything just gets really quiet,” Aria said, pausing to put her elbows on her knees and resting her temples on her palms. “I don’t see why this is such a big deal to everyone.”
“It’s a big deal to everyone because we can’t have you being a danger to yourself, or to anyone else for that matter,” the man answered. He looked down at his hands in his lap and Aria could see that he was balding.
Sensing that this man was accustomed to extreme emotional displays, she seized the opportunity to release the pressure. “I fucking hate this place,” she said. “Who the fuck would want to live here?”
The psychiatrist received the words and stayed silent, welcoming more expression. Aria glanced around the room. “Life is like an air-filled syringe to the veins,” she said, playing with the end of her sleeve. “I wish that love could make this world good, instead of sugar-coat it.”
“Are you saying that you feel like love is fake?”
“Yes, love is fake!” Aria shouted.
The psychiatrist scribbled notes on the pad of paper in his hands. It made her feel like a lab rat there to be studied. As if to cut him off from his writing, Aria said, “You people don’t care about me, you don’t care about me at all. You just want me to die so you can be rid of me.”
“We don’t want you to die – that’s precisely why you’re
