But Inside I'm Screaming

anchor cocked her head ever so slightly to the left, coordinated perfectly with a hint of a smile: clues that a heartwarming story was moments from unfolding “—who took on a giant…and won!”

Isabel lets the sounds of the television wash over her. She looks at Sukanya. Then, as she turns back to the screen, she relaxes all the muscles in her face, her neck, her back and legs and finally exhales into a stupor.

The pictures of angry neighbors picketing in front of city hall, once clear, blur into a comfortable kaleidoscope of color. The voices, once a cacophony, blend into a symphony of sound, and become a waking lullaby for the two women, side by side, late at night in a mental institution.

Night after night Isabel and Sukanya sit immobilized in front of the television. To Isabel the newscasts that just months ago were precision Swiss timepieces are now melting clocks that litter barren dreamscapes. The stories that once implied competitive edge are now superficial jumbles of words tied together by nursery school segues.

“Isabel?” Connie the night nurse calls into the room halfheartedly, assuming Isabel is elsewhere. But the twin wing chairs intrigue her. “Isabel? You in here, hon?”

Go away.

Isabel feels the spell of the stupor being broken as the nurse calls her back into reality.

No. Go away.

Connie peers around the chair and looks surprised to see Isabel sitting there.

“You must not have heard the call for meds,” she explains to her mute patient. “I brought them in for you.”

Wordlessly Isabel turns her palm upward and watches as the small pills roll out of the white Dixie cup and into the center of her hand. She takes the cup of Hawaiian Punch from Connie and stares at it with an equal amount of blankness.

“You okay, hon?” Connie’s face crinkles up. Isabel watches her mouth move. “Do you feel all right?”

Isabel looks back and forth between her two hands and, in one smooth motion, brings the pills to her mouth. Slowly she follows with her Hawaiian Punch and swallows the sleeping pills. Connie hesitates before moving away and, eventually, out of the room.

Isabel turns back to the TV. Sukanya has never looked away.

There is comfort in being left alone. Something about the numbness hugging her feels familiar.

Seventeen

“What I mean is, they just want to take you over, know what I’m saying?” Keisha says. “They want to control you and make it so they own you or something.”

“So just opening up to someone, just talking to someone, would make them control you?” Larry asks her. Isabel sits forward on her chair and stares intently at Keisha.

Let her finish.

“Yeah, kind of.” Keisha scratches at her head. “But it’s more than opening up. I’m talking about talking, really flapping with someone.”

“Flapping?”

“Flapping. Flapping gums. Talking. You know? Like about all your stuff. They think they got you in their hand, you belong to them and you can’t belong to yourself anymore. I hate that. Like the tribes who think if you take their picture you’re taking a piece of their soul. It’s like that. You tell yourself to someone and they steal your soul. That’s why I don’t talk to anybody. I wanna keep my soul, man.”

“Go on,” Larry says.

“No one wants to hear about all my shit, anyway,” Keisha continues. “Who am I supposed to go to—my sister? Ha.” And she looks genuinely amused at such an apparently bizarre notion.

“Why do you always have to do that?”

“Do what?”

Alex looked down at the comforter on the bed and traced a line of quilting with his finger.

“You’re always calling Casey when you’ve got a problem.” He calculated a sulking look. “You even call your mother…”

“And?”

“And you never come to me with the problem,” he said. “You won’t let me have a crack at it first. I am your husband after all. That’s what husbands do.”

Isabel crossed the room to the spot right in front of Alex on the edge of the bed. “I am so sorry,” she said, kissing his cheek, “how about,” kiss “I promise,” kiss “to come to you,” kiss “first next time.” Kiss.

Alex pulled his head away and looked her square in the eye. “Only me,” he said.

“Only you?” Isabel was smiling, leaning to kiss his cheek again.

“Only me,” he repeated. If Isabel had been paying attention she would have noticed his emphasis was on the first of the two words. And he wasn’t smiling back.

“We all have to have someone to talk to,” Larry says.

Leave it to Birkenstock Boy to paraphrase Dylan.

Keisha is shaking her head. “Not me, man. Not me.” She looks proud of her stoicism. “No one I know talks about all this deep shit, anyhow. All we talk about when we get together is who sleeping with who, who wearing what, who got what CD…all that shit. No one sits around talking about how bad they had it with their mama.”

Amen to that.

“Have you considered that you might need more than that?” Larry asks her. “Especially now?”

“I tell you what, Larry,” Keisha says, her childish face suddenly somber. “I don’t see any black folk here, in this place. Not a one. I’m the only one I see. And black folks, the ones I’m talking about, not talking about all this psycho-shit. And they ain’t here. So that tells me that maybe there’s something to that, know what I’m saying?”

She’s exactly right. Exactly right.

“What are you saying?” Larry asks.

“I’m saying maybe that’s the key,” she says proudly, “that’s the secret. Talking about the shit’s what makes you psycho. You don’t talk about it, you don’t have the problems. The problems start when you start digging all around them.” Keisha is triumphant with her theory.

“Or—” Larry follows her theory with his own “—or, the digging leads us to a deeper understanding of what we’re all about and therefore moves us to a deeper appreciation for life.”

I like Keisha’s philosophy better, dude.

“I like my philosophy better, man,” Keisha says. If Keisha had been paying attention to Isabel she would have noticed the startled look on her washed-out face.

Eighteen

The woman uncomfortably perched on the edge of the Adirondack chair has not opened up in group. Unlike Sukanya, though, Lark is very “present,” very aware of what is going on and very sad. Her brown hair is unkempt and badly cut, as if she had done it herself. Her face is reddened and swollen.

Lark’s whole body is bloated: her wedding ring is surrounded by fat flesh and shows no sign of ever leaving her finger. Lark is a mess by anyone’s definition.

The only time anyone speaks with Lark is when she is smoking on the deck. There, the nicotine softens her hard defenses, loosens her tongue.

“Can I ask you something?” she addresses Isabel.

“The doctor confiscated my carton of cigarettes,” she confesses, not without a sneer toward the unit, “and I was wondering if you would do me a favor.” Lark has a thick Brooklyn accent. “Favor” is “fay-vah.”