But Inside I'm Screaming

Isabel looks at her watch. An hour has passed.

Twenty-Four

Another sign of failure.

Isabel is out of clean clothes. She has been out of clean clothes for two days but has doubled up on dirty underwear instead of admitting to herself that she has been in the hospital for so long she has cycled through her hospital wardrobe twice.

She bends over and starts gathering her clothes together in a bundle and trudges down the hall to the communal laundry room. The door is closed. Balancing her laundry on her hip, Isabel opens the door and is startled to find Sukanya.

Sukanya stands, wedged in between the dryer and the washing machine—which, Isabel notes, is in use— holding an open book and mumbling what sounds like a prayer. In front of her, on top of the dryer, is a single lit candle.

Before backing out the door Isabel watches the sixteen-year-old girl.

Sukanya looks up, sees Isabel and looks back down, without interrupting her prayer.

Isabel closes the door and thinks how nice it is to hear Sukanya say something other than “I’d prefer not to say.”

She dumps her laundry back in her room and grabs her pack of cigarettes.

“Kristen? Patio?” Isabel has started the question on her way around the corner into Kristen’s room but stops short when she finds Kristen immersed in paperwork spread out on her crinkly bed. “Oh. Sorry.”

Kristen looks up for a split second and then races on with her paperwork as if she is in the middle of taking SATs.

“What is this stuff? What’re you doing?”

“Application forms! Can’t you see? I’m trying to fill out application forms. I’ll talk to you later…” She trails off as she flips over the side of one form. On it is an unmistakable logo. A huge M formed by two golden arches. McDonald’s. Next to Kristen is a stack of what appear to be a hundred more.

“Seriously, what’s up? Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Kristen answers distractedly, not looking up from her work. “I love to fill out forms. Any forms, really. These are the best, though. McDonald’s. They’re the best because you have to fit each letter in its own square; it takes concentration. Other forms give you a line to fill in. That’s not as challenging. I love these forms.” Kristen is hunched over a fresh application and is carefully squeezing her name, letter by letter, into the appropriate boxes.

“You do this often?”

“Yeah. I have hundreds of the same forms. I take them everywhere with me. Want to do one?” she asks hopefully, as if these are New York Times crossword puzzles.

Um, yeah, Kristen, we’re so alike.

“Ah, well…no, thanks,” Isabel says. “I guess I’ll go, then. I’ll be outside if you want to come out.”

But Kristen does not seem to hear her.

Isabel goes out to the smoker’s patio and sits alone in an Adirondack chair flanked by two pots of fatally dehydrated geraniums.

A half hour later Kristen pushes through the door and looks relieved to find Isabel.

“There you are!”

“Hey.” Isabel is tentative in her greeting. She watches Kristen light her cigarette at the wall, noting her shaking hands.

“I’m glad you came and got me,” Kristen says as she pulls a chair up alongside Isabel. “I can get a little obsessive about my forms…”

No kidding.

“…but it calms me down when I start thinking about my mother,” she is saying. “After we talked about Billy the other day I talked more with my shrink and I guess that’s what got me going.”

Isabel feels Kristen looking at her, studying her. She knows Kristen wants to talk but does nothing to encourage it.

That does not dissuade Kristen.

“It sounds corny, but I feel like you get it,” Kristen says. “You understand me.”

“All I did was ask if you wanted to come smoke.” Don’t do this, Kristen. Don’t drag me into your personal hell.

“It’s more than that.” Kristen is insistent. “No one else understands me. You remind me of this girl I used to know. Laurel. That’s her name.”

Kristen told only one other person when she had had sex with her boyfriend, Billy. From Laurel she sought reassurance and advice. Laurel gave it in the form of a ten-page letter passed to Kristen between classes.

But one night, while Kristen was out with Billy, her mother, Nora, went into her room to straighten up. When Kristen got home she found her mother in the master bedroom, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts next to her on the bed.

“What’s going on, Mom?” Kristen was worried. “What happened? Did something happen?” Her mother smoked, but not this much. Kristen could not take her eyes off the ashtray. A couple of half-smoked cigarettes had not been fully extinguished and smoke was spiraling up. She knew, in the pit of her stomach, something was terribly wrong.

And that is when she noticed the letter lying on the bed in front of her cross-legged mother.

Suddenly her mouth was very dry.

“Tell me it’s not true.” Her mother looked intensely at Kristen. “Tell me you have not had sex with Billy. Tell me.”

“What?” Kristen was buying time. “What’re you talking about, Mom?”

“This!” Nora grabbed the letter in her fist and waved it angrily. “This letter is what I’m talking about! Tell me you were just trying to show off to a friend, this Laurel person. Tell me you made the whole thing up just to impress an older girl. Tell me, Kristen.”

Kristen knew she could tell her mother what she obviously wanted to hear and tiptoe to safety or she could tell her mother the truth. She took a deep breath and tried to swallow, but her mouth was so communion wafer-dry that her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and she had to take another deep breath.

“It’s true,” Kristen whispered. She couldn’t look her mother in the eye.

Nora let out a guttural moan that seemed to go on forever. She was doubled over as if to get more vocal power. Kristen had never seen her mother like this. She felt alternately sick and scared.

“Mom, I’m sorry—” was all she could think to say.

“How long?” Her mother was talking in a different voice.

“Huh?”

“How long have you and Billy been having s-e-x?” Her mother didn’t actually spell the word sex, but said it as if it were poisonous.

“Um. Well.” Once again the truth prevailed. “Three months. Something like that. I’m not sure, exactly. Maybe less. Probably less. Less for sure. Two months. I don’t know.”

By now her mother was rocking back and forth on the bed while trying to light another cigarette. She was so mad, though, that her hands were shaking, making it nearly impossible to unite the tip of the cigarette with the Bic lighter.

Nora reached for the phone.

“Mom? Who’re you calling?” Kristen was panicked. She had no idea what to expect.

“Bob?” Her mother had called Kristen’s father, who had stayed in a company apartment in Manhattan for the night because he had an early breakfast meeting.

“Come home right away” was all Nora said into the phone.