But Inside I'm Screaming

“…so, I mean, we weren’t really that good friends…”

Silence.

“…it’s just that you get to know people, or you think you know them, so quickly here. From group therapy, I guess.”

“You had warm feelings toward her, though, didn’t you? You expressed that in here once or twice.”

“Yeah. I don’t really know why, though. There was just something about her that seemed so fragile. But she was tough, too. And that thing she said about someone wanting to control you when they knew what you were all about. She was kind of smarter than she seemed at first.”

“What did that evoke in you?”

What did that evoke in me? Evoke?

“Isabel, why are you smiling?”

“It’s just…well…evoke…it’s kind of a word that we’re told is a print word. I remember my first year in television my news director got mad at me because I used it in a script. He said, ‘No one goes around saying evoke.’ He told us that and the word slain were verboten. Actually, then he added verboten to the list, too.”

“Okay, well, sorry for using the improper word.” Dr. Seidler smiles and turns the conversation back to Keisha. “Why else did you find Keisha so appealing, do you think?”

More silence.

“Let me help you out here, and this is just a theory. Some people believe that we choose our friends, we choose the people we care about, because they remind us of ourselves. Do you think that’s the case with Keisha?”

“Yeah, I’m a black girl from the ghetto.”

“Look beyond the surface, Isabel. You’re quite fragile yourself, right? If you weren’t you might not be here. But you’re tough, too, when you have to be. Could that be why you felt strongly about Keisha?”

That and the fact that she gets it. She knows what it’s like when someone takes away your soul. Alex took my soul.

Silence.

“I don’t know,” Isabel says. “I want to be by myself for a while today. I don’t really feel like talking anymore.”

“Aren’t you going over for dinner, Isabel?” Connie is in early.

“They’re already over there, so why don’t you sign yourself out and catch up with them before dinnertime is up.”

Isabel dutifully writes dinner on the board and wordlessly leaves the unit.

The smell of cooked beef assaults Isabel as she opens the cafeteria door. She picks up a wet plastic tray and slides it along the three steel rods that outline the salad bar.

There he is!

Isabel’s heart starts beating twice as fast. There, sitting off to himself at the end of a rectangular table in the corner of the dining hall is the little boy Peter.

Anthill Peter.

She throws some iceberg lettuce into her foam dish, adds a couple of cherry tomatoes and Thousand Island dressing and approaches him. He is concentrating on his mashed potatoes and does not hear her.

“Hi,” she says, clearing her throat. “Can I sit down?”

Peter looks up at her and then from side to side, to check to see that it is him she is addressing. She smiles.

“I was wondering if I could join you.”

Nothing. Back to the mashed potatoes he goes. He is not eating them, he is pushing them around on his plate.

“I’m not scary or anything,” she tries to reassure him. “I promise I won’t bite.”

Stupid comment! Maybe he’s here because he was abused. Oh, God, maybe he was bitten even, by a monstrous adult who looks like me and who lured him in with companionship…with dinner.

Nothing.

“Okay, well, see you around.”

Good going, Isabel. Smooth move. Blown off by a mute nine-year-old.

Isabel chokes down her wilted salad off by herself, away from Ben, Melanie, Kristen and the rest. In between bites she steals glances at Peter, who is still pushing his mashed potatoes around.

She thinks about what Dr. Seidler said earlier, about what it might be about Peter that makes her want to befriend him. What he “evokes” in her.

Peter is now at the trash can throwing his untouched plate of food away.

Now. Do it now.

Isabel gets up, waits a beat and throws away the remnants of her salad. As Peter’s group files out she falls into step alongside the mysterious boy.

“Hi, again,” she says softly, trying to sound distracted, like she does not care if he answers her or not. “Told you I’d see you around and sure enough…I’m seeing you again!”

The little boy is studying the pavement ahead of each step.

“My name’s Isabel.”

Nothing.

“Okay, well, that’s strike two.” She fakes a baseball umpire’s cadence: stee-rike two.

“Bye,” she calls out. When she looks up from the pavement she looks directly into the gardener’s kind face.

“Sad boy,” he addresses her as he sprinkles fertilizer on a bed of hungry marigolds. “Umm-hmm, sad little boy.”

Isabel considers his words.

“Aren’t we all?”

The gardener looks up from his work, cocks his head to one side and gives it thought. “I suppose we are, I suppose we are.” Sprinkle. “But you can’t let it crush you. No, ma’am. Can’t let it crush your spirit.” Sprinkle. “You’ve got to feed your spirit…fertilize it. Umm-hmm.”

Isabel walks away.

Twenty-Eight

“Isabel!” Kristen calls her over to the smoking deck. “Come sit. We were just talking about boyfriends.”

Isabel is confused. The only other person on the deck is Sukanya.

Either it’s a freaking miracle or Kristen is crazier than I thought.

“I was asking Sukanya here if she has a boyfriend,” Kristen purred, “and then we were scoping out the men.”

Sukanya’s vacant stare indicates that the conversation has been entirely one-sided.

Curious, Isabel lights a cigarette and pulls up a chair.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Isabel asks Kristen through her exhale, mindful of the trauma surrounding Kristen’s first sexual encounter.

“Not exactly,” Kristen begins. “I’m bipolar, you know.”

In the years that followed the Incident, Kristen’s mania that had begun with self-mutilation grew and soon she was craving outside stimulants to increase the buzzing sensation she would get when the roller coaster climbed to the peak of her bipolar illness.

Kristen became an alcoholic.

When she was happy she was so euphoric she would go on binges at a bar two blocks away from her apartment. Not only would she gulp down whatever she thought to order, she would order rounds and rounds of