More sobs.
“I met D.J. once,” I said. “He seemed a very troubled person.”
A rush of tears.
“It must have been hard for you, living with him, all the drinking. But even so, you miss him terribly. It’s hard to believe he’s gone.”
She began swaying, clutching her face.
“Oh, God!” she cried out. “Oh, God! Oh, God, help me! Oh, God!”
I patted her shoulder. She shuddered but didn’t move away.
We sat that way for a while, she calling out for divine help, me absorbing her grief, feeding her small bites of empathy. Providing tissues and a cup of water, telling her none of it was her fault, that she’d done the best she could, no one could have done better. That it was okay to feel, okay to hurt.
Finally she looked up, wiped her nose, and said, “You’re a nice man.”
“Thank you.”
“My papa was a nice man. He ya know died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He left a long time ago, when I was in ya know kindergarten. I came home with stuff we made for Thanksgiving- ya know paper turkeys and Pilgrim hats- and I saw them take him away in the ambulance.”
Silence.
“How old are you, Carmen?”
“Twenty.”
“You’ve dealt with a lot in twenty years.”
She smiled. “I guess so. And now Danny. He was ya know nice, too, even though he was a mean one when he drank. But deep down, nice. He didn’t ya know give me no hassles, took me places, got me ya know all kinds of stuff.”
“How long did you know each other?”
She thought. “’Bout two years. I was driving this catering truck- ya know, the roach wagon. Used to drive by all these ya know construction sites and Danny was working at one, framing.”
I nodded encouragement.
“He liked burritos,” she said. “Ya know meat and potato but no beans- beans made him toot which made him ya know mean. I thought he was kinda cute so I gave him freebies; the boss never knew. Then we started ya know living together.”
She gazed at me, childlike.
I smiled.
“I never, ever thought he’d really ya know do it.”
“Kill himself?”
She bobbed her head. Tears ran down her pimpled cheeks.
“Had he talked about suicide, before?”
“When he drank and got all p.o.’d, ya know, he’d go on about how ya know life sucked, it was better to be dead, ya know, he was gonna do it some day, tell everyone the f-word off. Then when he hurt his back- ya know the pain, out of work- he was real low. But I never thought…” She broke down again.
“There was no way to know, Carmen. When a person makes up his mind to kill himself, there’s no way to stop him.”
“Yeah,” she said, between gulps of air. “Ya couldn’t stop Danny when he made his mind up, that’s fer sure. He was a real hardbutt, real ya know stubborn. I tried to stop him this morning but he just kept going, like he wasn’t ya know hearing me, just all juiced and ya know shootin’ ahead like a bat out of… hell.”
“Dr. Weingarden said he talked about some bad things he’d done.”
She nodded. “He was pretty broke up. Said he was a ya know grievous sinner.”
“Do you know what he was broken up about?”
Shrug. “He used to ya know get in fights, beat people up in bars- nothing really heavy, but he did hurt some people.” She smiled. “He was little but ya know real tough. Scrappy. And he liked to smoke weed and drink, which made him real scrappy- but he was a good dude, ya know. He didn’t do nothing real bad.”
Wanting to know her support system, I asked her about family and friends.
“I don’t got no family,” she said. “Neither did Danny. And we didn’t have no ya know friends. I mean I didn’t mind but Danny didn’t like people- maybe ’cause his papa beat him up all the time and it turned him ya know angry at the world. That’s why he…”
“He what?”
“Offed him.”
“He killed his father?”
“When he was a kid- self-defense! But the cops did a number on him- they sent him to ya know CYA till he was eighteen. He got out and did his own thing but he didn’t like no friends. All he liked was me and the dogs- we got two Rottweiler mixes, Dandy and Paco. They liked him a lot. They been crying all day, going to miss him something bad.”
She cried for a long time.
“Carmen,” I said, “you’re going through hard times. It will help to have someone to talk to. I’d like to hook you up with a doctor, a psychologist like me.”
She looked up. “I could talk to you.”
“I’m… I don’t usually do this kind of work.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s the bread, right. You don’t take no Medi-Cal, right?”
“No, Carmen. I’m a child psychologist. I work with children.”
“Right, I understand,” she said with more sadness than anger. As if this were the latest injustice in a life full of them.
“The person I want to refer you to is very nice, very experienced.”
She pouted, rubbed her eyes.
“Carmen, if I talk to her about you and get you her number, will you call?”
“A her?” She shook her head violently. “No way. I don’t want no lady doctor.”
“Why’s that?”
“Danny had a lady doctor. She messed with him.”
“Messed with him?”
She spit on the floor. “Ya know
“Dr. Weingarden’s a lady.”
“That’s different.”
“Dr. Small, the person I want to send you to, is different too, Carmen. She’s in her fifties, very kind, would never do anything dishonest.”
She looked unconvinced.
“Carmen, I’ve seen her myself.”
She didn’t understand.
“Carmen, she was my doctor.”
“You? What for?”
“Sometimes I need to talk too. Everyone does. Now promise me to go see her once. If you don’t like her, I’ll get you someone else.” I pulled out a card with my exchange number on it and gave it to her.
She closed one hand over it.
“I just don’t think it’s right,” she said.
“What isn’t?”
“Her balling him. A doctor should, ya know, know better.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
That surprised her, as if it were the first time anyone had ever agreed with her.
“Some doctors shouldn’t be doctors,” I said.
