Elizabeth Flock - But Inside I'm Screaming

“Okay, okay. Give us a break for God’s sake.” Lark speaks for the first time since she was released from the soft room following her psychotic break.

“I got to go to the art studio to pick up the vase I made my mama.” Keisha turns to Isabel. “Wanna come?”

“No, thanks.” Isabel avoided the art studio. Her first day at Three Breezes she had been appalled to learn that there really was a place you could weave baskets. She would never sink that low, she told herself. She wanted no souvenir of this place.

“See ya back at the ranch,” Keisha called over her shoulder.

“I know how you’re feeling,” Kristen comforts. “It’s tough when people you like leave. Feels like I’ve been here forever, I’ve seen so many people go.”

You don’t know a thing about me. I don’t give a shit about any of you, that’s how much you know how I feel. You think we’re friends.

Isabel walks on in silence.

“It gets easier, if that’s any consolation.” Kristen pats Isabel’s shoulder. “It gets easier.”

The following day Kristen approaches Isabel, who is reading and smoking on the deck.

“Hi,” she says.

Isabel looks up. “Oh. Hi.”

“What’re you reading?” Kristen is twisting her head to the side in order to see the cover of Isabel’s book.

“Anna Karenina,” Isabel answers.

Kristen looks like she wants to talk, but the Russian novel is a dead end to her, conversationally. Sensing this, Isabel closes her book and asks about Kristen’s bandaged arm.

Kristen does not know why she likes to bleed, she tells Isabel. She loves to pick at her cuticles until they are ragged and bloody. She loves to let her hair get dirty so she can scratch her scalp until it bleeds in different places. She has one area at the very top of her head that she has kept from healing for two years. Every time she makes up her mind to stop, the scab will itch and she will pick it off, usually pulling several hairs out at the same time. It hurts so much that it feels good.

Even at a young age, Kristen says she knew this was not normal. Then, her first boyfriend in high school confirmed it. Billy was more than six feet tall, almost a foot taller than Kristen, so he could literally see over the top of her head. He spotted the bloody sore along the part in her hair.

“What happened to your head? ” asked the fifteen-year-old, sounding disgusted.

Kristen quickly ran her hand through her thick hair and repositioned her part so the sore was covered up. She had just picked at it so the blood was vivid red.

“I told him it was a mosquito bite,” Kristen tells Isabel. “I was embarrassed when he saw it so I told him I’d scratched it because it itched.”

“Ew” was all he said and the conversation was dropped. Kristen was careful to move her part from then on so Billy would not notice that it was not healing.

“Did your parents like him?” Isabel asks.

“Yeah. At first they loved him,” she answers with a weary smile that fades too quickly. “Until they found out we’d been having sex.”

“ Ithink we have a lot to talk about tonight so let’s get started.” Larry starts talking as he shuts the door to the living room. “I’d like to begin with what happened at last night’s session. Lark? Can we start with you?”

As Larry turns the empty chair in the center of the circle to face Lark, she shifts in her seat.

“What was on your mind yesterday afternoon, before the session began?”

Lark looks at Larry.

“Lark? Could you talk to us? Tell us what you were going through yesterday…”

“I’d like to talk about it, Larry.” It is Ben.

“All right, if Lark doesn’t mind yielding the floor then Ben, why don’t you start us off.”

“I was very upset, Larry, that Lark smoked in here. I mean, smoking’s not allowed inside. I think you should know that Lark smoked in here, Larry.”

Silence.

“Hmm. You’re right, Ben. Smoking is not allowed inside the building. Matches aren’t allowed, either. Lark? Can you hear that Ben had some concerns about your smoking inside?”

More silence.

“What did that call up for you, Ben?”

“Huh?” Ben looks confused by the question.

“Why did that upset you?”

“There are rules, Larry. There are rules about that and I don’t like that she broke that rule.”

Can we please get to the point, folks?

“You’re right again, Ben. Lark? Care to jump in? Why did you feel compelled to smoke inside this room?”

Lark looks drugged. She probably is.

“What do you want me to say, Larry?” She slurs her words, but her tone is unmistakably confrontational. “You want me to apologize or something? Is that what you want?”

“What I want, Lark, is for you to talk to us about what was going through your mind yesterday. Were you feeling upset or anxious about anything in particular?”

Lark looks out the window and appears to be mulling over the question.

“What interests me is what led up to your break last night. Because that is exactly what happened here. Who was talking to Rita last night, Lark? Who was that?”

Lark turns back to face the empty chair.

“I don’t remember.”

“Oh, I think you do remember. But just in case, let me help you out. You talked about your father touching you when you were a little girl. Remember? You talked about the curling iron. Who was that talking about young Lark?”

Silence.

“Lark?”

“Donna,” she says quietly.

“Donna? Who is Donna?” Larry asks this as he surveys the group. “Lark? Who is Donna?”

“She sticks up for Lark. She tries to protect Lark sometimes,” she says in a childlike whisper. “But sometimes she can be a bully.”

“Like when?”

“Larry?” It is Keisha.

“Yes, Keisha?”

“I was thinking that maybe Donna comes in when Lark can’t defend herself.”

“An interesting observation. Tell me more about that.”

“It’s like, um, maybe when Lark gets pinned down or somethin’, like with her daddy, Donna comes in like a wrestler to try to be strong for her when she can’t be strong for herself.”

“What made you think of that, Keisha? That’s a very good point.”

Keisha tips her chair back so far that it is teetering precariously on its two back legs.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“Ain’t nobody gonna hold my arms down, know what I’m sayin’? Nobody. When I leave here? Ain’t nobody gonna ever hold me down again. Uh-uh.”

Me, neither.

“I know you’re leaving, Keisha, and I want to address that in a little bit. For now, though, let’s stay on this topic. Why does it bother you to have someone hold your arms?”

Keisha turns to look out the window. “That’s what they did to me,” she says. “I don’t really remember it, but my therapist here told me that’s what the police report said. That they held me down.”

“When they raped you?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember anything about that afternoon?”

“Naw,” she says, turning her attention back to the group. “Thank God for that, know what I’m saying?”

Lark is still staring at the chair.

“Lark? What do you think about what Keisha just talked about?”

“I wish I couldn’t remember,” she says.

Silence.

“Keep going,” Larry gently urges her on.

“That’s it. I wish I couldn’t remember.”

“Do you think about it a lot?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Do you think that when you do think about it someone else comes in and sticks up for you so that the memory can’t hurt you? Like Donna? Maybe she comes in when you start thinking about it and she takes all the bad out of it for you? Lark, do you know what yesterday was?”