Michael Ford: Suicide Notes

Like that’s any of his business. I wanted to slap him. I hate to admit it, but I’d actually almost started to think old Cat Poop wasn’t so bad. But as soon as he asked me that, I knew he was a dirty old man. I mean, he’s only like thirty-five or something, but that’s old enough to be a dirty old man. The point is, he just wanted to hear about teenagers getting it on.

“What kind of pervert are you?” I asked him. “Can’t you just look at some porn? Or do you like hearing people talk about their sex lives?”

He didn’t answer the question. I didn’t expect him to. I’d caught him, and he was probably embarrassed. He should be. I mean, some stuff is just private.

“How many times do I have to tell you that nothing is bothering me?” I said.

“If nothing is bothering you, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to talk about why you tried to kill yourself,” said Cat Poop. “Can you do that?”

“Sure,” I shot back. “If I wanted to I could. But I don’t want to. Not with you.”

“Are you saying you’d like another therapist?” he asked me. “I can arrange that if it would help.”

I almost told him to go ahead and do it. Then I thought about having to answer the same stupid questions all over again. As annoying as he was being right then, at least I had Cat Poop trained a little bit. If I got a new therapist, I’d be starting all over again.

“No,” I said finally. “I don’t want a new one.”

“I’m honored,” said Cat Poop.

“But I’m not talking about Allie, or sex, or anything else that isn’t any of your business,” I warned him. “Just so we’re clear on that.”

“Well, think about what you do want to talk about,” he told me. “We’ll pick up tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait,” I said as I stood up. “Oh, and by the way, you need a haircut.”

As I turned to leave, I saw him reach up and touch his hair. Score one for Jeff , I thought as I shut the door behind me.

When I got back to the lounge, the new girl, Martha, was there. She was sitting on the couch, still holding that rabbit in her lap. She was staring out the window at the snow.

I was going to go back to my room, but something made me go over to Martha. She didn’t even look at me when I sat down next to her. I kind of wanted to say hello to her. I mean, I know it’s not easy your first few days in the nuthouse.

“I like your rabbit,” I said.

Martha stopped rubbing the rabbit’s ears and looked at me.

“Does he have a name?”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“He’s your best friend, isn’t he?” I said, and she nodded again.

“I have a best friend, too,” I told her. “Her name is Allie, and I tell her everything. Do you tell your bunny everything?”

Martha nodded and held the bunny close to her, like she was protecting him.

“I bet he’s a good listener,” I said. Then I told her, “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. We can just sit here together.”

She buried her face in her rabbit’s fur, but I could see she was smiling. We sat like that for about an hour. I talked about some stuff, nothing important, and she sat there and listened. It didn’t matter that she didn’t say anything. I think she was happy just having company. I guess having a stuffed bunny for your only friend can get a little lonely.

My bandages came off today. I didn’t know they were coming off, so it was a little bit of a shock when Goody Two-shoes called me into the medical room after breakfast and pulled out her scissors. And it was even more of a shock when she unwrapped the gauze and I saw the stitches. I don’t know what I thought would be there—maybe some tape or something—but there were little black crisscrosses along my wrists, like tiny railroad tracks. Or animal prints. It looked like a mouse had run across my arm with muddy feet.

The stitches came out, too. That hurt a little, because the skin had healed around them. But Goody’s a whiz with her scissors and tweezers, and she got them out pretty quickly. Now I just have these reddish scars there. I guess I always will, although Goody says they’ll fade over time.

I don’t know if I want them to fade. That probably sounds totally freaky, but part of me doesn’t want to forget what it felt like, even though it hurt. If I forget about the pain, I might also forget that it was a really stupid idea to do it in the first place.

My mother told me once that having babies is like that. I guess she was in labor for something like sixteen hours when she had me. Also, it was the middle of July, and being super fat in the hottest part of the year wasn’t her idea of fun. All in all, she said, it wasn’t as beautiful an experience as they make you think having a baby is, and afterward she told my dad she would never do it again.

But she apparently forgot how much it hurt, because two years later she had my sister. Although that time she planned it so she’d be her fattest in the winter, when she could wear a bunch of clothes to cover it and she wouldn’t mind being warm all the time. And she had them load her up on painkillers the minute she started having contractions. Amanda only took, like, two hours to pop out, anyway, a fact my mother reminds me of whenever she wants to make me feel guilty. Then I remind her that nobody told her to go and get pregnant.

Not that I’m really comparing having kids to trying to kill yourself. I’m just saying that sometimes forgetting how much things hurt makes you do them again. And that’s not always such a hot idea.

I’m not even sure I want kids, by the way, even if I’m not the one who has to be pregnant. It seems too risky. I mean, what if you end up with a kid that’s just plain bad? Or stupid? It’s not like you can give it away or put it in a garage sale or something. You’re pretty much stuck with it for a long time.

I know now they have all these tests they can do so you can find out if your kid has three arms or is retarded or whatever, but you can’t test for everything. You can’t test for crazy, for example, or for bad taste in music and clothes and stuff. You can’t know if your kid is going to be someone you would actually want to have hanging around. You just have to take your chances. That seems like a pretty big gamble to me.

Not that I’d be having any kids right away, anyway. I’m only fifteen. I know, there are a lot of fifteen-year-olds out there having babies, but not me. I don’t need to mess up my life any more than it already is. So no babies for me. I’m glad we got that straightened out.

I don’t know how I got from my stitches to babies. Sometimes my mind goes in weird directions. Or maybe it’s the meds, which I’m still on. But Cat Poop says these are just antidepressants, and nothing too heavy-duty. Not like the Pez.

Anyway, after I got my stitches out, I went to show Sadie. I know I kind of freaked out the other day when she mentioned them, but the truth is, she’s really the only person who hasn’t treated them like they’re a big deal, and that’s sort of cool.

She asked if she could touch my scars, and I said it was okay. She ran her fingers over them like they were puppies, really softly, like she was afraid she might open them up again.

“I don’t have any scars,” she said, and she sounded kind of sad.

“Do you remember almost drowning?” I asked her. It’s something I’d been wondering for a while, but I wasn’t sure it was something I should ask. Now, since she was touching my scars and all, well, I figured it was as good a time as any.

“I remember everything was green and quiet,” she said. “At first—when the air ran out—my chest burned. But then the pain went away, and everything was really quiet. I felt like I was flying. The next thing I remember is lying on the grass. Sam was breathing into my mouth and all these people were staring at me.”