Kate Braverman - Lithium for Medea

Hot wind assaulted the house. It was furious, enraged. I rocked Picasso in my arms. He arched his oil-stained head to me and closed his yellow eyes. I stroked the soft white fur on his neck. He purred, a deep humming. And I thought of the humming in the hospital, the fluids slowly oozing, the hiss of oxygen. The humming.

A boundary is crossed. The hand-painted mural that is the world shatters into separate fragments. The sky swirls. Ink rushes like a lava flow between the torn seams. It’s enough to make a strong man drown. And my father is weak, helpless. And the sky caves in. Black chunks fall.

Outside I could feel the wind driving toward the sea, a wide hot spoke. In Philadelphia it was kite season. I was six years old. Daddy was supposed to take me to the park and make my kite windborne. But Daddy couldn’t come that day. Daddy couldn’t come any day. Daddy stayed in bed. When he spoke it was whispery, windy, harsh. He had to lean close to your ear. Had everything become a secret?

I went to the park alone. I had a kite in a bird’s shape. It upended in a tree stump. The sky was a child-eyed blue hung between low hills, grafted onto the day like a patch of blue flesh. Cobalt-blue flesh? The sky was a severed bull’s-eye. “Stop crying,” Mother said, making soup steam. “It’s only paper. I’ll buy you another.” But something happened to Father. Kite season ripped him to pieces. Maybe Daddy was only paper. What happened to the sky? Blue sky with white chipped mouth of clouds was rolled down like a used sail. Big hands packed it away.

Then big hands packed the brass lamps and the new china plates. I sat in strange rooms assigned to me by smiling strangers. Mommy drove the car. And Daddy didn’t talk at all. And we were taking a cab to the train station. Why were we going to the train station? We were going to California. And what was California? It was where the oranges grew and there was no snow. No snow? Then what? Well, just sun and palm trees. And just sit nice and quiet in your seat. Let Daddy try to sleep.

And I am squeezed small and airborne in a hawk’s belly. I nest in a raped oak shell. I break my dolls. I tear their arms off. I burn their almost porcelain faces. I practice invisibility. I lean into shadows and walls, making cold metallic connections. And I scream, I don’t like it here. There’s no sky, no sky. No sky in city apartment inches from a boulevard where Daddy curls small in bed all day. No sky in city apartment glued to a wide gray boulevard where trucks heave and shove. And where is Mommy? Will she stop working soon? No. And Daddy’s lying in bed all the day and the sun is strange, defective. It falls plop into the ocean. It bleeds. And father bleeds. Father has a drawer of special bandages. And Mommy’s gone. Will she come back soon?

Life’s hard all around, Mother says to the mirror. Mommy is making her mouth red. Mommy is making her eyes big. Her teeth are polished sails. If it’s that bad, divorce him. He’s a small soft mound. You don’t need his broken strings, his useless arms. You don’t even have to bury him. Mommy is talking about Gerald. She is saying just go. Maggots will do the rest.

Outside it was very dark and hot. The wind made a sound like a long harsh cough. The air seemed gravelly. The sky looked like a sealed grave. I rubbed the cat’s soft white chest. Sirens cut at the night, black knives. There was a sense of smoke.

Maybe it would have been different if Jason had been there, if he had waited for me, or come back. Maybe it would have been different if the moon weren’t so bright, so clearly gorged on blood.

Maybe if the Santa Ana winds weren’t blowing, tearing at the air, turning the night into a kind of scrub brush. Maybe if the night hadn’t been pitted with sirens, howling dogs, screaming and wails.

I waited for Jason, and night was an avalanche, air molecules insane. I held Picasso on my lap. His purring was a soft hum. And night pressed down a savage fist. The air was pointed and sharp and clearly alive. Picasso was warm and soft on my lap. He was listening to me, hearing my thoughts as if I were reciting a lullaby. Then it occurred to me that the cat might want to sleep.

Picasso nestled against my chest while I crossed Pacific Avenue. He seemed untroubled by the occasional car, the moon full and shrieking, the wind a torture. He trusted me.

My feet touched cold sand. Suddenly I turned around. I stared at the deserted strip of boardwalk behind me. I was afraid someone would see me. My heart was racing. My head was a seething black storm. That’s when I realized for the first time what I was going to do.

I sat down just above the wet sand, Picasso on my lap. I stroked him and he purred, a soft humming. I held him warm against my chest. Our hearts beat together. The waves broke on shore and withdrew, broke on shore and withdrew, a kind of humming.

It was simple. A door opened. A crevice was torn in the fabric. Something entered. It stalked. It was a hunter. It was hungry but mindless as a shark. It would take anything. It was enormous.

And it wouldn’t go back empty-handed, humiliated with no new scalps, no dried hides or skulls. It was rude not to acknowledge its presence, its chill and teeth. Something was required.

Picasso never really struggled. He stared at me, disbelieving, his eyes startled yellow marbles, oddly frozen. And I thought of the certain marbles children call cat’s eyes. I heard sirens behind me. I felt the wind whipping my shoulders, hot breath, desert breath rubbing my flesh. The moon was breathing platinum above me. There was a slow cracking sound.

Picasso took a long time to die. I was surprised. My fingers were stiff and itching at the end, after the bones in his neck broke and he finally went limp. A thin trail of blood slid from the corner of his mouth and drip, drip, dripped down his neck onto my hands.

I let him fall to the wet sand. I let the waves wash the blood from my hand. I dipped my hand into foam and swish, the blood was gone.

Then the waves circled the cat’s dead body. The waves reached out black hands and embraced him. Salt leaked into his wound. He was wrapped in black coiling swirls.

I turned my back to the sea. I felt the power of the waves at my back hurtling and gnawing the shoreline, crashing and withdrawing, a kind of humming. I felt the rhythm, the wind, salt spray, the land groaning while cold black water lapped around my ankles.

I looked up at the sky. Would that blood satisfy? Would it be enough to glue the torn place shut? And something inside me turned incredibly hard.

That night the moon was impossibly full and the yellow of a child’s gold locket. It seemed to follow behind me as I walked back to my house.

I locked my door. I could still sense the moon, feel its special yellow heat. It sat suspended in the center of the sky as if precisely placed there by an engineer. It hung directly above my head, fat and glowing like a terrible promise.

I thought, what is it, anyway, this moon? It’s simply a pinprick, a sliver, a coin glued to a useless black metal sky. The moon is an empty beacon. The moon is a cyst, dead to my curses or, worse, cursed itself, stuck there, abandoned, useless and blind.

The moon was the yellow of a marble. The moon was yellow as Picasso’s eyes after I dug my fingers into his neck until bones broke and blood drip, drip, dripped down on my hands.

I lay very still in my bed. Now things will change, I thought. And from now on, death, you bastard, you deal with me.

Everything requires an explanation.

Name. Age. Sexual persuasion. Occupation. Tribal rituals completed. (Check where appropriate.)

1. Search for visionary experience/hallucinatory connection with forces called magical, spiritual or even philosophical.