Memoirs, Ink

Surviving Black Holes

By Kaitlin Legg

 

"They all hate me," he says, blankly staring at the wooden desk.

"Who, Ernie?" I ask. "Who hates you? How could anyone hate you?"

The ceiling light hums. We sit elbow to elbow on the edge of the twin-size mattress, facing the speckly grey wall. I search for an answer in the wall and try to imagine what he could be thinking. The desk that serves as a storage unit for his clothes and the books we brought for him rests against the chalky wall. Glancing at the copy of Walden I bought for him that afternoon, I hold my breath for a heartbeat and resolve to ask again.

"Who?" I pause, and then I plead. "Will you please just talk? Ernie. Please."

The mind-numbing hum of fluorescent lights answers me a second time and Ernie twists at the waist so that he's facing me. His eyes look like wet black holes. Suddenly I'm scared, really scared like when I was a kid and thought there were faces on the walls when mom turned the lights out. Scared like when I thought my soul could be stolen by demons donning masks on haunted hay rides.

"Why did they make me come here?" is his response. He continues to do this, answering my questions with more questions.

Before now, I'd never imagined living without my twin brother, especially not because of some paranoid psychosis that I couldn't understand. At 20 years old, he had never experienced any major psychological issues. In a matter of weeks, everything collapsed. Maybe it was the acid trip earlier that August, maybe it was two years of a cruel girlfriend, or maybe it was simply feeling young and lost. Perhaps the pressure of transferring from a small, private art institution to a larger liberal arts college was too stressful. None of us have the answer. We just know that he is lost somewhere and we wonder if he'll make it back.

He eerily turns his devastating gaze back towards the wall, and then I tilt my neck sideways to fit my curly-haired head into the crook of his shoulder. It's then that I realize he smells like someone who hasn't showered in days. He tells our mother that the showers here in the psychiatric ward at Saint Mary's Hospital are cold and the water pressure hurts, and besides that he doesn't deserve the shower anyway.

He doesn't respond to my physical appeal for human connection, so I keep my head there and start to cry. My body doesn't allow me any decency, and I fold in half and start heaving before my throat even has a chance to tighten. It is an ugly kind of crying that happens when your feelings storm out of your body all at once and none of your muscles know how to handle it. I try to focus on my mom, who is bent under the desk and picking up all the clothes that don't deserve to be inside the drawers. She calmly presses her right hand across each piece of fabric, smoothing the crumples. I am surprised by her coolness. Historically, she is the family crier.

The visits repeat like this for a week. Sit on the bed and ask Ernie why his clothes are on the floor again. Ask if he took his medicine, ask what he ate for lunch. Ask him what the lists he writes mean. Lists of names and places from years ago, people and locations that I barely remember. Every visit the same thing. No, he hasn't taken his medicine. No, he doesn't deserve nice things. No, he doesn't remember what he ate. Oh, and everybody hates him including the doctor, his childhood best friend, and the kid who sat across from him in the spring 2008 semester of Art History.

He only breaks the fuzzy hums that the lights spray over the room to ask, "When can I come home? You won't ever let me come back will you?"

            And every time my grey-haired, logical father replies, "You know what you have to do. You have to take your medicine. You have to talk in therapy."

After over a week of this, my tired father only replies, "You know." His delivery is measured and calm. We start to follow this routine during each visit. After several minutes of sitting, my father splinters the silence with a request: "Walk?" The four of us rise at his suggestion to take a lap or two around the hall, eating crushed ice from Styrofoam cups and being greeted by the other patients. Sometimes I bring one of our old friends, hoping the familiarity will snap Ernie back to his normal self. Sometimes the people lining the halls change. Some leave. Some, I know, will be there forever.

Visiting makes me sick. My stomach turns at the sight of the parking garage with its dim, orange lamps and the September briskness that the cement retains. I cringe as I step out of the elevator and onto the psych floor. I hate the silence, I hate the pleading, and I hate the linoleum flooring in his bedroom. I think I may like chewing on the crushed ice, but only because it gives my anxious body a task to focus on. After every visit I carry the cup with me as we leave, crunching a pebble-size cube as I hear the doors click and lock behind me. There's something satisfying in the crunch and the click.

Secretly, I start to hope they never let him leave. I decide that he isn't going to get better and I am shocked at how quickly I lose hope. After three weeks that feel like three years he barely says a word, and the effort it requires to get him to take medicine becomes predictably painful. Visiting is like offering your hand to have the fingers cut off again and again. If this is how my brother will be forever, then I can't bear sticking around for it. I think about all the stories I have heard about people who abandon their families and I finally understand why. I start coming up with excuses in my head, just in case. I imagine justifying this to my friends, knowing that the friends who have come to see him will understand. It wouldn't be so bad if he had always been in and out of hospitals like this, but to lose him after a lifetime of psychological stability makes the situation that much more distressing.

Before I have time to finish dreaming up the life of an unforgivable sister, something happens. It's early October now, the month of our birth. If there is any time for an improvement, this is the time. I make a fart joke and he laughs at it. He laughs. The sound startles me, like when someone says your name sharply after you've been daydreaming. I am so relieved I can barely stand it.

A single, easy laugh.

 

Kaitlin Legg is a 23-year-old woman from Rochester, NY who is caught in the strange abyss of early adulthood. She enjoys writing of all kinds, but is particularly interested in the way narrative can be used to retell, reclaim, and recover from trauma. Her academic concentrations include media studies, rhetoric, and women and gender studies. She has experience presenting work in all of these fields, and also has a background in social justice activism. Currently, Kaitlin is a professional observer of the world - a career supplemented by her barista gig at Starbucks. She plans on attending graduate school in 2011. When not working, Kaitlin busies herself with vegan cooking, riding Greyhound Busses alone, and playing with her horse, Dillon.