everyadventure
02-05-2011, 02:26 AM
Chapter 1:
Lily had to hang from the garage rafters, on a yellow nylon rope, before she found out her family’s secret.
At fourteen, hopeless despair threatened to drown her. It had descended two years earlier, an unwelcome guest that arrived along with periods and pubic hair. Some integral switch had been flipped, immersing her in heavy darkness. Everything was so difficult: tying shoes, chewing, breathing, all required unbearable effort.
And where was her God? Lily was raised in a fervently religious home, her parents proud descendants of pioneering Mormon saints. The virtues of diligence, faith, and endurance had been passed down to her through the generations. She’d never doubted that she was God’s child, that He was, literally, her loving Father. She’d been dutifully baptized at age eight, her white dress clinging to her wet skin, emerging from the water pure and holy. She’d felt angelic, expected, almost, to find feathered wings sprouting from her thin shoulder blades.
But it had been a long time since Lily had seen the light.
“Give your burden to Jesus,” she’d been taught.
“You are never alone.”
“He will answer your prayers.”
“He will send you a Comforter.”
Not true, not true, not true. Lily reasoned that perhaps she’d committed some black and vile sin, something so unforgiveable that even God gave up on her. She searched her memory, searched her soul, but her transgression remained elusive.
Oh, how Lily longed for feeling! Anything: excitement, anger, peace. Hunger! Hatred! Some sensation to replace the interminable heaviness, the suffocating, oppressive weight.
One endless night, Lily lay in bed, wondering idly if there was anything that could make her react. Would she smile if she won a million dollars? Would she fight back if someone hit her? Would her pulse quicken if she were held at knifepoint? What if… what if she were cut? Would she bleed?
Lily decided to find out.
She crept quietly to the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the carpet. Moonlight seeped in from the window above the sink; Lily didn’t need a light. She grabbed the largest knife from the block, then decided that perhaps a paring knife would be easier to maneuver. She clutched it tightly in her fist, keeping her hand behind her back, should she run into her mother or father. But the house was sleeping, and she encountered no one as she retreated to her room.
Lily locked the door behind her and sat on her bed. She rolled up the sleeve of her nightgown and inspected the pale underside of her arm. She could see blue veins just beneath the surface. She felt no fear, no apprehension. Maybe just the tiniest flicker of… was that hope? Yes, Lily hoped.
She decisively slashed horizontal tracks on her left wrist: one, two, three, four, in quick succession. Blood immediately bubbled to the surface, pooled, dripped, then began pouring at an alarming rate. And… it hurt! It hurt! Lily laughed in relief, felt an exhilarating rush. She was alive! Her heart was beating, her blood pumping—
It dawned on Lily that perhaps she had done something serious. Lily, as weary as she was of life, wasn’t yet resigned to dying. She grabbed the nearest thing—a teddy bear—and pressed it to her throbbing wrist. Still, she couldn’t help smiling in satisfaction as the bear’s fur darkened and matted with her blood.
Finally the bleeding slowed, and Lily retrieved a pair of socks from her bureau and bandaged her wrist. She carefully adjusted her nightgown sleeve to cover it. She glanced at her teddy, Bumble. Her father had won him at the state fair when Lily was five. She’d spotted the stuffed animal sitting forlornly on the back shelf of the ring toss booth, had begged her father to win him. He spent $15 before he could finally hand the yellow bear to Lily. Now he was ruined; his hard eyes gleamed in cold accusation. Lily didn’t know what to do with him, and finally stashed Bumble in the furthest corner of her closet, hidden under a track suit.
Lily hadn’t known it would be so difficult to keep her vice hidden. The cuts would take weeks to heal, and meanwhile Lily had to wear long sleeves. Gym class presented a challenge; she wore a thermal top under her gym jersey, telling coach that she had a rash. She changed in a bathroom stall, like Angela, who was ashamed of her DD breasts, and Beth, who did her back-to-school shopping in the Women’s Plus section. For Lily, already so exhausted by the strains of daily living, it didn’t seem worth the extra effort. “I won’t do that again,” she promised herself.
But the lure of the steel blade and the relief it promised were too much for her. So Lily indulged, prudently avoiding her wrists. She sliced at her thighs, her abdomen, her budding breasts. She spent her allowance on gauze pads and adhesive tape. Her skin became an exotic relief map, gouged valleys and scabbed mountain ranges divided by rivers of scars.
It alleviated the desolation briefly—blessed deliverance! But it didn’t last. Lily descended further into the black void, until, one day, she realized with startling clarity that this was it. She’d been waiting for some fortuitous salvation, but this was her life, there was nothing more. The fog seemed to clear from Lily’s head, and she could envision the practical solution.
Chapter 2
Lily typed “how to tie a noose” in the computer’s search bar: 363,000 matches. She clicked on the first one, and there! Numbered instructions, complete with illustrations. Lily printed the page and went out to the garage, a wooden structure that was separate from the house but leaned unsteadily towards it in longing.
Lily’s father was a fastidious man, so Lily easily found the box labeled “twine & rope.” The longest strand was bright yellow, a nylon throw rope her father used on boating trips. She sat on a step ladder and proceeded to tie a hangman’s noose, forming an S from the rope and wrapping the loose end around several times, then poking the rope’s end through the S. It looked all right. She stood on the step ladder and swung the end of the rope over the garage’s low rafter. She tied a knot, and with no further hesitation, slipped it round her neck and stepped off the ladder, kicking it over in the process.
Lily felt panic; this was more horrible than she’d anticipated. She retched, desperately trying to draw in air. She clawed at the rope round her throat, but it was no use. “Air, air, air,” every thought screamed. And then, with a sudden slither, the rope came undone from the rafter, dumping Lily on the cement floor. She frantically scrabbled at the knot, and at last it came undone. Lily sucked air in, it was raw against her crushed throat, but oh, it was glorious. She lay there panting until the black dots throbbing before her eyes dissipated.
“I won’t try that again,” thought Lily.
Lily resorted to wearing turtlenecks to cover her latest indiscretion. At first her neck was an angry shade of red, scratched scarlet, swollen. As the days passed, the claw marks turned to dark scabs, her throat ringed in vibrant shades of blue, purple, and indigo.
The array of turtlenecks did not escape the notice of Lily’s mother. She suspected the worst: that her daughter had been necking with a corrupt boy. As Lily’s mother, it was her duty to ensure that her daughter remained pure, and she determined that her daughter would hide nothing from her.
So one morning, several days after the incident, her mother placed a plate of scrambled eggs in front of Lily at the breakfast table, and in a swift movement, yanked down the collar of Lily’s sweater. Her mother gasped in horror and stumbled backwards, colliding with the wall and knocking down the framed painting of a fruit bowl. “Lily!” she gasped.
Lily grew very still, her fork poised in the air.
Her mother’s hands were clasped over her mouth, but Lily could still make out the muffled words. “Lily, what happened? Who did that to you?”
Lily remained mute.
Lily’s mother stumbled to the telephone, and with trembling fingers, dialed her husband at work. “Come home, Hyrum, come home now.” Her mother returned the phone to its cradle, then sunk weakly into the chair across from Lily. She stared at her daughter, her mind racing through a dark labyrinth: was her daughter assaulted? Her baby raped? Who? How? She couldn’t form her thoughts into words (who says the word “rape” at the breakfast table?) and so she sat speechless.
An undeterminable length of time passed before they heard the car pull into the driveway. The tires screeched, the door opened—Lily waited to hear it shut, but her father neglected to close it—and her father’s shoes pounded on the walkway. He flung the kitchen door open and stood, tie askew, surveying the scene. He was relieved to see there was no blood, and his wife and daughter appeared unharmed.
“What,” he heaved, “is the matter?”
Lily had yet to look up from her plate, and had grown quite familiar with the gelatinous mound of eggs residing there. Lily’s mother stood and shakily walked over to Lily. Wordlessly, she rolled down Lily’s turtleneck, revealing her bruised and lacerated throat. Lily’s father sank against the doorframe. He didn’t want to ask the question because he feared the answer. But he was her father.
“Lily,” he probed gently. “Can you tell us what happened?”
And with that Lily collapsed into herself, sobs wrenching from her anguished soul. Her mother held her to her lilac-scented bosom, but Lily found no comfort there. She cried on and on, tears pouring from some endless pool. Her parents became alarmed when she showed no signs of ceasing.
“Lily,” her mother said firmly, “That’s enough now, pull yourself together!” But Lily was past reason, beyond control, and the sobs turned to keening, an animal wailing that raised goosebumps on her parents’ arms.
Lily’s father did not recognize this creature sitting in his daughter’s chair. Her hair was wild, her skin mottled a moist red, her eyes puffy and slitted like a pig’s. He grabbed her shoulders and shook, hard. “Stop it!” He yelled. “Stop it now!”
But she wouldn’t, couldn’t, and her frantic mother finally dialed the doctor, who disinclined as he was to make house calls, agreed to come when he heard the howling in the background.
He arrived fifteen minutes later armed with a syringe of liquid Valium. “I need to inject this in her hip,” he murmured. Lily’s father nodded and pulled his daughter to her feet, holding her upright. Her mother tugged at the band of Lily’s jeans, folding them down, exposing the network of cuts and scars. Her mother shut her eyes tightly and swallowed back the bile that rose in her mouth.
The doctor grimaced and slid the needle into Lily’s hip. Within moments, Lily’s shuddering stopped, and she slumped heavily in her father’s arms.
“What now?” her father whispered.
The doctor rubbed his jaw grimly and nodded his head towards the back rooms. “Put her to bed,” he said. Lily’s father scooped her up (how little she weighed!) and carried her to her bedroom. He laid her gently on the bed and pulled a comforter up around her chin. She was once again his daughter, yes, he thought tenderly, this was the same face he’d looked at, admired, for so many years.
He returned to the kitchen where his wife was standing uneasily with the doctor. “Thanks for coming out,” he said, extending a hand, “I don’t know what got into her.”
“Yes, well,” began the doctor, clearing his throat, “It appears she has a series of lacerations on her hip. Do you know anything about those?” Lily’s parents exchanged a glance and shook their heads.
The doctor nodded, and pulled a notepad from his satchel. “I’m going to give you a referral to a local psychiatrist, Dr. Bergman. He’s head of an in-patient facility in Weston. Depending on her state of mind when she wakes up, you might want to take her in and see what he says.”
Lily’s mother accepted the slip of paper with numb fingers. The doctor clapped her reassuringly on the shoulder and said, “I’ll mail you the bill.”
Lily’s parents sat immobile at the table, as the sun arced its path over the tablecloth, the plates, and finally the salt and pepper shakers. It illuminated a dusting of crumbs before spilling at last to the linoleum floor, and in this manner the morning passed.
Lily had to hang from the garage rafters, on a yellow nylon rope, before she found out her family’s secret.
At fourteen, hopeless despair threatened to drown her. It had descended two years earlier, an unwelcome guest that arrived along with periods and pubic hair. Some integral switch had been flipped, immersing her in heavy darkness. Everything was so difficult: tying shoes, chewing, breathing, all required unbearable effort.
And where was her God? Lily was raised in a fervently religious home, her parents proud descendants of pioneering Mormon saints. The virtues of diligence, faith, and endurance had been passed down to her through the generations. She’d never doubted that she was God’s child, that He was, literally, her loving Father. She’d been dutifully baptized at age eight, her white dress clinging to her wet skin, emerging from the water pure and holy. She’d felt angelic, expected, almost, to find feathered wings sprouting from her thin shoulder blades.
But it had been a long time since Lily had seen the light.
“Give your burden to Jesus,” she’d been taught.
“You are never alone.”
“He will answer your prayers.”
“He will send you a Comforter.”
Not true, not true, not true. Lily reasoned that perhaps she’d committed some black and vile sin, something so unforgiveable that even God gave up on her. She searched her memory, searched her soul, but her transgression remained elusive.
Oh, how Lily longed for feeling! Anything: excitement, anger, peace. Hunger! Hatred! Some sensation to replace the interminable heaviness, the suffocating, oppressive weight.
One endless night, Lily lay in bed, wondering idly if there was anything that could make her react. Would she smile if she won a million dollars? Would she fight back if someone hit her? Would her pulse quicken if she were held at knifepoint? What if… what if she were cut? Would she bleed?
Lily decided to find out.
She crept quietly to the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the carpet. Moonlight seeped in from the window above the sink; Lily didn’t need a light. She grabbed the largest knife from the block, then decided that perhaps a paring knife would be easier to maneuver. She clutched it tightly in her fist, keeping her hand behind her back, should she run into her mother or father. But the house was sleeping, and she encountered no one as she retreated to her room.
Lily locked the door behind her and sat on her bed. She rolled up the sleeve of her nightgown and inspected the pale underside of her arm. She could see blue veins just beneath the surface. She felt no fear, no apprehension. Maybe just the tiniest flicker of… was that hope? Yes, Lily hoped.
She decisively slashed horizontal tracks on her left wrist: one, two, three, four, in quick succession. Blood immediately bubbled to the surface, pooled, dripped, then began pouring at an alarming rate. And… it hurt! It hurt! Lily laughed in relief, felt an exhilarating rush. She was alive! Her heart was beating, her blood pumping—
It dawned on Lily that perhaps she had done something serious. Lily, as weary as she was of life, wasn’t yet resigned to dying. She grabbed the nearest thing—a teddy bear—and pressed it to her throbbing wrist. Still, she couldn’t help smiling in satisfaction as the bear’s fur darkened and matted with her blood.
Finally the bleeding slowed, and Lily retrieved a pair of socks from her bureau and bandaged her wrist. She carefully adjusted her nightgown sleeve to cover it. She glanced at her teddy, Bumble. Her father had won him at the state fair when Lily was five. She’d spotted the stuffed animal sitting forlornly on the back shelf of the ring toss booth, had begged her father to win him. He spent $15 before he could finally hand the yellow bear to Lily. Now he was ruined; his hard eyes gleamed in cold accusation. Lily didn’t know what to do with him, and finally stashed Bumble in the furthest corner of her closet, hidden under a track suit.
Lily hadn’t known it would be so difficult to keep her vice hidden. The cuts would take weeks to heal, and meanwhile Lily had to wear long sleeves. Gym class presented a challenge; she wore a thermal top under her gym jersey, telling coach that she had a rash. She changed in a bathroom stall, like Angela, who was ashamed of her DD breasts, and Beth, who did her back-to-school shopping in the Women’s Plus section. For Lily, already so exhausted by the strains of daily living, it didn’t seem worth the extra effort. “I won’t do that again,” she promised herself.
But the lure of the steel blade and the relief it promised were too much for her. So Lily indulged, prudently avoiding her wrists. She sliced at her thighs, her abdomen, her budding breasts. She spent her allowance on gauze pads and adhesive tape. Her skin became an exotic relief map, gouged valleys and scabbed mountain ranges divided by rivers of scars.
It alleviated the desolation briefly—blessed deliverance! But it didn’t last. Lily descended further into the black void, until, one day, she realized with startling clarity that this was it. She’d been waiting for some fortuitous salvation, but this was her life, there was nothing more. The fog seemed to clear from Lily’s head, and she could envision the practical solution.
Chapter 2
Lily typed “how to tie a noose” in the computer’s search bar: 363,000 matches. She clicked on the first one, and there! Numbered instructions, complete with illustrations. Lily printed the page and went out to the garage, a wooden structure that was separate from the house but leaned unsteadily towards it in longing.
Lily’s father was a fastidious man, so Lily easily found the box labeled “twine & rope.” The longest strand was bright yellow, a nylon throw rope her father used on boating trips. She sat on a step ladder and proceeded to tie a hangman’s noose, forming an S from the rope and wrapping the loose end around several times, then poking the rope’s end through the S. It looked all right. She stood on the step ladder and swung the end of the rope over the garage’s low rafter. She tied a knot, and with no further hesitation, slipped it round her neck and stepped off the ladder, kicking it over in the process.
Lily felt panic; this was more horrible than she’d anticipated. She retched, desperately trying to draw in air. She clawed at the rope round her throat, but it was no use. “Air, air, air,” every thought screamed. And then, with a sudden slither, the rope came undone from the rafter, dumping Lily on the cement floor. She frantically scrabbled at the knot, and at last it came undone. Lily sucked air in, it was raw against her crushed throat, but oh, it was glorious. She lay there panting until the black dots throbbing before her eyes dissipated.
“I won’t try that again,” thought Lily.
Lily resorted to wearing turtlenecks to cover her latest indiscretion. At first her neck was an angry shade of red, scratched scarlet, swollen. As the days passed, the claw marks turned to dark scabs, her throat ringed in vibrant shades of blue, purple, and indigo.
The array of turtlenecks did not escape the notice of Lily’s mother. She suspected the worst: that her daughter had been necking with a corrupt boy. As Lily’s mother, it was her duty to ensure that her daughter remained pure, and she determined that her daughter would hide nothing from her.
So one morning, several days after the incident, her mother placed a plate of scrambled eggs in front of Lily at the breakfast table, and in a swift movement, yanked down the collar of Lily’s sweater. Her mother gasped in horror and stumbled backwards, colliding with the wall and knocking down the framed painting of a fruit bowl. “Lily!” she gasped.
Lily grew very still, her fork poised in the air.
Her mother’s hands were clasped over her mouth, but Lily could still make out the muffled words. “Lily, what happened? Who did that to you?”
Lily remained mute.
Lily’s mother stumbled to the telephone, and with trembling fingers, dialed her husband at work. “Come home, Hyrum, come home now.” Her mother returned the phone to its cradle, then sunk weakly into the chair across from Lily. She stared at her daughter, her mind racing through a dark labyrinth: was her daughter assaulted? Her baby raped? Who? How? She couldn’t form her thoughts into words (who says the word “rape” at the breakfast table?) and so she sat speechless.
An undeterminable length of time passed before they heard the car pull into the driveway. The tires screeched, the door opened—Lily waited to hear it shut, but her father neglected to close it—and her father’s shoes pounded on the walkway. He flung the kitchen door open and stood, tie askew, surveying the scene. He was relieved to see there was no blood, and his wife and daughter appeared unharmed.
“What,” he heaved, “is the matter?”
Lily had yet to look up from her plate, and had grown quite familiar with the gelatinous mound of eggs residing there. Lily’s mother stood and shakily walked over to Lily. Wordlessly, she rolled down Lily’s turtleneck, revealing her bruised and lacerated throat. Lily’s father sank against the doorframe. He didn’t want to ask the question because he feared the answer. But he was her father.
“Lily,” he probed gently. “Can you tell us what happened?”
And with that Lily collapsed into herself, sobs wrenching from her anguished soul. Her mother held her to her lilac-scented bosom, but Lily found no comfort there. She cried on and on, tears pouring from some endless pool. Her parents became alarmed when she showed no signs of ceasing.
“Lily,” her mother said firmly, “That’s enough now, pull yourself together!” But Lily was past reason, beyond control, and the sobs turned to keening, an animal wailing that raised goosebumps on her parents’ arms.
Lily’s father did not recognize this creature sitting in his daughter’s chair. Her hair was wild, her skin mottled a moist red, her eyes puffy and slitted like a pig’s. He grabbed her shoulders and shook, hard. “Stop it!” He yelled. “Stop it now!”
But she wouldn’t, couldn’t, and her frantic mother finally dialed the doctor, who disinclined as he was to make house calls, agreed to come when he heard the howling in the background.
He arrived fifteen minutes later armed with a syringe of liquid Valium. “I need to inject this in her hip,” he murmured. Lily’s father nodded and pulled his daughter to her feet, holding her upright. Her mother tugged at the band of Lily’s jeans, folding them down, exposing the network of cuts and scars. Her mother shut her eyes tightly and swallowed back the bile that rose in her mouth.
The doctor grimaced and slid the needle into Lily’s hip. Within moments, Lily’s shuddering stopped, and she slumped heavily in her father’s arms.
“What now?” her father whispered.
The doctor rubbed his jaw grimly and nodded his head towards the back rooms. “Put her to bed,” he said. Lily’s father scooped her up (how little she weighed!) and carried her to her bedroom. He laid her gently on the bed and pulled a comforter up around her chin. She was once again his daughter, yes, he thought tenderly, this was the same face he’d looked at, admired, for so many years.
He returned to the kitchen where his wife was standing uneasily with the doctor. “Thanks for coming out,” he said, extending a hand, “I don’t know what got into her.”
“Yes, well,” began the doctor, clearing his throat, “It appears she has a series of lacerations on her hip. Do you know anything about those?” Lily’s parents exchanged a glance and shook their heads.
The doctor nodded, and pulled a notepad from his satchel. “I’m going to give you a referral to a local psychiatrist, Dr. Bergman. He’s head of an in-patient facility in Weston. Depending on her state of mind when she wakes up, you might want to take her in and see what he says.”
Lily’s mother accepted the slip of paper with numb fingers. The doctor clapped her reassuringly on the shoulder and said, “I’ll mail you the bill.”
Lily’s parents sat immobile at the table, as the sun arced its path over the tablecloth, the plates, and finally the salt and pepper shakers. It illuminated a dusting of crumbs before spilling at last to the linoleum floor, and in this manner the morning passed.