Such a Pretty Face (26 page)

“She grabbed Albert and would not let him go, her arms and one leg wrapped around him. So I pushed Lindy and the others out and explained how Helen was scared of people in white coats because of her experience at the mental wards. So Lindy, I swear I thought she was going to cry, she changed into a University of Oregon sweatshirt and jeans and then she sat down and talked to Helen, as they did in high school, and eventually Helen got out of Albert’s lap and she let Lindy put her hands on her stomach. I think that somewhere in her mind, Helen recognized Lindy. She said, ‘I remember you because of lemonade and horses.’ They used to ride our horses and then drink lemonade.” I heard Grandma’s voice crackle, then she sniffled.

“Anyhow, Helen got on the table but told Lindy she wasn’t going to allow them to put any ‘tracers’ in her, and Lindy said, ‘We never put tracers in anyone. We’re the good people.’ And Helen said that the enemy had put something in there, and she knew because they weren’t ‘bleeding her anymore.’

“Lindy told her that there was a baby in her stomach and…” Grandma choked on her tears. “And Helen sat up straight and said, ‘There is no baby in my stomach. I don’t have a husband.’ And Lindy said, ‘Yes, there is, honey. There’s a baby in there. Do you remember how it got there?’ And, Helen did, she must have, because her eyes got wide, and I knew she wasn’t with us anymore—she was somewhere else—and her whole face crumpled up and she pulled her knees up and started crying, keening back and forth, then she pulled at her hair, and fiddled with her toes, and kept crying, these mewing, sobbing sounds, and yelled for Albert to help her, help her.”

Grandma slumped onto the floor, still holding the phone.

“It about destroyed Albert. Anyhow, when we finally got Helen calm, Lindy asked her if she wanted the baby, and said if Helen didn’t want the baby that Lindy could take it out. Helen completely lost it. She started shrieking, high pitched—it was like listening to an animal. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and tried to kick Lindy. ‘You won’t take it. I won’t let you take it. You get away from me. You aren’t going to hurt it, it’s mine!’ Helen knew. Somewhere in the back of her mind she understood she was pregnant, she had a baby, and she wanted to protect it, above all.”

I thought of that baby in Helen’s stomach. Would we look alike? Was it a girl? Was it a boy? How did it get in there?

“So we’re keeping the baby. Lindy talked to her about eating well and resting, once Helen wasn’t hysterical, but then she started rhyming words again, and asked Lindy if she wanted to hear her poem. Lindy said yes, and Helen said, ‘Babies, babies, babies. How do they jump in your stomach? You must be a bad girl. Or get them from throw up.’”

Grandma rubbed her forehead. “Lindy started to cry—she and Helen were such wonderful friends—but Helen didn’t notice. She said another poem. It was about a black room. ‘Black room, slimy room, hurt room. Stick in your butt, stick in your front. Always ouch, always mad, I tried to kill that hairy crab,’ and then she started singing that song, ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ from
Pinocchio,
and Lindy cried again. Before we left, Helen actually let Lindy hug her, and said, ‘I like lemonade and horses.’”

Grandma listened on the phone for a minute. “How do I feel about another baby? I don’t know how we’re going to do this. But what else can I do? She refused the abortion. The baby is coming, so we’ll deal with it.” She paused. “I love all of our grandchildren, and having Stevie live with us has been a gift from the second she came into our lives. We’ll hope this baby has the personality and cheerfulness of our Stevie. I love that child to distraction, and so does Albert. Without Stevie we would never have been able to handle all this grief with Helen, never. Stevie has saved our lives. She’s an angel, right from God to us.”

I went to sleep that night, after Grandma and Grandpa kissed me good night, then kissed each other, and the last thing I heard were Grandma’s words in my head. “I love that child to distraction, and so does Albert…. She’s an angel, right from God to us.”

I believe, I truly do, that the love of my grandparents is what saved my life.

Even after they were gone.

Grandma and Grandpa watched Helen very carefully.

And who knew why—maybe it was hormones or maybe Helen was hanging on to a shred of sanity, or maybe God stepped in and answered Grandma’s incessant prayers to Him, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Apostle Paul, and the Prophets—but Helen did eat, she did rest. There were incidences, but the voices in Helen’s head seemed to grow dimmer. They didn’t tell her to stand in the middle of the street and flap her arms or climb a tree and jump from a branch or pick at her fingernails till they bled. They didn’t tell her quite so loud that the CIA was after her.

Until the seventh month. That’s when things fell apart. That’s when she tried to get Sunshine out of her body. All by herself.

I loved first grade, although I did get some teasing about Helen at first. Some kids called her a “crazy lady,” and one girl asked why she shouted at lampposts and why she wore a cape, but I could deal with that. Plus, a bunch of cousins and kids of Grandpa’s employees were in my class, and they told the kids teasing me to “shut up or lose a tooth” or “Tease Stevie and I’m going to smash your nose inside out,” and that took care of things, even when Helen danced into my classroom wearing antennas on her head and a set of black spider legs from my last year’s Halloween costume. Grandma rushed in and escorted her out pretty quick.

First grade was all day, not like kindergarten, which meant I was out of the house for hours. My teacher, Mrs. Zeebach, had been a student of Grandma’s and she had me reading novels and doing advanced math worksheets, but the best thing was that I won the school’s art competition in the fall and in the spring with my work. When my name was announced, the kids in my class stood up and cheered because that meant I had beat the sixth graders, too. I won $5 and chocolates. I shared all the chocolates with my classmates.

Grandma and Helen usually met me at the end of the driveway where the school bus stopped.

One afternoon Helen was waiting for me with two pencils behind her ears. She was carrying a lunch box. “Stevie Stevie. A beehive girl. You won’t give a monster a swirl. Buzz buzz buzz, beehive girl, you don’t make me want to hurl.”

She poked me in my stomach, then she poked her own stomach. “I got a beehive in here. It’s moving. I can feel them. I think they’re going to sting me so I’m going to have to smother them.” Then she softly hit her stomach, got all teary-eyed, and said, “Barry’s bad, Barry’s scary, Tonya’s in a can, not one that you can carry.”

On a sunny Friday, though, Grandma’s friend Mrs. Wong came and got me before school was out. It was Song and Music Day, where we spent an hour in front of the piano that Mrs. Zeebach played. It had been my turn to sit next to her on the piano bench, which was the first good thing. Another good thing that happened: We had found Herschel, our hamster, who had mysteriously escaped during the night two days ago. Phuc Do found him behind the bookshelves and caught him, only dropping him once on his head when he wriggled out of his hands.

Right after we got back from Mr. Wright’s PE class, I heard the sirens.

I later learned that Helen had gotten ahold of a knife and tried to take the baby out of her own stomach. “The bees are all cooked,” she’d told Grandma. “All cooked. I tried to take them out so they wouldn’t get burned.”

That night I studied the stain of blood on the carpet of Helen’s room.

I don’t know why I did it—maybe it was simply years of living with someone sick and how it makes you see almost everything differently from anyone else, how it makes you feel crazy, too, and your world shakes and sputters, and reality is topsy-turvy and confused—but I got my paints out.

I drew petals in purple, blue, and green around the circular red stain.

I made a flower out of the blood, complete with a long stem.

That night I kept thinking about flower blood.

And I kept thinking about how my own mother used a knife on herself to get her baby out of her stomach.

I wondered if it was ever possible to run out of tears.

I sure hadn’t.

When the sun came up, I was still up, too, and when Grandma and Grandpa saw the blood flower, I thought I was going to get in trouble, but I didn’t. The three of us stood there, and then Grandpa pulled me into his strong arms for a long hug and Grandma kissed my forehead.

Helen came home about three weeks later from a special hospital in Seattle. She was, miraculously, still pregnant. But her fear of chairs had grown exponentially.

“I am not going to sit in a chair again,” she told Grandma when she waddled in the door, a plain green dress over her skinny but pregnant frame, her blond hair in a ponytail. “No. I didn’t like that. The chair wouldn’t let go of me. It hurt me.”

“Sugar, we have different chairs here,” Grandma said, wiping her hands on her flowered apron. “These chairs are comfortable and friendly.”

Helen eyed her suspiciously. “I think you’re from the other side.”

“No, sugar, I’m on your side. I’m always on your side. And these chairs are nice chairs. They won’t hurt you.”

“Have you gone to the CIA?” she asked Grandpa.

Grandpa shook his head and put his cowboy hat on the coatrack. “No, baby, I haven’t. I’m with you. I’m on your side, and you can sit in this chair. Your mother made your favorite dinner again, oatmeal with cinnamon, no white sugar.”

“I don’t eat white sugar because of the noise, and I’m not going to sit in that chair because of the foobadurang.”

“Sweetie, how about this chair?” Grandma pointed to a big, comfy red chair in the living room. “There’s no foobadurang.”

Helen stared at that chair. She went over and peered underneath it, then she sniffed it. “There’s no ropes here.”

“No, no ropes. There are no ropes here,” Grandma said. Helen didn’t notice Grandma’s voice wavering. She didn’t notice Grandpa’s exhausted, shattered expression.

I did. I held Grandpa’s hand.

The way I understood it later is that Helen had had to be held down sometimes in a chair. They didn’t want to tie her to a bed because she clearly already had nightmares about beds. But she also kept trying to hurt the baby with her fists. Helen had told the doctors the bees were “ready to come out and knocking on their door.”

“I am not going to sit in a chair with ropes or octopus tentacles again. Are there octopus tentacles on this red chair?”

“No, sweetie. Not at all,” Grandpa said.

“Where are the tentacles?”

“They’re not here. We don’t have tentacles on the farm. We only have chickens and goats and pigs and horses. That’s it. Remember?”

Helen nodded. “All right. I remember. We don’t have octopus here. I can sit in this red heart chair if you check it each day for tentacles and ropes.”

“I’ll do it now, sweetie,” Grandpa said.

I watched him examine that chair. He even turned it upside down. “I’m checking…still checking…almost done checking, Helen. Okay, sweetie. It’s safe.”

Helen nodded. “Are you sure?”

Grandpa checked the chair one more time, every inch of it, his hands running over the whole thing. Do you see how family members in the house can get caught up in someone else’s mental illness? How you start talking the language of a schizophrenic? Try doing that at seven years old. I am living proof: It knocks something sane right out of you.

“Yes. We’re safe.”

“Okay. I have to get the devil’s water out of me now. Come and watch,” she told my grandpa. “I don’t want Barry to come in.”

So Grandpa watched his daughter pee, never taking his eyes from hers, so Barry wouldn’t come and get her, and then we had dinner. He moved the red chair to the kitchen table. That seat wasn’t as high as the others, so Helen’s face was only a little bit above the table, but she sat down at each breakfast and dinner with us, after Grandpa checked the chair.

The other chairs in our house did not fare well. Periodically, and without warning, she would throw the kitchen chairs, the chair by Grandpa’s desk, a small stool that Grandma used for gardening, the Adirondack chairs on the deck, and the two antique chairs by the small table near the front door. The throwing was unpredictable.

“This one has to die,” she would say, lifting it up. Helen was not a big person at all, but in her demented rages she seemed to become stronger.

“This one is trying to hold me down.”

“This one won’t shut up. Shut up, chair! I’m not going to let you hit me with your wood. Quit screaming at me.”

She broke a couple chairs, scratched a bunch up, and chipped wood off others.

She was distracted only by her pastel crayons or paints.

“Draw a picture of that chair, Helen,” Grandma told her one time as she spun my wooden kid’s chair above her head. “Then I’ll be able to see what you see.”

“No! I’m not going to draw today because of the kicking of the bees.”

“I’d love a picture by you.”

“No!”

“You can get back at the chair by drawing it,” Grandma cajoled. “You can show it who’s boss, that Helen’s in charge.”

“I’m only going to draw a bad picture,” Helen replied, slamming the chair down. “A bad chair. A chair with arms and handcuffs and chains and some snakes and not you, Command Center.”

“Well, that will be very creative. Not boring at all. I always love your pictures.”

“Everybody does, because then they can see the mess.” Helen kicked the chair, then pushed her black top hat back on her head. She had wrapped foil around her neck and tied it in a big bow. “They can see the mess in my brain.”

“You draw the mess well. You’re an artist.”

“I’m telling the truth about chairs, so the truth isn’t invisible anymore.” She stuck her lower lip out, then scratched her arms. “Shut up, Punk! I’m not drawing for you!”

“It’s good we have you to tell the truth, honey.”

Helen grunted, but she took the pastels and the big canvas Grandma had been holding.

“You sit here, girl kid.” She pointed to a chair. I sat down. She nodded at me, then adjusted the tin foil tie.