The First Time She Drowned (15 page)

MY FIRST ATTEMPT
at suicide was to suffocate myself with a pillow, which, as it turns out, is an impossible way to off yourself. But being only fourteen at the time, I just kept thinking that if I really wanted to die, I could override that internal tireless lifeguard who kept resuscitating me.

After a good hour of trying, I was left with a new sense of failure and a headache, which led me to my mother’s medicine cabinet in the hall for something to kill the pain. As soon as I saw it, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner—one hundred aspirin and the promise of “fast pain relief.”

I fell asleep clutching the bottle. I was too tired to try again, and it was enough just to have it wrapped in my fingers, smooth and round and comforting, like holding someone’s hand.

Morning came the way it always did, crashing into the reprieve of unconsciousness. I remembered the aspirin with relief, felt around in the sheets until I found it, got up, got dressed, put the bottle in my jacket and left for school.

The day was swimming-pool blue with a bright sun sitting high. It was the kind of day—inviting, warm, vibrant—where
people seemed thrilled just to be alive. It made me wonder if a lot more people killed themselves on days like this just to turn down the volume of the sun. The sun that ordered, “Be happy!” That screamed, “Wipe that miserable scowl off your face.” That slapped, “Your life is perfect! There is nothing wrong with your life!”

“Good-bye, flowers,” I said solemnly as I walked to school. “Good-bye, trees.”

I was going to take the aspirin at lunchtime and be dead before the closing bell.

“Good-bye, sidewalk,” I said. “Good-bye, plane flying overhead. Good-bye, grass.”

It was all terribly theatrical. But by God, if no one else was going to recognize the tragedy of my impending death, then I would just have to step up to the plate. Besides, indulging in the aspirin-clutching drama of
No One Loves Me and I Want to Die
created a distance from the soft-tissue truth of no one loves me and I want to die. It put everything Out There. Away from me. Like shedding tears after a loss, which, though a tangible expression, is not the real grief. The real grief is quieter, sits like a muffled, unmovable howl in a place that no one can reach.

It made me think of Madeline Dupine.

I never knew Madeline personally. Back in elementary school she had been in Matthew’s sixth-grade class, but he didn’t really know her either. She was an outcast. Kids thought she was weird. One day Madeline showed up in class with her long brown hair hacked off as if with a knife. Another day there were bruises on her face and arms. Then one day she didn’t show up at all. Instead she stayed home and killed herself. She was eleven maybe, twelve
at the most.

The story behind the story quickly filtered out. The live-in housekeeper came forward. She reported that she’d witnessed Madeline’s parents beating her. That sometimes at night, they had forced Madeline to stand outside in the freezing snow in her pajamas. Occasionally the housekeeper had tried to sneak a blanket to her. Neighbors emerged to verify the housekeeper’s story. They too had seen Madeline standing outside in the snow. They had thought it was odd, suspect. But no one had helped her.

She must have appeared a figment, paper thin and white under a streetlamp. That’s how I pictured her. A paper cutout of a girl with big, round eyes, snow falling in illuminated white puffs on her chopped-up hair. Translucent under the glare of passing headlights, invisible to the warm houses drawing curtains against a cold night. Easy to overlook, because nobody likes to be haunted.

But when she killed herself, Madeline came to life for the first time. She pointed her finger at the world. She forced people to open their curtains and see her. To touch her skin and feel how cold she was. She bore witness to her own pain because no one else would. She exposed the secrets that created it. She exacted revenge. And everyone was sorry. Everyone was filled with regret. They loved Madeline in death as they had not loved her in life. Kids who never even talked to her laid claim to being her best friend. Because people seem to want the attention of being associated in some way with a tragedy. Because death raises the import of the life it takes, especially a young life.

At the time it was just a sad story, but now I wanted to be like Madeline. She seemed brave. I even envied her bruises and her
chopped-up hair, because those were visible proofs of her parents’ hatred, something other people could see. Her suicide seemed to me like a final act of self-love, an act of self-preservation even. Because Madeline had taken her power back. But mostly, what stood out was that her last howl had been heard, that in the end she had gotten the love she wanted. And even if that love had come too late, it seemed better than never having it at all.

I sat through my classes that morning watching life happen as if from behind a one-way mirror. All around me kids talked and passed notes to each other, oblivious to what I was about to do. I felt like jumping up on the desk and screaming, “I’m going to die today!” Instead I sat through the drone of teachers and stared at the clock as it ticked off my final minutes on Earth.

At lunchtime, I headed slowly for the cafeteria.

The room was packed. The light was pouring through the windows in a way that was both ordinary and somehow brighter. The din of the students seemed celebratory, every smile, every laugh amplified as if someone had turned up the color on all that was happy, all that was alive and untouched by grief. I watched myself move invisibly through the crowd, operating on a different speed, on a different plane—one-dimensional, made of paper.

Lately I had been buying a sandwich and a candy bar and taking them into a bathroom stall rather than eat by myself in front of everyone. This time, I picked up a tray and pushed it down the line, picking out everything I’d ever wanted to get: Jell-O, chocolate pudding, French fries, ice cream, an extra-large soda.

I moved toward an empty table in the middle of the lunchroom. Other tables quickly filled with groups of friends, shouting at each
other as they unpacked homemade lunches or made jokes about the slop on their plates. I sat down and put the aspirin bottle on the corner of my tray. My throat swelled as I stared into my French fries. Two girls passed by me and paused as if they might sit down. I looked up hopefully, but another girl waved to them from a table in the back and they moved away.

I opened the bottle, lifted it high in the air and poured the aspirin onto the table. I glanced around to see if anyone noticed and saw a boy on the football team looking over at me. He nudged his friend, and the two of them stopped eating and stared at me with eyes wide and curious like children at the circus.

Do it,
their eyes seemed to say.
Entertain us.

Tears fell unchecked into my ice cream dish. A table of girls began singing “Happy Birthday” to one of their friends. The song became a mockery.
Do it. Kill yourself.

I began counting pills, lining them up like a path of white stones. I picked up the first aspirin and stared at it. I wondered how long it would take and if it would hurt and what it would feel like to be dead. I wondered if my mother would finally be happy.

Around me, more kids started to notice and whisper. When I met their gazes, they looked away. I put a pill in my mouth. The sadness of that first swallow was a surprise, so pure and bottomless, the mourning not of myself but of what life could be and was not. I thought again of Madeline Dupine, and I saw now how suicide was
not
the romantic act of self-love and bravery that I had believed it to be. Instead it was an act of total despair, an act not followed by the love I imagined finally receiving but by nothingness, the black void of nonexistence. But I couldn’t think
of another way out.

I took a second aspirin and then a third. One of the football players said something to the other, who laughed in my direction and then stood to get a better look. I wiped my tears with my sleeve and told myself I didn’t care, that soon it wouldn’t matter. I scooped the rest of the aspirin up in a handful. I tried not to be afraid.

Whispers seemed to spring from all corners of the cafeteria.
Do it,
their excitement said, building on itself, a growing pressure.
Kill yourself.

I brought the pills to my mouth and closed my eyes, imagining how soon this would all disappear, pinholing into darkness like the last seconds of an old movie.

Do it, do it, do it,
their stares seemed to urge.

And then suddenly one person, one voice said, “Don’t.”

I looked up.

It was Wade Mattell.

• • •

“Let’s get out of here,” Wade said.

We were standing in the hallway outside the cafeteria where he had escorted me away from all the rubberneckers. He took the aspirin bottle from my hand, walked over to the trash and emptied its contents.

“You mean, just leave school?” I said. “Won’t we get in trouble?”

“So what?” he said, and I laughed because all at once I realized it was true.
So what?
I had just come
this
close to killing myself. There was nothing left to lose.

We didn’t even bother sneaking, just strolled right out the front door. I remember both the shock and freedom of that, of seeing
how flimsy the rules of adults were, how they required my complicity, how anytime I wanted, I could bust them wide open.

As I walked beside Wade, his nearness made me so self-conscious that I kept my eyes on the ground in the hopes that he might not notice that I was fat and ugly as long as I didn’t look at him. We wandered the streets aimlessly to the rhythm of his basketball hitting the pavement. Every once in a while he would dribble the ball in circles around me and then feign a free throw over my head.

“So . . .” he said finally. “Wanna watch me play basketball?”

He kept his eyes on the ball. His lashes were long and light.

“Okay,” I said.

We started toward the local playground. The air was cool and crisp, the afternoon sun nesting on the colored leaves. Occasionally we brushed against each other by accident and drew quickly away like opposing magnets.

“I hate girls,” he said suddenly.

“Oh,” I replied nonchalantly, because I liked walking beside him and I was reluctant to point out the obvious.

When we reached the basketball courts, Wade pointed me toward a grassy area where I could sit and watch. He looked suddenly happy and childlike, nothing like the sullen, insubordinate kid from detention. I took a seat as he began to dribble at an impressive speed.

“It’s the fourth quarter,” he said in an announcer’s voice. “The score is tied with three seconds remaining. Wade Mattell has the ball. He dodges left, then right, then left again.” Wade dodged imaginary players. “The crowd is on their feet.”

He pointed to me. I stood.

“Mattell goes in for a layup!” His long, lean body charged the basket, lunging into the air. “He shoots . . .”

The ball left his hand and hit the rim. For a moment it hung there, suspended and circling. We held our breaths and watched. Our focus was pure, unified, time-stopping. A total merge. And then . . . swish!

“He scores! And the crowd goes wild.”

Wade pointed dramatically at me and I gave a little self-conscious clap.

“And the crowd goes
wild
!” he tried again, and this time I clapped as hard as I could and hollered at the top of my lungs. Wade took a victory lap around the court, his arms in the air, mouth agape in wonder at his own achievement. I sat back down and laughed.

“Okay, it’s the fourth quarter . . .” he said, starting all over again.

Later, when it got too dark to see the ball and my voice was hoarse from emulating a thousand cheering fans, Wade came over and lay down on the grass beside me.

“I’m going to be the greatest basketball player in the world,” he said.

Before I could answer, he sat up and glared at me. “What? You don’t believe me.”

“No, I do!”

“Okay.” He collapsed onto his back again. “Good.”

We stayed there, gazing up at the sky for a long time, and I was surprised by how comfortable I was lying next to one of the most popular boys at school as if it were a natural, everyday
occurrence.

The grass was slightly damp and cool, and the night was deep with stars. There was something almost religious about lying on the solid floor of the Earth and staring up into that vastness. I thought of how far away the morning seemed, how inconceivable that only hours before, I had wanted to kill myself. I thought of Madeline again and how sad it was that she never got to see how quickly life could turn, how it could get better when you least expected it. I remembered the look of care in Wade’s face when he took the pills from my hand, and I wanted so much to say thank you, but it was the kind of thank-you that meant so much, I couldn’t get the words out.

“My mother hates me,” I said instead. I don’t know why I said it, it just popped out of me like a cork, and yet, I wasn’t all that surprised to hear myself utter the words. Somehow, secrets didn’t seem like they needed to be secrets with Wade. I peeked over at him to see his reaction. I wanted him to feel sorry for me.

He pulled a pack of matches from his pocket and began to light them one by one, allowing for a quick flicker of light like a firefly before blowing them out. It seemed as if he hadn’t heard me, or worse, didn’t care.

I turned forward again, my own face burning with shame at my confession. We lay there in silence for a long time.

“Screw her,” Wade said quietly, seemingly out of nowhere. This time he let the match in his hand burn down to his fingers before tossing it into the damp grass.

“Screw who?”

“Your stupid mother. Who cares about her?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s my mother.”

“She’s a bitch.”

“But you don’t even know her.”

“I don’t have to know her. It’s obvious.”

I didn’t know what to make of that. It seemed a mean thing to say and it certainly wasn’t the pity I was looking for, and yet, strangely, I was elated.