The Sea-Wave (11 page)

T
here's a rose bush under my window, a dead one, that Mom used to threaten to rip up but forgot about. When I'm upset, I drop things vengefully into it. Hairbrushes, cutlery, artwork. Anything that frustrates me. If my parents have ever seen the crumpled up paper and sweaters sticking out of the rose bush, they haven't made it a part of their conversation.

They
enrage me more than anything. I sometimes picture their legs poking out of the rose bush, thrashing for a minute, then going soft. It's not healthy. But it helps.

P
eople can be tough to figure out. I've figured out a lot of people, I've got x-rays, but there's a few you just can't fathom. They've got the lead vest on from the dentist. If you want to be a mystery you can keep your hands exposed and your head. You only have to cover your heart.

It's strange because I'm not scared of the old man but I'm nervous, I'm unsure of him. I've thought about him
a lot
. I'm the bird looking down at us from a million points of view. And I still don't get it. I'm a smart kid. But I like the kinds of problems I can solve.

I just don't
get
it.

M
om shook me awake in the night.

“Your father wants to see you.”

The elevator door opened. The living room was full of people. It was like a birthday party only no one was speaking, just sitting there staring at my dad, who was sitting in the middle of the couch, naked. Then everyone stared as Mom wheeled me in front of him like a birthday cake. Before I could close my eyes, Dad jumped up and tried squeezing behind the TV but his butt was too big. He said something to my mom and she picked up the phone and called more and more people.

When our neighbour Macey got there she took one look and called an ambulance, though my mom objected. She didn't want to make a fuss.

When the ambulance guys came, they convinced Dad to put his shorts back on and go peacefully with them. They kept him in the hospital overnight. When he came home, he seemed fine if slightly dazed.

No one ever mentioned this again.

O
nce to cheer me up my mom bought me an octopus in a wheelchair. Two of its arms were pushing the wheels, four were on the leg rests, and two were raised up in the air like it was a solid thrill to be an octopus in a wheelchair. It was cute but an octopus is basically a monster and this may be the wrong kind of metaphor to hurl at your disabled child.

I named the octopus Creakle because it sounded Dickensian.

I slept with Creakle for a week. Then I dropped him in the rose bush.

For all I know, he's still there.

M
y school has a zero tolerance policy for bullying.
If you tell someone you're being bullied, they're required to look up from their cellphone briefly.

I've been hurting for a long time now. When someone hurts you, you become their victim. It's what you are. Our school is full of victims, usually the brightest, most talented kids. We are the emotionally damaged future. When someone hurts you it knocks a piece out of you until one day you just fall to pieces. It takes a long time. Everyone sees it happen. The teachers see it. I guess it's easy watching someone else's kids being eaten, like the maggoty kids on Third World commercials.

It just doesn't pay to care.

Y
ou are going to die in this chair.

Thoughts get stuck in my brain like gum.

I don't think anything negative when I'm reading. I guess that's why I read so much. I have to keep my brain cells as busy as I can. Or I just wouldn't be able to live.

I'm not sure if I was born sad or if it's just because of my life.

I should probably be on drugs.

I
don't want to grow up.

M
y aunty gave me a book called
Home Life of the
Victorians
. It was 100+ colour plates of Victorians doing Victorian things like playing the harpsichord and smiling gaily. They seemed pretty happy despite TB.

I tried picturing myself sitting next to the Victorians but every time one of the smiling ladies got up quickly and wheeled me out of the frame. Then went back to her needlework.

The book was a nice thought and probably expensive.

I dropped it in the rose bush.

W
hen I opened my eyes, the old man was leaning on a tree. He was sitting with his knees up, leaning, with his arms around it and his head against it, hugging it.

He was crying. He was quiet, but he was crying. There was a dark line running down the bark.

The old man looked a hundred. He looked like a kid.

If god had decided to wake up and stuck a hand in me and I stood up, I wouldn't've run. I would've stepped out of my chair, gone over to the old man, crouched down and hugged him. I wouldn't've said anything. But I'd've hugged him for a long time.

Then I would've run.

I
was then . . . in the ocean. Water flowed over me. It seemed — yet it was not a wave. It was a fold, only. It was not even, the ocean. It was . . .

I lay in confusion. In a quiet room. The white sheet lay next to me. My bed was the ocean. There were other beds, like other small oceans, and men in them. They were so close together, the beds, end to end, along two walls of a long room. Few men could have passed between them.

A door. At one end of the room. For so long I watched it, not even thinking. It was difficult, thinking. So I rested. And looked again. I looked, only there was no door. There was only . . . a shadow.

And then a woman came in, like a wave. Her uniform, white. Her skin. She held something.

She approached one man. She bent over him. I could hear, something. Some gentle tone.

She moved on. The next, and the next man. One man
screamed
. He lifted his arms. In an instant, he was calm, again. And said nothing.

She was so close, now. This bright woman. Turning sideways, she sidled between the beds. As white, it seemed, and as thin, as a ream of paper.

And she was above me. Her face . . . was strange. Unsmiling. She held a syringe. She lifted my arm. It was so pale, and thin, I did not think it was my arm. It was some other man's. She lifted water. I had the strength of water. I did not resist. I did not even feel the syringe.

Then the room was moving. The man next to me, was now . . . above me. His bed was above me, and above me again. When I moved my head, the beds went with it. The walls did not stop them. They remained in the air . . . then disappeared.

She passed my bed again, the woman. She moved toward the door. The door was still open, yet . . . There was a pile of men, before it. They had lain down, one on another, to stop her. To block her way. They lay completely still. They did not even seem to be breathe.

She moved closer, the woman. She approached the door and the men, not slowing. She moved
through
them. Then closed the door.

I lay back in the ocean.

I could hear the ocean.