The Sea-Wave (3 page)

I
'm quiet and still and the trouble with being quiet and still is that people will occasionally mistake you for a toilet. It's easy to take things out on me or blame me. Mom does this pretty much daily. She used to love me. She's like the dolls with the smaller dolls in them, but she forgets they're there, that one of those moms really loved me. Or she could never
hurt
me. I'm a different kid now, too. But I still remember the smaller kid, in her sarcophagus, who loved her mom and felt loved. I still feel her, sometimes. Life would be easier . . .

Occasionally my dad stands up and whispers to Mom not to say this or that in front of me but it doesn't matter. I can hear her from the kitchen. I can hear
him
. He doesn't talk much about me so I have to listen.

What are we going to do with her? What will happen to her? What's . . . going . . . to happen?

Then I'm swallowing water and sinking. I'm listening and I'm sinking. I'm the whale with the harpoon earrings. Sinking.

When my parents are suddenly alone I go straight to my room but the elevator doors don't always close fast enough. Or they open and drop me in the middle of something, a storm cloud I thought was a pillow. I listen and I watch my parents roll out of the kitchen like smoke, looking only at the space exactly above me or beside me. Then I look at
them
sinking down in the two big couches and I think: What have I done to these people?

I'll bet they ask themselves the same thing.

W
hen I closed my eyes, it was night. When I opened them . . .

We were going down a dirt road. There were roses growing alongside it, wild ones. I could smell them.

The sun was shining. The
sky
. You don't see much of it, in the city.

There wasn't a building of any kind in miles.

I've been to other cities but I've never been
out
of the city. Parks are half cement. They're busier than streets.

The old man was quiet for once. The way his beard moved, I could tell he was looking around. Maybe enjoying himself, a little. He slowed down a little.

I could only smell roses.

I pictured the skyscrapers behind us, fading away.

My future was fading away.

I was still scared, but . . .

The roses.

I hadn't felt that happy or relaxed in a long time.

I
n such a prison, if a man passed through the hall, and moved the air, it moved on no other occasion. In the warm season . . . I would hear feet, and rush to the grille, as the man in the cell across the hall. Breathing and breathing the wind. Then waiting, till the next man passed.

I was reading, one book that remained. The light from the grille was sufficient. It should not have been. But I had so grown accustomed, to the missing light. As . . . a fish. Of the deep sea.

I was slowly reading. One page, and the facing page, perhaps, per hour.

I finished a page. I raised a finger, to turn it.
It turned
itself
.

I rose. I closed my hands on the bars of the grille.
What man,
thinking
,
moving, could produce this wind?
There had never been such wind. Stirring, even, my hair. Blowing down my throat.

I stood, looking. The man across the hall, through bars, looked also. For the man.

But there was no one. No man. This blowing seemed to come . . . from above. As a letter. Warm, and feeling. From one beyond the prison. It could not have come from within.

I breathed in. I had not breathed so deeply for so long. The other man breathed. I could hear him, even, with my own eyes closed, breathing in. Listening. To the wind. And the pages, in the wind. Turning and turning.

We groaned, both, in sadness. As it passed away.

I
'm getting a really good tan.

I
'm sad about my future, I worry about it. But a writer is something I could be. It would be a job but also a way of communicating, feeling emotion, being more like people. I don't mean being
like
them . . . I just mean feeling real.

My fear is that, as a writer who's also a wheeler, a wheelchair person, people would just pat me on my hair and say I was beautiful and way to go. I'd be that heartbreaking kid in the framed article in the
Sunday Sun
. People wouldn't judge me or ignore me or laugh, which my cousin says happens constantly and only makes you a better writer.

The last thing I'd want to be is a mediocre writer.

There's already a million of those.

I
t's tough, writing about yourself. Your veins are barbed wire and you're pulling them out. Or you're playing a guitar but then thorns grow on the strings and you have to keep playing because everyone's watching.

I'm not remembering nice things, I haven't had a nice life. I'm picking onions out of my salad and just staring at a plate full of onions. I write a bit, then I feel like crying.

Before
I started writing, though . . .

I don't ever want to remember what that feels like.

I
went to Hell but it was Disneyland.

At a school assembly, the principal called me forward. Someone pushed me forward. Someone in a Mickey Mouse suit came out of the bathroom. As he put his arms around me — I am terrified of mascots, the principal said I'd love it at Disneyland. Then he hugged me, too.

My parents appeared. They put their arms on the pile. They looked so happy. When a sick kid wins a prize . . . I wondered if I was dying.

When we finally got to Disneyland, my parents fought the whole way, I couldn't go on most of the rides because they weren't “equipped for my needs.”

We ate corn dogs and took pictures.

Before I could stop him, Donald Duck squeezed me and as I screamed inside, Dad snapped a photo. It hung on the living room wall for years until I knocked it down with a broom and pushed it deep in the trash. There's still a blank space on the wall. No one's said anything.

We haven't been on vacation since.

W
e were in a dried up pasture. My legs were getting scratched up pretty bad by cactuses. I saw a brick building in the distance. The old man must've noticed it too because he turned me towards it and pushed me as fast as he could.

It was a house — once. It had three walls and no roof, like a diorama. Teenagers had partied in it. “
François'
Cathedral” was spray-painted on the one wall. “Becky is a whore” was spray-painted on the other.

The old man walked through the door hole, there was no door, and around the house.

The floor was rotten in places. I was afraid — I thought he might fall through the floor. But instead, he went batshit.

He picked up a part of a bedframe and hit the walls with it. He kicked them. Whatever he could get his hands on, he threw it. He threw bricks. He threw
himself
. He knocked down the one wall just by ramming into it.

The old man didn't calm down until the last wall had fallen. Then he sat in a rotten armchair with his head in his hands, panting.

I remember thinking: What the fuck is wrong with this guy?