Walk the Vanished Earth, page 7
She knows Mama and she knows the Father. She knows what she reads in Mama’s books and what she peeks on the flickering screen, the times she creeps up beside Mama asleep. People tinny and distant behind the gray glass. A house among pines, a mother scolding her son. Laughing women on a cart, skimming over white sand called snow. She likes the crisp look of it, how clean it seems. In the north, says a voice, there’s snow. In the north, it says, the trees grow tall as giants. She remembers Mama saying she headed north. I too, Bea thinks, will head north.
One night the Father comes home early and catches her staring at the screen. There are battered faces, men with metal hats yanked low, a chatter of something he calls guns.
That’s the war, he says. He unlaces one big boot and lets it fall to the floor. Men fighting their battles. His lip lifts in scorn. My father claimed Americans were men of honor, that they only fought wars for freedom. He laughs. The great freedom to buy and sell and be God-fearing Christians and rape this land dry. We should’ve left it to the Indians.
She studies his face. It is leathered where hers is tender. Why don’t you fight? she asks.
His thick fingers in thick laces, removing his other boot. Little Bea, he says. You think I’d fight for this country? I’ve seen what they do, what my father did. He killed the buffalo. He wiped this country clean. Then he turned this nation’s soil to ash. My father, the Dust Bowl. His very hands a bowl full of dust. No.
You and me, he says, we’ll make our own path. We can do better than my father did, than these soldiers are. Napalming babies. Shooting water buffalo and dumping them in the village well. These American men. He laughs, and it is a cold sound. Let them fight their battles, he says. Our war is here.
His second shoe falls to the floor. With a snort, Mama wakes up.
Go to sleep, she insists, though whether she means she or the Father, they cannot tell.
She has learned her sounds from Mama and the Father, from the black-and-white screen she studies and the books they pore over, the paper rags Mama brought before Bea was Bea. Sometimes she tries her voice at song, humming snippets to herself in late morning, when Mama and the Father burble their snores. The songs are from records and the records are from Mama, who carried them crammed in her pack with her books and papers and hopes of tomorrows to the north. Mama has trekked from another desert farther south than their own.
I walked through the lonely night, Mama says, and fetched up here, where I had you. My Bea who was destined to be. Her palm smoothing her hair.
Mama’s eyes are black and brittle in the weak light. Her hands are as soft and useless as Bea’s own. For so long they have been circling each other in this place. She and her. Her and she. Mama and the Bea.
From Mama she has learned no love for sugar, has settled for beets from a can, perhaps a lick of honey on a spoon. Mama gets her own sweets from the bottles she leaves empty by the door. She says the desert that birthed her stripped sugar from her tongue. Says everything tastes like sand.
Who were your people? she asks Mama on one of their lamp-lit nights.
I am from no people, Mama replies, and her face closes like a door.
What about the Father? she asks then. Who were his people?
Your father was a deer, Mama says, with antlers this wide. She stretches her arms to show her. He came from the east, leaped all the way here.
Bea tries asking more, but Mama has turned to her glass. Soon she will be sleeping. At dawn Bea asks the Father, when he crashes into the house, blood thick on his boots.
A deer? He snorts. It’s your Mama who’s the deer. I found her in the desert, meant first to shoot her, but her beauty took my breath away. I roped her firm and fast and true, and brought her here to kick those hooves up at home. I taught her to be cow, not deer. How good she’s been to me.
She’s from no people, Bea adds.
He laughs. No. Your mama comes from a proud line of starving silver miners in Zacatecas. She used to cry for her mother’s courtyard, how the sun slanted through the lemon tree. I stopped all that. Cows don’t cry, I told her. He laughs again. My little Mexican cow. She’s lucky I found her. Kept her safe from prying eyes all these years. Without me, she’d be shipped back to the mines.
On this truth she chews. What was Mama hoping for, the day she set heel to road, leaving her people behind? With her records and books, her longing for something more. Instead, she found the Father, or he found her. She seemed a deer, but he named her a cow, noosed her neck and brought her home. Locked her up in the dark, where one day she birthed Bea.
In her closet she’s grown, infant to girl, tucking her fists against her belly to stop its growls. Whispering Mama’s songs to herself in the day’s shadowed grip. Listening to pots slamming when the Father comes home. I’m not hungry, damn it, I just want to eat. Soup burning on the stove. Fat’s stench, dark with blood and brine. A spoon clacking a bowl. The record player’s whir. One song after another, not one of them about love.
Love is for children, the Father says. And you—leveling his finger at her—are child no more.
The Father has no time for children. He speaks of giants. At dawn he breathes it, while Mama sleeps her sweaty sleep and the sun pulses at the door, waiting its turn. There’ll be a new breed, he says. When ours is done. A race of giants, men bigger than men. They’ll make this world right. The government’s shipped men to the moon, you know. But our giants? They’ll go beyond that. They’ll travel to the stars themselves.
The Father says she will spawn it. Time for you to marry, he tells her. He picks his teeth, inspects his fingernail after. Studies her with his coarse and grainy eyes, bright blue. Marry somebody tall, he says. New breed has got to be tall.
Except no one exists for her to marry. Only Mama and the Father know she’s there. Nestled in her sheets. Hidden away.
I’m done hunkering in the dirt, the Father says. His eyes alight on her scrawny self. Let us grow tall as the tallest tree, he tells her. Let our giants take over this earth.
At times she dreams of poison, though she knows it is no dream. The Father with his pinch of powder in her soup, the hour it comes time for sleep. Meat filming her teeth, that bitter tang underneath. Her eyes grow dense, her tongue unwieldy. But he is right. It is better to sleep. The Father is kind. He wants it easy, wants her to feel nothing, no push and tear.
With morning stretched into noon, she wakes. Mama in the bathroom, hunched and heaving over the dirty bowl. Needle spinning on the record player, static on the screen. Old fat in the air, sorrow and dust. A scatter of papers, not one about love.
Bea looks at the Father, still sleeping. His lidded eyes, his bristled cheek pillowed next to hers. She counts each hair on his head, runs her finger along his jaw. His lips tremble with each breath. How she adores him in this moment. Each thread of hair, each vein in each fragile lid, each rough finger on each rough hand. This man who has named himself her Father. This man who will help her build anew.
One night the war comes home. Mama in the kitchen, tearing pots from the walls, pans from their hooks. Bea in her closet, peering through the open door, her swelled stomach pressing its cheek to the floor. What have you done to her? Mama rips a shutter down, lets the forbidden moon stream through. She’s only twelve. She’s your daughter.
My father is a deer, Bea whispers.
The Father’s eyes are brined and mocking, the red eclipsing his blue. He laughs when Mama breaks a glass and presses its jagged edge to his throat. He waves her away like a fly. We must remake this world, he tells her. We need a new breed. It’s how we fight our war.
Mama lunges again. Rakes her nails along his jaw. You. Her voice low and terrible, the guttural bark of a beast roaming free in the night.
My father is a deer, Bea says again.
Then Mama has her bottle, not wine, but the clear liquid that knocks her sideways when she drinks. The bottle is full, and Mama has a match, and she is lighting a rag that spouts from its throat. Bea knows fire from books, the screen, the stove’s low flame, but not like this. It is beautiful. Watching Mama with her fire, she wants it for her own. Bea crawls out of her closet, stands up, legs strong beneath her.
She looks at the Father, braced and grinning, and thinks, I don’t need you anymore. Your task is done. She looks at Mama, her face alight with fire, and thinks, I will be the Bea you could never be.
The Father was right. Their war is here. She against him, him against her, she against she. Mama, the Father, and the Bea. Gnarling each other’s throats, stripping them to the bone. She knows the truth. Fire is how you fight a war.
She wrestles it from Mama. Her bottle, its rag, its match. The floor blazes quickly, the walls, the roof that has blocked out the sky. The Father’s mouth in its terrible O. Mama’s black and broken hair. Her heart so red it becomes its own element, burning away in the dark. Deer coughing their hatred in the desert, under those cold and indifferent stars.
From the burning house she steps. She turns her back on the fire, and she walks away, hefting within her small body the dreams of her father, curled in the shape of a baby. She strides through deserts, mountains, plains, only to end up in a sterile room with pain galloping through her.
Within her splits a seam. Water and blood and fire and ash. Voices whispering, urging her to be anything but Bea. Her giant is fighting free.
PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION—OFFICIAL REPORT (EXCERPT)
PSYCHIATRIC CENTER of KANSAS CITY—CHILDREN’S DIVISION
Dr. James Edward Carson
Patient: Bea Samson
Date of Initial Evaluation: 7/16/75
Case No.: 42
Admission Date: 7/15/75
Date of Report: 9/7/75
Anecdotal: Last night, more than two weeks after her expected due date, Bea Samson went into labor. The orderlies heard her scream and discovered her water had broken. She was taken immediately to General Hospital, where she was given an epidural and admitted to the delivery room. At 10:30 p.m., in response to her escalating distress, the medical staff determined a caesarean section was necessary and administered a general anesthetic. At 11:00 p.m. the obstetrician successfully delivered her infant, a male weighing a mere 5 lb., 6 oz., his slight weight a logical result of the mother’s age and physical condition. The infant was promptly removed from the delivery room and deposited in the hospital nursery, where he will await placement in an appropriate situation.
Summary of previous tests or assessments
Creative expression therapy (potentially beneficial)
Role play (unsuccessful)
Rorschach tests (a red herring)
Behavioral therapy (hopeful)
Personality assessment
Patient is a selective mute who vacillates between obedience and violent, even potentially dangerous, behavior, especially when placed under restraints. She often seems confused and bewildered by her surroundings, showing symptoms common to schizophrenics. Additionally, she suffers from fear of social contact and anxiety when approached by staff. No relationships with her fellow patients have yet been observed.
Mental state examination (MSE)
See attached document for results on the following: appearance; psychomotor behavior; mood and affect; speech; cognition; and thought patterns.
Formulation/summary
Based on clinical observations and assessments, it is evident this patient faces numerous psychological obstacles. While she possesses basic cognitive functioning, her struggles with memory and communication point to more complicated malfunctions than are usual in patients suffering from trauma. While attempts at memory retrieval showed initial promise, efforts have been temporarily halted due to changes in the patient’s condition.
Four weeks prior to this report, patient fell into a near catatonic state, interrupted briefly the night she gave birth. While she is mostly compliant with the physical routines of our Center, she is largely unresponsive in both facial expression and verbal communication, although the latter was previously progressing.
Although we expect this to be a relatively temporary state, a stricter regimen of medication is necessary to assist the patient in regaining some measure of equilibrium.
Diagnosis
Axis I: Schizophrenia with temporary catatonic symptoms (moderate to severe; early onset); General Anxiety Disorder related to trauma (severe); Selective Mutism (moderate to severe); Language Processing Disorder (moderate)
Axis II: Schizoid Personality Disorder (moderate); Dissociative Amnesia (recurring)
Axis III: None
Axis IV: Childhood malnutrition; extreme seclusion; probable sexual abuse; physical neglect
Axis V: CGAS—40
Risk assessment
Patient is not currently deemed a physical risk to herself or others. However, given her earlier behavior, this could change once her catatonia decreases. Her newborn is under the custody of Children’s Welfare, and, at this time, it is impossible to determine what effect the infant’s removal will have on the patient’s psychological condition.
Treatment plan
A continued course of Thorazine has been prescribed, with a daily oral dosage of 200 mg. Given her current state, decreasing it to Valium does not seem a viable course at present.
When the patient emerges from her catatonia, cognitive behavioral therapy will be provided to address her amnesiac and trauma-related disorders. Once she is stabilized, group therapy will also be added to her daily schedule, and she will be assigned a language specialist.
In the short term, patient’s prognosis appears hopeful. If her schizophrenic and trauma-related symptoms decrease, it is possible her amnesia and language processing issues can be treated. The goal is to improve these symptoms within the span of two to three months. A time frame of six months to a year is expected for a decrease in psychotic behavior and an increase in positive social interaction.
In the long term, the prognosis also appears positive. The goal is to assist the patient with deinstitutionalization, with a recommended time frame of approximately six years. At this time the patient will turn eighteen, approximately, since information on her exact birth date remains elusive. Within this time frame, the expectation is to move the patient from our Center to a halfway house, where she will be offered vocational training and assistance with life skills so that she may eventually move to a residence of her own and, in a best-case scenario, become self-sufficient by the time she becomes a legal adult. Her various disorders notwithstanding, she may eventually become a productive member of society.
In the most optimistic scenario, patient will recover sufficiently to remain outside the institution, but also to be reunited with her son and even achieve full custody. Much depends on her treatment in the months and years to come, and on the correct administration of the methods prescribed.
SAMSON
TEXAS PANHANDLE, 1935
The boy won’t come to church. Samson sits in the truck with his wife, waiting. From the dooryard, the boy stares back. He’s donned his overalls, not his Sunday shirt. Even from this distance, his eyes look cold.
“He’s stubborn,” his wife says. “Boys are.”
But Samson knows different. It’s not a fourteen-year-old’s orneriness. The boy isn’t right. There’s a slyness to him as he slinks out of sight around a corner. Hands in his pockets like he’s hiding something. As their truck jounces away on the rutted road, Samson resists the urge to glance back. It wouldn’t surprise him to find the entire farm burned down on his return. The boy’s done things before. Killed a chicken for the fun of it. Knocked a fence pole down to let the hogs escape.
“I don’t like it,” he says. “We should have forced him.”
His wife folds her hands in her lap. Her gloves, he notices, have been mended too often. Her profile in the April sunshine is young. Not the cherub he married, but a girl still. That dimple in her chin. Her hat’s straw brim latticing shadow over her nose. And he a man over eighty. What has he done to earn such wealth? This wife, their frame house, the wheat he’s hewn from the earth. I could die happy, he thinks, if not for the boy.
As they near town, other trucks join them, rumbling in from the farms beyond. The men in ironed shirts, hanging arms out the cab windows. The women in cotton dresses, pastel with spring colors like his wife’s. In most truck beds, a gaggle of towheaded children. They do not speak of the past, these good men and women, but for some it lingers in their eyes. His head, seared with an ancient scar, speaks where his own eyes do not.
In the church parking lot, Mrs. Ernst approaches. “A morning straight from God,” she chirps. “Will you be joining us at the picnic afterward?”
“We might,” says his wife. “Depends on the boy.”
“Left him at home again?” Her voice drops. “How’s he getting on?”
Mrs. Ernst has a broad German face, not unlike that of Samson’s wife. It’s possible our people fought in the Great War, Samson thinks. Funny how here we get on. He swings the truck door shut. Rust blossoms by the handle. And the driver’s seat is torn. He hopes the wheat will be better this season. Last year’s soil was so thin and dry that many seeds just blew away.
“Nothing easy about a son,” replies his wife.
Samson senses both women trying not to look at him. “Best find a spot inside,” he says.
