Shades of Eva, page 36
And then I remembered. “The strap saw!” I whispered.
“Leave it!” Amelia said, and she grabbed my hand.
“But our prints are on it!”
“The rain will wash them out! Come on!”
We ran away from the saw and the stump and the tree, carrying the tiny coffin of my little brother into the woods, laughing and running like two school-kids who’d just pulled a fire alarm.
We stopped at the base of the slope at Cascadia Creek and looked back toward the Asylum high up into the night sky above us, toward the excitement, toward the water tower standing guard in the rain, and then turned to one another. I kissed Amelia. She didn’t pull back. She didn’t fight me. She returned a rain-soaked kiss in the night with lightning bolts blasting the earth around us.
Things were the way they ought to be. My head quit hurting for a moment. My body quit shaking. Elmer’s long wait was over. He had been reborn in a way, and now we were going to give him a last name and a proper burial, and I was one step closer to my proper station at my family table.
Amelia was holding up her end of the deal. I needed to hold up mine, but something new began aching inside of me. I began grieving a grief I had never anticipated. That tiny box felt as if it were burning holes in my hands, and I nearly dropped it.
***
Chapter 37
Thick layers of gauze,
Its contents, my heart.
A clinical perspective for friends,
Enough so the blood does not drip.
Only at the solitary presence of his tiny grave,
Do I sit and unwind all the layers
And view the deep gash.
It will never heal…I will only wrap it differently with time.
Wednesday: 2:12 a.m.
Late that night, I held in one hand the tiny fingers of my baby brother. There were ten of them, albeit some detached from their adjacent bones, but they were all there. I held Elmer’s tiny skull in my other hand, looking into the hollow orbits of his eyes, wondering what color those eyes used to be, wondering what expression they might convey if they could ever set themselves on me.
I sat there listening to Ully’s pseudo-confession repeating itself in telepathic silence somewhere inside of me, listening to the absence of his remorse ringing in my ear, watching his old, frail body pointing a likewise frail finger toward the black oak tree, images and sounds that seemed etched into my soul as if they were but a latent painting awaiting an artist’s canvas, or a song yet to find its way from the inkwell to its paper.
Amelia sat in a recliner for several hours watching me watching the bones, assembling them, disassembling them, crying over them. The jubilation that had overtaken me upon finding my brother had been replaced with a melancholy anguish the likes I could have never expected.
I could not believe that I had actually found him. But there he was. Here he was! And here, too, was the grief of a loss I had never allowed myself to grieve, the loss of a brother laid out before me in miniature, magnificent bony detail.
I was enraged. I was in despair. And I was afraid. For what was happening to me, for what had happened to Elmer, and for what was about to happen to all of us. I was afraid for what I was bent on doing because of it all.
I felt sick. I felt insane. I felt that smothering sensation born of a never-ending hug, one you can’t wriggle out of, and the familiar, all too similar pain of constriction deep inside my chest, the sort of pain that can take thousands of heartbeats from a man.
But Amelia moved over to me, held me, and suffered it with me, and in her embrace I could feel those components of grief in their entirety, and at once feel my heart still itself. Amelia must have sensed all of that energy: the anguish, the simultaneous relief, the rage, and a peaceful, newborn sympathy emanating from me. Together, we remembered.
I had never considered how painful that loss could be until Amelia had entered my life. I had never realized how agonizing that loss could be until I held the bones of my dead brother in my hands. Amelia was teaching me how to grieve, and she was demonstrating that gift by wrapping herself around me.
I couldn’t help feel that Amelia was grieving her own grief with me too, for the losses that had permeated her own life and her own family. I also couldn’t help wondering if she had ever been consoled as she was consoling me, as her aunt most assuredly had consoled my mother forty years ago. When I’d spent considerable energy on my own pain, I turned to Amelia and looked deep into her eyes. I was thanking her, expressing affection for her, expressing affection for loved ones and lost lives, and offering her a similar gesture of sympathy.
She understood and at once buried her face in my chest, and I held her.
Somewhere in those tears, sometime in that embrace, Amelia recited a poem to me that put fresh bandages on my heart, a poem for mothers and children and lovers that didn’t erase the past or fan a fire of vengeance because of it, but protected the past in a sort of respectful cocoon.
Thick layers of gauze,
Its contents, my heart.
A clinical perspective for friends,
Enough so the blood does not drip.
Only at the solitary presence of his tiny grave,
Do I sit and unwind all the layers
And view the deep gash.
It will never heal…I will only wrap it differently with time.
At once I understood the source of my mother’s angina. Her pain was a form of remembering in a society where every force around her was compelling her to forget. She was holding on the only way she knew how to—by holding onto the pain when she could have held on to the memory. If only memories weren’t so painful!
I could hear a car idling outside the Sacramento Drive Victorian. Amelia released me and stood up to look out the window.
“They are here,” she said, smiling a peaceful smile.
I didn’t ask who she was talking about. I didn’t care at the time.
I sat and brewed over the bones for another minute, and then handed them over. “Take them,” I said. “Let’s finish this.”
She crossed to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. I placed the bones carefully back into the toolbox, and Amelia took them out to the idling car.
I stood looking out the front window into the dark, rainy night air toward two strangers who had gotten out of the car. One of them took the container from Amelia. The other seemed to have given the window behind which I was standing a casual, yet concerning glance. I stepped back, not wanting to be seen.
I knew Amelia would tell me who they were when it mattered more to me.
In just twenty-four hours, I’d have all the answers I needed.
In my first session with Ben Levantle, he’d asked me to write about what happened in the shed in my shadow journal. What I think he was asking was, what did you do when it happened? While it happened? How did you react when you were being raped, for you did react somehow?
So how did I react?
I’d lost consciousness. I’d gone silent. I’d separated myself from the situation. Maybe I detached as children do under such trauma. Maybe in that moment I’d entered a mental world like Joanne Greenberg’s character, maybe a rose garden, maybe a bar, maybe a kingdom where my word was law and my first was king.
And since I did retreat—since I was gagged and had failed to scream—a question came to mind, one that I’d never considered. How did Mom know to come to the shed if I did not call out to her?
That’s what Ben was asking.
And so I started asking. I started asking Mom.
I picked up my journal and the pen Ben had given me and I took Ben’s advice. I gave my mother a voice. I asked her a question, and in a strange, very eternal, and perhaps a genetic way, she answered me. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: I’m so sorry, Mom, for not listening.
Mom: Mitchell, please don’t apologize. It wasn’t your fault.
Me: I just want you back so bad.
Mom: I always told you that I’m here in spirit.
Me: But I killed you. I helped kill you didn’t I, with the stress I used to put on you.
Mom: No, Mitchell. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. You put years back on my life. I would have never lived as long as I did without you.
Me: Why did you come to the shed, Mom? I don’t remember calling you.
Mom: What do you mean, Mitchell?
Me: Ben wants to know what I did when it happened. He wants to know what I did, and I want to know why you came. How did you know I needed you? I didn’t call you. I didn’t scream.
Mom: You didn’t need me, Mitchell.
Me: But I did! I blacked out.
Mom: You handled it, Son.
Me: But how? What did I do?
I walked to the living room and sat down in front of the computer. I was numb. The idea that I’d handled things was sitting on me like an elephant sitting on my chest. I was flashing back to the spaghetti supper spilled in that shed: to blood and noodle-like nerves and smoke, and to Mom standing there. She had a gun in her hand—but she didn’t have the key to the storage toolbox—I did.
So how did she get that gun?
I had that key in my pocket. I’d unlocked the drawer. I’d unlocked the toolbox before I went in. The door was banging. There was a thump. I heard someone moving in there. Mom never opened that drawer. She never knew Dad had a gun in there!
How did she have it if it wasn’t already….
And then it became clear to me. Someone else was in that shed. Someone else shot Fred Elms before Mom ever got there.
And then the phone rang.
“—Mitchell, it’s me. It’s Amelia. We have the results.”
Time seemed to stand still for just a moment. I looked to my watch. It read 5:12 AM. I moved to the window carrying the phone with me and stared out into the night.
“Go ahead, Amelia.”
“—The baby is your brother, Mitchell. He was Eva’s baby.”
“Who is the father?” I said.
Two words, no hesitation. “—Fred Levantle. They found Ben’s DNA was the DNA of a paternal uncle.”
I said nothing. I felt…disappointed. It was not the last name I wanted to give my brother. The name I wanted to give him was…was my father’s name.
“—We are closer,” Amelia said. “—Your mother was right. It wasn’t Brad’s child. She was right, Mitchell. It’s vindication for her. Are you still seeing Ben this morning?”
“Yes.”
“—Good. Because I don’t think we have much time. If we can’t find Fred, we’ll let the police find him for us. I’m heading back to the river house to clean up our trail. We need to talk about the gallery. You have the blueprints to the tunnels, right?”
“Yes. I found them last night.”
“—Okay. You work at noon today, right?”
“Yes. After my session.”
“—You can go. We’ve been listening to the scanner and to Ben’s line. They haven’t called him yet. But keep your phone on, okay?”
“I will.”
“—And you have Van Husan’s article, so you have photographs of what you’re looking for. Find the gallery. Call me. We get Emily’s things today and we’re gone.”
“Mom didn’t shoot my rapist!”
There was a long, awkward pause. “—What?”
“I shot him, Amelia! That sort of puts us on a leveler playing field. I’ve killed a man, too.”
“—How do you know that?”
I hesitated to answer her. How did I answer that and not sound like a freak? But I had to tell her the truth, so I threw caution to the wind.
“Mom told me so,” I said. “I think it was a genetic memory. She told me, and I wrote it down.”
***
Chapter 38
“Writing…is a deeper sleep than death…Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be dragged from my desk at night.” ~Franz Kafka
Wednesday, April 24, 1995 9:00 a.m.
Ben Levantle
The Dissociative Experiences Scale has three subscales: Imaginative Involvement; Amnesia; and Depersonalization. At any given time, one percent of the general population can score above twenty on any subscale. Any score above thirty on any factor suggests a strong likelihood of one of two major psychiatric disorders: schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder.
Mitchell’s scores were alarming: 40, 47, and 49, respectively.
Several of Mitchell’s answers were telling. He claimed to often miss parts of conversations; he was often unsure of having done something or having only imagined doing it. He was able to ignore a tremendous amount of pain. He stated that sometimes when he remembered certain experiences it was as if he seemed to be reliving them. He found evidence that he had done things he could not remember doing. He admitted to talking to himself when alone. He scored low on remembering key events in his life. Mitchell indicated that he saw himself as if he were looking at another person, and sometimes didn’t recognize his own reflection in a mirror. And lastly, Mitchell attested to viewing the world as if he were looking through a fog.
Perhaps I should have waited on the shadow journaling. I regret to say that I underestimated his trauma, and his addiction, and more importantly, I’d overestimated his resilience.
The best thing to do would be to refer him to a specialist and encourage him to check in to a clinic that could give him the assistance he required, which was, in my estimation, far beyond what I could offer. I had a colleague’s business card on the desk and ready when Mitchell entered my office. Problem was I’m not sure who entered my office that day. The man looked like Mitchell, but he had the eyes of someone else. He was tired. As close as he was to me, he was as distant a man as I had ever seen.
Before I could raise the subject of his test score, Mitchell withdrew his shadow journaling notebook, tossed it on my desk, told me to open it to a certain page, and then told me to read.
I offered a brief objection. He sat, but Mitchell only shook his head at the objection and closed his eyes as if he were too tired to argue. He said he needed to lie down, and he did. Within minutes he fell asleep.
Normally I wouldn’t think of reading anyone’s journal, and that goes for a shadow journal, as well. Even when asked. These things are confidential, personal, and if they are discussed in therapy they should be discussed openly, freely. Journals are notorious for harboring the deepest of secrets, but a shadow journal is one tick higher on the darkness meter. It involves a certain level of dark imagination. Clients almost always want to discuss what they’ve written, but Mitchell was the first to turn the exercise over to me with a blanket permission to read away.
As Mitchell drifted into a restless sleep, I wrestled with the choice of reading what he had to say or risking offense by not reading it. I chose to read, if anything to see what effect the writing had on man who, as far as my instinct was concerned, had several personalities raging inside of him.
Mitchell’s primary voice was assigned the moniker, the Critic. It seemed to represent the devilish, dare I say Satanic, voice of self-hatred. This inner voice of contempt can be quite cruel to say the least. To describe the homicidal hatred such as that expressed by Mitchell’s critic is not easy. It was an overwhelming voice of self-abasement I had not encountered since reading Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, in which the hero of Kafka’s macabre tale is suddenly and unexpectedly arrested and charged with existence.
To give you a taste of what I’m talking about, here is a passage from Mitchell’s journal:
Mitchell: Who are you?
Critic: I’m the rational part of you, the one who sees all the mistakes you make.
Mitchell: Did I kill Mom?
Critic: You may as well have shot her. Had you only listened to her and went inside, it might not have happened. Had you quit your whining, she might have lived. You were so spoiled!
Mitchell: I thought so.
Critic: You are the weakest, most pathetic son I’ve ever seen. You’re worthless. No wonder your father left you. It should have been you born into that place, not Elmer. You’re a pitiful excuse for a human being, let alone a son!
Mitchell: You’re right.
I turned a page and Mitchell woke up. He didn’t sit up. He just opened his eyes. I held the journal up for him to see and asked him, point blank, if he had considered the origin of this wellspring of utter wickedness, to which he replied with the question, “I hold the pen, don’t I?”
It was not the answer I wanted. As therapists we want that critical voice to be externalized, that is attributed to someone outside of the self. In Mitchell’s case it could have been the voice of his father, or his uncle, or another person with whom he’d suffered this sort of verbal abuse.
His answer, however, suggested the accusatory depravity of his critical voice was very much an internalized aspect of his personality. His responses to this Critic were completely submissive: You are right; I thought so; and perhaps the most despicable response, a question: Did I kill Mom, a question his Critic unequivocally affirmed.
Mitchell had taken on the archetypal prisoner identification in Kafka’s book whose guilt was never in doubt, a wormlike, shame-filled character who, according to the story, was worthy of little more than scorn, and ultimately, execution.
I sat there staring at my client, my mind oscillating between Mitchell’s words I hold the pen, don’t I, and something Kafka had written a hundred years ago about his occupation: “Writing…is a deeper sleep than death…Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be dragged from my desk at night.”
The next counselor Mitchell would see would have to instill in him a sense of differentiation from these types of voices. Mitchell would need to learn to argue with his critical side, to understand this voice as an extension of another person in his life, or a series of people. He’d need to learn that this voice is not his; that it is a voice of needless shame, and it isn’t correct.
