The Best American Essays 2016 Part 3

I was living with Mami in South Beach. She'd been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia three years before and was on a c.o.c.ktail of antipsychotics and anxiety medications. She was also using cocaine. Our nights together were unpredictable. Sometimes my mother slept for sixteen hours straight. Sometimes she paced around the apartment talking to herself, laughing, screaming at me for doing G.o.d knows what. Sometimes she threw plates across the room, or threatened to burn me with a hot iron, or gave me a full-blown a.s.s-whipping. I was five-feet-six by the time I was eleven, four inches taller than my mother, something she loved to remind me of as she was kicking my a.s.s-the bigger I got, the bigger my beat-down had to be. Eventually I started hitting her back. We came to blows regularly.

That weekend I was alone with my mother. She was manic, talking to herself, screaming at me, insisting that I'd stolen a pair of her heels. She searched the entire apartment, turning over cushions, upending tables, emptying all the drawers onto the floor, pulling hangers out of the closets. When she didn't find her shoes, she made me search, standing behind me as I opened and closed and opened and closed drawers, as I turned over mattresses and emptied out the bathroom cabinets. I did this over and over, and every time I didn't find the pair of heels, she'd slap the back of my head, harder each time. Until I refused to search anymore.

I knew what it would mean, to defy my mother, but I did it anyway. I turned to her, balled my hands into fists, took a step back, and said, "I didn't take your G.o.dd.a.m.ned shoes." I turned to leave, and that's when I felt the whack on the back of my head-hard, much harder than before-and then a shower of blows.

She beat me until I fell, and after I fell, and stopped only when she was good and ready.

Afterward she put on multiple layers of makeup, slipped into a slinky silver dress, found a subst.i.tute pair of heels, and announced that she was going dancing.

I was still on the floor when she walked out the door, couldn't have gotten up even if I'd wanted to.

I got up a few hours later and took my mother's pills, all of them-antipsychotics, sleeping pills, anxiety pills. I washed them down with half a bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid. I'd heard the stories about toddlers who'd gotten poisoned with Drano, or detergent, or bleach, but all we had was Dawn. If we'd had any Drano or bleach, I would've downed that too. I was determined to die.

Later I sat in the living room, waited for my mother to come home.

When she found me, I was on my knees on the kitchen floor, throwing up blue.

I don't remember falling asleep, or making my way from the living room to the kitchen, or being on my knees.

There is the faint memory of riding in the ambulance, sitting up on the stretcher, someone's hand pressing hard against my chest, shaking me, bringing me back from wherever I was.

There is a woman's voice: What is your name? Open your eyes. What did you take? Don't fall asleep.

There I am sinking, sinking. Then I'm gagging, a tube up my nostril, down my throat. Don't fight it. Don't cough. Swallow.

There is chaos, the shuffle of people all around me, moving me, prodding me, holding me up until I'm throwing up charcoal into a plastic container.

There I am: stomach thrusting against the back of my throat until my eyeb.a.l.l.s are almost bursting until there's charcoal vomit splattered down the front of my T-shirt until there's nothing left inside me and I realize I'm in a hospital and I'm in a hospital bed and there is my mother and there is my father and there I am. I am eleven and I am alive.

I used to imagine that the French woman knew something about pain, about planning. That she had tried before, as a child, as a teenager. That she sat in her bedroom and listened to whatever was on the radio, wrote poems about darkness, dreamed of jumping off bridges and a.r.s.enic c.o.c.ktails and death by electrocution. Because she was no ordinary girl.

I'd like to think that someone loved her-before she jumped, and after-even if she didn't know it.

Or maybe she did.

That Halloween we decided to throw a party. We spent the night at Kilo's and woke up around 2:00 p.m., crusty-eyed and cotton-mouthed and ready for trouble. I called up my aunt t.i.ti, who lived a short walk from Kilo's neighborhood-and smoked weed all day every day-and told her we needed a place for a party. An hour later we were at her apartment on Harding Avenue, smoking her Krypto and listening to her '80s freestyle. We called everyone we knew with the details. Bring your own weed, we told them, and wear a costume.

Whenever somebody's mom would ask about a chaperone, we put t.i.ti on the phone. She gave them her address and phone number, said please and thank you, laughed easily. She was every teenage hoodlum's dream, my aunt. Like an older best friend who would cover for you, go to court with you when you didn't want your parents to find out you got caught stealing at Woolworth's or the bodega around the corner, who acted like a teenager even though she was in her twenties. She partied with us, smoked us out, then took us to the movies or skinny-dipping on South Beach. She taught us not just how to fight but how to fight dirty, to bite the soft spots on the neck and inner thigh, to pull off earrings and hair weaves, to use anything as a weapon: pens and pencils, keys, a sock full of nickels, Master combination locks.

That night Boogie and I dressed up as toddlers, parting our hair into pigtails, dotting our faces with eyeliner freckles, baby-blue pacifiers hanging from the gold chains around our necks. We wore Mickey Mouse and Pooh Bear pajamas, sucked on Charms Blow Pops, drank malt liquor out of baby bottles. The apartment filled up with our friends from Nautilus, Kilo's friends from the barrio, t.i.ti's weedhead friends. We sat in a circle on the living room floor and pa.s.sed around a Dutch, blasting House of Pain on t.i.ti's stereo, until Kilo and I got bored of watching everybody jump around and stole a dozen eggs from her kitchen.

Outside, we climbed onto the hood of somebody's old Chevy Caprice and flung eggs at trick-or-treaters, some old scutterhead stumbling down the street, a guy in a pickup. Afterward, when all the eggs were splattered down Seventy-Seventh and Harding, we jumped off the car, Kilo all sweaty, the malt liquor in my baby bottle already warm. Kilo lit two cigarettes, handed me one. I slurred a faded version of Lil' Suzy's "Take Me in Your Arms," and we started slow-dancing right there on the sidewalk, Kilo breathing smoke into my neck-danced in the yard next to t.i.ti's apartment building and collapsed onto the gra.s.s. Then we lay there, side by side, laughing and laughing at nothing, at everything. Everybody else seemed so far away, even though we lay there listening to their coming and going, the building's front door opening, closing, footsteps scurrying across the lawn, our friends coming over to say, "You got gra.s.s all up in your pigtails," and, "I think they pa.s.sed out," and, "The h.e.l.l you doing down there?"

When Boogie and Papo came over, one of them kicked my sneaker. Then Papo said, "Think they'll notice if I p.i.s.s in their mouths?"

"I'll f.u.c.k you up," Kilo said.

"You dead?" Boogie asked, giggling.

"My eyes are open," I said.

"Don't mean you can't be dead," Boogie said.

I didn't look over at Kilo, but I could hear him breathing beside me. He wasn't laughing like the rest of us. I wouldn't realize it until much later, after the Krypto and the Olde English had worn off, after that miserable fall with my mother, after going back to my father's house, after Kilo had cheated with a girl from the barrio and gotten her pregnant and named the baby Mikey, like he hoped this Mikey would be the one to save him. After hating her for stealing him from me, after stealing him back years later, even if only for a little while, after the two of us, trying to be those same two kids we'd been, got drunk at the beach on a Sat.u.r.day night, snorted an eight ball in just a couple hours, after he watched me take one b.u.mp of scutter after another and told me to Slow down, ma and Watch out, baby girl, go easy, that's how motherf.u.c.kers OD and I told him that that was exactly how I wanted to go and that it would be the best way to die and that n.o.body would miss me anyway, after he s.n.a.t.c.hed the baggie from me, took my face in his hands, his breath rank like stale cigarettes and Hennessy, and said Don't ever let me hear you say that s.h.i.t again and I don't wanna lose you and after I let him hug me and thought about the two of us lying in the gra.s.s that Halloween when we were only thirteen and fourteen, how we were just kids but seemed so much older, already so tired, so d.a.m.n tired it was like we'd been fighting a war. That's when it would hit me, that Kilo wasn't that different from me, that maybe back then he'd also been dreaming about dying. Maybe it was seeing his homeboy shot down right in front of him and having to look in the mirror every day, face himself, accept that he was still here, still alive, Mikey's memory like a ghost that was always calling.

But that Halloween, the two of us on the gra.s.s, all I knew was that I felt nothing and everything all at once. Boogie and Papo lingered for a while, joking, smoking, laughing, and I didn't even notice when they sneaked back to the party. I couldn't tell how long we lay there-could've been minutes, could've been hours-but I sat up when we almost got trampled by a pack of kids running wild through the yard toward t.i.ti's building. There were like six or seven of them, boys and girls we went to school with, sprinting, pushing each other out of the way, calling out, "Move!" and "Run!" and "Go-go-go-go-go!"

Later, in the middle of t.i.ti's living room, with the music turned down and their eyes wide, everybody listening and holding their breaths, they would tell a story about how they'd been hanging on the corner of Seventy-Seventh and Harding. How a couple of them had been sitting on the hood of a car, while Kilo and I were pa.s.sed out in the yard or pretending to be dead or whatever it was we were doing. How some guys in a pickup had pulled up right next to them, how the pa.s.senger had rolled down the window, pulled out a gun, and asked which one of them had thrown the eggs. And while I stood there, the spinning in my head already fading, the dancing and the laughing and Kilo's face against my neck already like a dream I was sure to forget, I wouldn't feel guilty for egging those guys, and I wouldn't feel bad that my friends almost got shot because of us. I would resent them for being that close to death. I would imagine, like something out of a movie, the truck pulling up, the slow opening of the tinted window, moonlight reflecting on the gla.s.s, then the barrel of the gun, like a promise.

I walked into the school counselor's office one afternoon, on a whim. I told myself it was because I had a math test during fifth period that I hadn't bothered to study for, that I didn't want to see Ms. Jones's face in front of the cla.s.s as she handed out the test, how she'd be staring at me as I took one and pa.s.sed it back. Truth was I couldn't care less. Every time Ms. Jones called me to her desk and asked, her voice almost a whisper, why I hadn't turned in any homework that week or the week before that, or why I never brought books to school, I just shrugged, rolled my eyes. The last three times, she'd threatened to send me to the princ.i.p.al's office if it happened again. Next day, same s.h.i.t. I'd walk up to her desk again, cross my arms, say, "My bad," and act like it was the first time in my life I'd ever heard of books or homework. Eventually Ms. Jones gave up, like I knew she would.

I didn't know what I'd say when I walked into Ms. Gold's office. She was known in most cliques as the counselor for the losers, druggies, troublemakers, kids who got suspended, kids who fought or brought knives to school, kids who flunked so much they were already too old for Nautilus-kids whose parents were drunks or junkies, or whose parents beat them, homeless kids, bullied kids, kids with eating disorders, or brain disorders, or anger problems. So naturally, when I showed up at her door, she knew exactly who I was.

"Come on in, Jaqui," she said, her voice hoa.r.s.e, like she smoked a few packs a day. "Have a seat." She ran her hand through her long mane of orange hair, and I noticed her fingernails were long as h.e.l.l and painted gold. She dressed like she was a young woman-ivory pencil skirt, short-sleeved blouse, black high heels-and smelled like floral perfume. She was an attractive woman and wore lots of makeup, but up close, you could tell how old she really was. Older than my mother. Probably a grandmother. This made me like her right away.

I stepped inside the small office and sat in the nearest seat. It was bigger than I'd imagined, with a few chairs set up in a circle. I wondered how she knew my name and if there would be other people coming.

"I've been wondering when you'd show up," she said, sitting at her desk chair. She leaned over and opened a drawer, rummaged through some files, then pulled one out. "I was going to get you out of cla.s.s if you didn't make it over to me soon."

I tried not to look surprised. "For real?"

She smiled at me a long time, looking me over, studying me. Then, finally, she said, "I know all about you."

I doubted that she knew all about me, but at the same time, I was afraid of what she did know, and how. "Like what?"

She opened the file and put on her reading gla.s.ses, flipped through the pages quickly. "Well," she said, "I know you've been suspended quite a few times." She observed me from behind her reading gla.s.ses.

"Okay," I said, not surprised to find that everything she thought she knew she'd read from my school records.

She kept going, not taking her eyes off me. "I know you've been in a number of fights, in and out of school, that you ran away from home a year ago and the police picked you up two weeks later, that you were arrested last month for aggravated battery, and you have a hearing coming up." She took her gla.s.ses off and waited.

I took a deep breath but said nothing.

"I know you're angry," she said, really emphasizing the word angry, "but what I don't know is why."

I shrugged and looked down at my sneakers, suddenly feeling like I'd made a mistake, like I'd rather be faking my way through Ms. Jones's math test than sitting there being questioned.

"So why don't you tell me," she said, closing the file without even looking at it.

"I don't know," I said.

She nodded. "Why don't you tell me about your situation at home?"

I had no idea what she meant by "situation," but I just shrugged again, rolled my eyes like I'd done so many times with Ms. Jones. "What do you wanna know?"

"Let's start with what brought you here."

I considered telling her that I'd just wanted to get out of cla.s.s, but somehow I didn't think she'd like that. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them. "Sometimes I live with my father," I said, "and sometimes I live with my mother."

"So they share custody."

I shook my head no. "I just go whenever I want."

"Where are you living now?"

"Mostly with my mother. But sometimes I don't sleep there."

"So where do you sleep?"

"Friends' houses, boyfriend's house, the beach."

"The beach?" she said, raising her eyebrows.

It could've been her expression, the way her face contorted into something I read as disbelief, then anger, then pity, even though she was supposed to be the counselor for all the school's f.u.c.kups, so she was supposed to be the woman who'd heard it all, seen it all. Or could've been something else-that I'd admitted this for the first time, confessed it to someone other than my delinquent friends, even though it wasn't really anything, nothing compared to what still needed confessing. That once, last year, I stood in front of the mirror in my father's bathroom with a box cutter, determined to slit my wrists, but then couldn't do it, and instead I carved up my upper arm so deep it left a scar. That sometimes I saw myself climbing up on the concrete balcony in my father's high-rise building, saw myself sitting on the edge, leaning forward, letting the pull of gravity take me. That even though I didn't like to think about it, I found myself catching feelings for girls, that sometimes when I was around Boogie the swelling in my chest and throat was like a bomb that was ready to explode.

But I couldn't say any of this. I didn't know why. But right then, sitting in Ms. Gold's office, the last place I'd expected to be even an hour before, I started to cry.

The second time was that winter. Holiday break. My mother was off her meds, and we'd been fighting for three days straight. We screamed at each other because there was no food in the house. Because my music was too loud. Because, my mother claimed, there had been a woman in the apartment going through her things and I'd been the one to let her in. Mami always had these stories-a woman who came into our living room and moved all the furniture while we slept, a man who kept looking in our windows at 2:00 a.m., people sending her messages through the television or the radio, a fat guy who came in and ate all our food while my mother stood in the kitchen, paralyzed with fear.

That morning my mother woke me before sunrise as she paced around the apartment talking to herself, refusing to take her pills or let me sleep. I covered my head with my pillow, and she pulled it off, started shaking me. I needed to get up, she said, help her check all the windows so n.o.body could get in the house. I turned over, my back to her.

She shook me again, yelled, "I said get up!"

"Fine!" I said. "I'm up." I'd already learned that when my mother was like this, I had no choice but to do what she ordered. So I ran around the apartment checking all the windows-the living room, her bedroom, my bedroom. I made sure the deadbolt on the front door was locked, then got back into bed.

Ten minutes later my mother burst into my room, insisting that I'd left the windows open again. But this time I didn't get up. I was awake but refused to indulge her. She yelled. I yelled back. She threatened. I threatened back. Then she left.

She came back with a steak knife, pointed it at me like it was a sword.

"Who are you?" she asked.

I jerked up and hit my head on the wooden beam of the top bunk. "What the f.u.c.k are you doing?" I jumped out of bed and on instinct grabbed my pillow, the closest thing I could use as a shield.

"Tell me who you are," she said, "because you are not my daughter."

I should've cried, begged her to stop, to put the knife down. I should've apologized and told her I loved her. But I didn't.

"Are you serious?" I asked. "I never wanted to be your daughter! You're not my mother. You're a crazy f.u.c.king crackhead!"

She stood there for a while without saying a word.

I kept my eye on the knife, gripping the pillow with both hands.

"You are small," she said finally, "like a fly. You are so small I could squash you. You are n.o.body. You are nothing."

I didn't believe what my mother said-not at first. I took it the same way I always took her rambling-everything she said was nonsense. But after she turned back for her room, left me standing there with the pillow in my hands, everything quiet except for the sound of my own breathing, something changed. It was like a switch that got flipped and everything that happened after was mechanical.

Dropping the pillow on the bed, the beeline for the kitchen for a gla.s.s of water from the tap, a car horn blaring across the street somewhere.

My mother rushing to the living room window, peeking through the blinds.

The bottles of my mother's prescriptions on the counter, untouched for weeks.

My mother running back into her bedroom, slamming the door shut.

The first pill, a drink of water. The second pill, another drink. The third, fourth, fifth, another drink.

My mother coming back out of her bedroom, pacing back and forth. Bedroom, living room, bedroom.

Another pill, another drink. Bedroom, living room. Another pill and another and another.

The car horn again.

The way my mother walked past me so many times but never once turned to look at me, to see me killing myself again and again.

The wanting, more than anything else, to sleep.

My mother saying, "You are small."

My mother saying, "You are n.o.body."

My mother saying, "You are nothing."

The second time, I swallowed all my mother's pills, locked myself in my room, didn't sit to wait until she found me. The second time, I slid a dresser in front of the bedroom door to keep my mother out. The second time, I woke sick to my stomach, stumbled out of bed but couldn't get the dresser out of the way in time to make it to the bathroom, so I threw up all over the carpet in my bedroom. The second time, I woke to find that, again, I had not died.

In my bedroom, spewing a foul white foam that I a.s.sumed was my mother's pills, and then the Kentucky Fried Chicken that Kilo had brought over late last night-blowing chunks of chicken and mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese-I was sure that if I didn't die of a prescription drug overdose, then the retching would kill me. I bent over the mess on the carpet and the vomiting turned to dry heaving.

It took me a few minutes to straighten up, to push the dresser out of the way, to wash my face and brush my teeth, to get my sneakers on and my hair in a ponytail, to stuff some of my things in my backpack and go.

I walked past Normandy Park, feeling jittery and weak, headed toward the Circle-K, where I bought a small bottle of Gatorade and got some change for the pay phone. Outside, I sipped some of the Gatorade, then picked up the phone, my hands shaking. And then I threw up again, just liquid this time, left the receiver dangling, and bent over right there on the spot.

Again it took me a minute to get myself together. Then I finally made the call. I put two quarters in the phone and dialed my father. The line rang four or five times before Papi picked up.

"h.e.l.lo," he said, but not like a question, more like he was annoyed at whoever was calling. I was surprised by the sound of his voice, which I hadn't heard in months-not since I ran away to my mother's house. His voice stirred something inside me, and I couldn't believe how much I missed him, how much I needed him. I wanted to ask him for help. I wanted to tell him everything that happened since I left, ask him to come and get me, take me home. But he'd let me down so many times, and I'd let him down so many times, I was sure it was the only thing we would ever do-let each other down.

"h.e.l.lo?" he said again.

But I couldn't do it. So I hung up.

I stood there for a long time, feeling tired and weak and so sick. I considered just going back to my mother's, getting back in bed, letting myself drift off. But I wasn't sure if the pills could still work, if my body had absorbed some of them before I threw up, if there was still a chance I could die.

I picked up the receiver again, but this time I called Kilo.

Twenty minutes later, Kilo's dad picked me up in front of my mom's building. He was driving his station wagon, Papo riding shotgun, and Kilo in the back. I got in, dropped my backpack on the floor, and thanked them for picking me up.

"Where to?" Kilo's dad asked.

I gave him my father's address in South Beach, and he made a right out of my mom's complex.