A Fairmount Narrative

Wrote this for one of my college classes. Appreciate any feedback.

 

Sunshine in the Group Room, winter’s joke�"

we’re deep in leap year February, but

might as well be April, with sun that hot

and honey. Know what else is funny? Margie

mouth pressed open against the window glass

trying to devour light that tastes of

tulips and Easter egg innocence, her

open lips an echo of Munch’s Scream.

(And I know she screams in dreams sometimes, like

a child might.) Her tongue kisses leave behind

            saliva stains on the panes.

 

Me? I am senseless, desensitized

 by light on linoleum, and the f**k you of

a schizo in solitary (again)

whose screams duet with the percussion of

fists a room over, where Bertha’s anger

has gotten loose. I came last week,

the day they put the new toilet in. That

was about how my first day went, with the

plumber hauling in the urinal, mouth

moving round the stem of a Lucky Strike.

There was a boy in the waiting room too,

must have been nine, approaching double digits

on frozen time-- here they take the clocks off

of walls, and jeans and sneakers off of you. 

(Shoelaces are easy garrotes in the

violent wing, and lazy nooses for those

aping Monroe.)

 

But Group is about to begin. There are

thirty of us, all women, some full grown,

though Millie is only 16. We sit

in a circle of chairs, unless you’re Em

or Bertha. Then you’re slumping sloppy;

Em coasts by on a Methadone high, and

the Seroquel hits Bertha like a freight.

Doc must have set her straight; she’s fairly

docile and drooling on the floor. Upped her

meds�"when she wakes she’ll call it mind-rape,

while Em will ask for more. Em got into

sex work and heroine, but ended up

homeless. She had to choose between a room

or her daily fix, and the drugs liked her best.

Bertha is schizophrenic, once jailed for

the assault of a weed-dealing boyfriend

prone to violence. When lucid, she inveighs

against the prison guards who “raped her up

the a*s!” Edits are supplied by a nurse,

with the timid suggestion of:

‘cavity-searched’.

 

In Group we all go around and share,

pollute the air with our private aches and

hope someone somehow will understand.

Nikita will sit a few chairs from me�"

She’s a student from Penn. They put her in

because she overdosed on cough syrup,

and before that was drowning in depression.

On my right, Angie will smirk the smirk of

a Cynic in private pain, will refrain

from speech although after she will seek to

give me a formal education in

the art of men. She is glamorous, her

teeth a white, gap-toothed flash between her

blood-red lips. When she walks she swings her hips

and tells me how to kiss with your tongue.

I think of Angie of the Rolling Stones:

 There ain’t a woman that comes close to you

Come on Baby dry your eyes.

And Angie says, “here’s how to make a man jump

your bones: I’ve been married five times. I’ll

tell you the secret, the way to charm a man

into your hand. End the conversation

first, and always walk away. Act bored. Men

only really want the things they can’t have.”

 

Me? Well, you probably already guessed.

When you are thin like me you get stuck by

the mirror often, or any reflective

surface really, counting ribs, tracing the

sternum’s piano keys with the fascination

of an archaeologist. You browse over

your body with careful intent as you

excavate, to discover what new

landmark has appeared with the latest

1,000 calorie deficit. You measure time

on the inches of your appearing femur,

your bony shoulder--your breast de-age to

12-year old’s nubs as your face gets older.

And although sometimes you hold the bowl of

your ribs in your hands and feel sure that you

are dying, more often you are lying

to yourself, basking in the praise of

magazines and other women who exclaim

over how thin, how slender you are. The scale

offers praise too, the quantifiable

pleasure of good grades.

 

I’ll can it now, Group is starting. Someone

soon will speak. Not me�"I’ll whittle myself

to death in here, in silence. You’ll see--just

come back next week.