“Well, yeah,” I admit. “But we’re alike in the ways that count.”
“Trust me. You’re too close to see it.”
“See what?”
“How you’re changing. Surely you’ve noticed some of that. I certainly have. You’re feeling things so much more deeply. The pains of your life, the love that doesn’t ever get returned. This unfairness shakes your soul. Crying all the time now, aren’t you? Your lows are so much lower. Ever since your hormones kicked in and you got your period and the blood…”
Alix snorts at that, a few cracker crumbs exploding into the air. Stephanie, on the window seat, sits straighter and leans slightly forward, looking very interested,
way
too interested in my personal problems. I can’t believe that Ambrosia is talking about my hormones, my period, my soul, and my crying. But how do I stop her? I’m so flabbergasted that I’m not even capable of hearing full sentences right now. I take in only isolated phrases. “Full potential … late bloomer … finally had enough … waking up.”
By then she’s come full circle back to the subject of Raymond, and how different we are. “He is exactly whom you see, nothing buried inside, nothing to coax out and discover, nothing stuffed down and left to ferment. Within you, on the other hand, there are layers waiting to be revealed.”
There’s a big vase of white flowers on her desk, roses. A petal drops. She picks it up, eats it. “In you, Meg, there are untapped complexities. You know that. In this way you’re more like Alix, as deep as the ocean.”
Alix starts a little when she hears her name come up. She’s trying to look indifferent to the comment, but her eyes dart and her gaze drops to her hands. I can’t tell if she’s embarrassed or flattered, maybe both. Probably nobody ever called her deep before. “Well, we might be alike a little,” she says. “Meg hates everyone, too.”
“But I don’t really hate … not Raymond, not—” I protest.
Ambrosia stops me with a traffic-cop motion, the palm of her right hand held in my direction. She then swings her full attention to Stephanie. “Meg is also like you. Intense, passionate, eager, and willing to put aside mundane individualistic concerns for a greater purpose.”
Stephanie scoots to the edge of the window seat in disagreement. “Like me? Not at all. No offense, Meg, and I’m sure you have lots of passion tucked somewhere inside your quiet little self. But other than that one weird outburst in Western Civ, I’ve never seen you stand up for anything. I don’t have a clue what you care about. Do you even know?”
“That,” Ambrosia says with a wistful sigh, “is the crux of our problem. We see the surface and assume that’s the core. That may be true for most people, but not for us in this room. We have to dig before the others can see our true natures and understand the depth and breadth of what we share. Alix, why don’t you ask Meg a question about herself?”
Alix groans, embarrassment or flattery over and done with. “What is this, some stupid icebreaker game? Are we in kindergarten?”
Stephanie, too, has an edge on her voice. “I have a question. For Alix. If you love surfing so much, if the ocean is so important to you, why don’t you care when people treat it like shit?”
Alix doesn’t miss a beat. “How do you know what I care or don’t care about?”
“You’re selfish!”
“Who made you the judge of me?”
“You only care about you.”
“What do you know about me?”
The insults go on like this as Alix and Stephanie glare at each other. I’m sure Ambrosia is now sorry that she ever invited them. Only to my surprise, when I glance over, she actually seems to be enjoying their whole nasty back-and-forth. There’s an expression of amusement, even excitement, on her face. She turns to me with a sparkly smile.
“So Meg, a question for you. Whom do you hate more—the foster parents who make money off of your misery or the mom who threw you away like garbage the day you were born?”
Her question catches me in the throat. I actually feel it lodged there, a shape that’s huge and sharp and won’t let me swallow. I can’t believe that she asked that, that anyone would ask it. The question hangs there, grows and twists in me. I feel trapped, almost panicked for my life.
But then … but … and here’s the truth. The question she just asked? It’s the very question that I feel like I’m asking myself all the time, late at night, early in the morning, a question I keep stifling and never dare to answer, not even to myself. On the surface it’s the rudest, meanest question, but it’s also the most honest one I’ve ever been asked.
Alix and Stephanie have gone silent, waiting to see what I will do. Cry? Get mad? Answer?
When I turn to Ambrosia, I see encouragement in her. She honestly wants to know. She wants to get into my head and see what’s going on there. She doesn’t want me to lie or to pretend anymore. She wants to know who I really am—when I’m not faking, when I’m not scared, when I’m being totally true to myself.
The lump in my throat dissolves.
I give myself permission to answer: Whom
do
I hate most? In my mind, a blank face floats to the surface. No eyes, no nose, no hair. It’s the mother I never knew. But to express the level of hate I want to express right now, a blank face isn’t good enough. It won’t let me focus. I need actual eyes and ears and the sound of a hateful voice. I need specific deeds where I was wronged. I push aside the blank face and let the answer to Ambrosia’s question rise like scum on water.
“Foster mother,” I say. “This one. I hate her. I call her the Leech. It suits her.”
Ambrosia rubs a finger along the perfect polish of her thumb. “Should this leech be allowed to treat you the way she does?”
“No.”
“Louder! More outrage.”
“No!”
“Much better. And what would you like from her?”
I pretend to think about this, even though I’ve thought about it a lot. “I want her to feel sorry for how she treats me.”
Ambrosia’s voice drops. There’s disappointment in it. “That’s it?”
“Okay, I want her to feel really, really”—she coaxes me forward with her hands, like I’m trying to ease a car into a tight parking space—“
really, really
sorry. I want an apology.”
Her body shudders like I blew it and hit the car behind me. “That’s it? Words? Only words? Is this a wrong that can be erased by a little apology? That’s all you think you deserve?”
“I want…”
Eager, a second chance for me to get it right. “Go on.”
“… to be treated the way she treats her cat.”
Ambrosia slams her hand on the top of her scrapbook. “Is that seriously the best you can do, Meg? An opportunity for a wrong to be righted, for justice to be done. And all you can come up with is begging to be treated like a cat?”
“You should see how she treats the cat! Like royalty.”
“Come on! Think big, Meg! You deserve it. What about some payback? Shouldn’t a leech be punished for the blood-sucking misery she’s caused you?”
“Well…” I open to other possibilities. “She should pay back some of the foster care money she’s been paid.” Ambrosia’s eyes go even dimmer with disappointment. I try again. “Or how about she goes to jail for a while.”
Ambrosia shakes her head slowly, like I’m the biggest dimwit she ever met in her life, and now she has to provide the answer herself. “Meg, instant death or slow, excruciating torture?”
“Excuse me?”
“What do you want for this miserable leech? Death or torture?”
At that, Alix laughs hard and uninhibitedly. Ambrosia’s choices are so unexpected, so wild, that I laugh, too, a real giddiness flooding through me. Stephanie joins in, bouncing on the window seat. “Why not? That’s punishment fitting the crime, all right! For being part of a system that abuses kids? Death, definitely,” she says.
“Hold on!” Alix insists. “It’s Meg’s life of misery. Maybe she wants torture.”
I giggle nervously as they wait for my decision. I’ve never allowed myself to consider getting even with someone to this level. But it’s just a game, so why not? No one’s going to get hurt. I reach down past my usual forgiving thoughts to a more primal part of myself. As Stephanie asked, Why not? “You’re right! It’s my revenge. I guess I do want some torture first.”
“Excellent!” Ambrosia mimes writing my answer in her book. “Would you prefer the torture of actual physical pain or excruciating mental anguish?”
“Pick mental,” Alix advises. Her eyes go hard like she’s remembering something important. “Bruises heal, believe me. You can get used to bruises.” She launches into a cheerleading chant, giving it a hard rock beat: “Mental anguish, mental anguish, mental anguish.”
I give Alix a thumbs-up, warming to the game. “Mental anguish it is.”
This time Ambrosia actually does write it down. I get a jolt of satisfaction from watching her pen glide across the page and knowing that my deepest, meanest fantasy of revenge is down in ink and can’t be erased. She addresses me with a solemn expression: “What is this leech’s legal name?”
“Lottie Leach.” I spell the name like each letter is drenched in oil.
“By the way, you’re a natural at mental anguish,” Ambrosia compliments me.
I feel myself blush. “Thank you.”
She writes the name and closes the book.
We’ve gotten so lost in my revenge fantasy that we haven’t noticed how dark the room has become, even though it’s still afternoon. The new storm is rolling in fast, the sky almost black except in one spot, as if an invisible moon has come up and is sending down a celestial spotlight. The all-white garden with the stinking plant glows in the center.
Stephanie leans against the edge where the wall meets the window, and she yawns. “Wow, I’m tired,” she says. Alix’s face and the muscles in her back and arms are slack and relaxed. I’ve never seen her look so … peaceful. There’s no other word for it.
“Good time,” she says dreamily. “Too bad it’s fantasy.”
I, too, suddenly feel tired, like years of tension have drained out of me. Maybe it’s the aftermath of the revenge game. Maybe it’s the low pressure of the unusual weather. Maybe it’s something else.
Ambrosia starts humming a tune. I know that tune. It’s
the
tune, and I want to ask her about it. I try. My mouth opens, a question forms, but I go limp, so limp, too limp to even talk. Nine notes rising and falling. I count them. I hum along. Alix and Stephanie’s soft voices join in.
I let myself drift off thinking about the Leech, her cat, and my revenge. I feel exhausted in a totally satisfied way. Like when you use up every minute of your day, not wasting time by wishing that you had done something else or regretting where you are or who you’re with or what you did or didn’t say.
When you’re totally aware that this is your life, and for the first time, you know exactly how you’re supposed to be living it.
8
Time for the
stasimon.
In Greek tragedy, a musical interlude, a helpful aside to make sure you, the audience, understand what just transpired, a face-to-face so that we can be mind to mind.
In times past, it would be up to the chorus to sing the stasimon. But that was then. Big choruses and girl groups are a thing of the past. We now live in a culture of solo acts, live journals, celebrity autobiographies penned by those who are known around the world by one name only.
Jesus. Madonna. Tupac.
Ambrosia. I fit right in.
In case you’re wondering, Ambrosia is not some nom de stasimon to hide my identity. I am not unavenged Clytemnestra, nor her wronged daughter Iphigenia, nor Cassandra whose woeful story echoes so perfectly with mine. Why Aeschylus didn’t jot down my tale for all eternity is a mystery to me. But his literary snub hasn’t stopped my need for revenge. That remains endless, enduring, immortal.
So given my longevity, who is better suited to make sure you understand how the plot is congealing and thickening?
I’ve called them and they’ve done their first experiment. It’s written down in my book. So for now, I let them sleep. But not for long. Too much rest and they will not feel enough rage for what I’ve endured. Sleep can suck the strength of the serpent.
Awake, awake, awake, you artists of pain. Ugly and beautiful, that potent and combustible mix.
FIRST STASIMON,
THE BOOK OF FURIOUS
9
I
couldn’t have been asleep
for long, maybe only ten minutes, but when I wake I feel refreshed, like after a full night’s sleep. We laugh a little about my revenge fantasy. It was so much fun. After that, Stephanie takes off on her bike. Alix gives me a lift down the hill in her old car, and even though the drizzle has turned to steady rain, I ask to be dropped a couple of blocks away from the Leech’s house. I want to walk the rest of the way. I wish I could walk forever and avoid the reality of what’s waiting for me. I know that what we said and did in Ambrosia’s bedroom was just a silly game, but I’m still pumped and not ready to give up the feeling.
I turn the corner and there’s my living nightmare waiting for me: Lottie Leach in one of her old flowered muumuus on the front doorstep. This is not a good sign. As I tentatively approach the house, her eyes narrow hard in my direction. I know that look. She’s going to kill me for being late.
Gone is any hope of an apology. Gone is any hope of my life ever changing.
I hang back, trying to forestall the inevitable. She shifts her weight, moves one foot down a step and brings the other to meet it, another right foot, another left. For her, this qualifies as a rush toward me. I have plenty of time to run in the other direction, but my usual feelings of helplessness whoosh back and take over. Where am I going to run? Whom can I run to?