Girl in Pieces (40 page)

In my small, tidy room, I lie on the bed, heart thumping, mind whirring. What did Felix mean, an
emotion
? I worked so hard on those pieces, looked at all the books in the library, did everything the drawing manual said, practiced and practiced. Isn't that what you do as an artist? I think back to Tony's gallery show, when Ariel asked me to come to her drawing workshop. Ariel said I would never get anywhere unless I examined myself. Made myself
my
subject. I choke back a laugh. What does Felix want me to do, draw myself ? No one is going to want to see that, a girl with split skin and a sad face.

I press my face against the wall. I can hear them out on the back deck, listening to a soulful singer on the record player, voices mingling with the intermittent cries from the dark desert. I have nothing now. Not Riley, not Mikey, not Ellis, not my drawing. I suck in my breath, try to stem a fresh wave of sobs. I'm so tired, again. Tired of
trying.
My nose leaks; my eyes throb with the effort of holding tears back. I curl up, clutching my knees to my chest. I miss Riley so much, even though I know how wrong it is: his smoky, liquidy smell is ingrained in my memory; my fingertips ache when I imagine the velvety slope of his back; my heart catapults in my chest.

I rock back and forth on the bed. My mind fills with the bathroom down the hall with its box of razor blades under the sink. The kitchen with its slinky promise of knives. I uncurl myself, force myself to feel around my body, count off the scars and bandages, the sheer accumulation of my own damage.

There is nothing else I can do to myself.

Louisa comes to me then, an image out of nowhere: on fire, her fine hair rising in flame, skin melting off like butter.

I sit up so fast tape pops on my stomach. I press it back into place, wincing at the pain. My backpack's in the closet. I drop to my knees, digging inside. It's the only thing Wendy didn't destroy.

Louisa's composition books are still tightly bound. I work at the tape with my fingers.

The first page of the first book begins, in small, neat black script:
A girl's life is the worst life in the world. A girl's life is: you are born, you bleed, you burn.

Louisa's words hurt, but they are true, they ring through me. I read everything that night, each book. I can't stop.

It's early morning and I haven't slept yet, Louisa's words still electric inside me.
Cutting is a fence you build upon your own body to keep people out but then you cry to be touched. But the fence is barbed. What then?
When I pull myself out of bed Linus tells me that Felix is letting me work in one of the empty bedrooms, the smallest one. Devvie and Tanner move a tall table, a stool, and boxes of supplies—pads, pencils, inks, pens, and paints—into the room for me. Devvie is an angular girl with a penchant for flannel shirts and track pants. She is something called ABD at New York University.

The room smells musty. Outside, the horse nickers. Tanner takes him out for a ride every morning at this time. I sit on the floor, dirt and dust sticking to the backs of my calves.

Felix said to do something I loved. Or felt complicated passion for. Ariel said to use myself. Louisa gave me the story of her life.
A drunk and a drunk met and they made a mess: me. I was born with a broken heart.

I trace the scars on my legs, feel up under my shirt at the years of cuts healed and unhealed. It is all I am, now, these lines and burns, the moments behind them.
A girl is born.

In the musty room, I select a sketchbook with thick, creamy paper, and dark pens. Using a ruler, I begin a frame on one piece of paper, testing the flow of the black pen, its feel in my fingers. It works like water over the paper, no pushing like with charcoal. On another piece of paper, I sketch, lightly, testing myself, testing the images that appear.

A girl is born.
I start with myself: a girl with clumpy hair in a yellowy, fuzzy cardigan on the first day of a new school, all her scars hidden under the sweater and her jeans. What a sad girl she is, mouth clamped shut, eyes burning, a force field of anger and fear vibrating inside her. She watches the other kids, how easily they move around each other, laughing, adjusting headphones, whispering. She wants to say
My father is in the river down the street
but she says nothing. She meets a beautiful girl with wild purple hair and white, white skin. The beautiful, momentous girl smells sweet and creamy, like face powder and too much black eyeliner.

The beautiful, momentous girl is
fucking angelic.

Louisa wrote,
Each aberration of my skin is a song. Press your mouth against me. You will hear so much singing.

I draw and lose the hours.

As the story progresses, the character of Charlie loses more clothing, piece by piece, her pale young woman's flesh taking on more and more damage as the arc unfolds. I fall asleep on my arms on the table. I wake and resume the story. I am no good at talking, no good at making the right words reel from my brain to my mouth and out, but I'm good at
this,
my pictures and the words I can write. I'm good at
this.

This is what Felix meant. What you do should fly through your blood, carrying you somewhere.

My fingers begin to cramp, and I need some space, and air. I leave the house quietly. I walk for a long time in the desert, finding a shaded spot under a cottonwood to rest, balancing one of Louisa's books on my knees. It's quiet and empty and full out here, in the desert, all at once. I burrow deep into Tanner's fleece.

Louisa wrote,
People should know about us. Girls who write their pain on their bodies.

I read and reread her life slowly. It's difficult and it hurts, but she gave me her words and her story, every bloody bit of it.

No one bothers me. No one comes to ask what I'm doing. When I'm hungry, I go to the kitchen and make a sandwich, fill a glass of water, return to the room, and keep drawing the comic.

I think it takes three days, maybe four, I can't tell, I don't know, but at some point, I just have a feeling, something clear and final that says:
Finished. For now, finished.

I gently gather all my papers and put them in order, place them in a tidy pile on the tall table, clean up the pens, dump the pencil shavings in the basket under the window.

Everything Casper wanted me to say I've drawn instead.

I have a voice. I have a place for my voice.

I look down at the sloppy, too-big sweatpants Linus gave me, the waistband rolled down three times, and the giant NYU T-shirt Devvie loaned me. I think of my overalls back in the wrecked and bloody apartment, my long jersey shirts, the clompy black boots. It's time for different things. It's time for me to speak again.

I strip off the borrowed clothes, shivering in the cool air from the open window. I wrap a gray wool blanket around myself and leave the room, quietly slipping out the back door. I sit on the steps for a long time, in the fresh cold, listening to the desert unfold around me, its chirps and squeaks and howls, listening to the sounds of Felix murmuring inside, Linus and Tanner squabbling over cards.

It sounds like home, all of it.

A few days later, when it's time to leave, Felix hugs each of us, even me. I shrink from his touch at first and then, consciously, force myself to relax. He rubs my back with his sturdy hands. He kisses my forehead. Linus and Tanner pack the car; Devvie has made several sandwiches for us, arranged a bag of fruit and cheeses, though I suspect Tanner will want to stop for salty treats.

I adjust the waistband of my skirt. It's army green, cotton, falling just above my knees, four dollars at the Value-Thrift in Santa Fe. I look down at my plain black sneakers, the Santa Fe High School Raiders T-shirt, short-sleeved and light brown, the scars on my legs. What was it Blue said?
Who gives a shit.

Linus took me shopping and automatically walked us to the denim section of the store and started sifting through hangers of jeans and overalls, thinking that was what I'd like. I left her there and wandered around. When she found me, my arms were full of plain cotton skirts and T-shirts and one pilled black cardigan with shiny silver buttons. I shook my head at her arms full of overalls and said, “Not anymore.” She raised her eyebrows, smiled, and took them back to the rack.

Felix says, “Did you know, Charlotte, that there is a whole, interesting history of self-mortification?”

I stare at him, unsure of the word, but then I think I understand.

He nods. “It's true, my dear. Some people used it as a way to get closer to God.” He raises his chin to me. “Are you trying to get closer to God, Charlotte?”

I shake my head. “Fuck no,” I say. Felix laughs and helps me into the car.

Linus starts the car and we drive, but she stops just where we should turn onto the road, looking in the rearview mirror. I turn around. Felix is lumbering down the gravel, his fuzzy slippers raising rivulets of dust. He bends down by my window, out of breath, motions for me to lean closer.

In my ear, he whispers, “You be
you,
Charlotte. You be you.”