The cops took me to the hospital in the back of a cruiser and dropped me off at the emergency room and a giant, muscly guy with a whistle around his neck who worked in psych showed me around my new lodgings which included a white room with nothing in it but a drainhole in the middle of the floor. The giant told me that’s where I’d go if I misbehaved. Bring it, I said. I turned around to leave and he grabbed my arm and I used my other fist to punch him in the head. Nope, he said, you can’t do that. That’s exactly the thing you can’t do. I managed to squirm away from him and took off down the hallway but an orderly at the end intercepted me with his meal trolley and I plowed right into it and wiped out on the slick of apple juice that spilled in the collision. I knocked myself out when my head hit the floor and woke up wearing a disposable diaper and chained to a bed. What. Ever. They kept me tied up for two days and force-fed me anti-psychotic drugs which fucked up my coordination and made my eyeballs do strange things. I would focus them on something in my room, the wall or the end of the bed, but my vision would go elsewhere. I mean if I was looking at the wall beside the window, for instance, I was seeing the ceiling, even though—
I went downstairs to look for Mom. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t in her bedroom. What a mess there was in her room—a million little piles of scrunched-up Kleenexes that looked like a snowy miniature mountain range. Grandma had gone to bed. I went outside and sat on the second-floor deck stairs and threw clothespins into the pail. I missed every shot. It was dark, which was why. I went inside and slipped the pages of Mom’s totally insane and unfinished letter under her bedroom door curtain. Then I opened the curtain and took back the pages and put big red exes on all of them starting from each of the four corners. I slipped them back under her curtain. Then I opened her bedroom-door curtain again and took the pages and wrote on the first one: When can we meet to discuss your work. I returned them under the curtain. I went to my bedroom and lay down. I got up and went back to Mom’s bedroom and opened the curtain and took the pages and crossed out my question so none of it was visible. I didn’t want to talk about her work. I slipped the pages under her curtain. I went to my bedroom and lay down on my bed and turned off the light. I held my hand in front of my face and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness so I could see it. Finally I saw it. I got up and went to Mom’s bedroom and opened the curtain and took her pages to my bedroom and put them at the back of my closet with my broken toys from when I was a kid.
7.
Early this morning Mom went off to have an ultrasound of Gord that we could put on the fridge and Grandma was sitting at her table playing online Scrabble with a person whose code name was SINtillating. I don’t want to put a naked picture of Gord on the fridge, I said to Grandma. That’s mean and stupid. Grandma said Gord is a fetus in utero, not naked. What happens to a kid if everyone in her family is insane? I asked Grandma. Well, for starters, said Grandma, I think quite a bit of anxiety? I nodded. And … being scared? said Grandma. I nodded. And sad? Mmmmhmmmm, I said. And angry? said Grandma. Hmmm, I said. Why do you ask? said Grandma. Are you writing a story?
I dropped to the floor to pick up her hearing aid batteries and morning pills.
Come, said Grandma. She leaned over and pulled me up off the floor. She pulled me right into her lap. She rocked me back and forth like a baby. Her arm knocked her other pills off the table and also her computer mouse. They just lay on the floor. She rocked me and rocked me. SINtillating is waiting for you to make a move, I said. I had a hard time saying it. Grandma laughed. I lost this game a long time ago, she said. But it’s not good to forfeit, I said. You were the one who said the Raptors had to play hard to the final buzzer! Get your head in the game, Grandma!
All right, she said. She banged her fist on the table. Let’s do it!
I got off her lap and picked up the mouse from the floor.
Grandma made a word. SINtillating wrote back on the side of the board in the comments section: Oh, damn, I thought you’d forfeited.
Never! wrote Grandma. Your move.
Grandma and I waited and waited. Grandma drummed her fingers on the table. I chewed my nails. Finally, SINtillating made a word: lozenge. Whoa! said Grandma. Nice one. A bingo with a zed! Grandma moved her arms up and down to worship SINtillating like she’d just made a half-court three at the buzzer. Grandma was on the ropes. She made a word that wasn’t a word, using SINtillating’s zed. Blazen. What is that? I said. Nothing, said Grandma. I’m calling her bluff. It’s my only hope.