Trauma Becomes You

It is my job to gag her. Mike and some of the others have her pinned to the ground. The rest are watching us. My hand is covering her wildly-moving mouth.  She is trying to bite me. This enrages me. I reach my other hand into my coat pocket feeling for the bandana, wondering how the thin strip of cloth is going to muffle the screams I know will come as soon as I relax the pressure of my hand.  “If you scream, we’ll kill you,” I say with my most menacing voice into her unblinking eyes.

I am eight or nine, not usually the lead neighborhood sociopath. I am the one who plays Barbie with the boy who stutters. I play jacks with the girl whose hand has been shriveled since birth. I don’t make fun of the kid who will forever talk in a squeaky girl-voice because his doctors slipped when they were removing his tonsils.

I know the rules. We are supposed to shun Sherrie because her parents weigh over 300 pounds apiece. I, alone, have been inside their house, tempted by extravagant ice cream sundaes and ancient Elvis records my parents do not have. I have seen Sherrie’s mother scream at her for leaving the screen door ajar, for crookedly parting her infrequently-washed hair. I know how damaged Sherrie is and why. Yet here I am, adding injury to injury.

Sherrie has a bad habit of trying to tag along. Usually, we ditch her. But today we’ve had enough of her whining. Now we have her tied to the fence in Mike’s backyard. She can see her house through the wood slats, see her father’s car pull into the driveway, see it getting dark. She knows she will be punished for staying out this late. We want her to be grounded. We leave her there to struggle free. We go home to our warm dinners.

It’s Halloween and I put on my cyclops mask and trick-or-treat with everyone until my pillowcase is black from dragging the candy haul around. I know I’m supposed to avoid Sherrie but they live next door and I’m alone and I alone know they’ll have the yummiest treats so I make one last stop. Sherrie’s yard is festooned with steaming cauldrons and scratchy brooms that catch the hem of my costume robe. I tear myself loose and knock on her door. Sherrie’s mom sees my mask and says, “You never looked better,” before thrusting a stuffed goody bag with a witch on it into my outstretched hand.

When I get home my mom looks me up and down and points me at the bathtub. I see myself, hideous in the mirror, and yank at my mask but it doesn’t come off and I can’t get any air and I feel myself dying and wake myself up.

My skates roll fast on the newly poured sidewalks, especially with my dog pulling me by the leash. He doesn’t know to avoid Sherrie and luckily he doesn’t stop when we pass her. But then my skate catches on her foot and I don’t let go and Silky scrapes me another several yards before tiring of dragging me. I look back and the blood-tracks from my skinned knees lead straight to Sherrie’s grin.

It’s a perfect windy day and we are trying to fly from our umbrellas. We hunt the neighborhood for a ladder so we can try from the roof. A crowd starts to form on the side of my house. Once we’re all roof-high, seeing the small boxes of our homes, our swing sets rusting in place, our parents’ unfulfilled landscape dreams, I understand that I am yearning for something outside this place, outside myself, and that catastrophe would be a welcome relief. Sherrie is begging to be let up the ladder. Mike whispers, “Our guinea pig is here” and shouts, “Let her up!” He pops open the biggest umbrella we have and hands it to her. We are all looking over the edge of the roof, gauging the likelihood of a soft landing on the patch of unmown grass. Sherrie holds the umbrella and watches us watching her. I see a hint of defiance on her face about the sacrifice she’s about to make and close my eyes, picturing her flying from my roof to hers and on down the line. And then I feel the jerky push and I am flying and the thrill of escape lasts just long enough.