The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

she yelled. “Give it to me! Give it to me!”

      “Johnny lost his head.” When I said this, I heard my own tone. So nonchalant, so casual, so dismissive of the horror, and yet I saw it as if it were yesterday, as if I were up in a tree watching a shameful tragedy unfold. “I tried to help him, but I couldn’t move. My legs were broken in six different places. My stomach felt like it had exploded. Ally died. She died. Our baby died.”

      I tried to pull away from Emmaline, but she wouldn’t let me. I finally leaned against her, my body shaking like that leaf, the leaf breaking off, piece by piece, ripped and shredded by that windstorm.

      “The drunk got out of his car and managed to call an ambulance before he passed out.”

      I could feel the cool of that night around me. Feel the heat of my blood. Of Ally’s blood and mine mixed together, outside of my body not inside where it was supposed to be. I was six months pregnant. I saw Johnny’s headless body in the dark and then everything slipped into oblivion. It was like my mind shut down and I closed my eyes and I shut down and out.

      I woke up alive and without Ally in my stomach in the cold sterility of the hospital. I woke up knowing Johnny was long gone. I woke up screaming and had to be sedated. I remember the nurses and my mother holding me, hugging me, loving me in Spanish and in English as I screamed.

      Emmaline rocked me, my hands at my side. I thought I would throw up. My eyes moved to the craft corner. Could I not have simply made a craft today? Could I not have simply headed straight to the screaming corner? Could I not have simply died that night?

      “Like we planned, she was named Ally after my mother with the middle name of Johnna after Johnny.” My voice cracked and the windstorm met with a tornado and the tornado swept that leaf away and soon that tiny little fragile leaf broke apart piece by piece. Emmaline rocked me back and forth, back and forth as I dropped to the floor and slipped into what would politely be called hysteria. “That’s why I stopped playing my violin. That’s why I didn’t eat pancakes for twelve years. I couldn’t. There were no more pancakes in my life. No more music. None. That was the last time I was me.”

      My dry, hacking sobs came up from my soul, ragged and razor sharp. “I miss Johnny. I miss Ally Johnna. God, I miss them. I miss them, I miss them, God, I miss them.”

      Before I left Emmaline’s, I slipped into her shower. It was tiny but perfectly clean. First I burned my skin and face with steamy hot water, then I cooled off in freezing cold water. I dried, dressed, cleaned up after myself (I like things tidy) and left the bathroom.

      Emmaline was waiting for me. She held up her hands above her head. “Put your fingertips to mine.”

      I did so.

      “I sense no more anger in you right now, Jeanne, not right now. You must kick the crap out of your anger, your pain. It’s controlled you for too long.”

      I bent my head again, and glared at the floor between us.

      She put both hands on my stomach, massaged it gently. “You will have more babies, Jeanne, you will.”

      She bent onto her heels and wrapped her hands around my knees. “You will heal.”

      Frankly, I would be grateful if my healing involved leaving this building and being smashed by a bunch of suicidal pigeons. Dying by suicidal pigeons is not an idle wish. Would I ask the pigeons to dive-bomb me into oblivion? Maybe not, but if they did, I would be okay with that. And that’s a sorry place to be.

      “I can’t do it.” No, I could not do it. “I can’t even begin to heal because I would have to think about it. And I can’t. I can’t go through it again.”

      “You can,” she told me. She wrapped her fingers around mine, hugged me close and rocked me back and forth, back and forth. “You can. You can. You will.”

      I slipped my feet into my heels, left her office, pulled my chin up and, like a drunk homing pigeon, found my way straight to the brewery. To hell with my good intentions of not getting blitzed.

      The memories Emmaline had stirred up were raw and crashing down on my head, one after the other. Each horrific moment.

      The doctors and nurses had told me at length that I had not sustained any permanent injuries and would be able to have children again, that my bones would heal, the scars would fade. Their earnest reassurances and worried looks meant nothing to me, their voices coming at me as if from disembodied floating heads.

      When I still had my legs in slings, dried blood on my face, and an empty, lonely womb, I decided that I would never fall in love with any man again-so in my throbbing, damaged, completely mentally unsound mind, that precluded children. Of course, the screaming would begin again and those same doctors and nurses with the worried looks would sprint over and give me a shot that would put me back to sleep for a little while and out of my misery.

      Johnny and I rarely drank alcohol. But two weeks after they died, at my mother’s house, I reached for a glass of wine. Then two. It was the first night I’d slept more than a few hours without waking up screaming, the flashbacks intense, vivid, and terrifying. That was the start of my downward slide. I started drinking more, drinking harder.

      My drinking fairly soon got out of my control. My mother and Roy and Charlie all stepped in to help me, but I didn’t want their help. I wanted their love, but not their help. Alcohol fuzzed over my life, and that’s what I really wanted-the fuzziness. I did not want clarity, did not want to work through the past, did not want any more mind-screaming agony.

      I wanted the fuzz. And I wanted not to think. So I got a job at an ad agency and I worked. All the time. I was a wunderkind. An unsmiling wunderkind that could somehow put together television ads that brought tears to people’s eyes, laughter to their hearts, and tubloads of money to my bosses.

      Two years after the accident my legs and pelvic area didn’t hurt much anymore, probably because I was young and continued running (almost obsessively, I ran) and physical therapy, but my heart felt like it was being pinched by a vise, so I kept drinking.

      In fact, I thought to myself in a sudden flash of predrunken clarity, believing I would never let myself fall in love again, hence no pregnancies, might explain the motivation behind my long list of bad men: Choose dickless men, don’t fall in love, use all protections and hence, no pregnancies and no heartbreak.

      I headed to the brewery around the corner from Emmaline’s. A young man with a goatee, a big grin, and a hooped earring in his eyebrow helped me pick out a six-pack and a little scotch. He made reservations for me at a nearby bed-and-breakfast when I asked for recommendations. “My mom and dad always stay there when they want to get away from us kids,” he told me, dialing. “Can’t blame ’em. There are nine of us.”

      Well, wasn’t that what I needed to hear at that moment? I hated his mother instantly. Nine kids.

      Nine.

      She had nine and I had nothing.

      Gall.

      I drove my car up to the bed-and-breakfast, greeted the two friendly male proprietors, one short and one tall, and entered my room. I had a view of Mount Hood. I vaguely thought of calling Rosvita and telling her where I was, but decided I would do it after my beer.

      I drank one beer in the soaking tub in my room and a little scotch. I had another beer out on my deck in the dark and a wee bit of scotch. I had one more beer while I watched a movie and a tad more scotch. One more after I sat out on my deck again and cried into my scotch. I passed out in bed, visions of Johnny’s smile and my darling, dead baby dancing through my head.

      My mother was there, too. She smiled at me.

      CHAPTER 6

      I woke to a splitting headache and a pounding on my door. I had slept naked so was feeling quite nude.

      I said something unintelligible to the door, which sounded like, “I don’t want any tomatoes.”

      “Jeanne?”