The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

I don’t condone or indulge in violence,” Bradon said, adding, “well, usually I don’t. But the people who are so damn comfortable in their cushy privileged lives that they can’t reach out and change one iota to accommodate or help someone different than themselves are infuriating.”

      I snuck a peep at Drake. His pretty face had this stricken look on it.

      Emmaline sat in silence.

      “I have a lot of anger.” I said this quite matter-of-factly. “Some days I think I live for it.”

      I was done. There was silence again.

      Becky spoke. Her voice was rough and yet soft, too. Like rocks and cotton candy mixed. “Me, too. Sometimes I think the only thing alive in me is my anger.”

      “Yeah, I’m plain pissed off sometimes,” said Soman. “Plain pissed off.”

      “I think anger is in my genetic muscles,” Bradon said. He smiled. The man had a beaming smile that reached those dark soft eyes.

      “You want to see anger in muscles, man?” Soman asked. He stood up and flexed, making grunting sounds, his braids dropping over his muscles. He did a front flex, a back flex, arms up, arms curved down. He hummed the same song he sang at the beginning of class. We were all quite impressed with his muscles, everyone except Drake who looked rather pale. Like glue.

      Emmaline’s voice cut across the loft like a dull razor on a chalkboard. “Pathetic. All of you. You are not grasping the goal of anger management class. This is not a joke. It is not a laugh. Your anger is eating your insides and you all sit there and laugh. Stand up before I throw something!”

      We didn’t move.

      “I said stand up, you miserable, anger-ridden people. Stand!”

      We stood.

      “Close your furious eyes and channel your anger.”

      We tried to channel. I closed my eyes. I channeled my anger toward Slick Dick and hoped that he would get hit by a piano dropping from a high-rise.

      “Unbelievable.” I flicked open one eye. Emmaline had her hands on her hips. “You’re not trying to fix yourselves, not trying to get rid of all this stupid, useless, unproductive anger. I can tell. You’re indulging yourselves. You’re not thinking of peace, you’re thinking of everything that pisses you off. You’re making lists. You’re thinking of ways to get revenge.”

      Soman coughed.

      Bradon sighed.

      Becky said, “My thoughts are stuck.”

      “Stop. Now. Keep your eyes shut, you ridiculous people.”

      I didn’t feel ridiculous. A flying piano was possible, but I didn’t feel that was the time to bring it up. I wanted a good grade out of anger management class or a sticker or something.

      “Hit!” Emmaline suddenly roared, arms outstretched. All of our eyes popped open. I jumped, so did Becky.

      “I said hit! Hit! Hit!” Emmaline screeched, flapping her arms.

      Knowing that Bradon wouldn’t hit me because he is a gentleman and knowing, too, that Soman wouldn’t hit me because none of the men in his family hit their women, I was not alarmed. Drake shrank into his beanbag. He did not want to get pummeled. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at Becky. Emmaline’s yelling had made her go pale. Was I supposed to hit Becky? Hitting Becky was terribly unappealing.

      “The bags!” Emmaline bellowed. “Hit the punching bags! Hard! Release the anger forever! Come on you downtrodden, seething people! Hit!”

      The five of us downtrodden, seething people faced those bags and started punching. Soman and Bradon sent theirs flying, but Becky didn’t do too bad, either, for being a skinny gal. Drake punched his carefully, as though he didn’t want to mess up his nails.

      I beat mine senseless.

      After about thirty-five minutes our fearless leader told us sweating people to head to the craft table that instant.

      “The violence is temporarily out of you people, now let’s replace it with art,” she said, throwing little pink towels at all of us so we could wipe our sweaty anger away. Soman and me and Bradon were soaked. Drake had removed his tie and jacket. I knew Becky had cried while she’d hit her bag.

      “Art your anger,” Emmaline ordered.

      None of us except for Drake seemed to have a problem with arting our anger. All he could think to draw was the two policemen who had arrested him. “I’m going to sue their asses off. They will never work in this town again. I know everybody. Every. Body. Everybody who’s somebody and these two will be lucky if they can get a job in a tiny town in Idaho when I’m done with them.”

      “Shut up,” Soman said, standing up again. “Shut the fuck up.”

      Bradon stood up, too. Without a word, Soman grabbed one side of Drake, Bradon the other. They picked him straight out of his chair and dropped him back into his orange beanbag.

      “Hey, you touch me again, and I’ll sue your asses off,” Drake quivered. “I got a bunch of lawyers in my back pocket. When I say jump, they’ll jump, when I say-”

      “For God’s sake,” Emmaline screamed. “Shut up! Really! None of us want to hear any more out of your farting mouth, Drake!”

      Drake’s farting mouth fell open in shock. I guess no one had ever referred to his mouth as a “farting mouth.” Soman and Bradon picked up his beanbag and flipped him over on his stomach. He said, “Ooofff,” when he landed, his legs spraddled out.

      Soman brandished a very large piece of metal in Drake’s direction when it appeared that Drake might speak again, then settled back into his seat at the art table when he didn’t. He made a six-foot-tall tower using metal and rope. I must say it was quite stunning. Somehow he blended all the rust colors and the ragged edges and the silver shine to form this modern-looking piece of art, like something you would see in the middle of a city park.

      “His name’s Oscar,” he said when Emmaline told him to tell the class about his art piece. “Like Oscar the Grouch. Oscar’s sick to shit of his anger, man. His anger is eating him alive and it’s gonna keep eating him until he’s got no guts left and his flesh is green. Plus his anger makes his knuckles hurt when he bashes someone’s face and he’s tired of that, too.”

      Bradon grabbed watercolor paints, dipped a brush in water, and sat doing nothing. Finally he painted a scene of a rundown school. In front of the school was a young African-American boy. In his arms he held another African-American boy. It was clear that the boy was sick. On the ground there were two syringes, beer bottles, and a bong. A wooden cross lay at his feet. The boy was looking straight up at the sky, as if asking God why he hadn’t helped. “It’s the hopelessness I see in so many black boys’ eyes,” Bradon told us. “Hopelessness. Emptiness. Detachment.”

      Becky traced her hands with colored pencils over and over on the same piece of white butcher paper. The hands arched like a rainbow. She decorated all of the hands with sequins, beads, and glitter.

      When it was a gleaming, bright, beautiful design, she poured black paint over the whole thing, covering every inch of the design. “The hands reflect how I was before the drugs; the paint is how I am now. Not very original, but there it is.”

      I couldn’t figure out what to do. Art my anger? I grabbed a huge piece of light green paper. I told Emmaline to trace me on it. I used different colored markers to write down on every inch of my body what I was pissed off about. I wrote down Slick Dick’s name on my vagina. I wrote my mother’s name, Ally Mackey, and my father’s name, Grayson Mackey, and my grandparents’ names, Henri and Rosa (Sanchez) Monihan, across my heart. Across my whole body I wrote Johnny’s name and the name of our baby girl, Ally Stewart. I wrote a ton of words all over the paper, too, in various sizes. Lost. Alone. Lonely. Dead. I kept writing and writing and writing.