South of Elfrida (10 page)

You burp, it's rancid, you lie in your crib wet and hungry, a strip of light coming through a partially open door separating you from her. You mutter, the pit of your stomach burns then cramps, your legs fly up and squirts eject, and there you are, in your crib wet, hungry, and now smelly. You mutter some more, you try
ba-ba-ba-ba
. You stare at the strip of light through which she will pass. She doesn't come. You wave your arms, wanting the smell of her, the taste of her skin around her jaw and chin that you try to mouth. Your flower-stalk head waits for the weight of her hand to hold it up. Glimpsing her you're all astir, aflutter, in a quiver of expectation. Slam. Click. Light gone.

God. When I told this story to my first psychiatrist, back in Toronto, he said there was no way I could remember. Ridiculous. I remember lying stunned and staring into the pitch-black. No hands, no fingers, no legs, no body, no mind. I remember being an invisible baby, flailing useless arms, blinking in darkness, panic rising. “When I stopped my stupid whimpering and crying, I wasn't sure if I was still alive,” I told him.

“Ah, but you have to learn to wait your turn. You are one among many. The ego,” he said.

By then a grown woman with choices, my ego mobilized and stretched itself large. “Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!” I shrieked, startling us both. I stamped to the door, passed through, let it slam shut. A few steps into the waiting room, I heard a sound, a clicking sound, and turned back, tried the handle. He had locked the door from the inside. I could hear his muffled voice on the phone.

I almost passed out—that was dangerous.

I've learned there's waiting. Of course there's waiting. There's always waiting. Wintering between two American border checkpoints—one, to the south, at the actual border to Mexico, and the other just twenty-five miles north, on the northbound lanes of the I-19 freeway inside the state of Arizona—you learn about waiting. Twice a week I drive to Tucson for appointments with my psychiatrist and I have learned to allow extra time at the checkpoint—you must wait your turn. The Border Patrol calls the permanent roof over the I-19 a “canopy,” but to me, and some others, the eight-hundred-and-seventy-thousand-dollar structure looks like the military installation it is, the Quonset hut roof embedded with spotlights.

I slow and turn up the car radio to hear the news on
NPR
, to hear English. The radio in my apartment, its antenna pointing hopefully northward, catches only static or staccato Spanish. The second-hand
TV
is useless too; occasionally I glimpse Oprah behind the snow. I can't sign a cable agreement; they want a year commitment. A snowbird, I'm just in Arizona for five months.

Yes, here comes the flying roof. Border Patrol is siphoning traffic into one lane using orange dunce hat cones. Along with white trucks full of produce on ice, or cars crowded with Mexican families up for the day, or maybe someone like me, working on something that won't ever be clear, I fall into a resigned line. Everyone wants to avoid the “secondary inspection,” where they pull you over into a special holding area and strip your vehicle. According to the law, they don't have to have real suspicion; they can “select” you for a conversation, and, in my case, I don't trust what might come out of my mouth. The goal is not to say anything provocative or to annoy them; I tell myself that deeply, truly I do not want to be noticed.

The sniffing dog worries the white van five vehicles ahead, the German shepherd at attention on a leash held by a guy twice as big as my small-boned son, a computer nerd locked in a university lab in Toronto. The dog's nose ciphers a vehicle's life over the years. What kind of stories would a piece of steel with tires reveal? How would anybody explain: I was young then. Hey, I have no bombs.

So now to prepare: Turn the volume on the radio down to zero (
NPR
is considered “left wing”), tidy the front seat, smooth an eyebrow with a pinkie, and open the window. A glance in the mirror informs me that my eyes are red from the mesquite pollen, so in go allergy drops to take the red out. Inching forward, I smile but not too much, turn off the phone, and seem preoccupied with the shopping list beside me, too preoccupied to look them in the eye. Here's how it is, as I see it: You slide on by. Wade your way through the checkpoint like Mexicans crossing a river. Practise looking guiltless: a gift of the state.

They wave me on. They hardly look at me.

Surging through the guilt gate once again, I turn up the volume. The news makes my spirits rise—nutcases act out all over the world. I pass the Tohono O'odham reservation with its mystical white church off in the distance and dive into Tucson traffic.

Personality disorders—borderline or narcissistic—make you erratic, unreliable in general. My analyst—the Tucson shrink—says, “You have to catch yourself in the act. You have to stop shouting and hear yourself.”

“But why am I like this?”

“Work with what you have,” he says.

The state of my mind is attributed to genetics, familial tendencies. Upbringing. There is that locked-up uncle. But at forty-nine, I've realized others aren't the ones I should be suspicious of, it's me.

“You seem sad.”

The analyst opens with his usual gambit. By the time I arrive, park behind the little square building, climb the stairs—those extra ten pounds—and enter his office with its fake leather couch and the twist of modern glass trying to look vaguely phallic, I do feel sad. “I hate the Border Patrol. They piss me off. I hate having to be nice because I'm afraid.” I've stepped into it now.

“What happens if you're not nice?”

“They'll arrest me. They won't like me. They don't anyway. They hardly noticed me.” I pause, then blurt: “I'll be in an insane asylum or be dead, the kid alone on the playground. Scabby knees. Dirty arms. Damn.” He picks up on “dirty arms.” Feeling childish and defensive now, I say, “I used to show up at Sunday school with dirty arms. When I put my elbows on the table, the undersides of my arms were streaky with dirt. I had to hide them from my Sunday school teacher. She would notice.”

If he were permitted to smile, he would, I can feel it. But he doesn't smile. I watch him as closely as a baby watches its mother's mouth. Sometimes because of the watching, I can't understand a word.

He says, “How did you feel?”

“I would turn bright red.”

“Embarrassed?”

“Humiliated. Could never remember to wash my arms. I tried, and there they'd be, dirty.”

“Whose job do you think it was to see you were clean before Sunday school?”

“Mine. I was old enough. I just missed my arms.”

“It was your fault?”

“I never told my mother.”

“But she should have noticed.”

“I wasn't worth noticing.” Bang. Click.

Silence. He gives me a moment. Tears are on the way. I won't give them to him. I won't give in. But he's paid not to quit.

“What makes you think you weren't worth noticing?”

It's all I can do to stay in this room, all I can do to not stand, walk to the door, and shut it behind me—oh so quietly. I'll be like a waft of air, a mere breeze passing through, a moment he won't remember.

He says quietly, “How do you feel now?”

What I feel is nothing. Dead nothingness, the centre of me as empty as a void, shreds of pride clinging to my skull. But another emotion awakens; I know this one, a form of excess that in my experience can only make matters worse. Righteousness. Righteousness rouses, vaults out from its dark place to fill the gap, to lift me up—I have good reasons to hate this man, to hate myself. I'll swallow the pills I hoard, I'll rip up the cheque I've written and mail him the pieces. I'll eat a whole movie-theatre-sized box of Junior Mints.
Junior Mints.
My laugh sputters out there, sounds like someone choking.

“Paula, what's going on, on the inside?”

I won't tell him. Won't say a word. My head roars. Blank space. Then: It's rude not to say something. “None of your fucking goddamn business.”

Silence.

Mental static amid heartbeats.

He waits, gaze level, practised, attentive. It's hard to catch him blinking. I take a breath. I
am
making progress—I am noticing his look. “I hate you.”

“I know.”

The kindness in his voice is like a thrust with a weapon, it hurts that much. The pain enters my pelvis first, moves up my spine, and brings tears to my eyes.

“It's hard for you when someone's nice,” he says. “How do you feel?”

He's working me, slowly dragging me back. “Borderline personality disorder, remember?” I've read the American Psychiatric Association's
DSM
description.

“I don't believe in labels.”

“I do.” It was shocking to see my “unique” selfhood described so accurately.

“Labels are limiting.”

“Definitions are useful.” Behaviours that I thought my own turn out to be based on a personality disorder. It's so fucking ironic that my life is hassled with border checkpoints.

“It's hard for you to be vulnerable.” He smiles a genuine, likeable smile. Sometimes I attempt to entertain him, to elicit that smile. “When we've been ignored by our mother and someone notices us, we overreact.”

To stand back and see yourself as others see you—a person whose conduct is predictable, based on brain chemistry—makes you feel like a specimen, a lesser human. All those years I thought I was thinking. No. Just acting out.

Silence.

Then he skips a few lines. “When someone is kind, do you feel an inner excitement?”

He has me, and I can't help it—I scoot forward. “Yes! I start bubbling and want to move in.”

“Move in?”

“If someone is nice, I just want to move in, have them all to myself, attach myself like a barnacle.” My body prickles with a sense of urgency; I've confessed a deeply tangled truth that gives rise to helplessness and panic. I must disengage immediately. I pick an object to stare at. The twist of coloured glass he thinks is art. There, that choice is unsurprising, conventional. Boring, just like him. What does he know? What does he really know? My eyes slide sideways toward his. The bottom line is, I want him to love me.

He says it gently as he stands: “Our time is up.”

“Thank God.” As always, I try for more attention. We've talked about it. I say, “You can't wait to get rid of me.”

Driving southbound, at first I'm dazed and practically deaf, my mind cycling through the mixed signals: what I said, what he said. What I shouldn't have said, the disgrace and unbearable discomfort of wanting so much. As anger rises, I deliberately turn my attention to the checkpoint, to the long, sullen line of vehicles at a standstill, then begin to gloat, an unsettling feeling that's nevertheless better than the first one. Then fury leaps to the fore, despising me, the fury a predator that operates most successfully in the hell of psychic confusion. The next thing I know, I'm cursing a blue streak and
Why the hell, How the hell
is the mild part of it. My swearing accelerates to shouting, then I'm screaming, foot pressing the pedal, the car picking up speed. Then I yell, “Stop! Stop shouting, stop shouting!” I want to bulldoze the falling-apart Pontiac in front of me, a mattress strapped to the roof. I shout, “Stop!” again. Someone looks at me from another car and I glimpse myself in the mirror, see in a flash that I'm off track. I have to get off the freeway, pull the car over, bring myself to a halt. The next exit is a long way yet. I grit my teeth, scream through them, swing onto an exit ramp, slow at the bottom. The tendons in my neck hurt from bellowing.

I pull into a Walmart parking lot and drive over to an empty section. I leave the engine on and the radio up—to hell with
NPR
, I want loud, violent music—rap!—to muffle the conversation zapping back and forth between me and myself, accusations flying because everyone ignored me, I can't stand being ignored, I'm angry for being so stupid, so pitiful, so wrong. I shouldn't have been born, everything about me is stupid, everyone hates me, I hate myself, they didn't even look at me at the checkpoint, they didn't think I was worth looking at, the shrink dismisses me, how can you do this, how can you do this to yourself. If I had a gun, I would fire it.

My hands on the steering wheel hold me in place as my body goes through the raging. The holding is exhausting, an act of will, because mentally I want to give in, everything I feel about the world and myself in it is true and yet, and yet I know it's not the only truth. I am not only my personality disorder and I break into a sweat with the effort of holding on to that thought. My hands hurt—fucking hands, fuck that!

A police officer taps on the window. My startle reflex working overtime, I cry out and fumble to start the car, but it's already on, isn't it, and the air conditioning is blasting and the rap station is pounding and so is my head. I turn the radio off and slide both front windows down. “Oh, dear.” I dab at my eyes, then gesture toward the phone on the seat. “I've had some bad news.” I see myself in his Polaroid cop glasses—my hair's a mess, I've scratched my face, my eyes look crazy. “But I'll be fine.”

He leans in the passenger side window, inhales, sniffing. They have their priorities, I think, and with this thought I begin to calm down, flutter my fingers to seem that I'm tidying my hair. The officer asks, “May I see your registration?” I open the glove compartment. He looks at the documents, nods, hands my papers back. “Nice time of year for you snowbirds.” I assure him, yes it is. He lifts his hands off the sill and, changing his mind, looks in again. “You have someone at home to check on you?” I reply that I do indeed. My son, a good boy. He lives here. “We all get bad news one time or another. You drive slow and take care now, ma'am.” And simple as that he turns and walks away. I watch the patrol car swing out onto the road and am so relieved that at last I feel the pounding of my heart. My God, what was I thinking, what was I doing?