Read The Finer Points of Becoming Machine Online
Authors: Emily Andrews
I’m sitting in Dr X’s office, waiting. I yawn and look around his office, bored and tired. His desk is piled high with papers and patient folders, which surprises me somewhat. Every other time I’ve been in this office it’s been neat and tidy.
When he finally comes into the office, he looks flustered and tired. ‘Good morning, Emma. I’m sorry I’m late, but we had some patients come in early this morning…’
He trails off and sits down behind his desk, trying to organise the paperwork there. He settles for putting it all in a pile on the right side of his desk.
I wait. He looks at me. My hands are neatly crossed in my lap, not over my chest like they usually are. He doesn’t seem to notice.
‘So Emma, how are you? No, wait. I need to get your file; just a moment…’
He begins to sift through the stack of folders and papers on his desk. His brow furrows and he mutters to himself until he finds it. He wipes it off, opens it up, and starts glancing over it. He nods to himself and looks back up at me.
‘I hear you had a hard time at dinner last night, Emma. Is there a reason why?’ He picks up his pen, waiting for my response.
I’m slightly surprised by his question. ‘Uh, what do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Well, according to the evening nurse, you didn’t want to eat dinner last night. She made a note of it. Now again, is there a reason you didn’t want to eat last night, Emma?’
‘Um, well kind of. The food was gross, and I didn’t like it.’
Dr X looks at me suspiciously.
‘I’m serious.’ I tell him. He continues to look at me without speaking. ‘I mean, the food was cold
and
burnt at the same time, and I’m not a big fan of meatloaf. I just didn’t like dinner.’
‘So it was a food preference issue, and not anything else?’ he asks me.
‘Yup,’ I nod. ‘That’s it. Nothing else.’
Dr X looks at me, and I’m not quite sure he believes me, but he accepts my response.
‘Well Emma, I must remind you that you’re very thin, and that with the different medications you’re on…’
I zone out. I don’t really mean to, but I just click into autopilot, nodding my head as he continues talking about needing to eat and how if I don’t, it affects how the medications
get into my system or something like that. I’m busy staring at a picture of Dr X with a beautiful, well-dressed blonde woman, holding an infant.
‘What did I just say Emma?’ Dr X asks me.
‘Uh…’ I stammer. ‘You said it’s important to follow the rules because if I don’t, it affects my treatment.’ I tell him.
I wasn’t paying attention, and I’m not entirely sure that’s what he was talking about, but that’s become my stock answer any time someone starts talking about something that I’m not interested in hearing, and usually it works out. Today, it doesn’t.
‘Yes, and then I said that a third leg was growing out of your stomach, to see if you were paying attention. And then you nodded and agreed with me.’ Dr X tells me.
Damn. I’m caught. I look down and snicker in spite of myself. Dr X seems offended by my
snickering. ‘
What
are you laughing about, Emma?’ He’s irritated now.
‘I’m sorry. The third leg thing was funny,’ I say sheepishly. The humour of his comment seems to escape him until I point it out and despite himself, he cracks a smile briefly before clearing his throat and resuming his usual clinical demeanour.
‘Yes well, never mind. How are you feeling today?’ Now he picks up his pen to take notes.
I think for a minute. Really, I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to say, so that I’m not telling him too much but not being so vague as to let him know that I’m evading his questions.
‘Um, ya know, trying to get used to the medication and stuff…’ and I continue to talk about how I’m trying to deal with my parents’ divorce and how it upset me, when Dr X’s beeper goes off. He frowns and takes it off his belt, looking at the number before he sighs and interrupts me.
‘I’m sorry Emma, we’re going to have to continue this later. I hate to interrupt you, but I have to go. Uh, just keep writing in your journal and following your uh, treatment plan.’
He grabs a stack of folders and rushes to the door before he turns and looks at me. ‘I’m really sorry Emma,’ he says.
I realise he feels bad and I smile to make him feel better. ‘It’s cool Doc,’ I tell him. He shakes his head and rushes out the door.
I pick up my journal and follow him out of the office to join everyone else in the common room. It’s visiting time. Cindy walks out of the visiting room laughing and giggling, her parents are behind her. They tearfully hug, and Cindy waves to her parents as they leave.
I glare at Cindy and start drawing little spiral designs on the cover of my journal, irritated with her for being happier than I am. I open my journal and I read what I’d written in it;
You will not reach me
.
I frown and start chewing on my fingernails as I re-read those words over and over again. I had decided when I got to this hell hole of group therapy, bad food, and dingy walls, that I didn’t need help.
I look down at my arms and back at the words. I tap my pencil on my journal, deep in thought. I finally stop tapping and start to write.
December??
I wrote the words ‘You will not reach me’ on the inside of my journal when I got here. Why? What point was I trying to prove, and to whom? That I’m OK, that I don’t need anybody? I think maybe I was wrong.
I look at the journal entry and try to decide just where I’m going with this. A thought is starting to dawn on me, that I’m not exactly doing OK. How do I fix it though? I put the pencil back to the paper and continue writing.
I’m not sure what exactly it is that I’m trying to say, other than that I was wrong about not needing help. I still think everyone here is retarded, and Dr X is too busy to help me the way I probably need to be helped, but now I realise that everything that happened with my parents really did affect me more than I thought it did, and I need to do something about it.
My pencil snaps. ‘Dammit!’ I glare at the offending pencil. I sigh and pick up my journal in irritation, clutching it tightly to my chest as I walk over to the main desk where the nurses and orderlies are busy discussing the events of some television show that I have never watched and don’t care about.
‘Hey, can I have another pencil?’ I ask, and show the pencil to the group. Without really paying any attention to me, an orderly puts a pencil on the counter and continues talking to the rest of the group. ‘Oh I know! I can’t believe that happened on the show! I was like, oh, no way…’
I roll my eyes, pick up the pencil and walk off, muttering to myself as I walk back to my chair. ‘Stupid people and their stupid fake lives and stupid TV shows…’
I start tapping on my paper with the new pencil and I try to remember what I was writing about. I’m having a hard time remembering, the meds are clouding my brain and making it hard to hold onto a thought.
‘Hey Emma! What’s going on?’ Ricky’s voice interrupts me again and I drop the pencil onto the journal. I furrow my brow and I begin to rub the bridge of my nose as I close my eyes.
‘Hi Ricky. I’m kind of um, ya know, thinking about stuff.’
Ricky looks like I just told him that I hated him.
‘Oh. OK. Well, I just, ya know, wanted to see if you were doing OK. You seemed kind of out of it yesterday.’ Ricky toes the ground dejectedly.
I feel bad. I don’t want to tell Ricky to go away, but it seems like he has the absolute
worst
timing ever. I decide to compromise.
‘Oh yeah. Hey Ricky, that was really nice of you to check on me last night. I really appreciate it.’
Ricky smiles. ‘Uh, no problem Emma. It’s cool. I think you’re really nice and I was worried, so I wanted to make sure that you know that you can talk to me any time.’ He laughs nervously and toes the ground again, and I inwardly groan as I start to get the disturbing feeling that Ricky has a crush on me.
‘Uh yeah. I got it. Thanks Ricky. I’m gonna go back to writing now, OK? Dr X wants me to uh, ya know, write more and all, so I don’t want to get into trouble or anything.’
‘Uh, OK Emma. See ya later.’ Ricky walks away. I wrinkle my nose at him before I go to my journal.
Where was I?
I tap the pencil thoughtfully on my lower lip. Thoughts are swirling like fog, and I can’t seem to latch onto any one of them now. My concentration is broken again, as laughter from the main desk seeps into my ears.
‘Goddamned normal people and their stupid conversations…’ I start muttering to myself and a thought begins to solidify in my head, a conversation with myself.
Are you mad at them for watching television, or are you mad at them because they’re laughing? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re mad at them because they’re not like you. They’re not in here because they can’t live with the darkness in their heads, it’s a job to them. They haven’t lived your life, and you hate them for having something you didn’t have; a seemingly normal life with a normal job and normal friends. You’re bitter, and that’s just sad, hating other people because you’re jealous. And that’s what you boil down to, isn’t it? A bitter, sad, unhappy, not-quite-little-any-more girl. If you don’t cut the crap Emma, and
start dealing with what’s really making you unhappy…
What’s really making me unhappy? I sigh and write down the answer to this painful question.
I am unhappy because of my parents.
The words are simple, but they say so much more than that to me. I read them and realise that I’m beginning to come face to face with the years of abuse I watched and grew up with. I don’t know how to fix what’s wrong with me, but as I look around this room, I know that I don’t want to be in this place any more. Not just in this room, but in this place inside myself, this place of fear and guilt for things in the past that I couldn’t control.
I could not control what happened to me. It was not my fault.
My eyes blur as I read what I’ve just written. I’ve been blaming myself for what my mom went through, for not being able
to protect her from my father; for Paul and Rosemary growing up watching the same abuse that I was watching, and being unable to do anything about it. I’ve always thought that it was my fault, that if I had been stronger or older, I could have stopped what was going on around me.
I have turned all my fear and disgust into guilt, and it’s been twisting inside of me until I can’t even breathe. I’m starting to realise that the night I ended up in the hospital wasn’t really about Donnie breaking up with me.
Sure it hurt, losing Donnie. We had a lot of fun together, and he was hot. Plus, it was nice having a boyfriend who could buy booze. But when he broke up with me, all I wanted was for my mom to show me that she cared, and she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it. All I had really wanted was someone to love me.
I sit in the chair, trying to decide what I am going to do with all these new thoughts and realisations that are coming to me.
I’ve spent years telling myself that I am a machine, that I can’t feel, just to let me cope with the horrors happening around me.
‘Emma.’ A voice startles me.
‘Huh?’
Ricky is standing next to me. Before I have the chance to bitch him out for interrupting my newborn thoughts, he says ‘Emma, they want you at the front desk.’
‘For what?’ I complain.
‘I don’t know. They’ve been calling you.’ Ricky shrugs and walks off.
‘Goddamned lazy stupid nurses…’ I start bitching and angrily snatch up my journal and pencil and storm to the desk. The nurses and orderlies are still busy having some painfully normal conversation about whatever it is normal people talk about.
‘Uh, someone was calling for me?’ I ask when I get to the front desk.
A chunky, bald, twenty-something male orderly looks up at me. ‘What do ya want?’ he says, smacking the gum in his mouth loudly.
I frown. ‘I don’t know. Someone up here was calling me.’
‘And who are you?’
‘Emma. Emma Banks.’
His expression turns to one of
recognition
. ‘Oh yeah, got a visitor here for you.’
I hope it’s Mom. ‘Who is it?’ I ask.
The orderly looks down at the sign-in sheet, still smacking the gum around in his mouth.
‘Uhhhh…’ he says as he reads down the list.
I tap my foot impatiently.
‘Banks, Emma… uhh…’
‘Yes. Emma Banks,’ I snap at him.
‘Banks… Banks… Sorry about that. Uh yeah, it looks like your father is here to see you.’
‘My step-dad?’ I ask him, confused. The orderly checks the list again.
‘Uh, his name is Austin Banks.’ The orderly reads the name from the sheet. ‘Just wait here and someone will escort you into the visiting room in just a sec.’
He sits down and rejoins the
conversation
, leaving me standing, speechless.
The blood drains from my face and my feet feel cemented to the ground. My head starts to spin.
‘Oh shit.’ I whisper to myself, and suddenly I’m shaking and can’t seem to stop.
Austin Banks is my father.
As I sit in the hallway, I start chewing nervously on my nails. I’m waiting to be escorted into the visiting room where my father sits, also waiting.
Why has he come here? Is he here to yell at me? To criticise me? Can I refuse his visit? Do I
want
to?
No. If he is here to talk to me, then I’ll try to see him and find out just what
has
brought him here. I wonder if I’ll always suspect his motives now. Possibly. Probably.
In my mind I see his face, and though I recognise the features, they are cold and
lifeless and waxy, like an exhibit in a museum. When I think of him like this, I don’t think of him as Dad, or even my father at all; I think of him as Austin, someone remote from me, someone I don’t have to care about who doesn’t have to care about me. But Austin really is my father’s name.
I know very little about my father’s life before he met my mother. From the bits and pieces I’ve been able to gather together over the years, I know that he grew up on a farm in a small town, and spent more time working on the farm than going to school. He had several siblings, all of whom died very young in slightly suspicious accidents, such as drowning in the bathtub, or falling into a washing machine. Leaves you thinking that Austin was lucky to survive whatever was happening with that family of his. His own father left Austin and his mother while Austin was young. His mother got married again, to a rigid, abusive, and uncaring man. This is how the family legend goes…
The clock seems to have slowed down so much as to be standing still. I’m still here, waiting to see the man who had helped create me, for better or for worse. A curious mix of fear, love, and curiosity overtakes me. I am not totally comfortable. Then the meds just happen to kick in. For the first time I am grateful for them, knowing that they’ll keep me calm so that I won’t freak out in the visiting room. And now, alongside the waxy head of Austin, I’m seeing in my thoughts the waxy, emotionless stare of Teresa. Teresa, my mother.
Austin graduated high school and moved to the city, where he met Teresa. This much I’ve been told – over and over it seems. More of the family legend. Teresa had lived through problems of her own, and at the tender age of eighteen had already spent most of her adolescent and young adult life working multiple jobs. She’d had to support herself and her own mother – an alcoholic, manic depressive, abusive mess…
At last, the same bald orderly who had told me that my father was here to see me gets up from the desk. He grabs the keys and escorts me to the visiting room.
I take a deep breath and walk into the room. My dad –
Austin
– is sitting there, looking through a Bible. He looks up at me and stands and I can’t feel my legs holding me upright, even though they are.
‘Hi Emmy,’ he finally says.
‘Hi Dad,’ I answer. It’s all I
can
say right now.
The door shuts behind us.
Austin was in his early twenties when he met Teresa at the diner where she worked her night job. She was charmed by his accent and quick wit; he loved her hard-working attitude and shyness.
They were married six weeks later in a
tiny chapel, with only a handful of guests.
Three months into their marriage, Teresa became pregnant with her first child. I was born seven months later, a tiny, pale, sickly baby. Austin got a job in a factory and worked long hours to provide for his new family.
I’ve seen pictures of me and Dad when I was a baby, and I can tell by the way he held me that I was a precious, fragile, breakable thing to him, and that he loved me dearly…
We sit in uncomfortable silence for what seems like forever, but in reality is probably only a minute or so. My father speaks first. He sees my arms and he stares, hard, before his eyes meet mine.
‘Oh Emma, what the hell did you do to yourself kid?’ he asks me, and his voice seems sad. And there’s still so much running through my head.
Most of the fights in the beginning were caused by the stress any young married couple feels when the money is too low and the bills are too high. Teresa took on sewing jobs from a local tailor shop to help bring money in.
Teresa became pregnant again, and two years after I was born, Paul came into the world.
I’ve been told that the fighting got worse around this time. The family legend. But Mom was young, had no money, and nowhere to go with two children aged two and under, even if she had wanted to leave. She stayed, and five months after Paul was born, she became pregnant with Rosemary.
Sitting opposite him, I am surprised by my dad’s tone. I am so used to hearing him angry or upset with me that he completely catches me off guard. My eyes well up with tears. I try to fumble for an explanation.
‘I, uh, hurt myself Dad,’ is all I can manage to get out.
‘Emma, honey… why?’ he asks. Again he surprises me with the concern in his voice.
What can I say? How can I explain to him, especially with him acting so nice with me right now, that it is partially his fault that I am here in the first place? How can I tell him that the years of fighting and abuse has festered inside my head until it has become an infection, one that is killing me? I can’t, so I sit and suffer in silence. This is something I’ve done often enough. We all have. Me and Paul and Rosemary.
I don’t remember Paul – or even Rosemary – being born. But I can remember bits and pieces of things shortly after that. No longer just family legend; I know this for real.
I remember one time, my dad had an old motorcycle that he spent a lot of time fixing
up, polishing and working on. One day he and Mom were fighting over God knows what, and he looked at me, picked me up, and we went out to the garage. He sat on the motorcycle and sat me behind him, using a belt to secure me to his back.
We rode and rode until we were in a forest somewhere. He stopped the bike, and we got off and walked into a tiny log-cabin convenience store at the base of a trail. My dad bought me apple juice in a little glass bottle that was shaped like an apple, and we bought beef jerky.
We followed the trail until we came to a little stream, with stepping stones placed so you could get to the other side. When we were walking across, I remember slipping and I fell in. My dad turned around and started laughing as he picked me up, all cold and wet and startled. I started to laugh too, and he kissed me on the head and said ‘Emma, don’t you know how to walk?’
He carried me the rest of the way back to the motorcycle, wrapping me up in his
sweatshirt. We rode home to where Mom was waiting, none too happy to see me dishevelled and sopping wet. They immediately got into an argument over how long my father had been gone, and what in the hell was he doing with a child that young on the back of a motorcycle anyway?
My father sits in silence, like he’s unsure of what to say next. I’ve always felt that he is made out of stone, a living, breathing statue. His sudden concern for me is shaking me to the core. I’m scared because I feel I’m starting to doubt everything that I’ve ever thought about him over the years. Then he finds his voice again.
‘I brought you this Emma,’ he says, and hands me the Bible in his hands. It is burgundy, leather bound, and in the bottom right hand corner he’s had my name imprinted on it. I am touched, even if right now I have a hard time even believing that God exists, much less cares about me.
‘I don’t understand what’s going on Emma, but I, uh, thought this might help you.’
‘Thanks Dad,’ is all I can say. I place the Bible gingerly in my lap, not sure what else to do with it. More awkward silence.
My dad was impulsive. One day, he came home with a cream-coloured, wrinkled dog that we named Noodles. He showed us the dog first, so Mom couldn’t make him take it back when she saw how much we wanted to keep it. Mom resented the dog at first, but she grew to love the protective and ever so patient, wrinkly, smelly little thing.
I think that I remember the fights getting worse around that time too, or maybe I just started to see what was really happening around me.
At first they always fought when we were in the other room, but gradually they started to fight in front of us. And that’s when the fear started creeping into me and wouldn’t let go.
I had nightmares, constantly. Until I was nearly ten years old, I begged to sleep in my parents’ room every night. When they finally wouldn’t let me sleep with them any more, I slept with the light on.
The effect my parents’ fighting had on us kids began to show in other ways too. Paul was having a hard time potty training, and would often wet the bed in his sleep. Mom and I tried to hide it from Dad. But he found out anyway, and hit Paul to teach him not to be lazy, and to go to the bathroom at night.
As for Rosemary, she had the annoying habit of crying constantly and throwing fits. She also had a very vivid imagination. Cute in a child, it developed to become uncontrollable lying.
In addition to not being able to sleep, I began to have problems eating. My stomach was constantly in knots, and I remained pale and thin. And I would cry at the worst possible times, like in front of my classmates if I got an answer wrong at school…
I’ve been lost in these thoughts in the cold silence of the visitor room. My dad, speaking, brings me back.
‘Emma… Why did you do this to yourself? Why didn’t you call me?’
Ugh. The question I’ve been dreading. If I want to answer honestly, I’ll say something like ‘…because I’m so afraid of you that I couldn’t tell you that anything was wrong. And because Mom didn’t want you to try to take me away from her…’ But of course, those words aren’t going to come out of my mouth, so I settle for a half-truth.
‘Because Dad, um, you know, we haven’t got along real well for the past few years, and I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.’
My dad looks surprised at first, then shakes his head.
‘Kid, I know we haven’t always got along, but I never wanted anything bad to
happen to you. You’re my little girl. Do you know how upset everyone is that you’re in here right now?’
‘Yes Dad, I know,’ I reply, dropping my head. Even in his concern, he is still making me feel bad. Like I have just been selfish in trying to kill myself.
…through all the troubles my father began to work more and more, and eventually got promoted in his job. But even though he was making more money, his family was falling apart. And he began to fall apart with the pressure of everything. So he clamped down on us, thinking that a tighter grip would fix everything. We, at least, should be something that he could control. Then when he finally realised that that wasn’t working, he just blamed Mom.
It became a fact of daily life, just like waking up and brushing your teeth, that my parents would fight, that my mom would cry and that my dad would hit her.
And sometimes he’d hit us. But it didn’t necessarily happen in that order.
I’m thinking, remembering, but I’m on full alert just sitting there, ready to listen when I have to.
My dad continues, unaware that anything is running through my head. ‘Do you have any idea what it was like for me to get a phone call saying that you were in this…’ he looks around distastefully ‘…place?’
Again, I feel ashamed at being here. I don’t say anything. And then I feel his eyes staring at me. He is expecting a response.
‘No Dad. I don’t know what it was like for you. I’m sorry.’
Our relationship is always going to be like this, I think to myself. I am never going to be good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, or well behaved enough to make him proud of me.
At school I was the weird kid, and since I had no friends and my home life was miserable, I began to escape into books. I was fascinated with a character in one of my science fiction books. An android. I loved how he didn’t feel anything, how he was so human but didn’t have the same pesky emotions that I couldn’t seem to control within myself.
I decided that I wanted to be an android. Whenever I got upset, I would repeat certain phrases to myself, over and over and over again, like a mechanical thing, until I felt calm and emotionless and in control once more.
And if I couldn’t control my home life, I could control other things; like whether I ate or not, or even whether I wanted to have feelings for anything at all.
The worse the fighting got, the less I ate and the less I allowed myself to feel. In exasperation one day, my mom finally started screaming at me and crying, ‘What is wrong with you Emma? You’re like a
machine; you don’t eat, you don’t feel, you don’t smile. What is wrong?’
My dad runs his hands through his hair and sighs deeply. I wonder if maybe he knows that I hadn’t been thinking of what kind of phone call he’d get when I was admitted to this place. I don’t want to dwell on that though. Thankfully, he changes the subject.
‘Jesus Emma, you look like hell. They have you all doped up, don’t they? What do they have you on?’
I try to remember the names of the medications, but my mind is swirling from the meds and from sitting in this room with him. I just can’t remember. I begin to panic when I realise that I am unable to answer his question, and I start to hyperventilate.
Back to my memories, back to my memories, back to my memories. They finally tired of
fighting all the time and I started to see the change in my mother. Despite the bruises, she had reached the point where either she was going to die, or
he
was.
When I was thirteen, they sat us down at the table and told us that they couldn’t get along any more, and that they thought it was best for everyone if they got a divorce. They said something about how they had
agreed
to
disagree
and told us that everything was going to be fine. Just words, telling us that they’d take care of us and not put us in the middle, and that it wasn’t our fault. I actually thanked God when they told me the news. At least I had the hope that something was going to change.
And oh, change did happen. My father threw my mother out of the house with nothing more than the clothes on her back. We didn’t see her except on the weekends, and more often than not, my father would make one of us stay behind to keep him company.
My parents kept fighting though, and it became scary. One minute my father
was drunk and screaming death threats at my mother, the next day they had
decided to call off the divorce and pretend like we were suddenly going to become some perfect family. It never lasted. It would all fall apart a few weeks later in some new violent and dramatic argument. Repeat
ad nauseam.
It came to the point where they hated each other so much that they tried to push their hatred of each other on us.
I never bought it though, which pissed them both off. I couldn’t understand why they, as adults, couldn’t understand that I loved both of them.
I became more and more isolated from them, and they both began to treat me more as a problem – and occasionally, as a weapon – than their child…