TEMPTATION
The doctor told you to take those pills after your mother died, but you didn’t. You collected 2-4-6-8 of those pills and shoved them inside your panty drawer. At 4 am, you slipped out the window while your father slept off his amber whiskey.
You’re shirtless, in a pair of panties, the color of sorrow, when the voices tell you to walk the neighborhood, but you float, twirl about instead, to the tune, “Yesterday.” It’s the song that’s white noise in your head skipping, skipping, like that.
When the lady across the street, who gets up before 6 am, spots you, the flashing lights arrive. The lights are the color of your mother’s blood the day her head hit the basement floor after she slipped, the day your mouth let out a scream like a crazed, caged monkey at the zoo, so you do go into that red light.
And they take you away.
They take you to another doctor with bleached teeth, caramel skin. He tells you that the chemicals in your brain shifted, and you need another damn med, blah-blah. He hands you white pills this time, instructing you to take three a day, “three a day,” he smiles, thumbs up, like we’re at the circus, and this is the last trick before he releases you back to sane town.
The house is empty when you get home. Your father’s out playing at another honky-tonk because a mountain of bills was always on the kitchen table. He, your father, charmed the older lady, Delia, the one who gets up before 6 am, to fetch you, watch over you, because after all, you’re only 14 years old. Delila fed you warm cookies with walnuts, some kind of chicken sour soup so you devour it. The temptation to take the new meds is still fresh in your brain, so you swallow them, down-down.
Hours later, the white pills take hold of you, you surrender, sleeping through a suburbia sunrise, lunch, another frozen dinner. But the voices, those loud whispers creep back in the middle of the night. They tell you to scrub all your panties in the drawer, scrub-scrub-scrub with bar soap to wash your mother’s hideous death away, scrub until the hot water scorches your skin, scrub until the image of that monkey in a cage is finally free.
When you wake-up, an old, familiar country tune plays on in another room, your fathers planted inside your bean bag chair,
“Dad,” you murmur, “I, I…had an awful dream.”
“Shh, it’s ok,” his voice cracks, “the new meds are working, you slept, Peach.” His voice is sugary, faint, as you try to come too. You take a few deep breaths, exhaling deeply it seems for the first time in days.
And somewhere, somewhere off in the distance, you think you hear a hum, your mother’s weeping willow tree whispering, the music of that little sparrow singing outside your bedroom window.
You’re shirtless, in a pair of panties, the color of sorrow, when the voices tell you to walk the neighborhood, but you float, twirl about instead, to the tune, “Yesterday.” It’s the song that’s white noise in your head skipping, skipping, like that.
When the lady across the street, who gets up before 6 am, spots you, the flashing lights arrive. The lights are the color of your mother’s blood the day her head hit the basement floor after she slipped, the day your mouth let out a scream like a crazed, caged monkey at the zoo, so you do go into that red light.
And they take you away.
They take you to another doctor with bleached teeth, caramel skin. He tells you that the chemicals in your brain shifted, and you need another damn med, blah-blah. He hands you white pills this time, instructing you to take three a day, “three a day,” he smiles, thumbs up, like we’re at the circus, and this is the last trick before he releases you back to sane town.
The house is empty when you get home. Your father’s out playing at another honky-tonk because a mountain of bills was always on the kitchen table. He, your father, charmed the older lady, Delia, the one who gets up before 6 am, to fetch you, watch over you, because after all, you’re only 14 years old. Delila fed you warm cookies with walnuts, some kind of chicken sour soup so you devour it. The temptation to take the new meds is still fresh in your brain, so you swallow them, down-down.
Hours later, the white pills take hold of you, you surrender, sleeping through a suburbia sunrise, lunch, another frozen dinner. But the voices, those loud whispers creep back in the middle of the night. They tell you to scrub all your panties in the drawer, scrub-scrub-scrub with bar soap to wash your mother’s hideous death away, scrub until the hot water scorches your skin, scrub until the image of that monkey in a cage is finally free.
When you wake-up, an old, familiar country tune plays on in another room, your fathers planted inside your bean bag chair,
“Dad,” you murmur, “I, I…had an awful dream.”
“Shh, it’s ok,” his voice cracks, “the new meds are working, you slept, Peach.” His voice is sugary, faint, as you try to come too. You take a few deep breaths, exhaling deeply it seems for the first time in days.
And somewhere, somewhere off in the distance, you think you hear a hum, your mother’s weeping willow tree whispering, the music of that little sparrow singing outside your bedroom window.
