Chapter 15: The Book Room

15. The Book Room

In therapy we played the Affirmation Game. Everyone writes an affirming statement on a slip of paper, and the slips are put into a little green plastic bucket. As the bucket is passed around a second time each person pulls out a slip, most likely not their own, and reading the affirmation to the group.

“I am amazing.”

“I am pretty.”

“I am super-smart.” I got to read that one.

“I have everything I need to put my life back together.”

“I am shit.” Rebecca read that one. Silence enveloped the room, and I saw tears begin to form in her eyes, which made me feel bad for her. She stared straight ahead, looking at the floor. All the other eyes turned to me – they knew that I had written it.

I knew that Judy was letting the quiet hang there on purpose, trying to make me feel bad. I did feel sorry, not for saying it, but for making Rebecca, whom I didn’t know at all, feel bad. Finally Judy broke the quiet saying, “Allison, would you please stay after group for a few minutes.” I was in trouble once again.

The session was dismissed early and I stayed in my chair as everyone filed out. Phyla made eye contact with me, and I tried to read everything into those eyes – sympathy, criticism, hope.

“Allison,” Judy began, standing over me once the door had closed behind the last of the others, “you seem to have a real problem with our work here.”

“No, ma’am,” I answered. “I’m just trying to be honest about how I feel.” I wanted to be looking her in the eye, but I didn’t have the strength, the defiance, to do that.

“Then open up and tell us about it, instead of playing these games.”

I didn’t say anything.

“There’s a lot of brokenness here. Maybe you think because these girls have ended up here, in detention, because they have been convicted of something, that they are all just badass.” She paused there, wanting me to absorb the force of her having used a cuss word. “But they got there because of the brokenness within themselves, brokenness we’re trying to address here, in this room, with these therapies.”

Again, I had nothing to say. I stood up, getting ready to walk out and on to my social studies class.

She reached for my hand, but I pulled it back, even though that little bit of touch felt good. Touch had become such a rare commodity in my life, and the make out session with Phyla had only made its absence more poignant.  “Allison, if you’re not going to be part of the solution, at least get out of our way so you’re not part of the problem.”

“Is that all? Can I go?” I asked, still trying to leave.

“Yes. I’m not holding you prisoner or anything. But just think about. You can’t live forever shutting everyone out.”

By the time I got out the door Phyla was long gone. I had been hoping to catch her for just a moment or two before we went to separate classes, but I had screwed that up. I rushed on to Mrs. Dickinson’s American History.

There was a war with Mexico that I had never heard about before, but then there was a lot of things that had happened that had somehow slipped past me. Even though I tried to listen I couldn’t figure out who were the good guys, Mexico or America. Thirteen thousand American soldiers died for the land that America got out of the deal, nearly half of all of Mexico. I wondered if the land would allow slavery to expand, but then it was the end of the period. More domination, ,more possessing, more oppression would certainly follow.

In English we were still discussing Jane Eyre and no one had given me the book yet. I’m not sure anyone really cared. From what Mr. Perkins was saying, it sounded like the girl’s childhood pretty much sucked, particularly compared to the suburban middle-class life Allison-me had enjoyed before the crash.

In the line at lunch Phyla whispered to me, “Laundry room,” and even though I was angry with her for making out with me one day and deliberately ignoring me the next I knew that I would go. Once there, still wearing my too-small unicorn shirt, I remembered my resolution to do laundry. I got there first and was looking at how the washers operated when Phyla slipped in behind me, and grabbed me by the waist. I spun around, wanting to accuse her of something … but then we just kissed.

It was tender and gentle, and made me want more, but then she pulled back. There was moisture shining in her eyes. “I’ve missed you so much, Gesama,” she whispered.

I held up a finger in front of her lips to stop her from coming in for another kiss, “What is this whole Gesama stuff? And … like I knew you from sometime before here? Before this place?”

She nodded. Then she looked around the shabby laundry room with mustiness and spilled detergent powder. She squeezed her nose to indicate her distaste for the smell, which was pretty overwhelming. “Let’s go somewhere else to talk. This was a bad choice.”

She led me by the hand out the door and through an open door into a hallway that was obviously part of a newer part of the building. The creamy white of her peasant blouse with burgundy bric-a-brac trim contrasted beautifully with the caramel of her skin. It was hard to think that Erika could hate her for that.

While the new addition was not by any means new, it was more modern, with a late twentieth century drab institution chic. In this part the persistent breathing of the old house faded to almost nothing. We passed office doors that were closed, except for Ms. Slanick’s office where we could see her working at her desk, studying something on the computer screen.

Finally my guide reached an open door and pulled my into a large closet with bookshelves, an old scarred wooden table, and two wooden chairs. “It’s okay,” she whispered, “we’re allowed to be in here. It’s my job to keep all these books in order and to fetch them for the teachers, sometimes.”

Even though I had so much I wanted to ask her my eyes went immediately to the books, maybe because I hadn’t really seen much in the way of books other than what we had given as text books, and now I remembered how much I missed reading. A lot of the books were textbooks, old and tattered, but there was a section of novels, classics, probably intended for the English class. They had also seen a lot of wear.

“You’re not going to find anything written in this century in there.” Phyla told me as I continued to skim the titles, sorted alphabetical by author. “I got a job in here for good behavior, but I have a feeling that sneaking around with you might … damage that.”

I nodded and then smiled a little.

“Also, everything in here, for the most part, has been approved as ‘appropriate’ by the state. You’re not going to find any copies of Catcher in the Rye.”

Again I nodded. I realized that I was going backwards alphabetically and when I got to Bronte I found that there were seven copies of Jane Eyre right there. “Hey,” I said with probably a little too much excitement for such an silly thing, “this is the book that we’re supposed to be reading in English class.”

Phyla smiled, “And let me guess, no one ever gave you a copy.”

Again I nodded, pulling out the one with the least amount of wear on its spine.

“Typical, but you should have asked and they would have sent me down here to get you one. Even though no one really cares if you get an education in here, they like to go through the motions. You should read it – it’s pretty good, really. And, it gives us an excuse to be down here now. If Ms. Slanick comes down we’ll tell her I brought you down here to get you this book.”

I sat up on the table, clutching the book to my chest as if I had just found a wonderful treasure. Phyla sat down in one of the chairs and laid her head on my thigh. I could see moistness in her eyes. “It’s good to be together again,” she whispered.

“Why?” I asked, and then realized that didn’t come out at all right. “I mean, it’s wonderful to do this, to kiss you and all that, but why … why do you call me Gesama? And why do you say ‘again?’”

She took a little while to answer. “You didn’t seem to be surprised when I mentioned the spider – the one that you were.”

“I know. I mean it’s really weird, but I remember being a spider, leaving in the warm darkness under the microwave in Allison’s house, and then one day, during breakfast, we merged. And now I have memories of growing up as Allison, and of having been a spider, and … okay, that’s just too weird. I’m really not that weird.”

I was looking down at the side of her face in my lap and she smiled, “Oh yes, you really are that weird. But the spider-you was not always a spider.”

I set the book down beside me, and absent-mindedly pushed the fingers of my left hand into her dreadlocks, slowly twisting and untwisting them. Rather than asking I waited, knowing that she would tell me more.

“You used to be a girl, a girl named Gesama, and I was in love with you. I am in love with you. And you loved me too. I hope that you still do. We have been together a long time. But you forgot so much when …”

“When what?” I had to ask when the silence had been getting a little too long.

“When you jumped into the spider, the night they killed the girl body and you had to hide. By the way, I like this Allison body – you chose well, we chose well. And the Allison you fits the Gesama you, and …”

“Wait, the night someone killed me?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to remember. Not right now. I was there, and it hurts too much.” She was crying more, “Just touch me like that, my hair. It feels so good to have your fingers in my hair. Please, just do that … and try to remember. I need you to remember.”

As my fingers continued to play with her hair, something stirred inside me, like a deep, forgotten memory of her hair, of this beautiful girl whose damp cheek was now resting against my thigh. Did I really remember having loved her before? Or was I just manufacturing something because of what she had told me. The weirdest thing was that she knew about the spider-me. And the spider-me now had a name, Gesama.

It felt like if I sat there long enough more and more would come back about Gesama. I didn’t think. I just felt, just let myself become empty to clear some place for memories that were trying to surface, and they included touching this hair before.

Suddenly she sat up, leaving a wet spot on the thigh of my jeans. “Ms. Slanick’s coming down the hall. We have to …” she stood up, and picked up the copy of Jayne Eyre, so she could pretend to be giving it to me just as Ms. Slanick came around the corner.

“Girls,” the director said, looking at us over the top of her reading glasses, “what are you doing down here?”

Phyla seemed to relax immediately, but it was still evident that she had been crying. “No one had given Allison a copy of the book that we’re reading in English, so I brought her down here to get her one.”

Ms. Slanick smiled. I could tell that she knew that there was more to the story, but that she was going to let it slide. “Thank you, Phyla. We shouldn’t let these things fall through the cracks. And Allison, you probably should have said something to Mr. Perkins.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Slanick,” I said, hopping off the table. I knew that my mother, Allison’s mother, would have probably disapproved of me sitting up there, but Ms. Slanick didn’t seem to notice.

“Now, you know that the after-lunch rest time is there for a reason, and you are supposed to getting some rest. So I need both of you to go on up to your rooms. Afternoon classes start,” she looked at her small gold, very feminine wrist watch, “in just thirty-five minutes.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I answered, clutching the book to my chest once again.

With Phyla leading the way we walked back into the old part of the mansion and up the stairs to our rooms. When we got to my door she glanced up at the camera in the ceiling, and then leaned in and kissed me quickly on the lips. “More some other time,” and then with a little laugh she rushed on into her door.

I went into my room, and laid on the bed, trying to process what I had learned, trying to remember being Gesama.