Girl in Pieces

I pull the object from my pocket and put it on the floor of Mikey’s garage. It’s a red cross, slightly larger than my hand, made of plaster and encrusted with fat white skulls with painted black eye sockets, black nostrils, black-dotted mouths. The sides of it have been dipped in thick red glitter.

The skull-cross is gaudy and cheap and wonderful and showers me with a palpable ache: Ellis would have loved it, would have bought several more to nail to the walls of her blue-painted bedroom, where they would share morose space with posters and cutouts of Morrissey, Elliott Smith, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Edith, the Lonely Doll.

I find an old striped scarf in Mikey’s trunk and gingerly wrap the cross in it and push it under the pillow. I get up and look around the smallness of Mikey’s place, thinking about what Ariel said, which overwhelms me and makes me long for the safety of my kit in the trunk, so I go into the teeny bathroom and rock back and forth on the toilet for a while. Casper said repetitive motion, like rocking, or even just jumping in place, can help soothe your nerves.

When I get overwhelmed and I can’t focus on just one thing, when all of my horrible hits me at once, it’s like I’m one of those giant tornados in a cartoon, the furry gray kind that suctions up everything in its path: the unsuspecting mailman, a cow, a dog, a fire hydrant. Tornado Me picks up every bad thing I’ve ever done, every person I’ve fucked and fucked over, every cut I’ve made, everything, everything. Tornado Me whirls and whirls, growing more immense and crowded.

I have to be careful. Being overwhelmed, feeling powerless, getting caught up in the tornado of shame and emptiness is a trigger.

Casper told me, “You can only take one thing at a time. Set a goal. See it through. When you’ve finished one thing, start another.” She told me to start small.

I tell myself: You made it out of Creeley, however it happened. You got on a bus. You came to the desert. You found food. You have not hurt yourself in this new place. You found a job.

I repeat the sentences until the tornado stops whirling. When Mikey gets here, everything will be just a little better.

Out loud, I say, “A place to live.”

I have money. I can find a place to live. This is what I tell myself, in a kind of mantra, as I arrange myself on Mikey’s futon and fall asleep.