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By April Scheiner
“Nicole, what’re you doing out in the snow?” It was Ms. Barber, my English teacher. “Did you miss your bus?”
“No, I’m not getting on the bus today.”
“Is your foster mother picking you up?”
“No.”
“Are you having trouble with the kids on the bus?”
“No … it’s not that.” I looked down at my boots and forced my best fake smile in an attempt to shake off the woman. Then I gave her what she wanted to hear: “Everything’s fine. I just like the snow … like walking in it. ’Sides, I live really close to here.”
It worked. She laughed. Then smiling, she said, “Sounds good; just don’t forget to do your homework.”
I tapped my backpack in response and left the teacher to struggle with her car against the developing ice on the road. As she left, I walked along a sidewalk that was quickly becoming a thick layer of snow. The smile disappeared from my face as I allowed my thoughts to wander. I had a lot on my mind lately.
My parents had been fighting with the courts to regain custody of me and my brother, and I just couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything else. Why would she want us? She hated us. Nightmares of the abuse suffered in their small apartment, a shit-hole of a place located above a hat shop near the train station, lingered in my racing mind. I could remember train horns blaring every night, jolting me awake. That was if Mommy and Daddy weren’t kicking each other around, making enough noise to drown out even the train. Oh, yeah, sweet remembrances. Not!
My current foster placement at Pat Hilgart’s home was great and I didn’t want to leave. For the first time, after four prior placements, it was as if I had a real home. Damien, my brother, was currently in juvie, for stealing food for my parents when we were at home, so I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to him. My caseworker says that I will have to return to my parents’ home if a judge says so; the thought made me want to disappear completely like I had never been born. It seemed that as soon as I managed to get close to a family, or a caseworker, I’d be moved for some reason or other. And my parents … well, that was another story. No way in hell I was going back there.
Man, was it cold out. Flashes of “The Little Match Girl” movie, about a young girl who couldn’t go home unless she satisfied her parents by making enough money selling matches, kept hitting my mind. I could relate to her fear of returning home without having what was required; in my home it had usually been either food for which begging was required or a bottle of booze. When I came back empty handed, I would get beaten. Our place came to be known in our hood as the screaming house. We kids were abused in many ways—which was why the court took me away in the first place. So how could they make us go back? There was every possibility that my parents might actually win in court, too. It wasn’t fair. No parenting class in existence could change the damage already done. I just couldn’t go back there. I felt like crying, but had learned long ago that crying didn’t do any good. Sometimes it made things worse.
I stopped at a frozen lake that I had passed many times before and decided to sit down to think for a little while to bask in an atmosphere of peace. If The Little Match Girl could weather storms, to ponder her plight, then so could I. I watched an amazingly agile woman gracefully skating on the lake, while a couple of children, likely her own, struggled with learning the skill themselves. I watched the woman, wishing that I had such agility, or had even learned to skate as a child. I had never gone to dancing or skating-school like so many of my friends had. There never seemed to be enough money in the house for anything.
Behind the snowstorm, the sun still shone bright. It was truly beautiful watching the flakes drift to the ground.
My moment of peace was interrupted by a familiar voice.
“Hey, Nicole.” It was Bill.
I turned around to acknowledge that I had heard my boyfriend.
“I waited for you at the bus stop, but you never showed. Where the hell’ve you been? Wasting my time … I have to come looking for you now?” He sat on the hood of his car, arms crossed.
“Leave me the hell alone,” I screamed.
“Get in the car right now.”
He jumped off the hood and dragged me into the car. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the woman on the ice had stopped to watch, her eyes looking very concerned. She even started to skate in our direction, but Bill had already peeled out.
I’d had it! I decided that Bill was not going to keep me in that car. As he rounded a corner, I took the risk. I wasn’t about to let him kick my ass today. I opened the door and jumped out, and landed face-down on the curb. I caught my balance, got up, and started running. And kept running and running and running. I could feel the blood dripping down my chin from the fall.
Visions of my father whipping me, and Bill doing the same, came to mind. I ran as fast as I could. I wasn’t going to take this crap anymore—not from anybody. Let my parents fight for me. Let my asshole boyfriend come look for me. I didn’t care. None of them would ever see me again. There was an escape, one last escape that made sense.
I ran into the first building I came to, a four-story townhouse building, and raced up its stairs to the roof. I walked to the edge and looked down. I saw Bill looking for me. I spotted a rock and kicked it off, and watched it drop to the ground with a thud. Time to end this roller coaster some people referred to as a life. I peeked one more time over the edge, took a deep breath, and with little hesitation—jumped.
* * * *
I opened my eyes later and was immediately hit with the antiseptic odor of a hospital. At first, I had no idea what had happened. Who were all these strangers, several in white, blurry jackets, rushing up and down the hallway outside of my room? Finally, I put it all together. All I was sure of was that there was a sharp shooting pain in my left arm, and that my head felt like it was going to explode, especially in the back. Through blurred vision, I became aware of someone standing over my bed taking my pulse, a woman of Native American coloring, with long, black hair pulled to the back and put into a braid. I believe she was smiling.
“Nicole, I’m glad to see you’re awake. I’ll have to tell the doctor so he knows the swelling on your brain’s probably not as bad as he thought.”
“I … can’t see straight.”
“Don’t worry. That’s common with a concussion. Chances are good that it’ll go away pretty soon. Are you in a lot of pain?”
“Yes, please help me.”
She gently caressed my hand, the one with the I.V. tube in it, and that comforted me. I still couldn’t quite pull together what had happened.
“What happened to me? Why does my whole body hurt?”
“You took quite a fall, young lady. The doctor will be in to see you soon; then we’ll see if we can do something about that pain. For now, is there anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable?”
“I’m kind of cold and thirsty. Do you think you could please get me a blanket?”
She shuffled through a cabinet and pulled out a blanket, which she used to tuck me in.
“Can you shut the door or close the blinds or something. I feel like I’m on display.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s one I can’t do for you. You’re in a suicide prevention room so I have to be able to look in one you, every once in a while. You’ll probably be sick of me by day’s end.” She smiled. “If you need to use the phone, I’ll have to bring one in for you and be in here with you. Also, there’s nothing in here that you can hurt yourself with.”
“Nicole … Nicole?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” I said, coming back to the conscious world. I began crying my eyes out. She gave me some privacy by leaving to get me a soda and something from the cafeteria to eat. She had mentioned that someone was here to visit me; I waved my hand in the air to tell her “No.”
After the nurse left the room. I could hear her talking. I curled into a fetal position, best I could, in an attempt to find shelter from the mental storm going on in my head. But instead of feeling better, I found myself hurting even more. It was out of control. It hurt so badly; I never should have moved.
“What is it? Why is she screaming?” a familiar voice inquired from out in the hall. I couldn’t quite make it out, but I didn’t have to. I could hear my nurse quietly consoling a woman, the woman, while a doctor I had never seen before entered the room. He used a small, bright flashlight to look into my eyes and gave me directions, which I followed, for him to test my memory and vision. He explained that they had been worried that there might be some swelling around my brain, since I’d been out for so long, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. He ordered a CAT scan just the same.
“Let me have a look at that left arm,” he said.
I could barely move it and felt like screaming whenever he touched it.
“Yep, that’s a couple of breaks for sure. I’ll be coming in later to put a cast on that. How does your back feel?”
“Really bad, but not as bad as my head.”
“OK.”
“Normally after a suicide attempt, patients are kept in the psych-ward for 72 hours, but we’re going to keep you here … due to your physical condition, and continued blurry vision. The talk you had with the psychiatrist earlier indicated we shouldn’t have to worry about you giving us any problems. Am I right in believing that?”
“Yes,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to break it to him, but I had never talked to a shrink. County hospitals, you can keep them. But at this point, nothing would surprise me.
“Can you do anything about this pain?”
“Yes, we’ll be giving you a morphine drip. When you feel pain, you’ll press a button, and you’ll get relief. Nurse Judy will be taking care of you.”
Then, as if on cue, she walked in with a Pepsi and a sandwich.
“Thanks,” I told her.
“Any questions before I leave?”
“No,” I responded. I guess I was pretty damned depressed.
“Then I’ll be seeing you later today to set that cast, and to check on that neck. Take care.”
I don’t remember much of what happened after that, probably because I was too fogged out on morphine to give a damn. I’m not even sure how long I was in the hospital, but upon my release, I had the misfortune of being reunited with her.
She was given a list of directions on how to take care of me, and the prescriptions I needed to continue.
I couldn’t believe that after all this, I was the Little Match Girl again. I felt nothing toward this woman, not even as she pushed my wheelchair into the elevator. She never even said a word, which was fine. I couldn’t even look at her without my eyes welling up with tears. My neck brace was very tight, but I wasn’t about to ask her to fix it. She had already flashed me a few blaming glances, as if I had done something directly to hurt her. I couldn’t believe that some idiot judge had put me back in her custody.
I really wanted to see Pat, to tell her how sorry I was that I hurt her. She had not been allowed to visit me, as she wasn’t my mother anymore. She cared for me, even cared about me, and I had returned her love by attempting suicide. I would be sure to contact her as soon as possible. Meanwhile I was left with a woman that never knew how to care. Why did she want me back?
“Well, get up. The car isn’t too far away,” my mother ordered, rolling my prescriptions and home-care instructions into a ball and pitching them into a trash bin.
April
Scheiner, is a graduate of the University of Denver School of Law.
She works and writes as a victim advocate regarding the dark realities of
survival that many people endure during their lives. She is a woman
who believes that only through awareness can positive change occur.
©2004 Words Words Words. All Rights Reserved. |
