Emergence Delirium by Danielle Altman

They found me floating face down in the motel swimming pool, a seedy place off the Sunset Strip where we’d been partying. A janitor heard the splash. He dragged me up to the patio and slapped my cheeks, which was funny. I was already blue, and now some random guy was hitting me. We kissed. His breath choked me. I woke, briefly. Curled over, shivering on the lip of the deep end, my reflection rippling beneath as my lungs spasmed dry.

He rubbed my back, yelling for help. My hair was warm, dripping thick, and matted with something. Blood. Mine, I guess. That made me laugh and cry equally. A coyote in the night. I was too far gone for fear. The night whispered something. I closed my eyes to hear.

The owl-faced man, the janitor, shook me until his jowls trembled and his eyes sprouted tears. Against my better judgment, I sat up, but only to comfort him. He took the opportunity to stick his finger down my throat. That’s when the rainbows shot out of me. I tried to say, good luck, Prince Charming. Ketamine abides in the bloodstream. But I was a frog. My voice a croak. 

The doors that squared the courtyard opened. Hollywood. A rent-by-the-hour dollhouse. A girl crouched behind it with a flashlight, illuminating the silhouetted stick figures who rushed toward me, excited to catch my final and best performance before I checked out.

Is she dead? some girl from Fullerton whispered.

There was no escaping Orange County. A ghost of me wanted drumsticks, to play a beat, make a bow. So tired. I rested my cheek in a puddle of chlorine and went to sleep.

***

Here’s how I got here: a motel off Santa Monica Boulevard where they threw my party, hot and overcrowded with people pretending to know me. Speed, beer, and K pulsed in my veins as I danced to a Damned record on repeat. I passed my tongue and fingers through my birthday candle flames to see if I could feel. I can’t feel you, I hissed at the cake.

Everyone laughed. How Stacey, they clapped. But I wasn’t sure I was her anymore and my burns didn’t look funny. If Justin saw the marks, which he wouldn’t, since he didn’t want me anymore, he’d take me somewhere private, snap an aloe leaf, scold me. Kiss it where I was too numb to hurt. Feel, he used to say, his fingers tapping the inside of my wrist. The blood in the beat. No use keeping time without it. I’d played my best for him, spread my legs for him, fell in love with him. He gave me feel and took it when he left. Probably locked it in a trunk in the house he shared with his wife and kids. I wanted it back. And him.

Close your eyes, my fake friends yelled.

Make a wish.

No memory of my escape from Room 102. I stood alone by the pool, famously painted black. The night was starless and dewy, reeking of car exhaust and dead leaves. I drew my leather jacket tight against the wind tugging at the hem of my dress. I spun on my toes, to feel something, anything. Twenty-one. So far from being a kid. The palm trees swayed and bent toward me, lit up from beneath like reanimating monsters. The searchlights of the Hollywood Bowl darted across the sky. Close enough to touch, always out of reach.

I spun again, wishing he would call. Hopeless. At least my boots were cute and sturdy. I clicked my heels three times. Motionless, but still spinning. I tripped on something, a sprinkler head maybe, scraped my hands along a stucco wall to get steady. Blood bloomed on my palm, tangled in bougainvillea. City lights and palm fronds cartwheeled above. I fell to my knees. Sick and pretty.

Standing, I stumbled back, expecting ground, finding air. A cracking thud against my temple, cold slapping pool, a blanket so heavy, dragging me under. Foggy. Did I leave my keys in another room? Oh well. No matter. No sides, no bottom. Heavy boots. Warm water.

What a mistake. Is this death? I see myself. My drumsticks carve air, make fetid weather. In dive bars I can’t buy a beer in, I accelerate, become the speed of sound. The mosh pit is a slippery throbbing organism. Boys touch me, try to suck me in. Sometimes I let them but all I want is him. Backstage, I touch him first. He runs his hand along my knee. I lift my skirt, move his hand higher. He pulls back, shakes his head, falls back into his coffin.

I’m dying and even my thoughts are stupid.

No. I’m eight. At the bay. Dad drags me out to where I can’t touch and holds me down beneath the water. I blow bubbles as I scream. No. There’s a storm out in the North Pacific. I’m sixteen, surfing Trestles. Waves make way for courtroom doors. The swell is heavy, it forces me through. Dad, a cartoon criminal, beautiful hair shorn, looks at me with so much regret it makes me happy. Proof, finally, that he loves me.

I roll over, kick my legs useless against his prison bars. No. My crib. I’m an age from before I can remember. I’m crying for my mother, gumming my fist, staring at curtains drawn mean tight. She rushes in, lifts me, presses me to her chest. No matter how hard I kick and scream, she never stops loving me. Neck freckled and sun-warm, smelling of dirt, milk, oranges. My mouth is full of her. When I suck, it floods, until I’m flat and loose as peanut butter in the sun. Everything is gonna be alright.

No. I’m too young. Not ready. Someone or something is rocking me.

Hey, I croak at some janitor. Don’t forget me when I’m gone.  

Danielle Altman

Image by GregoryButler from Pixabay – a small swimming pool with a tiled surround, blue water and a white fence and a row of sun loungers.