Isn't That Nuts?

I crawled inside a vodka bottle a few years ago. I would melt fresh ice under a heavy pour as soon as I pushed into the kitchen after work. If he saw me marching across the porch, nerves and desperation propelled him to the bottle first. Can I pour you a drink? he asked.

Mornings washed pieces if my life down the drain. Alone in my car sobbing, hung-over and vicious, I remember staring through the windshield while rain pushed November's reddish leaves across the Pontiac's hood. I thought, it's not as bad as the mental hospital…

It happened during a warm, grass-scented April afternoon. They took my shoes and anything made of glass in my purse including a little perfume oil that smelled like dust and earth and happiness. No mirrors. No doors. They stared at me while I slept, but nobody cared about another terrified girl I had met . Her mother spoke in her head.

The girl whispered and glanced to the side in fear. She's going to hear us, she said.

Who? Your mother?

Yes! she said.

I am sorry, I said.

She would wake with slash marks on her arms. Fingernails in the night had retraced and opened old scars.

Your mother? I asked.

I don't remember anything, she said...

Sitting there in the old Pontiac on a dreary day with a long drive and a head like a stone, I was crying again. I wondered about another woman I had met on the locked ward. Her husband would bring their children but she would crawl in his lap, as if she were the youngest and most wounded of them all.

They love you, I told her later.

They do. It kills me, she said.

Go home to them, I said.

I am afraid, she said.

Later she asked a nurse to monitor her that night, and strap her hands to the bed.

She did not trust herself, she said.

Somehow the vodka days passed and I was raking my yard and waving to the neighbor's little kid, wondering what pit I'd fall in next. About a mile away I heard a deep whistle sound over the Stevenson Dam and I knew turkey vultures would be lining the fences, waiting while the water churned.

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A demon sat staring at the curves of my face. I remembered the stubble on his chin tugging my hair. Maybe I used to be crazy, and that's how this door opened and dangerous things slipped in.

Nothing is for certain or for sure; it all teeters on maybe.

I still think about the woman who would curl against her husband while her kids sat quietly because dad had probably said, don't do anything to upset your mother.

I know her life was a torture. I know she wanted out from under its weight. She was afraid to sleep without a nurse watching, so how could she care for a daughter and make her husband happy and not come apart?

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I told the demon that my life didn't go right. It was never right for me to have kids.

What do you mean! You don't have any, and maybe that's right, he said.

I believe it is.

I remember a picture of my mother when she was just married. Her hair was long and dark and her face was beautiful. A pale blush and dark eyelashes. She smiled over her shoulder. I look like that, sometimes. The things that conspire while we are busy being mortal would have crafted for a me a heartbreakingly stunning girl.