The Box

            by Shoshana Zambryski-Stachel

 

I'm sitting on the bathroom floor, knees drawn to my chest as I gently rock back and forth.  I’ve been here for hours.

 

This morning I never actually got up.  Part of me is probably still lying there, inert under the weight of my comforter, hiding from the sunlight wriggling its way through the evergreen blinds.  My brain had stopped, held up at some random security checkpoint where the guards began to search me top to bottom with their short wands, flapping their wings as they circled in on me.  I feel like shit.  I’m not sick.  No, I wouldn’t say that.  My body has simply found a way to mirror how I feel inside, multimedia for emotions; I'll be an artist yet!  I just can't seem to get my mind around the situation in my head, can't discern the specifics, as to how to make it end or even what caused it.  I've simply stopped: man down.

            The aching started in my head. Maybe I even imagined it, but I remember feeling as if a migraine was coming on; starting with the slow pulsing, then building upon itself into a throbbing, a sizzle of blood in my temples.  Then I began to feel it elsewhere, slowly descending down my neck, spiraling along the column of my spine and filling the void of my stomach.  It’s all encompassing; it has me wrapped within its sharp talons.  So there I lie in bed, submitting myself, handing my body over to emotion.

            The seconds pass and my father is towering over my body, gargantuan.  Bent at the waist, forced to hunch over.  He cannot fit into the confines of my room, it’s made for little people like me.  The giant tries to persuade me, “It’s a beautiful day, get up, do something.” He has great persuasive techniques, yet I remain where I am,

mumbling about how I don’t feel well.  I’ll get up in a while.  I have no intention of rising.  I am safe here, cocooned within my bed sheets.  The heavy thuds of the giant’s red slippered feet shudder throughout the house as he leaves my cupboard for more spacious areas of the house.

Minutes or hours later, curly-cued pasta appears next to my head; the scent of garlic infused with Parmesan envelopes the delicately spiraling pieces of carbohydrate goodness. My stomach moans softly, juices gurgling in the emptiness of the cavity.  I roll over and face the pasta, stare it down.  It wins.  My stomach and the enticing smells lure me into the sensuous comfort of the noodles; though I cannot seem to make myself finish them, nibbling and picking on them individually with my fingers and finally setting my back squarely against them.  I get to win this one.

Facing the uneven whiteness of the wall once more my mind went blank.  Empty and swarming with a multitude of worries and ailments.  All of those small, seemingly meaningless remarks, breaking free and reminding me of his insensitivity; pictures swimming in my mind of the two of you, cutting me close, I try to overlook those smiles, I take what I can get; my isolation presses me into the wire springs deep within the mattress, the cold metal impaling me. 

 

Seconds have become hours.  In here I’m racing, running a marathon, pushing my muscles farther, darting from one object of pain to the next.  I need to move.

Cramped muscles jump into action, folds of sheet and blanket falling from my figure as I reanimate this body, which had so willingly submitted itself to stillness.  Mechanically I open the door and drag my legs behind me as I descend the stairs, slowly, mind still lost.

Somehow I find myself in the bathroom.  This bathroom.  My body aches, racked with a desire to vomit, revolting against my attempts to contain this.  I see a picture of myself: shivering as I am on the cold tile of the floor, bare skin peeking out at my shins below the tangle of cloth gathered at my knees.  There I am, kneeling at the foot of the effigy, clutching to the rim of the cold porcelain, but nothing comes.  My body convulses, rhythmically, as my chest rises and falls and my stomach descends into my spine.

Slowly I slide back into myself as the convulsions slow and finally cease.  I’m dizzy.  My body seems to get me better than I do myself as it imitates the spinning of my mind, reeling around the room, taking account of my surroundings. Gently I loosen my grip on the hard plastic in my hand, rotating it and opening it to the LCD screen.

            “I think I’m losing it…” time continues to trot around in a monstrous hamster wheel, gaining speed as it goes nowhere.  Waiting.

            “No you’re not. Don’t worry, it’ll get better.  You’ll be fine, I promise.  Take it from someone who’s had their fair share of bathroom floors.  It gets easier.  You should read this short story I wrote a while back, it might help.”

            “I’d like that.” 

            My mind wanders to and fro, darting around the small room.  Roaming around the idyllic hills, farmhouse and vineyards, I notice all the discrepancies where the paper has been put on in the wrong place, lopping off one side of a hill and connecting it to another roll dotted with trees; the misted mirror picturing a solitary stag standing proudly yet full of caution, hesitating at the mouth of the forest, ready to turn back at any moment; the uneven rip of toilet paper next to the nape of my neck, with bookend wooden cows holding it in place, the right one’s hemp tail has unwound; then I notice the mysterious shine of faux-marble, covered by tiny bits of my shattered self.  My own eye stares back up at me, big wet drops cascading through the heavy lashes.  I hadn’t even noticed that I’d been crying. 

Hastily I wipe the shameful tears away with the back of my hand, unwilling to admit to even myself that I’m losing it.

“Will you keep talking to me, please?  I don’t wanna be alone in my head…” a silent plea.

“Of course.”

Those two small words, your simple reply, are enough to help me keep it together. You still make me smile, after everything, even now, as I continuously sway side to side on my heels, accompanied by a nervous twitching, swiveling my head around on my shoulders as if a caged bird examining her surroundings.  As if these solid walls and locked door are no more than a thick viewing glass, encasing me in a box.  I’ve been having this feeling lately, as if trapped in a box; it’s shrinking around me.

I rock.  Hunching in against my knees then falling back as far as my arms will stretch.  Swaying and shaking, control seems to be a foreign concept.

Telltale footfalls reverberate through the ceiling and stairs as the giant descends to my level, stopping on the other side of the door behind which I hide, forcing me to clutch to my trembling knees even harder, bringing myself in closer, condensing and preparing to let go and melt through the grout between the dark tiles if he dares to find a way to jimmy the lock of my fort. 

“What’s going on? What are you doing in there?”

I don’t respond, can’t.  My mind rushes to assemble a sentence, find the exact tone and syntax to disguise the inevitable quiver in my voice.

“Will you come out?” the deep voice rumbles from the other side of the mottled wood.

“I’m not ready to come out yet,” I need more time, more time in here.

“Well, will you be ready soon?  It’s getting late, you’ve been in there for hours.”

Hours? My tongue stumbles and forces out my default.  “I dunno.”  I don’t. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to rise and open that door.  Feel the solidity of the stale air crash against me and pull me out into firing range.  The thought of leaving these four walls sends me back into panic, shaking uncontrollably.

I need help.  There, I’ve said it.  I admit that I’m not strong enough.  I need a fortress that doesn’t reside within me, that is not me.  The foundations are crumbling from the weight of the years, years of mending others’ broken hearts and hiding mine away in a musty labyrinth beneath the mighty stones.  Tears roll down my cheeks as another cascade of rock dislodges from the failing stronghold.  I need help.

The car revs within the garage, echoing against the walls, and the giant is gone.  I need to tell him, to ask him to help me.  To tell him that I finally want help, but not from him.  Instead from someone who will not brush me aside with a sweep of the hand for attempting to explain my mind. 

I can’t bring myself to say it.  I’ve admitted it to myself, isn’t that enough?  Must I admit my weaknesses to the rest of the world as well? 

Time rolls on by and I finally connect my fingers to the small buttons of my phone, clicking away to form my words.

“I want to see a therapist.  I don’t want to talk about it with you, I can’t.  Please, just leave it at that.”

Thunder booms and the giant is pounding on the door demanding to get inside my head, he thinks he can force his way in.

The rocking increases, palms pressing into my eardrums, please don’t scream…

“Open this door!  You need to talk to me!” No response, I’m still rocking.  It clears its throat after some time and starts again, calmer.  “I’m sorry you’re so unhappy this summer. Why do you think that is?”

Frantically my fingers attack the well-worn keys of my phone.  I don’t trust myself to speak.  Unlike the giants I don’t scream, thus I cannot be heard, understood or acknowledged.  “Please just don’t ask questions. Please?”

“Shoshana…?” a small vibrating informs me that he’s received my message, followed by a heavy sigh.  “This doesn’t work, you need to open the door now.  What’s this about?”  Another sigh, “Ya know, I’ve been feeling as if you don’t love me anymore, and… it hurts.”

Quickly I string together my thoughts, automatically retreating and rearranging to protect his feelings, to make it better, trying to soften the blow and somehow maintain my position, but my emotions don’t care.  “Of course I love you, you’re my father, I love you regardless.  I try so hard to enjoy being around you and spending time with you.  But you find a way to insult and degrade everything and everyone, making it impossible to be happy around you.  You’re strangling.”

I hold my breath and force myself to stop swaying.  What have I done?  What will he do?  I know what he’s capable of, massive hands having been crumpled in pain, knowing too much of that.  Please understand.

Silence. 

“I’m going out.  I’ll be back late.” Flying about the house as if a hurricane, tearing at objects and slamming the door behind him followed by the whir of the garage door. 

I stay where I am, terrified to leave.  Could he be waiting just outside that door?  I rock, forgetting about time and trying to wrest my mind from thoughts that I’ve betrayed my father, but he was the one who left.  I simply asked him for help, to leave it be, instead he left me.  The gentle swaying of my body lulls me into a trance, a crib rocking my tired mind away from the chaos.

Abandoned I wait, for some sign that I’m ‘ready’.