For almost two years she’d worried that she might be schizophrenic. Her best friend Janice had a brother who heard voices and felt suspicious and was angry all the time. Lisa had seen what it had done to Janice and her family, and she’d learned enough to be frightened out of her mind.
Being schizophrenic meant they would send you away and lock you up for weeks at a time. It meant that the people around you were always watching you, waiting for signs that you were coming unglued again.
It meant that the people in your life always had to be on their guard, and that they got taunted about having someone crazy in the family.
When she’d began hearing the voices, she’d known what it meant. Her time with her mother was limited.
At first it hadn’t been so bad. Hearing stray conversations and only later realizing that no one had been nearby to have them. There had been no rhyme or reason to them. Sometimes the things Lisa had heard terrified her. The time she’d heard the daddy hitting his kid had sent her to her room with her hands over her ears, biting her lip to keep from crying.
Sometimes she’d heard bathroom noises that made her giggle. Other times they made her feel sick.
The older she’d got, the more specific it had gotten. Now it seemed that the voices were always talking about her.
It was funny how little you really wanted to hear what people really thought about you.
Grandma Ellen had thought she was fat, and that she had an eating problem. That had lasted until last summer, when she’d suddenly grown and discovered that it didn’t seem to matter how much she ate; she no longer gained weight.
Then Grandma Ellen had thought she was anorexic. Lisa had caught the look on her grandmother’s face whenever she went to the bathroom, as though she was going to check for signs of vomit.
Aunt Lucy was nice, but she worried that Lisa didn’t have enough friends.
Of course, when you were hearing voices that sounded like the people you thought were your friends talking behind your back, it was hard to look for new ones. Especially since there was a feeling in the base of her gut that at least some of the things she was hearing were true.
Uncle Mike argued with her mother about their having their own house. They could have so many more things, he argued, if they would move back in with him. Her mother would argue about being independent and setting a good example.
She’d tell Grandma Ellen though that she felt guilty for having taken advantage of him all those years when she was small.
Her friends thought she was fat at first, and then they started getting jealous. They’d make things up about her liking this boy or that; they’d make comments about her being a slut because she was developing earlier than they were.
As though the fact that most of them didn’t even need a training bra was her fault.
The bitter thing was that Lisa had thought she was pretty and popular before all this happened, despite being a little overweight. If she believed the voices, however, the more popular she got on the surface, the more everyone despised her.
In Lisa’s experience, the more normal changes associated with becoming a woman were more humiliating than gratifying. Shopping for her first bra, her first period.
At least she never seemed to be bothered by much pain. It was something she’d sometimes caught her mother muttering resentfully about.
For almost two years, the voices had tormented her, and Lisa hadn’t been able to tell anyone, not even her best friend. Anyone she told would freak out, and the next thing she knew, she’d be locked away somewhere away from her friends.
She’d be stuck with other kids who really were crazy, and she’d be stuck away from her mother.
Lisa didn’t even want to think about the voices she’d hear at a mental hospital. She’d seen One flew over the Cookoo’s Nest one night with Aunt Lucy. Hearing people get their brains shocked out didn’t sound like her idea of fun, even if Janice assured her that they didn’t do that kind of thing anymore.
After all, she wasn’t even sure what her voices were. Maybe she was hearing ghosts, or memories.
She had nightmares sometimes about meeting the faces that went with some of the voices, especially about the daddy who was hitting his kid.
She hoped her own daddy wasn’t like that. Her mother had never told her much about him, saying only that he wasn’t someone she’d known well.
Sometimes she wished that she could get to meet him, that he’d show up in a big white limousine, (or in her sillier times, a white horse) and come save her mother from the life they’d become stuck in.
As the bus pulled up to the school, Lisa winced. A month ago she’d gone beyond hearing voices and had begun to see things…naked things. It had terrified her at first. Janice’s brother only saw things when things were getting really bad for him, when he’d been off his meds for a while.
Apparently this was going to be another one of those days.
Lisa closed her eyes for a moment and then stood as the bus pulled to a halt. She ignored the whispers about how stuck up she was and kept her eyes focused firmly ahead.
She could see the fleshless skulls of some of her classmates ahead of her. Others looked as though they weren’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Lisa walked quickly, shoving past several of the boys who immediately protested.
She slowed, reminding herself to be careful. It was getting easier to hurt other people now, and while sometimes she still forget, the sight of the bruises she’d put on Janice’s wrist was warning enough. She didn’t need to be expelled for fighting at school. She certainly didn’t need to get into any more trouble.
She was off the bus, and after that she kept her eyes firmly down as she hurried away from the stop. She could hear Janice calling to her, but she ignored her. She didn’t want to see Janice that way any more than she did anyone else.
Worse, Janice knew the signs, and it terrified Lisa that she might be able to see that Lisa was seeing things.
It was a secret Janice wouldn’t keep. She’d been raised to believe that it was important to tell about things like that, and the few times Lisa had even raised the issue, she’d been firm.
Janice’s brother had seen skeletons. He hadn’t seen naked people, but that wasn’t the sort of thing he’d have talked about to his younger sister.
It hurt, losing her one friend, but although Lisa could deal with the voices, the hallucinations were more than she could deal with.
Lisa hurried down the street, down row after row of identical houses with identical lawns. People in the suburbs prided themselves on looking just like everybody else, and although Lois had sometimes wondered why her mother had chosen this life, deep down, she’d known the truth. It was all her fault.
Lisa kicked at a stray rock, and winced as it flew across the lawn to smash into the side of a car. A year ago, it wouldn’t have gone that much further then one kicked by a normal boy. Now she was some sort of freak.
The thought that she might not be hallucinating, that the things she was seeing and hearing were real was even more terrifying. Aunt Lucy had let her watch the Exorcist one night when her mother had been out late working. She’d had nightmares for weeks.
What if she was possessed now?
It would explain the freakish strength, the weird hearing and sight. It would explain Lisa’s sudden inexplicable rages, times when she felt as though she was standing outside her own body looking in.
She loved her mother. She would never want to harm her. But screaming and throwing a couch, that was exactly the sort of thing that got a kid locked up. Lisa knew it, but she hadn’t been able to control herself last night.
Her guilt had kept her from sleeping all night, and her mother hadn’t looked any better the next morning. She’d slept beside the hole in the wall so that no one would be able to come into the house and steal things.
Lisa was ashamed of herself, and the worst part of it was that she didn’t have anyone left that she could turn to.
Her mother had sacrificed so much for her already. The voices she’d heard assured her of that. She could have been somebody big and important, living the kind of life Lisa only saw on the movies.
Instead of being grateful, Lisa had thrown a couch at her. It was going to cost a lot of money, Lisa knew, money they didn’t have to fix it. That meant they were going back to eating sandwiches for a long time, and they probably weren’t going to get to go on the trip this summer.
Lisa was as miserable as she’d ever been, and the worst of it was that there was nobody she could confide in.
************
Lois felt trapped.
What was going on with Lisa was something beyond her control. She was strong enough now to be really dangerous, but sending her away to an institution wasn’t really an option.
There was no telling what they would do if they discovered what she was able to do while she was locked away. Lois would lose all control over the welfare of her child then, and she didn’t want to find out too late that Lisa was being locked away in a lab somewhere.
She couldn’t even share this with anyone. Her own parents would have her committed if she talked about this. Lucy wasn’t reliable, and might tell someone. Uncle Mike might understand…although Lois would hate to ruin the special relationship he had with Lisa.
She didn’t want to see horror in anyone’s eyes when they looked at her little girl.
Wearily she sat on her one remaining chair and switched the television on. She was going to have all day to wait while the bricklayers did their work.
************
“Mom?” Lisa asked cautiously as she stepped into the darkened house.
By the light of day, the hole was even larger than it had seemed the night before, even though the bricklayers had already replaced half of it.
Although it was only a little after six, they’d already apparently taken off for the day. Lisa had heard her grandfather mutter about unions often enough to know what that meant.
Her mother was sitting in the darkness, the television turned down low.
She’d had to use a sick day from work for this, and that was something her mother couldn’t afford to do often. She didn’t get paid on those days, and Lisa felt her guilt increase even further.
Her mother glanced at her and gestured toward the television.
“They’ve been playing this all day.”
There wasn’t a place to sit, so Lisa stood as Lois turned the volume up.
On the screen was a tiny figure in a blue and red outfit. He was flying, and it almost looked as though he was carrying an airplane.
