Read Online Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin - Free Book Online
Authors: Julia Heaberlin
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I’ve drawn my knees up tight and crossed my arms around them. My
tongue tastes like a dead trout. There is growing dread that no one will find me and
pull me out in time. That I will suffocate in here.
Is this one of your tests, doctor?
The second I decide I can’t take it
any longer, he strides into the room. His chair creaks with his weight as he settles in.
I fight the surge of gratefulness.
You came back.
“That took longer than I thought. We
can make up the time in our next session. We have about a half-hour left. I’d like
to talk about your mother this week, if that’s OK.”
“That’s not why I’m
here.” My response is quick. “I went over and over that years ago. Lots of
people have mothers who die.” A fog drools at the corners of my vision. Frenetic
pricks of light everywhere, like a swarm of frightened fireflies. New guests in my head.
I wonder if this means I am about to faint.
How would I know the difference?
My
lips contort, and I almost giggle.
“So you shouldn’t mind talking
about it,” he says reasonably. “Catch me up. Where were you the day she
died?”
Like you don’t already know. Like there isn’t a big fat
file on your desk that you don’t even have to bother to hide from a blind
girl.
My ankle throbs and sends a message to the
crescent scar on my face and to the three-inch pink line drawn carefully under my left
collarbone.
Can he not see how upset I am? That he should back off?
The pieces of his face spin around,
stubborn, refusing to lock in place. Gray-blue eyes, brown hair, wire-rim glasses. Not
at all like Tommy Lee Jones, Lydia had said. Still, no picture falling together for me.
No way to draw him blind.
This is the worst session yet, and we are
just getting started.
“I was playing in the tree
house,” I tell him, while the fireflies do their panicked dance.
Tessa, present day
The first Susan has arrived, bundled in white
cloth, like she is dressed for a holy baptism. The woman holding her is covered in
head-to-toe white, too, her mouth and nose masked, so that all I can see are brown eyes.
They look kind.
She unbinds the cloth and raises Susan
carefully up to the window. Most of the small group gathered in the hall on the other
side eagerly raise their iPhones. Susan is bathed in brief flashes, like a movie
star.
Her skull is a horror show. Her eyes are
holes going to the bottom of the ocean. Most of the lower half of her jaw, gone. A few
rotten teeth hanging like stalactites in an abandoned cave. It is the emptiness, those
two gaping, awful holes that remind me she was once human. That she could once stare
back.
Remember?
Her hollow, toothless
voice bubbles up in my ear. An unspent grenade erupts in my chest. It’s a shock,
but it shouldn’t be. The Susans had been silent for more than a year this time. It
had been foolish to think they were gone.
Not now.
I imagine my hand clamped
over her mouth. I screech out “The Star-Spangled Banner” in my head.
Bombs bursting in air.
Jo is
squeezing my arm.
“Sorry I’m late.” I gulp
in her quirky normalness. White lab coat,khaki pants, purple Nikes,
plastic badge hanging off a skull-and-crossbone-printed lanyard around her neck. A whiff
of something chemical, but not unpleasant.
Deep breath. I’m on this side of the glass. This side of hell.
She nods casually to the group. Besides Bill
and me, four other people are cleared for this event: three Ph.D. students—one
from Oxford, two from the University of North Texas—and a beautiful, unbottled
blond scientist from Sweden named Britta.
We’d spent the last fifteen minutes
together, strangers pretending we weren’t about to observe death at its most
sadistic. The students’ eyes flicked to me with interest, but no one was asking
questions.
Before Jo arrived, we had settled on
discussing the three places in Dallas and Fort Worth that Britta should not miss
tongue tastes like a dead trout. There is growing dread that no one will find me and
pull me out in time. That I will suffocate in here.
Is this one of your tests, doctor?
The second I decide I can’t take it
any longer, he strides into the room. His chair creaks with his weight as he settles in.
I fight the surge of gratefulness.
You came back.
“That took longer than I thought. We
can make up the time in our next session. We have about a half-hour left. I’d like
to talk about your mother this week, if that’s OK.”
“That’s not why I’m
here.” My response is quick. “I went over and over that years ago. Lots of
people have mothers who die.” A fog drools at the corners of my vision. Frenetic
pricks of light everywhere, like a swarm of frightened fireflies. New guests in my head.
I wonder if this means I am about to faint.
How would I know the difference?
My
lips contort, and I almost giggle.
“So you shouldn’t mind talking
about it,” he says reasonably. “Catch me up. Where were you the day she
died?”
Like you don’t already know. Like there isn’t a big fat
file on your desk that you don’t even have to bother to hide from a blind
girl.
My ankle throbs and sends a message to the
crescent scar on my face and to the three-inch pink line drawn carefully under my left
collarbone.
Can he not see how upset I am? That he should back off?
The pieces of his face spin around,
stubborn, refusing to lock in place. Gray-blue eyes, brown hair, wire-rim glasses. Not
at all like Tommy Lee Jones, Lydia had said. Still, no picture falling together for me.
No way to draw him blind.
This is the worst session yet, and we are
just getting started.
“I was playing in the tree
house,” I tell him, while the fireflies do their panicked dance.
Tessa, present day
The first Susan has arrived, bundled in white
cloth, like she is dressed for a holy baptism. The woman holding her is covered in
head-to-toe white, too, her mouth and nose masked, so that all I can see are brown eyes.
They look kind.
She unbinds the cloth and raises Susan
carefully up to the window. Most of the small group gathered in the hall on the other
side eagerly raise their iPhones. Susan is bathed in brief flashes, like a movie
star.
Her skull is a horror show. Her eyes are
holes going to the bottom of the ocean. Most of the lower half of her jaw, gone. A few
rotten teeth hanging like stalactites in an abandoned cave. It is the emptiness, those
two gaping, awful holes that remind me she was once human. That she could once stare
back.
Remember?
Her hollow, toothless
voice bubbles up in my ear. An unspent grenade erupts in my chest. It’s a shock,
but it shouldn’t be. The Susans had been silent for more than a year this time. It
had been foolish to think they were gone.
Not now.
I imagine my hand clamped
over her mouth. I screech out “The Star-Spangled Banner” in my head.
Bombs bursting in air.
Jo is
squeezing my arm.
“Sorry I’m late.” I gulp
in her quirky normalness. White lab coat,khaki pants, purple Nikes,
plastic badge hanging off a skull-and-crossbone-printed lanyard around her neck. A whiff
of something chemical, but not unpleasant.
Deep breath. I’m on this side of the glass. This side of hell.
She nods casually to the group. Besides Bill
and me, four other people are cleared for this event: three Ph.D. students—one
from Oxford, two from the University of North Texas—and a beautiful, unbottled
blond scientist from Sweden named Britta.
We’d spent the last fifteen minutes
together, strangers pretending we weren’t about to observe death at its most
sadistic. The students’ eyes flicked to me with interest, but no one was asking
questions.
Before Jo arrived, we had settled on
discussing the three places in Dallas and Fort Worth that Britta should not miss
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