June 13th
I used to write about myself in this journal; my thoughts about the
world, my recordings of the things I was doing, even a little poetry here
and there. Now, my niece gets an awful lot of air time on these pages.
I guess I could say I'm writing down my thoughts about a new and very different
person in my life, but my own son has never occupied my writing as much
as Theresa does. This could mean any of 3 things. 1. I'm getting bored
with myself. 2. I feel guilty about letting Glenn go so easily, and I feel
the need to be someone's mother again. 3. I'm so worried for Theresa's
sake I can't help but write think about her all the time, which means I
write about her a lot. I'm most inclined to go with the 3rd one, since
the first is utterly preposterous, and the 2nd sounds like something
a 50's housewife would say. So I'm worried out of my skull for this niece
of mine, my second cousin Maeve's daughter, whom I barely know, to the
point of letting her take over my journal. You know what? I'm glad I'm
so worried about her. I'm not going to stop obssessing over the poor girl
until she stops giving me a reason to wring my hands every time I lay eyes
on her. Until I can see that she's happy, this is her book.
June 25th
Sign classes are going well. We're doing this so Theresa can "talk"
without a piece of paper, and so that I can understand her. So far, it's
not really doing anything for our rapport. Theresa's asking me about myself
a little more often, but she still doesn't have much to say about herself.
It's an improvement, though. I'll give it some time.
July 18-19th
Someone upstairs has a lively sense of humor, I tell you. Yesterday,
I forced Theresa to sit down and have a conversation with me. I
made her tell me about her friends. So, she started telling me about James.
My God, she is taken with that young man. He helped her quit drinking and
put her problems above his even though his were nothing to sneeze at, he's
so sensitive and caring and sweet and there-for-her despite being just
as tortured as she is. Great pecs to boot. I found myself falling
in love with him just from listening to her. But, they're just friends,
she insists, it never went any farther than that, bloody unlikely it ever
will. I told Theresa she needs to get her claws into him before he
gets snatched up by some other woman and she ends up settling for some
inhuman bastard like my ex-husband.
Then the lively sense of humor kicked in. This morning, as I was pouring out the coffee, I heard a knock on the door. Theresa was still in bed, so I went to get it, and there stood this tall-dark-handsome young man with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. "Hi, I hope I have the right house. Is Theresa here?" he asked me. "Yes, she's here, she just hasn't gotten up yet. Are you James?" I said. He looked really surprised and said "Yeah, how did you know?" I told him I just took a wild guess.
So, I let him inside and took him into the kitchen for coffee. While we were talking to each other, getting acquainted, Theresa walked in. She saw James sitting at my kitchen table and looked like someone just threw a glass of ice water in her face. James saw her walk in, and he stood up and said "Hi, Terry." She laid her hand on her chest and started hyperventilating, the most noise I've ever heard come out of her. James walked over to her and took her shoulders in his hands, he said "It's okay, Terry, it's just me. Don't tell me you've forgotten about your old friend Jimmy already!" Slowly, she calmed down. I chuckled and said to James, "I don't think Theresa expected you to drop by." Theresa smiled and reached up to hug him. So we all sat down to breakfast together. For the rest of the day, it was hard to find those two not holding hands.
July 20th
Theresa and James dragged themselves out of bed before I did this morning,
hell, even before the sun decided to grace our part of the world with its
presence. I ventured out to the back porch to find them sitting on the
swing. James was whispering something into Theresa's left ear, and she
was holding a pen and Post-It pad in her hands, but not writing. While
he filled her head with his words, she had her head leaning slightly back,
her lips creeping towards a smile, her eyes closed.
I left them alone. Not about to interrupt those two, I was.
This afternoon, I found them swinging around on the rope swing I set up for my son when he was a little boy, doing their best impression of Tarzan and Jane. James was yodeling away (though I'm sure he'd call it his "Tarzan yell") and wearing a makeshift loincloth that I'm sure was on my table last Thanksgiving. Theresa was wearing...um, I won't get into that. They were having fun, which was a great relief to me. So, I hopped on back to the house, left a note on the front door, and absconded off to Starbucks.
About an hour before writing this, I cornered Theresa as she came out of the shower (one of the few times I was able to catch her away from James) and dragged her into my bedroom for a few words in private. I told her, with a huge smirk, that I'd seen her and James playing Tarzan and Jane. "Just friends, are you?" I said.
She picked up a pad and pen and wrote, since her Sign vocabulary isn't very big just yet, Okay, I admit it. I missed Jimmy more than I let on, and we got a little exuberant.
"Exuberant?" I laughed. "Theresa, I've seen more clothes on a pygmy!"
It was warm today, she wrote with an obstinate look on her face. She then turned and walked out. I fought the urge to shout after her, "You two are awfully friendly, I notice!"
Now I'm wondering how she'll feel after he leaves. He can't stay forever, no matter how much I wish he could, and she's living with me for a reason.
July 26th
At around noon today, the phone rang. I looked on the Caller ID, and
the number was one I didn't recognize, and it certainly wasn't from this
area. James looked over my shoulder and picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" he said. "Already, why?...What's the big emergency?...I've only been here a week...Well, that depends on your definition of a few days!...okay, okay, fine, I'll come back."
"Who was that?" I asked after he put down the receiver. Theresa stood between us and looked concerned.
"That was Beelzebub," he said glumly. "Our team is sending over an aircraft to come get me. You see, I've stayed a little longer than I told them I'd be gone."
Why won't they let you go back when you want?, Theresa wrote.
"They have a point, Terry. If I'd planned to stay a week, I should have told them I'd be gone a week. Besides, there's been some mutant violence in San Francisco lately, and a lot of anti-mutant rioting in reaction to it. So, they don't want the team to be undermanned. I'm sorry, Terry."
Right now I'm watching James get ready to depart. He and Theresa are on the front porch, I'm sitting on the living room couch to write this. The sun is on its way down, and so is a snazzy-looking little plane, vertically descending to my soybean field. Theresa is clinging for dear life to James, and from the way her body's shaking, I can tell she's crying. Silently, of course. I wonder what she'd sound like if she had her voice. But, the point is moot, because if she had her voice, she wouldn't be living in my house and crying into her best friend's shoulder. James separates himself from her, and holds her shaking hands while he kisses her forehead. They're walking out into the soybean field together. Wait a minute, is she going back with him? No, she's not. The plane is taking off, and Theresa's silhouette is still in the field. Now, she's running back towards the house. She bolts through the front door, still crying desperately, and runs into her room, which used to be Glenn's room. I have to cut this entry short.
July 27th
Last night, after I put down my writing, I went into Theresa's room
to talk to her. She was lying on her bed, shaking like Saint Vitus, with
tears pouring out of her eyes. Not that I could see her eyes, covered up
by her hands. I sat down at her desk, feeling utterly stupid. I didn't
know what to do to comfort a hysterical 24-year-old woman who's been disabled
for less than half a year. I said to myself, Megan, you don't know what
she's going through. You were free as a bird at her age; she's trapped
by her own body. Don't pull the "I understand" line, because she's not
going to fall for it. Just talk to her.
"You really love James, don't you?" I said.
It's not just that, she signed.
"Do you want to talk about it, dear?" My God, I said that with an Irish accent, and I've lived in this country for nearly 40 years. I must have been tense as a high wire.
I don't have my voice, or my powers, or my old life. My friends are in another state, and I can't even stay sober without those damn meetings anymore. She had to spell out some of the words by letter, but her hands were doing their job.
While Jimmy was here, I pretended the writing and signing was just because I wanted to use my hands. I didn't worry about my voice, and it was SO nice to have Jimmy around again. She signed the word "so" very big. When I'm with him, I know someone is looking out for me. Still spelling out some words, yet her hands stayed steady while her body racked violently.
Out there on the porch, I thought about going back with Jimmy. But, I can't, because what would I do once I got there? I'd be dead weight back there. So, thinking about that, and leaving Jimmy again, I started crying. Only then I realized, I can't even cry anymore! Look at me, Meg, I'm just dribbling and shaking like an invalid! Do you hear anything?
I have nothing to do with myself, I can't protect myself anymore, I can't say anything to most people without having you there to speak for me. I'm handicapped, and the people I love most are a thousand miles away. After their maddening dance in mid-air, her hands went limp and dropped back to the bed with their exhausted arms.
I touched her shoulder, and once she was looking at me, my hands assumed their positions. I don't know what to say., I signed to her. I'm glad you told me this. I don't sign nearly as well as Theresa. My hands aren't as practiced as hers, but she understands. The distance is gone. Now I can see, up close, just how much she's hurting.
Nothing I can do will make Theresa's voice recover any faster. If it
recovers at all, that is. I can't glue her life as a mutant "terrorist"
heroine back together, or make her alcoholism vanish like a leaf in a fire,
or fix it so that she can venture out by herself without the slightest
risk of danger. Hell, no fully-abled woman has that, but just a few months
ago, Theresa had her own defense against the nebulous threat of the night
that normal women are always hiding from. Now, she can't even scream for
help. I can, however, and will make sure Theresa doesn't
feel alone, like a helpless creature depending on the good grace of a stranger
for her survival. From here on out, I will be there for my niece. No, wait.
For my daughter.