There are hours where I am not scared. I talk to you on the phone. I try to think about my future. There are times when someone asks me how I’m feeling, I don’t think about every glass of water I drank in Lakewood or the scar on my chest.
On Monday, my mom got a new job. She now has health insurance. Every orange, red, and yellow leaf felt like applause as she nodded and smiled while talking to them on the phone. Her eyes were so big. She was tearing up a little when she hung up. Deziree yelled, I got the job. Did it again. We danced like she had just won $500 playing slots.
Every day, she tells me I need to go back to school. Not just because I need an education, but because I need to feel like I’m moving in a different direction. And I want to. But then there are days where I can’t leave the house at all. I try, but I can’t get myself to put on shoes. Or I can’t turn the knob and go out there. They could be anywhere. Anyone could be one of them. Or at night when I’m in the space between awake and rest, I feel hands on my throat again. I scream and I thrash and my mom has to tell me things will be fine. She scratches my scalp, smooths my hair. I’m not ready.
Back in early September, there had been talks about lawsuits, congressional hearings, damages, further inquiries into the research studies. Then there was Lakewood’s water. It was so photographable! And I don’t mean just Long Lake. There was the large flock of Canada geese that died from landing on its surface. Old white men—men I was used to seeing stuffing cake donuts in their mouths, their cheeks dusted with powdered sugar, chocolate frosting on their teeth—had been transformed into a combination of regal and broken in black-and-white portraits.
On major news websites, Lakewood is withered crops and rotten pumpkins. A small town with lots of big trees and empty old houses that seemed to inspire people on TV to rhapsodize about the past, the middle class. And what was going to happen to all these little white kids who had been drinking the water? Their lives would be shorter, they would probably have lingering health issues. And how long had the water been on the verge of this? Why didn’t the state notice? What had pushed it to the tipping point? Look, look, look at all these sad farmers. It is the kind of disaster people love to look at.
Tanya, the reason you don’t have these letters already is because I don’t want you to think I’m crazy or a liar. I don’t know. Maybe you would say something like at least you got paid for this. It’s not fair to you, but I hear every argument, every way to make this much smaller coming out of your mouth.
I did make copies of all these letters. My mom and I sat with your dad and did our wills. If something ever happens to the two of us, you’ll get the copies then. I hope I’ll be able to at least try to say something someday. And if I don’t, I’m sorry.
Sometimes, I look around—drinking coffee in my kitchen, sitting in traffic, holding a package of chicken in the grocery store—and I say, “Is this real?” I rarely feel alone; there’s always a chance someone is watching. I have to stop myself from rating how I’m feeling on a scale.
Since coming home, I’ve been going to the art museum a lot. The one my grandma took me to when I was a child; it’s one of the few places I feel safe now. On a whim, I signed up to do a training course on how to be a docent. There are cameras everywhere. The times when I go, I see the same people who have been working there for years now. They say hi to me, ask me about my mom, my day.
There’s a painting here that’s part of a traveling exhibition that I keep coming back to. On one side is a mid-century-style bedroom. The room is bright, its furniture gray, the carpet and curtains June-grass green, and there’s yellow lampshades. A black-and-white image is small and superimposed over the room. Honestly, this side of the painting means very little to me. If I was in a classroom or writing a response paper, I would have to talk about postmodernism, something about emptiness, and the many ways it tries to communicate absence and distance. I’m already tired thinking about it.
But the other side. It is painted in purples and blacks. Four people are looking decidedly at you. They force you to react. Two are perpetually laughing, two are judging. There is nothing you can do to stop them. I should hate it, but I can’t stop getting sucked in. I dream about this one, Tanya. I think it is pushing toward ugly and there is definitely some meanness in it, but I love it. It’s the first new thing that I have loved in a while. I refuse to learn anything about the painter. I will myself to live only in the painting itself, to love how it makes me react.
I decided that I will go there every day. Drink from the same fountain I remember my grandmother’s hands lifting me up toward. Have a cup of coffee in the coffeeshop and watch the water spill up and out of the fountain. I will look at the brushstrokes, the sculptures gleaming under the light like well-tempered chocolates, the golden frames, black and white images of the long dead. I will force myself to remember, despite everything I know now, people are capable of making something wonderful.