Lakewood(64)

Then today, I woke up in my bed. Looked at my phone and was surprised by what day it was. It was Saturday, September 5th. I had lost weeks in August and the beginning of this month. It was late in the day, 6 p.m. I went to the bathroom, undressed to take a shower. There was a scar near my breast, close to where my heart lives. I took a breath. Thought about how I was seeing, breathing, hearing. Took my heartbeat. I felt like me again. There was a small, healing bruise beneath my eye.

I showered, dressed. Wrote the beginning of this for both of us. As I wrote, I tried as hard as possible to feel nothing. I needed to be objective. I needed to be as clear-headed as I possibly could.

First, I went to the closest emergency room. I wanted a doctor to look at my scar. Maybe they could tell me what had happened.

The ER was packed. There was a child with a cloth pressed against her head. She kept trying to take the cloth off, wanted to touch whatever was beneath. A man was lying on the floor, while two other men tried to coax him up. I can hear everything, he said. I can hear your blood moving through your veins. I can, I can. A woman whose skin was tinged yellow, so that her hair and flesh were almost a matched set. Multiple people saying they could see a black sludge following them. It was seeping beneath the door. It was glistening on the walls. Couldn’t you see? It sounded exactly like what I had seen, and I looked around, but all I saw was white walls and scared people and cheap televisions in the corners.

I think I really hurt my eye somehow. A teenage girl said, I keep seeing these neon diamonds. She had a paisley print scarf wrapped around her eyes. Her mom was holding her hand.

Some teenagers smelled familiar. Sweet, like cotton candy, fire, and, maybe, vitamins. One of them had a long cut on his palm. His blood looked closer to blue than red. A man with a nail sticking out of his foot. He was saying, It doesn’t hurt. I could live like this forever. Let’s go get a milkshake.

Despite the cold, I was sweating. A mother walked in holding a baby. Its skin was bright red. The baby had a scream that sounded like it could melt glass.

The news broke in with a special report. The anchor said we weren’t supposed to drink the water in Lakewood and the surrounding areas. He listed off the small towns nearby. There was widespread contamination, and not boiling, at this time, would help. None of the people waiting seemed to notice. A nurse came out and taped a garbage bag over the drinking fountain. On the intake station, she put out a line of water bottles. It’s going to be a three-hour wait for anything not life-threatening, someone yelled.

I left and drove the two hours home. When I opened the door, my mom screamed. She dropped the glass of water she was holding and ran to me. Are you okay? she asked me. What happened? Did I do something to make you mad at me? I haven’t heard from you in days. She said she had called my office to make sure I was okay, and they said I was still coming in.

Deziree was grabbing my hands. Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me. Tell me.

I took a deep breath. Another. And then I told her everything. How the letter came in the mail inviting me to be a part of the Lakewood Project. And no, I didn’t have it anymore. I had torn it up and thrown it out after signing the NDA. The tests during orientation, what I could remember about Lakewood, how I was sure this wasn’t about some sort of advancements in medicine, it was about torture, about control. It felt like I spoke for hours. My voice was getting raspy, I spoke without interruption for so long.

Deziree didn’t let go of my hands. She looked thoughtful, her eyes were on mine. I kept checking to see when she would stop believing me, when I would see her start to think I was having a mental health crisis, that I was talking about something that was impossible.

She told me to take a break. She went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. Drink this, she said. Then she went into my grandmother’s room and returned with a slip of paper. It was very faded and had been folded several times. Dear Deziree, it began, you are invited to participate in a research study about memory and perception. The Mineral Hills Project was designed to help future generations understand the most mysterious place on Earth: the human mind.

There are three years of my life, my mother said, that I can’t remember. The year I got pregnant with you and the two years before I had my “accident.” Your grandma and I were fighting in those years, so we barely spoke. She thought I was on drugs. And I thought her thinking that was offensive. She pointed at the piece of paper. I was there. I don’t have any proof. But I know it.

I believed her.

When I was young, my grandma took me up to Mackinac. The first time I saw the Straits, where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron join, the water was so blue. I knew it wasn’t the ocean, but I asked if it was anyway. I felt overwhelmed by the beauty of it. People talk about how large expanses of water can make them feel insignificant. But there was something for me in it that made me feel larger. Maybe it was the mixture of the joy of loving something so immediately and the fear I felt knowing I loved something I should never touch. That’s because I couldn’t swim. I would die quickly if I ever went into the Lakes. I don’t know. But seeing the piece of paper, feeling that here was an explanation for why no one could figure out what had happened to my mom, I felt that same mixture of joy and fear.





29


Dear Tanya,

Deziree and I spent the rest of the night talking. I reminded her that this is how I was affording her health care. I began to offer to stay in, to keep her well, but she held up her hand. If I had known this is what you were doing. Lena, this is my life. The only time you get to make decisions for me is if I’m truly too sick to do it. You need to talk to me. I thought you knew better.