When My Heart Joins the Thousand(60)

“Hm,” the doctor says. “And was he ever evaluated by a psychologist?”

“No. Why are you asking these questions?”

“I’m wondering if Alvie has any history of schizophrenia in her family.”

“What? No. You don’t think she’s . . . oh God.” The blood drains from her face, and she clutches the chair’s arm as if she thinks she might fall off. “No. That can’t be it. None of the other doctors said anything about that.”

I squirm in my chair.

“It’s rare for this condition to occur in children her age,” Dr. Ash says, “but it’s not unheard-of. And it does run in families.”

Mama presses a hand to her mouth and closes her eyes.

“We might have caught it in the early stages,” he says. “I can’t be sure, since she seems reticent about answering questions. But based on some of the things she’s been telling me, and her history of violent outbursts, I think we’re better off erring on the side of caution.”

“What should I do?” Mama whispers.

Dr. Ash glances at me, then away. “I can write you a prescription for a new medication. In addition to curbing any delusions or psychotic breaks, the drug should cause an emotional flattening—a desirable effect, in this case. It’ll level her out, so to speak.”

I stare at my feet. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“We’re trying to help you,” Dr. Ash says.

I feel sick. I thought he was different, but I was wrong. “I don’t need your help. I never asked for help. I just want people to leave me alone.”

“Please, Alvie,” Mama says in a small voice. “Just do what he says?”

I bow my head.

“If you have any problems,” Dr. Ash says, scribbling something on a little piece of paper, “give me a call.”

I take the pills. I don’t want to, but Mama begs me.

Over the next few weeks, a black haze swallows me. I’ve taken medications before, but it was nothing like this. These drugs dull my thoughts as well as my feelings. I feel like I’m living and walking inside a bubble of water that muffles people’s voices and makes everything blurry and wobbly. I watch my own body from outside as I dress myself, eat breakfast, and sleepwalk through day after day. Nothing bothers me anymore, because nothing matters anymore.

Somewhere deep beneath the haze, in the part of me that can still feel, I hate it.

Every morning, Mama makes me take a pill with breakfast, and she makes me open my mouth to be sure I’ve swallowed it. I start to hide the pills under my tongue, then spit them out into the sink later, but soon Mama figures out this trick and starts checking under my tongue. So I start swallowing the pills, then sticking my fingers down my throat and vomiting them up in the bathroom. Then Mama overhears me, and after that she won’t let me go to the bathroom until two hours after I take the pill.

It’s hard to think with the drugs swimming in my head, but I know I have to find some way out, or I’ll feel this way forever.

When I finally stumble on a solution, it’s almost absurdly simple. I find some vitamins at the local drugstore that look just like my pills, and I buy several bottles with my allowance. While Mama is asleep one night, I dump all the pills down the toilet and replace them with the vitamins.

It works. Mama thinks I’m taking the medication, and the haze slowly dissipates.

Thank God.

Once my head is clear again, I go to the library and do some reading on the drug that Dr. Ash prescribed me, and I’m shocked at the long list of side effects, some of them serious and life-threatening. These grown-ups are trying to kill me.

No, I think, not Mama. Mama just believes everything the doctors tell her. But I have to be more careful in the future. Telling things to grown-ups isn’t safe.

A few weeks later, Mama takes me back to Dr. Ash. I make sure to tell him that everything is fine, that I’m feeling better, that I’m not angry or scared anymore, and that I’ve been taking my medicine. All lies. He says that my behavior has improved dramatically and that I can return to school in the fall. Obviously I can’t go back to my old school, but Mama picks out another one—a normal public school with normal children.

“You see?” Mama says, beaming. “You just needed the right medication.”

When we get a refill at the pharmacy, I sneak out of my bedroom at night after Mama goes to bed, take the bottle from the medicine cabinet, dump the pills down the toilet, and replace them with vitamins again.

For a while, everything is okay.

Then things start to change. I notice Mama sitting at the desk in her bedroom more and more, looking through papers and writing things down, muttering to herself the whole time. The phone starts ringing more and more often. And whenever I go to pick it up, she says, “Don’t answer.” We start getting envelopes with big red letters saying FINAL NOTICE on the front. I know something is happening, but whenever I ask Mama, she just shakes her head and smiles and says, “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

One day, near the end of August, Mama comes home from her job with a strange look on her face. Her eyes are wide and glazed, her mouth open slightly, like she’s not quite awake. “Mama,” I say, “what’s wrong.”

“Nothing.” She locks herself in the bedroom.