The Law of Moses(27)

My grandma came rushing into the police station with frizzy grey curls flying and a look on her face that warned of trouble. Not trouble for me, luckily, but for the police officer who hadn’t called her while I was being questioned. I was eighteen. They didn’t have to call her, but they backed down pretty quickly under her wrath, and I was released within the hour, after agreeing to paint over my drawing. Hopefully Molly wouldn’t come back when I did. It wasn’t until we got home that Gigi unloaded on me.

“Why do you keep doing that? Painting walls and barns and drawing on white boards? You made Ms. Murray cry, got yourself arrested, and now this? Stop it! Or for hell’s sake, ask permission first!”

“You know why, Gigi.” And she did. It was the dirty little secret in my family. My hallucinations. My visions. The meds I’d been on most of my life made it a hundred times worse. They were meds made for people who had totally different problems, and when one medication didn’t work, they would try something new. I’d spent my whole life in and out of doctor’s offices—a ward of the state, an enemy of the state. Nothing had helped, and it wasn’t until coming to live with Gigi that I had finally been free of the medication. No one ever considered that maybe they weren’t hallucinations. They hadn’t thought about the fact that maybe it was exactly like I said.

“I can’t ask permission, Gigi. Because then I would have to explain. And people might tell me no. And then where would I be?” It was a legitimate argument as far as I was concerned. “Forgiveness is usually easier than permission.”

“Only if you’re five! Not when you’re eighteen with a police record. You’re going to end up in jail, Moses.” My grandma was upset, and that made me feel like shit.

I shrugged helplessly. The threat wasn’t new to me, and it didn’t especially scare me. I didn’t think it would be much worse than the way I lived now. There were a lot of concrete walls in prison, or so I heard. But Gigi wouldn’t be there. And Georgia. I wouldn’t ever be able to see Georgia again. She thought I was crazy though, so I didn’t know why I cared.

But I did.

“It would be such a waste, Moses. Such a huge waste! Your art is awe-inspiring. It’s wonderful. You could make a life for yourself with your gift. A good life. Just paint pictures for heaven’s sake! Just paint quietly in a corner! That would be amazing! Why do you have to paint barns and bridges and walls and people’s doors?” Gi threw up her hands and I wished I could explain.

“I can’t. I can’t stop. It’s the only thing that makes it bearable.”

“Makes what bearable?”

“The madness. Just . . . the madness in my head.”

“Moses was a prophet,” she began.

“I’m not a prophet! And you’ve told me this story before, Gi,” I interrupted.

“But I don’t think you understand it, Moses,” she insisted.

I stared at my grandmother, at her round face, her adoring smile, her guileless eyes. She was the only person who had ever made me feel like I wasn’t a burden. Or a psycho. If she wanted to tell me about baby Moses again, I would listen.

“Moses was a prophet. But he didn’t start out that way. First he was a baby, an abandoned baby in a basket,” Gigi started up again.

I sighed. I really hated the story of how I got my name. It was completely messed up. It wasn’t cute or romantic. It wasn’t a Bible story. It wasn’t even Hollywood. But it was Gigi. So I stayed silent and let her do her thing.

“They were killing all the Hebrew baby boys. They were slaves and the Pharaoh was worried that if the Hebrew nation got too large they would rise up and turn against him. But Moses’s mother couldn’t allow him to be killed. So to save him, she had to let him go. She put him in a basket and let him go,” Gi repeated with extra emphasis.

I waited. This wasn’t the place she usually stopped.

“Just like you, sweetie.”

“What? You mean I’m a basket case? Yeah, Gigi. I know.”

“No. That’s not what I mean. Your mother was a basket case, though. She made a mess of her life. She got so deep and so sick that there was no way she could take care of you. So she let you go.”

“She left me in a laundromat.”

“She saved you from herself.”

I sighed again. Gigi had loved my mother, which made her more forgiving and compassionate. I didn’t love my mother and I was neither compassionate nor forgiving.

“Don’t mess up your life, Moses. You’ve got to find a way to save yourself now. Nobody can do it for you.”

“I can’t control it, Gigi. You act like I can control it.” Even as I spoke, the heat started rising up my neck, and the tips of my fingers felt like they were pressed up against an ice-filled glass. It was a feeling I knew all too well and what came next would happen whether I wanted it to or not.

“They won’t leave me alone, Gi. And it’s going to drive me crazy. It is driving me crazy. I don’t know how to live like this.”

Gigi stood and wrapped her arms around my head, pulling my face into her chest like she could stand between me and everything that was already inside me. I kept my face pressed against her, my eyes closed tight, trying to think about Georgia, about last night, about how Georgia had refused to look away from me, and how my heart had felt like it was going to explode when I felt her come undone. But even Georgia wasn’t enough. Molly was back. She wanted to show me pictures.