The Law of Moses(35)

I stood up from my chair and walked to the wall and leaned against it, completely shielding my grandmother from her clinical gaze. I closed my eyes for a minute, reaching out just a little, parting the waters just a crack. I focused on the woman’s shiny black head, her hair pulled back in a perfect, low ponytail.

She asked me several more questions, but I was concentrating on raising the water. I wanted to find something to make her run, screaming. Something true.

“Did you have a twin sister?” I asked suddenly, as an image of two little Asian girls in pigtails and matching dresses suddenly surfaced in my mind.

“Wh-what?” she asked, dumbfounded.

“Or maybe a cousin the same age. No. No. She’s your sister. She died, right?” I folded my arms and waited, letting the images unfold.

The doctor pulled off her glasses and frowned at me. I had to give it to her. She didn’t rattle easily.

“You had a visitor today. Georgia Shepherd was her name. She’s not on your list. Do you want to talk about Georgia instead?” she parried, trying to derail me.

My heart shuddered when I heard her name. But I pushed Georgia away and thrust back.

“How did that make you feel, losing your sister like that?” I asked, not breaking eye-contact with the doctor. “Was she crazy like me? Is that why you wanted to work with crazy people?” I gave her a wild-eyed, Jack Nicholson smile. She stood abruptly and excused herself.

It was the first time I’d ever done something like that. It was strange and oddly wonderful. I had stopped caring if I was believed. If I never got out of the psych ward, I was fine with that. I was safe there at least. Gi was gone. Georgia was gone too. I’d made sure of that. It was the only thing I could do for Georgia now. She’d seen them put me in the ambulance. I’d fought. But as my eyes swam and the world spun, I’d seen her horrified, paint-streaked face. She was crying. And that was the last thing I saw before the world went dark.

Now I was here. And I didn’t care anymore. It was all spilling out the cracks. Georgia teased me about my cracks, telling me I was cracked so the brilliance could spill out. And it was spilling out, brilliant and brutal.

And so it continued for the next few weeks. The hardest part was when the therapist or doctor hadn’t lost anyone. There were people like that, and I had no one on the other side to use against them. To say I had the entire floor rattled would be putting it mildly. They tried to fix my cracks with medication, just like they’d done all my life, but the medication made the cracks wider, and short of putting me in a stupor, nothing they tried made me stop seeing the things I could see. And I started telling them all exactly what I could see. I didn’t do it out of love or compassion. I did it because I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass anymore. I didn’t break it to them gently either. I hit them over the head with it, Georgia style. In your face, tell you like it is.





Georgia



MY MOM HAD CONNECTIONS through her work with the foster system, and she found Moses for me. I don’t think she wanted to find him. But for whatever reason—maybe out a lifelong compassion for troubled kids or out of respect for Kathleen Wright—she tracked him down. We had to be on a list in order to see him. The list was comprised of doctors, immediate family, and people Moses had been allowed to add.

My mom came with me the first time and we waited outside an official area while our names were relayed to another reception area on another floor. It was a building with different levels and pass codes and key pads. The reception area was as far as we got. We weren’t related and Moses hadn’t added any names to his list. I wondered if there had been any family to see him. I doubted it. My mom patted my hand and told me it was probably for the best. I nodded, but I knew it wasn’t best for Moses. I would keep trying without her.

I skipped school and drove Myrtle to Salt Lake the next time I attempted a break in. Or a break out. I would take him away if he’d let me. It took me three hours to get there in that damn truck. I had to drive in the slow lane, pedal pressed all the way down, Myrtle shaking even worse than I was. I talked us both through it, patting Myrtle’s dash and telling her there was nothing to be afraid of. We would take it slow. Cars and trucks flew by me in a swarm of horns and angry fists. But I made it. And I went again the next week and the next and every week for a month after that. Week after week, Myrtle never could get over her nerves and Moses never did let me in.

Finally, on my seventh week in a row, a woman came to the reception area and escorted me into a private meeting room. I’d noticed families being led to these rooms. My pulse sped up and my palms started to sweat in anticipation. I had high hopes that I would finally be able to see Moses. I needed to see him. I needed to talk to him.

“Georgia?” the lady looked down at her clipboard and smiled at me, though I could tell she wanted to get this over with. If she was a therapist or a psychologist, she needed to work on her poker face. She was impatient and had an irritated little wrinkle between her brows. Maybe it was because I was in cowboy boots and jeans, with my hair in a long, swinging braid. I probably looked easy to get rid of, easy to brush off and send away.

“Yes?” I responded.

“You aren’t on Moses’s list.”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what they tell me.”

“So why do you keep coming?” She smiled again, but she also looked at her watch.