Page 119 of Night Songs

“Hess—”

“But she didn’t tell me why…”

“Look at this—”

“Why write this note if she wasn’t going to tell me why she killed herself?” she asked angrily.

“Hess!”

She stopped and looked at me wearily. “I’m sorry. What is it?”

I held up the tape. “She recorded this the day before she died. Maybe the answer is here.”

Hess stared at it, then shook her head. “No. She didn’t want me to listen. That’s only for you.”

I huffed. “Are you fucking kidding me? She’s not here. She doesn’t get to decide who knows what anymore.Idecide.” I studied the tape again, suddenly worried we’d have no way to play it. “Is there a tape player here?”

Hess stood up, and I heard things being thrown around in the next room. After a while, she came back out with an ancient player clutched inher hand. “I knew we had it somewhere around here.” She set it down on the kitchen table and opened the slot, blowing the dust from its crevices.

I sat in the chair across from her and placed the tape inside. “Are you ready?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’ve been waiting almost thirty years for this.”

I pressed the play button, and the wheels of the tape began to whir, and a voice like smoked honey filled the room, surrounding us with its music.

40lulabelle

1982

ONE DAY LEFT

I have been to hell, and I ain’t even dead yet.

In hell, there isn’t just one man in a white suit—there are many, and some of them are women, too. They strap you down and leave you for hours at a time. They force medicine into your veins or down your throat. They make you eat terrible food and watch you relieve yourself and tell you when to fall asleep.

But the worst part of hell is there’s no music.

The first night in the hospital, a group of men in white wrestled me into a room and strapped me to a bed. A bright bulb hung above me, searing into my eyeballs. I imagined it shattering and the little shards impaling my eye jelly.

I tried to tell the nurse who I was, but she just nodded like I was a lunatic. I didn’t have an ID on me when they picked me up, and of course, I don’t look like Belle Powers without the costume. Far as they were concerned, I was just another loony claiming to be Jesus.

While she examined me, the voice returned to my head.

She will give you too much medication, and you will choke on your own vomit.

I studied the nurse. She seemed competent enough.

He was just screwing with me. I wouldn’t let him have the satisfaction.

He kept speaking, but I started to sing an old hymn, attempting to drown out the voice. The nurse told me to be quiet, but I kept singing. I couldn’t let him win.

She warned me again, and when I refused, she put a needle in a glass vial and stuck it in my arm.

The voice stopped, but so did everything else in my brain. No sound at all. Not even silence. Just empty nothing.

They must have let me out of my restraints at some point, but I don’t remember when. The next day was a stretch of bright haze, like walking down a fog-covered street in the middle of the afternoon.

They made me sit in the common area, and I watched the other patients slumped and drooling in their chairs like puffy slugs. Some jerked and twitched as if against their will.