Page 120 of Night Songs

We weren’t allowed to play music because it excited the other patients too much, so the only sounds were their mumblings and screams, and an old television blaring gray words.

I talked with a doctor who told me I had something wrong with my brain. Whatever I was seeing or thinking wasn’t real. It was all in my head. That’s why the voices and the visions stopped when I was on the medicine.

I asked him how it happened, and he told me he wasn’t certain, but many people thought it was the mother’s fault. It could come from a mother who was overprotective, or one who rejected a child, or a combination of both. The child developed the illness in order to cope with the toxic environment created by the mother’s delusional ideas.

I told him I never had a mother, and then he asked me a few questions about my aunt and determined that she was to blame—the combination of her rejection of me and her “extreme Christian beliefs” as he put it.

That got me thinking. I asked him if the bad mama was taken out of the equation early enough—say, when a child was five—if the damage could be undone. Could the child have a normal life?

He said, perhaps. As long as a more suitable mother was there to parent the child into adulthood.

We also talked about treatment options, and he said there were medications, some I’d already taken. I told him I hated those pills. They made me slow, and I couldn’t feel anything.

And worst of all, I couldn’t make music.

He said that was a common side effect. In order to quiet the bad, the good could be quieted as well. Once I got used to it, though, I wouldn’t notice what I’d lost.

Hell I wouldn’t.

You can be damn sure I got out of there as soon as I could.

Honestly, I don’t know what to believe.

Part of me can look at all this and see the truth revealing itself. The medicine they gave me made the night songs and the visions stop. I still worried about the devil and my death, but the threat felt much less urgent.

Dope and booze changed my mind as well, made it easier for me to live with the curse. Does that mean it’s all in my brain?

Or is this just a trick?

There is another part of me that still believes the curse is real, and this is the devil trying to gaslight me.

Either way, I know I can’t be with you and Hess any longer. I can’t let y’all see me take my own life. And I can’t be a danger to my own child. I almost killed you by leaving you in that trunk. When the man in white showed up at the cabin, I thought I could protect you by locking you up and leading him away. I wasn’t thinking straight, was I? What kind of mother could do that?

But I refuse to take those drugs or be strapped to a bed ever again. That is no kind of life. I’d never be able to make music again, never be able to think for myself. At least now I have my own thoughts, my music, my freedom.

If I do outlive this curse, I have to disappear, so you and Hess won’ttry to find me. You will think I’m gone, and that will protect you from whatever kind of evil’s got a hold of me.

I don’t want to make you sick like me, angel. Maybe if I leave now, you can still have a chance.

But if you’re listening to this, then it means it didn’t work. And I’m so sorry that this evil has found you. The last thing I ever wanted was to make you suffer.

Goes to show I was never cut out to be a mother. Here you are, in your time of need, and I can’t protect or guide you.

I wish I could take all the pain away, to tell you how to make it better. But I don’t have the answers. You will have to make your own decision about what to do next.

I love you, angel. Good luck.

41rhea

2010

ONE DAY LEFT

“It’s impossible,” Hess whispered, her cheeks wet and raw.

I was speechless.

“Do you really think…” Hess paused, as if afraid to expose the thought to air. “Do you think she could still be alive?”