Catherine

Locked up. That’s it. They just put you in and throw away the key. I was committed two years ago and it’s been nothing but madness since then. I admit that I feel a bit crazy now, but I’m in it up to my elbows every day. You don’t expect a plumber to smell of roses, right? Case in point. Crazy is fine, really. Everybody’s washed in it in some way. Skipping the cracks on the sidewalk, counting steps to the bathroom, and adding up the numbers on license plates; it’s mental exercise. The difference between people who are in here and out there is that we don’t keep these things to ourselves. If you skip cracks in the sidewalk, fine. If you stop and tell one person, or five people, or everybody that passes that you’re skipping cracks you get thrown in the bin. It’s honesty. Personal truth and that’s what’s crazy. So now when I go in to talk to the baby doctors and they ask me to ‘open up’ I don’t say a word. Straight to hell with them.

But like I said, crazy is fine. People in here are just louder versions of people out there. Like Brewster who yells at people to stop staring or Mother Mary who blesses everything down to the last dead cockroach in her room. Even the sad ones are louder. The depressed. They shuffle in like lemmings and sit at the circle tables and slouch. They’re tricky because they hold it in, but it always comes pouring out. We’re more real, more in touch. The soul is loud and we are pure souls.

Last week Catherine came to stay. She was loud. She moved from table to table talking up every person in the room. She used her sex to get everybody all upset. She would rub her pale hand on the depressed’s arms and stare longingly into Brewster’s eyes. She even hugged Mother Mary. Right in front of everybody she grabbed that big, black woman with the cross and hugged her until her eyes almost popped out. Mary didn’t say much the rest of that day and she didn’t bless Catherine either.

Catherine didn’t get around to me until later. She spotted me at my table one day and I could tell that it was my turn. She sauntered over and sat down right across from me. “What are you reading,” she asked and I waved my hand at her. Why do people ask when the title is stamped on the cover? She leaned in closer and whispered, “Is it a secret?” I put the book down on the table and stared her in the face. She was quite lovely, truth be told, but it was her smirk that uglied-up her face. “I heard you don’t say much,” cooed Catherine, “not a word since you been here.” She turned her eyes to Brewster and Mother Mary a few tables over. “I bet Bubba and Huggy over there twenty down that I could get you to talk. I’ll split it with you if you croak.” I shook my head at her and reached for my book, but Catherine slammed her white hand down on it. “Come on. Just one word. Right in my ear.” I wrenched my book from underneath her hand and opened up to my last page. Not worth it, that girl. She leaned back in her chair and clicked her tongue at me. “You like stories, huh? I got stories. Pictures too.” She pulled down her collar over her left breast exposing a bright red heart just to the left of center. “I used to live in Tijuana working as a bartender. The locals would come in everyday and tell me I was beautiful, that I was their sweetheart. They called me that so often I got the nickname. Sweetheart. I thought it was cute. I even got this tattoo to remind me. Then one day some of my sweetheart buddies pulled me into the backroom of the bar and raped me until my pussy bled. That’s what I was worth to them. Their sweetheart.” Catherine kicked up out of her chair and walked away. Her story made me sad. “Sorry,” I said as the dust rattled off my tired voice.