MC Quixote

Other Masks a Hidden Fortress Part 17

There's a secret ritual behind the mask covering this body, my fortress. It's kind of like an involuntary thing you know you have to cover up if you want to keep doing it, or if you don't want to keep doing it. You just have to hide all the lines that have been etched into the body; the evidence that something's not right, and this has become my veil.

Would it have happened if I had stayed in Mexico? Maybe things would be different if I hadn't moved to Utah. I'll probably never know but I can tell you this, when I'm doing it, I don't feel pain. When I'm doing it, I feel like I'm just going to push through and get a moment of release, a short release. The more I do it, the more I ritualize it through the practice and through the cover-up. It's like every tight, long-sleeved top I've bought, especially the ones I can put my thumbs through at the ends, these accessories are a prelude to the ritual. In fact, I think the ritual started a long time ago, and the shirts, the razors, the bandages, the scars, the scars over other scars, are all part of the ritual.

And when I look at other girls in tank tops or spaghetti straps it makes me feel so much shame. I'm so cloistered. I'm catapillared in long sleeves, pants, masking the lines that make a map that leads to my secret, my secret ritual. It's a ritual, that in a complicated way, gets me out of my pain; but at the same time the pain increases with the increase of the ritual.

Ironically or paradoxically the pain increases with the increase of this ritual that momentarily releases me from the pain. It's like being stuck on a train that has somehow found itself on tracks that go in a circle. But it feels more like the tracks are in a spiral, a spiral downward, with smaller and smaller circles of track, heading for the inevitable. I don't really know how to break free from all this. Jumping from this train seem fatal, staying on this train seems fatal, and my only hope seems to be if I can slow this train down. How?

The masking of the secret, the isolation because of the secret, this island of pain, shame, guilt, and more shame of this secret. This train, with only one masked passenger, hiding alone, wrapped in shame, sequestered in this marked up body: becoming one big scar. I will soon need more armor, more coverings, and a thicker shell to hide the small little oyster of pain that is becoming who I am. I want to cast away this shell, but I know the little muscle, or meat of who I am will shrivel up and die.

But I know, I have to leave this fortress, this secret fortress. I must open the gates by ending the secret. I don't really know who I can tell. I don't want to burden my younger cousin with this; she's still so innocent. If I tell my mom she'll freak out and probably try to send me back to Mexico and I know that would be bad because my dad really needs me here. There's nowhere in Mexico where he can earn enough money to buy grandma's diabetes medicine.

I can't tell my dad, and it's not because he's deaf, but because he would probably understand more than anyone because he's deaf. He's just getting above water financially and I don't want to jeopardize everything he's built through all the sacrifices of coming here. I'm pretty much stuck on this train, alone, circling in spirals downward.

I spiral to school, somehow make it to Mr. C's room thinking, "If I could talk with a professional, a school psychologist. This is my ticket off this train, I have to get with a doctor, a counselor, someone who has seen this before and can help me." No, no, I don't want Mr. C to know. I don't want him to lose respect for me. He always seems too busy or distracted anyway. But I feel like I'm really going to hurt myself.

I turn myself off, slow the train down, coast into Mr. C's room. Two minutes before the first bell rings, only two people are in his room, Mr. C and that nerdy computer boy. Ok here I go, floating now, I'm on autopilot,

"Mr. C, can you take me to the school psychologist?"

This get's Mr. C's attention.

"Um, ok, ok, let's take this out in the hall."

Once out in the hall and Mr. C quietly asks me,

"Caylee, what's up?"

"I need to go to the school psychologist."

"Ok, hmm."

Mr. C looks down at the floor perplexed; he knows that there hasn't been a school psychologist in this school for a long time. There's a pause; I'm suspendedin air, on this train, now in free-fall.