Speaking With Tongues

Chapter Four

Chapter Four, And The Farm Animal Names My Brother Would Call Me By.

From now on, you’re going to be reading the word ‘depressed’ a million times, but I’m not apologizing or anything. Besides Aidan, other demoralizing things were happening. One night after church, the first Sunday night of my seventeenth summer, only a few weeks after the Aidan revelation, I suddenly got really depressed when I got home. I had gone to church with my five brothers and parents, but I had driven back home by myself, so I was all alone in the house for some time, being depressed.

I had recently quit all my involvement with the church, other than my simple attendance, in reaction to finding out that the pastor’s son was a philanderer and not wanting to assist the church in the harvesting of such beings, so I figured that was the main reason I was feeling miserable: because I felt purposeless and bored. Before, I used to play the cello to accompany the worship group and accompanied the choir with the piano and played the violin in a quartet and blah blah blah. Shit, I was involved. Now I did nothing but sit in the pew by my mother and draw stick figures of Aidan fornicating with several women simultaneously. I gave him an abnormally tiny penis. I took no pains to hide it from my mother whose eyes were attached to whatever was happening on stage.

Anyway, like I was saying, I was home alone feeling tremendously sorry for myself, and by the time my brothers got home, I was hoping they’d feel sorry for me too. I never was close to my brothers, except for James. And James couldn’t be much help lately anyway on account of his going through his near-insanity period over his recent breakup with Christy. They were together for over two years. Serious talk about marriage. All of that. Then one day, bam. Kaput. And no explanation. It nearly drove James insane, I mean really insane. He would drive to her house in the middle of the night when he couldn’t stand it anymore. She lived in the god damn other side of the universe, but he’d drive there anyway and he’d throw rocks at her window and he even shattered it once and didn’t even run away when it shattered. She eventually got a restraining order against him. I couldn't blame her, but I still hated her, naturally. He turned into this extremely angry guy since then, real mean to everyone, especially my parents. But I never really complained because it was since then that him and I started getting close again, now that Christy was out of the picture.

So James was the only one who noticed my gloom, but he had this really funny way about him: when he knew that I was sad or mad about something, he tried to cheer me up by being a real jerk to me. It never worked, obviously, but it was his way of telling me he knows I’m not ok. So it was nice in that way, at least.

Well, the first thing he says to me is “Hey hog, why aren’t you hogging anymore? C’mon, tell me.” He meant stage-hogging. Even though he didn’t mean it all mean or anything, it was just one of those things that made my eyes all big and watery and my lip quiver and if I said a word, I would burst into sobs. So I just kind of looked at him, I was sitting on the couch and he was standing and blocking my view of the T.V. while he was undoing his tie, and I tried real hard not to cry. But it’s always obvious with me when I’m about to cry. “What’s your problem, piggie?” He got a real kick out of calling me that, since I hated it so much. But I just kept looking at him until he started pinching my legs, trying to make me laugh, so I pushed him off and yelled at him to stop and took off running up the stairs to my room. My usual M.O. when upset: I’d run away from everybody, but what I was really wanting was for somebody to follow me. Wow, I hated not getting any attention when I was upset.

But James came. He sat on my bed. He just sat there for about ten minutes while I lay face-first in my pillow. He finally asked “Come on Kittie, what’s up?” He also called me Kittie, like I’m some sort of farm or something. Kittie. Piggie. Hog. Of course, I didn’t say anything. I always wanted to be real quiet for a long time when people were asking me what’s wrong. I got this kick out of making someone beg me to talk to them. But I guess it wasn’t really like that this time. The thing is, I really didn’t know what was wrong, I just felt really crummy. He started pushing and rocking me softly and said “I’m waiting here all night. You gotta tell me what’s up.” Pause. “Come on.” I didn’t want to tell him about Aidan, mostly since my pride was hurt for having had a philanderer as the object of my affections, and I also didn’t want to tell him the other reason I was depressed because I didn’t know what the other reason was. I suddenly wanted him to leave so I could take a sleeping pill and fall helplessly into mindless nothingness.

He tried to pull my head to face him, but I tensed up, groaned, then pushed his hand away. Then I suddenly changed my mind about the sleeping pill and started getting really scared that he would give up and eventually leave my room. Great gatsby, that depressed me. So I turned my face towards him and just let him see my wet, teary face. He just waited for me to say something but I still had nothing to say. I didn’t look at him, I just sort of looked around the room and wiped my eyes and nose and kept sniffling. “Piggy,” he said, and started tickling and poking me again. That really made me angry. I turned my back towards him again and pulled the pillow over my head. He just sat there and I could hear him breathing and probably just looking around the room at the stuff on my walls and everything, just sort of waiting with me. Finally, he took the pillow off my head and put it under his head and he laid down with his back pressed up against mine. I fell asleep.

A few hours later, I was awakened by the sensation that he had just left the room. I really wished that he would’ve just stayed there, but he didn’t, and I remembered how tremendously depressed I felt and I think I also dreamt about being depressed. So much for mindless nothingness.