Billie Girl

Chapter Seven

So, when there are trying times you stick to those you know, who you love and who, in some way, protect you.

Outside my living room window I saw the police cars patrolling the streets. And then there were the grass roots volunteers wearing bright neon jackets and lights on their hats that runners used. They scouted around in groups of two or four. On the local news they called themselve: "the neighborhood watch."

When I was out in the car, I saw local media vans with satellite antennas. And on top of everything else, a Hollywood production company was on location shooting some Bruce Willis movie in town. Grand Rapids offered tax break incentives to Hollywood producers, so it was not unusual to see crews out on my hometown streets. On Division Street downtown (the shady part of town) big bright lights created daylight at night. I bet the folks that lived in that "iffy" area were grateful to Hollywood for at least scaring away the strangler with those blinding lights.

Another friend of mine started to lose her bearings from all that was happening. Her name was Alicia, and I met her at a poetry reading. I noticed her because she couldn't just sit down and listen. Instead, she stood and fidgeted in the back of the library like a dancer who is stretching before a performance. We were friends for about a year, and she had some far out theories that should have tipped me off to her impending disease. One such theory was that she believed there were concentration camps ready and waiting in the United States sponsored by FEMA. She got all her conspiracy theories off the internet and she was always sending me creepy links to scary web sites which I would delete after taking a quick glimpse at them. It was the usual stuff predicting the end of civilization.

But the shit really hit the fan at a small soiree she threw at her place in East Town. Look I'm not saying she was not a hostess with the mostess because she was perfectly hospitable and charming. She even had some pretty cool friends who brought guitars and started improvising songs right on the spot about each other. I joined in and sang along. It seemed like everyone was making fun of everybody else. It was an impromptu roast. But nobody was making fun of Alicia. She was off limits because she was off her rocker.

Maybe the whole lot of us were enablers. She sat there and told us all she saw Jesus flickering in the candle on the dining room table. She invited me to her room and pointed to the night stand by her bed where there were a bunch of tiny figurines from the movie Toy Story which she had collected probably from McDonalds or something and she said to me, "Billie, this is my movie."

I paused and looked at her. But I just could not figure out what she meant. So I asked her flat out, "What do you mean, 'this is your movie'?"

And Alicia said, "Well, you know how they are shooting a Bruce Willis movie in town, and how they have this tax incentive for movie companies to come to Grand Rapids? Well, I am fully taking advantage of that, and that is why this is my movie."

I pushed her one more time for a clue that might make sense, "But I still don't get how this is your movie."

"This is it," she said. "There is nothing more I need to say. Just watch and enjoy."

She pointed again at the figurines and I was dumbfounded.

Now, I knew about everything that you needed to know about mental health since I often questioned and feared for my own sanity. And to me, my sweet friend Alicia was clearly showing signs of a nervous breakdown. She just wasn't making sense that night. I asked her if she was on any sort of medication and she told me that she could not take 'That horse shit rat poison." She confessed to me that she had once spent time at Pine Rest, a local mental institution where she claims she was told by the doctors that she dressed too provocatively. "Don't you see, Billie girl? They don't allow us girls to be who we are. They want to hold us down. But we have to own our bodies."

"I think you need to get some help." I said in a whisper so that nobody would hear me. I didn't want to shame or embarrass her.

She heard me loud and clear, yet she said, "Do you want some more wine?" as if I had said nothing at all.

I thought about repeating myself once again. But then some other friends came trampling up the steps and into her room and I thought it would be rude to do so in front of them. And that was that. That was the most that I could do for her. I never did anything more for my friend Alicia.

Two weeks later I heard she committed suicide by inhaling helium from a tank she bought at a birthday boutique. She got her suicide methodology from an audacious web site that blatantly displayed homespun ways for people to end their lives.

All I could think about was how my mother has raised me in Grand Rapids because it was such a safe place to be, far away from any possible threat of terrorism. It had always been a clean, conservative city...now all of a sudden my girlfriends were either killing themselves or getting killed.