Girl in Pieces

Every moment is spoken for. We are up at six o’clock. We are drinking lukewarm coffee or watered-down juice by six forty-five. We have thirty minutes to scrape cream cheese on cardboardy bagels, or shove pale eggs in our mouths, or swallow lumpy oatmeal. At seven fifteen we can shower in our rooms. There are no doors on our showers and I don’t know what the bathroom mirrors are, but they’re not glass, and your face looks cloudy and lost when you brush your teeth or comb your hair. If you want to shave your legs, a nurse or an orderly has to be present, but no one wants that, and so our legs are like hairy-boy legs. By eight-thirty we’re in Group and that’s when the stories spill, and the tears spill, and some girls yell and some girls groan, but I just sit, sit, and that awful older girl, Blue, with the bad teeth, every day, she says, Will you talk today, Silent Sue? I’d like to hear from Silent Sue today, wouldn’t you, Casper?

Casper tells her to knock it off. Casper tells us to breathe, to make accordions by spreading our arms way, way out, and then pushing in, in, in, and then pulling out, out, out, and don’t we feel better when we just breathe? Meds come after Group, then Quiet, then lunch, then Crafts, then Individual, which is when you sit with your doctor and cry some more, and then at five o’clock there’s dinner, which is more not-hot food, and more Blue: Do you like macaroni and cheese, Silent Sue? When you getting those bandages off, Sue? And then Entertainment. After Entertainment, there is Phone Call, and more crying. And then it’s nine p.m. and more meds and then it’s bed. The girls piss and hiss about the schedule, the food, Group, the meds, everything, but I don’t care. There’s food, and a bed, and it’s warm, and I am inside, and I am safe.

My name is not Sue.