Charleigh Wallace
____________________________
Anna Blair’s
Visitors
Based on a true story.
Copyright © 2011
All rights reserved.
…continued
Ten
Dr. Alexandru greeted Anna warmly at the door to his office, careful not to stand too close or look too long into her eyes. He didn’t want to frighten her.
He wondered if he would ever convince a woman like Anna who had been raped and abused that not every man who looked was a monster, and not every man’s touch meant rape. Dr. Alexandru had no more answers than Anna did.
She found his kind smile comforting, and speculated as to why he didn’t look at her for very long. Was he embarrassed by the things she had said? Did he think she was plain, ugly, fat? What was he anyway? Russian? Italian?
Dr. Alexandru’s deeply accented voice startled her, making her flinch and hold up her hands in fist formation.
“Anna, please have a seat. I thought today we’d just talk if that’s okay with you?”
“Whatever,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
Anna sat directly on the middle of the not inconsiderable “fluffy, puffy” couch. She sunk uncomfortably into the crease between the cushions. She abruptly stood, pulled down the crack of her pants that were creeping up her bottom, and sat on the cushion at the far end, the farthest she could get from the doctor.
Anna stared with irritation as Dr. Alexandru got up and sat opposite her in a worn, upholstered wingback chair from the early 1700s, Anna guessed. She noted it looked cold, and it certainly did not match his ugly metal desk.
Dr. Alexandru smiled, ignoring her glare. “Can you tell me about your mother?”
“Are you Russian?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He smiled. “I’m Romanian.”
“I think she’s dead.”
“What?”
“My mother.”
“Yes, Anna, she passed away over three months ago.”
“Oh.” Anna tied and re-tied her blue suede tennis shoes, completely bent at the waist, her face covered with a short mass of blonde hair.
Dr. Alexandru smiled at the process, the look of those worn tennis shoes on such a beautiful woman, in a white oversized T-shirt and blue jeans. What a playful, young outfit, Dr. Alexandru surmised, on such a complicated woman.
”Anna, how did she die?”
The memory came back, bolting her upright like a Nazi soldier.
“Cancer. Multiple Myeloma.”
“Go on, please.”
“She got sick, and threw up blood clots, and was saying she wasn’t going to die to the nurses in the hospital, but they didn’t believe her. Then she said she saw my grandmother and grandfather in the hospital room, and then I knew.”
“Knew?”
“She was going away. They were coming for her. But she wasn’t afraid anymore.”
“Were you with her when she died?”
“No. I never got to say good-bye.”
“How did you react when you found out she had died?”
“I cried for a long time.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Sometimes I still don’t think she’s gone. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that she died.”
“Those things are hard for us to comprehend. Sometimes it takes a long time to not feel as much pain when we think about them. Death seems so final.”
“Well, thanks for that, Doctor. I feel better now. Implausibly better, actually.” She stared at Dr. Alexandru until he looked down.
“Sorry, Anna.”
Anna detected the sigh that came from Dr. Alexandru, the weary look on his face. She decided to forgive his stupid comment, but held back. She wanted to ask if he had lost someone, too, but didn’t. She looked away quickly, and then suddenly, her stomach clenched, her bowels began to spasm. Then came a hot flash, and that all too familiar feeling of needing to crawl into a corner, or scream, or peel her skin off because it was too confining. She was heading for a panic attack.
Anna jumped up. “I want to go home now! I’m getting nervous being out this long!”
“Okay…okay, Anna. Are you alright? Do you need some water?”
Anna ran out the door without answering. The doctor quickly picked up the phone and called Lawton Cab.
He watched out his window as the cab quickly pulled up, taking her back home.
“Jesus, what does he do? Sit there and wait the whole hour?” Nevertheless, Dr. Alexandru was thankful the cab was right there when she needed it.
On the ride home, Anna gripped the side door handle, praying she wouldn’t have a full blown attack. Not here, not now. She started crying in the back seat.
“Hey, are you okay?” Craig asked, looking in his rear-view mirror. Her face…she’s so afraid; her eyes look terrified. God damn it, I wish I could hold her! He slammed his hands on the steering wheel, making her jump.
“Just drive!” She screamed. Craig stepped on the gas.
The cab halted at the curb. Anna threw her money at the vicinity of the front seat, and leaped from the cab. She scrambled for her keys while Craig stood helplessly outside his cab door. Rushing in, she locked and bolted the door, and ran to the bathroom where she spent an agonizing hour of panic, vomiting, diarrhea, and chills, before the medicine finally kicked in with wonderful bliss. Then she gingerly climbed into bed, under fluffy, soft sheets, exclaiming, “Fuck the mail,” and fell off to sleep.
Craig had ignored all his calls for a good hour, sitting in his cab outside her house, standing by the mailbox, resting up against the side of the car, waiting, not knowing how to help. Finally, he got in and drove off.
Anna awakened only once to hear her children come in the door from school. They were home now, and the panic was gone. Peace was back and she held on tight.
Eleven
Anna found herself again in Dr. Alexandru’s office. She just wished sometimes she could remember the ride to and from, but she did remember Craig’s blue eyes looking at her in the rearview mirror, and his scent.
“Anna, tell me about kindergarten.”
“What do you want to know? Kindergarten is pretty self-explanatory.” Anna loved being snide with Dr. Alex, what she now called him.
“What happened when you walked home from school that one day,” he asked, ignoring her sneer.
“I don’t remember much.”
“Tell me what you do remember.”
“Are you yelling at me?” She rose from the couch.
“Of course not, Anna. I am asking you to tell me what you remember.”
She sat back down again. Overreacting was not exactly her best feature, she thought to herself.
“Okay,” she said calmly, placing her hands on her pants, near the knee caps, fingers splayed.
“I remember my dad said boys will be boys. Whatever the hell that means.”
“Anna, whatever happened to you was not acceptable behavior in boys, or men. Ever.”
As Anna conveyed what she could recollect, Dr. Alex took his notes, thinking a few times he’d like to get a baseball bat and hit those boys upside their heads, the ones who had hurt her.
Anna left soon after. Dr. Alex rubbed his tired eyes, pushing up his glasses on his head rather than setting them on his desk. He concentrated on the taped recording. He typed his notes:
From the medical records on Anna Blair, she was seen by the family doctor after the incident in kindergarten, but he claimed she had not been raped. Her parents took her to a psychiatrist, who noted that she did not want to talk, but climbed all over his desk, playing with his pencils, etc. From what her older sister, Fran, said, Anna’s mother apparently walked her to and from school for the remainder of that school year, but then assumed Anna was better, and did not walk her to school when 1st grade began.
Fran was interviewed last week. There were more instances when Anna was too frightened to walk down the same side of the street where boys were. This went on for many years. Anna could not walk outside the school building while waiting for her mother to pick her up…this would be fourth grade…if boys were present on the playground. Four years after the incident.
Apparently, Anna did not know why this was happening to her. She completely blocked out the incident, which caused a snowball effect on future memories. They all seemed to have been erased. And it seemed after this first incident, she started binge eating, a whole pack of cookies at a time.
On their next visit, Anna shared with him a dream from a few years ago.
“You want to tell me about a dream you had?”
“Yes.”
“Please, go on.”
Anna relayed the dream as if she’d dreamt it yesterday. Funny how she remembered it with such clarity, but couldn’t remember what mail she had received just yesterday.
“I resided in a substantial, glass house. The whole thing was windows, and it was dark outside. All the lights were on inside the house. Whoever was out there could see me, but I couldn’t see them.
“Then somehow Cezar got in the front door even though it was locked very securely. I fled into the kitchen, got a generous knife, with serrated edges, and repeatedly stabbed him in the chest. There was blood everywhere. Then I went out of the room to wash off the blood from my shaking hands, but when I returned, the body was gone, the blood was gone, and I knew I would have to kill him again and again and again.”
She shrugged. “So, that’s it.”
The dream’s meaning was obvious. The fear was still very real and alive inside Anna.
Dr. Alex wanted to help her; he watched her face during every session, and the expressions that crept in as her memory fought to come back, little by little.
Her problems did not start when her mother died. They had just escalated. She had repressed memories from the incident in kindergarten, allowing her to see only snapshots of her life. She was married for eight long abusive years, and divorced the children’s father ten years ago.
Dr. Alex read in her file:
She is tormented with panic attacks, irritable bowel syndrome, and was diagnosed with MS in 1993, but so far, has had no ill effects except for a loss of sensation, of touch. She has a Bachelor’s degree.
Dr. Alex looked out his window at the traffic traveling up and down Gore Boulevard, the lighted trees, angels, and little snow village houses being set up for another season. The horse-drawn carriages would soon begin their walk up and down the street. Snow was starting to fall. It was quite pretty, even with the vast Army base in the distance, with its drab, dark brown barracks and light tan quarters laid out on flat, dead, frozen dirt and grass.
She’s pretty. She is quite heavy, but under the circumstances, I understand why. It’s her armor. When she’s heavy, no men are knocking down her door. Her physical appearance now is only the end result of years of suffering.
Dr. Alex’s eyebrows furrowed in a combination of anger and loss for Anna’s life. He sighed, put on his dark blue Sears parka and black leather gloves, and walked down the stairs, out into the cold night.
Anna was at home, staring at the toilet, trying to focus on Craig’s smell and his strong hands gripping the steering wheel. She flushed the toilet. Craig’s eyes were kind. But then again, in the beginning so were Cezar’s.
She walked into her room and sat in a corner, facing the wall. She closed her eyes. It was Burbank. Rhona was small, and Fia had recently been born.
“Cezar, it’s 2:00 am! I am so tired.”
“I don’t care!”
“But I can’t stay awake. I’m so tired.”
Finally she agreed, because he said she couldn’t go to sleep until she did.
“Okay. We can have sex, just so I can get to sleep.”
He grinned. “No, I don’t want sex. I want a blow job.”
“But I agreed to have sex. Isn’t that enough?”
“No!” He bellowed.
He always wanted oral sex, and he always wanted to finish in her mouth, holding her head in place so she couldn’t move, or breathe. And no matter how many times she said no, he always tried, releasing a small amount of semen into her mouth. She would push away, spit all over him, and go brush her teeth, cry, or sometimes vomit.
Anna gripped her stomach, remembering another time.
“I feel so sick.”
“So!”
“I can’t give you a blow job, Cezar, when I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
“Fuck you!” Then he grabbed her head, bringing her face to his groin. Tears streamed down her face with him in her mouth. When he finished, she went into the bathroom and vomited.
Anna held her mouth, crying but making no noise.
She remembered Burbank, and all the many excuses Cezar gave for needing blow jobs. He was sad, he was happy, he had a headache, he was constipated. He told her that oral stimulation was the only thing that would stop hideous migraines. He wouldn’t take his blood pressure medicine, the real cause for his headaches. He’d just say he forgot. So she’d forget how hard she was biting.
After school Anna, Rhona and Fia all rode in the cab to Harry’s Market. Thanksgiving was coming soon. Rhona and Fia did the shopping, running into the store from the waiting cab while Anna clung to the door handle. Craig tried to make small talk while he and Anna waited, but there was no response.
Soon the girls came out, bags in each hand. On Thanksgiving they enjoyed a safe, quiet meal with Jerry Lewis entertaining them in Cinderfella.
Twelve
“My mom and dad were in the San Francisco Opera Company before I was born.”
“Really?” Dr. Alex was impressed.
“Yeah. They gave it up to raise Fran and me.”
“Oh, that is too bad,” Dr. Alex said, but quickly looked away when greeted with a hostile glare.
Anna continued. “Then,” she pronounced with anger, “they joined this concert society group. I sat bored to death while listening to endless agonizing hours of choir rehearsals. It was some big deal, but I hated the music.”
“Why?”
“Because! They sang those little stupid ‘staccato-ed,’ exactly-measured notes, precisely as written: c d c c e f c c, like fucking note robots!” Anna was now on her feet, using hand gestures and angry expressions. Dr. Alex just smiled. Then she turned toward him and took the top of one hand, and while hitting it into the palm of her other she exclaimed, “Notes, Dr. Alex, are written to dance on a page. They are not to be sitting up to their asses in cement!”
Then she sat back down. Dr. Alex got up and went to his desk. He rummaged around, lifting papers, opening drawers, until he uncovered a black, leather-bound book, a journal. Anna looked at it, and then at him with impatient irritation.
“What the hell is that?”
Dr. Alex put the journal on the mahogany-stained pine coffee table that sat between them. “This,” he explained, “is the beginning of your life now.” He handed her a black pen.
“What!” She demanded with angry suspicion.
Dr. Alex smiled as furrowed brows and a scowl greeted him. “I want you to open the journal and write down what I tell you to write.”
Anna wiggled on the couch, clearly annoyed.
“Please?” Dr. Alex sensed her hesitation, but Anna grudgingly grabbed the pen from his waiting hand, slammed open the journal to the first page, and sighed.
“I want you to write…’This is my…'”
As he dictated, Anna glared at him. He urged, “’This is my…journal. My new book of memories to replace the old ones I no longer have.’”
It was very clear to Dr. Alex that even though Anna remembered some specific times in her life, her overall life was a blank, and he wasn’t willing to allow her to live like that anymore, to leave behind memories. It was time to take with her what she could remember, and make new memories.
He pleaded. “Write, Anna, please?” He continued. “’I will write in it each day…’”
Before Anna could argue, her mouth poised for an angry comment, he continued to dictate.
“’I will write in it each day,’” he stated with more emphasis, “’to remember from now on. And I will bring it with me each week to see Dr. Alex.’”
He smiled. She smoldered. Could he not tell how clearly annoyed she was? She stood, frowned, and angrily thanked him for the damn journal, leaving in a huff.
Anna knew deep down this was a relief. Now she wouldn’t have to try so hard to remember. She was tired of hearing her father ask her if she remembered this vacation or that vacation. Did she remember bringing him lemonade as he struggled to get their small trailer ready for a trip? She remembered none of it, and he would get mad at her for it. He’d snap at her, yell, and make her wonder why he was so angry.
It broke her heart the most when Rhona reminded her of the birthday not too many years ago, when Rhona had saved up her money so she could take her mom out shopping. Whatever Anna liked or wanted, Rhona bought it for her. Rhona reminded her of all the great things Anna had purchased that day, how much fun they had had, but Anna couldn’t recall any of it.
It was as if some other person had cheated her out of her life; a human shell who got to enjoy all of those times, Anna left with only the agony of not remembering the activity, the feeling she had, or who she had shared the precious moments with.
Her face would light up when a memory came back, a photograph whisking in and out of her mind, stopping long enough to say hello.
Like the time she was not allowed to see The Exorcist because she wasn’t seventeen yet. She had called Grandma Blair who came to the theatre willingly. Anna thought she was coming to take her home. But Grandma Blair came in the theatre with her and watched the whole movie straight-faced. Fran and Anna would laugh at the memory, and also because Anna remembered anything at all.
Anna remembered her first kiss at a high school Sadie Hawkins dance, where Anthony Biscoe pushed his tongue down her throat, and all she could do was stand there scared to death. And how she shouldn’t have gone with Anthony but with Adrian, the Greek drummer she broke her date with, the one she even now thought of, even now sometimes loved.
Anna remembered her dear grandmother’s funeral, not recognizing the painted face that lay in the coffin, and knowing that she would never again hear that deep, exhilarating laugh.
Anna’s memories were shattered, but as she continued to go to Dr. A, a shortened version, bits and pieces were coming back. She remembered having to ask Cezar permission to go to the grocery store, and how she’d better not be gone longer than a god damn hour. She remembered having to ask permission to practice her singing or take a bath, because he didn’t want to be out in the living room, watching the damn kids. And he didn’t want to hear anymore about her singing until it brought in the big bucks.
Dr. A sat down at his desk, pleased with his accomplishment, the first wrecking ball pounding against Anna’s stone wall. He tapped his pencil on the brain-gray metal desk, staring out the window at the icy rain falling.
Craig dropped Anna off a little after 10:30 am. She threw her money at him, said “sorry,” as she slammed the door, and walked angrily up the walkway. She dropped her keys twice, slammed the black journal down on the step once, then picked them both up, and opened the door.
Craig smiled as he sat in the car watching her. “She said ‘sorry.’ Fucking A, she said ‘sorry!’” He cranked Rascal Flatts and sped off down Atom.
Once inside, Anna walked to her bedroom, her footsteps hard enough to shake the lamps in each room as she passed. She threw herself on her bed, opened the stupid journal, and began to write:
Dear Diary
I just got home. Big fucking deal. I think the cab driver likes me.
And then she stopped, got off her bed, and spent the next fifteen minutes kissing the mirror in her bedroom, imagining a combination of Craig’s eyes, and Russell Crowe’s lips. She picked up the journal again:
Dear Diary
Russell Crowe kissed me today.
And so her journaling began.
After taking a quick shower, Anna dressed in her tie-dyed, once-piece, 90/10 cotton blend union suit, and made her breakfast of Cap’n Crunch Cereal soaked in Coca Cola.
…to be continued.
Charleigh Wallace 