This memoir is a work of nonfiction. Although creative language is used throughout, special attention has been given to details and facts. Certain names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect identities.
Chapter 1
Greenwell Springs Mental Hospital — March 1991
A mental hospital has a very unique odor. Of course, it reeks of pine oil, mint oil, and other disinfectants, but that’s not what I’m talking about. There is another aroma that is quite peculiar. Anyone who has been in a psychiatric ward has likely noticed it. Patients, employees, and visitors have all sensed it.
It is not particularly malodorous, nor does it cause the sinuses to protest. It’s just different. It evokes the need to seek security, and heightens awareness, while it simultaneously engages curiosity. You might feel an impulse to look over your shoulder and scrutinize blind spots. It’s not dissimilar to that feeling you get when you smell ozone in the air just before lighting plunges from the heavens to singe the earth with a kiss of destruction. I believe it’s due to the high concentration of troubled minds. You become cognizant of despair that rests on the edge of palpability. Your mind wrestles between haze and clarity before settling on an even more confusing alternative: mental illness is tangible.
My senses were inundated on March 13, 1991, when I stepped through the entrance of Greenwell Springs Psychiatric Hospital. That odor teased my nostrils, sending my sixteen-year-old mind into a frenzy of very mixed emotions. The combination of sights and sounds (and that smell) overpowered me. It left me with the coppery taste of fear beneath my tongue and a deeply pervasive knowing that there are others like me, and they were there. The building was a place where hopelessness dwelt, and, for some reason, I desired to go deeper inside. I needed to be there. The hospital was a womb and a silken web, and I was drawn to the warmth of the spider’s belly.
Angry, depressed, confused, afraid, sad, and vengeful; my mind was a total wreck. I was angry at the world, believing it to be cruel and vicious and unwelcoming. My sadness and depression were rooted in hatred for myself and the feeling that I’d always be alone. I was confused about who or what I was. There were voices all around me, demons in every reflective surface, while my own reflection was streaked with tears and blood. I loathed mirrors, yet I was subdued by anguish if I didn’t check each one for monsters. There was always at least one.
The demons themselves were ghastly creatures that didn’t conform to any specific images depicted in the movies. I knew they were lurking behind trees, slinking around corners, and hiding in fog, but it was in mirrors where they took on their sinister, dark and fluid forms. Some resembled people I knew. I could make out characteristics of my stepmother, Bulinda, and several cousins. Some reminded me of classmates, while others looked rat-like or reptilian. I wanted them all to go away.
I walked into the lobby that day with a black garbage bag slung over my shoulder. It was stuffed with a few changes of clothes, some composition books and writing implements, as well as various hygiene items. I also had a Sony Walkman and half a dozen cassette tapes of all my favorite bands: Metallica, Skid Row, Motley Crue, and Pink Floyd. To some, these groups were just rock stars and musicians, but to me they were poetic gods who outwardly expressed all the things I kept inside. Theirs were the reincarnated voices of Poe and Browning, Frost and Cummings, Hemingway and Morrison. They gave voice to the mental tears cascading and catching in the basin of my heart, leaving the pain to rise in a mist of dissolved emotions.
I walked beside my mother, Ailene. Grant, her boyfriend, walked behind us. He was the man who, in less than a decade, would marry my younger sister, Raechel. The lobby was bright, and the hospital’s whiteness was strangely inviting beneath the fluorescent lights. Peach-colored plastic chairs were lined up in neat rows atop speckled vinyl composite floor tiles. Plastic shrubs and small trees in decorative terra-cotta pots adorned the room. There were two vending machines against a wall. One of them advertised various prepackaged snacks, and the other sold cold drinks. A Southcentral-Bell payphone hung on a wall next to a short hallway that led to a set of sturdy-looking double doors.
“You wanna coke or som’n?” my mom asked.
I nodded yes, but she was already fishing for change out of her purse. She gave me a handful of quarters, nickels and dimes, and told me to get her one too. In the South, all sodas are generally referred to as “coke.” If someone asks you for a coke, you will likely respond with, “What kind?” I already knew that in my mom’s case she wanted an actual Coca-Cola. A coke for me meant either a Pepsi or a Dr. Pepper, in that order.
I walked over to the machine and deposited the fifty-five cents required for purchase. To the left of the machine, there hung a framed print of a tranquil prairie scene. The picture was covered in reflective glass, and I could see grotesque faces with snarling mouths and sinister eyes glaring at me. Voices echoed in my eardrums, saying, “You will die here!”
“Good!” I retorted, realizing I’d done so quite loudly. Several people looked up from their magazines, but only briefly. They returned attention to the periodicals they perused, so I resumed staring at the malefic grins and mocking laughter in the reflection. The demons’ guffawing faces were out of sync with the sounds in my head. Grimacing, I returned to my mom, who was standing at the receptionist’s desk, and popped the tab on the Coke before handing it to her. There wasn’t any Pepsi in the machine, so I sipped on a Dr. Pepper instead.
As I surveyed the waiting room, I noted that it didn’t appear much different from any other hospital waiting room I’d been to. Several sets of double doors hid hallways that led to different areas of the facility, undoubtedly concealing deep secrets of the world beyond. I looked through the windows of the doors located to my left. They guarded the exit. It had rained relentlessly during the drive up from Berwick — a little town tucked away in the coastal marshes and swamps of south Louisiana. But now, the sky beyond the doors was clear and bright. Sulky gray thunderheads gave way to azure patches of sky. Cumulus clouds to the west allowed crepuscular rays to beam brightly. Vehicles in the parking lot, the pavement itself, verdant oak and elm foliage, and lush St. Augustine grass, all glistened in the sun’s luminous glory. The world always looks fresh and new after a spring shower washes away the grime.
A spasm rippled through my torso and caused my shoulders to tremble as I imagined myself bursting through the doors and sprinting out into the awaiting springtime world beyond. Instead, I would wait for the doors on my right to open — offering me the secretive new world beyond. That secret place beckoned to me.
Behind the desk, a plump and pretty black lady hung up a telephone. “H’ah can I help ya,” she asked with a beautiful smile.
“I’m Ailene, and dis is mah son, Michael. Miss Paige, o’va at Fairview Hospital in Bayou Vista, she sent us.”
The lady turned to the appointment book on the desk to her left and placed her finger next to an entry. Her movements caused the sweet floral perfume she was wearing to waft through the air. She jotted down a quick note and reached for the phone. As she keyed in a three-number code, she said to us, “Y’all can have a seat ‘n someone’ll be wit’chall shawtly.”
My mom and I sat down on the peach-colored chairs, and Grant walked outside to smoke a cigarette. The sanitary lobby was enveloped in silence. Only the occasional turning of a magazine page broke the stillness. A gnawing chill made the room feel like a mortuary. When joined with the silence and scents, I started to feel an eeriness that I hadn’t noticed before.
“These people are gonna he’p ya, Son,” Mom whispered. “You just behave an’ do what dey tell ya.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A loud click-pop came from a set of double doors behind and to the left of me. The doors’ magnetic locks disengaged. I grew acutely aware of the little hairs rising on the nape of my neck. That was immediately followed by an almost painful tingle behind my jaw. Then came the sharp metallic taste of copper that burned my tongue, causing my jaw to clench. When the door swung open, I gazed upon a very attractive white lady casually walking toward us. The welcoming smile on her face filled me with a distinct impression of warmth and kindness. She wore a creamsicle skirt-suit accented by low, white pumps. Poufy, bird nest-styled bangs accented a cute, round face with deep, brown eyes set in a clear, tan complexion. Her hair was light brown with frosted tips that rested loosely upon her shoulders. Impossible as it seemed, her wide, bright smile broadened even more as she approached us. That not-so-unpleasant, unique odor also accompanied her. In fact, it grew thicker. I decided it must be heavily concentrated beyond the doors, and the spider sent its beguiling muse to tempt me with an erotic enchantment. As she addressed my mom I got lost in her words, until she turned to me and stuck out a petite hand.
“Hi Michael, I’m Crystal,” she said in a soft angelic voice, “and we’ve been expecting you.”
Her eyes were the embodiment of compassion. That soft, ultra-feminine hand took hold of mine. It was a touch that generated soothing waves of calmness. I needed to follow her... anywhere.
“Come with me, Michael.”
She was delicate and sincere. Enticed, I followed as she led me to her inner sanctum, not knowing if she was taking me to a sanctuary or a tomb. Nevertheless, I followed, because there might have been no difference between the two.
* * *
After the interview, I signed the voluntary admission forms that gave the hospital my consent to observation for 72 hours. If I would’ve refused to sign, I’d have simply gone home with my mom, which also meant going home with Grant. After signing, she escorted me to Southwing, where I was told to strip. A nurse handed me a white linen hospital gown that was covered with green polka dots. Then I was placed in an empty white room with padded walls. Barefoot and lacking my glasses, I sat in a corner of the room. My visit to the psych ward began on suicide watch.
It wasn’t long before I was yelling at the taunting, snickering voices that were belittling me. My screams were forced through torrents of tears that could no longer be held back. A fragile dam had burst, allowing an emotional flood to pour through, carrying with it the twisted memories of a boy with a shotgun and the acrid taste of cold, hard steel resting between his teeth. I had wrapped my lips around the barrel, the bitterness of spent gunpowder saturating my tongue, while fear and despair and loathing washed over and through me. The raging tempest of suicidal ideation had whirled into a certified attempt the previous night, and I remembered it all. The spiraling vortex of jumbled emotions sucked me in —
My big toe was inside the trigger guard, the shotgun’s barrel was in my mouth, and the diamond-tipped needle on the record player had just lifted to swing back to the beginning of the black, vinyl disc spinning at 33 RPMs on the turntable. I heard a click as the needle made contact. Crisp popping sounds began to radiate from the speakers, followed by an electric guitar’s distorted, darkness-delving strikes. The gloomy chord progression helped my courage to rise. Other instruments joined in to create deep and sinister sonance as the death-laden melody filled my bedroom. Malice in the music was then joined by the mesmerizing voice of Ozzy. “Gen’rals gathered in their masses,” he whined, “just like witch-es at black mass-es!”
The hypnotically arcane music enthralled me, and I felt a strange warmth blanketing me as I sat on the cold tiles of my bedroom floor. Two crescendos were about to meet. I knew that all I had to do was push the trigger. Push my toe downward against the trigger and it would all be over. No more voices, no more demons, no more memories of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Bulinda. Death would also free me of the sexual fantasies planted in my childhood by several older cousins. Everything would just go away If I’d press the god-damned trigger.
Seconds turned to minutes, as fear of death battled the hatred of living. Then, Ozzy howled, “Sa-tan laughing spreads his wings! Oh Lord yeah!”
Taunted, I started to wonder. Would there be only darkness — nothingness – when I cross over? Would death be the end? It was then that I realized how tightly I was biting the barrel. I opened my eyes while simultaneously unclenching my teeth. My lips were tingling, and my tongue was gritty with little chips of tooth enamel. I removed my toe from the trigger guard and pulled my face away from the deadly blue-steel phallus I’d willfully placed in my mouth. The taste of gunpowder, oil and iron became more prominent. Gently, I maneuvered the weapon over to my left and leaned it into the corner. As I stood, I could feel how my back had adhered to the door I was sitting against. Sweat had saturated my shirt.
As my senses started to clear, I realized that I was trembling, somewhat violently. Numbness and tingling were alternating in my extremities and I was dizzy. My nose was dripping snot, and my cheeks and eyes were raw from salt-heavy tears. Making my way to the bed, I crawled onto it. As the vertigo subsided, the alternating numbness and tingling receded as well. I allowed the damp nighttime air to wash over me as it wafted between the slight opening between window and sill. It was a false sense of peace, for the tumult wasn’t over. I sat there on the bed, willing my thoughts to become more lucid, while reflecting on the melancholia I was experiencing. The dark gravity of my situation became clearer. My suicidal ideation had become something deeply macabre. Had I pushed the trigger, a .410 slug would have launched through my soft palate, into the gray matter, exiting through the top of my skull. It would have blown through the thin, wooden bedroom door, carrying gobs of brain, blood, and bone into the hallway. That mixture, and the unmistakable stench of spent gunpowder, is what my mom, Grant, and Raechel would have encountered when they walked in. But instead, I gave in to the fear of dying. The fear that pain may not end in death and that the torment I felt might continue, or be even worse, after death. It might follow me to the other side.
Then, I heard the front door being violently slung open, followed by slapping, booted footfalls urgently crossing the tiled floor of the government housing unit. Suddenly my bedroom door crashed open with a loud bang, the force sufficiently strong enough to lodge the doorknob into the drywall behind it. I immediately leapt up, but Grant’s powerful, calloused hands latched onto me and he jerked me off my feet. He then slammed my slight, 140-pound frame against the wall, knocking the breath out of me and causing the windows to rattle. One of those hard hands found my throat and started to squeeze. I was attempting to gasp for air while continuing to stare into his eyes. He wanted to kill me, so I taunted him by keeping my eyes focused on him. In my own head, I yelled, “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME, MOTHERFUCKER!”
Instinct kicked in in much the same way it did earlier when I’d sat with a shotgun barrel in my mouth. My mind fought against death and I started to clutch at his grip. Nevertheless, I started to lose consciousness and the world turned grey just as I heard my mom yelling, “Stoppit! You gonna kill ‘im!”
When I regained consciousness, I was lying face down on my bed. I heard my mom, who was still screaming at Grant. I heard her say she was going to call the cops. Little starbursts were popping all around me and my ears were ringing loudly. I sat upright, and although Grant was no longer in the room, I still smelled his beer- and cigarette-tainted breath as I gulped at the crisp air coming in through the open window beside the bed. My mom’s boyfriend (and my sister’s future husband) had nearly succeeded in killing me. Had he accomplished it, an alternate history would’ve been written. He’d have gone to prison and my sister would have never birthed his child. I would not have had an opportunity to commit the crimes I’m guilty of — the crimes that led me to prison. Many future choices rested on the events of that March night, and it is bizarre now to imagine the smorgasbord of interchangeable outcomes.
When I was able to stand, it took a few moments to loosen myself from the grip of vertigo that set the room to spinning. I walked to the door, the knob of which was still embedded in the wall and peeked out. Down the hallway, to my right, I saw the sofa in the living room. My 13-year-old sister was nestled against Grant, who was sipping from a fresh beer. He looked to his left and stared at me menacingly, then curled his arm around Rae and pulled her closer. She snuggled deeply into his side. I heard my mother’s voice, which sounded like it was coming from outside. She was likely talking to Uncle George, the cop who was my Aunt Donna’s husband.
I stepped backward into my room, dislodged the embedded doorknob, then closed the door. I was consciously thankful that my baby sister, Karli, was spending the night at her friend Carissa’s house.
My record player was still on. The music stopped and the arm lifted once again. It swung back to the beginning and set back down. Crackles and pops, and then the dark melody returned. Nearly 30 minutes had elapsed since I’d first bit down on the barrel. The shotgun was still in the corner. When the door was flung open, it had been hidden from view, but it was once again visible.
“There’re three shells in it,” I whispered.
Instead of my own brain exploding, I envisioned the three of them meeting that fate. Fate that I could deal to them. I slid on my blue jean jacket and laced up my black jungle boots. I picked up the loaded weapon and rubbed my hand over the hard, smooth, heavy, wooden stock. I envisioned Karli’s blue eyes crying and I began to sob at the thought of causing her mental anguish and distressed. So I returned the gun to the closet, and, instead of slaughtering my family on that cool night in March 1991, I climbed out of my window and walked to the graveyard. I lived just two blocks from the cemetery where a 300-year-old live oak stood. I spent the night curled up in its lofty branches that overhung Fourth Street. On that particular night, that old man was a friend and a comforter.
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