Lilac Vegetal
by Myra Sherman
My stomach rumbles when the beefy guy with KFC in his backpack sits next to me. The fried chicken smell makes me crave juicy breasts and succulent thighs, creamy potatoes, biscuits. Hoping no one hears, I put my hand on the skin between my jeans and cropped tee.
“This is the Acute Outpatient Program and our check-in group,” Dr. Peters says. Sometimes he reminds me of my father, although there’s no physical resemblance.
My father was a big man, until he got sick. He went down to ninety pounds before he died. His skin was yellow from liver cancer and just thinking about him, even after three years, makes me want to cry.
Dr. Peters is middle-sized and middle-aged. Except for his blue eyes and deep voice, he’s nothing special. But I want him to like me. I want him to care.
My empty stomach rumbles again, even louder than before. The problem with chronic dieting is you’re always hungry. Growing up, my mother cooked fattening Filipino food, even though my father hated it. I was chubby in grade school. My thighs rubbed together, my arms were fat. I could be overweight in no time.
“I’m Dr. Peters, the program director.”
The room is beige, dull and stuffy. Amateur artwork is on the walls. The overhead fluorescents simulate daylight. Eighteen people have said how they’re doing and what they want to work on. The half hour check-in is almost over. There’s just Lisha and me left.
“Lisha, we missed you,” Dr. Peters says.
“I had appointments,” she snaps. Lisha is a tall African American. Before AOP she jumped in front of a BART train. Everyone worries about her, but she makes it hard to like her. She’s angry and quick to take offense.
“How are you?” Dr. Peters asks. His forehead is creased with concern.
“I am totally fine.” Lisha’s forehead is beaded with sweat.
“You’re sure?”
“You can move on.” Lisha’s hand wave is imperious, the Queen of AOP, mistress of the nuts.
Dr. Peters sighs, but doesn’t answer. Time’s going by. I want my turn. I need my turn.
“He’s trying to be tactful,” I blurt out. “You are so far from fine. Girl, that wig, and your lipstick looks like you did it on a rollercoaster, plus…
“Perla, that’s enough.” Dr. Peters coughs and drinks from his water bottle—everyone in AOP carries water, just like the gym—then turns to Lisha’s case manager. “Marsha, can you take Lisha to your office?”
Strangely Lisha doesn’t resist. She follows Marsha from the room head high as an African queen. I wonder what she’s thinking, what psychosis feels like. She’s taken all the time. I don’t know if Dr. Peters will end the group or let me talk. I’m embarrassed by my outburst.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just…I really need to be here.”
Dr. Peters raises his eyebrows, like he doesn’t believe me.
I know he’s thinking I look too good for AOP. It’s the same old story, being judged by my appearance.
People say I resemble Mariah Carey. I don’t see it. Maybe the hair and skin tone, but she’s a lot older. Plus I’m Filipina-Italian and I’m not sure what she is, but definitely something else. If she had a drop of Filipina blood my mother would know. My mother’s into things like that.
“I still can’t sleep, or concentrate. And last night for no reason, I had a panic attack. My husband got really upset.”
People discount my problems. Like being pretty and depressed isn’t possible. Doing my hair and nails, exercising and keeping up with fashion, doesn’t mean I don’t have issues. But I try not to dwell. Be present and positive, is my motto. At least it used to be.
“Upset?”
“I mean worried.”
What actually happened was Joe accused me of fabricating symptoms. “You want to be sick,” he kept yelling. It’s an understatement to say Joe doesn’t understand me. Sometimes I wonder if he ever did.
When Dr. Peters says to meet with him during break, I get this sinking feeling. “I was done,” I say.
I stay in my chair and watch people leave. It doesn’t seem fair to single me out. If it’s what I think, he’s going to talk discharge. He’s been hinting all week, smiling and looking at me, “So, who’s ready to graduate?” Like it’s an academic program where you get a degree and people aren’t kicked out before they’re ready to make room for new patients.
Dr. Peters clears his throat and sits next to me. He starts looking through his clipboard of papers. All the AOP forms are green. As opposed to the regular psych clinic, where they’re pink, or day treatment which has yellow. I know about the forms from volunteering at the clinic, after I lost my job, but before I was a patient.
I only volunteered two weeks, helping in the waiting room. I’d direct people to the right line, help the ones with canes and walkers, get drinks for staff.
In my family we talked to each other or not at all. But listening to the patients, hearing how therapy helped, decided me. I stopped volunteering and started treatment. If I exaggerated my symptoms a little, who could blame me? I couldn’t stand staying home, worrying and doing nothing.
Of course, now, I don’t have to exaggerate. If anything my symptoms are worse, the anxiety and panic, the incapacitating depression.
“I’m sure you expected this,” Dr. Peters says.
Some people won’t attend AOP, because of the stigma. It’s for patients who need daily treatment and are too disturbed for regular groups. Not disturbed like schizophrenics, there’s day treatment for them, but disturbed like persistently suicidal, or out of control bipolar. I keep telling everyone I’m bipolar II, the kind that’s more low key and not as obvious, but still just as devastating.
My fingers tremble as I take the green AOP discharge plan. My eyes fill and splotch the blue ink with mascara-tinged tears. I hiccup loudly.
“Are you okay?” Dr. Peters asks, moving closer.
I take a deep breath but feel like I’m choking. He smells like Lilac Vegetal, the aftershave my uncle Mike used. Be present and positive, I tell myself. You’re an adult now, a married woman. The diamonds on my wedding set sparkle, but I don’t feel like a wife.
Joe and I have been married five years. He’s third generation Mexican-American. He’s good-looking, in a Benicio Del Toro kind of way. We had a big Catholic wedding. We both come from large families. We seemed to have a lot in common.
“Dr. Peters said I could have another week,” I tell Joe.
We’re having dinner at Black Angus, salad for me, top sirloin for him. He’s on his third Corona. I’m sipping a Pinot Gris, thinking about a second glass. There are 100 calories in a glass of white wine.
“Why would you even want to,” Joe says. He has heavy-lidded eyes that are hard to read. Although he’s never been violent, sometimes he scares me.
After six years with the Sheriff’s Department, Joe just made Lieutenant. He doesn’t get how awful I feel since losing my job. My confidence destroyed, my nerves shattered. Everything’s upside down. I used to be the successful one, giving workshops in communication skills, even without my degree, when he was just a deputy at the jail, doing shift work.
What my company did to me was terrible. The harassment, stress, saying I wasn’t qualified, demoting me to a glorified clerk. It took all I had, just as a matter of principle, to fight them. We used the settlement for the down on our new house. Which was all good, but now I have a workmen’s comp claim on my record.
Sometimes Joe acts like he hates me. Like I’m a burden he can’t shake. I worry about him and all those young female deputies. I’ve heard what happens at the jail, people hooking up, getting divorced, getting married.
The waitress asks about dessert. I want the Chocolate Ecstasy Cake, but shake my head no. Joe orders another Corona. “For the road,” he says.
“I need to stay in treatment,” I say after the waitress leaves.
“You’d be better going back to school.”
“I need help.”
Joe narrows his eyes and looks disgusted.
I’m in Marsha’s group, headachy from lack of sleep. We’re in the smallest room, sitting in a tight circle. The gray carpet is stained brown in the center. It looks like dried blood, but probably is coffee.
When we got home from Black Angus, Joe kept haranguing me, saying I was too afraid of life to live. “You make yourself sick,” he kept yelling. I ended up sleeping in the extra bedroom, while he drank himself to a stupor. I didn’t hear him leave this morning and he hasn’t called.
“Where’s Lisha today?” I ask.
“She’s fine,” Marsha answers.
“I printed this article for her. About Japanese businessmen jumping in front of trains, it happens all the time, during the commute. They announce there’s been an accident which is their code name for suicides, and then the family pays the costs for stopping the system, with everybody being late.”
“That’s supposed to make Lisha feel good?” Betty asks, shaking her head. She has white puffy hair and wears pastels. I never know whether to pity or admire her, in her eighties and still coming to treatment.
“I thought, she wouldn’t feel like the only one.”
Marsha sneezes. She’s short and wears black-framed glasses. It’s my first time having her for group. It’s my first time with all women. “Let’s get started,” she says.
Some people are afraid to talk, some talk too much. I want my turn but don’t want to seem greedy. In check-in I brought up the fight with my husband. I’m ready to start when Ann raises her hand.
She’s this older saggy-faced blond who was fired from her job. Like me, but worse, because she was there thirty years, and didn’t get a settlement. Now with her benefits gone, all her vacation and sick days, she’s trying to survive on state disability. I’ve been in group with her before. It’s always the same, no way to feel better and no solution.
“I’m thinking of getting a lawyer,” Ann says sniffling. “Age-ism.”
“You should,” I say.
“What’s age-ism?” Betty asks.
“Discrimination because I’m older,” Ann explains.
“Just wait,” Betty snorts. “You have no idea.”
Ann’s been in the program three months, twice the time I have, but no one says she should be discharged. I can’t help thinking if I looked worse, was old and overweight and plain, the staff would take my issues more seriously.
Suddenly I realize no one’s talking. By the clock, I lost ten minutes. When Dalisay cracks her knuckles, the loud pop-pop is like a gunshot.
Dalisay tries to be friendly with me, because she’s Filipina. Actually, she’d have more in common with my mother, same generation, except she’s really manic, sometimes to the point of craziness, and my mother isn’t. Today she looks especially weird, with her buzz cut growing out in gray-black patches and thick fuchsia lipstick.
“I’ll go,” I say.
Marsha nods. There are twenty minutes left.
“It’s my husband.” I tell them about the night before, how sometimes I feel my marriage is a terrible mistake. “I’m so depressed. Lots of mornings, I have to pee, but don’t have the energy to get up. I just stay in bed and hold it in, until my bladder’s ready to burst.”
“I’ve done that,” Ann says.
“You don’t look depressed,” Betty says.
Dalisay nods sympathetically.
No one understands.
Until I was four, I was skinny. There was a Pantene commercial on TV, Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. The model had long wavy brown hair. My uncle Mike, who was staying with us, said I looked like her.
Uncle Mike looked like Sylvester Stallone with a shaved head. He was a Gulf War veteran, my father’s younger brother. When he pulled down my panties and touched between my legs, I liked it. He made me feel special. He said I was beautiful and would have lots of boyfriends. He made me promise not to tell.
Joe complains when we have sex. He wants me to do things I can’t. “You’re too inhibited,” he says.
“I have my reasons,” I say.
I have an appointment with Dr. Reed, the AOP psychiatrist. My first visit with him didn’t go so well. “Medication should be a last resort,” he told me. He even asked why I was in AOP instead of regular outpatient. “I have serious symptoms,” I told him. “I can’t even function.”
This time he seems friendlier. I purposely dressed down, just tights and a baggy shirt, hardly any make-up, hair pulled back.
“How’re things going?”
He has family pictures on his desk, next to a flat screen computer monitor. His degrees and qualifications are on the wall in matching silver frames. He’s not at all attractive, with a weak chin and sharp nose. In the family pictures his wife looks pampered, blond and beautiful.
“My symptoms are worse. I can hardly sleep, and I’m depressed, and I have panic attacks.”
“Panic attacks?”
“Sometimes I black out and lose time. It happened in group yesterday.”
“Sometimes in programs like this, if you’re suggestible…it’s not uncommon to pickup new symptoms.”
“You think I’m faking?”
“Not exactly. Not intentionally. More like avoidance.”
“Why won’t you help me?”
He touches his tie. He looks at me funny. He looks funny. The grain in the oak desk looks like its moving. I feel dizzy, nauseous. My chest tightens. When I close my eyes, I fall, bumping my forehead. I see black and gold spheres, silver light rays, twilight stars.
“Perla, can you hear me?” Dr. Reed’s voice sounds far away.
The carpet feels scratchy where my shirt’s pulled up. I’m on my stomach. Dr. Reed and Ralph, the program nurse, are standing over me. I don’t know what’s happened. I feel vulnerable and exposed.
Ralph helps me up and into a chair. He drapes a blanket over me and takes my blood pressure. Before I leave Dr. Reed prescribes Ativan and Zoloft.
I want to feel good. I’ve finally been taken seriously. I have medication. I can stay in the program. Instead I feel devastated and empty. Like I’ve lost something I didn’t even know I had.
The image of the model in the Pantene commercial comes to my mind. I never looked like her. My skin was too swarthy, my hair too curly. My uncle lied.
I’m at my mother’s, visiting after AOP. She still lives where I grew up, in the old section of Carquinez, overlooking Hwy 80. As a kid I didn’t mind living over the freeway. The traffic outside my bedroom window was like the ocean, noisy but soothing, lulling me to sleep. I always thought I’d move to San Francisco after high school, just forty miles, but a different world. Of course, that never happened.
After my father died my older sister moved in with her twins. When the boys get home from school and my sister is off work, the house will be noisy and busy.
With just me and my Mom, sitting in the kitchen, it’s a peaceful reminder of childhood. The same yellow Formica table, kitten salt and pepper shakers. Coconut rice served in pale green dessert dishes, too many calories to count.
My mother has short black hair and a Filipino nose. She’s gained weight in the last few years and wears long loose blouses.
“I’m starting medication,” I tell her. “I guess that’s good.”
“You had problems, remember before. Thinking people were staring, that you were too fat, nobody liked you…”
“I was just a kid then.”
“You got over it without medicine.”
“This is different.”
“My beautiful, unhappy daughter,” my mother sighs, reaching across the table to stroke my cheek.
I’m writing a book about my life. The title is “Pretty Girl.” Everything’s going in it, my family, my uncle Mike, Joe, all the treatment I’ve had. It’ll be done in a week or so. If I can write all night and Joe doesn’t interrupt me every minute.
“When are you coming to bed?” he keeps asking.
“Not tonight,” I tell him.
My home office is white and gold. Sitting here, with my fingers flying, I watch the sky turn from black to lavender to pearly pink. I can’t stop to eat or drink, or even use the toilet. What I have to say is too important. People are desperate to hear my story.
I’m printing my latest pages, numbers 30-40, when I hear Joe behind me. I recognize his step, his breathing, his meaty smell. I don’t have to turn around to know he’s in boxers and a wife beater, preparing to give me a hard time.
“Okay Perla,” he says. “Enough.”
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m taking you to the doctor. You’re not right, since the drugs.”
“My prescribed medication, taken faithfully and to the letter.”
“Three weeks…”
“You’re keeping me from writing.”
“Writing garbage.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“What the fuck, Perla. What the fuck.”
We’re in the waiting room, for my emergency appointment. A bundled-up woman is crying in the corner. A toothless long-haired man in stained clothes is talking to himself. Joe is in off-duty cop clothes, jeans and cowboy boots with a logo-less tee. “This is worse than the jail,” Joe says. “Look at these people.”
“Shiny, happy people,” I say.
“Perla…”Joe shakes his head.
“From third grade, REM.”
“Don’t even explain.”
For a so-called emergency, we have to wait a long time. When I get out polish to touch up my nails, Joe explodes. “What’s wrong with you?” he yells.
“You,” I say.
I have time to do both hands, two coats of bronze pearl, my trademark.
“The smell,” Joe keeps muttering.
I could run away, or maybe kill Joe. Rat poison seems especially apropos. I imagine Joe clutching his throat, choking. I picture myself at his funeral, dressed in black.
I’m writing in my notebook when I realize Dr. Reed is standing in front of me. The pimple on his nose makes him even uglier.
“This isn’t my idea,” I tell him.
“You’re her husband?” he asks Joe.
We walk single file to his office, first Dr. Reed, with me following and Joe in back, like I’m a prisoner.
Dr. Reed stares at his computer. He asks obvious questions, “What’s the day, date, year? What do people mean when they say a stitch in time saves nine? How are a peach and a pear similar?” He says numbers and asks me to repeat them. He asks about hallucinations. Finally he says my medications are wrong.
“The way you got manic from the antidepressant is diagnostic.”
“For what?” Joe asks.
“Bipolar, probably II.”
“Like I always said,” I tell them.
“Depakote and Zyprexa,” Dr. Reed says, nodding.
I always knew I was Joe’s trophy wife. I used to wonder what would happen if I lost my looks. Now I don’t have to wonder.
In two months I’ve totally deteriorated. Joe thinks it’s the medication, but I don’t know. Maybe this is how I’m supposed to be, the real me. The ugly me. My skin’s sallow, my hair’s dull. I’m reduced to sweats that pull tight on my butt and thighs and expose my stomach flab. I took off the gold belly-ring Joe bought for my birthday. There’s nothing uglier than body jewelry on a fat girl.
I know I disgust Joe. He staggers in at 2:00am, drunk on El Jimador. One time he had lipstick on his collar. I didn’t say anything. If I gave him half an excuse, he’d bolt. He might anyway. He doesn’t love me and probably never did. It was all about my looks, nothing more.
My life is day by day. I’m still in AOP, one of the regulars, too disturbed to get rid of. More and more, I’m in Marsha’s group, instead of Dr. Peters’. It took awhile before I realized Marsha works with the sickest patients, the ones without hope. I was so demoralized. Since I’m not supposed to drink alcohol, I bought fudge at See’s and finished the entire box. I felt nauseous after, even stuck my finger down my throat, but couldn’t throw up.
After AOP I go to my mother’s. She hugs me and kisses my forehead, but she’s worried. She’s stopped the fattening desserts and serves fresh fruit. A few days ago she said she was starting Weight Watchers.
“Maybe we’ll go together.”
“No. I don’t care.”
“I care,” she said.
“You just think so,” I said.
Marsha’s group is small today—just Dalisay, Betty and me. “How come just us,” I say.
“Let’s really use the time,” Marsha says.
“That’s supposed to make us feel good?” Betty asks.
Three months ago, when I talked about the Japanese suicides, Betty asked the same thing. That’s supposed to make Lisha feel good?
“I was just wondering, whatever happened to Lisha?” I ask.
“She’s in our Transition group,” Marsha says.
“Shouldn’t that be confidential?” Dalisay asks.
Marsha sighs.
“I didn’t mean…” I apologize. The Transition group is for program graduates. Funny Lisha would be there, while I’m still in AOP.
Last night was the first time Joe didn’t come home. No call or explanation. The disappearing husband, the ending marriage…
“Who wants to talk first?” Marsha asks.
“I will,” Dalisay says. “My husband finally understands.”
Dalisay’s husband is in his seventies and very traditional. He wants her at home, taking care of him, or at her nursing job, making money. When she’s manic, Dalisay thinks every man she sees wants her. She dresses bizarrely and attracts attention. Her husband threatens to throw her out.
“He’s a good man,” Dalisay says. “Everything was my fault.”
“There’s no fault involved,” Marsha says. “Just keep on your medication.”
I raise my hand. “My husband didn’t come home. Probably he’ll leave soon.”
“I’m not surprised,” Betty says. “You’re like a different person. Maybe you should see the doctor, get your medicine checked. Unless you like being like this.”
“Maybe you should get your meds looked at,” Marsha says.
When Dr. Reed sees me, he looks surprised. His complexion is clear and he has a fresh haircut. He looks fit and healthy.
“Everything’s wrong,” I tell him.
“Cognitive impairment, weight gain, depression. You should’ve come sooner.”
I’m too tired for anger, even when he decides I’m on the wrong medication. “The second time,” I say.
He checks the computer. “Antidepressants made you manic, mood stabilizers caused depression. It almost seems you were better before.”
“You look really good,” Dr. Peters tells me in small group.
“Twenty-six days without meds.”
“Your mood?”
“Okay. Not great, but normal. I’m getting back to myself.”
There’re new people I don’t know. Like the guy with the shaved head who winks, then asks, “What did you used to do, before treatment?”
“That doesn’t matter now,” I say. “I’m moving forward. Yesterday I went to Voc Rehab and got tested. The counselor said they’d fund me for finishing my degree.”
“Excellent news,” Dr. Peters says. “You worked in Human Resources, right?”
“I was a Psych major.”
“Guess you got the real skinny, here. All us looney-tunes,” the same guy says.
When he winks again, I realize it’s an involuntary twitch. Maybe it’s his shaved head, or the way he looks at me. Smiling, nodding, licking his lips.
I’m four years old, lying in bed, watching my uncle. He pulls off the covers. He pulls down my pants. He licks my belly button.
“There is something,” I say. “My uncle Mike…” My heart races, my stomach twists. “He used to touch me.”
I surprise myself. The forbidden, the unspoken comes pouring out. As I talk about my uncle, I remember his funeral. A motorcycle accident when I was nine. It was raining when he spun off the road. It was raining when we buried him.
“Child molestation,” a wrinkled woman with fuchsia hair says. “I know how that is.”
“When he wanted to stop, I wouldn’t let him.” I picture myself at seven, naked under my pink fleece robe, sneaking into my uncle’s bedroom. “I wouldn’t let him, even when I knew it was wrong. The last time was the day he died.”
“Filthy pervert,” the fuchsia haired woman snaps.
“For years I’ve felt guilty.”
“All his fault,” Betty says.
“Yes,” Dalisay agrees. “You didn’t know.”
“It’s affected me sexually, with my husband.”
“The two of you should go to couple’s therapy. It really helped me,” Dalisay says.
“Or sex therapy.” The new guy winks and nods.
“The important thing is getting this out. Acknowledge the guilt, but don’t let it define you,” Dr. Peters says.
After group Dr. Peters hugs me. I feel his approval and satisfaction. Like good work, a job well done. If he’s wearing aftershave, I can’t smell it.
Myra Sherman lives in Lake County, CA. Her fiction has appeared or will appear in: The Blotter Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Workers Write-Tales from the Couch, 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, Another Sky Horror Anthology, Thuglit, and others.
Lilac Vegetal is from her recently completed collection of linked jail stories. She is now working on a novel.
