Free But Inside I'm Screaming by Elizabeth Flock Page B

“Isabel? You in here, hon?”
    Go away.
    Isabel feels the spell of the stupor being broken as the nurse calls her back into reality.
    No. Go away.
    Connie peers around the chair and looks surprised to see Isabel sitting there.
    “You must not have heard the call for meds,” she explains to her mute patient. “I brought them in for you.”
    Wordlessly Isabel turns her palm upward and watches as the small pills roll out of the white Dixie cup and into the center of her hand. She takes the cup of Hawaiian Punch from Connie and stares at it with an equal amount of blankness.
    “You okay, hon?” Connie’s face crinkles up. Isabel watches her mouth move. “Do you feel all right?”
    Isabel looks back and forth between her two hands and, in one smooth motion, brings the pills to hermouth. Slowly she follows with her Hawaiian Punch and swallows the sleeping pills. Connie hesitates before moving away and, eventually, out of the room.
    Isabel turns back to the TV. Sukanya has never looked away.
    There is comfort in being left alone. Something about the numbness hugging her feels familiar.

Seventeen
     
    “W hat I mean is, they just want to take you over, know what I’m saying?” Keisha says. “They want to control you and make it so they own you or something.”
    “So just opening up to someone, just talking to someone, would make them control you?” Larry asks her. Isabel sits forward on her chair and stares intently at Keisha.
    Let her finish.
    “Yeah, kind of.” Keisha scratches at her head. “But it’s more than opening up. I’m talking about talking, really flapping with someone.”
    “Flapping?”
    “Flapping. Flapping gums. Talking. You know? Like about all your stuff. They think they got you in their hand, you belong to them and you can’t belong to yourself anymore. I hate that. Like the tribes who think if you take their picture you’re taking a piece of their soul. It’s like that. You tell yourself to someone and they steal your soul. That’s why I don’t talk to anybody. I wanna keep my soul, man.”
    “Go on,” Larry says.
    “No one wants to hear about all my shit, anyway,”Keisha continues. “Who am I supposed to go to—my sister? Ha.” And she looks genuinely amused at such an apparently bizarre notion.
     
    “Why do you always have to do that?”
    “Do what?”
    Alex looked down at the comforter on the bed and traced a line of quilting with his finger.
    “You’re always calling Casey when you’ve got a problem.” He calculated a sulking look. “You even call your mother…”
    “And?”
    “And you never come to me with the problem,” he said. “You won’t let me have a crack at it first. I am your husband after all. That’s what husbands do.”
    Isabel crossed the room to the spot right in front of Alex on the edge of the bed. “I am so sorry,” she said, kissing his cheek, “how about,” kiss “I promise,” kiss “to come to you,” kiss “first next time.” Kiss.
    Alex pulled his head away and looked her square in the eye. “Only me,” he said.
    “Only you?” Isabel was smiling, leaning to kiss his cheek again.
    “ Only me,” he repeated. If Isabel had been paying attention she would have noticed his emphasis was on the first of the two words. And he wasn’t smiling back.
     
    “We all have to have someone to talk to,” Larry says.
    Leave it to Birkenstock Boy to paraphrase Dylan.
    Keisha is shaking her head. “Not me, man. Not me.” She looks proud of her stoicism. “No one I know talks about all this deep shit, anyhow. All we talk about when we get together is who sleeping with who, who wearing what, who got what CD…all that shit. No one sits around talking about how bad they had it with their mama.”
    Amen to that.
    “Have you considered that you might need more than that?” Larry asks her. “Especially now?”
    “I tell you what, Larry,” Keisha says, her childish face suddenly somber. “I don’t see any black folk here, in this place.