Mother, Mother: Psychological suspense for fans of ROOM

Will hovered by the stove, trying to feel the stitches beneath the surgical tape on his chin. He made no attempt to disguise his eavesdropping.

“I feel like you’re asking me to choose between my children,” Josephine told the mystery caller. “I love my daughter more than words can express, but I’m terrified of her. She critically injured my son. Uh-huh. Yes. I am afraid for our lives.”

Whumpa whumpa whump. Josephine’s ballpoint pen was the only sound while the person on the line spoke at length.

“I know we’re not the only victims here. Violet suffers the effects of her condition more than anyone. Uh-huh. I agree. We’ve tried to get her the medical attention she needs, but she flies into a rage at the very suggestion of it.” She paused and listened briefly. “That—” Josephine’s voice splintered. She jotted down 5150 hold on her notepad and framed it with stars. “That breaks my heart. But if you’re telling me this is her best chance at recovery, then I guess I don’t have much choice.”

Will’s chest twanged with pity and helplessness. He wanted to protect his mother every bit as much as she wanted to safeguard him. It was Will who got hurt last night, but their mother was the one Violet really wished dead.

Of all the crazy that had transpired the night before, Will had felt most unsafe when he saw the way his sister eyed his mother across the dining room table. How Violet-like she’d been, glowering with her hangdog neck and hooded eyes. Anyone else might have mistaken her for someone meek and self-punishing. But Will knew the truth: Violet thought she was proof of nature over nurture. She didn’t need their mom’s loving care to survive.

Will crossed the kitchen and put a supportive arm around his mother’s sashed waist.

Josephine cupped the mouthpiece with her palm and whispered, “Don’t worry, sweetie. You’re safe now. I promise. I won’t ever let her hurt you again.”

VIOLET HURST (#ulink_e735a818-6b5b-5cb7-9cc9-f7f8068562a3)

ON HER FIRST night in the psychiatric ER, Violet found herself curled up on a stretcher in a hallway that smelled like a combination of dirty hair and Lysol. Her brain was still steaming like an engine turned off after revving, but thanks to the liquid charcoal she’d sipped earlier, she felt a little more coherent, a little less like the universe was a big holographic time loop.

On the stretcher opposite Violet was a thickset Hawaiian woman. She was sitting bolt upright, her eyes flitting around wildly.

“I feel a question,” the woman said. “Is it okay to be me?”

Violet’s first thought was for the woman’s privacy. She assumed the woman was praying aloud or having a heart-to-heart with a voice that she alone could hear. She tried hard not to look at her and instead stared down at the disposable foam slippers she’d received when she arrived barefoot.

At this time last week Violet had been registering by phone for the SAT. She’d been writing an English paper and trying to decide if she ought to go to the Halloween dance. All that seemed like it happened in a previous life. Less than three hours ago, Violet had been reincarnated as a mental patient. She’d walked through three sets of locking doors and a metal detector. She’d peed into a series of cups and had blood drawn from both arms. She’d been stripped of her clothes and handed a pair of pajamas that refused to stay snapped at the waist.

The Hawaiian woman continued her eerie chant. “Why can’t I be me? What’s so unlovable about me?”

“She’s talking to you, you know?” This came from the young Puerto Rican man on the stretcher to Violet’s right. He was lying on his stomach, a supermarket tabloid open between his propped-up elbows. From the looks of it, he was methodically tearing up the pages and Frankensteining the shreds back together in grotesque combinations, pairing Angelina Jolie’s mouth with John Travolta’s chin and Simon Cowell’s nose.

“Me?” Violet asked stupidly. They were the only three people in the hall, save for the constant flux of orderlies and nurses.

“She says she’s an intuitive,” the man said.

“Oh.” Violet didn’t want to admit she didn’t know what that meant.

“Oahu, over there? She’s got the gift. She gets possessed by the people around her. She feels what we’re feeling, get it? Like some Invasion of the Body Snatchers shit.”

Suddenly accusatory, the woman stopped flailing and turned to stare directly at Violet.

“Who’s controlling you?” she demanded.

Violet thought of Oahu again half an hour later, when the intake nurse asked her, “Do you hear voices or see things other people cannot see or hear?”

While the counselor ran through a series of questions, spitting them out like rapid gunfire, Violet wept convulsively, drawing tissue after tissue from the box balanced between her pajamaed knees.

“Do you have a history of mental health problems?” the counselor asked. “Do you know your clinical diagnosis?”

“No,” Violet said. “Neither.”

“Are you currently taking any drugs, legal or otherwise?”

“No.” She paused. “Well, after school today I ate some seeds a friend gave me. Flower seeds. Morning glories?” According to the Internet drug forum Violet and her best friend, Imogene Field, had consulted, the LSA the seeds contained was a cheap, legal version of LSD. LSA was supposed to bring euphoria, rainbow fractals, and what one user called “an overall feeling of pleasant fuckedness.” But what began as a fun afternoon with friends had turned into a train-wreck trip when Violet went home for dinner. Every moment since had been mental cannibalism. A strange thought, but that was exactly how it felt: like Violet’s brain had swallowed two-thirds of itself.

“How many seeds did you eat? How did they make you feel?”

“Five, I think? And the water they’d been soaked in. I felt nauseous, mostly. And my thighs cramped up. I guess I also felt giddy and, later, spaced out and trippy. But then my family came after me.” Violet felt her eyes fill and run over. “Or maybe I lost it on them?”

After school, she and Imogene had gone to the Fields’ house, where Imogene’s brother, Finch, and his best friend, Jasper, had shown them a mason jar filled with water, lemon juice, and the ground-up remains of the Heavenly Blue morning glory seeds that they had pulverized in the Fields’ coffee grinder. Mr. and Mrs. Field, who preferred to go by Beryl and Rolf, had been away at the studio apartment they kept in Manhattan, where they were meeting with a new oncologist.

Finch assured everyone that the seeds were organic.

Imogene suggested adding ginger, just in case the concoction made them feel nauseated.

Jasper questioned whether extraction was potent enough, so they spooned four or five seeds into each glass like a garnish.

The taste hadn’t been sickening. It had reminded Violet of wheatgrass. Jasper insisted it tasted more like very weak hot chocolate. It didn’t work at first.

“What happened when you lost it on your family?” the nurse asked.

“I was looking at my mom, and she was a different person. But it was also like she’d always been a different person. Like, at the end of every day, when no one else is around, she unzips her suit of flesh. I know it was just the acid distorting things, but as, like, an analogy it holds.” Violet rubbed her eyes. The sockets ached.

“How does your family get along as a whole?”

“We don’t.”

“Let’s go back to what happened tonight. I know you’re shaken up, but this is important. Do you think you can tell me more about the assault?”

The word assault made Violet feel turned upside down, kicked in the stomach, and orphaned at the same time. She was in mortal terror of her mother. She felt guilty about Will. She was scared she’d said something she couldn’t take back, and committed a crime that would fit her for an orange prison jumpsuit. Even trying to remember what happened felt like a threat to her physical safety.

“Have you ever attempted suicide?” the counselor asked.

“I suppose. Technically.” Still, Violet tried to explain that the Jainist fast to death wasn’t really suicide. “It’s kind of like a peaceful way to give up your body. Not an act of despair, but an act of hope. You’re not giving up on life, you’re just passing into the next stage of it.”

It made sense to Violet, but the counselor looked dubious.

“Do you consider yourself ‘eating disordered’?”

“Not really. It’s more like a detox gone too far. I just wanted to feel pure, like all the venom’s been sucked out of me.”

Sallekhana was gradual. First, you fasted one day a week. Then, you ate only on alternate days. Next, you gave up foods one by one: first fruits, then vegetables, then rice, and then juice. After that, you drank only water. Then, you drank it only on alternate days. In the final step, you gave up water too, erased your bad karma, and hoped to shit you weren’t reborn into another nightmare.

Violet looked down at her hands. This was a newly acquired nervous tic. A month into fasting, her hands went cold and her fingernails started to turn blue. Ever since, Violet had been hiding them under thick layers of Night Sky, a sparkly navy polish.

Within the hospital’s cinder-block walls, it was impossible to know whether it was dusk or dawn. “What time is it?” Violet asked.

“Ten p.m. Let me ask you again. Did you attack your brother with a knife?”