“Okay, guys, grab a magic marker!”
Larry the group leader is sick today and his substitute is a therapist who looks like she is fresh out of graduate school and hasn’t yet had her spirits trampled by life. Her name is Rita.
No one moves. They all stare at Rita.
“Come on, people.” Rita is now batting her eyelashes in what Isabel thinks is a pathetic schoolgirl attempt to get everyone to do what she wants.
She has no experience. She’d never waste the eyelash-bat for a group of nuts if she had half a brain. Besides, this is shaping up to be an artistic venture, and if so, I am outta here.
“What we’re going to do tonight…” Rita is now trying to reason with the group. “What we’re going to try to do is make a mural on this piece of poster board. I want everyone to take a magic marker and go and draw a picture of how you see yourself.”
Still no action from the group.
This is embarrassing. Like watching someone on stage struggle to remember her lines.
“Seriously, you guys.” Rita is plugging away. It’s as if there’s a competition among the mental health care workers to come up with the breakthrough group activity. Rita seems convinced that her activity will beat them all. “Just try it out. If you don’t want to continue that’s fine.”
“That’s fine?” Lark croaks. “If we don’t like it, then what? We get to leave the session for the night?” She challenges Rita. Everyone turns to Lark. Even Sukanya.
“Um, well, no, Lark. But we can try something else if everyone decides they don’t want to do this. But I really think you ought to give it a chance.”
“Yeah, well, what do you know?” Isabel is staring at Lark, who, for some reason is taking Rita to the mat. “You just don’t want to hear about the hard stuff. The shit. The things in our lives that’ve fucked us up. Right? Am I right? You just want us to draw pretty pictures.” Lark’s voice goes high to mimic Rita’s.
Rita is literally cringing. Lark has the entire group transfixed.
“My father raped Lark when she was eight, Rita. My mother watched him do it. Want me to draw a picture of that? She never said a thing. Not a word.”
What the hell is going on? She never says a word at these things. Now she’s spewing all this stuff in the third person?
“You know what dear ole dad did when Lark got her period? Stuck a hot curling iron up her, that’s what. Said he’d burn it outta her. Said she wasn’t pure anymore. Little fucking Lark is such a fuckin’ crybaby,” Lark continues, Rita staring along with everyone else. “She asked her daddy to stop. You believe that shit? She actually asked her father to stop…like that would work or something. She’s unbelievable.”
Lark has now pulled a pack of cigarettes from her shirt pocket. Isabel is surprised to see that they are her cigarettes—Lark must have taken them from the bureau in her room. She lights one up—verboten inside the unit—using matches she must have stolen from the nurses’ station when no one was looking. Rita has absolutely no control over the group.
“Lark, I don’t think you’re supposed to do that,” Ben says nervously, looking at Rita for approval.
Melanie starts to laugh. Keisha tilts her chair back and looks as if she’s enjoying the conflict. Sukanya maintains her catatonic stance.
Lark inhales and drapes one arm over the back of her chair while crossing her legs…a difficult undertaking since her thighs are extremely fat. She has to force her right leg to stay poised across her left.
Rita looks panicked. She stands up, and instead of directly approaching Lark, she announces to the group that she’s forgotten something outside the room and will return momentarily. She bolts out of the living room.
Lark turns to address Isabel and Kristen. “Scared little Rita,” she laughs. Then she inhales again. “I think I scared her off!”
The person talking bears no resemblance to the quiet woman who inhales secondhand smoke out on the deck.
Seconds later the evening nurse and two orderlies burst into the room followed by Rita, who at least had the intelligence to realize she was in over her head. Lark looks at them expectantly, like she knows the routine, and she slowly drops her cigarette in to her half-empty can of Diet Coke and stands to greet them as if she is at a cocktail party.
“Boys, good evening.” Lark stands jauntily with one hand on her hip.
Isabel watches as the orderlies pin Lark’s arms behind her back and escort her out of the room. As they do, Lark spits on Rita’s astonished face. “Fuckin’ baby!” she yells at Rita. “Asking Daddy to stop…”
As she leaves the room, Lark breaks into uncontrollable laughter.
Once the double doors are closed behind her, a visibly shaken Rita, who has wiped her face clean with a balled-up Kleenex fetched from her pocket, looks at the group and says, “Okay. Now. Where were we? Magic markers for everyone. Come on, guys.” This time Rita makes it an order.
After a minute or so Melanie rises and goes to the bin and picks a violet marker. Ben watches her, heaves himself up and chooses yellow. Kristen exhales and follows suit. Isabel looks at Keisha, who rolls her eyes, shrugs, stands up and stretches.
Who are these people?
Isabel stands up and quietly walks out of the living room.
Without anyone stopping her, Isabel returns to her room and climbs up onto her uncomfortable bed.