Superpowers
January 3
9 a.m.
"Show you how to play volleyball?" Beast asks.
"Are you serious after the party last night? Do you know how I got home?"
"Before the island, sometime in June... a Halloween moon?" Fanta says.
Waterpark Mom says to ignore them. She's Marianne from before I turned six, and she shows up wearing the same clothes from ten, twelve years ago, a smoother version of my mother, fewer wrinkles, though what Marianne does to hide her age I'll never know. Today Waterpark Mom wears a bikini Marianne wouldn't attempt now without a good cover-up.
Beast gabs about some mystery girl and brothers I have never met. And I listen to how Fanta escapes from Hades for the second time. I tell Patti about the swimsuit Marianne wears underneath her jeans and t-shirt, her plan to lounge outside on the patio and gossip with a friend, and the advice I wish she'd tell me about boys instead. All of these things I tell Patti seem typical and not so out of the ordinary, this tension between a mother and a teenage daughter who is legally an adult.
"It's the other conversations, the multiple conversations running in my head with Beast and Fanta," I say, "sometimes I can't pretend I'm like everybody else."
"What does it mean to be like everybody?" Patti asks.
"What a fake!" Beast says.
"Vandee told me I was your biggest joke," I say.
"You say funny things sometimes, Vanessa, but I never laugh about you. Only with you," Patti says. But what she says is a momentary diversion from her other comments about the noise in my head and turning down the volume on imaginary friends. Patti asks if I would like a peppermint.
I shake my head, but my mind follows where she goes into a closet to get the candy. It might as well be the beach, and the imaginary friends in my head are tired of staying contained. They are a carnival of loud.
Shade and some of her friends have started up a game, and Fanta asks, "Have you found Beast!?" I can't imagine Beast playing any sports after last night, the junk food we ate - all those chips of different kinds, chili cheese dip at Don's and then at the 7-Eleven. We were the trick-or-treaters who ate all our candy on Halloween night. I'm surprised he showed up at my session with Patti. The Beast I remember is belly up enjoying the sun. But I don't see him anywhere, with Shade or Fanta, or off lounging by himself. Maybe he's with the mystery girl and taking her to meet those brothers I've never met; it's wishful thinking he went to ask Vandee about what I said.
9 a.m.
"Show you how to play volleyball?" Beast asks.
"Are you serious after the party last night? Do you know how I got home?"
"Before the island, sometime in June... a Halloween moon?" Fanta says.
Waterpark Mom says to ignore them. She's Marianne from before I turned six, and she shows up wearing the same clothes from ten, twelve years ago, a smoother version of my mother, fewer wrinkles, though what Marianne does to hide her age I'll never know. Today Waterpark Mom wears a bikini Marianne wouldn't attempt now without a good cover-up.
Beast gabs about some mystery girl and brothers I have never met. And I listen to how Fanta escapes from Hades for the second time. I tell Patti about the swimsuit Marianne wears underneath her jeans and t-shirt, her plan to lounge outside on the patio and gossip with a friend, and the advice I wish she'd tell me about boys instead. All of these things I tell Patti seem typical and not so out of the ordinary, this tension between a mother and a teenage daughter who is legally an adult.
"It's the other conversations, the multiple conversations running in my head with Beast and Fanta," I say, "sometimes I can't pretend I'm like everybody else."
"What does it mean to be like everybody?" Patti asks.
"What a fake!" Beast says.
"Vandee told me I was your biggest joke," I say.
"You say funny things sometimes, Vanessa, but I never laugh about you. Only with you," Patti says. But what she says is a momentary diversion from her other comments about the noise in my head and turning down the volume on imaginary friends. Patti asks if I would like a peppermint.
I shake my head, but my mind follows where she goes into a closet to get the candy. It might as well be the beach, and the imaginary friends in my head are tired of staying contained. They are a carnival of loud.
Shade and some of her friends have started up a game, and Fanta asks, "Have you found Beast!?" I can't imagine Beast playing any sports after last night, the junk food we ate - all those chips of different kinds, chili cheese dip at Don's and then at the 7-Eleven. We were the trick-or-treaters who ate all our candy on Halloween night. I'm surprised he showed up at my session with Patti. The Beast I remember is belly up enjoying the sun. But I don't see him anywhere, with Shade or Fanta, or off lounging by himself. Maybe he's with the mystery girl and taking her to meet those brothers I've never met; it's wishful thinking he went to ask Vandee about what I said.
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