It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks: A memoir of a mother and daughter. Catherine Burns L.

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       THE FINGER

      I choose premed as my college major. But after my first multiple-choice bio test (which reminds me a lot of the SAT) I realize I will never get into a medical school that is not in the Czech Republic because I don’t test well so I might as well have the career that I want as a weeping actress. My mother will be ashamed of me either way. I take an acting class and don’t tell anyone. The teacher says I am excellent. He says I am the only one in class who breathes like the character. People pretend to know what he is talking about but they don’t. I do. I want to use my life to breathe life into other people. I don’t want to breathe my own life.

      My homework situation has lightened up considerably since dropping premed so I hang out with my sister every weekend doing massive amounts of cocaine. She works at Saturday Night Live. Everyone there does it. We stay up every weekend until dawn doing lines and talking about my mother. We pretty much blame her for everything. It’s so fun. We talk about how she never let us mourn for our fathers so we blame her for never getting over it. We confirm that she never has room for all of us in her heart at the same time so one of us is always out on her ass. Except my brother, who is a boy. He is always in favor because my mother feels the sorriest for him.

      “It’s a man’s world, Cathy. Don’t you ever forget it, Cathy,” my sister says, rubbing her finger along her top gum.

      “His father died, when he was six you know, boohoo,” I say sticking the straw deep into my nose.

      We laugh and pretend to scream in her face. “Yes, we know! OUR FATHERS DIED TOO!” More lines. Then roleplaying.

      I am my mother. “Well I think it’s very hard for a boy to lose his father.”

      Then my sister is my mother and adds, “And the women in this family are just much stronger.” We laugh so hard we have tears pouring down our faces. We talk about how she always told my sister she was slow and me that I was a pain in the ass and now we have no choice but to wear those descriptions like dog tags around our necks. Nothing is our fault. We are simply a product of our upbringing! More lines. We agree that we will never amount to anything in her eyes if we are not widowed with children before the age of twenty-eight. And then we pretend to feel sad because my sister is thirty-one and already blew it. But it’s okay, we console each other, we can just do more lines. I go to every taping and the party after. I see Elvis Costello throw his guitar down on stage and change songs in the middle of the live show and throw everyone into a panic. Me and Gilda Radner throw up side by side in the bathroom at Gallagher’s. It is the best time of my life.

      I want to be my sister. I try on all her clothes and pretend I live in her apartment. We do more and more and more and more lines. We have a blast. But when the drug wears off it is unbearable. I wish I could sleep; I wish I were dead. But I am wide awake, my skin is crawling and my loneliness has turned my heart into a scab the size of a baseball glove. I feel severed. My torso is lying useless on the couch that used to belong to my parents. My legs are somewhere in the bathroom. My sister and I are forging an alliance out of hatred. And the closer we get the farther out my mother gets tossed. “This is wrong,” I say. “Can’t we all just find a way to live together?” But then we burst out laughing. I need more drugs.

      I have lost thirteen pounds. My mother hasn’t said anything. At night I see my boyfriend. I wear short shorts and high heels. I take the Seventh Avenue IRT from Cathedral Parkway and change at Times Square for the RR. I get off at Union Square and change for the L and walk to Avenue C. The later the better. My boyfriend is impressed with my street smarts. He should be. I am not afraid. I am too angry for any motherfucker to fuck with me. I defy them to fuck with me. I want them to fuck with me. This is my recurring fantasy: I will take the subway to my mother’s house and get in the bath in my old room and slit my wrists and die in the warm water and have her find me. But I am afraid it will hurt. What a pussy. What a fraud. I am never having children. What if they hate me a fraction of this?

      I throw up all day. Vomiting causes the release of endorphins in the bloodstream. A surge of endorphins causes euphoria. No wonder I do it so often. Between self-imposed euphoria and cocaine I am okay. I arrive in a taxi across town one night clutching my $120 in cash, only to discover that I am cut off from my dealer. I plead with her. She says my sister doesn’t want me to buy anymore. I say, don’t you want me to buy anymore? I’m a really good customer, aren’t I? Yes, she says, you are. So sell me some, I say. She does. My sister reaches a bargain with the dealer: no more grams. From now on I have to buy half ounces. My sister thinks this will make it harder for me. But it doesn’t. I use my social security checks. They come on Fridays. My bathroom is covered with vomit. I’m sure it is a metaphor.

      My mother agrees to come to therapy. I am dreading it, and I can’t wait. The truth will come out. That she never notices me. That I am a burden she doesn’t want to carry. That I had a chance to be light and happy and instead I am dark and miserable and should be flushed down the toilet along with my dinner. I have lost twenty-three and a half pounds. “Hey you!” I want to yell. “Your daughter is painfully thin. Did it occur to you that maybe it is because of something you did? Something you neglected?” I walk in the office and my mother is already there. She looks terrified. Her arms are crossed. I kiss her hello and she actually flinches. It is the saddest thing in the world. My psychiatrist says to my mother, “Thank you for coming.” My mother scrutinizes me and my carefully chosen ensemble. “Is that my sweater?” is all she says.

      My oldest sister, Carly, is home for Christmas. While I am snorting up in my mother’s bathroom she tells me, “As long as you are throwing up and doing drugs I don’t feel comfortable engaging with you.” Leslie agrees. I look at them and see that they are fat. My brother, who is home too, takes me into my mother’s bathroom a couple of hours later and says, “Kid, they think you are headed for serious trouble.” I wait for the part about how he is worried but he says, “I told them you are a relatively smart girl and you’ll either figure it out…or you won’t.” And he leaves. I stare out the window at Washington Square Park and am thoroughly dissatisfied with my family. I go in the kitchen and slice myself a cucumber and start eating it with a pair of chopsticks and my mother, who has been glaring at me, says, “Are you going to throw that up?” I look at her with such disbelief and hatred and say, “No. Comments like that make me throw up. Not cucumbers.” And I go in her bathroom and throw up.

      My friends at Barnard stop talking to me. They taught me how to vomit, they taught me how to dress, they drew up the plans for my renovation. They reinvented me. I am nothing without them

      It seems like a good time to transfer. I decide to apply to the drama department at NYU. I know it is what I was meant to do. I can cry on a dime and I have impeccable comic timing. I tell my mother, now a department head at NYU, how much money she would save if I transfer. “Sure,” she says. “I could get you in.” Until she put it like that I assumed I was good enough to get in myself.

      Dr. Mellman thinks I am a danger to myself. She tells me to go home and pack a bag and meet her back at her office so she can bring me to a facility that can help me. I call my sisters, whom I haven’t spoken to for months. Neither of them is home. I don’t call my brother because I am mad at him. He comes to New York periodically and doesn’t call me. Some people, he said, think blood is thicker than water but he doesn’t. Just because I am his sister, he said, doesn’t necessarily СКАЧАТЬ