Sleepwalker

approx. 4,000 words

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Sleepwalker (rough draft)
by Shelley Stoehr



         Crying.  I'm in the hallway of my high school, and it's deserted, the edges blurred by darkness or
         Tears.  Yes, I'm crying, I am, it's me, and that's blurring my vision so the lockers on one side are a gray blur with flecks of red yellow orange green blue -- stickers pasted on throughout the years, pasted on top of each other, new fads covering old, new
         feelings.  Covering old.  The gun shakes in my hand.  It feels like guns do, soft and sweet-smelling and it wails and squirms in my hands, or is that just the way I'm
         holding it.  Closer, I pull it closer, I pat it, hold it against my chest, heart to heart, and I say Shhh, everything's okay, I wouldn't hurt you, it's okay,
         Mommy's here...

         No!  Don't take my
         baby.
         
         My eyes open, and the room is dark, and I don't know where I am, but it's not a gun, and it's not my high school, oh shit.  I am crying, I've been crying in my sleep -- and now I realize -- worse -- she's been, is crying, moaning and sobbing, and shhh, shhh Mommy's little girl, you'll always be Mommy's little girl I love you my baby.  Her blond curls are wet with sweat, or my tears, I can't tell, and we're both shaking.  I can feel her tiny heart fluttering in her chest, and her back as it heaves, sucking in tiny breaths.
         "What are you doing?" my husband says, jolting me from any remaining stupor, but even so I don't loosen my grip on Caitlin.  If anything, I hold her tighter, because she grounds me in this reality.  This waking reality.  I know now, I've been sleepwalking again.  I pushed off my comforter and shoved the sheet down with my feet the way I always do before getting out of bed, and I padded across the hall to Caitlin's room, maybe because she was crying, or more likely I woke her when I picked her up and now my husband is trying to pull her away from me, and he is whisper-yelling -- the way we've learned to express anger since Caitlin was born nine months ago --
         "Give her to me!  What are you doing?  You woke her up!  What is wrong with you!"
         It's not a question, it's a statement of fact.  We both know something's wrong.  Before Caitlin was born, I hadn't slept-walked since I was a kid, in fact, Joe Joe (the name his mother calls him, and I do too now, because it's so affectionate and sweet, like him, except for at this moment when his face is puffed out and red, burning with anger, yet crossed with the shiny wet paths of tears...)  Joe Joe never even knew I was a sleep walker until
         the night I locked myself out and knocked on the door wearing nothing but a baby blanket, clutching its pink flannel to my breasts, horrified and cold, my feet prickly from wherever I'd walked, barefoot. 

         Now, I wear pajamas.  I hand over my wrinkle faced baby, and she falls asleep almost instantly on her daddy's chest, the creases easing out of her face as she rests it against his shoulder and falls back asleep.  He lays her in her crib, presses her plush bunny with the torn ear that used to be mine when I was young into her arms, and eases a Gerber's Nuk pacifier into her mouth.
         Still stunned, by the memory of the dream -- what did it mean? -- and the whole scenario, the danger of it sinking in -- what if I'd taken her outside into the cold, what if I'd lost her?  I let Joe lead me out of Caitlin's room.  He is gentle, but I can feel his hand quivering against my back. 
         After helping me into bed and pulling up first the sheet, then the comforter with the cigarette burn, the dog hair, and the bleach stains in it... he stands at the side of the bed and sighs.  He closes his eyes.  He opens them.
         "What are we going to do?" he asks.  "This can't go on."
         I don't know.  "I dreamed I had a gun --" I start to say, wanting to understand, wanting him to understand, what, I still don't know.
         "I don't give a --" he starts to say, raising his voice, and then dropping it back down to a forced whisper -- "Does it matter what you were dreaming about?  What could you have done to our daughter, what could you have done to yourself?"
         "I would never hurt Caitlin!"
         "How do you know that?"
         I just know. 
         "I'm her mother," I say, grabbing the pack of cigarettes from the nightable and lighting up.  I suck furiously.
         "I'm going to sleep.  Please stay in bed," he says to me or to no one.
         He turns out the light, and before I even finsh my cigarette, he is snoring.  My feet are cold, and I sweep the floor next to the bed with my fingers, searching for discarded socks, afraid to turn on the light, not needing the added humiliation of seeing myself in the mirror on the back of the closet door.  I feel my hair matted against one side of my face;  with my fingers I touch the other side of my head, where the hair hangs like greasy coils of frayed rope.  I never had a chance to shower yesterday.  I fell asleep when Caitlin did, at seven o'clock, before Joe got home.
         Finding sweat socks, I slide them onto my feet, and snuggle under the covers, the comforter up to my chin, the heat off of Joe warming me, feeling safe, and yet not.  My head spins, churning out dark thoughts and spitting them out into my mind's eye, at first so fast I can't grab hold, and then they congeal into memories, like before my father got remarried, and once when I sleepwalked then...

         I was cold, my feet were cold.  I rubbed my eyes and pushed back my hair and noticed my feet were bare.  Cold air stung my bare bottom.  I wasn't wearing my pajamas!  I was so ashamed, I started to cry, and I still didn't know where I was, but I had to go to the bathroom, I had to go to the bathroom soon!
         The world gradually focused, and I saw that I was in the kitchen, and the sounds from my dream, where cats and dogs tumbled over each other trying to reach a single bowl of water... sounds congealed into reality as I made my way to the hall, to the bathroom.  They were inside.  They were inside, making strange noises, but I had to go pee!  I pushed open the door with my chubby five year old fingers, and there they were, my father and his girlfriend, naked as I was, but on the floor, grunting and growling and moaning and meowing, and they saw me!
         "Go back to bed!" growled my father.  He clenched his teeth.  I was scared.
         "Sweetie, what are you doing up?  Where are your clothes?" said Robin, his girlfriend, the one he gave a big ring to.
         "I have to--"
         My father raised himself up on one arm and repeated, louder, scarier -- "Go back to bed!"  To Robin, who looked concerned, he said, "She does this all the time.  Takes off her pajamas and walks around... her mother always found her doing things like stuffing her pj's in the toilet and then wandering off, once she even peed in the oven... Go back to bed!"
         I hurried out, and my father kicked the door shut behind me, or maybe it was Robin.  My mother would've... well, at the end, when she was too sick too sleep, she would lead me to the bathroom or back to bed, and sometimes I didn't know I'd been up at night at all, which was best, because when I did remember, it was the poke of her bony hand cold against my back, the vision of her shoulders like doorknobs sticking up under the thin fabric of her nightgown, the retching over the toilet...
         I had to pee!  I still had to pee!  My father would kill me if I opened the door again, so in my room, I slid deep into the closet, squatted, and peed on the rug.  It sank into the blue fibers, but it stank, and I had to shut my closet door, but I didn't worry about what if when they found out what I did because I was already asleep, naked in my bed.

         It is silent, except for Joe Joe's snores, light and reassuring.  He has never yelled at me, even before Caitlin came.  He has been quiet and disapproving.  He has downed a Guiness with his back to me, and his breath slow and forced.  He has made a fist at his side.  But he has never used it, and he has never yelled.
         The fish tank glows across the room, and I sit up, watching the fish -- Mollies, black and white and spotted -- swim and peck at the gravel, at the leaves of the plants.  I've named the male Brandon, and the females Kelly, Donna and Brenda, all after the characters in Beverly Hills 90210 that I still watch in reruns on the SOAP network, symbolizing my arrested youth, I guess.
         Finally, after another cigarette, and a trip downstairs for one of Joe's beers to calm me, I sleep.  I hope I will not wake for a long time.

         When I do wake, it is business as usual.  Making coffee, packing Joe's lunch, feeding Caitlin rice cereal and smooshed bananas, putting her on a blanket on the floor to play with a circle of stuffed animals, cups and spoons, squeaky blocks.  I drink my coffee staring at the wall in the kitchen.  The phone rings.
         "Sweetheart, how are you?"  my stepmother asks.
         "We're fine," I lie, although not really because aren't we?  I mean in the greater scope of things, aren't we?  Caitlin bounces a block on her knee and chortles.  Yeah, we're fine, I think.  But the long pause signals that maybe we're not, after all.  I tug my robe tight and bite my lip, sink down to the blanket by my daughter protectively, I don't know why.
         "You sound tired," Robin says.  "Listen, I'm in the area, why don't I come over and give you a break?"
         It sounds good.  I am tired.  Yet I move closer to Caitlin, putting my hand against her cheek that's so soft she's almost not even there.  "You don't have to," I say, thinking, You don't want to.  I don't want you...
         "I'll be there in a half hour," she says.
         Great.  Although it is hardly above freezing outside, I rush around the small house, opening windows, airing out stale cigarette smoke.  I shove empty beer bottles into the recycle bin on the porch, and cover them with newspaper.  I wipe Caitlin down with aloe scented wipes, and then add a thin layer of Johnson's baby lotion -- an infant's Italian shower.
         Robin brings my father without warning.  I say, "Hi Dad, what a nice surprise!" but my stomach sours, and I know I have to lie down now.  I have to get away.  No one notices my disappearance.  They're too busy cootchie cooing their only grandchild, their Lady Caity.

         I dream I am big.  I lie on my side onstage in the school auditorium.  I have teats, and my stomach bulges out
         out big, bigger than me,
         out from under a dirty, red-stained blanket, red stain spreading and people watching, friends gawking --
         at me!  O's, rows of toothy, red, gaping O's, and I want to see what they're so surprised about, so I try to look down past my bulging stomach, which writhes and wiggles, and then I see
         Them.
         They are wormy, blind things, squirming out of me, but I do not make an O with my mouth, I make a U, a big smile, and tears glisten in my eyes until they -- They -- come
         white coats,
         featureless faces, like silly putty masks,
         Their hands are shiny, stainless steel dishes, and they scoop
         They scoop up Them, Them babies, mewling kittens without fur, and they -- They -- parade through the aisles of my teenaged friends and not friends, the rows of O's, and I shrink and I run flat-feet slapping tile, after Them and Them, and I shriek,
         "Don't you take my babies!"  I reach, and then
         
         Slap.  Harder slap.  Real tears, real world, real living room, real daughter screaming as I try to take her from my father's arms, and he pulls her away from me, from me, and Robin slaps me again.  I stop.  I breathe.
         "Maybe that's what we need to do!" shouts my father at my dream, "Take her away!  Something is wrong with you girl!"
         "You can't take my baby," I whisper, but I am there in the living room, I have been sleepwalking and shrieking, and I seem crazy -- feel crazy.  I close my eyes.  I'm glad I took the time to brush out the sleep from my hair this morning, but my eyes feel dull.  Colors are faded.  Maybe I'm still dreaming, still sleepwalking, and this isn't real.  My father isn't clutching Caitlin as if she belongs to him and can't possibly be mine, because when have I ever done anything right?
         Instead of being big, I am really quite small, which is how I know this isn't a dream.  I am small and afraid, and instead of pushing Robin aside and taking My Baby, I softly cross the dining room, the kitchen, and exit through the back porch to the deck, where I sit in the cold and damp, sobbing, smoking a cigarette.  As my butt grows cold, colder, and finally begins to tingle -- the moments before numbness -- I remember a time way back, in high school.
         My first time.

         Concrete Blonde was playing on a portable stereo, "Come sail your ships around me/ And burn your bridges down."  I was fifteen, a counselor at Camp Winnetka, and I was sitting on a cold, slightly damp rock that overlooked an ageing pond, clogged with water plants I couldn't name, but I did like to stare into them as they rippled with the wind and the muddy water, and frogs and fish I imagined might still live under the overgrowth of plants. 
         I liked where I was, especially because it was my thirteenth night in a row sitting next to Jake on that same rock, my bottom so cold it was already numb, staring peacefully out into the once-pond, touching him.  Our legs felt fused together, and every night so far that we'd sat out there after lights out, there in our private hideaway in the woods, it was like we'd been afraid to move.  For an hour or more, we were simply touching -- thighs, hips, shoulders, holding hands.  Sometimes Jake sang with the boom box, sometimes I hummed along.  I was a terrible singer, embarrassed of my own voice.
         That night was different though.  I smelled Jake's aftershave, even though I suspected he didn't need to shave yet... I felt the roughness of his Rugby shirt against my bare arm -- my cold arm, but I wanted to be able to feel him.  My eyes teared with expectancy, because the night sizzled around us, lightning beginning in the south.  Thunder roared, but no rain fell.  We were alone with ourselves, and our music, and...
         "Come lose your thoughts upon me/ And let your hair hang down..." 
         Jake moved!  He moved, and it was to wrap his arms around me, and ease me back.  I felt the rock immobile, safe beneath me, but above was just well, Jake, putting out the stars with his breath and his moist lips and gentle fingers pushing back my hair.  As we squirmed to fit together, our bodies seeking to touch everywhere at once, I easily, intentionally, let my tee shirt rise up, and I willed him to touch me more... and his pants slid down after some groping and a bump on my elbow against the rock that would leave a bruise... and then we were pretty much done. 
         Pretty romantic for fifteen, nonetheless.  That's what I thought while I rinsed out my panties in the cabin sink later, smiling broadly, like this is the best life can ever be.
         I smiled and I smiled and I never thought about anything but Jake touching me, loving me, for the next four weeks.  Even then, when camp ended, and we were holding each other next to the line of buses choking out hot air, and we were ignoring the fumes and promising to call, and we were still hoping, but suspecting it might not happen again -- we might not happen again -- even then, I was still smiling.
         
         I remember the dream about the gun again as I light another cigarette and wish I'd at least worn slippers and wonder, where the hell are they?
         No one has come for me, and why is that?  Why am I still outside on the back deck in damn February, and where is my baby, and why do I think they have a right to her?
 
         Because now I remember. 
         Suddenly.  Now.
         Now I know He hates me.  My father.  I'm a failure, a loss, pieces to be swept up and thrown away.  Like my mother.  He loved her, but after she got sick, after she died... he lost the capacity...
         To deal.
         With me, anyway.

         Oh,yes, I remember, I do!  Now, I know why the sleepwalking and the gun dreams and the clutching my baby!  It's so easy, I'm surprised I didn't remember sooner...
         It's so hard, I'm surprised I remember at all.
         Putting out my cigarette in the snowy grass off the edge of the deck, I feel the cold, really feel it, because I know, because I do remember...

         I wasn't sleepwalking.  Not that time, that time, after Jake, after missing my period and then missing it again and
         I got the gun that afternoon.
         My father's closet, behind his shoes, tumbled in a mess as though they weren't hiding anything.

         It comes back...

         Details, like how did I know?  I'd been searching.  Ever since I told them the week before, ever since the pregnancy test was positive and he said

         I searched, and I found it, I knew he had it from when I was little, from when I was sleepwalking, and I was in their bedroom, and when I woke up the nuzzle was pointed at me, and then he said, "Oh Jesus, it's you, I thought you were -- Go Back To Bed!"

         I kept his gun all afternoon, I held it in my hands, I cradled it, I loved it.  I took it to the bathroom when He was in there, and it was night, and I was supposed to be asleep, but I could've been sleepwalking
         but I wasn't
         I pointed it.
         "Oh Jesus!" he said, his face blossoming crimsom and then purple, which I wouldn't have noticed if I were really sleepwalking.
         I pointed it, an accusation -- You hate me, you left me, you left my mother to die and you wanted me to go with her, you did! -- a declaration -- I love you, but you always want me to go back to bed, and Jake loved me, and he deserves to know, and you can't take care of this like you take care of everything else.  I peed on my closet floor for almost my whole childhood, and even a dog knows not to piss where you sleep, but I did, and it was because of you!  Because I loved you!

         I said none of this, I just pointed the gun at him, and then at myself, and then at him, and pretty soon he either figured out I wasn't sleepwalking, or he didn't care.  He knew he had control, like he always wanted, always needed.
         He took the gun.
         And the next day, he sent Robin with me to the clinic, but it was him, Him.  The next day, he took my baby.

         NOT THIS TIME, NOT EVER, NEVER AGAIN!  SHE'S MINE!
         The words scream in my head as I push up off the deck, and get a wet splinter, big like a dagger in my hand, and I pull it out, I wipe the blood across my chest like a crazy woman, and I am crazed.  Just not crazy.  I rush up the steps and inside, where Robin coos to Caitlin, and Caitlin smiles contentedly, the way she should at me...
         The way she does, when they don't interfere.  Caitlin loves me.  Joe loves me.  Maybe even my father loves me.
         But I don't forgive him, not for what he did, but more than that -- I don't forgive him for letting me forget.  Taking my little girl back into my arms, I hold her against my chest, where she cries softly from the cold and wet of me, but gradually is soothed by the beating of my heart against hers. 
         "You have to go now," I say.
         My father looks shocked, I guess.  Not really angry, just flabbergasted that I would say that.  Robin looks sad.  But she doesn't blame me.  She knows I am casting them out, and she knows I might not let them back, she is a woman who can see this in my face, hear it in my voice... she has heard it herself, in herself, when my father made her get her tubes tied and refused her children of her own.  She knows.
         But she doesn't say anything in protest.  She says, "I love you baby," to both Caitlin and me.  She says, "Let's go," to my father.  She looks at him in such a way that he's not going to argue, not with her, not with me, and I feel bad for him, it's like he doesn't quite get it.  He doesn't remember.
         I'm not going to remind him, not now.  I just want him gone, from my house, from my dreams, from my baby.
         Robin's not going to remind him that he took it all away himself, we didn't take anything from him, we listened, we did as we were told.
         Except I peed in my closet at night.  And I once held a gun, a real gun, in my hands, and pointed it, at him and at me-slash-my unborn child, and I remember, I remember the gun felt real, and the rest of us people felt fake.  We didn't know how to love, not when it counted.  We loved, but we pointed a gun and said Go Back To Bed Go Away and gave up an innocent baby, not yet born, supposedly for love, but really, I don't know.  I don't know.

         Caitlin naps with me.  She smiles with me.  She eats of me.  She can't stop looking at me with hungry, lovely eyes.  When Joe comes home, he is concerned about the blood on my nightgown, but he sees Caitlin and I so happy together, and the calm on my face, and he decides to let it go... we'll discuss this time another time.
         I sleep like a baby that night.  I wake up with tears on my cheeks, but hope in my heart, just as Caitlin must have felt these last hard months with me.
         I feel like a baby.  But I am also a Mom, and with the dreams and the sleepwalking gone, I'm a great Mom.  Love, real love, circles me, spinning my head into cotton candy.  I call my father. 
         "We should talk," I say.
         He agrees.  He says Robin wants to see the baby.  I say, "We'll all talk.  But yeah, Caitlin misses her too.  If only Mom..."  I don't need to finish.  Nor do I need to say, "If only Caitlin's older brother
         (was born, not ripped out of
         of me)."
         
         I say, proudly, "Caitlin is growing a tooth."
         "I miss you baby," he says, he really says. 
         "I always hoped so, ... Dad."
         "I love you," we say together, and it's strained and really hard.  But it's a start.