Theresa was a girl, despite all of her claims to being a woman mishandled. I know all of her names, most likely Thérese; Therése; Theresé. No matter the accent, she's simply the reason I ever survived.
In furniture finishing class was I, sanding and tacking, praying for a miracle to pluck my face out of the place, out of that mundane place. A miniature statistician was I. No computation could derail me. I was precise to the slightest degree and that was damn intimidating. Do you know how many percentage points go into 'overwhelmingly against'? Nevertheless, Rex Harrison was expectedly my suckling, salivating saint. Did numerical equations matter to 'enry 'iggins? Well, they were my most blatant obsession. Figure ten times ten-times GET ME THE HELL OUT OF THIS BORING EXISTENCE!! With fingers blistered and vision fuzzy from turpentine fumes, I imagined that pleasant smelling, mild-mannered men were tramping down placid halls for me. It's happened. It has. But the men are always belching boys who smell of reefer. 'enry 'iggins would never come so low as into my high school.
Love didn't come, didn't need me, did not believe in me, not in this world, not at home when Mother, bitching, sent me off with her chorus of 'good riddance' for the day. I could barely make it to classes. Through them? Never awake. That furn. finishing was the worst. It didn't diminish my ignorance in sex; it didn't add to my potential to make lovely money. Surely, it was meant to stimulate, invigorate, but it only made me desperate. It dragged, dragged, dragged me by my hair like a tractor. For 44 minutes 59 seconds from 1:05 every afternoon I was driven to the pinnacle of insanity, which then clicked in at 45 minutes into class exactly. Every time. Ten minutes from the bell, when varnish had stained my brain so deep that all the tools made like Fantasia and danced. I always got the urge to snuff it: to put the Black and Decker to my temple and drill me to deliverance. It got that frustrating. I despised that bastard routine that wished me wise and ignored all my cries eeagh! eeagh! Heavy, yeah. Belligerent, sure.
I have never been closer to death than on Feb. 14 when echoes of 'go to Hell!' from Mother, drunken Father, faggot Brother and his boyfriend, fulfilled me as no other valentine ever had. Damnation would never smell sweeter, I figured. So, walking to school, I decided that was it. I'd had enough. Nothing made sense and nothing made a difference so I made a date with the drill. It was exhilarating. That afternoon I would show the world what a spooky bitch I could be. I would make a bloody mess of the workshop. Erin Coulter next to me, my blue jeans, Mother's sweater I'd snuck out-everything. Shock, of course, would rule the school. My friends, such as they were, would torment themselves over criticisms they shot at me in absent-minded cruelty, wondering if they were the cause. My parents would blame my teachers, my teachers would blame my parents. The School Board would hold special sessions and adopt special measures, but my folks would still sue. Recrimination would be the theme of the prom. Then I would be forgotten, pushed aside by the latest catastrophe. That was the best thing.
Instant social purification was all I had in mind, not becoming an icon. Make a statement and get out, don't deal with the consequences. I was sure the 'consequences' meant 'grief'-a lot of it-for everyone who'd given me grief. My death was the best way of hurting the most people most efficiently. They would respond by becoming disfigured, tortured. Then they'd push my memory out, banish it like a leper, so they could 'get on with their lives.' I would then become history, soon 'ancient' history. I wanted that. I need privacy. My face in obscurity forever. After. They'd say:
"You remember that Mitchell bitch?"
My name was Michelin.
"Yeah. Sure was a bitch. Heavy bitch."
I weighed 93 pounds.
"Belligerent, wasn't she?"
I was pretty agreeable. Plastic, I'd say.
"Sure did smell when they found her."
I was still pretty fresh.
"What river did they drag her out of? The Potomac? sure did smell."
"Sure did. Say, did the Browns win today? Kosar is tits."
"Did Mitchell have tits?"
"Flat-chested, they say. I don't remember though."
* * *
I was determined that no one would romance me in the grave just as no one did above ground. It would be easy. In this school squashing the future's just killing the grey cells in any expedient way. Decibels, yes; grain alcohol, better. I was in love with this delicious perception. I ran myself through glass every day up to this. Bare to my pimpled butt I rolled in this glass, in this hailstorm of criticism and self-denial that withered my hope for honesty and pleasure in demurity. I inwardly screamed, raged about the abuse coming down on me but I never bucked, just shoved it up my cunt like a lover. So I deserved success.
You realize, of course, that my plan didn't work. I'm writing these words. How? Theresa. The Reason. She forced me to resist the fate that begged me so. She smashed the glamorous image of a stupidly meaningless suicide. But she never knew what she did for me. She didn't know me. I knew her only as a bloodless face that scraped the halls. In furn. fin. class she was a ghost, a whisper of a jazz note hit off-key in a closet. Her soul was never exposed though I never supposed she was in control of her emotions. She drifted quietly, never speaking, like a colostomy bag on the waves of a gelatin sea only now setting to solid, setting because of her glorious moment in the never pleasant sun of high school fame. If SHE didn't want to be known, it is now blown.
Our teacher surprised us that fateful day; we wouldn't only be staining, we would also be sawing, planing and routing. That's furniture CONSTRUCTION for God's sake. What an outrage! It involved machinery-dangerous machinery. Without much imagination you can figure that 42.897% of us weren't prepared for much more than sniffing paint thinner and digging the fabric designs of the upholstery. The Reason was not into it from the start. Her cackling burnt (literally, at the edges) orange hair hid her eyes, but her quivering liver lips and feigned lethargy spelled an even more pronounced case of self-deception than I practiced. (Her autopsy showed she was so full of accelerators that the medical examiner called her a pillow. She hid it well. She was a regular sphinx.)
She wasn't on the jigsaw more than thirty-two seconds before her blood was squirting-a new world's record for self-induced amputation. Plunk went her left hand into the sawdust pile at her feet. She didn't scream. I give her credit. Teacher had a tourniquet on her in no time, a Motley Crue kerchief he nearly tore off the head of Floyd Garber to get at. 'In no time' was too late, though. Apparently her heart was so loosy-goosy that her blood gushed like out of a hose. She didn't have much blood to begin with.
The lesson from this? Well, it didn't come from her. You know, only one person shit his pants over this episode, that was Floyd Garber. His kerchief was autographed! I attended the funeral, though those things depress me. The church was full. The boys varsity baseball team went as a group, with a glove on one hand, the other fist pulled up into the sleeve as a salute. In bitter, mean-spirited irony, the school chorus was named after her-the Theresa Benedict Glee Club, uh-huh. They did a medley of Def Leppard songs. Nobody cried.
Nobody knew her but she became a legend just because she did a stupid farted death. It inspired me. No one would respect my similar death. My statement would be mockery; my reward, ridicule. From then on I've been committed to doing a more meaningful departure. No mere fear for my image-real concern! I deserved better. Thank God Theresa showed me the truth. Now, if I go with a purpose, things'll be different; I'll know peace and satisfaction. Perhaps I'll join the PEACE Corps, yes, and contract AIDS in Africa while nourishing a continent. I bet Bob Geldof never thought of that.
Maybe I'll throw myself under a train to protest shipments of chemical weapons. No. It must be more horrific; so horrible that ridicule will be scorned, that jokesters will have their tongues cut out, that whole offending towns will be burned down. I will be kidnapped and brutally raped by pseudo Black men, smeared with wanna-be-nigger excrement, stabbed 44 times and left in a gutter with the word SLUT carved into my poor forehead. Then I will be crusaded by an enraged population and an indignant legion of news reporters when my rapist/murderers are let go like beleaguered butterflies by a pussy judicial system.
Death as social redemption. It's all I can do for my sister. Theresa.
Matthew Penrod is 28, married, working as a Ranger/Historian at Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, MD. He loves the history of the Civil War or just the lore of the destruction. Antietam was America's Bloodiest Day ("sounds like an amusement park")-23,000 Americans killed and wounded in 11 hours. Matthew says, "it's very appropriate to my writing and perfectly describes my life. A fascination with annihilation-there is a pay check in it."
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