*Voice memo begins.* October 12, 2023, 18:32:02.
I’m in the parking lot of the liquor store when my mom calls to tell me my brother’s in the mental hospital again. He tried to escape when they started the assessment—pushed nurses aside to sprint toward the door to the roof. I was terrified, she said. Only I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because, in that moment, he didn’t seem like anyone I’d ever known. I asked her why he was still there if he wanted to leave so bad. Well, they’re involuntarily committing him, she’d said. You know about that. In front of me, a woman with a large cardboard box of alcohol struggles to open her car door—I watch her maneuver the box to her waist, catch it when it begins to topple, then set it on the ground. I wonder what it would feel like to have the doors closing behind you, the burden of proof shifting from prove I’m crazy to prove I’m not. Crazy is the kind of label that sticks. The court will decide his fate, she’d said. Don’t you think that’s a little melodramatic? I had asked. This is serious, Bri. But that I knew already. Everything was always serious.
***
Writing Notebook, October 7, 2023.
On Saturday morning, I walked to the pool in my apartment complex. There was someone there, so I walked back to my apartment and sat on the balcony with my coffee. It was warm for October. I watched the swimmer—a slender man with a swim cap and goggles. The coffee burned my tongue. Water dripped from his swimsuit onto the concrete beneath his bare feet. Did it bother him to see me watching? Did he notice at all?
***
Finding the Medicine (Working Title), Scene 1, Draft 2, 2023.
Caretaking in movies is love letters, walks around the neighborhood, and shared meals. When Rita arrived at her grandmother’s house, her mother leading the charge, now that’s when she really understood caretaking. Her Granny was diminished—she’d long since lost the warm squish Rita had so loved when she’d hugged her grandmother. They’d used to be pen pals back when Rita was a child, and she’d loved opening the colorful envelopes and cards despite the fact that she couldn’t really read cursive. Sometimes, Granny wrote in a green pen that smudged.
Now, Granny lay in a back bedroom shrouded in darkness, a vomit bucket stuffed with newspaper beside her. Seeing her Granny like this was difficult; she was so different it made Rita afraid. Granny didn’t remember anything—whatever illness she had was taking her memory. Every conversation was a loop, a merging of the same stories told over and over, Rita feigning surprise and emitting a strange sound, a laugh track. The kitchen table was littered with half-eaten toast, crushed crackers, glasses and water bottles set around, plastic lids dumped in piles around the room. Rita cleaned out the fridge, extracting fuzzy chicken in a plastic container, some kind of sauce from 2010, exploded Greek yogurt and shrunken, rotting clementines. The glass of the fridge was stained with a yellow sticky liquid. On the kitchen counter, her mother’s grocery list for Granny: yogurt, fancy water, bagels.
***
Back of a CVS Receipt for Ibuprofen, Alkaline water, Viibryd, 40 mg. October 3, 2023.
- Physical description: wallet chain connected to maroon skinny jeans (out of style), bracelets made of shells, his right arm covered in tattoos.
- Auditory description: the bracelets that clacked as he moved his hands, Fleetwood Mac playing on vinyl until my brother steps through the door and Dad stops the record.
- Talking fast, like an auctioneer (too dramatic?) as if every thought inside his head was worthy of sharing, words strung into sentences that only managed an attempt at coherence.
- Rubbing his ear obsessively (symptom?)
- Certain someone is spying on him (at this point, with artificial technology, isn’t a healthy degree of paranoia justified?)
***
Orange sticky note, undated, discovered March 2, 2023, floating in the backseat of my hail-dented truck.
I smoked weed at night. My day job was running grants for the state’s drug task force investigators. At meetings, they talked about DTOs and ghost guns. I was desperate to go on a ride-along, only I was afraid it conflicted with my values regarding police.
***
Finding the Medicine (Working Title), Scene 5, Draft 6, 2023.
“Look,” Rita’s mother, Carolyn, said. “There’s a fire.” They were headed back from Granny’s. Carolyn had been staying with Rita since Granny became ill, and it was driving Rita mad. Every morning, her mother made smoothies at 5:00am, whirring the blender so loud it sounded like it might fall off the counter; she took hours in the bathroom, leaving Rita only a scant few to brush her hair and teeth and smear pink blush across her cheeks, then sprint out the door.
She pointed across Rita’s side of the car, and Rita followed the direction of her finger, saw the flames devouring the dry grass beside the highway. “Hopefully someone knows about that,” she added.
Rita wondered if she should call someone, but she wasn’t sure who. The fire department? She wasn’t really sure where she was, only that she was traversing the in-between land that existed between her apartment in the city and Granny’s 70s house in a rural town. She couldn’t admit that to the fire department, or whoever it was. That would be embarrassing. It’s a hub, Granny had always said. We have dealerships and great hospitals. People come from miles away.
Her mother drove on, past the gas station that claimed to have a “complete” pirate ship indoors. You’d think such a thing could be seen from the road, but Rita never saw a glimpse of it at all. Rita remembered those cardboard road trip game boards, the ones she’d had as a child—when you saw an oil rig or a horse you moved the plastic window across a space. Wildfire. Seen.
***
iPhone Notes app, May 3, 2023.
- The first time my brother was hospitalized, I was incapable of writing him a letter. Send him something, my dad said. Anything. So he’ll know you’re thinking about him.
- But anything wouldn’t do—we hadn’t spoken in years. What was I to say?
- Xmas 2017, when he confronted me next to the restaurant’s bathrooms. The women’s bathroom was marked “Heifers.” My brother didn’t believe my mental illness was as serious as his. You don’t feel like I do. Stop trying to get it.
- I couldn’t offer to relate to him. He was determined no one could.
***
Journal Entry, 3:19 a.m. Thursday, October 15, 2023.
I tried it out, just to see if I would gain some insight. It’s not like I’d never thought about it before, but I needed to remind myself. Weren’t we conscious beings interconnected and one? I could still understand him. There was a part of me that thought I was the only one who would ever be able to understand him, if such a thing was possible. I thought past experience would lend me credibility, but everywhere I turned, I had to defend what I felt, what I believed.
I ran a hot bath, so hot that when I stood in it, my ankles turned pink. Eventually, I worked up the courage to sit. I began sweating immediately. My heart thumped. Once the bath had cooled a bit, I sat with the razor pressed to my arm. There was a refrain in my head—do it, do it, and beneath that, if I really listened, I could feel that instinct to survive, the way my body resisted despite my brain. Why were they saying such different things? Which one was really me?
***
Piece of Notebook Paper, undated: Character Sketch: Carolyn.
Mother of three. Red hair, dyed. Always wears dangly earrings and carries a large purse filled with heavy items that are never needed. Degree in engineering, which led to a PhD and a professorship job. She’s on sabbatical in the story. Carolyn doesn’t like to experience emotions, but Rita is getting good at reading what is not expressed, or what anger and stress really mean in terms of deeper emotions. Rita’s childhood: crying in the backyard because she was bullied at school (—scratch that. Need more obscure reason. Bullying overused.) Her mother doesn’t comfort her, just sits beside her and tries to move the conversation to a different subject. They’re jealous of you, Carolyn says. Maybe they want to be your friends. Rita sits, remembering the hateful look in their eyes, the way their lips curled just at seeing her. She cried on. Eventually, her mother put a hand on her shoulder. Cry it out, she said. Sometimes that’s what you need. Then come inside and we’ll watch a movie, okay? Rita sits on the back porch, watching for fireflies as darkness descends. She sees her mother’s face through the window, watching.
***
*Voice memo begins.* July 17, 2023, 11:57:45.
“I’m shitting myself. I’m in the bathroom. Obviously, I’m not actually shitting. But I think Mom found the sketch. I accidentally left it on the table.”
*Bathroom sink runs, then stops. Door opens and closes.*
“Bri,” she says. “What the hell is this?” *Paper flaps.*
“It’s a character sketch. I’m writing a story about caregiving. Well, it’s actually about more than that.”
“Why can’t you write about someone else? You never write about your father.”
“It’s fiction,” I say. “The details of life become stories. That’s how us writers work.”
“So you’re just going to write and make me look bad.”
“Well, it did happen,” I said. “And besides, it’s a sketch. Not everything in a sketch ends up in the final.”
“Your generation.” *sighs* “You think everything is for you to use. You know, parents fuck up. I’m sorry about that day. I didn’t even remember it until you wrote about it. My parents did things I didn’t like, either. Worse things, actually.”
“It’s not a competition,” I said. “And some of the things you’ve told me about your dad make it hard for me to understand why you speak to him at all.”
“That’s loyalty. You only get one family.”
“Loyalty has to be earned. It’s earned by everyone in your life, so why not for parents?”
“Remember, Bri. Write with compassion.”
“What do you know about writing?” I asked. “You don’t even read.”
“I know about being a decent fucking human.”
***
Work Notebook, April 7, 2023.
I’m just another millennial in an office, bitching about in-person work and questioning why I have to work at all. Why are some granted access to resources and others denied? I know the reason (come on, get educated). I understand my privilege. I’m grateful for it, or maybe that isn’t the right thing to say, but sometimes it makes me feel all weird inside. I don’t deserve anything that someone else doesn’t also deserve.
But is it such a horrible thing to seek passion and meaning beyond all else? If we praise technological and social advancement, we should recognize that meaning seeking is a privilege. A hundred years ago, meaning existed only in the present (fact check), please let the crops grow, let it be a boy. Everyday survival was meaning, and even though we are lucky we can pursue creativity now, our lives lack meaning and purpose and we are disconnected from what it means to be alive or dead. Death is an abstract.
***
Text Message Thread, October 31, 2023.
Bri Johns: Happy Halloween *emojis*
Sawyer Johns: Thx. *thumbs up emoji*
Bri Johns: Who are you, Dad? Lol.
Bri Johns: Just wanted to see how you were feeling. Any Halloween plans?
Bri Johns: Sorry, not to be like mom. Are you doing ok after the hospitalization? Can I come visit?
Sawyer Johns: I’m fine, Bri. Are you on sativa or something?
Bri Johns: I can’t ask how you’re doing?
Bri Johns: Try me. Pls.
Bri Johns: Unbelievable. Srsly?
***
Finding the Medicine (Working Title), Scene 3, Draft 2, 2023.
One day, Rita looked out the window and saw a shirtless man mowing Granny’s yard. He looked around the same age as her, maybe a bit older. She paused and looked through the glass—his hands were wrapped around the mower as if it might get away from him, his skin glistening with a sheen of sweat that made his muscles look defined. She imagined those hands on her. As if sensing her gaze, he glanced through the window and right at her. Rita stumbled and backed away.
At the kitchen table, Rita sat with her Granny as she ate her soft sweet potatoes, sliced avocado, and floppy lunch meat. She raised her glass in slow motion to sip from it. Rita’s mother was in the other room, moving medications around so Granny wouldn’t find them again. Granny couldn’t remember anything or get around all that well, but damn was she good at finding the medicine. Everything else she lost—her life alert, her phone, the checkbook, the keys to her car. But the medicine she remembered, as if she wanted to take as much of it as possible to cure herself. Except what she had couldn’t be cured—she’d caught some illness the doctors couldn’t identify, and her dementia worsened by the day.
“The neighbor’s wife has cancer,” Granny said. “He was snooty but now he seems nicer.”
“Interesting,” Rita said. Out the window, the man was using the weed whacker, plastic glasses over his eyes, headphones clamped over his ears. Every so often, his head bobbed just slightly to music she couldn’t hear.
“Everyone in this neighborhood is religious,” Granny continued. “Some Mormons—don’t see a lot of them here. Protestants, too.”
Rita nodded. The man went around the side of the house and out of sight.
“Granny, who is that man mowing your lawn?” Rita asked.
“He’s my yard boy,” she said. “The snooty neighbor, he really changed his tune when they found out. His wife has cancer! Can you believe it?”
Rita feigned surprise, said she had to go to the bathroom, and went to find the yard boy. He was dumping something from the mower into the trash can. He looked even better up close. She wondered if he had another job or if this was it.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Rita, her granddaughter.” She gestured toward the house and leaned against the outdoor wall, crossing her arms, hoping she looked cool. At least she’d worn a slight sheen of makeup today.
“Bran,” he said, continuing what he was doing.
“Like the cereal?” she asked.
This time he looked up, appeared to study her. She flushed as he assessed her.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, nodding at the door beside her.
“Better,” she said. Although this wasn’t true, it seemed like the right thing to say. After all, her mother wouldn’t like it if she’d told the yard boy Granny was doing horrible. Elder abuse was a thing, after all.
“Good,” he said. “I’m almost finished here. I’ll be back on Tuesday.”
“I’ll be here, too,” she said. “Just helping out.”
***
Finding the Medicine (Working Title), Scene 8, Draft 4, 2023.
Rita was in love. She was in love with the yard boy’s body. Bran. He went to the local college an hour from here, he had a Protect Trans Kids bumper sticker, and once, she’d looked in the back of his car, which had turned out not to be a truck at all but instead a twenty-year-old Prius. She was sure he’d end up with a white girl with aquamarine hair. But in the meantime, he was hot.
He hummed as he finished putting away the mower, which was always what he did when he wasn’t mowing.
“What song are you humming?” she asked. He grimaced, looking a bit abashed. He slipped his shirt over his chest and small spots of sweat appeared across the yellow fabric like raindrops.
“My own,” he said. “I’m a musician.”
Rita smiled. Her heart might have thumped. “Play me something,” she said.
He shook his head. “I don’t have the set-up here. I’ve got a great space at home—I’ve spent most of the money from doing lawns on it.”
“You live with your parents?” Rita asked. It came out sounding harsher than she’d intended. “Sorry,” she added.
“I don’t mind. It ain’t so bad, living with the folks.” And that’s when she heard it—that sense of complete ruralness that all the people here seemed to emanate—they seemed to pulse with it, their differentness, their insistence on the physicality of living.
Before she knew it, he lay her down in the back of the Prius. If she hadn’t been throbbing, she might have looked down on this. She exposed her neck and he lurched for the skin, a lick turning into soft kisses that gave her chills. His lips were soft for a musician’s. He slid out of his pants, fumbled for hers. They ripped her jeans down in tandem, their hands grazing from the stiff jeans to each other’s bodies. And then they were upon each other, ecstasy tossing their heads back and causing their eyes to shutter.
***
November 1, 2023, 12:45pm CDT.
Reply To: Mama (therealchelsea.johns@gmail.com)
From: Brianna Johns (sweatykitties57@aol.com)
Email Subject: re re: penny 4 your thots plz?
Mama–see below. Comments in blue.
Dear Bri,
- You do realize that “yard boy” is offensive, right? Or demeaning, at least
Obviously. It’s meant to be. I was told I could do it to prove a point. The point being that Granny refers to Bran solely as the yard boy, never by name, and at this point she isn’t in a place to be able to do so. Can you blame her? Is it really so bad, in the context of all the shit old ppl say? And when rita starts up a fling with bran she only ever calls him “yard boy.” Essentially, I’m trying to reveal the female imitation and internalization of the male gaze, really. Do you think that’s a good enough point?
- Is Rita unemployed?
Does it matter? This capitalistic world, I swear to fuck. I want to be in a post-work world. labor is okay, as long as it follows the basic parameters of humanity (which is a different discussion entirely.) but yes, she’s unemployed. Why else would she have so much free time in the middle of the day?
- Isn’t this supposed to be about Carolyn taking care of her mother? What am I MISSING??
I told you, it’s about many things. Why are you so obsessed with Carolyn? I told you, she is NOT you.
- Why is Granny racist? You should realize that not all elderly people are racist. Although most of them are. But still, this sticks out. Wow, am I sounding like a writer-type person now? ☺
:/
- I thought Rita was white. So why would she say that (pg. 9)? And I thought you liked blue hair?
I don’t want to identify her specifically as white. She could be anyone. But if she was a person of color, I’d probably have to be very culturally aware, do some research…damn, i just realized. I defaulted all the characters to white. But reading fiction that describe people’s races and skin colors gives me the fucking creeps. And rita—is she the kind of person to acknowledge privilege? Back to the keyboard for me.
- Rita is kind of an asshole. SORRY!! ☺
Not everyone has to be likable. Especially women. but i do think she needs more backstory, besides the bullying thing. What makes her tick? I’m not sure yet. Going to Spruce’s on sat. to write if you want to join me.
P.S. Change your email, please. You gave that to the state??
What the hell is your email? The REAL Chelsea Johns? Sounds like a fake twitter account. The “real” makes it seem unreal.
P.S. Did you get Sawyer’s email? I just don’t know what to do. How do you think I should respond?
Did he mean that he’d thought about committing suicide or that he was going to? Medicaid fucking sucks—all they do is stabilize, stabilize. I know Dad’s been to his apartment. We should probably go see them in person.
P.S. I really love you. I’m sorry about that day in the backyard. You’re right—I couldn’t deal with it. I’m getting better. I’m trying.
I know, mama. I’m not holding it over your head. We’re different people than we were then.
***
Back of October 2023 Electric Statement.
Turns out Sawyer was trying to kill himself. I won’t recite the story here—I don’t want this to turn into a sad manipulation of my brother’s illness, or a story about how I’m just as depressed as him. I don’t want to relay those dark moments. I’m glad Dad was there. In our family, Dad is the caretaker for my brother. Not that Mom doesn’t also care, it’s just that something about Dad and Sawyer always clicked, and once illness set in, Dad was the only person who could reach him. The rest of us were left decoding text from a faraway planet.
***
Finding the Medicine (Working Title), Scene 12, Draft 9, 2023.
Carolyn confronted Rita about it on Monday afternoon. Rita was sitting at the kitchen table, the center of Granny’s house, of all her memories here. She wasn’t sure she even remembered the other rooms of the house. This room—the china cabinet crammed full of glassware of all kinds, including everyday pots and pans and casserole dishes; the table that was so rickety she was afraid someday it would collapse beneath Granny’s hand. Granny always helped herself stand by pressing down on the surface of the table to get her started. Embroidered things in frames hung on the walls.
Carolyn collapsed into Granny’s chair, demarcated by the fuzzy horse pullover that hung like a dead thing off the back of the chair. She rubbed her face with her hands. Her hair was a bit grayer than usual, but Rita didn’t want to tell her.
“I’m so tired,” Carolyn said. “Joe is so aggravating.”
Joe, that was her mother’s brother, the one who lived in the U.S. Virgin Islands and yet acted like it was the other side of the globe and not a three-hour flight. He was studying some kind of marine creature or insect there. Who the fuck cared about it anyway?
Rita breathed. Why was she getting so angry? The feeling hit her then. The eviction notice. She was out of money, and she didn’t want to ask her mother for anything, especially not now. And moreover, she was afraid to tell her mother. In fact, looking at Carolyn now, Rita wasn’t sure anyone would ever do what her mother was doing for Granny for her. Well, her mother had, but she never would again.
Carolyn breezed on, happy to complain about woes Rita was already familiar with, so she half listened—I am so mad with Lowe’s, let me fucking tell you, and did I tell you about the lost cash? In the fucking bathroom cabinet, underneath the towels! Rita had been out of work for two months, although her mother thought it had been five weeks. But Rita hadn’t applied for anything at all. And now she was being evicted. A sudden void opened inside her. Where would she go? Could she stay here? She imagined taking care of Granny all day, tucking the pills into her hand, handing her fresh cups of orange juice and water, being awake when she was awake. The doctors still didn’t know what was wrong with her. Rita knew they would never know. But maybe Rita could stay here, take care of someone who just couldn’t remember anything. Perfect, easy. She did know it was supposed to be hard, and she’d read things about angry dementia patients, and sundowning, but she didn’t want to parse all that out now.
“Are you listening?” Carolyn asked.
“Yes,” Rita said. “I’ve been thinking, my lease is ending soon. I could move in here and help Granny. You could go home. We get along well. She only yelled at me that one time.”
Carolyn pushed her chair back, and it scraped the ground.
“I knew it,” she said. “The yard boy got you pregnant.” She scowled out the window, even though Bran wasn’t there. Rita had taken to calling him Bran—she thought she might really like him, although she wasn’t really sure if she loved him. He’d played her his songs—electronic manipulations of sound, voice and perspective. It was cool, but she could only listen to it for so long.
“His name is Bran,” she said. Carolyn’s eyes widened. “I’m not pregnant. But I am being evicted. We’re being evicted.” This last part made it seem like her mother had been complicit the whole time.
“Evicted?”
Rita sighed, then nodded. Carolyn blew a breath out of her mouth loudly, took a slug of water from a glass beside her hand. Napkins were spread across the table, and they had dancing frogs on them.
“There’s no way you’re taking care of Mom. I’ll fix the eviction—but you owe me. Majorly.” Carolyn stepped back and mumbled something about checking on Granny. “And stop being a Joe, please. I don’t like being aggravated.” She smiled at this last part, but Rita knew what she wasn’t saying, because Carolyn really did hate everything about Joe; she thought he was spineless—but because he was her brother she didn’t feel like she could say she hated him. I don’t always care for what he says. Or does.
Rita walked out back, where geese honked from the neighbor’s yard. A plane zipped by overhead, something military. I’ll fix the eviction, her mother had said. Rita wasn’t sure what this meant, but she had a feeling it had to do with her mother wielding her schooling and general take-no-shit-from-anyone attitude. She supposed she wouldn’t be able to see Bran so much. She’d taken to meeting him at his clients’ houses, fucking in cobweb-filled sheds and dusty garages and yes, the Prius. Sometimes she went to his local gigs. Her mother would make her get a job. Rita knew she needed one. And she wanted one, in a survival kind of way. Rita wished she had a passion like Bran’s.
When she turned around, she saw through the glass as her mother helped Granny into a chair and handed her a glass of water with a plastic straw. Her mother had always fixed things. All Rita had ever done was ruin them. Carolyn settled into the chair across from Granny, a box of Cheez-It’s in her hand. They stared at the TV. It was how Rita had always felt, and she remembered it well—she’d always been the one outside, the one marked weird and different, characteristics adults had said were good things. But this wasn’t true. People liked predictable things. There was something in her that refused to mold. She was an accumulation of her wants and desires, but they were family. They saw her. She opened the screen door and walked inside. She sat on the couch and Carolyn handed her the box of Cheez-Its. The news was on.
***
Journal Entry, December 1, 2023.
My brother isn’t coming for Xmas. I don’t know why—he said he didn’t feel well and didn’t feel like pretending to be well. I wasn’t sure what this meant. My brother’s defining feature was being ill and sucking everyone else into its orbit. I just mean that sometimes I want to feel heard, too. No one called me every evening at 8:00pm to rate my feelings on the Suicide Scaries Scale, something Dad had made my brother when he was in his pre-teens.
This is the way it’s going to be for a while. I’m feeling 3/7 Scaries about it (haha). Sawyer will try. We’ll try to save him. He’ll try again. He’ll get better. He’ll get worse.
***
Sticky Note, January 24, 2024.
- I rarely refer to him as Sawyer. I always refer to him as “my brother.” I hadn’t realized I was doing it at all.
- I thought about it again last night. If I called, whether he’d answer.
