FRESH YARN presents: Fifteen... by Sharon Bordas

FRESH YARN presents:

Fifteen
By Sharon Bordas

There is no time more awkward for breaking off a relationship than the period immediately following a suicide attempt.

David and I were only 15 and forever seemed like a long time to stick it out, but I saw no other acceptable alternative in light of the public expression of his pain. While friends and teachers attempted to console me with well-intentioned assurances that everything would be OK, I knew their promises were empty and meaningless. David was clearly not OK, and if I couldn't figure a way out of this, I was going to have to live with him for the rest of my life.

I hoped he hadn't been too disfigured by the attempt itself. Did he have visible scars? Could he ever again wear a short-sleeved shirt? All I knew was that his mother had come home only to find him in some state of near death. Did she scream when she came upon her son dangling from the rafters? Had she taken her time putting away groceries, unaware that he was reclining in a bathtub filled with his own blood? Asking these questions took up the majority of my waking hours, though I don't recall expressing a single one of them out loud.

When the woman I was starting to think of as my future mother-in-law called under the pretense of seeing how I was doing, I had a hard time listening. All I wanted were vivid details of the crime scene and, if possible, some illustrations to give the scene visual depth. It didn't take me long to realize that what she really wanted to know was what had happened to her seemingly happy son.

"Did David ever say anything to you, Sharon? About wanting to, you know, hurt himself like that?"

"Not that I can remember," I told her.

"You would have told me, wouldn't you? If he had said something like that?"

"Sure. Yeah, I'm totally sure I would have."

But I was lying. All these years later, familiar with statistics about teen suicide, aware that hotlines and support systems exist, I'm still not so sure what would qualify as reportable. In my experience of 15, expressing vaguely suicidal thoughts wasn't uncommon. One of my favorite pastimes at that particular developmental stage was to lie in bed King-Tut-like, and imagine that my friends and family were sobbing over my pink sparkly coffin.

"We never really knew her," they'd say, "and now we never will."

Was the fact that I had spent many satisfying nights playing this fantasy on a loop that never grew old the kind of reportable fact David's mother was after?

I decided it wasn't.

"So, how is he now? Is he home?"

"No, he's in a place where he can get some help."

"Oh. What kind of place?

"A place for troubled teenagers. An institution."

"Oh. Wow. That's intense."

Awkward pause. A million heartbeats passed while I searched for something more to say.

"So," I laid back on my bed and walked my feet up the pink latticed wallpaper on the bedroom wall, "how are you"?

She seemed not to have heard me.

"He's very embarrassed about this whole thing. You should remember that when you talk to him. Don't say anything that might upset him."

It's a little late for that, Lady, I thought.

"Sure," I said, "I get it. No problem."

She had me write down a phone number. I pretended I had a pen. Then she began to ask me how school was going and I muttered something about wishing I was taking French instead of Spanish. Spanish seemed so obvious. Thankfully, she still wasn't listening.

Ever since I'd heard the news, I'd been consumed with increasingly complicated fantasies about David's attempt. As the days wore on, I graduated from visions of slashed wrists to slow-motioned imaginings of a leap from the roof of his ranch style home into a field of spikes. By the time my mother informed me that David's method of choice had been drug overdose, I'd conjured up so many spectacular scenes, I had trouble accepting the truth.

"Did he bleed from the eyes or mouth or anything like that?"

"Don't be so dramatic," she said. "He swallowed a handful of his mother's 'ludes. They pumped his stomach. End of story."

Although this certainly was a more civilized way to go than anything I had fantasized, I felt it lacked a certain flair. My mother waited impatiently for a big emotional reaction befitting a 15-year-old girl who cried through every Star Wars movie, but all I really felt was disappointed. I recreated the scene in my mind, searching for dramatic resonance. No matter how many angles I shot it from, a glass of water and a prescription bottle didn't provide a particularly compelling visual. Then it registered that David's mother had easily accessible 'ludes sitting around the house. Interesting. Did my mother have 'ludes stashed somewhere in ours? What was a 'lude anyway? My mother rolled her eyes at my questions.

"It doesn't matter what he took," she snapped at me between cigarettes, "it didn't work. I never knew what you saw in that wimpy little kid anyway. How could he do this to his mother?"

Mom wasn't the only one who saw David's cry for help as an unforgivable failure. Most people I talked to seemed to think that the fact that he took the pills just moments before his mother was expected home negated the seriousness of his attempt. Everyone at school assumed that he was either a) trying to become popular, b) crazy or c) totally gay. None of these possibilities elicited much sympathy in the pre-Real World era of '80s Orange County. While the rest of my AP English class engaged in a heated discussion of Faulkner's Light in August, I drew pictures of tombstones in my notebook and made a mental note that if I ever felt the need to throw my life on the pyre of teenage angst, I'd make sure to get the job done right. My crowd was merciless when it came to failure, and apparently suicide was no exception.

As the weeks passed and David failed to reappear on campus, the rumors that he must be gay gained momentum. I tried to distance myself from the potential humiliation of being a gay guy's girlfriend with vague, carefully worded statements.

"Yeah, I think he did do a little ice skating. But that was way before I knew him."

"He was an altar boy, yes, but he never took the overnight trip to Magic Mountain with Fr. Folgrom."

"You'd have to ask him, but I'd guess he'd pick Les Miserables over La Cage."

I really had no idea if he was gay or not. I wasn't all that sexually experienced. Maybe, I thought, I didn't want to have sex with David not because he was a good six inches shorter than me and wore braces. Maybe it was instead an unspoken sexual ambivalence I had sensed emanating from him. I tried to look objectively at the situation. We were both active members of the choir and drama clubs and we both knew every word of West Side Story; homosexuality was a real possibility. I wondered if David had a crush on the only openly gay kid in choir, Ioannis, a Prince tribute band of one. Although I was guilty of giggling whenever Ioannis attached a brooch to his choir uniform, I didn't consider myself homophobic. I figured there had to be at least one homosexual in Duran Duran, and they were totally hot. But David wasn't as cute as those guys were. Could I find a way to respect his lifestyle choice but save myself from living a life as his beard? I lamented over my sexual future, now so intricately intertwined with the least attractive homosexual in the world.

Despite my tortured inner dialogues and sleepless nights, my new role as a teenage near-widow did have clear advantages. Several of my teachers told me in whispery voices that homework was optional until I "recovered". No one expected me to practice the piano or learn geometry. I spent a little less time washing my hair and a little more time ripping my jeans in strategic locations. I started smoking cigarettes. Concerned parents lurched towards me, their arms outstretched.

"We're all thinking about you and your family during this terrible, terrible time."

I squirmed out of reach of those arms and joked that there was no need to worry about my family. My father hadn't even registered David's existence, much less that he now resided in a mental institution. My mother was happy that the "little faggot" was no longer tying up our phone line. No one seemed to know what to say to that. Even Ms. Landers, the hippie-chick English teacher I so wanted to grow up to be, just stared at me blankly, pulled me into a suffocating hug and told me that everything was going to be OK. How disappointing, I thought, that she didn't know she was supposed to laugh.

I resolved to polish my comedic material. Although I was an untested talent, it's likely that my delivery was not at issue. When I picture 15-year-old-me laughing uproariously about my mother's cruelty, I cringe. I thought it was hilarious that she always sat with her back to the wall in restaurants so that if someone came in shooting, I would be the first to go down. After a decade of shattering panic attacks and reoccurring nightmares about being shot in restaurants, I now wish for the ability to time travel so I can go back and not only laugh along with my 15-year-old self, but also give her my number so she could call me anytime. I think it would have helped her to know someone like me back then. I could have given her some much-needed emotional support. And help her polish up her routine.

I'm an old lady of 35 now and, when I cross paths with 15-year-olds, I am shocked to see how young they are. I study the peach fuzz on their sweaty faces, the way they have barely transitioned into wearing deodorant and managing their hair. Always these truths take me by surprise. These smelly children are not what I imagined myself to be back then. Instantly, I feel protective of any 15-year-old within arm's reach. I want to squeeze them until they tell me their secrets. I imagine fighting their battles for them, engaging their startled parents in aggressive conversations, asking pointed questions, trying to determine if their children are safe. Their parental reassurances sound like party line to me. They fall on deaf ears. I know that if asked, my mother would have said I was a happy, well-adjusted kid and she would have been wrong. There wasn't a moment where I didn't feverishly hope that my real parents, the ones who adored me beyond reason and would have given up anything in their possession to ensure my happiness, were going to drive up to my front curb, preferably in a red Volkswagen rabbit or a midnight blue convertible mustang, and offer to take me home.

The unexpected wave of compassion I received as David's girlfriend helped to legitimize my silent fear that any hope of an intellectual, exciting future was about to be extinguished. David was now my future. I imagined myself a young mother, sitting at a Formica table, a cigarette on my lip, baby on my hip, talking into the phone about David and his "goddamn boyfriend". I reluctantly acquiesced to the notion that I would never study abroad.

Several months had passed and I still hadn't called David. I felt badly about that, but I had never really been that good on the phone. I wrote a couple letters. I never sent them.

Then one day, well into my homework-free time of healing, spontaneously, without warning, my mother decided that visiting David in the looney bin was an unfortunate but necessary social obligation. A duty falling somewhere between sewing quilts for abused children, an act I performed with what now seems a shocking lack of irony, and visiting my grandmother on the holidays. Wracked by guilt and a sense of inevitability, I agreed to go. We set a day. She did, however, decide against taking me herself, thinking it would be better if she kept her nail appointment, so I was forced to ask around and try to bum a ride. I struggled with the right way to phrase the request. It came out something like this:

"Anyone want to give me a lift so I can visit my gay boyfriend in the mental institution?"

Quite an offer.

David's friend Chris volunteered to give me a ride. "And I don't think he's gay, by the way," he said.

"Right. Me neither." And off we went.

David's new home bore a shocking resemblance to our high school, down to the shade of brown stucco and flesh colored trim. The only visible difference was the electrified fence around the perimeter. Chris, a 200-pound football player famous for smashing beer cans on his head, took one look and fell quiet, deciding finally he would wait outside. I couldn't blame him. I was terrified. What was I going to see in there? Why hadn't I thought to bring a pack of smokes? And, most importantly, what if they didn't let me out?

"You don't have to wait," I told Chris.

"How are you going to get home, Bordas?"

"Right, good point. I'll make it quick."

Out front David's parents greeted me with the somber air of funeral directors. I'd forgotten that David's father was so strange looking with his greasy comb over and car salesman demeanor. Was that actually a brown polyester suit he was wearing? No wonder David never mentioned him. I shook his hand and told him I was sorry, giving him my best "everything will be OK" routine, to which he struck a playful pose, cocking his hand like a gun and pointing it right at me.

"Hey, if it weren't for you, maybe we wouldn't even be here right now," he said.

I laughed and wondered if there was any way I could throw up without anybody noticing.

That I might be responsible for David's suicide attempt had never once crossed my mind. Although I had spent much time and energy trying to understand how he might have tried to kill himself, the why hadn't seemed all that relevant. There were plenty of reasons just lying around in plain sight -- his parents, living in Orange County, a secret, shameful desire to wear pumps. I'd just never considered the possibility that I might be one of those reasons. What had I done to contribute to David's pain? Had I ever come out and told him we were never going to have sex? I tried to remember if I had implied this or actually stated it as fact. Neither possibility seemed all that appealing from the perspective of a 15-year-old boy. The homosexual scenario offered other treacherous missteps. Had I gone too far with my Ioannis jokes? Had David seen the mean streak I inherited from my parents and feared it would turn in his direction? Standing in that sterile hallway, ideas ricocheted around in my head and didn't stop as, in my efforts to reach the inner sanctum, I stumbled through dozens of bolted doors and retina-screening devices. With each new security measure, I grew exponentially less secure. What kind of monster had David become to require all these locks and procedures? What was he going to do to me once I got in there?

My heart was racing, but it was too late to turn back now. The best plan I could come up with just to smile, accept blame and get out as soon as possible. Why hadn't anyone told me not to wear a skirt? Shouldn't I have been better prepared for this?

The last doors finally slid aside and there, looking sad and pale, stood David.

I struggled to catch my breath, he looked so small and so familiar, this boy who I had made out with on his twin bed when his parents weren't home.

"I've missed you," I said, realizing with a shock that I had.

"I've missed you, too."

No matter what happens, I told myself, do not cry. I managed a dry-mouthed smile. I was afraid that if I did try to speak, he'd hear my voice shake.

"It's OK," he said. "It's not your fault."

"Oh." I said. "Thanks."

David was my first real boyfriend. He had surprised me on a recent "anniversary" by decorating my front yard with an elaborate web of notes and presents strung together with shoelaces. Children create secret languages to avoid detection by adults, and David and I had done just that, designating "shoelaces" our code word for making out. David knew my mother hated him and that I secretly believed she hated me. Covering the front yard in shoelaces was an act of breathtaking defiance, symbolizing the entanglements of future relationships that would pull me out of that lonely house and into the sunshine. I remember how delighted I was as I followed those red and blue stitched laces all over the yard in what became an Easter egg hunt of affirmation. I found goofy stuffed animals and homemade cards hidden among the impatiens the gardeners were always replanting. I couldn't believe anyone had taken the time to construct something so elaborate and generous just for me. I stood there on the wet grass in my fuzzy slippers and felt an unfamiliar thrill run through me. This, I thought, is what it must be like to feel loved.

We made small talk that day in the hospital, David and I, carefully emulating the adults who hovered over us wearing plastered-on smiles and offering soft cups filled with orange punch. We never spoke of our relationship directly, but it was clear our romance had come to an end. We were only 15 and neither of us really knew what to say. The roles had been reversed. David had never been the suicidal one in our relationship. That had always been me.