Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [4]
In desperation, Jake butted his head into the middle of my back, wrapped his hands around my waist, and pulled with all his might. He succeeded, pulling so hard that Nicola’s hair, which I had resolutely refused to yield, came away in great clumps in my hands. Nicola’s screams turned to pathetic whimpers as she reached to cover her burning scalp. She then curled herself into a fetal position, naked and bleeding, and began to keen.
My co-offenders are riveted as I tell them everything, right down to my fantasy of feigning a reconciliation with Nicola and then beating her senseless on the stage of The Jerry Springer Show.
When I stop to take a breath, I realize my hands are shaking, as my recollection of the events has triggered an adrenaline rush. I look around at the group. Shawn has removed his head from his hands and is looking right at me as if I have just confirmed all his worst suspicions about women. Keisha is smiling so broadly that I can see all of her white teeth. She shakes her head encouragingly and utters, “damn,” under her breath with unconcealed admiration.
Larry does not meet my eyes. He has the look of a trapped animal, a typical bully who, once cornered, melts under the gaze of his captor. I’m receiving validation from my fellow thugs, and I begin to think maybe this group therapy stuff isn’t so bad after all.
I do not realize the full extent of my blunder until my gaze finally reaches Mary Ann. Apparently the thought has occurred to her, long before it did to me, that an encore performance on national television would not provide favorable testament to Miss Priss’s anger-management counseling skills. It is just one more time my temper has gotten the better of me, and I know, with an element of fatalism, it will not be the last.
I will not be graduating from anger-management skills training as planned, Mary Ann tells me after class. She can see there’s much work to be done, and it doesn’t take a licensed clinical social worker to see that an outburst like mine speaks of deeper issues to be explored. She then presses into my hand a white slip of paper on which is written the name and telephone number of a person she knows to be an excellent therapist. She adds, after a few seconds, that although she has no authority to order me to individual therapy, she hopes I’ll seriously consider it. Then, with a depth of understanding I’d failed to credit to her, she deals me the coup de grace. “Mira,” she says, looking fully into my eyes for the very first time, “you owe this to yourself, but more than that, you owe it to Chloe.”
On the first floor I stop to buy a Diet Coke at the vending machine. It’s now late in the afternoon, and most of the people awaiting trials have gone for the day. I’m spent emotionally and physically by my display in class, and I guzzle the Coke greedily on the way to catch my bus. By the time I get to West Broadway, I’ve finished the Coke and, as I run for the bus heading to the Village, I toss the empty can into the garbage, only to see the little, white slip of paper that has stuck to the side of the moist can, the piece of paper on which Mary Ann has written my ticket to sanity, disappear into the trash.
chapter 2
You cannot know the type of person you really are, I mean truly, deep down, appreciate the measure of yourself as a person, until you’ve felt the cold steel of a pair of handcuffs against your wrists. What does it evoke? Pain? Terror? Remorse? After my attack on Nicola, they had restrained me, in order to protect me from myself, the officer told me, her hand atop my head as she gently, and I’d like to think sympathetically, assisted me into the back of the cruiser. She had