When we are home together, I am still for her. I learn her thinking.
I am so good at it I become an extension of her mind, like she’s invented me.
That’s how I reach the fifth dimension — a shared space between her mind and mine.
In the fifth dimension, she and I become untethered from time, distance, events, cause and effect; we do not label hurt feelings or observe personal boundaries.
My consciousness becomes split into two timelines.
- November –, 1985-present
- The fifth dimension
In the fifth dimension, my mother likes me.
In the fifth dimension, I disappear.
When we are home together, the television is always on.
The morning news when she wakes up.
The evening news if she is home from work.
Primetime shows before bed.
Judge Judy in the afternoons.
Soon I have a tv in my bedroom. Before I have a calendar or a computer, I have a tv.
In the summer, I wake up to the last half hour of Martha Stewart and devour hours of Wimbledon.
After school, I watch Captain Planet and X-Men, then Family Matters and Full House, then Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson’s Creek.
On Saturday mornings, I wake up to Duck Tales and Chip n Dale.
We eat dinner in front of the tv.
If I don’t like what she’s watching, I eat dinner in front of my own tv.
The tv is my company and also my excuse. Because if she’s not watching the tv, she likes to talk to me about work and the gall of whomever provided her customer service that day. She tells me her co-workers are tapping into her landline and listening in on her conversations. She recounts rude Target employees who deny her the right to return barely used items.
I must listen to all of it.
Sometimes we laugh together at her stories. She can really tell a story.
She goes on much longer than I can bear.
I itch for her to leave me be.
I learn to turn my head back to the tv when the commercial break ends.
She teases me for some of the shows I watch.
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Star Trek.
But she takes an interest in Dawson’s Creek. We watch a few episodes together.
She complains about each of the characters, and how unrealistic it all is.
She only likes or dislikes. There is no in between.
I stop watching shows I like with her.
I begin spending more time at the public library.
It’s quiet. The air is cool and steady. The librarians smile at me.
I am dropped off alone for hours at a time.
Since I am a good, quiet kid who follows rules, I can pick out any books I want.
The promise of discovery; new ideas; verified facts. I thirst. I take home way more books than I could ever finish.
In the library, I forget about the fifth dimension.
At home, while my nose is in a book, I forget about the fifth dimension.
I am reading a case study when my phone lights up with an unknown number.
My mother is in a hospital in New Jersey.
“For up to two weeks. Maybe longer. We’ll see how she does on the medication,” the nurse on the phone tells me.
What medication? I wonder, but do not ask.
I notice as if from another body: my heart is pounding.
The drumming pulls at me until something old and forgotten happens.
It’s my heart.
I am ripped from the fifth dimension.
The four walls around me take on a clarity I have become unaccustomed to.
My body feels distinctly and uncomfortably solid.
“How did she get there?” I finally think to ask.
The nurse sounds like she is reading. “The New Jersey police found G- wandering the train tracks. G- would not open her mouth until she was forced to by the officers. G- was sucking on a rock. G- explained it was a love charm to summon her boyfriend,”
I am numb. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” I say.
The nurse is silent.
“What should I do now?” I ask.
“You can try to speak with her tomorrow. Take care.”
The nurse recites the hospital’s phone number and the extension to the psychiatric ward, and then hangs up.
I am unmoored.
In the weeks following my mother’s hospitalization, I reach out to many different organizations. I read a lot of websites. I find the family member support page on NAMI’s website.
I drive 8 hours to my mother’s apartment and pack her things into storage. I drive another 8 hours home and complete my finals.
All of that is easier than contending with the open tabs in my browser.
Why don’t I contact NAMI?
I am not ready to inhabit my timeline.
Stray Sentences 