Black Sheep

I sat with my mom in the car on the way home from the mental hospital. It was Matt’s third admittance. It was four months before I left.

My mother had taken to holding herself, arms wrapped around her waist in inappropriate hug that did no one any good. When she was driving, I pried her hands away from her stomach at red lights.

“You need to focus.”

I turned on a rap cd. 

“Don’t,” she said. “I can’t listen to that music anymore. It ruined Matt. All those words, swirling around his head, made him crazy.”

I rolled my eyes when my mother said that but I wondered, later, if she was right. Maybe Jay-Z and Tu Pac Shakur and Kanye West and The Geto Boyz and Wu Tang Clan were the culprits.

The days got longer, my showers got hotter and my iPod was glued to my ears.

Three days later, Matt looked at me and said, “Biggie Smalls is like Hemingway, you know? So simple, such eloquent prose. Marla, Marla, I have to tell you something. Listen to me, okay? Listen! When you move, Marla, fall like a fucking thunderbolt.”

I nodded. He was crazy but he was poetic.

I have to be honest. It was around that time, that I too began to question if what I was seeing was real.