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STRANGE CONDOLENCES | MARK TULIN

STRANGE CONDOLENCES | MARK TULIN

I felt strange at Maddie’s funeral as the people lined up to give their condolences.

“Sorry for your loss, Harry. We’ll all miss her.”

What could I say? Maddie shouldn’t have died of cancer in her early fifties. Should I remind them of her mental illness and that the racists robbed her of happiness? Or do they know how much she had suffered?

Maddie was the odd one out, never fitting in with the white kids or the black girls at school. The white children thought she had “cooties.” And the black kids laughed at how she spoke white and ridiculed her for taking advanced classes.

Her parents didn’t make it easy. They moved to the whitest neighborhood in the city. They raised Maddie in a predominately Caucasian section of town because they believed white schools were better. It turned out to be damaging.

Niagara was a town steeped in racist history, much like other smaller cities during the seventies. Drunken teens drove by in pickup trucks and yelled “nigger”. Her parents wanted Maddie to ignore them, but it was impossible for her not to see how brutal the world was.

In a classroom full of white students, the teacher required them to read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn aloud. Maddie was the only black student, and whenever someone said the word “nigger” from the Mark Twain novel, which happened frequently, her peers turned and looked at her. They thought it was a joke and often used the n-word outside the classroom. Maddie complained, but the teacher said it was part of the book and she didn’t have the power to change the reading list.

There was no safe place for Maddie. She felt trapped at home and only had a few nerdy girlfriends, equally traumatized. She grew up feeling ugly and ashamed of her color and her Afro-centric features. Depression followed her around like an old dog.

Maddie sat between her two sisters at church every Sunday, listening to the sermons about forgiveness, brotherly love, and preparing for God’s deliverance—but all the time, thinking how unfair God was for making people behave the way they do. The world was rotten, and no amount of churchgoing would change it.

Her depression worsened, so her parents sent her to a psychologist to “get the problem fixed.” She slowly revealed her sad life to her therapist, but when the session ended, she left without answers. The therapist enlisted her parents for help, but they made things worse, monopolizing the session and bagging on Maddie to the point of tears.

Despite being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Maddie excelled academically—especially in her English classes, always getting the highest grades for her creative storytelling. She wasn’t sure what kind of writer she would become but knew that was what she wanted to do. Upon graduation, she enrolled in the State University of New York with high hopes but was unable to finish the school year due to mental health issues. During that time, however, she developed a book idea, wrote a proposal to an agent, and was signed to a contract.

Her mantra was, “I want to be someone special and leave this stinkin’ town.” She knew she was a talented writer and was determined to convince the world.

Her writing career became official when she signed a book contract with a major publisher. With the money she made, she left Niagara for Philadelphia, which was close to New York City and affordable.

Maddie envisioned having a book on the New York Times Bestsellers List and having speaking engagements and book tours. She dreamed of being wealthy and living in the Caribbean, where brown people looked like her, and she wouldn’t feel self-conscious. Maddie imagined a day when white people wouldn’t be abusive. Perhaps when she becomes famous, people will stop calling her a nigger.

In the following years, some of her dreams were realized. She published another nonfiction book about felines. The book didn’t make her wealthy, but she earned enough to make her feel like a success. She was invited to morning talk shows to discuss her book and proudly described the various cats on the runway. When she returned from the last show on her book tour, she resumed her mundane life, working as a waitress in a Center City pub, feeling underemployed and unhappy.

Shortly after arriving in Philadelphia, she put a personal ad in the Daily News: “Young black woman new to the city, looking for friendship and adventure.” She made it clear she was not in the market for a “sex buddy” or a man who treated her with disrespect because she had plenty of that in the past.

I answered Maddie’s personal ad with low expectations, thinking it would be a one-time thing. But, to my surprise, we clicked. The date lasted six hours and might have gone longer if it hadn’t rained.

“You look like Dustin Hoffman,” she said.

“You remind me of Angela Davis,” I replied.

It didn’t matter if we were of different colors or religions. Our chemistry made us feel we were destined to be together. She enjoyed my sense of humor, and I appreciated her charming intellect. We planned another date and then saw each other regularly. But the longer I knew Maddie, the more sorrow I saw in her eyes. She tried to hide it, but her darkness was palpable and hovered over her like an onyx-colored cloud. Call me stupid, but it didn’t matter how troubled she was. I grew up with a schizophrenic mother, and I was used to being around unstable women with mood swings.

While driving Maddie home after a disturbing movie, she confessed that a man had raped her as a child. The memory of the rape, she said, was fragmented—like missing puzzle pieces scattered on the floor. Maddie said the incident occurred near a frozen lake in the middle of winter amidst swirling winds and cold temperatures. She remembered being naked with her feet stuck to the ice and unable to move.

“Did this man touch you?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” she told me at first, but later opened up.

She was ambivalent about talking. Sometimes, she stopped herself mid-sentence while describing the man’s clothing, how he smelled, and where the incident occurred.

“He was a male friend of the family,” she revealed, “but I’m not sure of his name or why he was left alone with me. I can still feel his hot breath on my neck.”

She had a detached look when she talked about the incident.

“When I told my mother this man had touched me, she said I was making it up. I begged her to believe me.”

“I don’t care about your phony stories, Maddie,” her mother yelled. “Didn’t I teach you better?”

“But Mom, it’s true.”

“Hush your mouth before I put my hand to your behind.”

Her father responded: “Your imagination will get you trouble one day, Maddie.”

“Dad, I’m not lying. It happened!”

“Don’t sass me, girl! I don’t want to hear about that young man. I know his pops, and he wouldn’t do something like that unless provoked.”

When Maddie told me about her parent’s reaction to the rape, I shook my head in disbelief. “How can your parents be so blind?”

“I must have provoked that man,” Maddie kept repeating, never letting go of the guilt.

She hoped marriage would make her forget. But the painful memories persisted. A simple ceremony couldn’t heal her traumatic wounds. It was like a poisonous arrow stuck to her that couldn’t be removed.

Supporting her was not easy. Maddie often misinterpreted my concern and protection for wanting to control her. When I reminded her to take her medications or about an upcoming doctor’s appointment, she shouted: “Stop treating me like a child!”

I went from a savior to an enemy. Nothing I did was right. The more I tried to help, the more verbal abuse I received. Maddie saw me as the scolding and unloving parent.

Her mental state got so bad that she removed her clothes one night and ran into the Philadelphia winter. She said she was returning to the “lake” to tie up loose ends, which was over 400 miles.

Of course, she never made it to the lake that night. Instead, the police found her wandering the broken sidewalks of North Philly. They put her in cuffs, wrapped her in a blanket, and transported her to the nearest psychiatric ward.

Her psychiatrist committed her to a private psychiatric hospital, and eventually, she received electroconvulsive shock therapy that took away much of her memory. She told me she smelled her brain sizzle during these treatments and watched her thoughts disappear into a fog of smoke. She forgot the name of her first dog and her favorite teacher. But she still remembered the frigid winter winds on the lake.

Each ECT treatment destroyed parts of Maddie. She stopped having conversations and showed little affection. She grew thinner and aged ten years when she left the hospital. She lacked energy and wanted to sleep away the days. She made daily entries in her journal and tried to regain the missing parts of her memory, but when she attempted to write, her medication made her tired and unable to concentrate.

However, her foggy mind eventually cleared to the point where she resumed normal activities. She attended school functions for our children and worked at temporary jobs. But I knew something wasn’t right. Then I found the suicide note she left on my desk. She had been carrying a gun in her purse. She was planning to use it, and I quickly called her psychiatrist, who told me to notify the police to take her to the hospital.

Maddie wanted to die. “You’ll be better off without me,” she said in the note.

She planned to put a bullet in her head.

Once I took the gun away from her, she was back in the hospital. Despite being cooperative and friendly with all the staff, she attempted to hurt herself and was immediately put on suicide watch.

I wondered how soon I’d receive a phone call from the hospital telling me my wife had died. I had been preparing for it, visualizing myself at the morgue, identifying her body, calling her family to tell them the bad news, and then making funeral arrangements. But the phone call never came. She had been on the way to recovery, optimistic about her future, and had several books in the works when it all came crashing down again—but this time, it wasn’t her mental illness that was to blame.

Maddie had been bothered by a leg issue. Her doctor admitted her into the hospital for further testing. Initially, the doctors diagnosed her with phlebitis. Then, after more testing, they changed that to septic thrombophlebitis. But the treatment didn’t work, and her condition spread like wildfire. From there, they diagnosed her again, this time with a rare form of cancer, and chemotherapy was implemented— but it was too late. She was only in her mid-fifties.

When I saw her a few days before her death, she was a shadow of herself. Her body had deteriorated, reminiscent of those in concentration camps. She looked at me with her rheumy eyes, and I cried.

“Don’t cry,” she said. “I’ve accepted this, and I’m looking forward to it.”

At the funeral, I was still in shock. Familiar people and strangers offered their condolences. But it felt awkward, and I didn’t know what to say. The loss was personal, and it felt uncomfortable having people approach me who didn’t know the whole story. However, with each kind word, a tear dropped. They were grief words. They reminded me that death chooses its victims randomly, and it’s the luck of the draw who lives and dies. One day, it will be my turn, and people will give their condolences to my son and daughter, and they will feel awkward, too.

 

END

 

 

 

MARK TULIN is a former family and sex therapist, joke writer, and fruit peddler from Philadelphia who lives with his wife in Long Beach, California. Mark has five poetry books: Magical Yogis, Awkward Grace, Junkyard Souls, Rain on Cabrillo, Uncommon Love Poems—and one fiction collection, The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories. Mark is featured in Amethyst Review, White Enso, Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, The Writing Disorder, Defenestration, The Haight Ashbury Literary Review, and others. Mark was a Pushcart nominee and included in The Drabble’s Best of Drabble. A publisher once compared Mark’s work to that of artist Edward Hopper regarding how he grasps people’s peculiar traits. Follow Mark at www.crowonthewire.com.

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