If the Mountain Were Smooth

happened.

The Beginning of the End

I guess I just don’t know what you mean, Faith smiled at me. Her teeth were a little gray, but not in a way that most people would notice.

I don’t know, I mumbled, and shrugged.

Is there an event that brought this on?

No. I don’t think.

Are you saying you want to end your life?

No. I’m not saying that.

Then why this belief that death is eminent?

I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. I just have a feeling, that’s all.

How long have you felt this way?

I don’t know. I can’t tell. Time seems to run into itself all the time. As far as I can tell.

Well, you didn’t mention this to me last week, so it must be a more recent idea, right?

I don’t know. I don’t really remember. I could feel myself scrunching up my nose, twisting my hair on my fingers.

Well, you know this is kind of an unusual thing for you to expect, don’t you? I’m worried about the repercussions for you. If you believe your death is eminent, you might be driven to do things impulsively. Does that sound correct for you?

I guess. I don’t know. I guess what you just said makes sense. I’m a little confused.

What confuses you?

I don’t know. Everything. Death, life, what it all means, everything. I don’t know. I’m confused by a lot of things. I’m confused by the color of the sky. I’m confused about why raindrops sound like they do. I’m confused why the devil’s always knocking on my door, begging to come in, and why I left my house years ago but I swear I’m still there today, and they never left, any of them. They all stayed. I don’t understand why I feel this way… I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t understaaand-

Wow, that is a lot to be confused about. You know, you’ve been through a lot. More than the average person. That might explain why you’re experiencing so many different emotions. And there isn’t any reason for you to believe that death is eminent- no substantial reason. Maybe, in time, you’ll find that this belief is only transient. We’re running out of time. About your payment-

I blinked and was out of focus. I know I paid her. At least, I think I did. I know I was in my car on the way back to my apartment only a second later. At least, it felt like a second. It could have been longer, I guess. Actually, I guess it would have had to have been longer. I kept forgetting how time works.

I hated this city. I only moved here for work. The air was dirty. There was trash everywhere. Everything always seemed gray. The color of everything was always gray, even when it wasn’t. Even the pretty colors, like pink and purple and some shades of blue, they were always gray in this city. I couldn’t understand why. I hated it. I hated all of it.

I guess I shouldn’t think that. I should think positively. I shouldn’t always think negatively. That’s what Faith would tell me, I think. Not to think about how much I hated everything. After all, I had my apartment. I had my job. I even had school, most of the time. I wasn’t out living on the streets. I had stuff.

My apartment was on the fifteenth floor. It was in a ratty building, kind of. It’s hard to find real estate in this city. It’s always too expensive. The apartment I rented was too expensive. It was small. Kind of. I had a kitchenette, and space for a couch, and a separate bedroom, even. My walls were gray. I wasn’t allowed to paint them. My couch was baby blue and covered in plastic. My coffee table was glass with white, wooden table legs and the kitchenette was all blue and white. Some silver.

I thought it would be nice to have the front room always matching. The bed was pink. At least, the bedspread was. A nice, pretty, light pink, with big, fluffy white pillows that went with the white dresser and nightstand. The bedposts were wooden and white. I wanted white to brighten up everything. I only realized after I had already purchased everything that it would all eventually turn gray. That made me feel sad.

Sometimes, I felt kind of trapped in this room. I don’t really know why. I felt like it was suffocating me, a lot of the time. Like it was a cage. A cleverly disguised, nicely decorated cage. A cage I wasn’t supposed to know was a cage.

I sat down on the couch. I had already set out my homework on the coffee table earlier that day. It was English. I was supposed to compare To Kill a Mockingbird with Their Eyes were Watching God. I didn’t see how they had anything to do with each other, really. I figured the professor wanted some paper on black culture and maybe even feminism, or how they’re the same thing, or something. She didn’t like my job. She didn’t like me because she didn’t like my job. I didn’t care. Not really.

I looked across the room to the painting of me on the wall in lingerie. I smiled briefly and vaguely. It had been sent to me by my biggest fan. That’s what she called herself, anyway. I believed her. She always sent me letters. She wanted to be just like me. I tried to tell her I wasn’t really that great. Didn’t matter. This girl lived in Iowa and she thought I was the most beautiful thing.

She had only ever gotten two jobs. She didn’t have an agent. She asked me how she could move to New York City, too. I told her to get good grades and get a scholarship to a university. She asked me if that’s what I’d done. I told her, no, I only went to community college part-time. But if she really wanted to move here, that would be the easiest way to make it happen.

She asked me if the city was really magical. I didn’t know what to say. She’d never been here. I didn’t want to lie to the girl. I didn’t want to kill her with the truth, either. I didn’t want to tell her how people were rude, and everything was too expensive, and the industry was competitive, especially for someone who’d only ever had two jobs, and that everything was gray, always so gray. Always so fucking gray. So, I told her, yes, it was magical. Especially if you liked shopping. That made her happy. It was a lie. At least, to me it was. Maybe not to her. Maybe, she’d really think it was magical.

I had already started the essay yesterday, I realized. I just had to finish it today. Should’ve done it earlier, really. It was due that night. I started to work on it. I kept an eye on the clock. It was a medium-size clock, with roman numerals for numbers. If I didn’t pay attention to it, time might escape me. Or it might not. I might go backwards in time. I did that sometimes. And when I woke up, it was the next day. Or just later that day. But the going backwards always made the time go forwards too fast. I knew that for a fact.

I only had two classes. I had this English class. It was a literature class. And then I had a science class. It was an environmental science. It was my third year being a part-time college student. This was my last semester before I got my Associate’s degree. I wasn’t really sure that an Associate’s degree would qualify me to do anything, but I would have one. I didn’t know what to major in. I thought I’d know after three years. I didn’t. I didn’t even have an idea. I was equally good at everything, and I didn’t enjoy any of it.

I was in-the-middle. Like, on the left- and right-brain tests you take, I mean. I was always neither. I was always both. I was just in-the-middle. I wasn’t really good at STEM or English or whatever it is that’s the opposite of STEM. I was just good enough at everything. I always got a B in every class. Always. Never a B+. Never a B-. Always just a B. Always in the middle. Always.

I guessed it really didn’t matter what I’d major in. If any serious employer bothered to do a Bing search on me they’d know they didn’t want to hire me pretty quickly. Then again, I guessed it might also increase my chances. I guessed I could work as an assistant or something. A secretary, probably. I didn’t need any job like that at the time, anyway. Besides, I was going to die before I even got a chance to try at any of the boring jobs. I was pretty sure about that. I was positive.

I was typing my essay by the time I realized I’d finished writing it. I had a small Google Chromebook. I liked that it was small. I had a pink case on it. Light pink. I’d wanted it to be cute.

I was pacing. I was pacing when I finished the essay and I’d placed it in a polka dot binder in my Victoria Secret bag that I took to class. I paced a lot. I paced a lot when I was done doing something. Sometimes I watched TV. I knew it made more sense to watch TV for hours than it did to pace. But pacing burned calories. I thought. So, I paced instead, most of the time.

I thought I should eat before I went to class. But then I was in my car driving to my class and I’d forgotten all about eating. I didn’t really like eating. Faith told me I had to eat. I was a little underweight, but that was important in my profession, so to speak. Being thin was very important. And eating made me feel guilty. I didn’t like that feeling. Not at all. I’d rather be hungry.

My English professor was a feminist. A very vocal one, at that. She didn’t think women should wear makeup or bras or, well, be a woman. She didn’t like me but I always passed every test and she couldn’t pretend that I didn’t. But she looked at me with her dead-brown eyes behind her round old-hippie glasses and her unkempt dirt-brown bangs and she didn’t look very happy to see me alive and sitting in a chair in her classroom.

I liked to be quiet in class. I wasn’t very good at saying the right thing, so I liked to not say very many things at all. I was good at listening. I could give a statement if I really had to. Like if I was in a group and I had to say one thing. I could do that. But I didn’t like to. I was good at observing. I could tell a lot about a person from what they wore and the little things they said or did.

Like Jason. He was a guy in my class. He always wore his hat backwards. He liked to wear gold chains and white shirts and jackets with lots of patches and collars. He was a poser, a wannabe. He always wanted to hang out with the wannabe rappers who were never going to make it and drink Cîroc with them. And the wannabe rappers let him hang with them. Sometimes. But it was never enough for Jason. That was because he wasn’t supposed to be a poser. It never made him happy.

Jason liked to go out of his way to talk to me. I talked back, sometimes. When a response was required. He was nice. But he was only talking to me because I was pretty. I knew that. He thought I would look good on his arm or sitting in the passenger seat of his 1982 diesel Mercedes that had the dent on the passenger side and that he bought fucked up but fixed himself because he felt like he was a diesel mechanic. Jason was nice. But I couldn’t like anyone new right then. I didn’t think.

The class was over before it started, it seemed like. I wasn’t having a good day today. Today, everything was hazy. Everything was blurry at the edges. I couldn’t really concentrate. Some days I was better. Just not today.

Ace, we gotta go to Leroy’s, where’re you goin’ Man, I heard one of his friends talking to Jason.

I’ll be right back in a minute guys, he said. I didn’t turn around. Even confused, I knew he was on his way.

Hey Gabby, Jason was walking next to me. I didn’t look at him. It’s me. Ace. Your homeboy.

I smiled vaguely.

There’s that smile, he said. How’re you today?

Fine, I mumbled.

See, you’re lying. You know I can see right through that.

I didn’t say anything.

Me and my boys, we’re having a little get-together in his crib tonight, in case you wanna’ stop by or anything, you know what I’m saying.

Thanks for the invitation, Jason.

He scoffed in a half-humorous kind of way. I knew that was coming, he said. Look, I’ll let you get in your car. But tell me, why you single? You know, you’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re a model, what’s up with that?

I didn’t say anything.

Listen, you’re not a lesbian, are you?

I looked up at him. He was serious. It was a rare occasion. I almost laughed.

No, I’m not a lesbian, I mumbled.

Oh, so some boy hurt you real bad and now you hate all of us, he pouted.

I looked up at him.

I can see it in your eyes, Gabby. He smiled. But you’re not gay. You know what that means? I still got a chance.

I got in my car and shut the door.

Alright, talk to you Friday. Jason waved and ran back to his friends.

My car was a 2005 white Honda Civic and it drove smooth. Sometimes I could have a conversation like that. Even when I was messed-up, I mean. Even when things were hazy. Not always. But sometimes I can zoom in for a second. Occasionally I can focus. Every once in a while.

Some nights are dark. Some nights are cloudy and some nights are sooty and some nights are pitch-black and some nights are unlighted, sunless and vague. Hazy turns into different things at night. Strange things. And sometimes night happens in the middle of the day. Sometimes it happens at night. Tonight was one of those nights. The nights where it happens at night.

I know I was very young the first time I helped my mom cook crack-cocaine. I remember how I had to help her light it. Ether is dangerous. She needed help. I did a good job and she gave me candy. She gave me smarties in the little wrapper. Maybe I was four the first time. I’m not sure.

Mommy had to smoke crack because Daddy wasn’t very nice to her. I thought he was mean sometimes but she didn’t like it when I said that because Daddy always made sure we had food and money and a roof and Daddy took care of me and was very nice to me and it was the least I could do to show a little respect.

Mommy had a lot of problems if she wasn’t smoking. Daddy drank a lot but he really didn’t smoke hardly ever but Mommy had to smoke because otherwise she would be sick and angry and I didn’t want Mommy to be sick and angry and so I had to help her get well and stay well, especially. Mostly.

Daddy said I was his special girl. I was his little princess. I was the one that could make him be happy. But I had to do what he wanted. I had to help him with his special thing. It was the thing in his pants. The thing I didn’t have but he did have. I didn’t really know why he had one and I didn’t have one. I thought it was kind of weird. But it was funny to look at. It was kind of like a cake with filling and then after you emptied out all the filling it got really soft and squishy and it shriveled up. There was a lot of hair on it and I didn’t like that. But Daddy said it was okay.

If I was good then Daddy would let me do fun things and eat candy and junk food and sometimes if I was really good and we had a special day like sometimes on payday after Mommy had her cocaine and Daddy had his liquor he would even take me to McDonald’s and let me play in the play area and sometimes for a whole hour. And I could drink chocolate milk and if it was a really special day, I could get cookies or a McFlurry. But only if it was an extra special day. And only if I was really good for Daddy.

Mommy always smoked a lot of cigarettes. She usually smoked two packs a day. She said it made her feel better. We didn’t