You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know by Heather Sellers

Author:Heather Sellers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-01T21:00:00+00:00

The house fell through. The status quo prevailed. Married but not living as married. A family that wasn’t functioning like a family. Fine and not at all fine.

A giant manila envelope came in the mail. Wisconsin post-mark. No return address. It was a letter from my cousin Patty, Katy’s daughter. Enclosed were photocopies of Katy’s skeleton drawings, and family recipes. I had forgotten I had written Patty back when I first contacted the scientists about schizophrenia and face blindness. She was the only one who had answered.

Let me answer your questions one at a time. No, no one in the family has mental illness as far as I know. Aunt Florence had a severe paranoid reaction in Europe and had to come right back home, but do not bring this up to anyone—she doesn’t want anyone to know, especially your mother. I was in a mental ward for six months due to a breakdown brought on by exhaustion after I had my two children and working so much. My mother (Katy) died of agoraphobia and emphysema—she couldn’t leave her bedroom the last three years of her life. People always said your mother was peculiar, but there was no mental illness in the family.

To the contrary, it sounded like every female member of the family suffered some form of mental illness, and childbirth was a specific trigger. The sheaves of drawings were the same kind hidden in my mother’s bedroom closet, the ones she’d forbidden us to look at. There was one of a snake eating a blood-drippy heart, the snake wrapped in other snakes. Dave asked me to put the drawings away. He was worried that spending time with them would upset me. But I liked them. I liked the boldness and weirdness. I liked being in the presence of the strange, dark, unstoppable creative impulse.

I was in the tub with a glass of wine when the phone rang. I wrapped myself in a towel and answered.

“Your mother is very hurt, very hurt, Heather, by your saying you do not love her, and you must make amends, you really must. She’s your one and only mother!”

I didn’t recognize the voice at all. Had I ever heard it before? It was old and forceful, midwestern, Germanic, terrifying. I pretended to know whose it was.

“Love is a two-way street, and she’s your one and only mother. My circle is praying for the two of you to heal. It would be wonderful if you and me and your mom could go to church all together when we are up there. I can’t get her to go down here! She thinks she’s sinned too much! Oh, Heather! So much healing. So much—”

“Who are you?” I said finally. My voice sounded polite and afraid.

It was Bernie. She was visiting my mother in Orlando, and they were driving up to see me. They would arrive Monday. Hadn’t I gotten the letter?

They’d gone to kindergarten together, my mother explained when she got on the phone. Bernie, she said, was her best friend.

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