Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge

I tell her I'll see what I can do. I say, listen, I'm coming near an over­
pass; if the phone dies, you know why.
There is no overpass straight ahead. I toss the phone on the passenger
seat next to my work bag. The phone starts to ring. I press the end button.
When the street light turns red, I pull down the vanity mirror and smile into it.
My face feels waxy and stiff like a mannequin's. My work entails lots of smiles.
I'm a "College Adviser and Tutorial Specialist" at Pro-Ivy Education Center in
Encino. I read college admission essay drafts all day and hold up my head just
so that my emotions won't spill all over the pages and besmear the faces of
eager souls intent on getting into the best universities. These kids - or I should
say, their parents - pay for my wages. I can't exactly say, Look, this might do just
fine if you submit it with a bottle of vodka and a letter of apology.
Before I take the two flights up to the office I get three more missed
calls. I guess Sandy will have her suspicions by now. Maybe she's sorry that I'm
her legal conservator. Before me, it was Mother. But Mother was a total
pushover. That's what Julie, the case manager, thought too. Your mother can't
continue to let Sandy do whatever she wants to. She's so easily manipulated. We need to
do what's best for your sister, not what she wants.
What's best for Sandy. The second time Sandy slit her wrists, I practical­
ly moved back home. Mom was a mess. The doorbell rang at a predawn odd
hour, and I swallowed hard something that was trying to tumble out. At the
door I saw Mom and Sandy. Mom stood there looking like an invisible gun was
aimed between her eyes. Sandy had a chenille couch-throw wrapped around
her body. Show her, Mom said. Show her what you've done. Sandy held out both
wrists to me. Her left wrist had a powder-blue toilet paper wrapped around it. I
could see no blood, a good thing.
Mom sank to the floor. Which hospital do we go to, Deeyah? Tell me, and
we'll go. All the while Sandy said, It's okay. The blood is dried now. But she didn't
struggle when I drove her to the emergency.
She was out after the initial 72-hour hold. The hospital couldn't move
her to the recommended locked facility against the wishes of the conservator,
our mom. It kills any mom, even one with a stone for a heart, to hear her child saying,
'What kind of mother are you to put me in a place like this?' That was all Mother
could say.
It was either relinquishing Sandy to a public conservator, one of those
faceless bureaucrats who had two hundred other "cases," or having someone
else in the family take charge. Our father in Anchorage. He says, She's just lazy.
She has the lazy devil in her. All she needs is a month of hauling frozen salmon. So that
was that and I took over. And now Sandy calls me literally twenty times a day,
mostly collect.
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