Page 30 of Jacob Michaels is Trouble

“Like you.” I sighed.

“Like me.”

“Is that your memory?”

She smiled at me, took another sip of her coffee.

For several moments we stared across the table at each other, enjoying sips from our own coffee cups in amiable, comfortable silence. I tried making a timeline in my head but found it too complicated. With everything that had happened throughout my childhood, all of the unexplained, weird things, then my teenage years, discovering my sexuality, meeting Lucas, then…the well…it was driving me mad. Having been gone for ten years with the effects of what I’d done, then coming back and having all of those memories back…my mind just couldn’t handle it all.

The things in my past never got talked about, even with Oma. Everything was vague and referred to as though something we’d best just forget for fear of making things worse for ourselves. We were always on eggshells, doing our best to not draw attention to ourselves. At first, I thought it was just Oma’s way. When I was a little kid, that made sense to me. You just followed the lead of the person who was your guardian, whoever that may be. As I got older, I realized that we were trying to be discreet. In my mid-teens, I found out whose attention we were trying to avoid.

I just wanted to say things to say them.

I needed to process everything I knew.

But my head wouldn’t allow it.

Was that a side effect of being a kid and suffering through tremendously tricky events? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or something? Is that why things seemed to be somewhat blocked in my brain, keeping me from processing them? Was it a side effect of having my memories wiped clean when I jumped in the well the first time? Doing my best to think back to my life before I had jumped in the well at sixteen-years-old, I knew that I didn’t have PTSD or anything really psychologically wrong with me. My brain had just been programmed to push these things away, out of sight, out of mind. So much so that when I tried to think about them, my brain threw up a type of veil to keep me from thinking too hard.

“When I was a kid,” I said in a whisper, speaking to no one and everyone, “my mom just disappeared one day. My dad was at work. Mom was making breakfast, and The Police were playing on the radio.”

Carlita looked over at me, her face a blank slate.

Like my brain had been wiped clean of memories right after I jumped into the well the first time.

Tabula Rasa.

“I remember the house shaking.” I shook my head in frustration, trying to conjure up thoughts and memories that hadn’t been in my head for years and only came to me in dreams. Nightmares. “Lights and loud…fucking loud…sounds. Like a freight train and an earthquake all in one. Things were falling to the floor.”

Carlita was still staring blankly at me, and I was staring back as I spoke, as though in a trance placed by my own thought processes. I didn’t know why I was speaking so openly with Carlita, but I assumed oracles tended to have that effect on people. A drag queen oracle, even more so.

“Everything stopped, and everything was really still.”

Carlita waited.

“What happened after that, baby?” Carlita asked gently, her hand reaching for her coffee cup once more.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head jerkily. “I don’t remember seeing anything. But…I don’t remember anything after that until my dad was putting me to bed that night. He was tucking me in and reassuring me that mom would be back.”

No follow-up questions from Carlita.

“But she never came back.” My eyes locked on Carlita’s. “And Dad was gone in the morning. That’s when Oma showed up. To take care of me.”

“Who called Esther Jean?” Carlita asked lowly.

“I guess Dad?” I shrugged shakily. “I mean…I guess he knew someone had to watch me at that age if he was just going to up and take off as well, right? Grandparents are usually the first choice in those situations, right?”

“I suppose.”

Chewing at my lip, I stared at Carlita.

“I don’t remember Oma before she showed up. We were living in that house before Oma came to take care of me.” I said dryly. “I’ve never not lived in that house before or after Hollywood.”

Carlita stared.

“That’s not Oma’s house. Is it?”

More staring.

“A lot of my life is a lie,” I said with finality.

Carlita gave me a tight, concerned smile. With a shaky sigh, I slid from the booth seat and came to stand beside the table, looking down at the drag queen oracle known as “Carlita.”

“Thank you.” I shrugged.

“For what, baby?”

“Listening,” I responded. “I guess.”

She stared at me for a breath. “What will you do now?”

Again, I shrugged.

“About which problem?”

Then I left.