Burning Place

Psychiatry is the practice of burning through someone until there is nothing left.

The sunlight streaming in through the massive windows made Dr. Sumter seem like she was on fire; flames licking up the sides of her face and through her hair. Jeannette sincerely hoped that the flames consumed her, that she left behind only a pile of ashes and soot on her beige leather chair. That way, she wouldn't have to continue answering questions only for them to be recorded and forgotten about later.

"So you feel like your biological mother abandoned you then?"

Jeannette, who was lounging across a long deep brown coach casually, rolled her eyes at this.

"Leaving someone, that is the definition of abandonment isn't it?" she replied, looking over Dr. Sumter's shoulder through the windows at the leaves which were just starting to come in as spring blew in.

"Shall we pull out the dictionary and check?"

Jeannette snorted contrarily. This line of conversation, that of her biological mother, was one which had been turned over and explored in every conceivable way. The way she felt over the edges of the issue reminded Jeannette of finding rocks buried in the soft dirt in the summer, discarding worms and bugs, and plunging searching fingers deep into the earth.

She watched the clock rapturously as the psychiatrist droned on about medication, about managing. The second hand seemed to be growing slower the longer she watched it, dripping from one number to the next before finally, finally Dr. Sumter released her.

As she made her way through the sunny yellow halls, she was struck by the way it was so easy for Dr. Sumter to slip into the ideal identity for the next person she had to see. (A crier, she knew from the way there was always snotty tissue jammed in between the couch cushions when he was there first).

Gilbert's loud, eggplant car pulled up then and she was freed from her momentary lapse in consciousness. (Something her doctor is always talking about, being conscious). The tinted windows make the world outside look far away. As they passed street after street, neighbors waving as they chugged past, they all seemed to be growing farther and farther from her. Not in a necessarily corporeal since, but like the edges of the sun were always inching closer to them and always consuming.

She turned back to him, and he grinned brightly.

The inside of the house she grew up in was an almost suffocating shade of orange. Both inside and out, the color of fruit and bad trips painted every wall. When she was a child, she used to stare into it, waiting for it to reach out for her or at least become malleable so that she could plunge her short fingers into it and take some of that warmth (however fleeting) for herself.

Her and her mother (or not her mother, not really, but the woman who raised her) were close in a very purposeful and tenacious way. They were close in the way that long nights of forced movie watching, failed dinners leading to take out, and single mom syndrome always breeds- a comradery built on necessity.

Her mother was a psychic. She read palms and told fortunes out of their garage, refurbished to look authentic. Whether or not she actually believed she had mystical powers was unclear to Jeannette, even after 30 years of knowing her mother. Mostly, it just made her incredibly cryptic.

"How was the doctor's, dear?" she inquired while searching through the cabinets for something edible.

"Same old, same old," Jeannette replied as she opened the top cabinet for her mother who stretched up in a futile attempt to reach it by herself.

"She thinks I'm crazy, the doctor does," Jeannette continued.

"Everyone has their own truth, Jeannette. Did you tell her that?"

Jeannette laughed.

"She didn't appreciate the sentiment."

"Well, I think you should just go find the woman. I mean, she's been bothering you for almost 20 years, Jeannette. It's the least you could do," her mom said very matter-of-factly before puttering off to do something else.

Jeannette sighed.

Gilbert had been insisting upon that for years at that point. He firmly believed that the only way to solve her problems was to hunt down the woman who Jeannette had learned at 12 was her birth mother. He,

unlike her psych and unlike her mother, believed her whole heartedly. An avid believer in cryptids and things that go bump in the night, the existence of curses was hardly too big for him to swallow.

She had always declined, maintaining that her psychiatrist was right and that complacency was the easiest way to deal with the woman and all her questions. But lately, as the questions got more repetitive and the medications more numerous, she had begun to wonder if just maybe, being compliant was not the best course. She glanced out the window, just in time to see her elderly neighbor's face be incased in fire, the sunlight too bright and piercing through her skin.

9 months later.

Their plan was to drive through southern California, and then straight into Nevada. It was hot, spring in full swing and the temperatures in the desert starting to climb once again, and they had little gas and food money, but somehow the existence of a mission something other than silent waiting made her feel alive again. She felt as if with every mile that slipped behind them, more blood than she was accustomed to coursed through her blood stream. She felt whole, for once.

California was left behind them and guided by semi-coherent texts from her mother, they soon broached Reno.

Reno, a burning edifice to urban sprawl. The original geographic iconography. Every person they passed seemed to be full of fire, contained into one body and tamed in a way that in no way resembled the images of consumption which plagued her in Monterey.

They drove in silence. Gilbert was content to listen to his cassettes and Jeannette was entranced watching the buildings and people slide by.

When they finally reached the address that had to be wheedled out of her mother, it felt as if they were facing sprawling locked gates, encasing what was inside forever, and they had no key. While intimidating, the actual design of the building was, if anything, lack luster. A small dusty duplex shoved in between rows of identical little closet-sized buildings.

"You ready?" he asked her gently.

"I guess. It feels like a closing, doesn't it? We haven't even done anything yet."

"Well, if it doesn't work, then we'll try something else."

"Like what?"

He shrugged.

Both exited the car, and the gravel crunching under their feet gave her flashbacks to studying The Odyssey, the descent into the underworld.

The door grew bigger as they got closer. It was not particularly notable, olive green painted metal with a screen. She imagined her breaking down to nothing but ash and being blown through the screen. Filtered.

They must have stood out there for long enough for neighbors to notice, an elderly man wrapped up in a coat, pulled back the blinds to watch them. Gilbert waved slightly, features twisting in discomfort.

The length of time that they stood out there, trying to gather to courage to put what was essentially a lifelong gamble to rest, was irrelevant. What's important is that after the silence, after the old man watching them suspiciously, Jeanette did eventually knock hesitantly on the metal door. She heard the screen door behind in rustle and knew that her opportunity to leave, to forget the entire expedition had happened, had long since passed.

The door wrenched open, and a woman stood facing them. Jeanette felt the surprise curl around her; the woman had hair so short it almost looked buzzed off and wore heavy jeans and work boots along with her raggedy button up. A moment of fragile enquiry appeared and passed as Jeanette considered the possibility that her mother was only humoring her- that the woman who she claimed was Jeannette's biological mother had never lived here to begin with. But staring into the woman's face, the similarity really was striking. The same mousy brown hair, the same hooked nose, and slate grey eyes. Even the way in which the woman's fingers (sturdy, unlike Jeannette's whose were delicate and birdlike) curled around the door in clinging suspicion like plastic wrap settling over a long past spoiled left over was reminiscent of her.

"What do you want?" the woman crowed from the door.

"I'm Jeanette. Can we come in?"

The woman glanced between the two of them, eyes lingering maliciously on Gilbert. She seemed to

deem them no threat though, as she let them in.

Gilbert smiled nicely when they entered, reaching for one of the many wooden and glass knick knacks strewn around the duplex.

"How pretty-"

"Don't touch that," she snapped and Gilbert reeled his arms back in, sufficiently cowed.

"Now will you tell me why you're here?" she asked Jeannette, identifying her as the leader apparently.

Jeannette glanced at Gilbert before she began to speak.

3 hours later.

"You believe you've been cursed? And that my s****y old show girl costume will free you?"

Jeannette wanted to protest, wanted to assure her that she was completely in her right mind and apologize for bothering her. The sense of shame that always seemed to rear its head like a leviathan immerging from the deep black parts of the ocean. The point of the journey was, in some ways, to free not just herself but also her mom (her real mom, the one that had raised her and scolded her and had gone out of her way and past her paycheck to take her to the aquarium on days when Jeannette was in an especially poor mood) from the sense of lingering shame. She was very much tired of being the crazy girl, identified as such by neighbors and other kids and her doctors. At times she felt like her only allies throughout the entire debacle were those that insisted upon her sanity, in their own ways.

The woman, Opal she had learned, was not about to do any such thing.

Instead of saying all this though, Jeannette simply answered: "Basically."

It took some time for Opal to dig through her boxes of artifacts from her youth- by the time she had found what she was looking for sunset was nearing them.

The costume, though dilapidated and damaged from being kept in a box for 30 years, was still stunning. Feathers indeed adorned it, bright colorful ones made of plastic and some which appeared to be hawk feathers, deep red and rusty brown. The fabric seemed to move by it's own accord, orange and yellow

beads danced like fire in the light of the kitchen where the ensemble was being displayed.

"One feather?" Opal asked.

"One feather," Jeannette confirmed.

Slowly, she plucked one hawk feather from the bodice. Her blunt nails scraped across the surface and soon the feather was freed and undamaged.

As they stepped outside, Gilbert lugging a metal basin with fuel in it, the sun began to set. It lit up the sky in a bright yellow and orange.

"The sky's burning," Gilbert murmured.

"Good," Jeannette replied.

Jeannette took the feather from Opal, cradling it in her hands gently like one would an injured animal.

She dropped the feather in just as opal lit and dropped the match. The entire basin went up in what was a miraculous display of nature's power. The feather was consumed in seconds, and the flames licked the sides of the basin like long blue and orange tongues before the fire died.

By the time it was completely out, and the three of them had been snapped out of their trance, the sun had completely set and the sky was dark again.

"How do you feel?" Gilbert asked on the car on the way back.

Jeannette looked at him from the corner of her eye and shrugged.

"Better."

Psychiatry is a much disputed science, controversial for a multitude of reasons. From a patients point of view, they were the match whose bright fire consumed them but also gave them purpose and a sense of identity while the sweeping fingers of the doctor grew ever closer, determined to extinguish the fire leaving nothing but ash behind.