The Projects
May 1, 2008
The commercial iron gate swung open, clanging against a metal pole. With his hands stuffed in his pockets, Lethe crossed the hard, crumpled grass of the quadrangle. The air on his face was cold as steel. Forty feet ahead of him, two black men were rooted under floodlights. They appeared to be guarding the base of the building, their rugged profiles hidden under hooded sweatshirts. A hunched black lady with a little girl was also walking across the quadrangle.
“I need your help.” He said.
The child inched closer to her mother’s leg.
“What-u need?”
“Dope. Can you help me?”
“Do I look like a pusherman to you? Not every black person sells drugs. Can’t you see I got my baby with me?”
“I’m desperate here. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“How much you got?”
“Fifty bucks.”
“Maybe you should stay away from ‘dem drugs.”
“Sixty?”
“Give me two hundred.”
She strutted with a limp ahead of him. They passed the black men in hooded sweatshirts, entering the cavern-like darkness of the corridor. The stairs went up the side of the building which was shielded by chain-metal, cold air pouring through the chinks. On the ninth floor she had him wait while she went down the hall to knock on somebody’s door.
“What-u doing?” The little girl asked.
“Just waiting for your mom to come back.”
“She ain’t my momma. She my granny.”
“Sorry. Your granny—”
“Why my granny buying you drugs?”
“She’s not buying me drugs, okay. She’s doing me a favor.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever you say . . .”
“I just want to get out of here. This place freaks me out.”
“Scardy-cat.”
“Hush, will ya?”
“Crackhead.”
“What did you just say?”
“Crackhead.”
“I’m not a crackhead.”
“Crackhead. Crackhead.”
How Lethe woke up in the emergency room
His father’s Middle Eastern nose and black mustache loomed above him. The unforgettable scent of deodorant and anxiety was radiating from the Doctor’s silk shirt.
Beside the hospital drape, his mother was hunched over in her wheelchair with a bag of unopened Twizzlers on her lap. She yawned under the weight of her slouching upper body. The Doctor made a motion to the caretaker to pull her up. As her body was being raised, Rose turned her face upwards to her son. Spittle ran down the side of the mouth, which the caretaker was quick to blot with a sodden napkin.
In the fog of a semi-conscious state, Lethe tried to make out his surroundings. Coughing, he felt something lodged in his throat.
“You weren’t breathing.” His father’s voice was stern.
“I wasn’t?”
Beside Lethe, a respiratory machine emitted a constant beep. The Doctor inspected his son’s eyes.
“The police came to the apartment. They found heroin all over.”
“They did?”
From behind the partitioning drape, voices of doctors and nurses made a circling chant. Lethe’s father stepped back from his son, assessing his overall physical status.
“You’ll be moved into the psych ward later tonight.”
“I will?”
Lethe turned to his mother. Her pensive gaze was weighing on him. Was she upset? Worried?
“What mom?”
“Your mother brought you some candy.” His father said.
A Conversation with Dr. Offenbach
The confines of the mental ward produced a very strange reaction in Lethe. Whereas most of the adolescent patients rebelled against their captivity in the ward, Lethe found a certain comfort in being taken care of and treated as if he were different. The schedule for each day involved stretching in the morning, breakfast, arts and crafts, group therapy, meeting with your doctor, lunch, naptime, drug and alcohol classes, afternoon activities, and dinner. He had his own room with a double-plate glass window that looked out at a heating unit on top of a hospital building, and his mother and father usually came once a week to bring him Twizzlers.
Lethe took an extreme pleasure in meeting with his learned psychiatrist each day. Dr. Offenbach, having studied psychology for many years, was a precious resource to Lethe. As Lethe saw it, his doctor was helping him to discover the secrets of his mind. Dr. Offenbach was like his personal assistant on the journey toward self-realization.
Dr. Offenbach wrote in his reports: “the patient says he is cultivating himself to become a genius” and “the patient says he has to return to college where he can resume his work in solitude”. When confronted about his use of drugs, Lethe told the doctor that “he occasionally took Ritalin to concentrate better”.
“But the police found heroin all over your mother’s apartment, correct?”
“Heroin? Yes, I did that.”
“But I thought you were studying to become a genius.”
“I am. I have a duty to myself, to cultivate myself. I can’t be bothered by anyone.”
“What about the heroin, Lethe? Were you taking heroin?”
“Only as an experiment.”
“But the police found fourteen separate plastic baggies of heroin in your mother’s apartment. That sounds like a little more than an experiment to me.”
“I liked the way it felt.”
“But you agree that heroin wasn’t going to help you study?”
“No, it wasn’t going to help me study. But it did more than that. It brought me to that place.”
“What place, Lethe?”
“The place—you know—where Authors go.”
In the meantime, Dr. Offenbach arranged for his patient to be flown out to Tucson, Arizona where Lethe would attend a thirty-day rehabilitation program.
