“Don’t you want to change that?” Sam challenged him.
“I don’t know what I could say to make it better.”
“Just tell Raul the truth and let him work it out. A hard truth is always better than a soft lie.”
Sam opened the journal, reading the pristine penmanship of a woman who could barely control her life or emotions, and yet found a way to rein them in just long enough to write them down.
“Writing is healing,” Sam’s father had once praised her when she confessed her dream job of becoming a columnist. She had expressed doubt in her career aspirations, since who would listen to a silly woman when there were much smarter men out there? “Every person has something worth saying, Sam. Don’t stifle your gifts—your words could one day heal the world.” Sam had believed her dad back then, and she still believed him now.
“I have an idea…” Sam began tentatively. It was unconventional for sure, and it’d be breaching a fine line that could further hurt Raul more than help him, but at this point, anything was worth a shot. “I’d be willing to help you tell Raul in a way that I think would be easier for him to handle, but you might not like what I’m about to suggest…”
Gabriel straightened then leaned toward her. “I’m listening…”
And while Sam added yet another secret between her and Raul, Raul was busy amassing an even bigger secret of his own.
Women’s House Magazine
September 1971 Issue
Samantha Says…
Q:Dear Samantha,
It is a Saturday morning, normal in every way. My son has just turned one, and a fierce headache insinuates itself early on. By breakfast, the pain is piercing. This explains why I am skulking around with a futile remedy of my mother’s: a soft cloth tied around my head smelling of Vick’s Vapo-Rub to “draw out the pain.” I wear it like a warrior headdress, while every muscle in my body tenses as if in a battle against self. In a way, I am.
I stand at the kitchen sink, looking out at a world in which I no longer relate. It feels like I’ve been standing here forever, rinsing dishes, wiping surfaces, my horizon full of fearful days and nights, falling like dominoes, one after the other in sluggish succession.
Desperate for normalcy, I have decided to start writing: diaries, letters, an unfinished book—anything to redirect my thoughts. When I’m not caring for my son, I bend my neck and with trembling hands jot, tittle, jot, tittle. Sometimes the words flow so beautifully that I think they’re from a stranger, and other times I wonder if I’m doing a good job at anything, agonizing over every last detail until my mind is awash with self-doubt. Is my son’s delayed speech because of me? Will I have enough milk to last the week? Must I venture in public to the store so soon? Am I a good enough wife? Am I a loving enough mother?
I push myself to maintain pristine housekeeping, to the point where I am maniacal in my need to set everything in order, endlessly folding doll-sized underwear, matching myriad socks one by one, searching far too long for the one missing its mate. Cleaning is always at the top of my list of mindless activities, probably to distract me from thinking of anything else. The house sparkles, every inch a Pledge-dusted sea of clean. My intense need to straighten, dust, sweep, mop, and wash exhausts me, but my hands and feet will not stop. As I stand back looking at missed spots, I internally punish myself.
When I am not sorting and cleaning, and my pen hasn’t touched paper, I dwell. Nightly insomnia renders me useless most days, and overcompensating on my good days also drives me to exhaustion. My throat tightens when I eat, and food leaves me feeling empty. Who can swallow past what feels like a large rock wedged in my throat?
During my last doctor visit, I spoke to him of my problems, but mere words cannot describe this internal hell. When he turned to my husband, he made disconcerting tut-tutting noises.
“You’re too thin,” he observed.
“Yes, I can’t eat,” I explained, pleased finally someone noticed.
“You look haggard,” he added.
“That’s because I don’t sleep,” I offered as though I was handing him a menu of my ailments.
Looking over me, he studied something on the wall behind me, scribbled something in my chart, and shook his head at me. When I closed my purse with a click, my husband wrapped his arm around my bony shoulders, but it felt too heavy. The guilt of my wifely failures was too great. I was little more than a useless feral cat, slinking around the corners of life.
“Hysteria,” the doctor declared pointedly.
No kidding! I wanted to scream at him. Instead I said nothing.
Today, my acrobatic heart goes on a rampage, turning somersaults in my chest, heartbeat thundering in my ears like a herd of horses. What plagues me most is the nightmarish restlessness, now extending down my arms, the back of my neck, my jaw. Terrified, I call to a neighbor through my open window. The rest is a blur, except for the worried, frightened face of my son.
Within a few minutes—or hours, or days, for they all feel the same to me now—a screaming ambulance rounds the corner, and after a cursory examination, two paramedics load me onto a stretcher and out I go, like a piece of furniture of no more use. In the ambulance, safe from the world, I cling to one thought and one thought only: Wherever I’m going, I hope they keep me.
After a few hours, the ER doctor releases me to my concerned and perplexed husband with a diagnosis of “neurasthenia,” a catch-all diagnosis for certain female maladies when a wife is unable to function due to strange, unexplainable symptoms.
I return home to the scene of the crime and cry for several days. My husband, good and kind in every way, is clumsy in his efforts to soothe. He stands nearby watching helplessly.
