Seven words. "I’m sorry. There’s nothing here for you.” Those seven words triggered my son. Drew and I had spent the week in the Oklahoma panhandle with my parents. On the way home, we stopped by West Texas A & M in Canyon. Drew had been home from college since May and insisted on checking his mail in July, looking for a package of sheet music that I had sent in February. At the time, this request did not register as odd. At the university post office, a thin woman with a silvery pixie cut checked for the package and double-checked. She struck me as a retired teacher. It takes one to know one. She shook her head and pursed her lips, like she was sorry to disappoint. Her apology was sincere. I stood nearby letting Drew handle his own business.
My son turned and stormed toward the door without a thank you or anything. His silence mortified me, and I tried to cover for him.
“Thank you so much for looking,” I said and headed to the door Drew held open.
A heatwave rolled in from the outside like a gut punch, or maybe the sneer on Drew’s face unsettled me more. He was twenty and handsome, 5’ 7”, lean but muscular. I missed his easygoing smile.
When Drew returned home in May, he sent me a text message that read, “There’s something wrong with my brain.” He believed he had a head injury and explained how he had run headfirst into a wall two years earlier, his senior year of high school. He claimed he had a huge lump on his head. I had no recollection of the lump, but Drew was adamant about needing an examination. I took him to our family doctor.
During the appointment, Drew couldn’t explain what he meant about something being wrong with his brain, and I said that he seemed angrier than usual. After about fifteen minutes, the doctor concluded Drew had bipolar disorder. She didn’t refer him to a psychiatrist or call for lab tests or any sort of mood charting, which irritates me now. I didn’t think to ask for that. The diagnosis seemed hasty, and I wondered if the doctor reached her conclusion based on what I had said about Drew’s mood. These thoughts came later after I had time to think. Perhaps she sensed my son’s level of frustration. She wrote him a prescription for Lithium. Drew, convinced of brain damage, asked for further testing, and our family doctor referred us to a neurologist.
In June, Drew saw the neurologist who ordered a CAT scan of his brain. The results revealed no damage, and the neurologist referred Drew to a neuropsychiatrist. The Oklahoma trip had been a way to pass some time before the next appointment.
The West Texas A & M campus was quiet that summer afternoon, not a soul or a cloud in sight, yet on the post office steps, agitation descended on Drew.
“That lady was racist,” he said, leaning on the handrail. His brow furrowed, and his deep brown eyes narrowed on me.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, mystified by his accusation.
From my perspective, Drew’s reaction was inappropriate for a grandmotherly woman going out of her way, double-checking for a package mailed five months earlier. I spotted my silver Honda in the parking lot and resumed steps in that direction. “How was she racist?”
Drew scoffed, eyes ahead. Texas Red Oaks lined the sidewalk, and we strolled through their shade. A mockingbird swooped.
“She discriminated against me,” he said.
I had witnessed zero discrimination and saw no reason to argue considering the six-hour drive home. The silence swelled between us as we reached the lot.
The July sun blazed above, and my head shook back and forth in my asphalt shadow. After a while, I said, “I didn’t see any discrimination, Drew.”
Again. There was silence. At the car, he asked to drive.
I conjured a little enthusiasm. “Sure,” I said, hoping the drive would distract Drew from his own headspace. I unlocked the doors, slid in on the passenger side, and handed over my keys.
Drew turned the key in the ignition. He winced and coughed three times toward the radio when it came on. A mocking, antagonistic cough. He twisted the volume all the way down. Then there was silence as he drove us out of the lot, out of Canyon, and north on Highway 87.
I tend to feel other people’s emotions. Like a sixth sense. There’s nothing worse than tension in a car. We had a full tank of gas, and we had eaten lunch before our post office errand. My Honda could make the trip without a stop, and I didn’t look forward to six hours of tension.
Not far into the 374-mile trip home, my normally mild-mannered son transformed into a bizarre stranger behind the wheel.
“Are you racist?” he said, more accusation than question. He glanced at me sideways, both hands on the steering wheel.
I didn’t like his tone or the look in his eyes.
My heart dropped, and my nose huffed incredulity. Am I racist? I shook my head and thought about our family’s diversity that tinted Drew’s skin. His Italian great grandmother and his Hawaiian grandfather on his dad’s side. My Choctaw heritage and my grandmother’s grandfather, a freed slave. Our family had been whitewashed with time. Yet given the opportunity to check more than one race on official forms, I always did. I thought about the thousands of students I had taught and loved, despite differences of race, religion, or sexual orientation. I took a deep breath and shook my head. My exhale quivered, and I hoped he hadn’t noticed.
“No, I’m not racist, Drew.”
We sped down Highway 287 and slowed down for a minute at the city limits of Claude, population 1196. Drew erupted with another accusation, as if someone held a remote, flipping channels.
“Read your wrung.” He shot me a look. “What does that mean?” he said.
“What?” I thought I had misheard.
“Read. Your. Wrung.” He slowed the statement, dividing it into three parts for clarity, enunciating the first and last letters of each word.
I flat out did not understand him.
“That’s what you said to Mimi. She’s a witch. You’re both witches.”
With Claude in the rearview mirror, I glanced at the speedometer. The needle inched toward 80 mph and rested there. I was not casting spells, I was not a witch, and neither was my mother. The stark seriousness of Drew’s face stood in contrast with the utter absurdity of his words. He believed we were witches. With my right hand, I grabbed the car handle centered above the passenger window. With my left, I gripped the side of my seat next to the console. My heels pressed into the floorboard.
A heavy weight compressed my chest. I inhaled through my nose and exhaled through my mouth, counting to ten again and again. The world rushed by outside. Red-dirt farms mid-wheat harvest and ranches with grazing herds of Black Angus. Dilapidated farmhouses and corrugated steel Quonset huts. Miles and miles of barbed wire fences and utility lines, railroad track and wind turbines.
Outside of the city of Clarendon, population 2026, a sign from the Church of Christ welcomed us, as did one from St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Somewhere between the two stoplights in town is another sign that read, “Jesus is the only way to heaven.” I believe in signs, and there and then in Clarendon, I prayed for help. This was on a Saturday, and I started thinking about my church. I would be there tomorrow. Maybe I would even ask for prayer. It was clear that something was wrong with Drew’s brain, a psychological, perhaps psychiatric problem. I didn’t know the difference.
“No, son, we are not witches,” I said. I thought it best not to make eye contact.
Somewhere between Hedley, population 329, and Memphis, population 2290, still about 280 miles away, I wanted to text my husband Kody, Drew’s dad, but there was nothing he could do. What would I say? Drew thinks my mom and I are witches. Help. Somewhere between Childress, population 6105, and Quanah, population 2641, I held back my tears. In my experience, staying calm while someone else is freaking out works better. 220 miles to go.
A grassy median divided the four-lane highway. The worst thoughts crossed my mind—a high-speed rollover or a deadly collision with one of the eighteen wheelers that outnumbered us on the road. “Dear God, please protect us,” I begged, and when I couldn’t think of better words, I just said, “Help me. Help me. Help me.” Paralyzed with fear, I squeezed the hand hold tighter. But Drew kept the car between the lines even as he muttered about the medulla oblongata, capillaries, and red blood cells. Only bugs crashed into our windshield.
Somewhere between Chillicothe and Vernon, the radio emitted static. I scanned for a new station and stopped on a classical composition. Drew was a cellist. At West Texas A & M, he majored in musical performance. I hoped the orchestral melodies would soothe him. Instead, Drew burst out laughing. Maniacally.
“What’s so funny?” I said, curt by now.
“It’s the piano. The staccato.”
He looked at me and giggled with soft eyes, a childish smile, and a muffled snort. “It made me think of a hippopotamus in a tutu tip-toeing to the music.”
I wanted to find the image funny, but like the notes on the radio, Drew’s thoughts were equally disconnected. Talk of a dancing hippopotamus sandwiched between grumbles about the brain and the Chinese government. None of it made sense. Between my sheer terror and unspeakable confusion, I just kept praying for safety.
We traveled through Wichita Falls and Decatur and Denton into the northern Dallas suburbs of Lewisville and Carrollton and Plano before reaching Springville. We wound ourselves through the neighborhood and finally reached the turn for our alley. After six hours of Drew with his tumble of suspicions, delusions, and incomprehensible ideas, the sight of home brought a wave of relief.
I wanted out of the car and reached for the garage door opener, clipped to the sun visor on the driver’s side. I pressed the button for the door to lift, and Drew eased my car forward into the garage. As if on cue, Kody appeared, standing in the doorway to the house with our chihuahua Rain in his arms and a smile spread wide across his face. Mine wore my woe.
He took one look at me and said, “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t have the energy or a good explanation or the necessary privacy to reveal anything.
“Later,” I said, my exasperation unconcealed. Kody’s eyes squinted with concern.
He grabbed one of my bags and followed me to our bedroom. I noted our daughter Lauren’s open door and vacant bedroom. “Where’s Lauren?”
“Work,” Kody said.
She had a new job waiting tables at Joe’s Pizza and Pasta. Since her high school graduation in May, she was rarely home. Drew had been the same way after graduating, but this summer he had rarely left his room—another reason for our trip to Oklahoma, an attempt to break the isolation.
From my bathroom, I heard the click of Drew’s door closing behind him. Standing next to the vanity with my eye on the hallway, I whispered a condensed version of the road trip to Kody. Drew and his mood swings. His accusations of witchcraft and racism. My six-hour horror. My fear he couldn’t return to school until we figured out what was happening.
“What the fuck is this shit he’s pulling?” Kody said, suddenly irate.
I’m not exactly sure when the Kody-Drew Father-Son conflict started. Drew was not a troublemaker. He was good-natured, quiet, and kind. However, during his senior year of high school, two years earlier, difficulties began. He failed English first semester. Second semester he started failing all his classes. This was a kid who once made straight A’s. Drew is intelligent, his failure senior year was due to a complete lack of work. Then he stopped going to school. In the end, he still made it to college on a full-ride music scholarship. He scored high enough on the English CLEP to waive his first English class and high enough on his SAT to waive his college math class, but a grudge lay just below Kody’s surface.
When I tried to explain our trip, Kody took Drew’s behavior personally—as if Drew deliberately attempted to ruin our lives and derail his own. After the past six hours, I could have used a hug, not belligerence. I didn’t understand Drew, nor did I see why he acted the way he had or said the words he did. Trying to make Kody get it seemed pointless.
I needed wine, and we happened to have a bottle of pinot noir. I poured myself a glass and one for Kody and collapsed on the couch. Drained. Rain jumped into my lap, stood with front paws on my chest, and wagged her tail. I stroked her tiny head, stared at the television oblivious of the screen, and considered what steps to take and where. I asked myself what my mother would do. I knew she would pray for me if I called. But after trying to explain to Kody, I didn’t want to start over with someone else. Besides, my mother would’ve had difficulty processing the fact that Drew had accused us of witchcraft. She might even jump to the conclusion that Drew was demon-possessed. I didn’t need anyone jumping to conclusions.
I fought off a mental image of Drew in a straitjacket and made up my mind. I would ask for prayer at church in the morning. This would be a first for me, but my church The Rock has people available for prayer at the end of each service. I could practically hear my mother quoting the book of Matthew: “If two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” And as much as I believed my mother and the Good Book, I couldn’t help feeling scared for Drew’s mental health and alone in my decision-making.
“I’m going to church in the morning,” I said.
Kody gave me a glance and said, “I think I’ll stay home and talk to Drew.”
He sat in an oversized chair at a right angle to me with his feet propped up on the ottoman and eyes glued to the TV. I refilled our glasses and emptied the bottle. The wine softened my thoughts, and I drank the second glass faster. Then I opened our last bottle and poured another glass. The television was no comfort. When the wine was gone, I surrendered to my need for some quiet and solitude.
Just before midnight, I rose to my feet and said, “I’m headed back.”
“Good night, honey,” Kody said, peeling his eyes from the television to look at me. “I love you.”
I said it back and gave him a small smile. I passed Lauren’s dark and still empty room. My ability to be a mom had reached the limit that day. I hadn’t bothered to let her know I was home. The lights of Drew’s room were off, but he was in. I wondered if he were sleeping. I didn’t want to knock. I didn’t want to barge in either, so I didn’t say good night. Instead, I crawled into my bed without brushing the wine off my teeth. Rain took a big leap for such a little dog, nosed her way between the sheets, and wedged herself against my thigh as if she knew exactly what I needed. The tears that I had held back all day trickled down my cheeks into my hair and soaked my pillow. I felt so alone—in my sadness, in my fear, in my limited understanding of Drew’s brain, in my upcoming steps, and so I prayed to God one last time that night, “Help me!”
Crystal Byers is an emerging writer and veteran high school English teacher living in Houston, Texas. She is currently at work finishing her memoir Help in the Time of Schizophrenia as well as a Creative Writing MFA from Houston Baptist University. Visit her at crystalbyers.com.
