Chapter 12 run with scissors (11)

Hope emerges from the bathroom, passes the living room, and carefully transports her precious cargo.Zuzu heard the noise and stood in the middle of the living room, wagging his tail and licking the water droplets that fell on the floor. "Natalie, Augustine, one of you, go and answer the door!" Hope yelled, and she turned around the hanging coat rack in the hallway, and entered the kitchen. I ran to the front and opened the back door of the kitchen for her. "thanks." Natalie and I stood by the back door and watched as Hope ran across the lawn with a shovel, carefully placing the poop on the parched picnic table.

"My family is fucking crazy!" Natalie said. "Will I still get into Smith?" "You'll pass." I told her, though I didn't know if she really had a chance.If she doesn't change her surname, and doesn't go through a thorough brainwashing, I think she probably has little hope. "If I don't pass, at least you know what's going on," Natalie said. "Can you imagine what the neighbors would think about what happened in this family?" Natalie sneered, "Well, they're going to put my dad in a madhouse and burn the whole house down, like in the movies."

I look out to all the families in this neighborhood.The other houses are also Victorian buildings, but their windows are hung with exquisite mesh curtains, and neatly trimmed flowers and trees are planted in front of the doors, and seasonal flowers are blooming.Here we have only plastic tulips, planted in the filthy dirt, that bloom all year round but never attract bees, and our windows are only hung with coarse drapes, embroidered with vulgar patterns.It even occurred to me that maybe a neighbor who happened to be a member of the admissions office at Smith University was watching what was going on here through the curtains!

Natalie fingered a lock of red hair absently. It occurred to me that she would look cooler by painting her face silver gray or bright white. "Your face should be bleached," I said. "Uh?" "You'd look better if your face were whiter, it would make your big eyes stand out." She shrugged: "Bleaching? It's troublesome, let's talk about it later." She was a little listless. Standing at the picnic table, Hope gently nudges the poop with the shovel, keeping it upright with the tip pointing skyward. Agnes sweeps the living room in silence, her usual initial reaction to stress.She often sweeps and rattles in the middle of the night, sweeping from the carpet in the hallway to the carpet in the living room, and finally cleaning the walls of the living room.So it is not surprising that people are often awakened by the sound of sweeping the floor in the middle of the night.Although everyone was outraged, Agnes' strange behavior was not meaningless.After a lot of tossing, the hair on the carpet became less and less, and food crumbs and toenails were also piled up in a corner.

"You stop!" Natalie yelled. "Mind your own business!" Agnes yelled back, continuing to sweep.Her body leaned heavily on the broom.Without the broom, I doubt she'd be able to keep up; I think she'd just plop down on the floor like a pile of clothes. Dr. Finch came into the room, dried his hands on the skirt of his shirt, and looked out. "Very good!" He commented with satisfaction, and then shouted at Hope: "Good job!" Hope turned around, his face flushed. The doctor said, "Just wait and see, you two. From now on, we're sure to have a smooth sailing. It's a sign from God."

"Can you give us twenty dollars?" Natalie held out a hand. The doctor took out the wallet from his pocket: "I only have ten dollars." Natalie took the money and took my arm: "Come on, let's go for a walk." Things did turn around, and the first sign was a frozen turkey.It was an award Hope won from an over-the-air radio station for being the first to call and correctly guessing a Pat Boone song.But the turkey was too big to even fit in the freezer, so Hope decided to freeze it in the bathtub.There are only two bathrooms in the house, and she keeps the turkey in the one downstairs that has a shower.We let the turkey lie on our feet while we showered downstairs.From the insurance company, Dr. Finch received an unexpected thousand-dollar payout, which he took as an unmistakable signal that his turd was indeed a command from God, the result of a communication between him and God.

The resulting consequences were unimaginable: He began to take a hard look at every poop.And, given that God could communicate through any of us, He has to check our shit before we flush it away with water. "No way!" Natalie firmly refused.She was flushing the toilet even though her dad kept banging on the bathroom door. "Okay, Dad!" Hope said.She sprayed air freshener furiously into the air. The doctor saw Hope's series of feces, and even gave Agnes a chance (he thought his wife's feces were too low-grade), and finally concluded that only his feces were a message from God, so Every morning, he would call Hope into the bathroom, scoop up his poo, and put it outside on the picnic table with the rest of the poo, which was quite a spectacle.

He believes that only by putting the feces together can we give a complete picture and a clear answer to everyone's future. Is it possible for me to get into beauty school and graduate?The answer is those isolated, tiny bits of feces. "Crack, crack, crack, that's the sound I made when I defecated. It's the sound of scissors cutting something. It's crisp and sharp, so I think the answer is yes." The doctor said with a smile. Will the Internal Revenue Service seize our house in the future because we owe taxes for a long time? "I had diarrhea this morning and this shit means they messed up the archives so the house is still ours."

What is Hope's fate?Will she get married in the future? "See the millet in the dung? She will marry in the future, and she will marry a farmer." The doctor wrote these conclusions on paper, printed a schematic diagram of all the feces, next to the corresponding explanatory text, and thus completed a paper.The doctor put the article in his self-printed "Monthly Newsletter" and sent it to all the mental patients under his name. For several weeks that summer we didn't have to do anything, hold any events, make any decisions -- unless Dr. Finch's duodenum dictated it.

"I don't get excited about doing any work outside of the home," Dr. Finch said to Agnes. . However, when the doctor became constipated, the situation changed significantly. "I haven't had a normal bowel movement in a day and a half," he said, sitting on the couch in front of the TV, looking anxious. "I'm really not sure. I don't know what that means." The doctor's unfortunate constipation incident drove Hope into the room immediately and began countless Bible divinations.Tell me, when will my dad be able to defecate normally?Will the IRS confiscate our house?Will more patients stop treatment?Have you stopped talking to your dad through the bathroom?

For me and Natalie, it seemed like everyone in the family drank dirty water, so mentally retarded, and we were the only ones who stayed sane.However, we didn't take their thoughts and actions as insanity, we just thought it was all funny and ridiculous. "Can you believe that my father holds a medical certificate from the most authoritative university in the United States?" "If he can be a doctor," I said, "I can go to cosmetology school." Although I was under pressure, my yearning for beauty school became stronger, and I worked harder to keep a diary, and I insisted on it every day; writing a diary was the only thing that gave me satisfaction.I can escape into the paper, into the words, into the spaces between words—even if all I do is to train my signature. "Why don't you become a writer?" Natalie said one afternoon, "I bet you you'll be a funny writer." The diaries I keep are not funny, they are tragic. "I don't want to be a writer," I said without hesitation, "just look at my mother." Natalie laughed: "But, not all writers are as crazy as your mother." "That's right. But if I have inherited the writing gene, I must have inherited her madman gene." "Well, I just vaguely feel that cutting someone else's hair won't make you happy." This annoyed me. "I'm not going to get my hair cut. I'm going to start a beauty empire, and you don't understand my plan," I said, "You don't understand my original idea." "I still think you're going to hate this kind of work sooner or later. Standing there all day, sticking your fingers in other people's dirty hair, and moving around... it's fucking terrible!" I'm not going to stick my fingers in someone's hair.I want to sit behind a glass table and approve packaging designs for beauty products.Beauty Empire is my only way out.I love a TV ad for a beauty product that says, "We'll only be at ease when you're beautiful." This perfectly expresses my ideal of putting the interests of the customer first. Unfortunately, on the third day, Dr. Finch was still suffering from constipation.He told his wife to give him an enema.The effect of the enema is very effective, but the doctor believes that his stool has been in a closed and compressed state, and then it was completely destroyed by the cold water, so he cannot "read" the information of the stool and make a correct judgment. "I'm terrified that a sudden jolt of cold water in my bowels," he announced ruefully as we sat in the living room, "means that God has decided that He will no longer communicate with me in this way!" Hope was so devastated that he was almost insane. At that moment Kate, the doctor's eldest daughter, who had rarely been seen lately, entered the room.Seeing everyone gathered together, she was surprised: "What are you all doing sitting here?" She smelled of perfume and her makeup was flawless. Natalie snickered: "Sit down, Kate, you're missing the fun stuff." Kate smiled. "Really? What have I missed?" She wiped the surface of the chair with a handkerchief and sat on the edge of it. Dr. Finch explained to his eldest daughter the events of the past few days and suggested taking her to the picnic table so Kate could see God's command for herself. After Kate slammed the car door and fled quickly, Natalie leaned close to me: "You should really write this all down." I said, "Even if I wrote it down, no one would believe it." "True," said Natalie, "maybe it's better to forget about it altogether." spit on the audience Even though neither Natalie nor I have the ability to play the piano, we have the ability to have someone else play for us so we can sing.Three of Dr. Finch's patients played so well they could even keep up with the sheet music we had placed in front of them.Of the three, Karen is the best, she never seems to tire.I don't know whether this quality is innate in her, or because she swallowed a large dose of the doctor's prescription.She would gladly play us something like "Boundless Love," which transitions smoothly to the uplifting "There's a Place" after five times in a row. When she complained about sore fingers, Natalie would just in time grab a Snickers or grab a little weed from her pocket and put it on the front of her dress, which would keep her playing.Sometimes, though, Karen would become very stubborn from working on the piano keys for an hour and a half.In this case, Natalie resorted to another bribe. "You know," she said seductively, "I'm going to call Dad and ask him to see you this afternoon. I'm sure he'll see you," she paused, "if I beg him words." This way, Natalie could at least have Karen play another medley. Our goal is to become an internationally renowned singing group, at least with the release of songs like "The Taste of Peach" or "Old Captain Tenel".When none of the patients played the piano for us, we practiced by ourselves upstairs in Natalie's room.We sang to Stevie Nicks records.The problem was that her lyrics were sometimes difficult to follow, and Natalie lost the little caption on the record sleeve.At this point, I'd be lying on the floor with my head next to the speaker, and Natalie would be standing in front of the record player with her finger on the needle. "Wait a minute, I didn't catch it, play this part again." My pen scribbled quickly across the paper to keep up. "Is she singing about the white lined paper or the white dove?" Natalie put the needle on the record and let it sing again: "Listen to it again." After listening to it several times in a row, I finally understood, "Damn it, I just wrote a little bit, and I can't keep up." With dubious precision, I recorded the words to our beloved songs and would sing them over and over again.We stand in front of Natalie's closet mirror; in the mirror we open our mouths and sing. "My arms are too fat," Natalie complained.She lifted the ironing pliers that acted as a microphone to her mouth, and with the thickness and weight of her arms, she couldn't stand it after a while. "Well, we can use the mic stand," I said, "without having to take the mic off the stand." Natalie threw the curling irons on the bed: "That's right, great idea!" Sometimes we would move the fan upstairs, and with the whistling of the wind, our clothes would flutter and our hair would fly, and we would feel like Stevie Nicks himself, mysterious figures appearing on stage At the corner of the stage, and then slowly walked to the center of the stage, like a ghost.We love this special effect. "I wish I was like Nix, walking with a felt bag in my hand and singing." Her bird-feather hair was blown back by the wind. Our obsession with art is unstoppable! "Stop it, you two, I'm going to sleep!" Sometimes Hope complained loudly in the middle of the night.Of course, this just makes us turn up the speakers even louder. Once, we were rehearsing in our downstairs room, and a neighbor came across the lawn and tapped on the window to remind us to be quiet.Natalie lifted up her skirt, exposing her hidden parts, and pressed it against the windowpane, while extending the middle finger of her right hand. We are so involved!We are convinced that we have extraordinary talents.We currently only need the so-called "restrained audience" (referring to a group of people who psychologically passively accept advertising, etc.). So, is there anyone better suited to be our captive audience than the permanently resident patients at Northampton State Hospital? "That's a good idea, I think," said Dr. Finch. "Do you think they'll give us a chance?" Natalie asked.Natalie blushed at the thought of having a real audience, and small bumps appeared on her forehead, forcing her to scratch her face frantically. “I thought they would be thrilled to have two talented young performers offering their services for free.” We wanted the doctor to give us more encouragement, but the power of the TV was too strong, he kept dozing off, and finally fell asleep. "Maybe we can really do it!" Natalie's eyes showed expectation and confidence. "I totally agree. Maybe even in the papers! Do you know how to write a press release?" The little lump ran to her arm, and she kept scratching it. "No. But Hope knows how to write." "I admit, it's not Broadway, but it's a starting point." Our next step is to get in touch with the entertainment manager of the hospital.This seems to be more difficult than we imagined, because Northampton State Hospital does not have the position of entertainment manager, and the only person we meet is a fat woman with a sullen look near the reception desk. He looked at us helplessly and blankly. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you're saying," she said. Natalie let out a breath, trying not to look impatient. "I told you, I'm a student at Smith, he's a student at Amherst, we're both music students, and we want to perform for your patients as a special offering." "Hmmm," the woman said skeptically, "wait a minute, I'll see if I can find someone." She glanced at a piece of paper taped to the phone next to the phone on the table, full of names and phone numbers Number.She dialed an extension, turned her head away from us, and whispered something into the receiver. "Don't worry," Natalie said. "Even if it turns out badly, we have a chance. I can ask Dad to call someone here, he knows someone here." Dr. Finch knew the people here because his whole family had lived near the hospital before he started his own practice.Natalie's first memories of her family started from this hospital full of mental patients.In fact, her father had always had a dream of having his own psychiatric hospital one day, but that didn't materialize, so he settled for the next best thing and did what he thought was worthwhile.He left his house in a state of disrepair and invited his patients to live in it.Therefore, I also want to find out one thing: whether the doctor's children grow up near the mental hospital is the reason why they are all neurotic. "After a while, someone will come to see you. Do you want to..." She wanted to make some suggestions, maybe she wanted to bring us a glass of water, but she changed her mind temporarily. "Thank you," Natalie said. We left the reception desk and stood by the gate.Waiting near the door is the right choice, so that if something happens, we can escape at any time. After all, we don't know who is answering the phone at the other end of the phone line just now. A few minutes later, a broad-shouldered nurse came.She walks like a horse trainer, and her arms are so thick and muscular that she seems to have grafted slices of French bread beneath the skin. "Hello, my name is Doris, can I help you with anything?" Natalie repeated the lie that we were music students at Smith and Amherst Universities, and that we wanted to sing for patients in hospitals as part of our classes. Doris's initial reaction was solid: "But we don't have an auditorium here." "It's okay, we can sing in the ward," Natalie said. Natalie's witty responses made my day. "We don't have a piano either," said Doris. We took a quick look at the reception rooms of the dilapidated building and it was easy to conclude that the piano wasn't the only thing they were lacking, running water was questionable, patients could at best enjoy a (waterless) sponge bath, That's all. Natalie cleared her throat and replied with a smile: "It's okay, we can sing a cappella." "I don't know what song you're talking about," said Doris. "It's not a song, it's a technical term that means we can sing with our voices without the accompaniment of an instrument." Doris put her hands on her waist and tilted her head to one side: "Let me clear things up, well, you want to come here to sing for the patients, you don't need any musical equipment, and it's just the two of you, you just sing. " We nod. "Is it free?" We nod again. Doris thought about it for a while, and something was clearly confusing her. "So—can you tell me why?" Yeah, even I can't figure out why. "Because it's a good training for us," Natalie replied without thinking, "We need as much practice as possible before we can officially participate in live performances." Doris laughed: "I don't know what kind of live performance you are going to participate in, but if you want to come and sing, I don't think there is anything wrong with it." We left the hospital feeling as excited as if we had just finished taping the Today Show.We walked down a hill near the hospital, and Natalie said: "We'll silence them and let them know what the sound of nature is." "God, what the hell are we supposed to be singing?" I asked. "That's a problem." I quickly reviewed our existing repertoire in my head.Brandy's "Glass Heart" may make some patients dream about; "The End" is very nice, but it needs the accompaniment of percussion instruments to sing the effect. In addition, the rhythm of this song is too strong, which may stimulate The patient's nerves will cause riots, and then the trouble will be great.So what about "There's a Place" on the Western Story record?It also seems inappropriate, this song will make patients realize that they live in the wrong place and should flee collectively. "How about You Light Up My Life?" Natalie suggested. Wow!It's amazing what she thinks, "You're not kidding, are you?" I asked. "Why is it a joke?" The song needs to have an octave higher range, "Do you think we can sing that?" Natalie said confidently, "It's absolutely fine." In this way, we decided to sing "You Light Up My Life" live.Our audience is a group of "restrained audiences" who come from the hospital and are mental patients undergoing intensive treatment. When we arrived at the hospital a week later, Doris took us into a closed ward area and into a spacious room.The windows of the room are equipped with iron bars, and the tables, chairs and benches inside are firmly fixed, even if a typhoon comes, they will not move. A few patients seated themselves as they wished; others were strapped into chairs or watched over by three chaperones.There were about twenty-five mental patients in the room. Suddenly, in this room, I saw the most melancholy and tragic soul in the world. It was an eye-opener. In an instant, all stage fright was gone and I felt relaxed and completely at home. Doris did her best to set up a kind of unique "stage" for us, with all the wheelchairs and chairs arranged in a semicircle, with Natalie and I standing in the middle of the semicircle.I began to scan all the images, all the faces: their heads slumped to their shoulders; The degree to which people are afraid.One or two patients kept rocking in their chairs like tumblers.There were also several patients who looked very fierce and showed strong hostility. "It's all fucking shit!" said an ugly old guy, spitting.But I need not be afraid, for a guardian is watching over him.Obviously, his eyes are not as dazed and helpless as others, but murderous. I am somewhat worried, afraid that this old guy will suddenly attack. "No! No! No!" a woman kept yelling, her face was covered with fine hair, the most hairy face I have ever seen, I have only seen it on dogs before, even her forehead All furry, like apes. Will they allow these patients to use mirrors?Have these people with abnormal brains been injected with large doses of hair growth hormone? Natalie cleared her throat. I looked at her and we nodded to each other.It's time! At first, our voices were trembling because we were a little nervous, which is inevitable when performing in front of a live audience for the first time.But by the second verse, we're fully in the song.Natalie's voice is indeed beautiful, and the high-pitched voice echoes on the ceiling full of small holes, which can be called lingering sound.I close my eyes and can't help but imagine a spotlight focusing on my face, enveloping me in its light.I imagined the audience, wearing expensive earrings, listening intently to us in silence, taking out their handkerchiefs to wipe the corners of their wet eyes from time to time. That's why we sound so harsh and shocking when someone babbles. "What the fuck!" It was that hateful old man.I can see clearly now that this guy doesn't have a single tooth. He coughed violently a few times, made a big mouthful of sticky phlegm, and spit it towards us with a "poof". Because we were so close, he spat on us and splashed in the face! Disgusting! We had the only possible reaction, Natalie at least. She spit at him too. (full text)