Sanity is a strange country. Everything is right side up and manageable. You don’t get too mad there. You don’t get too sad. It’s just so. Every day you wake up, shrug your shoulders and say, “things are so so.” It wasn’t until Jesus that I decided to be an expatriate of sanity. I went to live on the Left Bank of Lunacy.
The hag left me with our five children over a year ago.
“I found me a handsome man,” she said taunting me in her sassy way.
How could I raise five children? The eldest was ten and very motherly. She fed and bathed the ruffians while I worked. I was a house painter. Winter had been hard and I had jobs all over town painting over weather damage. One house I did a job at was the preacher at the local Methodist church. The preacher roamed his backyard and reached his hands to the heavens.
“Oh, Jesus. Help me.” He said it over and over and then he turned around and looked at me with a beautiful smile.
I went home and walked the halls of my house. “Help me, Jesus. Help me,” I said.
“Pa, what you doin’?” The eldest asked.
“Shut your mouth and get those kids to shut up.” Begging Jesus did my mind no good. The hag had left behind her sewing kit. I pulled out a thick needle and stabbed my arms and legs. I stuck it under my thumbnails too. Jesus can’t help you. Only pain can help you. I screamed out in agony as the kids watched.
“You atone for your sins with pain,” I yelled at the kids.
The hag showed up the next day. She smelled of talcum powder. She said she left the man and wanted to live with me and the kids again. I opened the door wide and she walked in.
A week later, I came home early. My thumb was infected from the needle I had stuck in it. The hag was sitting at the kitchen table with the man. He was handsome, after all. I went to the shed and got an ax. I killed the man while the hag watched in horror and then I killed her hacking one limb at a time. Through the window I could see the kids running away across the field. They were moving faster than I had ever seen them move.
The Left Bank of Lunacy isn’t so bad. It’s lonely here but I can atone for my sins. For murder, I stuck needles under each of my fingernails, even the infected one. I howled for Jesus. When the police came, I greeted them with a beautiful smile.
“Greetings, from my new country,” I said.