It was the third therapy session for Zeneba. Carson’s Outpatient Therapist, Nancy, was feeling uneasy with their
work together at this point. Zeneba talked with great pain about the impending death of her best friend. Her grief was very present, yet she was so cagey about the details of their friendship, other than to say they used to walk together everyday and that her friend had been there for her through thick and through thin, that Nancy was wondering what it was about her best friend that Zeneba wasn’t ready to share. Could it be that her “best friend” was really her girlfriend, and Zeneba was worried about being judged as a lesbian? Could it be that it wasn’t the best friend that was dying at all, but that Zeneba, at twenty-one, had a terminal illness with which she was struggling?
“Can I ask you some questions about your friend, so that I can understand more what she means to you?” Nancy asked.
Zeneba put her head in her hands and hid her face. “If I tell you—you promise you won’t treat me like I’m a fool?”
“I will not treat you like a fool,” Nancy answered. “My best friend is Bones. Bones is my sixteen year old dog and Bones is dying.”
“I am so, so sorry your best friend Bones is dying,” said Nancy.
And then Zeneba cried and told the things that needed telling. As a kid, it was the dog who got kicked when she did, who hid with her under the porch and who was absurdly and unabashedly explosively happy to be near her whenever possible. In the mornings, Bones wagged at Zeneba’s outfit choices for school; Zeneba opened Bone’s dog food can and then made herself breakfast. Zeneba was seven and Bones was two and they were family.
Zeneba blew her nose and said, “I go to college. I take psychology. I think I have ‘Internalized Dog Syndrome.’ You think that could be a real thing? I look like a person, but really the best parts of me are all dog. I am so good with the kids I baby-sit—dog. I am so happy in the morning. Dog. Love to play catch, walk in the rain. Dog. If you come home, I’m thrilled to see you. Dog.” When Zeneba grew into young adulthood and the ice cracked under her feet the way it does when you live in a place filled with crime and heroin, and her first boyfriend overdosed, what was there to do, but find her way back to fulltime Bones? There are conversations you just don’t want to have in words. There are times when other people just need to have fur (or longhair) or don’t bother coming too close.
Her old friend, who smells like the earth and Fritos is becoming lighter. She sleeps now most of the time. She is deaf and mostly blind. She eats and drinks, but not as much. She isn’t sick; she’s just finishing up. All Zeneba can say to her is, “Thank you, my Bones, 100% Dog. You came to us and achieved 100% Dogness. A total and complete success,” but Bones could care less what Zeneba says, as long as Bones is still kissing her, trying with her last strengths to fill Zeneba with whatever dogness she can before they launch onto their separate paths.
“And now, here I am,” explained Zeneba. “I never needed a therapist before, even with all I been through. I don’t trust people all that much with the real stuff.” She took a deep breath, held her crumpled tissue in her lap, and looked at Nancy. “But….you’re really okay, you know?”
By JAC Patrissi
