Bogeywoman

by Jaimy Gordon

  Had I lost her? She was staring over my head into the night sky as if she were bored, and suddenly she got up, looked at her watch and went to her desk. Had the end already come? Had she become my dreambox mechanic and quit the job again before I ever knew she was mine? In truth I couldn’t even be sure she was a dreambox mechanic. Maybe she was a reporter, or a novelist, or a commissar on mission from some foreign country that was just whipping up bughouses of its own. In which case she was probably that backward land’s most eminent dreambox mechanic, a sort of gypsy queen of the mind-that sounded right, yes, I was sure I’d hit it. “Just tell me one thing, Doctor Zuk, are you a bigwheel dreambox mechanic in Outer Hotzeplotz or what?” I blurted.

  With every word she was further away from me. She picked up a pair of tortoiseshell glasses from her desk and balanced them halfway down her nose. “Why it matters for you to know this?” she said coldly. “Already you have foolishly asked me to be your psychiatrist. Now is too late to ask for resume.” “You mean you’re gonna be my dreambox mechanic?” “Come now, Miss Bogeywoman. You know is quite impossible. You have psychiatrist. You have heard of patient changing one psychiatrist for other like used hospital pajama?” “But I’ll see you, won’t I?” She peered at me over the tops of her glasses as if I were very small print. I wanted to swallow myself for asking another bald-headed question, since I knew she never answered one. She stared at me until a cold beam of fear settled in my gizzard-I could tell she was sick to death of me-but in my rotten hand I found one more ace to play.

  “I’ll talk to Foofer,” I said. “Is capital idea,” she said, with a tiny grimace of satisfaction. “And pretend he’s you,” I added. Doctor Zuk very slightly colored. At the time I was too green-too inex-spare-inced, as Chug had correctly put it-to know how often mismatched lovers employ that plan, but I sensed that I had struck a nerve. I was frightened to say anything more, and at first Doctor Zuk too was silent. She did not smile but finally she raised a finger whose fingernail, like mine, was bitten to the quick. “Why not?” she sighed. “As people like to say in old country where I come from, when water cannot be found, washing with dirt is permitted. I wish you luck of it.” And she gave me a little nod, then picked up a paper on her desk.

  Uneasily I discerned that the interview was at an end, that she was finished with me, wished me out of her sight, in fact, but she didn’t dismiss me. Why not? I thought of backing out the door, remembered that telltale gnash of hardware. I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself by rattling a locked door. But maybe I could hurl myself right through it-that would wake her up. I glanced at it-never mind-ugly arms were one thing, I wasn’t gonna bust my dreambox by bouncing it off a steel plate. My eye fell on the bronze mukluks and all at once I knew, don’t ask me how I knew, she had worn them herself.

  There came a knock. I heard a key scrape round the barrel, the door opened a little and Miss Roper and Miss Hageboom put their long faces in the crack. At once I snapped to the whole operation. “Dr. Feuffer is ready for her now,” Miss Roper rat-nibbled. “You were just keeping me busy!” I shouted at Zuk, “I hate your guts!” Doctor Zuk smiled. “Poor poor Miss Bogeywoman,” she said with an odd lilt. “Down there on rocky beach like orphan that seven seas vomit up. Is true no one in wide world wants you? Sob! sob!” “Liar. You like me whether you admit it or not,” I said, “I can tell.” She laughed. “Of course I like you. I even write book about you-My Kid Was Teenage Frankenstein-maybe you like to read?” Then she stepped out of the way and watched the two nurses lead me out, each buzzarding an arm.

  5

  A Quietroom of One’s Own

  East Five was the mirror image of East Six, with one big difference: it was uninhabited. Or so it looked on its steely face. O there were loonies there all right, maybe on the average loonier loons than any of the Bug Motels, but they were hidden behind locked doors most of the time, just like me. The rooms were quietrooms. No ping-pong balls flew.

  Now that I had lost the society of the better-than-nothing Bug Motels, I noticed, sister Margaret, how cleanly you had deserted me. And for that blueblack-mustachioed horse trainer, yet!-Tod Novio, Boyfriend Death, the scary hustler with torn silk shirts and English boots, rugged neck and squeaky voice, face like a charming rake in a Classic Comic. I radioed you, for want of other conversation. Hey Margaret, here’s the latest: The lamebrain dreambox mechanics think I tried to off myself and now look where I am, in a quietroom on Semi-Suicidal Observation. Or is it Suicidal Semi-Observation? Either way the fun has gone out of this place, and where the hump are you when I need you Margaret, I radioed you via the radio crystal in my posterior nose bulb. Come get me get me get me outa here, forget that fuddy libertine and get me outa here Margaret. When the medications cart rolled by me and my keeper Gloria, I palmed a little pleated dixie cup with a green pill in it. The green pill I let bounce off across the floor, and back in my quietroom I tried to cry into my paper cup, no luck. Finally I spit and spit in it until it was full, and in the exact center of the padded floor I poured a slimy libation. Come to me come to me get me outa here. Margaret! You were always easy to radio-but now who knew? That fuddy racetrack tout had captured your tower.

  Anyhow for me, for now, the dinky old school bus was over-o well it was summer anyway-and likewise I was missing the latest caper of the Bug Motels, which, I reflected sadly, was going to be its best ever. We were starting up a Rohring Rohring rock band with one hundred percent medical instruments, I mean we were about to execute the real, original mission of the Bug Motels-to play bughouse music. We weren’t going to dress in matching sequined uniforms, either, even supposing we could get em in this dump. Though of course we practiced kicking together like the Four Tops, we saw a band as a loose confederation of eternally solo flirters with dementia. In that, we were before our time. The first stage, already under way, was junking around the hospital for anything loose. Next we would whip up five sonorous contraptions of medical parts and work on our numbers, each one starring a different Bug Motel. Then one of these days we’d give a bughouse concert.

  But a bughouse band never stays the same or it rots: now one Bug Motel was in the burn unit swathed head to foot in whatever miracle wrap they roll you in after you try to barbecue yourself. And another Bug Motel was on ice in a quietroom-stuck in Suicidal Semi-Observation. The Bug Motels still had their mastermind Bertie, and Dion, and O. But how far could they get without the Bogeywoman for muscle? or Emily loyal-to-the-death-by-starvation for guts?

  So here I found myself and was it queer or what, to pace the exact same layout that was in a warped sort of way home to me, only deserted, as though every other member of the Bug Motels had died and gone to a worse place. For that’s what I did for exercise and pastime, whenever they let me-paced the green linoleum halls, past rows of green steel doors, day and night. I had a sort of itch: just keep moving it said and I did. At first I had to have a nurse’s aide with me all the time. Gloria dragged behind, grumbled about her feet, twisted her fingers in the back of my hospital gown and rode me like a hand puppet. She was short and slow, with the build of a sumo wrestler. “I ain’t took this job so I can wear my stems to stumps,” she panted, “hold up, ants-in-you-pants, this ain’t the infantry.” “I can walk by myself,” I told her, “what am I going to do? tear down the walls with my fingernails?”-because the halls were gleaming nude, no furniture, no pictures, no knobs rails hooks sticking out, no nothing. Even the nurses’ station was wrapped in chicken wire, the chicken wire in turn sealed up in (probably) bulletproof glass, everything slick as the glass mountain. “You mine your bidniss, I mine mine,” Gloria huffed and puffed and kept up with me as near as she could, or yanked me backwards when she couldn’t take it anymore.

  Once she was beat she slumped against the wall, and then I could get stuff out of her, I mean about the other bugs hidden in quietrooms behind the green steel doors. Behind O’s door lived a soprano twenty years over the hill with petunia-colored spots of rouge on her baggy cheeks and a queenly ar
ch to her baggy throat, which, I found out, she was trying her best to ruff with a noose. Since she was in O’s place I wanted to worship the ruins of beauty in her, surely her gorgeous air required a fan, but on the few occasions we passed in the corridor, she with her keeper, I with mine, she pretended to speak no English, though Gloria told me she was born in Ellicott City.

  Dion’s place was filled by a genuine mountain man from Sumpm Sumpm Gap in Allegany County. Mr. Woofter was as dark red, shriveled and dried out as venison jerky, and the one time he managed to speak to me he whispered only “Silky draws? silky draws?” and showed me an evenly corrugated one-dollar bill that must have been pried out of a very small space-a rotten tooth maybe (he had plenty of those). I think he was trying to buy my underpants, but of course I owned nothing but Camp Chunkagunk white cotton at the time, and in my quietroom I had lost track even of those. Here on East Five it was hospital gowns for everybody, even the diva, though somehow she got the rouge pot too. A salesman type with the shakes, wildly boisterous when not weeping, lived in Bertie’s old room. And in Emily’s was-nothing, no one, just emptiness and shade and a pearly sheen on the padded walls from one high small window.

  I paced. “Let’s face it you cramp my style,” I sneered mildly to Gloria over my shoulder, “this is cruel and unusual punishment not to let me go by myself, godzilla knows you can watch my every move from the nurses’ station.” “Maybe you right, maybe it is being cruel-to animals,” Gloria agreed, “cause I hear yall animals push that little bitty Emily down the laundry chute. And then she have to burn herself.” “How is Emily?” I asked, even more mildly. Mildness was my new strategy for getting outa here, but Gloria was too obtuse to notice. She didn’t answer about Emily. “I let you go, next thing I know you sawing away on that arm like a turkey drumstick,” she said. “Ya mean with my teeth?” I argued back, “so what if I did? How far would I get before you were out here whaling on me? Not even an hors d’œuvre…”

  Finally I wore her down and not a moment too soon, by now I itched so bad I was galloping, my hospital gown billowing out in back of me like a parachute on a jet plane. Gloria roosted massively on a high stool in the nurses’ station, folded her liver-wurst arms and never took her eyes off me. No way I could inveigle a hand under my gown to scratch the pubic triangle under these conditions. At first I had thought nothing of the itch, it seemed I’d always had it, mildly, subterraneously, a faint munching at the roots in the front yard, itch scratch itch. And it still seemed like I’d always had it, but now it was the starving central fact of a life, the little place marked x for the nail that nailed you, the tooth that gnawed you, the hunger that ate you, the itchy spot that souled everything alive. But if that were so, if I’d always had it, then how had I ever managed to stay in one place for five whole minutes? Now I galloped, up and down, up and down. Gloria squinted at me suspiciously through the glass. Dinner came, did I want it in my quietroom? No thank you, I slapped the slop on the white bread and galloped on, bolting down great half-moons.

  But finally Gloria’s shift was done. I never thought I’d be sorry to see her linebacker’s shoulders sway off down the hall until the night nurse, Miss Kniffin, led me to my quietroom, took away my gown and whanged the steel door home behind me. Wait don’t leave me! Just lemme (Blam. Clank-the outer door guard. Then nothing.) Not that I couldn’t pace in my quietroom, that was one good thing about emptiness, you could pace it off, round and round and round the padded hole. But now I had to face it, live alone with it, stark naked. I did have a social disease, I mean my coochie was not itself, could not be itself although it appeared to be itself, in fact looked exactly like its usual hideous self, scraggy black hair pasted to white skin like swamp grass sucked tight against a clay bank when the water drops.

  I threw myself on the soft floor, peered into that darkness between my thighs and everything looked the same in the bad light, no there was some kind of brown trash down there where the whips of hair rooted in skin, I scratched at it with the bitty edge I had left of one fingernail and managed to pry some off and hold it up to the gray twilight-good godzilla! it walked across my fingertip. I saw, just barely, its lacy nippers waving. Crab was no figure of ayrabber speech, then, these were crustaceans of some microscopic universe whose entire Chesapeake shore could fit between my legs. I scrambled to my feet and paced even more wildly, for the yellowed old padding I was lying on looked a lot like the ancient mattress in the ayrabbers’ stall. I had to get rid of these bugs before I infested this place, if I hadn’t already-I couldn’t lie down-no one could know-lemme die first. But what was the cure for crabs if you couldn’t tell a doctor? And even supposing you could find a doc who wouldn’t rat on you to your dreambox adjustor, how were you to collar this expert unless they let you out of here?

  I made a wild leap for the quietroom window. It was five feet above the spot where I bounced off the wall, and probably too small for my head, even if I could hold on tight enough to butt a hole in the glass. Still it felt good to bounce off the wall and I did it again, and again. Satisfying noise of my little pieces rearranging themselves, like a sack of potatoes thrown down from a barn loft. Then suddenly I found myself dangling from the padding three feet up-how was I doing this? It must be that superhuman strength of mental patients you hear about: I was four feet up, then five-godzilla knew what my toes and fingers were sticking to, but somehow I stayed up. And six and nine and finally I squinted through the woozy glass.

  Seventy feet down, at the bottom of so many fathoms of clear black jelly, streetlights came on like burning heads of hair, and at their feet, the tops of cars bulged silently in and out of view. The ayrabbers’ barn doors were still open; under the jelly of night the hole behind them was lit up like a palace. I pressed my forehead to the cool glass-Lemme outa here I screamed-reared back a little, getting ready to butt it. The door opened behind me and I let go.

  “Ow… ow…” Naked and flat on my back. “You are hurt?” “Cheese… what gives you that idea?” “You fall.” “Hump no, I jumped.” “How you get up there? What you are holding on?” That voice dried and cured in the smoke of five hundred thousand Gypsygirl cigarettes was at last a little impressed. “It’s that old, ouch, superhuman strength of the mental patient,” I croaked, and rolled back my head until I could see as far as the door. Could it really be madame-too-beautiful-on-her-horse? It was. “What are you doing here!” I growled. Because of the crabs I wasn’t even glad to see her. Thank godzilla there was no more light than the undersea glow from the green linoleum corridor, all the same I bunched myself in a sitting position, pulled my infested thighs discreetly together, threw an arm across my nuzzies. Sumpm hit me softly in the shoulder. A hospital gown. I got up and tied it on. “How come you’re here at night?” I mumbled rudely, not even caring anymore that she never answered a question from a mental peon-and then to my amazement she replied: “I like night duty. I’m not so crazy for sleep like some people. I like to watch sun come up. For a week, maybe two, I will do it…” I hardly dared read the message I could see so clearly between her words, but there it was: Because you are here, Miss Bogeywoman. She’s here because of me. Of me!

  “So,” said Doctor Zuk. “Maybe you would like a little to talk?” “Sure,” I said uneasily. I must say the whole thing struck me as highly irregular. Yes there was that furtive conservatism of the mental patient setting in, and then I was in a rotten mood on account of that itch, that itch at the x spot sucking everything down to its level. To think that just last week I’d thrown myself at her feet for this chance, kissed her imaginary ankles, and she’d kicked me into the imaginary gutter. Next she had betrayed me to the fuddies, landed me in a quietroom, I’ll never speak to that Zuk hag again I’d been thinking. And now here she was, inviting me-to talk!

  “Could we, er, walk and talk?” I proposed, “I got this restlessness.” “Ach, choleria, in these shoes?” She pointed at her silver sandals. She wore no nylons under her dress. It was the middle of summer but this seemed raw to me
, even nasty. I stared at the erosion cracks along her heels. There too she looked her age, as old as the hills and crags. “O all right,” I mumbled, and followed her down the hall. We ended up in a converted broom closet where nurse’s aides sometimes played cards. It was the usual Rohring Rohring hole in the wall, cracked plaster, exposed pipes, distant guts gurgling, roaches traversing the woodwork. She twisted a key in the lock behind us and we were alone. The first thing she did was toss her key ring on the rickety tabletop in a heap. When her knee touched it, the table tilted down two inches on its gimpy legs and the keys slid to one edge. I pulled my chair closer. I tried to keep my shifty eyes off those keys. One hand pressed my itchy crotch, hard.

  HOW LOVE GOT ME OUT OF THERE

  “So, er, uh, any hope of getting back to East Six? Lemme outa here! I been Quiet long enough,” I blurted, like a common ordinary mental patient. She tilted her spiky head and shrugged. “Why you are telling me this? Don’t get funny idea like I am your dreambox mechanic. You want something? Be grown-up woman. Talk to Dr. Feuffer.” “You kept me busy for the fuddies,” I accused. She smiled a little, as at a charming memory. “Ach, you have beg for it. And your face! How you like it when that iron door gets shut the first time, BOOMS! However, like people say in country where I come from, God he fastens one gate and opens a thousand. Perhaps there is open gate someplace and you don’t see?”

  “I might have to push one open with that superhuman strength of the mental patient,” I grumbled. “Is all for your education, my dear,” she said blandly, “you are talented person, a thousand gates, where is the sport? For you, God closes a thousand gates and opens one.”