Milani and I looked so much alike people thought we were twins despite the fact that she was two years ahead of me. Occasionally, people would ask us how we could hate white people when we ourselves were half white.
“Half white doesn’t make you all white,” she’d say. “One drop of black blood makes you black,” I’d chime in—using the words I’d first heard from my mother but now heard all the time.
Milani and I both thought we looked a little better and a little blacker with a tan. We’d sneak off after meetings to get a dose of UV radiation from Sun on the Run tanning salon. We’d make self-deprecating jokes to the staff at the tanning salon, sure that they’d never had black customers before; then we’d go study together and talk about the goddamn white man.
I had a suspicion that her boyfriend, Tamas, didn’t like me. Milani would tense up when we were together. The first time we met, he questioned me excessively about my background, particularly my father. What country were his ancestors from? Was his father from Italy? I figured he was just another paranoid black nationalist, so I had answered his every question in detail.
When I got to Milani’s room, Tamas opened the door. He greeted me halfheartedly and stomped out. I noticed that she had redecorated in the past few days; her Africa poster had been replaced with a gold-tone Star of David ornament.
Milani looked like she had been crying. I thought she was about to tell me that someone had died. I felt embarrassed for interrupting her with my trivial problem.
“Girl, I was just upset at something these white boys did to me today,” I said, waving my hand as I said the words, trying to indicate that it wasn’t a big deal. Milani pressed me for what had happened.
I told her, laughing at how silly it all was.
“Talibah, they’re telling the truth. You could be depressed.” She emphasized the word you as if to say, You could but not me.
She went on. “I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but we can’t be friends anymore. Tamas has taught me the truth about race: A child is the race of his father,” she said. “You’re an Edomite. I am from the tribe of Judah, God’s chosen tribe,” she added.
I looked at her like she was insane. Was she saying what I thought she was—that although we both had a white parent, she was more black?
“Are you sure your father isn’t Sicilian?” she asked, with hope in her voice. “Sicilians are from the Tribe of Judah. You know, the whole Moor thing and all.”
I almost lied and said he was. Unfortunately, only his mother was Sicilian and women’s genes didn’t seem to count in her new faith. I walked out of her room and slammed the door. I was upset at losing a friend, but more upset that another group had decided I still wasn’t black enough. After all the work I’d put in, not eating meat and missing parties? At least I still have Mah, I thought.
Two days after Milani broke the news to me that I was the same white devil I’d been railing against, Mah accused me of giving him syphilis.
“Are you sure you didn’t cheat on me? Then how come I’m on the white man’s antibiotics?” he asked, shaking the orange pill bottle in my face. For a week, I scared myself sick, thinking perhaps I had had dormant syphilis for years and had given it to my black prince. Only after I came up negative for syphilis twice did he admit that when he wasn’t spreading the news about the evils of the white man, he enjoyed going to parties and having unprotected sex with women in bathrooms. He also admitted that he had another girlfriend on the side who would be more fit to run his school. As if the week wasn’t bad enough with losing a friend and finding out I was going to Edomite Hell, he pulled out her photo. She was that perfect brown toast color I’d been trying to achieve by all my hours at Sun on the Run. She also had on short shorts. A far cry from the conservatively dressed African queen he claimed to prefer.
That was the straw that broke the depressed black woman’s back. That night, I slept for twenty hours but was still unable to get out of bed. When I finally rolled over, I used all my strength to turn to PSYCHIATRISTS in the phone book.
“I think I need to see someone,” I whispered into the phone, so that my strong black female roommates couldn’t hear me.
I never made it to the psychiatrist that year. I didn’t make it anywhere outside of my dorm room, actually. I spent all my energy faking normalcy in my voice when people called to see why I wasn’t in class. I told some people I had the flu, some people I had asthma, some people that I was just really busy with schoolwork. I wished everyone would leave me alone but secretly hoped that someone could tell I was lying and come rescue me. I wanted to die, but the wish made me mad at myself. I didn’t have the energy to commit suicide, and I was mad at myself for that, too. I took in-completes in all my classes.
Sophomore year, I moved off campus. Living alone was the perfect incubator for depression. There were no roommates to notice that I hadn’t taken a shower or that I’d been crying all day. I could wake up, order in Ben and Jerry’s, and cry myself back to sleep. Finally, when I received potential failure notices from all my classes, I decided to hit the Yellow Pages again.
Though it would have been easier, there was no way I was going to the university’s Student Health Center, even though rumor had it they were dispensing Prozac as freely as they did condoms. I was not going to risk someone seeing me in the psychiatric waiting room. I looked through the phone book until I found a doctor with an ethnic-sounding last name.
Dr. Nami talked to me for about ten minutes and gave me a pocket-size trial pack of Prozac. She said it might take some time to feel better, but I felt slightly better just having the drugs in my pocket. The receptionist at Dr. Nami’s office informed me that, to get additional visits, I’d have to call my insurance and get approved. I’d never had to do that for a doctor’s visit before.
“Only for mental health visits and chiropractors, the step-children of medicine,” she said.
Talking to a phone customer-service rep is a challenge for me even on a nondepressed day. While most people get frustrated pushing touch-tone buttons and talking to a computerized voice, I get mad when I key in the wrong combination of numbers and actually have to talk to a human representative. I prefer computers. Computers don’t come in with an attitude after being stuck in traffic. They don’t decide they hate your voice and put you on hold forever. Computers are one of the few places where everyone has a level playing field. You get out what you put in, without prejudice.
I punched every button on my touch-tone phone, attempting not to get transferred to a human being. Every time I heard “Please hold for the next available representative,” I’d hang up. After two hours of that game, I gave in. I was transferred to a male customer-service rep who sounded about seventeen years old and had only half of his attention on me. I heard the rustle of fast-food wrappers in the background. The customer-service rep’s voice was robotic and his words were separated with long pauses, like he was reading a script from a slow-moving computer.
“Hello”—long pause, sound of him repeatedly hitting the space bar—“my name is Tad. What can I help you with”—pause, sound of him typing—“this afternoon?”
I told Tad I had to get approval to see a psychiatrist. I imagined he would transfer me to a doctor or fax some forms to my nearest Kinko’s so I could pick them up.
“Sure, I can help you with that, I just have to”—thirty-second pause—“ask you some safety questions.”
What the hell are safety questions? Like, do I know what a solid double line on a highway means?
“Sure,” I replied, hesitantly.
“How many times have you seen a psychiatrist in the past year?”
This was too embarrassing. I had barely got up the nerve to talk to a psychiatrist and now I was letting a teenager—who was probably reading Maxim magazine as he talked to me—know how crazy I felt.
I held my finger to the phone’s receiver, ready to hang up. How many times have you seen a psychiatrist? is not a safety question, I thought. Whose safet
y is that question for, the financial safety of the insurance company? Why don’t they just call it what it is, a question about my past psychological state? Why the dumbeddown talk? I hate this. I hate everyone.
I took a deep breath. “I’ve been to a psychiatrist once, but I can’t go again until I get approval from you.”
I felt like Tad was typing Failure into my file, but I held in there, answering no when he asked me if I heard voices or had thoughts of harming people. I said yes when he asked if I had interrupted sleeping patterns. I wanted to ask him some questions about himself, since he had my whole life on the screen in front of him, like what brand of chips was he chewing in my ear? I restrained myself from doing that.
“Do you have thoughts of suicide?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. Because of how long this phone call is taking,” I said. There was a long pause before he asked his next question.
“Okay, we’re almost done. Can you verify your current address for me?”
I did. I could hear what sounded like him pounding on his keyboard.
“My computer is going slow; please hold for a second,” he said.
While I was holding, there was a knock on my door. I looked through the peephole. Cops. Oh, my goodness. I opened the door.
Before me stood two police officers: Officer Grey, a beefy bulldog-looking middle-aged white guy with the kind of long mustache that must be fun to twirl in the mirror when no one is watching, and his partner, Officer Jenkins. She was a younger black female cop with a stylish haircut partially tucked under her cap. She looked like someone I might enjoy clubbing with if I wasn’t so depressed.
“Are you Angela Nissel?” Officer Grey asked me. I nodded.
“Do you want to kill yourself?”
I couldn’t believe it. Tad had called the cops on me.
“No! I don’t want to kill myself!”
Officer Grey tilted his head and looked at my neck.
“Then what’s that mark on your neck?”
“I burned myself with a curling iron!” I said. After I found out Mah was cheating, I gave up on natural no-fuss hairstyles. I was through with attracting righteous men for a while.
I looked to the black officer for help. Surely, she with her perm would back me up. “Won’t you tell him it’s a curling-iron burn?” I pleaded.
“Well, it does look like a curling-iron burn,” she said. I laughed out loud at the seriousness of their faces and the thought of a suicidal girl crying out, “I can’t straighten my hair or my life out!” and holding a hot iron up to her neck.
It was the first time I’d laughed in over two weeks. Unfortunately, cops don’t like it when you laugh at them.
“We have to take you to the hospital,” Officer Grey said, while Officer Jenkins radioed something into her walkie-talkie about having a “Four-oh-four.”
I asked them for permission to grab a few things and they kept a close eye on me while I did it. While I’m sure word was spreading through my building that cops were at my door, two EMTs showed up. The male EMT looked like he could be a cover model for Black Bodybuilders.
Why, when I was being taken to a mental hospital, did the sexiest EMT ever have to show up?
“Ma’am, I have to strap you to this gurney,” the sexy EMT said.
“Are you serious? I’m not crippled! This is so embarrassing!” I screamed.
“It’s for insurance reasons,” he answered dryly, like I was wasting his time. I supposed crazy pickups are less exciting than heart attacks.
I hopped up on the gurney, not wanting to annoy the sexy EMT. He offered some advice to me as he started rolling me down the hallway. “If you cough a lot, your neighbors will think you’re really sick instead of being taken away for something mental.”
He was right. What would all my black neighbors think if I was wheeled away without any apparent signs of distress? As we pushed farther down the hallway, I started coughing slowly. By the time we left my apartment building, I was hacking like my whole life was caught in my throat.
Crazy Spa Interlude
Welcome to the Crazy Spa
We know you have a lot on your mind and hope you’ll find this guide useful in answering your general questions about what to expect here. If you have more specialized questions, like “When will my brain neurons stop misfiring?” please ask your doctor.
In your first few days, just try to relax and enjoy your all-inclusive stay. If you find it hard to relax, we’ll give you something to help you— probably something injectable.
Check-In
There is no set check-in time. We’ll accept you through our Emergency Room whenever your doctor or the police decide your major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, or postpartum psychosis is threatening your safety or the safety of others around you.
Intake
An orderly will escort you from the E.R. to the Psychiatric Unit. When you and the orderly arrive at the psychiatric floor, you’ll think that there is not much difference between that floor and the “normal” patient floors. Then you’ll notice that you and the orderly must be buzzed in to the psych unit through steel-framed bulletproof-glass double doors. Those doors are there for your safety.
After being buzzed in, the orderly will deposit you in front of the nurses’ station, and a nurse will give you a pencil and a test. For your safety, the pencil is barely sharpened. The test is called the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) and has over 500 questions. You’ll be thinking, Why couldn’t I have filled out this test during the eight hours I had in the damned Seclusion Room? Don’t get upset. This is for you. Everything here is for you. The MMPI will help the doctors clarify your diagnosis.
Other mental health patients will be sitting in front of the nurses’ station while you take the test. Some will be reading, some will be sleeping, some will be bitching about their meds. For the most part, they’ll all look pretty normal, like your next-door neighbor or your teacher’s aide. Actually, that may be your teacher’s aide. Don’t be embarrassed that she sees you’re in the mental ward. As long as she has on a patient’s ID bracelet, she’s in here, too.
Don’t be afraid that one of the patients will go crazy at any moment. They’re all wondering the same thing about you because you’re a new admit and have yet to take any medication. One of the patients may attempt to break the ice and ask, “Is this your first time?” You can answer or not answer. Everyone here understands you’re having a bad day.
Frisking / Confiscation
During intake the nurse may say to you, slowly and loudly as if she is speaking to a kindergartener, “Now, you don’t have anything hidden in your pockets that you can cut with, do you?” Don’t get upset. Some people, even hospital staff, confuse mental illness with complete f-ing mental retardation.
After you finish the test, all you’ll want to do is lie down so people stop staring at you, but first you will be frisked for sharps and anything that you could use to set yourself or other patients on fire. Things that will be confiscated include but are not limited to:
Plastic knives
The shoelaces from your shoes
Belts and pants drawstrings
Anything with glass (framed photos, mirrors, etc.)
Wire from your spiral notebooks
Dental floss
Balloons, plastic bags, and condoms
Curling irons and hot combs
You will get everything back when you check out or when your doctor deems you sane enough to use them. Don’t think anyone is singling you out—look around. Even the senior citizens’ pants are hanging somewhere between their upper thighs and their knees because we took their belts. They look like old people in young, saggy, gangstarapper clothing. Once you emerge from your depression and can laugh at things, you’ll see that this is actually a comical sight.
After your frisking/confiscation session, Hospital Administrative Staff will come around and talk to you about
advance directives and living wills. I know it’s a shame to taunt you with so many things related to death if you’re in for a failed suicide, but we promise that you’ll feel better in a few weeks.
Oceanfront Views
If you find yourself getting seasick, look around: Almost everything on our ward has been painted blue or green. These are calming, tranquil colors; we want you to relax and let us take care of your brain. There is no red or yellow here; those stimulating colors can cause agitation and hunger (think of one fast-food restaurant that doesn’t have one of those colors in their logo). We wouldn’t want to agitate you and make you hungry, because around here you don’t get too much to eat. Whatever you do eat, you have to be able to cut with a spork because plastic knives are too sharp (see under Frisking).
Our entire unit is designed to reduce the amount of sensory stimulation you have, but if you do see any reds or yellows and they make you feel angry or unsafe, see a nurse.
Your Living Quarters
Note: If you’re a celebrity, you will not have a room on the psychiatric unit. You will be given a room on one of the physical illness floors, so no one will suspect that you have problems with your brain. For more information, see Jane Pauley’s memoir, page 321, or ask your doctor for our brochure entitled “Special Treatment.”
For regular blue- and white-collar folks, our ward is equipped with thirty single-occupancy patient rooms. That’s right! Unlike cancer and stage-three AIDS patients, you don’t have to share your room with anyone! Other patients are not allowed in your room. There is a speaker above your bed. Periodically, you will hear voices through that speaker, including the nurse’s aide who wakes you up at 7 A.M. and the one who announces that lunch is now being served. If you’re alone in your room and you hear voices other than the one coming from your speaker, see a nurse.
Visitors
Don’t worry if no one in your family will come see you because you’re in a mental hospital. Soon after your 7 A.M. wake-up, you’ll have about seven visitors: your main attending doctor and a group of terrified-looking medical residents who stare at you from the foot of your bed. You will see the thought bubbles forming over their heads: WHEN WILL MY GODDAMNED PSYCH ROTATION BE OVER? Besides this fun bunch, any family and friends who haven’t written you off can visit between the hours of 5 P.M. and 9 P.M.
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