“I don’t sound insane—mad—crazy?” I suggested and couldn’t help but smile a little.
“Yeah,” she responded. “Isn’t that why everyone’s here?” She paused. “That’s why I was told I was here.”
I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see it. Maybe? I didn’t know anymore. There was so much jumbled up in my mind, and the line between clear-mindedness and lunacy didn’t seem as obvious as it used to be.
“What is lunacy anyway?” I questioned. Many women had just been considered mere inconveniences to their families, though others had such erratic behavior it would have been dangerous not to get help for them. If the doctors didn’t know what to do except to tie them down, how would a husband or parent know what to do? But if they came with sickness at any level in their minds, the longer they stayed, the worse it got. This wasn’t where people were cured; it was just another type of prison.
“Right. Lunacy,” she said like she was thinking of far-off things.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Grace. Grace Douglass.”
“Did your husband leave you here? Did your baby die? Or did you try to hurt yourself or someone else? Do you only cry and not eat?” All the reasons I’d heard flew out of my mouth. “That’s why most of the women are here.”
“You ask a lot of questions.” Her voice was so friendly my heart started to swell. Would this Grace Douglass be my friend?
“My husband didn’t leave me here.” As she spoke each word her voice sobered. There was a long pause. “My parents did. And I don’t have a baby—but my parents are afraid it might happen.”
“Oh.” I knew what she meant. “So that’s why you’re here?”
The pause continued so long I almost repeated my question.
“There’s more. Mother says I’m too ambitious and Father thinks I’m fanatical about things like photography and travel. And I love the wrong kind of boy. That doctor said it was moral insanity.” The sadness in her voice formed a bridge between us.
I leaned my forehead against the door. I didn’t know what she meant about loving the wrong kind of boy. How many kinds were there? Mentally disturbed was the most common diagnosis, but I was very familiar with the term moral insanity, though I didn’t understand that in her case. She was the youngest I’d seen admitted for it.
There were plenty of patients on my floor I was sure would not survive well outside these walls—not that they were doing any more than surviving here. My mother was one. Lorna too, though she hadn’t always been as bad as she was now. The ones who needed help with the basics of life or who would hurt themselves or others if given the chance were the ones who could use help from a doctor—but this hospital offered only nightmares. In the dictionary asylum meant an offer of protection. There was no protection here.
Sisters Rosina and Carmen weren’t insane; they just couldn’t speak English when admitted. After their parents died they’d become homeless. Their howling in grief and begging for food were a nuisance to the neighborhood, and without anyone to claim responsibility, they were sent here.
Too many stories. Too much sadness. My shoulders slumped under the weight of it all. My chest heaved. I focused my breathing to be regular and steady. I wanted to keep talking.
“How old are you?” I finally asked.
“Eighteen.”
We talked until Wilma yelled at us to sleep. But before that Grace had told me what it was like to go to school. About a woman named Agatha Christie who wrote detective novels. About her camera in her bag that was taken from her when she arrived. She told me about circuses, traveling to England, and kissing boys. All through the small square window. When she talked about those things, her voice shone as bright as the moon and I felt more alive than ever.
I fell asleep with all the images she’d gifted me. They swirled, raced, and spun in my head until it became a real world deep within me. The prettiest, brightest world I’d ever known. Why had Joann never given me these images? What fantastic things Grace had seen. What a life she’d led. And now she was here with me.
The last thing she said before we both retreated to our cots was what I had begun thinking of constantly.
“Do you think we could escape—if my parents don’t come back for me?”
That would mean being without Mother. Escaping had been on the fringes of my mind since I’d received the photograph from Joann on my fourteenth birthday. What Joann probably thought would satisfy some curiosities spurred on a desire in me to leave. Before that, the idea of leaving didn’t seem real. My maternal attachment to Joann had filled so much of me. But not anymore. Things were changing. And now I had Grace.
The light was bright through the window in the wall when I woke the next morning. I squinted. I heard a door slam and yelling filtered through the broken glass of my solitary window. I jumped up and stood on the bed rail again. There was Angel.
“Angel!” I yelled through the bars and broken panes. His eyes roamed, looking for me, and I knew he would not be able to see so far away. But he would know it was me. “Angel, up here. I’m in solitary.”
The door flew open and hit the wall behind it. Joann stood silhouetted in the hall light, her nursing cap casting a bullhorn-like shadow on the wall.
“Brighton, stop.”
I looked at her and then back outside again. Angel was being escorted away, but he was still looking for me. And I was all too sure about where he was being taken. Madness and desperation boiled in me. My hands grabbed at the bars and I pulled myself up higher. I screamed and yelled, and when the broken glass cut me, I didn’t care.
As he was being taken away with a man on each side of him, I continued to call for him.
“Get down from there.” Joann was pulling me down. My feet couldn’t find the bed rail, so my tumble was painful and hard against the concrete floor. I groaned for a moment but got up as quickly as I could, my shoulder and hip aching.
“Leave me alone.” I moved to a corner and had my fingernails splayed like claws. The way we looked at each other reminded me of the time Joann—Nursey then—taught me about bulls and how these men would master them with a red cape. Which one of us was the bull? Which one of us was the master?
Then I heard a car motor. I stepped back onto the bed rail before Joann could grab me, kicking her in her middle. She swore and doubled over. A black car with silver edges had driven up. I watched as a man in a suit and a white doctor’s coat exited the car with Dr. Woburn. Was that Angel’s father? Several other men were with them, each with white coats and clipboards.
“Brighton,” Grace’s voice called from her room. “What’s happening? Are you okay?”
She kept asking, but I was looking in the direction Angel had walked. I couldn’t see him. He was lost in the fog that hung in the air. Suddenly I felt a sting. My body involuntarily flinched, and I turned toward Joann just in time to see her pull a syringe from my thigh.
Insulin.
She’d just injected me.
Would I ever see Angel again?
And what about Grace?
What about me?
Rosina’s God, deliver us from evil.
1990
Black, White, and Bright
The black-and-white photograph of Joann Derry doesn’t look newly developed. The white frame isn’t yellowed or curled at the edges, but the film is so old the developing and printing have set off the varied shades of black in a yellowed glaze. Some details have been eliminated, but nothing my memory can’t conjure. I carefully pin the new print on the drying line along with a dozen others that have turned out. Not all the images I took have been printable. I was a budding photographer then, with a lot to learn.
I try not to study the photos as memories—not just yet—but only as a photographer. While photos only take minutes to process, my insides will take longer. But thoughts sneak in and I remember taking this photo. It’s an entirely different world, but I remember it like I am that girl right now, holding that late-thirties-model Kod
ak camera. In it, Nurse Joann is closing the back of my mother’s hospital gown. Joann’s exhaustion is evident—the sag of her jawline, the hunch of her shoulders, the deflation of her spirit. My breath catches in my chest, and as hard as I try, I can’t look away. The image holds me captive. This is what I didn’t want right now. I just wanted to have the prints, not relive the madness.
But the photo has become a siren and I am not turning away.
Mother’s stringy hair cascades down her back, and my stomach shudders at the pointy narrow shoulders. Mother is suddenly so real to me I am expecting her to turn around, point her bony finger at me, and remind me that this was all my fault. Everything that happened the year after this photo was taken was all my fault. Maybe instead of Mother turning it’ll be Joann and she’ll inject me with insulin again. After a minute of staring I realize I’m rubbing my thigh and I stop. The burden of forgiveness is heavy.
She had loved me. She’d taught me to tie my shoes, to read—and when I asked her about sex, she told me. Now, as a mother myself, I realize what it meant for Joann to do these things and be this person to me. She gave me everything during those long, bleak years, had given up so much, but she had also taken much from me. She’d kept secrets—secrets that revealed the darkest pieces of my life. She is why I am Nell and why I’ve been Nell for so long. I don’t want to be anyone else.
An hour or so later the phone rings again. I rush out of the dark room a second time and grab the receiver. The balm of my husband’s voice settles in the old wounds newly opened. He tells me about the child psychology conference and that California feels like another country.
“You’ll never guess what I am doing today.” I haven’t used our small home dark room in years. I tell him about the film canister and the phone call from Kelly Keene. I tell him I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.
I know he’s nodding his head. He often does this when on the phone with the parents of his patients.
“I don’t know what to do. You know how I feel about that place and . . .” Who I really am. I can’t finish my sentence, not even with him, even though he knows all my secrets. Some of the things surprised him, but he doesn’t shock easily. “It’s just been so long and I thought I was past all of this.”
“What do you want to do?” He’s using his doctor voice. I know Doc isn’t going to tell me what to do, though. He never does. He lets me talk and think until I decide for myself.
“I want my—” A cuss word taunts me as it sits in the pocket of my cheek, but then I think better of it. I swallow it back. “I want my film cartridges, of course.”
“But what do you really want?”
“Don’t use your doctor voice with me.” I don’t say it angrily but more as a reminder. Sometimes he doesn’t know he’s doing it.
“Nell.” His voice rests against my tense insides and softens me. “I can come home. I can be on a plane by morning.”
Would this help? Or is this something I have to figure out by myself?
“No,” I sigh. “Grace and I made a promise to each other about those pictures.”
“You haven’t talked about her in a long time.” I hear the smile in his voice. “So you’re going to go meet this Kelly woman and maybe—go back?”
The pause after this question could last for years as far as I am concerned. And because my husband doesn’t rush anything, he waits until I am ready to speak.
“I think I have to.” I realize then that I’m holding the latest photo I exposed and processed. Angel’s face is staring up at me, and my breath hitches.
The idea of dragging all of that out again with another person—this stranger, Kelly Keene—makes my stomach want to rid itself of everything I’ve eaten today. All of it is going to end up in the trash can if I don’t get control over this. There will be too much to trudge through. Our children know just enough, but they would never consider for a moment that my first eighteen years nearly shredded anything good out of me—because I never let it seep into my mothering. Oh, how I worked and worked to be the mother I wished I’d had. But in every filled milk glass and tuck-in with a kiss I knew my own buried faraway mother would’ve wanted to be that mother also. It made me stronger to think of her and know that there was a reason I did what I did.
“Are you still there?”
I blink and shake my head. My mouth is open, but nothing comes out for several long moments.
“I’m here.” I sense the surge of strength fighting against the shock of everything Kelly Keene is bringing to my life.
“You are who you are because of those years. I’ve never wanted to change you, even if that meant taking it all away.” He always knows how to talk to me. “If you need to do this, I’ll support you, but be careful.”
I’m nodding without saying a word. My eyes burn, but I won’t close them. I don’t want to squeeze any of the tears out.
“I can come home. This conference will happen again next year,” he offers again.
“No. It’s okay.” I inhale so deeply I think my lungs might pop like an overfilled balloon. “I know you should be there, and I’m a big girl.” I chuckle and exhale all at once, and look back down at that bright boy who saved my life over and over so many years ago.
Only after I assure him that I’ll be careful does he tell me he’ll call me tonight and that he loves me, and then we hang up. I return to the dark room, but before I hang the Angel picture on the wire with a metal clip, I eye it a bit more. My building is in the background. The back door is held open with a small rock so we can get back in. Angel stands in the foreground. It’s a little blurry, but when I bring the picture close, I can smell the dried grass and fresh breeze and hear the choir of birds that sang to us about our future.
That boy was more than simply the subject in the photograph—he was my everything in those dark years.
“Angel,” I whisper to myself. I lift my hand and touch the image of the skinny boy in white standing there with his wide, innocent smile and eyes that played between red and blue. He didn’t know what was coming yet, and it breaks my heart again.
I need to see it all again. To remember it and to be close to it once more before it’s all gone. Buried dust and ashes. I am not ready to let go yet. But I am ready to find those buried souls and love them and remind anyone who will listen that the invisible still exist.
1939
Heaven Backward
“Y líbranos del mal.” I turned to yell it at Joann. While I still had control over my body, I kept repeating the line of prayer. I understood now why Rosina did it. Why she couldn’t stop once she got started.
“Deliver us from evil.”
I reverted to English to make sure Joann knew what I was saying. I wanted her to know what I believed about her. Evil. This place was evil. The walls were a hell made out of brick and mortar. But instead of heat from the hellfire, there was a constant chill and dampness in the air.
The sting from my feet slapping against the cold floor radiated up to my thighs and hips. Then everything started happening in slow motion. I pulled my arm away from her grip. Her pretty and perfect fingernails scratched against my skin. My own were bitten and torn. Claw-like nails were a weapon against out-of-control patients.
Joann began to blur.
Her words, “Sorry, my love,” were drawn out and felt like dandelion fuzz in my ears.
I took a wobbly step away from her. One step back and into the corner of the small room. She had her hands out to me, splayed, and her mouth was moving, but I could feel the insulin rush through me now. Her voice didn’t sound like her. A voice somewhere repeated my name. Whose voice was it? I looked around for it.
I looked back at Joann’s face—it went from two to four back to one. She really had lied to me my whole life—but now I knew the truth. We weren’t the same, she and I, like she’d always said we were. She’d told me for as long as I could remember that she and I weren’t like the patients. That we had our minds and they didn’t. That we could learn and b
e rational and they couldn’t. There were too many truths and lies braided tightly in these thoughts.
She wore her white nurse’s cap on top of her light-blond styled hair. The magazines I’d stolen described the hairdo as coiffed, sleek, sweeping, and I could see all of those words in the beauty of Joann’s hair. My hand moved in slow motion up to my scalp, and the stubble rubbed against my palm. I was a patient. But Joann, with a face that looked like the magazine ladies, was not.
Her white uniform fit her well, and I looked down at my gown. Long. Loose. Soiled. Old. Likely had been worn previously by a now-dead patient. It wasn’t even mine. It was just the one that had been handed to me the last time the laundry came through. This one hung well below my knees, down to my calves, and had room enough for two or three of me.
She had freedom.
I had nothing.
“Can you hear me, Bright?” Joann’s words started cutting through the insulin. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I wrinkled up my brow. My mouth frowned. I could feel it now.
“I hate you,” I whispered.
The twitch in her face indicated surprise. I was surprised myself. I didn’t like the way the words tasted in my mouth, but they were true in that moment. And then I fell, and no one caught me.
I gave in to the insulin and my mind lingered only on how my muscles went from tense to relaxed and how good it would feel to sleep.
But it was the kind of sleep where voices could be heard. Joann apologized over and over, telling me she didn’t know why she’d done it. She was afraid and exasperated and didn’t know why I wouldn’t just stay the little girl who trusted her.
That little girl was gone.
She may as well have been dead.
I heard Mother too. Was I in my room? She wailed and thrashed and made all the familiar sounds. And a few times her sounds seemed to try to form my name. I was alone for so long, left in the dark, and I didn’t know where everyone had gone. So far away. How long this went on, I wasn’t sure, but slowly there was a fold of light in the corner of my mind and Mother was there. I think I said Mother but my mouth didn’t move, so I must have only thought the precious word. But the woman in the fold of light didn’t look like Mother. Similar but different. She was warm and glowing and whole. She smiled at me, and the glimmer in her eye was so different from how she usually looked at me.
The Bright Unknown Page 7