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The Bright Unknown

Page 8

by Elizabeth Byler Younts


  “Mother?” I asked.

  She just smiled and waved and twinkled at me. She wasn’t wearing a hospital gown; instead, she was in clothes I’d see in Joann’s catalogs. Her rounder, soft features invited me to come closer, but when I couldn’t, I realized I was in restraints. I was camisoled. I struggled and screamed, but something was in and around my mouth. With every muscle I tried to push, pull, and stretch, but nothing worked. Heat and dampness formed in the crevices. There was no release.

  Did this last for minutes or months? My mind and body were equally taxed. I wanted to leave my body. I pleaded with my soul to fly away and leave the rest of me behind. But my soul had wrapped around me, holding me together like glue, while the camisole ripped me apart. But slowly I gave in. I stopped struggling. I let go.

  Joann’s voice and Mother’s humming returned then.

  “Brighton,” Joann said with a spark of urgency. “Wake up, my darling.”

  Darling? She wasn’t allowed to call me that anymore, just like I’d never call her Nursey again.

  My mouth was dry and something was still in it. I tried to speak. A mouthpiece. Was I really at risk of swallowing my tongue? Had I had a seizure? It was removed as if Joann heard my silent request. My tongue felt large and thick, and when I felt the vibration in my throat, I was relieved that I could still make a sound.

  “Brighton, open your eyes,” Joann commanded as nurses did when trying to wake patients from an insulin stupor. “Open your eyes.”

  My eyelids fluttered. The light was so bright I winced. Was this what Angel experience when in the sunlight? I tried to shield my eyes with my hand, but the camisole held me down. Panic rose in me when I realized that it hadn’t just been in my subconscious but that I was actually restrained. I pulled harder and could hear Joann telling me to calm down so she could unbuckle the camisole but making me promise to stay under control. I nodded my head. I didn’t think I’d have the strength to fight anyway.

  She sat me up, and my body felt loose and free of any bones or muscles inside. Joann deftly unstrapped the camisole, and my ears were cued to another voice. It was far away, but I had to remember why it was familiar.

  “Grace,” I said. Then coughed. My throat and mouth so dry. But I had to try again. “Grace.”

  “Who?” Joann asked, confused. She tried to keep me in the bed as she pulled away the camisole and placed it by my feet. I pushed her away, but my arms were like the Jell-O Joyful served, and my legs were strapped to the bed rails.

  “My legs,” I said. Joann let go of my arms and loosened my legs. I swung them over the side of the bed, only to fall as soon as I tried to stand.

  “My legs,” I repeated. They were numb and growing tingly. I wiggled my toes and then my ankles while Joann tried to explain that it was just my circulation.

  “You have to forgive me, Brighton,” she pleaded, hanging all over me. “That shot wasn’t meant for you. You know I always keep one with me, just in case. You were out of control. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  She continued, and I let her talk without responding. I wasn’t considering whether or not I could forgive her; all I knew was that I needed to get to Grace. I needed to help Angel.

  “Forgive me, Brighton,” Joann said on her knees, her head bowed on the bed next to me.

  I contemplated little on her request as my legs gained strength.

  “Where’s Angel?” My voice chilled the room further.

  She shook her head as black streaks from her makeup made pathways down her perfect creamy skin.

  “We can talk about him, but you have to forgive me. Please forgive me.” She reached for me again, and because I had nowhere else to go, I stood on the small cot, my legs nearly buckling.

  Which was harder—the tile beneath her knees or the very tissues of my heart? Forgiveness was something so dearly connected to forgetting, and I wasn’t sure the former could happen without the latter. It was like asking the broken window to repair itself. Everything she was saying, the way she was desperate to touch me, all the tears she was shedding made my soul and stomach wind up together. My hunger was only satisfied feasting on my hurt and anger toward Joann. Maybe it would change someday, but maybe not.

  “Where is Angel? What have they done to him?”

  She didn’t answer but kept crying.

  “Answer me,” I growled at her. I had learned that from a patient long ago—to use my voice like that. That woman was dead now.

  “Brighton, you don’t act this way. This isn’t you.” Joann tried to wipe the wetness from her face, but it only smeared the blackness across her no-longer-perfect cheeks. “Come down and let’s talk.”

  “How am I acting?”

  Joann blinked and looked away from me.

  “Am I acting insane? Tell me, Nurse Joann.”

  I emphasized her name. This wasn’t the same woman who had mothered me over the last sixteen years. That woman never would’ve injected me with insulin. This was not the woman who had read Aesop’s Fables and Little Women to me. Oh, to be a character in those stories and not be me. Not be Brighton. Not be shorn. Not be brittle-souled and lost.

  Then I heard a voice coming from Mother’s cot and looked at her, and the sight of blood pulled me toward her on my weak and wobbling legs. Her arms were bleeding. This was what she did to herself when she was agitated.

  “Mother, what happened?” I asked and moved to sit next to her on the bed.

  “I know,” Nurse Joann said behind me. I ignored her and grabbed the damp cloth that had been draped over the footrail of her bed, already stained with blood.

  I carefully turned Mother over and welcomed the stare of her blank eyes. The look was familiar—though something did flicker behind her eyes when she saw my shorn head. Like she noticed the change. I forced my grimace to a smile. I wanted to put her at ease.

  “Mommy.” Tears rushed to my eyes when the word spilled from my mouth. When was the last time I’d called her that? “Let me clean you up.”

  Slurred words escaped her mouth, none of them intelligible. But I knew they were happy sounds. Not the ones she made when she was being dragged to hydrotherapy or forced to swallow powdered water that she knew would sedate her. I knew her sounds, and I knew what she was saying. She was happy to see me. She’d missed me.

  I gently wiped her arm where the scratches still bled. She relaxed into my touch. Her free arm rested on my knee, and her fingers thrummed gently against my skin.

  “You’re so good with her.” Nurse Joann’s voice broke.

  I forced myself to continue my even strokes and not look at Joann. The woman whom I’d seen as a second mother my whole life had betrayed me. The coolness of my scalp was a constant reminder. A shiver fell like water from my head down my back.

  “Please don’t hate me,” Joann whispered. “I didn’t mean— I was scared.”

  I finished with my mother and helped her sit up at the edge of her bed. After I carefully slipped her head through her gown and helped her arms through, I finally turned toward Joann.

  “You were scared?” I wanted to hiss at her like Lorna. My words started out quiet but grew to fill every space of the room. “How do you think I’ve felt since I was six and realized that living like this isn’t normal?” I gestured around me. “That other children live in homes with a mom and dad and sisters and brothers. They go to school. Eat dinner together around a table. Sit in front of a fireplace and read together. I live in a lunatic asylum with women considered insane and incurable—if they weren’t crazy when they came, they are now. None of us can leave. We’re all trapped. I’m trapped.”

  I felt dizzy and squeezed my eyes shut to gain back my balance. I opened my eyes and found Joann wide-eyed with a hand out, as if to calm me.

  “I’ve done the best I could with your circumstances. I haven’t taken other jobs—better jobs—because I love you. I’ve put so much on hold. Even pushed Sid—Dr. Woburn—off, for goodness’ sake.”

  “Dr. Woburn.” I shook my h
ead. “He’s a murderer, and I’ll tell everyone.”

  “Stop saying that. No one will believe you anyway. I haven’t gotten married and I haven’t had the family I’ve dreamed of because I wanted to be with you. As long as you’re here—”

  I cut her off. “As long as I’m here? Where else can I go? I’m stuck here.”

  She stopped speaking, her mouth gaping open for several long moments. “I know.”

  The tremor that went through my heart was like a battle cry from deep inside. I was unprepared to hear her agree that I was trapped. And telling me that she’d given up a future family because of me only compounded my reality. But if she loved me so much to give everything up, then why cut my hair and throw me in solitary?

  Why camisole me? Why torture me?

  “You don’t know what I’ve kept you from,” she continued. “I kept you from the children’s ward, insisting that you being near your mother was the best thing for her. That might’ve been true then, but really it was because I fell in love with you. I wanted you for myself. I was a silly eighteen-year-old, barely old enough to be a nurse here. But you—”

  She stopped and cleared her throat. The heavy pause wrapped around me as tightly as the camisole had been.

  “Look at what you did to me.” I pointed to my head. “And then solitary—and—” I pointed at my bed where the camisole and the restraints lay.

  “You threatened to ruin us—me and Sid.” She spoke in a grave whisper. “We would both lose everything.”

  “I’ve already lost everything,” I yelled. “Actually, I haven’t lost everything. I’ve never had anything. All I have is the shell of a mother and Angel. And you were ready to let Dr. Woburn take him away from me. Where is he?”

  “You know where he is. You didn’t give me the chance to fix it. And I haven’t left your side since—”

  “Was he really taken to Orchard Row?”

  Like a dam breaking, tears rushed to my eyes. My throat constricted. My hand went to my chest to steady my breathing. Had she really just said Angel was in the men’s ward? My eavesdropping on nurses and aides had taught me that even the non-dangerous men’s wing had a weight and height requirement for male nurses and aides. The men could be so violent they had to be handcuffed for basic medical assessments.

  “I’ve been at your side for three days. And there was the audit and—”

  “Three days?” I leaned against the wall and finally looked at Joann and took her in. Her hair was in disarray and her cap was askew. Her white uniform was covered in stains. Sweat marks lined her dress under her arms. I’d never seen her look so unkempt.

  Suddenly my mind jumped to the new patient.

  “Where’s Grace? The girl in the other room in solitary.”

  “The new patient? She’s still in solitary.” Joann’s dismissal of Grace, her lack of concern, stirred my anger.

  “Get Grace out,” I pleaded. “Why is she still in there? New patients are usually in solitary for only two days.”

  “She bit Wilma,” Joann snapped.

  I nearly broke out in a smile. She had spirit, and she wasn’t afraid. I liked her even better.

  “Get her out, Joann,” I insisted. “I still have a lot I can share about Dr. Woburn. Does everyone know Angel’s his nephew?”

  “Don’t,” she whispered and shook her head.

  I slowly got up from Mother’s bed. My legs were gaining strength. Joann followed me like an unwanted shadow.

  I held the hall railing and started to walk down the hall like I had bones older than dirt. My feet slid in something wet. I got my bearings again and kept walking. I had to get Grace out of solitary. And I had to figure out how to get Angel out of Orchard Row. If I had to tell every aide and every nurse who passed through here that Dr. Woburn was Angel’s uncle, I would. Surely that would uncover other secrets. I wouldn’t let this go until Angel was safe and out of Orchard Row. Even if that meant I’d never leave these four walls.

  Joann kept following me, and when I turned to look at her, our gazes fixed. I heard a loud motor idling near the building, and I shuffled as fast as I could while still holding on to the hallway rail. Joann followed me into Carmen’s room, and we looked through the barred window.

  A white bus was parked in front of the children’s ward. I watched as twenty-two children exited the bus. The rickety bunch walked in a ruled line, their wrists held by a rope to keep them straight. The front door of the children’s building remained shut, and all were ushered around back where they would be bathed. Bathed. Angel had told me all about what it meant to be bathed. None of them could’ve been older than ten or eleven. Some fought the rope and were immediately chastised by a uniformed attendant who had stepped out of the bus ahead of them.

  Now there really wouldn’t be any room for Angel.

  Farther down the foggy hospital road and then off to the left was the men’s ward—Orchard Row. Two two-story buildings connected by a hallway, and they were still overcrowded. Bars on every window—every window broken or completely shattered. Glass littered the ground around the buildings. Angel was in there. Right now. I grabbed my stomach.

  “I need Grace,” I told Joann as I stared out the window.

  I heard her keys jangle as she walked away. The door squealed when it opened, and I shuffled out of Carmen’s room and stood in the hall, waiting. Grace rushed out of the room and turned toward me. Even though she’d never seen my whole face, she knew who I was and she ran to me. She held me, and I felt her thick curls against my shaven head. Her touch felt warm and familiar somehow.

  Finally, I had a sister.

  1939

  Doorways

  I woke the next morning with a weight in my soul and the feeling I was being watched. I opened my heavy eyelids to see him. Angel. A sheen of light fell over his complexion. Glowy and spirit-like. I looked toward Mother when I heard her moaning in her sleep. Then I looked back at the figment of Angel. He was still there, and his smile twinkled in the morning sunrise. I blinked—was he real or had I moved into the dark unknown of a melancholy mind and would believe now and forever that Angel was present, no matter where he really was?

  “Good morning.” Angel waved.

  I waved and mouthed Hi, but no sound came out of my mouth.

  Joann breezed in with a medication cart. She looked cleaner than she had the day before.

  “You’re awake, I see, Sleeping Beauty,” she said without much tenderness. She was marking up a clipboard. “Angel, have you told her about your release?”

  “You can see him too?” I asked.

  “See him?” Joann started pulling Mother into a sitting position.

  “Angel.”

  “Brighton, are you feeling all right?” She came over and started to reach her hand out toward me, but I pushed it away. I didn’t want her near me.

  “Angel, is that actually you?”

  The figure of Angel laughed, and while it seemed inappropriate given where we were, it was the best sound I could’ve heard.

  “It is you,” I yelled as I jumped out of bed and wrapped my arms around him. He winced and I pulled back. He held my arms and looked down at me with that smile I would never forget.

  “Did you think I was a ghost?” He rubbed my arms.

  He laughed a bit more, but I saw tears fill his eyes. My empty heart filled up with them.

  “You’re hurt, aren’t you? They hurt you,” I said and began pulling at his shirt.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t let him get away with that, and checked him over like any nurse or mother would. His middle looked like a watercolor painting—covered in purple and blue bruises.

  “He was in the infirmary within the first twenty-four hours,” Joann said as she walked Mother out of the bathroom and then handed her off to an aide who, with several other patients, was heading for breakfast. “Broken ribs.”

  “I guess they didn’t like me.” Angel shrugged.

  I looked over at the door, but Joann was already gone.
>
  “This is all her fault,” I said. “Joann knew this would happen. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “She’s the one who got me released.”

  “I had to blackmail her,” I told him. I’d tell him the whole story later. “You wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for her and Dr. Woburn.”

  “If it wasn’t for them, we’d probably be dead,” Angel countered.

  I paused long enough to take in the truth that he was safe. For now.

  “So she got you released.” The word surfaced. That was the word that had been used, wasn’t it? “So you’re leaving?”

  I stepped back.

  Angel wrapped his arms around me. So gently. So carefully. The kind of delicacy we both needed.

  “I’ll never leave you.” He smoothed a hand over my bald head, and I suddenly felt very naked. I shied away for a moment, but he didn’t let me step away. “It’ll grow back.”

  I nodded.

  Then Angel told me all the details about how he was released to work with the groundskeeper, Mason. He would be a patient working, not a real employee, but the work was full-time. He would be given a small closet in the basement to sleep in for now. He would be busy. Very busy. But he would be safe from Orchard Row.

  There was delivery in this. Had Rosina’s God heard my groaning and utterings?

  Then I told him everything I’d overheard—it all seemed like years ago. His mouth pulled into the widest grin possible. Why was he smiling? I had told him about all the lies and what I knew about his mother and that Dr. Woburn and Joann had known all of it all along.

  “Dr. Woburn is my uncle,” he said with awe in his voice.

  “He’s a liar, Angel. Isn’t that more important?”

  “Brighton, I have an uncle. I have a mother and a father who are alive.” He stood and chuckled and turned in a circle until he faced me again. He held me closely and looked down at me. He’d grown so tall, and I’d stopped growing at least a year ago. The way he looked at me reminded me of the way I’d seen Dr. Woburn look at Joann. His hands were warm and held me gently. There was something new in this moment.

 

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