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The Bright Unknown

Page 10

by Elizabeth Byler Younts


  I didn’t answer.

  I stared at the wall. And every brick I placed over my soul, the better I felt. The vacant stare was a balm. I let my mind wander between imagining what my life might’ve been if I’d had a different mother to pure blankness. My imaginations were as fleeting as Lorna’s sensibilities. The barren canvas of my mind was easier to control.

  Was this what had happened to so many others who came to Riverside with their wits intact but eventually lost the battle and spent their days staring at walls? Was this what it was like for my mother? Could it be this easy to stop being Brighton and start being a patient? A real patient? To let go of all my hopes?

  “Brighton,” Grace repeated several more times, shaking my shoulders. “Are you sick?”

  I couldn’t speak. My mouth was an empty space, and the only words I had left were soundless and littered upon the floor for nurses, carts, and shuffling patients to walk over. I was locked inside myself with the images in the camera box.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Grace asked whoever had entered the room.

  “Brighton?” It was Joann. She came to me, and the cot slumped from her weight. She put her hand on my cool forehead. She whispered to Grace to go.

  Grace didn’t leave right away. I felt her hand on me for several long moments before she rubbed my leg and then stood up. I heard her feet pad across the floor, and the room felt emptier without her. I hadn’t been alone with Joann for weeks. Of course Mother was there, but that was the same as being alone.

  In these weeks I’d longed to move a step closer toward Joann. I missed her. But every time I touched my half-inch-long hair, the hurt surfaced, rushing over me like steam rushed out of the hydro room when the door was opened. Then I would let the pain cover me, and I’d dream of the outside world and wake up even further from her.

  “Bright, it’s me, Nursey.” The edges were gone from her voice. So different from the day she’d had my hair cut. It was also no longer the voice that pleaded for my forgiveness. Instead, it was the voice that had grown around me like a vine since my birth. The voice of the person who had always been a mother to me. And she wasn’t the eighteen-year-old nurse who had cared for me as a baby anymore. She was a grown-up woman who had set aside her own life for me.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  Did I even know? Patients often left their minds and souls lying around while their bodies moved and walked. What far-off places did their minds travel to? I wanted to go there.

  I hadn’t gone far. My soul was still tucked inside of me. But I was afraid it might fly away at any moment.

  Knowing that what I’d seen through that camera box would never matter had changed something within me. The innocent years of growing up alongside Angel with the doting attention of Joann had passed. And now I thought about what Joann’s real life was like. Her life outside of this place. With all that she’d given up for me, she’d also kept some things from Angel and me. And then there were all the things she’d done to me.

  I began to blame her instead of love her.

  I felt as trapped as the images inside the film cartridges.

  Joann was not responsible for my being in the hospital, but I saw her as the reason I was still here. My soul hadn’t fully captured my reality until Joann had rearranged my whole world with what she’d done.

  “Who am I?” My voice had returned.

  “Oh, my darling, you’re Brighton. The person I love the most.” She smoothed her hand over my short hair like she was moving phantom tresses away from my face. My hand gripped the edge of my bed so that I wouldn’t push her hand away.

  “If you love me so much, then why?” I squeezed my eyes shut.

  She cleared her throat, but her hand didn’t stop her smoothing caress against my head.

  “I was scared. I was so scared of losing you. If you tell anyone what you know and they investigate, we’ll be fired. And if we’re fired, then Angel will certainly go to the men’s ward because there will be no one here to advocate for him. You’d be stuck here without him. You’d be here without me. This would be your life.”

  I turned over like a tornado had rushed over me and my gaze met hers.

  “This already is my life.” These words flared up like a windstorm of energy. “And you didn’t answer my question. Why am I still here? Couldn’t there have been another way for me?”

  Each syllable held the weight of grief.

  “At least we could be together.”

  “That’s not enough.” The words were truer than anything I’d ever spoken. I felt a layer of myself peel away like scraped-away skin. What about a future? A real one where I had the chance to be a wife and mother or the sort of woman who lived as vivaciously as I expected Grace had. Or at least have choices. Did I have any hope for that life anymore?

  I’d spoken what neither of us wanted to believe. This was my life, yes. But she’d made it sound like it was worth it because she and I could be together. But it wasn’t. If I had a choice I’d live anywhere else, even if I’d never see her again. I hadn’t known this about myself until now. The kindness and effort given to me from my childhood had anesthetized me to what was real. It had numbed me from the life that was laid out before me. It was as if I was waking from a lifelong coma. I couldn’t be enough for Joann, and she couldn’t be enough for me.

  Joann clenched and unclenched her jaw and diverted her eyes.

  “Would you want to live here?” I asked.

  “I almost do.” She chuckled a little as a tear dripped down her cheek.

  I sat up in bed, anger propelling me upright. “No, you don’t. You get to go home every day. You get to choose where you live. You get to choose everything you do. You’re free.” My throat felt full of every patient’s voice. “I’m not free. I’m as captured as my snapped photographs. I don’t even feel alive.”

  “There are laws. You’re—” Joann paused and stood and turned toward my mother. She sniffed back tears. Or maybe anger. “Legally you’re both stuck here until he takes you out.”

  “My father?” She never brought him up. “Tell me his name.”

  She shook her head. “It wouldn’t matter if I did tell you.”

  “But he could take me out if you told him about me? My father could come and take me out of here, and I could be his daughter out in the real world? I know how to care for Mother. I could take care of her.” This was all I wanted in the whole world of desires. I imagined the moments before Sara Crewe learned her father still lived—would I live in those moments of anticipation for the rest of my life?

  She didn’t say a word. Instead, she got up and went to my mother, who hadn’t had breakfast because I hadn’t taken her.

  “What was he like? What did he look like? Was he tall?” I sat at the edge of my bed now.

  “Brighton, we’ve been through this.” She straightened my mother’s gown and held her hands so that she would stop scratching her fuzzy head. “Your mother—your mother was found alone in a condemned apartment. Neighbors heard her fits. Someone finally thought to call the authorities.”

  This story wasn’t familiar.

  “So her husband didn’t bring her in? Where had he gone?” We looked at one another as if we were both afraid of the answer.

  “She had no husband.”

  “No husband?” I repeated in a whisper. “But I heard you tell Dr. Woburn about him.”

  My mother had conceived me without having a husband. What sort of woman did that make her? I’d heard the ladies on the ward speak dark, black words of women with loose morals. Had my mom been one of those types?

  “Brighton, breathe.” Joann came to my side and pushed my head down toward my knees.

  I slapped her away. I hadn’t even realized I was gasping for air. That night on the balcony they’d called him a convict; they had known something about him.

  “But that night on the balcony,” I reminded her again, angry now.

  “Fine, Brighton. Yes, your father is a convict and was in j
ail when he should’ve been taking care of your mother. He could have at least married her and made her an honest woman.” The air was peppered with her bitterness. “Is that what you want to know?”

  But the practical truth was that I had lost my freedom the moment I was conceived. My mother had been loose and volatile. My father was a criminal. None of that mattered because I was trapped here either way. There was no one to come to my rescue.

  But then the thread of an old tune caught my attention. It was one Mother used to hum when I was a child, but hadn’t now for many years. My mother, who was sitting on her bed with chasm-deep eyes, was humming. Her voice was more gravelly than in years past, but it was the same tune.

  I closed my eyes, and my breaths began to slow and lengthen. In a few minutes I stood and walked over to my mother. I sat next to her and put my head in her lap. Her humming remained calm and strangely steady. A few minutes passed, and then she did something she hadn’t done in a long time. She rested her hands on my body, and we were warm together.

  Her wordless tune and my life had no voice—we weren’t as different as I’d always thought we were.

  1940

  Where I Come From

  I threaded the new film through the camera. We’d been without film for many months. But finally I convinced Joann to give us one more. The other six canisters were neatly tucked into a slit in my mattress. Grace and I made a pact that as soon as one of us was released or we escaped we would develop them and take them to a newspaper.

  I imagined a day of escape. When and how we would get away, I wasn’t sure.

  Though I feared I would never see the photographs, I still imagined the final products. Would Angel’s face be entirely washed out because of his paleness, or would you see that he had high cheekbones and a strong jawline? Would it show that he had full lips and not straight lines like Dr. Woburn, his uncle? Would my photos show the clarity of every curl that Grace had as her hair grew back, or would it simply look like a dark mass?

  To have the answers to these questions would mean I was free.

  A lot had changed since Grace had arrived nearly a year ago. Patients were being added to our ward almost daily, and every room was crowded now. More patients always meant more sickness, and Mother was not doing well. Any illness that came through the ward, she got. She’d had pneumonia several times. She’d gotten shingles. Some type of stomach influenza stuck with her longer than anyone else. She often needed cleaning up and a tender touch. She needed me.

  She was like a chain linking me to Riverside, giving me pause whenever I considered a plan of escape. Of course, it was possible that Grace’s parents would come for her before we could run away. They were visiting soon. My insides twisted into knots at the possibility. How I wrestled with the sweetness and bitterness of that.

  Those thoughts plagued me as I walked my tiny, skin-and-bone mother to another meal. She scooted slowly down the hall, and when she was served her food, she would barely eat. But somehow she was still stronger than seemed possible. It took both Joann and me together to handle her when she became especially agitated.

  I tried to take photographs of her when she was still and her version of happy. Those images would be just for me. Of course, she wouldn’t pose for me, so often half of her was washed out by the sun’s rays from the window in our room, leaving her in the gray. I prayed to Rosina’s God that someday these images would come to light. Maybe Grace could sneak them out and take them home. Maybe someday someone would know about our lives here and tell others. Maybe then it wouldn’t happen to more people.

  A few days later I found myself on the hall floor outside of the stairwell. Grace was on the first floor meeting with her parents. It was all she’d spoken about for weeks. Her father had come to see her six months after she was admitted, and all of our hopes had been dashed when he had walked out unfettered. Grace had pleaded with him to let her go home. She’d even told him about me and how we were treated. But he had been unmoved. Her father did promise he would return in a few months with her mother. Grace was sure the second visit would work.

  She wrote to them every week but hadn’t received anything except a Christmas card from her younger sister, Hannah, whom she spoke of often. Hannah was my age and had true-blue Scottish red hair. Grace said it was redder than any hair I’d probably ever seen. Grace said Hannah was the only person who loved her.

  “But I love you,” I told her that day as she gently slid the Christmas card under her pillow. She lay her head down, and I noticed how thin her jaw and neck were. When had she gotten so small? It was like pieces of her had slowly gone missing.

  But maybe today would be different. I hated myself for not wanting her to leave. What would I do without her? I still had Angel, but things were different between us. Angel had grown tall and handsome and strong, and he’d begun to watch over me like I’d always done with him. Asking me if I was okay, if I needed more food, if I needed another blanket. What I really needed was a way out.

  I heard yelling. It was Grace’s voice. There was crying, and the deep voice of a man I didn’t recognize was bookended with one I did: Dr. Woburn. They were in the stairwell. I stood and put my ear to the door.

  “Please, Gracie,” a woman’s voice said thickly, layered with emotion. “Your father only wants you to agree.”

  “I won’t,” Grace yelled.

  “Grace,” a calm Dr. Woburn said, “please, come back downstairs. We can talk about this.”

  I peeked through the long, narrow window on the door. Grace’s eyes were as wild as her hair. Her mother was perfect and beautiful. Her eyes and wide, full mouth matched Grace’s, but that was the only resemblance. Grace’s olive skin and curly hair were so different from her mother’s straight black hair and porcelain skin. Her father stood stiffly in a suit. His red and pointy mustache and wavy red hair gave him a fiery appearance that matched the anger in his eyes. His fists were clenched.

  “I won’t have you disgrace our family with your behavior with that boy and your insistence on what you think you know.” He pointed at Grace like his finger could poke a hole through her.

  “But I love him and he loves me,” Grace yelled. “I don’t want to hide who I am anymore.”

  “Gracie, please, listen to your father,” her mother cried. “We just want you home. You’d give up your life for him?”

  “I’m not giving up my life for him. I’m trying to live my life being the person God made me, and I can’t keep pretending.”

  Her father scoffed. “Look at you. Your hair is untamed and unkempt. You don’t even look like my daughter anymore.” Then he turned to his wife. “She’s gone completely mad.”

  “Father, if anyone could understand why I fell in love with a Negro, you could.”

  Grace had told me that the world of people beyond our doors was as separate as water and dry land. Everyone was segregated by color.

  Of course Negroes were treated differently here in the hospital, but the reasons why had never been explained to me. When possible, Negro patients were kept separated from the white patients. They were the last to receive their medicines, food, and treatments. I’d seen this my whole life. The only explanation I ever got from Joann was that the administration preferred the groups to be separated.

  “Grace Douglass,” Grace’s mother scolded. “You will be silent.”

  The polished older woman’s tears were replaced with a stern expression.

  “And what will you do to me if I don’t stay silent, Mother?” Grace yelled back, her wet face shining in the electric lights. “What will you do?”

  “Do not speak to your mother like that.” Mr. Douglass again pointed a long, refined finger.

  “There’s nothing more you can do to me.” Grace’s voice deflated and her arms flopped to her sides. She stood and wept, and when neither parent comforted her, Dr. Woburn pushed past Mr. Douglass and went to her.

  “Let’s find Nurse Derry and get you calmed down.” His sincerity gave me a small measure o
f affection for him.

  “Dr. Woburn,” Grace cried into his chest, and his arms slowly went around her shoulders. “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

  “That’s why you’re here, Grace,” he said. “We can help you.”

  She shook her head and pulled away. Slowly she wiped her face with the short sleeves of her hospital gown and shook her head again. “No, you can’t help me. You can’t make me all white, Dr. Woburn. If you could, then maybe Mother would stay and you could fix her too.” Her mother gasped, and her father yelled for her to stop. “She doesn’t look it, does she? But I do. Don’t I? You can see it, can’t you?”

  She looked up into Dr. Woburn’s eyes, and he gently touched her curls. I’d never seen him so gentle.

  “I fell in love with a Negro boy, and my parents hate me for it.”

  Dr. Woburn released a long-buried sigh.

  “I think we’re done here, Doctor. Grace will remain. She’s talking madness.” Mr. Douglass’s voice shook when he spoke. Then he looked at Grace, like every word was gripped in the vise of his jaws. “I’m sorry for you, Grace. But your outbursts and choice of suitor will ruin us. Completely ruin us. I will not have it. You’re acting as mad as your grandmother.”

  “My Negro grandmother?” she yelled at him. “You’re race prejudiced, Father, and that means you’re against Mother and me. Your wife and your daughter.”

  Mr. Douglass cleared his throat. He was like a filled syringe waiting to be plunged. He didn’t linger and didn’t look at Grace again but turned to his wife and with a snap of his head gestured for her to come.

  Mrs. Douglass’s eyes dripped with longing. She loved her daughter—I could see it. She reached for her from the several steps below Grace.

  “Goodbye, Grace,” Mrs. Douglass said, then spoke something so quietly I didn’t catch it. She carefully walked backward a few steps but kept her eyes trained on her daughter. Then, when she got to the landing, she turned and walked away. She didn’t look back.

  “My father brought me here before Jonah and I could run away,” I heard Grace’s muffled voice tell Dr. Woburn. “Everything would be different if he and I had run away a week earlier.”

 

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