When I looked at Dr. Woburn, I saw, for the first time, the resemblance between him and Angel. The worry that teased between his brows and caring eyes.
“I don’t know what to say.” His typical deep and direct voice was lush and velvety.
Then Grace turned and saw me through the window. She looked aged and raw. “At least I have Brighton.”
She and I looked at each other. The circumstances that had brought us to the hospital were different, but why we were kept here was the same. We weren’t mad or feeble-minded. We didn’t belong here. But no one would listen. No one wanted us. No one claimed us. There was nowhere else for us to belong. Any hope of Grace getting out and then her being able to help Angel and me had faded to nothing.
1990
Find the Light
“Cat got your tongue?” Lorna’s voice parrots. “Cat got your tongue?” She won’t stop. She echoes herself incessantly from down the hall, so I go to find her. She’s in the dayroom. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her, and the familiar ache in my soul journeys to my heart, mind, and hand. I wave at her. She waves back and then says it again. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Lorna?” I say. My body feels old, my back is aching, but my laugh and voice are young. I turn to see my reflection in the window, and I’m sixteen-year-old Brighton again. It’s been so long since I’ve seen me too. Lorna suddenly stops repeating her refrain, and I turn back to see that the dayroom has changed into a graveyard. And on the other side of it I see that bright, white light that I wish I could get to but can’t. The buzz of an electroconvulsive machine makes me sit up in bed. I’m a mass of sweat and I’m Nell again. And old. My face is wet from sleepy tears, and my heart tries to race and beat itself.
“Calm down, kid,” I say aloud. “Doc isn’t home to call 911, so you can’t have a heart attack.”
I stopped feeling silly about talking to myself decades ago. It started when my kids went to school and I was alone in the house again. My kids had been good company, and I made sure they never knew how much I needed their chattering and giggles. The house was so quiet then that it drove me to get a college education to become a teacher.
I never wanted to be like Joann and keep my children hostage from their own lives to make my life better. I wanted to be a good mom and let them grow and have their own unique lives. And they did. They come home for visits, but they live far enough away that it isn’t as often as I’d like. They bring home with them those little souls called grandchildren too. It’s like all the good in the world was pulled together to make them. Being a grandparent strips away one more layer of pain in my life because I don’t want all that burden around them. But I miss them and wish I could see them more.
The only time I was alone when my kids were little was when I was in the bathroom—and sometimes not even then—and I would often think of Mother. She and I were rarely apart. It was hard for me to mother any other way.
Speaking of bathrooms—I have to go. My old bladder is about as small and thin as a tea bag.
Once I’m done I can see that I left the kitchen light on. I hesitate because I know that’s where I left those new, old photographs. I can’t blame the dreams on them, though. I’ve had those ever since I left all those gray walls and souls.
I walk into the kitchen and stare at the photos scattered over the kitchen table.
Joann washing Mother on the bed.
Angel in front of Willow Knob.
The hydrotherapy room with women in tubs. Who knows how long they’d been in there.
A few photos are duds—my finger covering up the subject in the shot or poor lighting.
But when I see these faces and the pain in their eyes, or the nothing in their eyes—the swirl and cramp in my stomach won’t let me look away.
There is Lorna. The day she’d been put into a camisole and sat on the hall bench all day looking at the floor. A dribble of saliva on her lips had dripped on her lap, creating a wet circle. My young self would’ve seen this image casted in dark and light and wanted to tell the world of the sadness and mistreatment. But my old self knows if I did that, I would not just be sharing a picture; I’d be putting pieces of myself on display.
And Rosina. Her hand extended out from the solitary room. I knew she was praying behind the door.
Dear Carmen. Cuffed in restraints on her bed. She’d had an outburst that no one wanted to deal with. The restraints remained for several days.
So many women naked in the dayroom. They soiled themselves too often for clothing.
Grace. Looking over her shoulder. Full of life.
Oh Grace.
There she is—my surrogate sister—but where is the grace in these captured moments? And where is the grace for me, watching all of this happen and incapable of changing the outcome? And now they are gone. They’d been held captive in their lives and now again in the film cartridges.
I can still hear them speak in my head. Not just Lorna. All the antics and the praying and the asking for food. And the screaming. The yelling through the solitary-room door. The moaning at night. The shrieks that came when someone was dragged down the hall for electroconvulsive therapy. And, almost worse, the silence when they returned.
Before I know it my arms run against the table and all the photographs go flying. They lie like dead leaves on my laminate floor. But many of them are faceup, and the faces continue to stare at me. Especially Joann’s.
To reconcile the good and the bad that is folded up into one person is hard. Who had she been anyway? My nurse? Or a liar and deceiver? Or was she really the one who loved me most like she always told me? Had she been my real mother and Helen my captor?
I move to the floor near the pictures and assume a sitting position I haven’t used since those years long ago when my body could bend and turn better. I grunt a little as I settle. I pick up the pictures one at a time. I have to crawl on all fours to gather several. The stack in my hand is heavy and the voices are loud. Almost all of them lie in that old graveyard in that back quarter of those thousand acres. They’d never be known all the way out there, and someday it’ll be forgotten that there was a graveyard there at all. The stones will become dust and the weeds their markers.
1941
Every Key Has a Lock
I pointed the viewfinder at Joann as she handed out medications. Each patient took their small cup of water with the dissolved powdered medicines in one quick swallow. Joann had never made me take anything for what was supposed to help depression or melancholia, but Grace had had to ever since her meeting with her parents the previous year. That awful row in the stairwell. After that she was no longer the easygoing, companionable patient. She’d begun to yell and even hit the staff, especially upon threat of sterilization. Her refusal to eat enough to stay healthy worried me. She was told her parents were considering sending her to a doctor who did a special brain surgery that could cure her. It was called a lobotomy, but I knew almost nothing about it.
Grace had made a poor and unplanned attempt to rush past an aide who was escorting her near the first-floor door. She’d done this knowing that if she was successful she’d be leaving me in this prison. I knew this was evidence that I was losing Grace. She was losing the battle of her mind. Because of her attempt, now her every action was scrutinized even more and the possibility of sterilization and brain surgery was real.
More than half on our ward had been sterilized—my mother had years ago. Grace and I had not been. Joann told us that Dr. Woburn made sure I was not on the list for sterilization. But Grace was a more difficult patient because she had parents who would demand that she follow a more traditional plan of treatment.
I continued to watch Joann through the camera. We hadn’t had film for a few months and Joann refused to buy more. My antics and blackmail opportunities were long wasted. The staff knew I had no film, but I kept watching the life around me through the camera lens. There was a sense of separation it gave me in order to survive.
Joann smiled at me. T
hings had improved between us. But the life I’d had before Grace was a distant dream. Those years before my hair was shorn and before Joann had broken my trust were not my life anymore.
I tightened the camera’s focus on Joann. She had sweat marks beneath her arms and her hands shook as she handed out each little cup. At thirty-six, the aging process had raced ahead in the last few years, but she and Dr. Woburn were still sweet on each other. The doctor had become kinder with age and more present, but Joann was slipping away into somewhere I couldn’t reach. An ashen mood and exterior replaced the grit, self-assurance, and beauty she used to have.
The barred windows were behind me and the day was bright. There was enough light not just to see well but to capture the scene. I clicked the shutter. If I had film, would this photograph have shown how the deep creases on her forehead had formed a permanent grimace—much like the old scar of Dr. Woburn’s?
Grace walked into the dayroom. She didn’t even look over to where I sat on the couch. The shuffle of her feet along the floor was just like the other patients. When had she become a patient instead of Grace?
Grace had been in solitary for three days, and her time in isolation was happening frequently now. In her two years here, she’d become only bones wrapped in skin that was now more ashen than olive. When she got to the head of the medicine line, she put her hand out for the cup from Joann.
I lifted the camera and snapped the pretend photo. I documented this moment in my mind. Perhaps it was the submissiveness that rested alongside such sadness that I was drawn to, proving how there were snatches of time when she’d been broken into obedience. Though she would fight against it other times.
After the first click I kept the camera up to my eye. I watched closely as Grace took her medicine cup and dumped its contents on the tray in front of her. I snapped again. Oh, how I longed to have these moments captured.
Joann looked over at me, and I pulled the camera from my eye. What was Joann asking of me in her gaze? Did she think I could bend Grace back into compliance? While we were as close as sisters could be, she had become angry and distant even with me. She’d ruined an entire cartridge of film because of her temper, intentionally opening the camera box and exposing everything inside. She slammed doors shut. Slammed Joann against walls. She cried a lot.
I let the camera hang on my neck and stood from the putrid couch and went to my friend.
“Can we go for a walk? It’ll make her feel better.” Of course, nothing but release would make her feel better.
“Brighton,” Joann started. “You know the rules. You’re not children anymore.”
“Send Angel with us,” I said. “He’s practically an aide now. Besides, where would we even run to? We’ll just go to the garden. We could pull some weeds.”
This was my best argument because garden work would be starting as soon as it warmed up a bit.
Joann handed out a few more medicine cups before she looked back at me. “All right,” she finally said. “But if she gets in trouble, you’ll be responsible. I’ll ring for Angel to meet you outside.”
Once outside, we were shivering, but breathing outside air and sitting in the sun, filled the empty in my corners and spaces. As we sat near the garden, I saw Angel coming toward us. I hadn’t seen him in a week. I ran to him and hugged him. His hold on me lingered longer than normal, and I sank into his chest and he buried his face between my neck and shoulder. We sat close together and I felt warmer. Grace just gazed into the distance.
In awkward silence, Angel opened up his coat—with Mason’s name on the chest—and pulled out a brown paper package. He unfolded it and handed each of us a bread roll. They were golden brown, and while they weren’t very soft, they were better than anything we’d eaten in months. With overcrowding, shortages were at their worst, and I couldn’t remember the last time my stomach had been full.
“They’re old, but Joyful gave them to me—she baked them for the staff a week ago. She’s taking the rest home to her children.”
Angel and I ate quickly, but Grace only nibbled. I let the dry, buttery texture linger on my tongue before chewing it. I thought about Joyful taking leftovers home to her family, and I couldn’t help but imagine how her children would run to her and tell her how much they missed her. She would hug them and smile at them and give them each a bread roll.
“Brighton.” Angel’s voice was soft and warm near my ear. “Where are you?”
I smiled and shrugged. I’d been far away for a moment but fought the urge to stay there, fearful that one day I would remain in that distant world.
When I had eaten half of my roll, Grace stood and looked far off, away from the buildings, past the gardens and orchard and everything contained in our world.
“I’m leaving,” Grace said and took off. Her bare feet couldn’t have felt good against the dried, yellowed grass; but despite her weakness, she ran fast.
Without a word between us, Angel and I stood and chased after her. We wove in and out of the gravestones in the graveyard before we reached the furrows of an ancient garden and then flung ourselves through the trees. We’d never been this far before. I stopped and looked ahead. Angel was only a step behind me, and he too stopped and stood at my side. Grace continued to run through the tall, dead grass, then the trees that grew thicker with weeds and brush and bushes—tangled, unkempt, and dark. This was part of the thousand acres of land that was my whole world, and yet I’d never seen it. I’d never been with Grace when she attempted an escape—if they could be called that. She’d only made it past a few aides and into the stairwell. The audacity of this moment was frightening and thrilling—but it was impossible.
Grace slowed as she pushed her way through the underbrush—and then I couldn’t see her anymore. I held my breath and grabbed Angel’s arm, pulling him. What if we couldn’t find her? What if she actually escaped?
What if that meant that I could too?
But what about my mother? Would she feel my abandonment?
My speed picked up despite the bushes cutting my legs. Angel grunted behind me. None of us were wearing shoes. Grace was in sight again, ahead of me, fighting with thistles that gripped at her hospital gown. She used words Joann had outlawed from my mouth when I tried them out when I was eight.
“I need to get out,” she yelled between deep breaths as she pulled her gown free, tearing it. She pushed farther through the thickness and started banging her hands against a metal fence that had appeared almost like a weed. It was tall and impossible to overcome and covered in overgrown weeds and vines. “I need to get out.” Her anguish wilted the leaves around her.
She turned to us, her face streaked with tears. With gasping breaths she leaned against the fence. “We need to escape.” Her shaky voice was quiet and serious now.
Angel and I looked at each other. In all our years at Riverside we’d never even seen this fence. Was it possible to get through?
Grace hadn’t heard from her family since that terrible day in the stairwell. She’d never been the same. But now there was a fire in her eyes, and even though her body sagged like our dingy gowns, there was a renewal in her. She leaned forward and reached for our hands. Angel and I took hers, making a circle.
“Let’s escape, please. I can’t go on like this. This place is killing me.” She looked back and forth between Angel and me. Her arms and legs were scratched and smeared with blood. Her grip was so tight I wouldn’t have been able to pull free if I’d wanted to. I knew after thinking about it for too long what we needed to do.
“Let’s escape.” My voice floated dangerously around in the woods and cut the trees down right in front of me. I put my gaze on Angel to tether me.
“I’m not sure,” Angel said.
“We can climb it,” Grace suggested.
“There’s razor wire on top,” he protested.
“Find wire clippers in that shed,” Grace threw back.
The back and forth of their words made me dizzy. Then they both looked at me for answe
rs. As if I had them.
“Where would we go?” Angel finally said to Grace. “Besides, I have a job. Responsibilities.”
“A job?” Grace spat out. “A job?” Then she got mad. “You’re a patient who wears a different uniform, Angel. Do you get paid?”
Angel hesitated, then shook his head no.
“It’s not a job. It’s slave labor,” she yelled.
Angel pulled his hand from hers, and Grace’s and mine dropped.
“Where would we go?” Angel asked again, this time more sober. “We don’t know anyone out there, unless you think your family is going to take all of us in.”
Grace laughed an awful maniacal laugh while she shook her head. “I have friends. They’re a little ways away, but it wouldn’t be more than a day’s walk.”
“A day’s walk?” Angel repeated, and it was his turn to laugh at her.
“You think that’s worse than staying here? Maybe you do belong here, because you’re crazy if you think that walking a day would be worse than living out your life here in this loony bin.” Her words came out harsh and littered with curse words.
Angel pulled his stare from her, let it land on me for weighty moments, then turned to leave. “I just don’t see how it’s possible.”
Grace yelled so loudly the trees swayed against her force. I turned to look at her. She grabbed a thornbush and yanked at it until her palms were ripped and bleeding.
“Why, why, why is this my life? I can’t live like this anymore.” The rawness in her throat could be heard in every syllable.
I took a few steps toward Angel. I would never let him get too far away from me. I took his hand. “Wait.”
“We need more information before we can escape,” I said.
I saw my oldest and dearest friend in denial about his life and my stand-in sister falling apart into a pile of ashes where once a fire had been thriving and growing. And what about me? My mother surely wouldn’t want me to live out the rest of my life in this place. Maybe, if I could get out, I could find someone who could help Mother. I knew how to care for her. Maybe I could get a house, find a place for her with me. I would be her next of kin and could take her away from here.
The Bright Unknown Page 11