The Bright Unknown

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  I don’t walk up yet but glare at the Willow Knob building. It doesn’t flinch at my presence. It’s close enough to be gawked at from the road, but far away enough for the guts and souls inside to be invisible.

  Broken. Busted up. Burned. But there stands the building of my childhood. During my years here I thought about all the places outside the walls. And when I was free, I thought about the one place that was tattooed on my heart. This place was a force. A living being in my memories—and to think that my nightmarish childhood was littered with giggles, friendships, and a settling in of dreams. The modern woman might find these dreams of marriage and family too commonplace. They’re wrong. Especially when such dreams require a freedom that is out of reach.

  The willow tree is still in the front, swaying in the wind like nothing else matters. I pull my camera up to my eye, and I take a picture from the distance and capture its stance against the sun’s glow. The idea of capturing the building that captured me puts a smile on my face.

  After a dozen frames I walk hesitantly toward it. Even though I told Ms. Keene I want to go inside, right now I don’t even want to go near it. There are so many ghosts calling for my attention. But after a few deep breaths, I greet them—they aren’t nightmares; they are memories and people I knew. I take pictures and I remember them. My heart softens, and I get the sense they are welcoming me. They know I want to honor them and not forget them.

  What will happen to these forgotten souls when the buildings are gone and in their places are recreational fields and office buildings? Will the pain of all the people who lived and died here be lost? Changing landscape doesn’t change memories or pain. That isn’t the way human souls work. The passing away of buildings doesn’t change the past. Memories are immortal and unchangeable.

  My finger is snapping so fast that I run through my first roll of twenty-four in minutes. Every frame is filled with exhumed recollections. I reload and go around the back and find the door that we’d always run in and out of in those early days. Our giggles—Angel’s and mine—are spread thick through the air. I hear them. And Joann yelling for us not to run to the graveyard. The very same door we’d snuck out of one stormy night. The night everything changed for us.

  My gaze roams to that back corner where the graveyard should be. I almost think I will find my former self there.

  But I can’t go there today.

  I take pictures of the brick exterior and the bars on the windows. The word haunted is graffiti-painted on one of the walls alongside a scary face that reminds me of a mask from a tasteless horror flick. I walk around to my second-floor bedroom window and take more photographs. I was born and raised on the other side of those broken panes.

  I turn to see the children’s ward. Only half remains.

  The wind and birds sing in chorus together, their voices welcoming me home. They know me. They recognize me. They remember me. They know why I am here, and there’s some comfort in that.

  I look back up to my old window. Is someone still there? Is it a ghost or the scrap pieces of the soul of the lost girl I used to be? Everyone who used to be here was lost in one way or another. If they didn’t start out lost when they got here, they became lost before they left—alive or dead. I sometimes still feel that way. It takes gumption to live, you know, and all the grit you can muster, though there were times in the earlier days I nearly gave up.

  The hush of the wind over the grasses lulls me back to myself. I make a loop around to the front of the home—the building. The asylum. It never should have the word home attached to it, but it does.

  I walk slowly now, knowing that the Juliet balcony is up to my left. I can only see it in my periphery. Can I look at it? I had avoided looking directly at it when I walked up. Like a shield, I put my viewfinder to my eye and turn toward it, but I can’t snap the photo. My soul aches. My chest is tight, and every heartbeat hurts. I can’t pull my hands down, and through my lens I see things. Things I don’t want to see. I see a girl up there. Sitting. Hiding. Wishing. Hurting. And then other faces—skin around souls—stand behind her. They all look at me.

  I need to get out of here.

  I have snapped four rolls of film. I am doing all I can. I am facing it, and there is good in that.

  But when I finally pull the camera from my eye, I can’t catch my breath. My feet work better than my lungs, and I turn and run.

  I want to be okay with this. I want to feel that if I never gaze on these buildings again I will be all right. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves.

  My car is close. I run, feeling the shapes of many behind me pressing against me. When I climb into the car, I don’t even take my camera from around my neck or put on my seat belt. I turn the key, make a U-turn with a spray of gravel behind me, and leave. I am crying and shaking, and I put as much distance between me and that building as fast as I can.

  I don’t look back.

  Not this time.

  1941

  Gone

  Before we arrived at the tree line, the rain started, making it hard to see what was ahead of us. When I tripped in the blackness over M. Porter’s grave and cut my leg, a cussword wrestled itself out of my mouth and I nearly hurt myself worse with the ax I was holding.

  Angel caught himself before he fell, then helped me up, and we continued to run. Angel and I were two parts of one whole. He needed my eyes, and I needed his presence. We were no good without the other.

  Our running slowed down because of my cut leg, but every time the lightning flashed we could see the way a little better. The more we ran, the more my fear swelled. We hadn’t even left the property yet and my courage was already failing.

  I stopped running and Angel bumped into me from behind.

  “Brighton,” he yelled. “What’s wrong?”

  I looked back and could see lights on in several buildings. I couldn’t tell which was which anymore. There were so many now on the nearly one thousand acres. So many more than when I was a little girl. Did that mean there were so many more mad people now? It was rare that anyone left, but people kept coming. They wouldn’t miss the three of us, would they? Why would anyone care that we’d left? There would be three fewer mouths to feed, three fewer to care for, three fewer to burden the State.

  And what about Mother? I dropped Angel’s hand from my own.

  Suddenly I was spun around to face away from the buildings. Grace’s grip was tight on my arm even through the bulk of the coat. Her face was rain-drenched like mine, her hair soaked and flopping down around her ears and forehead. She had the expression of a wild animal, and her chest heaved up and down as she breathed rapidly.

  “Come on,” she yelled over the storm. “We have to go now.”

  “I’m scared,” I finally admitted as the pelting drops slowed some and the black sky turned to navy. We were already soaked, but if we escaped now, by midmorning these captured raindrops would have evaporated into the air of freedom. I played that possibility over and over in my head. What would it be like to be on the other side of those fences? To not be a patient. To be free. Could we even survive? How long would my mother survive? Long enough for me to rescue her or find someone who could? Or would she be just another body unclaimed and buried? H. Friedrich.

  “She’d want you to run—to leave,” Grace said like she knew my thoughts.

  I looked at her, still catching my breath. My hand went to my chest, and I doubled over, releasing what I didn’t know I carried in my stomach, the burden of this decision now on the drenched grass.

  Mother would want me to leave. I straightened my back and my breathing slowed and I met the eyes of my two best friends and nodded.

  I grabbed Angel’s hand and again we ran. It was hard to get through the brush and thornbushes but thankfully we had the oversize boots to keep our feet unscathed and we reached the fence faster than the first time.

  “Come on, come on,” Grace said, hurrying Angel to get out the tools. Angel tried the hedge clippers first, but the wire wouldn’t cut. Grace t
ried. I tried. But we weren’t getting anywhere.

  “It’s not working,” Grace said and threw the broken tool into the grass. She pushed Angel’s shoulder. “It’s not going to get us through this fence.”

  “Stop it,” I yelled. “It’s not his fault.”

  I grabbed the ax and raised it high to swing. The first wallop I gave the fence vibrated my entire body and stung me through. The ax bounded back toward me, and the wooden handle banged against my shoulder with such force I cried out. I took a few deep breaths then tried again, but nothing we were doing even damaged the fence. The ax hitting metal rattled my bones, and my shoulder ached. Because Angel kept hitting it, so did I. But after minutes of this, we still had not done any damage to the fence.

  Grace bent over and leaned her hands against her knees, crying. Her crying was raw and deep. I wanted to cry like that, but instead I felt numb. Maybe from the vibration of the ax; maybe because our escape was failing.

  We moved down the fence in both directions to see if there were any breaks, but none could be found. We also tried to dig beneath the fence, but with all the roots it was impossible.

  Exhausted from effort and breathing heavily, I leaned against the fence. A faint glow had grown and the neighborhood of madhouses almost looked pretty. The misty air hung like cobwebs around us. The beauty in this spring dawn was an insult.

  Spring.

  “What’s the date?” A new panic rose in me.

  It was only a beat before it dawned on Angel where my mind had just landed.

  “Your birthday,” he said, his voice rough and exhausted.

  He grabbed me and we ran, leaving Grace alone. I lost a boot before I got out of the wooded and brushy land. I didn’t know if Grace was behind me or not, but I had to go. My mother would be in the middle of her fit, and if I wasn’t there, no one knew what to do. Who knew if a nurse would even be around? Joann wouldn’t be there yet—unless her memory had served her where mine hadn’t.

  We ran until we had to stop and catch our breath, but when my eyes caught sight again of Willow Knob, I started again. I let the other shoe fall off and ran faster in my bare feet. The ground was soft and didn’t hurt. Angel was still right behind me.

  “What time is it?”

  “Maybe around five?”

  Cars pulled into the parking lot far off on the right with arriving employees while the nurses and aides, who lived on the property, walked toward the buildings. They were going to see us, and then we would be in trouble. I ran faster.

  Of course the back door was locked. I couldn’t get in.

  “Open up,” I yelled and pounded my fists on the door. “Open the door.”

  The door flew open, and Joann stood there looking like a used piece of fabric.

  “Where have you been? Do you have any idea the trouble you’re in?” Her hair was pinned in curls, and her face was pale and unmade. She was wearing a regular dress and a cardigan sweater. Why was she here? Like that? Her eyes were puffy and red rimmed. “And you, Angel, how could you let this happen?”

  “I was— We—” I couldn’t tell her that I’d been running away.

  “You were running away.” Joann grabbed my arm and gave Angel a side glance as she let us both in.

  “But what about Grace?” I asked.

  “You have other things to worry about.” Joann shut the door behind us.

  “I won’t leave her to take the blame for this. It was my plan.”

  “Neither will I.” Angel’s voice broke. Was he upset because our escape hadn’t worked or because he knew what it meant that I wasn’t with my mother? Had she started her phantom labor pains as she did every birthday? I looked up the stairs waiting to hear her wild screams and shrieks.

  Angel gripped my hand, and when I looked up at him we both heard Grace’s screams. She was being dragged by a security guard and an aide. Grace’s stolen coat was nowhere to be seen and her legs were soiled and bloody. Were mine too? I didn’t look to see.

  “You both know better.” Joann was frantic. “This will change everything.”

  “Just let me go to my room,” I said, trying to push past her. “I need to get to Mother.”

  She blocked me, but I kept pushing.

  “Stop, Brighton,” she said and then repeated herself two more times, so firmly that I finally stopped.

  “What?”

  I watched her as she lowered her eyes and shook her head. “By the time I got here it was too late. It was too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “For me to help her.” She took the pillowcase bag from me.

  I looked at her and then at Angel. His eyes grew wide. Mine mirrored his.

  “What are you saying?” Angel spoke what I thought.

  “Your mother.” She looked at me. “She’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “A nurse found her at the bottom of the stairs. Somehow she’d gotten into the stairwell. The door wasn’t latched and—”

  “Gone?” My hand went to my neck.

  “I’m so sorry, Brighton.” Joann pulled me into a hug.

  It had been my fault. I’d rigged the latch to escape all the heartache and pain and melancholy. She’d gotten her own escape now. I was still here.

  I had killed my mother.

  I pulled away from Joann, and somehow she let me and I ran up the murderous stairs and barreled through the second-floor hall.

  “Mother,” I called over and over. I ran into our room and stopped at the doorframe.

  Joann had followed me. “The aide put her here until the morgue could come.”

  She was so small lying there. Joann had covered her with a white sheet. So still. She didn’t need the camisole that was draped over her bedpost. She didn’t need an insulin injection that was always at the ready in every nurse’s apron. She didn’t need anything anymore. She didn’t need me anymore. My mother was dead, and it was all my fault.

  1941

  Metamorphosis

  My breath was held captive in my lungs as I stood in front of my mother, my dead mother, when I heard Grace screaming in the stairwell. Joann went down to calm her. Shouldn’t I be the one screaming? Wasn’t I the one who had just lost my mother and was responsible for it? Grace began calling my name over and over. I heard her being dragged away somewhere downstairs and toward what I knew to be the shock therapy room. Also my fault now.

  A minute later a few men in white uniforms came to my room. They pushed past me without giving me a second glance and one started to wrap the white sheet tightly around my mother. The other placed a stretcher next to her bed.

  They were going to carry her to the morgue.

  They were going to take Mother away.

  Without warning, I flew at them. I yelled at them to stop and pulled their jackets, their hair, scratched them with my jagged, ragged fingernails.

  “You can’t take her. She’s my mother.” The grief-filled words were like the scrape of a dayroom chair against the old linoleum, and my throat grew raw.

  “Hold her while I get the body.” His voice was in a shade of panic I understood. But I didn’t stop fighting and kicked him between the legs, and he bent over in pain. Then the other grabbed me and pulled my arms back, leaving me vulnerable to a solid punch in my middle.

  “You will unhand her.” Joann marched in. The man took his arms off of me. I doubled over and fell to the floor, but from the corner of my eye a flash of white crossed the room and tackled the aide who had hit me. Angel.

  The blur of chaos continued until Joann whistled and everyone stopped what they were doing. Except for me. I was still on the floor holding my stomach and coughing. The two aides righted themselves. One had a bloody nose from the tussle and both were staring at Angel with clenched fists. Angel’s hair was mussed and his shirt had been yanked out of shape, but he was fine otherwise. His gaze was on me, and it was like nothing else was in the room.

  He saw what I saw.

  He knew what I was thinking.

&nbs
p; He knew it was my fault. His face broke into a thousand pieces.

  I was ashamed for him to look at me. So I looked away.

  He moved toward me and wrapped his body around mine, like a cocoon, like we used to when we pretended to play butterfly the year we learned about metamorphosis. How I longed to change from my caterpillar state and be a butterfly that could fly away. But every time I left Angel’s cocoon, I was still the same Brighton.

  Our tears mixed, and we watched as Mother was wrapped in a white sheet. Her rest had begun from this life, and I knew now I would never rest.

  Before the men could leave with her body, patients began to come. Our friends. Our family. They all entered with such sacred quietness but for a few hmms and sniffs. Then Joyful came in. She was crying big, round tears that trailed down her dark cheeks. Her thick hands rested on my back and head, and they felt like heavy blankets that covered me. Her full voice sang a song about a river and prayer. I loved the comfort in the heavy melody.

  Rosina left her room for the first time in weeks and walked in, quietly saying the Lord’s Prayer. My mouth moved with hers. She cried between her holy Spanish words.

  Patients I’d known my whole life and some who were new came. They walked the path as one. In through the door, up to Mother’s bed—some of them lightly touching her sheathed body—then turning toward my bed and walking a circle around Angel and me as we sat in the middle of the floor. They were paying respects. They were mourning and grieving with me. With sad eyes they traced from Mother’s body to my face. Some of them said they were sorry and some just looked at me as blankly as Mother used to, their sympathies blocked inside themselves. The sheer number of them and their concern brought me comfort.

  And the two aides who were supposed to take my mother just stood staring. They did nothing to stop this funeral march and the sorrowful, moaning dirge. The only one my mother would ever have.