The Bright Unknown

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  My back grew straighter and Angel’s wrap around me loosened, but he remained close.

  “Everyone’s been dreading this day,” Aunt Eddie said to Joann. When had she arrived? “We all knew it would happen eventually. How much longer could that poor woman—and our sweet girl—”

  Joann sniffed and nodded.

  “What’s going to happen to her now?” Aunt Eddie wrapped her arms around her ample frame.

  Joann flinched at the question, and her eyes flickered to me and then back to the bed.

  “She’s in trouble, Eddie. She tried to make a run for it. Angel and Grace too.”

  “It ain’t right and you know it.” Aunt Eddie’s tears rushed as her voice grew passionate. “That she’s here. All three of them.”

  Joann clenched her jaw, but her eyes remained trained on Mother’s body.

  “She doesn’t belong here. She never did. Poor dear hasn’t got a soul to care for her.”

  “I don’t know what to do.” Joann spoke with thick, pasty words. “Sid will watch out for her, but—”

  “That’s all you have to say? The little girl you raised could be sterilized before the year’s out, and that’s all you have to say—that your husband will watch out for her?” She guffawed. “Maybe I should’ve been her stand-in mother instead. Criminal or not, her father would take better care of her than you.”

  “Don’t.” The word squeezed between gridlocked teeth.

  “You don’t scare me no more, Jo,” Eddie said. “Besides, you have a foot out the door. You ain’t my boss neither. I’ve kept quiet for all these years so I could get the safe jobs and good shifts—for my family’s sake—but not no more.”

  Then she looked down at me, her nostrils flared.

  “Attempted escape will guarantee you’ll be given treatments. Angel too. Anyone who attempts something that crazy—well, they should expect that.” Then she turned back to Joann. “You should’ve let her father take her.”

  I stood.

  “Take me?” I asked Eddie.

  “He was nothing but a convict,” Joann snorted. “It wasn’t possible.”

  “I looked in my file and Mother’s,” I said, accusingly. “I found my death certificate.”

  “What? How long have—” Joann put her face in her hands. “I never wanted you to know—”

  “That was wrong and I didn’t agree.” Eddie eyed Joann. “Joann has his address in a secret file in the records office.”

  “Don’t even try to find it, Brighton,” Joann scolded, raising her head. “You’re in enough trouble already.”

  Eddie took a step toward me with a quivering mouth and eyes drowning in their small pools of tears. “I’m so sorry, dear.”

  She hugged me, then gave Joann one last stern look before she left the room.

  “This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go,” Joann whimpered.

  Then she was gone. Eddie was gone. Mother was gone.

  1941

  A Long, Dreamless Moment

  Without warning, two more white-coated men I’d never seen before came in. One grabbed Angel with rough hands. He struggled in their grasp, but it was useless.

  “Stop,” I yelled.

  I beat the man on the back until the second man’s arms clamped around me. The aide’s fingers interlaced together like a concrete statue.

  Joann rushed back. “You will be gentle as you put them in solitary.”

  “But I have a job,” Angel growled at Joann. The anger he had toward her was remarkable considering how he’d always been so forgiving.

  “This one is going to Orchard Row, not solitary, Nurse,” the larger aide said.

  “On whose orders?” Joann choked.

  “Dr. Wolff, by way of Dr. Woburn.”

  Joann turned pure white. Whiter than Angel. Whiter than their uniforms. She stepped back, filling the doorway with her small frame.

  “Bright—Angel—I’m so sorry. I can’t—I don’t,” she stuttered and shook her head back and forth.

  “Don’t let them.” A feral surge rushed through me.

  Joann opened her mouth, but the words inside were never spoken as the aide pushed past her with Angel.

  “The girl is scheduled for treatment downstairs before solitary,” the aide said.

  With an animalistic yell Angel pulled out of the aide’s arms and lunged for me. Before he reached me the aide beat his back and he was on the floor in the next moment. Blood poured from his face.

  I screamed. Joann was mute. And all we could do was watch as Angel was pulled through the stairwell door without much effort. His blood smeared on his clothes and the floor. I kept yelling for him. I kept struggling. I wouldn’t quit.

  “Joann, you have to get him out,” I urged. I pulled and ratcheted my body to try to break free, but I couldn’t get away.

  Joann swallowed and then came to herself.

  “You will put her in solitary. I’m the managing nurse here so you will listen to me. If a doctor asks you, tell him to come to me.”

  “Dr. Wolff said that if she gives me any trouble, she goes straight to ECT.”

  Joann pulled out a shot from her dress pocket and after a sting on my thigh I heard, “There, now she won’t give you trouble.”

  The insulin rushed through me. I could feel it. My legs began to weaken and it was harder and harder to keep my hands fisted.

  “Don’t fight it, dear girl,” Joann whispered closely. “Forgive me.”

  Then she turned and went down the steps where Mother had just fallen to her death.

  My head was so heavy and my mouth felt damp and I couldn’t wipe the wetness away. My eyes lost their focus, and even though I could feel my body moving, I could only see blurred images flying in front of me—doors along the hallway and wandering patients. The scent was even more acrid than usual, and I began to vomit.

  I couldn’t keep up, so I was dragged. Once inside, I was put on the cot and strapped down with all four limbs splayed out. And then everything went dark.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but it seemed like only a moment. A weighty, dreamless moment. Like several pages of a book were turned at once. It seemed like a new me woke. Like the one who’d fallen asleep wasn’t real anymore. Like she had died.

  Someone had loosened my restraints, but I’d worn them long enough to have a steady ache in my wrists and ankles. I looked up to see only blackness pour through the broken window. The room spun and my head was pounding and my whole body felt snapped like a rubber band. Dried vomit covered my gown and the rancid scent filled me.

  Someone was humming loudly. Mother?

  No.

  A wave of reality reminded me that she was gone. Was she buried already as H. Friedrich—forgotten before she was known?

  The humming was coming from across the hall. It would stop for minutes at a time and then resume. I recognized the tune as one Grace used to sing in the early weeks of her arrival. It was a simple melody with words about dreams coming true, and I remember she said it was sung by someone named Ella. That was all I knew. I squeezed my eyes together, wishing she would share the words. Maybe they’d be of some comfort.

  Could anything comfort us right now?

  My whole body hurt when I pushed myself up to stand. The wound on my leg from our escape had been dressed. My shoulder ached from the ax. I limped to the door and looked through the square hole. I put my mouth to it and whispered her name. The humming stopped briefly, then began again. I called to her a few more times, a little louder.

  She quieted again, and there was a shuffling.

  “Hannah, is that you?” she returned.

  She thought I was her sister.

  “Grace, it’s me, Brighton.”

  Grace rushed to the door and put her mouth against the small square hole.

  “Be quiet, Hannah.” The whisper came like her throat was filled with gravel and fear. “Jonah is coming soon. I left the back door unlocked for him. Don’t tell Daddy.” She disappeared from sight,
and I heard the rattle of her doorknob.

  “Grace, I’m not—”

  “Hannah.” She was angry now. “Why did you lock the door? Did Daddy put you up to this?”

  She rattled and pounded on the door and yelled for Hannah to unlock it.

  “Grace, quiet,” I whispered loudly. “You’re going to get into trouble again. Listen to me.”

  She couldn’t hear me. Through the window I could see her bouncing around in wild, erratic movements. It went on for several minutes, then stopped and she was quiet.

  “Grace,” I said in a loud whisper.

  “Brighton?” She looked through the little window.

  “Yes.” I was relieved. “It’s me, Brighton. You have to stop fighting everyone. I think Eddie might—”

  “Brighton, guess what?” she said. “Hannah was just here and Jonah is on his way. I left the back door unlocked so he can get in.”

  “Grace, no,” I said, but she didn’t hear me. She went through the cycle again with the confusion of the locked door. And when she couldn’t unlock it, she went back to scolding her sister.

  Grace was lost.

  I put my back against the door and slid down to the floor. I didn’t remember falling asleep there, but the next thing I knew the door was creaking and pushing me. The person on the other side grunted and I scurried out of the way. My vision was like looking through gauze, but I could see a soft orange light coming through the window high in the wall. I turned to see the blurry figure and round shape of Aunt Eddie.

  “Eddie?”

  “Oh, Brighty, you’re awake.” Eddie leaned forward and with little effort pulled me to my feet and walked me to the cot.

  “How long have I been in here?” I sat down.

  “About eighteen hours, dear.” She sat on the cot next to me. “Joann told me what she done. With the injection.”

  I looked away. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten, but the details were only hanging around in the corners, making it easier to ignore. But now the facts had gained traction in my mind. Our failed escape. Mother’s death. Angel taken to Orchard Row. Any reserve hope I’d stored for so many years had vanished.

  “She done it because they were going to take you to shock therapy if you didn’t calm down.”

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  “She been here for hours with you, when her shift finished,” Eddie continued. “She was hoping you’d wake. Dr. Woburn made her go home finally.” The older nurse shrugged. “You know, ain’t good for the baby.”

  Yes. The baby. Being here wasn’t good for her baby.

  “Is Angel—” I started.

  “Orchard Row.”

  Grief struck me and I moaned, my body falling slack, crying. I’d lost everyone.

  1941

  There Is No Grace

  I was alone for the rest of the day. The grief over Mother was like the dust and dirt on the walls. It covered everything. There was no way to get away from it. The realization that the hope of escape was nearly gone was in everything else. It was heaviness in the iron cot frame. The way I couldn’t see the moon. The way the cot smelled of urine and vomit that weren’t mine.

  And then there was Angel. The purest soul I knew. Would I see him again in this life? How much longer could we survive? And what about Grace?

  Rosina’s prayers came to mind. I repeated some of those words as I sat in the corner. I’d cried all my tears. I was too tired to sleep. And the cliff of hopelessness was so close. But for the light that cascaded in from the broken window, all seemed lost. In that small ribbon of warmth and light there was something I couldn’t place. I couldn’t see how it might all happen—but in film light banished darkness. Could that happen in life? Was my sliver of hope enough?

  Approaching steps caught my attention, and I got up from the floor and peeked through the door window. The backs of men entered my view.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” I yelled. They ignored me.

  They proceeded to open Grace’s door, and as though she’d anticipated it, she flew at them. My square window only gave me flashes of aides battling her barred teeth and claw-like hands. She was so small and so out of her mind it didn’t take much to best her. I yelled her name. I didn’t know if I should tell her to keep fighting or to stop. Both seemed right. The aide kicked my door and told me to shut up, but I didn’t.

  “Just you wait,” he said to me.

  Grace’s cries as she was dragged away could have peeled paint from the walls. Her door was left open and the emptiness that stood before me filled my soul.

  Where was Joann? She said she’d never leave me. She said she wouldn’t forget me. Eddie said she’d been here while I slept, but I hadn’t seen her. I’d been given food once, dried bread and water. Whoever dropped it off didn’t even show their face but slid in the tray and rushed off. The racket in the ward was louder than I thought was common and I heard talk of a stomach influenza. That always caused deaths. Who would we lose this time? I kept my ears out for Lorna’s clichés and Rosina’s prayers, but heard neither.

  I went between watching out my door window for signs of Grace to looking out the window in the wall. At the close of the second day I was greeted by fog and dampness and eventually fell into a fitful sleep, believing my fate was sealed to spend another night in the smallness of these four walls.

  The solitary door opened and slammed against the wall behind it. The same aides from before had come for me. One walked in with his arms out toward me as if bracing for an attack. I jumped up from the floor and backed into a corner and analyzed whether it was possible to get past them. Could I grab the keys that jingled on the waist of the smaller one? At the first grip on my arm something arose out of me that brought such understanding of all the women I’d loved over the years; my resisting was savage and natural.

  A desperation to fight for my life took over. My muscles contracted painfully against their greater weight and strength. One finally grabbed me around the back, pinning my arms down, and the other held me around my ankles and lifted me.

  I bucked and reared and bloodied the nose of the man at my feet. The dayroom was empty as I passed through in their grasp, and they had to reposition me when we got to the stairwell door. We were so close now to the room of my birth, my childhood, my memories, my mother—my whole life.

  “Mother.” My neck muscles strained, and all the lumps and sighs and stones of guilt I’d swallowed down for the last eighteen years rose up out of me. I was bathed in tears.

  The aides’ hold on me was unrelenting, and once we were on the first floor and I recognized which room they were taking me to, I started weeping. Not the gnashing I’d just done in a whirlwind and fit of grief, but the kind of sadness that made me only as strong as the bread dough Joyful let me touch once. I was soft and could be molded and separated into a thousand pieces. I now understood the giving-up so many had done who had gone before me.

  1941

  I Never Knew You

  A familiar and once-despised voice told the aides to put me on the table. All I could see was the floor and the feet walking on it.

  “She’s going to fight,” one said. “She’s a tough one too.”

  “Leave her on the table,” he demanded.

  They did as they were asked, roughly laying me on my stomach on the table before complaining about their pay.

  As soon as their hands were off of me, I flipped over and saw the door slam and the back of Dr. Woburn standing near a table with medical instruments on it I’d never seen before. I guessed this was the electroconvulsive therapy room.

  He turned around, and the scar across his forehead had never looked so prominent. He held a clipboard in front of him, but his gaze fell upon me only briefly and then went past me. A click sounded from behind me. A door. My sight snapped over, and Joann frantically moved in beside me. Her eyes were round, and her hair was not pulled back behind her nurse’s cap but instead fell around her shoulders. I didn’t know that it was so long. She wasn’t wearin
g her white uniform, and I could feel her nubby sweater against my arm. She was wiping my face with delicate hands and saying over and again to forgive her. The despair in her voice scared me.

  “What’s happening?” Was she going to help her husband shock my brain? Was that why she was pleading for forgiveness?

  “Joann—time.” Dr. Woburn raised an eyebrow.

  “Right.” She looked at him, then back at me, and forced me up to a sitting position and started to unsnap my gown.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two while trying to keep my gown on. Was this how electroshock was done?

  “Go, Sid.” He was gone in a moment, furthering my confusion.

  Joann won the battle of my gown, and it was off me. She had a bag on the floor next to her, and she frantically stuffed the gown inside and pulled out a tan-colored blouse and a navy-blue skirt. “I didn’t have an extra brassiere, but put this camisole on first and see if that will help.”

  “Help what?” I said, and in my own fear I became frightened enough to put on what she called a camisole quickly. This one wasn’t a straightjacket.

  “Your breasts, Brighton. You have them, as small as they are, and it’s vulgar not to wear a brassiere.” She gestured for me to move quickly, and when I was ready she threw the blouse around my shoulders and pushed my arms through the sleeves. It was a fine shirt. Nicer than anything I’d ever worn, and for a moment I smoothed my hands down from my chest to my waist. “Promise me you’ll get one as soon as you’re able.”

  “Get what?”

  “Get a brassiere.”

  I was like a doll in her arms and was pulled to standing. She had me change my underpants, then she put the skirt down by my feet and gestured for me to step in. When I did, she pulled the skirt up to my waist in a blink. I had a waist. It was shocking to see. And it was small.

  “What’s happening?” I nearly slapped Joann to get her attention.

  Her hands stopped buttoning at my waist and moved to my face. Gently she held my cheeks and looked into my eyes. I was her little girl again.