The Bright Unknown

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  “You are leaving tonight, my love.” A tear streaked down her face, and she didn’t move to wipe it away, so I did it for her. “I should have done this years ago.”

  She was helping me escape? Tears I didn’t know I had left poured and wetted my cheeks. There was hope in that sliver of light.

  “It’s not going to be easy, Brighton, but you’ll have to trust us.” She was so firm that I expected her tears to dry, but instead more came. She took off her sweater and put it around me.

  “We’ll be fired if they figure it out,” she said without looking at me. “But it doesn’t matter because we’re leaving—Sid and me.”

  “Leaving?”

  She nodded. “Florida. Can you believe it?”

  While I shook my head in disbelief, tears streamed down her cheeks. She grabbed her bag and pulled me to the door.

  “To start fresh.” She peeked into the hallway before leading me out.

  “What about Angel—and Grace?” I grabbed roughly at Joann’s arm and she winced.

  “I’ll explain everything once we get out.”

  “No.” The passion to exert that small word made me feel woozy and my knees buckled. She caught me and held me up for a long moment, looking around us. When I nodded I was okay, she kept us moving toward the door—the very same one I’d snuck out of with Grace only a few days ago. “Please, tell me.”

  “Sid is working on getting Angel.” She slowly turned the knob to keep it quiet. I knew the trick too.

  “And Grace?”

  “We can’t help her now.”

  “What does that mean? I promised her.” I pulled away from her. I didn’t want to leave the building without Grace.

  “Promises are minions of love, aren’t they? Grace is in the infirmary. Her father was very upset over hearing about her attempted escape and wanted her treatment accelerated. She might be transferred.”

  I was the reason for all of this. What would they do to her?

  “Take me to her,” I begged too loudly.

  Joann pushed me against the wall and put her hand over my mouth.

  “Quiet, you.” She spoke so quietly I barely heard her.

  I nodded, and she let go of my mouth. “Listen to me. You cannot help Grace. You’re going to leave this place and settle somewhere. Then you can write to Eddie—but use a different name on the envelope. She will get it to Grace. Do you hear me?”

  I nodded without a word. This was really happening. My heart began to beat too quickly and my eyes blurred with tears. We were so close now, for the second time, but what if it didn’t work again?

  “Come on.” She pulled me outside and quietly closed the door behind us.

  “How long have you planned this?”

  “Listen, you need to walk normally. Like we’re just off-duty nurses.” She handed me her purse and she held the bag with my gown.

  I nodded but still looked up toward the second floor. The windows were dark, but I could almost see the forms of the ghosts that reached out their arms to hold me close. I looked away and walked on. It was harder than I’d expected. Harder than I wanted it to be.

  “My things.” My steps stuttered. “My pillowcase.”

  Joann shook her head and kept me moving forward. “Sorry, love, it’s in the attic.”

  I looked back, and Joann whipped me around to face forward. My things. I’d never see my things again. I wouldn’t fulfill the promise I’d made to show the world what was being done to us. All the care I’d taken to hide the film cartridges, and now they were gone.

  “But my mother’s photo. My film.”

  “Forget about them. I have a bag in the car. There are other photos of your mother inside, ones you’ve never seen. Some of her things. They’ll have to do.”

  As we rushed down the sidewalk, Mother’s ghost seemed close, pushing me. Telling me to go.

  The purple in the sky silhouetted several buildings, and I knew which one was Orchard Row. Joann directed me to look ahead. We stopped next to a car. Joann opened the door and told me to get in the back. She climbed into the front seat—but not behind the wheel. Would Dr. Woburn and Angel come soon? Would they come at all?

  Joann and I didn’t speak—maybe we didn’t even breathe. Until Joann scooted toward the wheel. She gripped it.

  “Sid said to only give him twenty minutes.” Her grasp was so strong her knuckles whitened.

  “Give them longer.” My throat was tight with words. I leaned forward on the edge of the cold seat and pressed my hand against the window.

  Then I saw movement from the other end of the parking lot. Two men with white coats. They were moving fast in our direction, but they were not close enough yet for me to see their faces.

  “It’s them,” Joann said and moved away from the wheel. I got out and ran to Angel. Holding him was like holding my own heart, so heavy in my arms. Real and beating. He winced.

  “Are you okay?” I checked him over as he moved us both toward the car.

  We were back inside, and Dr. Woburn started the engine. Angel and I looked at one another and held each other’s hands, but as we pulled out of the parking space I looked back. Was this finally happening?

  I exhaled a long breath—had I been holding it for years? That exhale pushed out all the sorrow and disappointment and death that were locked away in those walls. It was rotten and dingy air that I thought I’d never be rid of. Though I didn’t know who I was without it.

  Angel squeezed my hands, and I searched his steady and strong eyes.

  “Grace?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  The row of houses that I’d learned long ago were for the staff didn’t have even one window lit. The dark and sleepy houses were my first glimpse of real homes. Real families lived in them. There were lamps on long poles along the side of the street, but the lights looked more like ghosts. I couldn’t put into words how these moments felt. There was such a mixture of grief and anticipation that I couldn’t parse. Angel and I ducked as we passed through the iron gates with a night guard. With a wave of Dr. Woburn’s hand, we were permitted to exit.

  “Where are we going?” Angel finally asked, sitting up.

  “The train station,” Joann said after several long moments of silence.

  “Are you coming with us?” I asked.

  Dr. Woburn shook his head. Joann whispered, “No.”

  “But we don’t know how to live out there—out here.” I sat on the edge of the seat. “You’re sending us away so quickly?”

  “It’s the best we can do,” Dr. Woburn said.

  “It wouldn’t be safe, love,” she said to me. “Sid purchased tickets. You’ll leave in a few hours, so you’ll have to stay on the platform until you hear the conductor call your train number.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to us,” Angel shot back. “None of that makes sense. What’s a platform, and what do we do if someone speaks to us? What if we’re hungry? We might have been the more capable ones in the hospital, but out here we aren’t. We’ll need help.”

  Instead of answering, she handed us both sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. We grabbed them quickly. Joann told us to take care to eat only a little because neither of us had eaten much in days. My stomach roiled after half a dozen bites so I stopped. Angel didn’t. He ate the whole thing like a wild animal consuming downed prey.

  “I know, Angel,” Joann finally answered. “And I’m sorry that we won’t be able to help more. We’ll try to explain everything. I’ve packed more food in a bag. And there’s money in there too. There should be enough.”

  “Enough for what?” I asked. What did that mean?

  Joann began to talk in detail about train stations, platforms, how to use money, and what to expect once we got to a city called Pittsburgh. It sounded like another language to me. All I could focus on was the sound of the tires against the road and the whistle of wind coming from the car somewhere. I closed my eyes to it.

  “There’s an address in your bag.” She bobbed her head
toward me. “You’ll be going to see a man named Ezra Raab.”

  “Ezra Raab?” Angel repeated.

  There was a full beat of silence before she answered. “Ezra Raab is Brighton’s father.”

  I looked at her with eyes that seemed to stretch my skin.

  “But how— You said—”

  “I know I should’ve told you more.” She shook her head. “He came once.”

  “For me? When?”

  “Listen, he’s a convicted criminal. I was not going to hand a one-year-old over to him.”

  “I was one? What did you tell him?” I asked, but as soon as I did, I knew. “The death certificate.”

  “I couldn’t—” Joann shook her head and bit her lower lip.

  “What did he do?”

  “He’s not dangerous, but—what would he have done with a baby?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but she spoke before I could. “It doesn’t much matter if you’re angry about it. I did what I thought was best, and we can’t go back.”

  The rough-hewn silence in the car was like a leather strap that tightened around me.

  “He wrote,” Joann finally said. “Every few years—asking after your mother.”

  “And?” I looked from her and Dr. Woburn, who was clenching his jaw, to Angel.

  “I wrote him back, telling him of her poor condition.” She looked straight ahead. “He wanted to know about her.”

  “But he thinks I’m dead.”

  “She did what she could.” Dr. Woburn’s voice burst forth. “She went around to more than a handful of homes for children—orphans, foundlings—and spent weeks looking for a safe place for you.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Sid, it doesn’t matter now.” Joann patted her husband.

  “Yes, it does, Jo. I won’t have her thinking that you didn’t try. That you didn’t do everything you could for her.” Dr. Woburn went on. “Every place she found was dirty or dangerous. The children were always sickly and malnourished. She knew she could do better than those places. And she also put me off for most of that same time.”

  I scooted back and took my hand from Angel’s and put it in my lap.

  “No one wanted to adopt a child from a lunatic mother,” he added. “Don’t think she didn’t try that too.”

  “That’s enough, Sid,” Joann scolded. “Brighton, it doesn’t matter now. I know you’ve suffered greatly.”

  “And why now?” I finally asked. “Why couldn’t I have gone to my father years ago?”

  “After he was released from jail he worked far away. Somewhere out west. And only recently, in the last few years, moved to Pittsburgh. Everything’s in your bag. There may also be an aunt.”

  The car felt like it was moving so fast now. Like we were heading far too quickly into the future.

  “An aunt? My mother had a sister?”

  She nodded.

  “The picture. The hand on Mother’s shoulder?”

  She nodded again.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

  “I didn’t know much. Just that your father once mentioned her and said she was very ill. I never heard anything more.”

  An ill aunt. Ill like Mother?

  “Can I find my mother?” Angel asked, breaking the silence.

  “Your father won’t ever allow that,” Dr. Woburn said, wringing his grip on the wheel. “Take my word for it—walk away from all of this and start fresh.”

  “Oh, Angel, please listen to Sid about not contacting your family.”

  Dr. Woburn eyed Joann and cleared his throat. “You’re my nephew, you know. Your mother loved you and it was very hard for her to give you up, but she’s a proud woman who would never do anything to soil her reputation, and your albinism would’ve done that. I’m sorry.”

  “Have you no compassion?” I asked the doctor.

  “It’s all right,” Angel said almost sternly toward me. “I’m not a child, Brighton. I’ve known that my whole life. Why would I have been at Riverside if I’d been wanted?”

  “Your father’s a cruel, unrelenting man, Angel, much crueler than any doctor you’ve encountered at Riverside. He runs an asylum as well—he and Sid went to medical school together. However, their hospital is more of a eugenics factory than anything else.”

  “Eugenics?” we both asked.

  Joann shook her head. “Nothing you need to worry about now that you’re on the other side of the hospital walls. Thank God neither of you were sterilized.”

  “Couldn’t you have done this at any time? Just driven off with us?” I asked. “It seems so easy now.”

  “I don’t think so. With all the new staff, it actually might take time for someone to notice you are missing. It’s taken days to notice worse things,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t know, Brighton. I wish things were different.”

  The sun began to brighten the navy-blue sky. My first sunrise outside of the walls of my room. The silence that returned was nestled uncomfortably between us, giving me a moment to take in the newness. The speed we were going made my knuckles white. But the bench-like seat was smooth and comfortable. The dials and buttons on a panel in front of me, the way Dr. Woburn’s feet pushed at the floor and his hand gripped a long stick—none of this was familiar.

  All my thoughts about what was confessed and my questions ceased when I saw the train station ahead of us. I’d never seen a real one before, only motionless images in books. The unfamiliarity of it made my lungs fill with air I couldn’t exhale. Then a moment later they were empty and I couldn’t take a breath. My hands went to my chest. The coat and the nubby sweater were both open, and my hand touched the fine fabric of the blouse. My fingertips felt the smoothness, and I tried to think about how nice it was to help my breathing calm. It didn’t work.

  “Brighton. Slow down.” Joann turned and put a hand on my knee to soothe me.

  All I could think about was how we were enclosed in a small car. The air was musky and my breathing got worse. Dr. Woburn pulled to a stop and turned off the engine.

  “I need air,” I said between loud, raspy breaths.

  Angel pounded on the door on Dr. Woburn’s side. “Open it for her.”

  Angel pulled me out, and I stood with my hands on my knees until my breath steadied. He rubbed my back, and his warm hand was the exact weight to keep my heart in place.

  “Are you all right?” I looked up at him. The light from the parking lot illuminated the dark circles beneath his eyes and the thinness around his jawline and neck.

  He nodded. “Better now.”

  I wondered if he’d ever talk to me about it. Tell me what it was like at Orchard Row for those awful few days. My breaths became strong and deep as the reality settled in that Angel and I would not die in the asylum. We would not lose ourselves to the melancholy that took over so many souls. We were getting a chance to live.

  Dr. Woburn had walked around to Joann’s door, and when it clicked open she fell into a frenzy of sobs. Part of me had the instinct to comfort her and part of me wanted to remind her that so much of this heartache could have been avoided if only she’d found a way to get me out sooner.

  But the realization that if she had done that Angel never would have been part of my life was like a straightjacket of truth—unmoving and entirely restrictive. Angel never would have survived. If he didn’t die in the children’s ward, Orchard Row would’ve done him in. My childhood as it was, was the better choice because Angel and I were supposed to walk this path together.

  I saw, for the first time, Dr. Woburn as a husband and Joann as a wife. He knelt next to her seat and put his hands over her hanky-filled one.

  “This is what’s right, darling,” he said, and his eyes were full of what I knew to be love.

  Joann nodded first. “But it’s all too much. Too much sadness for me and such a burden for them to learn so much so quickly. I tried to give her an education, but that won’t help her understand how to live out here. How to shop at the market or get
a job or— What if her father won’t help her? What will she do?”

  Dr. Woburn looked up and our eyes fixed. I couldn’t keep them connected, and I looked away, off into the glare of the electric lights. I realized the conversation I was overhearing was one they’d likely had for years. The contradiction of everything we were in the midst of was alive and growing. Freedom was right. But I didn’t know how to be free and I had no one to teach me.

  “I won’t let anything happen to her, Joann.” Angel spoke. He took my hand. “I love her, you know. And I’ll never let anyone hurt her.”

  He loved me? Did he mean like a sister?

  “I’ll never leave you,” he told me. “I do love you. You know that, don’t you?”

  I took him in. His eyes shone more blue right now than red. I nodded. I guess I’d always known we loved each other. His grip on my hand tightened, and I suddenly felt we were going on some grand adventure that I didn’t have to be afraid of as long as we were together.

  “Come now.” Dr. Woburn’s voice drew me away from Angel. He leaned in and whispered to Joann. I wondered if it was about their baby or that he was grateful this whole mess was soon over or about Florida. I didn’t know what he said, but she nodded her head and he helped her up and out of the car.

  Angel reached back into the car and got out the two bags Joann had packed for us. I took mine from him, then we followed Joann and Dr. Woburn into the train station. It wasn’t an overly large building, but it was so unfamiliar. Picture books and newspapers really didn’t prepare me. It was a red-orange brick color, and there were electric lights guiding us in. Dr. Woburn pointed at a sign and showed us a map and where we were going. A city called Pittsburgh.

  The place where we would start our new life. With a man whose only memory of me was my death certificate.

  Dr. Woburn cleared his throat and took charge.

  “Your train leaves in the morning at nine twenty-seven. A man will call for you to board for Pittsburgh, and he’ll stamp your ticket when you’re on the train and—” He paused and continued after a deep breath. “You’ll have to watch what the others do around you. That’s how many of us learn anyway. Do what they do. Understand?”