Sunday You Learn How to Box

by Bil Wright

  The more excited the patients in Group got, the calmer Dr. Shapiro became. He’d ask them, “Are you taking your medication?” I didn’t understand how he didn’t know. Sarah gave everybody their medication at breakfast. Even if a patient didn’t answer, Sarah wouldn’t speak up and say that she knew they took it, because she’d given it to them. Every once in a while, some guy would be going off at the top of his lungs about something ridiculous and Dr. Shapiro would be asking him in this low voice if he took his pill. I’d be tempted to butt in and say, “Cut the bullshit, why don’t you? You know Sarah gave it to him. It isn’t working. He’s still a lunatic, that’s the problem! Get him out of here before he hurts somebody!”

  Dr. Shapiro knew what he was doing, though. Just when I started measuring how fast I could get to the door again, he’d calm the nut down, speaking practically under his breath, but firmly as though he was taming a lion without a whip.

  When I saw him alone, Dr. Shapiro would say, “Give yourself permission, Louis, to say as much or as little as you want to.” I didn’t mind talking about Ben. Dr. Shapiro was really interested in the details of the Sunday boxing matches. I told him I thought it was a chance for Ben to hit me like he’d always wanted to, except that now Mom had given him permission.

  When Dr. Shapiro pushed me for details about Mom, I used his “say as little or as much” policy. I kept it on the “little” side. Despite what he said about not forcing me, Dr. Shapiro did ask one day, “When do you think you’ll feel comfortable enough to say more about your mom?”

  I told him what I thought was all anyone needed to know. “Mom and I were supposed to be a team and I let her down. She’s pretty damn mad about it. I don’t know if she’ll ever stop being mad.”

  I knew I’d never tell anyone about Ed MacMillan and I wondered if I’d ever tell Dr. Shapiro about Ray Anthony. The answer, I was pretty sure, was no. It didn’t feel necessary to tell anyone about Ray Anthony. Most of what I knew about him or thought about him anyway, I’d made up. If I started talking about someone who was definitely real, but also made up, I knew Dr. Shapiro would add on about five more years to the time he thought I should be at Burgess.

  • • •

  It was a Thursday when Dr. Shapiro told us in Group, “Visitors are coming tomorrow and the schedule will be a little different, but nothing we can’t all handle if we work together.”

  I knew he was putting it that way because anytime anything was the least bit different at Burgess, the patients pouted and slammed around all day. Some of them cried about hating to have to be there because people were so inconsiderate. Vera once got into a fight with the Cursing Colored Woman because she bought fake Oreos for snacktime. The Cursing Colored Woman told Vera, “Y’all take the damn taxpayers’ money and stick it up your asses, insteada takin’ care of the damn taxpayers like you say you’re gonna. Don’t you think we know the difference between real cookies and these shittin’ fake ones?” The Cursing Colored Woman was the loudest when anything was different, but all the patients weirded out in their own way.

  In our private, I asked Dr. Shapiro about the visitors. He leaned over his desk and scratched his scalp with both hands so that dandruff fell out. He brushed it off the side of the desk and said, “Louis, because I think you’re a very mature young man, I’m going to share this with you.”

  “Yeah?” I said, wondering if what he was really saying now was that I was definitely a lot less insane than the others. Or maybe he could tell I was getting better.

  “The Stratfield Journal is coming tomorrow to do a story on Burgess. We tried to get them to come on Saturday when the patients aren’t here, but they said no. We can’t close the center just so the paper can get a story, but we also want to protect the patients’ privacy. So we’re going to arrange it so that the patients stay in the Group Room, at least while they’re taking pictures.”

  “Why?” I wanted to know. “Wouldn’t it be better if the pictures showed that Burgess had some patients in it?” The building itself looked like just what it was, an old falling-down house, nothing too pretty to look at, nothing I could see worth writing about.

  Dr. Shapiro told me other patients might not want their picture taken and that the center had to do what was best for everyone. He said for some of them it would be as if a stranger came into their house and started taking pictures and couldn’t I understand how they’d be upset by that?

  “I guess you’re right,” I told him. “I never had to think about my picture being taken in an asylum before.”

  Dr. Shapiro reminded me that Burgess wasn’t an asylum, and I didn’t argue with him. But I knew other people would be thinking it was an asylum. A nuthouse. Wasn’t that going to be the point of the story?

  The next morning I pulled out my blue dress shirt and a pair of black pants I usually only wore to church.

  “Where do you think you’re going in those pants?” Mom asked me. “You getting dressed up to go to that place, now? You must be really losing your mind.”

  I changed the pants, but I still got away with wearing the shirt.

  After Group, Dr. Shapiro made an announcement that we should all stay in the room and Vera was going to bring in some cookies and juice for snacktime. The Cursing Colored Woman insisted she wanted tea. “Why the hell can’t I have a cup of nice hot tea?!” she demanded, even though the Group Room was like an oven. Dr. Shapiro asked her, “Gloria, why don’t you have some juice now and get your cup of tea a little later, maybe after lunch?”

  The Cursing Colored Woman started up and when she did I headed for the door. Sarah stopped in the middle of twirling her hair and called out, “Louis, where are you going?”

  “To the men’s room.”

  Dr. Shapiro was really tense by now. “Can’t you wait, Louis?”

  “No. I can’t.”

  He came to the door where I was standing and looked out into the hallway. There wasn’t anyone there, but I could hear Vera’s voice upstairs on the second floor.

  “Go ahead,” Dr. Shapiro whispered, rubbing the back of his neck with both hands. When he’d closed the door to the Group Room, I went to the bottom of the stairs and listened. Vera was showing the photographers the upstairs offices. They’d be down soon. When I heard them coming, I ran into the kitchen and waited.

  “Now the Group Room, as I told you, is being used right now,” I could hear Vera telling them, coming downstairs. “But to the left here is the kitchen—” She stopped.

  “L—” she started again, then caught herself. “What are you doing in here?” She was smiling, but underneath the smile I could hear, “I could twist your ears off your lousy little head, Louis!”

  I smiled myself, at all of them. There was a woman reporter who immediately started writing something and a photographer who looked as if he didn’t know what he should do next. I felt sorry for Vera. Her whole body was twitching. I’d never seen anybody have a stroke before, but I was pretty sure it couldn’t be too different from what was going on with her.

  “Hi,” I said to all of them. “I’m Louis.” Then to Vera, “I’m fixing a cup of tea for—” I stopped myself. It wouldn’t be fair to say any of the other patients’ names. “I’m going to fix myself a cup of tea.”

  Continuing to smile at the photographer, I was saying to him, “Go on. Take it. Take a picture. I’m Louis Bowman. Son of Jeanette Stamps. Grandson of Donald Emmanuel Suggs. I’m the youngest one in here. I’m thirteen years old. And shittin’ crazy, as Gloria, The Cursing Colored Woman would say. I’m shittin’ crazy.” I wanted Mom to see that picture on the front page with my name under it. At least she couldn’t say I hadn’t worn one of my best shirts.

  Vera ran for Dr. Shapiro. By the time he got to the kitchen, I had volunteered several details about Burgess I thought would make a good story, without giving any of the patients’ names, of course, but I still didn’t get my picture taken. Dr. Shapiro asked me in our private what I’d hoped to accomplish by what I’d done. I told him, “I want
ed to get my picture in the newspaper. There might be some other kids out there who are just as crazy as I am. They’d know they weren’t the only ones.”

  • • •

  At the end of the last week in August, Dr. Shapiro told me that he wanted me to know before he announced it in Group, he wouldn’t be working at Burgess anymore. He also wouldn’t be at school in September. He said he had a new job, but I could tell he wasn’t going to say anything about it. He didn’t usually say anything about himself. He’d told me before we weren’t there to talk about him.

  “But from now on,” he said, “your therapist will be Dr. Davis. Although I’ll miss talking to you, I know you’re going to like her a lot. Unfortunately, you’ll have a bit of a break because she won’t be here until the second week of September.”

  At first, I just looked at him for a long time. I had to look away, though, to stop myself from crying. Then I wanted to yell like the other crazies did. I wanted to curse at him and ask him, “Why the hell did you make me come to this nuthouse if you knew you were going to leave me here?” I wasn’t going to tell anything to this Dr. Davis. Since they decided I was insane, I could act insane. I could act as nuts as anybody in there and who would stop me? Like Mom told me all the time, “There isn’t any white man gonna save you. You keep walking where they tell you to walk, you’ll be lost before you know it.”

  16

  The day I came home from Burgess and saw Ray Anthony in the parking lot, I grabbed my chance to talk to him, really talk to him for as long as he’d let me.

  “Ray Anthony!” I yelled, running to him. “You working this summer? I haven’t seen you.”

  “Yeah,” he answered, as though he was used to us having conversations, as though he wasn’t at all surprised I was asking. “I got me my same job I always had.”

  “What’s that?” I tried to sound casual like maybe he’d told me a long time ago, but I’d forgotten.

  “At the Sunoco station. End of Blackburn Avenue.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “What do you do?” That was real stupid, I thought. What does anybody do who works at a gas station?

  “Mostly, fix engines. Sometime I gotta pump some gas. But what he hired me for is that I can fix any kinda engine. Any kind.”

  His confidence made me feel proud.

  “Where you comin’ from?” I could hardly believe he was asking. I panicked, not wanting to lie to him.

  “This place,” I started. “It’s called Burgess. I go every day.” Then it began to pour out of me like I’d been waiting for weeks to tell him. I didn’t think about being ashamed or that he’d laugh or tell anyone else. It seemed right that he should know. In my mind, Ray Anthony should know anything he wanted to about me. Except about Ed MacMillan.

  Even so, as I told him about how I hadn’t been doing that well in school, that Dr. Shapiro suggested Burgess and how upset Mom had been upset about it, I stared at the corner of his shoulder because I couldn’t quite look in his eyes. Standing there in the parking lot, I told him as much as I could as quickly as I could, not having any idea what would come next, just knowing I couldn’t stop. When I finished, or at least slowed down because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, Ray Anthony reached into his back pocket and took out a stick of spearmint gum. He slowly ripped it in half, frowning at it like it took all his concentration.

  “You want half?”

  I took the piece he held out to me and waited for him to unwrap his half so we could start to chew together, at the same time.

  Finally he said, “I know Burgess. Everybody know Burgess. Ain’t you too young to be in a place like that?”

  “I’m the youngest.” I looked up at him. I’d never felt as young as I did at that moment. Burgess didn’t matter. I wanted to be old enough for Ray Anthony to take me seriously.

  “You know,” he started, and I could tell he wasn’t sure how to say it, “you can’t let nobody tell you you crazy. Just cause you ain’t out here doin’ what everybody else is doin.’ That don’t make you crazy.”

  I nodded. “I know.” And I remembered days I was sure I was crazy. I was glad Ray Anthony didn’t think so, though.

  “They don’t wire nothin’ to your head, do they?”

  I laughed. “You mean, shock treatment? No. They don’t do that to anybody there.”

  Ray Anthony laughed too. He looked a little embarrassed. “I was just makin’ sure.”

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. Something about the way he did it reminded me of Grandaddy. It was as if he was staring into a pool that only he could see, reflecting back on all the years he’d already lived, all the experiences he’d already had.

  “Least you ain’t locked up nowhere.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed with him, wishing I could see into his pool of memories.

  “You do whatever they tell you to. Just so it don’t cross their minds to lock you up somewhere.”

  “I do,” I told him. “I always do what they tell me to.”

  Suddenly Ray Anthony spat his gum out on the ground between us. He looked at me sharply.

  “You know, Burgess ain’t all that far from the garage. Them people get too much for ya, I’ll come over there with the old man’s truck and run it through the place a couple times.” He laughed in this voice that sounded like he was only half joking and I was reminded of why people could think he was dangerous. But when he started to walk away from me out of the parking lot, I wanted to follow him. I wanted to be with him, at the garage or wherever he was going.

  “Ray Anthony!” He turned back, but I didn’t have the guts to ask if I could go with him. There wasn’t anything else I could say to keep him there with me. “I’ll see ya.”

  The only thing I wanted more than to go with him was to know that he really would drive up to Burgess one day. He wouldn’t have to run through it a couple of times like he said. He’d just have to get as far as the front of the building. I’d be waiting on the porch.

  As he walked out of the parking lot, he reached into his back pocket for another stick of gum. I could hear the thumping of the organ and the choir of Greater Faith Tabernacle. I could hear the preacher saying, “Everybody in this world is entitled to a miracle.”

  I’ll be waiting, I thought. I’ll watch for you every day.

  17

  September. Mom was panicking. She wasn’t making enough money to save anything for the new house and she was anxiously trying to figure out what else to do. She began saying things now I knew she didn’t mean, like how it was a damn shame she had me around her neck since I wasn’t doing anything but flunking school and going to the nuthouse. “I’ll be glad,” she told me, “when you get old enough for me to pack your bags and put them out there on the stoop.”

  She was threatening to put Ben’s bags on the stoop now too so it made me feel a little better. Ben snickered at her. “I don’t need you to pack for me. I know how to pack.” But he never did.

  At school, my average from eighth grade put me in a class with kids I’d avoided my whole life. Guys who’d already beat me up, guys who were waiting to. Girls who sucked their teeth constantly at the teacher, at each other, at everyone else in the room. As if sucking their teeth took the place of English. This was the class I’d put myself in. It was nobody’s fault but my own.

  For the two weeks after Dr. Shapiro left Burgess, Sarah took over Group and I didn’t have any private sessions. I decided Sarah was something between a student and an actual psychologist. We sat in the room for an hour while she practically begged the nuts to sit down and control themselves. I made this joke with myself that if she had any sense at all, she’d triple their medication. Nobody would know except her. She could sit in the Group Room twirling her hair, watching them drool and nod.

  By the Monday Dr. Davis was supposed to start, I had pretty much convinced myself to have an open mind about her. I missed talking to someone about Mom and Ben, especially since things seemed to be getting worse. I hadn’t told Dr. Shapiro ev
erything, but what I did say somehow made me feel better. If I could stand this new person at all, at least I’d have someone to tell whatever I chose to tell them. I knew she had to lead Group first, so that would give me a chance to see how bad or good she was at being a therapist with the loons before I had her for our private.

  I imagined that Dr. Davis would be everything Dr. Shapiro was not. Tall and blow-away thin, because Dr. Shapiro was thick looking, not fat, but solid like he ate steak and baked potatoes with a couple of glasses of wine every night. Dr. Davis, I had decided, was spindly and either very old or even younger than Sarah. Just graduated or ready to retire. Either way, she didn’t have a family and would probably always be snooping around the patients’ food like I saw Sarah doing, looking for something to eat. She and Sarah would never be able to control the patients in Group. I’d still be respectful, no matter how badly I thought they were doing their jobs, but the rest of the nuts would eat poor Dr. Davis and mealy-mouthed Sarah alive.

  When I got to Burgess on the Monday morning Dr. Davis arrived, Lucille was waiting on the porch. When she saw me, she started jumping up and down, clapping her hands like a kid at Christmas. “She’s here! The new doctor is here! Wait till you see her! You’re gonna die!” That’s all she would say.

  It was enough to send me through the building on a search. I ran past Vera at the front desk upstairs to the second floor. The door to Dr. Shapiro’s office, which now belonged to Dr. Davis was open, but she wasn’t in it. I ran back down, asked Vera where she was. She said Dr. Davis was in a meeting. I’d have to wait until after breakfast to see her at Group.

  I left some of the breakfast glasses in the drain without washing them which made Lucille very upset. I ran back downstairs, expecting that Dr. Davis would be early the first time at least, instead of coming in a couple minutes late like Dr. Shapiro always did. Sarah announced that Dr. Davis was still in a meeting, but would be there soon. With her head cocked to the side and her eyes closed, Lucille repeated, “Wait till you see her, Louis. You’re gonna die!”