Quiet-Crazy

by Joyce Durham Barrett

  “Look, Elizabeth. Look, honey. See? Wanna touch?”

  The other picture, the mushroom, though its cap is a little wide, has the exact same shape as the man’s organ that I’d seen pictures of in the medical dictionary in the library. Real clever of Dr. Johnstone, I’ll say, hanging up prompts like that to get people talking, although it doesn’t work too well on me.

  Well, it isn’t any of his business, anyway, that’s what I think at first. But by the time he asks me again, I remember what Dr. Adams had said about cooperating and being honest or you couldn’t expect to help yourself. So I think, what the heck, and I say no, I haven’t had sex unless you want to count that day with old Sheriff Tate in the cemetery, and that wasn’t actually sex, by anyone’s Bible.

  But that doesn’t satisfy Dr. Johnstone. He then has to know about Sheriff Tate, and what we did, and how I felt then and how I feel now, and on and on. So I answer everything he asks me as best I can just to get him to hush.

  At that, Dr. Johnstone slides up on the edge of his chair and says, “What do you think about, Elizabeth, when you think about having sex with someone?”

  But I can’t go on with this, you know, who in their right mind can talk with a stark stranger about having sex? Why, I couldn’t have talked about it even with Caldwell, not even him, much less a saint. But Dr. Johnstone has another idea. He reaches out, takes both of my hands in his and rubs around on them real tender, looking straight into my eyes, poring over me, making me shudder, making me feel naked, until I turn my face away from him firm and good.

  “Can’t you tell me, Elizabeth? Can’t you?” he asks. And when I shake my head, he says, “There’s a way you can. We can pull the curtain,” he says, nodding toward the drapes over in the corner of the room, hanging in front of a couch, “you can lie on the couch behind the curtains and do it with me and tell me what you think about while we’re doing it.”

  I pull my hands away from him right quick. Is this supposed to be what goes on at Nathan? Having sex with your psychiatrist? Why, I could do stuff like this when I was six years old. In my own bed. In my own house. Broad daylight.

  “It’ll be just between you and me, sweetheart. No one will ever know,” he says, and for a moment he doesn’t look too much different from old Sheriff Tate, just another old man trying to get a rise out of someone. And the more I think on him, the more he doesn’t seem all that different from Mama, saying, “Look, Elizabeth, look, wanna touch?”

  I finally find the courage to look at Dr. Johnstone real hard, trying to figure him out, trying, somehow, to find the answer in his face. But all I do is get more and more in a quandary. If I don’t have sex with him, will he automatically dismiss me as not cooperating and not wanting to help myself? But how will I help myself by having sex with Dr. Johnstone? Will it, in some strange way, make me feel better about having sex with anyone? I try to imagine Dr. Adams asking me to have sex with him, but I know he would never do that. Is sex a privilege reserved only for the psychiatrist? Or is it not right at all, under any circumstances?

  I’ll have to say I am curious. Curious about what it might be like, and if it would be different from what I’ve thought. And if it might help in the long run, to know that, yes, I could have sex with a grown-up man and maybe it would make me feel more like a grown-up woman, rather than a wild woman-child. Maybe it would take away all that Mama stuff, and I could put her and it and all that crap behind me forevermore, with just this one man. But, no, I simply cannot go through with this thing he is asking me to do. So I get up, look at Dr. Johnstone straight in the eye, and I do believe I look right stern.

  “Dr. Johnstone,” I say, “I think I’m ready to be dismissed from Nathan.”

  Then I turn and walk out the door, afraid that he won’t, but more afraid that he will.

  10

  . . . . . .

  The next time I talk with Dr. Adams, I think for sure he is going to say, “Okay, Elizabeth, I heard from Dr. Johnstone that you’re not cooperating, you’re not being honest, so you’re dismissed.”

  But he doesn’t let on like he knows anything about what went on with Dr. Johnstone, and I wonder if Dr. Johnstone has written down his suggestion in that little silver metal notebook where he’s all the time writing. I want so to see what is in that book, because it seems more and more to me like it must be the Lamb’s Book of God, you know, where God writes down all the people’s names He’s sent into the world, and He lists your bad deeds on one page and your good deeds on the opposite page, and if your good deeds total up more than the bad ones then you’re sure to be with Him forever in eternity.

  But even more than that, I wonder if I should mention the whole incident to Dr. Adams. If it was wrong of Dr. Johnstone, shouldn’t people around here know what he is doing? But, then, more and more I am beginning to think that there must be something about me that makes people do sex things like that to me, when I’m not even asking for it. Although I don’t know what that something could be. I certainly don’t look fetching. I certainly don’t act fetching. Besides, what if I tell Dr. Adams, and then he sees that I am that kind, just asking for it, and then he might want to do it, too, even though he is not the kind to do stuff like that. Or is he? No. I just can’t risk it. I can’t risk messing up the one great love in my life. Although it is only pretend love, it’s the closest thing to real love of a genuine grown-up man I’ve ever known, or that I might ever know in my life. No matter if there never does come another man around in my life, ever, I will have Dr. Adams, even if it is a memory. Me and him playing “Heart and Soul.” Me and him playing Ping-Pong. Me and him just sitting and talking. Me and him doing the two-step to “Moments to Remember.” Him holding the tissue box for me to cry it all out, though he didn’t know the half of it, because I never could tell him such a thing. Why, oh why, does Dr. Adams have to be here in Nathan and married. Why can’t he be somewhere around Littleton and single.

  Although I don’t want to stay at Nathan for eternity, I do want to stay a while longer, long enough to feel even better about myself. And I’m feeling better already, in spite of Dr. Johnstone, and in spite of that I can’t get Lenny to talk, and in spite of I still can’t manage to tell anyone about what really happened and what is really wrong, and in spite of getting letters from Mama with her saying everybody in Littleton is wanting to know what is wrong with me, and “what is wrong with you, Elizabeth? Can’t you tell me, can’t you do that for your mother?”

  My God, does she think I don’t remember all those times? That I just forgot all about it? That it never happened? I hate it when she acts like she doesn’t know what’s wrong. I hate it when she starts talking like that—“for your mother.” Most of the time she’s plain old Mama, but when she wants me to do something, all of a sudden she becomes Mother, as if she’s some kind of Mother Superior. “Elizabeth, would you run to the store and pick up some milk for your mother?” Or, “Elizabeth, your mother needs some thread to finish up Mrs. Ivey’s dress. Could you run up to the five-and-dime and get some, could you do that for your mother?”

  As much sewing as Mama’s taken in from the people around in Littleton, I bet I’ve been to the five-and-dime a million times getting stuff that she’s run out of or else plain out forgot to get in the first place, whether it’s thread or a scrap of material or buttons and zippers, any little old thing that’s just a bother to have to go and get. Personally, I don’t see why people keep coming back to get Mama to do their sewing since she frets and fumes so much in trying to get the things to fit. At least she doesn’t pat them all around on their bottoms, and feel around all over their breasts in the name of “fitting them” with their clothes. All they know is after it’s all finished, the dresses she sews up do look good. They don’t have to go through all that looking and feeling you out all over, like I do.

  I hate, too, those same old closing words she uses every time in her letters, so that I’m sick to death of hearing them. “Remember, now, Elizabeth, the all-seeing eye of God is upon yo
u.” Lord, I wish it would get off me, even if only for a moment. That would help, just one moment when I didn’t feel like that big old eye was following me around everywhere.

  Even into the occupational therapy room it goes. You’d think that while you’re doing something like making pottery or painting or weaving baskets, the eye would leave you alone, but no. One day when I am dabbing in some oils, I think for a change I will draw something real, you know, something like an object, rather than just smear paint around on the canvas like I usually do. So the real object that comes out of me was an eye. That is it, just a big old eye that covers the whole canvas.

  The eye is long, skinny and oval-shaped, with a green iris and yellow streaks going through the white. All around the eye I paint black, as black as I can get it. I paint over and over the black, building up layer on top of layer. And when people ask me what it is, I tell them. It is an eye, of course, the eye of a black cat.

  The best thing about that big old eye, though, is that I can look back at it looking at me, and that feels awfully good. So I carry it to my room and put it on the dresser where it stays for a day or two, until I get tired of looking back at it, then I take it, bend it all up, and put it in the trash can. Then I go down to the rec room, and I play my favorite Elvis song over and over, just like he sings it,

  There’s no joy in my heart, only sorrow,

  And I’m sad as a man can-han be;

  I wont ah be free, free, free, e-e-e;

  I wont ah be free like uh bird in thuh tree.

  And while I play it, I know in my heart, I will never have that free like a bird feeling, that I’ll be carrying around that Mama stuff with me forever, if not right up front in my mind, then it’ll still be in the back of my mind, weighing me down. Always. No getting rid of it.

  Still, I play that wanting to be free song until Hemp comes in with his Camel cigarette sticking right on the edge of his lips, like it is going to fall off any minute.

  “Hemp,” I order, order, just like I have that authority. “Get around here and sing out this Elvis song, why don’t you?”

  “Unh-unh,” he grants. “Not me.”

  “Why not?” I say. “Nobody’s in here, and I won’t laugh.”

  “Don’t like ’im,” he says.

  “Elvis? I thought everybody liked Elvis.”

  “Fats Domino’s the one,” Hemp says, holding his Camel lightly in his hand, stretching out on the sofa, and looking something like Frank Sinatra. “I found my thr-eel . . . on Blueberry He-eel.” Then stopping short, he leans over to me and says real low, “You know Blueberry Hill is a girl, don’t you?”

  “Hemp,” I say, swinging my feet around to the outside of the piano bench, “I’ll sware, if you ain’t a picture.” I startle myself, at first, saying exactly the same words Mary Jane Payne at the pants factory says all the time and saying them in just the same way. But when I see Hemp doesn’t notice they are Mary Jane’s words, well, I don’t feel so startled anymore.

  Mary Jane is the one person at the pants factory who I like and I don’t like, if you know what I mean. That’s Mary Jane Payne, the head pants presser, the steaming hot job that, Lord, I don’t see how anybody can stand. But it suits Mary Jane Payne just fine. “Lord, honey, it ain’t no hotter’n me!” she shrieks with a wave of her rear. “Hot suits me up one side and down the other, didn’t you know that?”

  Of course I know that. Everybody in Littleton County knows that. And if people sometimes slip and forget, why Mary Jane Payne just up and does something to remind them. Like showing up down at the Frostee-Burg with a whole carload of men of all ages and her the drunkest one of them all. Why she has to get so drunk, I haven’t figured out. I thought people got drunk so they could act more like they really deep down want to act all along, but they just need a little courage, and a drink or two gives them what they need. But Mary Jane Payne always seems to be acting like she wants to anyway, so what she needs to get drunk for, I don’t know. So whereas drunk on most people in Littleton looks ridiculous, on Mary Jane Payne drunk looks sad.

  And that’s why I like Mary Jane Payne. Because sometimes I think deep down inside she’s real sad, no matter how hot she is, and I can have a feeling for people sad, because sad is truer than happy any day. And that’s also why, I have learned, I don’t like Mary Jane Payne. Because I think she’s using hot to cover up sad. I used to think it was plain old jealousy that made me not like Mary Jane, and, well, maybe I have been a little bit. Not jealousy because I want to get drunk and hang out with a bunch of men, but jealousy because Mary Jane Payne acts like she wants to act and to the devil with what everybody else thinks.

  I surprise myself to be talking like Mary Jane Payne to Hemp, and then again with Dr. Adams. But she keeps on popping up, and when he has a pretty good idea of what she’s like, he says, “Hm-m-m, that’s a keen observation, Elizabeth. Mary Jane Payne uses ‘hot’ to cover up ‘sad.’” And he uncrosses his legs to cross them again, thinking real hard on what I said. “What, then, I wonder, does Sarah Elizabeth Miller cover up? Anything?”

  And I think by now he surely knows it’s Angela, that I use Angela to cover up Elizabeth. But not until night when I am in bed playing around with cover-ups do I begin to see what Dr. Adams was saying. He must know I have something else on my mind. It’s like he can tell, even though you’re not saying it, he can tell. But I know I sure didn’t use hot to cover up sad, because God knows I won’t never be hot, not with what I’ve been through. So the question for me is can I tell Dr. Adams what I am covering up with my sadness. Hot? The thought tickles me at first. Sarah Elizabeth Miller hot up one side and down the other. But then it gets scary, too, for a camel can as soon go through the eye of a needle than a sinner enter into the Kingdom of God. But can I tell him what I hadn’t ever told anybody? No. Without a doubt. No.

  And I can’t draw a picture of myself, either. That is one of those things I absolutely and positively have to do. Not with Dr. Adams, but with Dr. Charles, the psychologist, when he gives me one of those weird tests. I like the tests a lot, especially the pictures drawn in ink. I look at a whole bunch of them and tell what I see in them, and I see things like butterflies and flowers and little shriveled-up maidenheads and snakes and wouldn’t you know it, even a man’s organ in one of them. Nathan is real hung up on getting private parts out in the open. So, there I am tracing around a man’s organ for Dr. Charles, so he can see where in the picture I see it. And I don’t even cringe. Well, not much. And not half as much as with Dr. Johnstone.

  What makes me cringe, though, is the drawing, when Dr. Charles gives me a solid white pad and a pencil and asks me to draw a picture of myself.

  “I can’t draw pictures of people,” I say.

  “Why can’t you?” he asks.

  “I just can’t. Never could.”

  “Try,” he says.

  I sit, looking at the paper, not knowing where or how to start. I could draw a round circle for my head, but after that, what? Oh, I know, eyes, nose, mouth, ears and some frizzles for hair. But it wouldn’t look right. It’d look like something in first grade, not like a real person.

  Dr. Charles sits. And I sit. Until I figure out this is one of those times when we’ll be sitting forever until I come up with something. So I draw a stick figure and let it go at that. Then I have to draw Mama and Daddy. So I draw two more stick figures, a big Mama stick figure with big breasts, huge breasts, just so he’ll know she was the mama, you know, and then I draw a not-so-big Daddy stick figure, and I am the smallest one on the page, so I figure that looks about right. And I hate myself because all I can draw is first-grade stuff, because I can’t draw myself anywhere close to the way I actually look, nothing like a real person picture. Just a stick figure. That’s all I ever was, I guess, and all I’ll ever be.

  The next time I go to occupational therapy I practice drawing people. But I am too embarrassed to let anybody see how miserable I am at drawing. So I keep on drawing colors, mainly light and dark and dark and
light, because I like looking at the opposites side by side: dark green, light green; dark blue, light blue; dark yellow, light yellow.

  But mostly I watch Delores do her drawing. Delores is almost like a real artist she draws so fine. And one of her pictures I like so, and keep on admiring so, until she says, “Here, you can have it.”

  It is a picture of a young woman sitting back in a rocker out on a porch covered half with shadows and half with sunshine. She is all leaned back in the rocker, with her right arm raised so that the back of her hand and forearm rests across her eyes, blocking the sunlight. It’s all kind of misty shadowy, except for the sun streaming down right in her face, and I think it is so beautiful and so sad at the same time. Beautiful that she feels the warm light and has it pouring down all over her; but sad that for some reason she has to block it out.

  I carry that picture back to my room and prop it up on my dresser. Then I sit down on my bed and I look and I look at it. When I feel myself about to set in to crying I lie back on my bed instead, even though I know I’m not supposed to be on my bed. But I don’t care if I am breaking a rule, ’cause I just notice that the sun is streaming in through my window, and even though it is streaming through the bars, still it is streaming, and I just want to feel it. Feel the light pouring down all over me. So I just lie there feeling the warmness radiating all around about me. And I see the light. I, for the first time ever in my life, I do believe, I see the light. And it is good.

  11

  . . . . . .

  Dr. Adams always tells me that we’ll talk about Angela whenever I am ready. And after seeing the light and feeling it running all through me, I feel good and ready.

  “She was a good playmate, Angela was, always happy, never fussing about anything, but then we got along real well.”