Enduring

by Donald Harington

  The B Ward, Latha managed to determine, was filled with the anxious, the disheartened, the confused, the nostalgic, and the disgruntled, whereas the C Ward, according to Flora’s categories, was made up of schizomaniacs, moonstruck-cholics, dipsomaniacs (like Flora), heebeejeebics (an advanced form of dipsomania that includes DTs) borderline loonies, and monomaniacs. Flora pointed out examples of each surrounding them. None of them were really crazy. The curable crazies were in D Ward. The incurable crazies were in E Ward. Those not even worth attempting to cure were in F Ward.

  Latha brooded upon the presence of so many different girls and women with so many different mental or emotional maladies, and she felt both ashamed of her own malady, slight as it was, and proud that her malady was as slight as it was. She wondered if she might be able to produce the power of speech in the presence of the doctor and nurses, and thus get herself promoted to A Ward, the first step toward discharge. She decided that the next time she saw Dr. Meddler she would make a concentrated effort to speak. She spent most of the insomniac night rehearsing what she would say to him, until she had it down perfect.

  Promptly at five A.M., he appeared with Nurse Shedd. “Ah, I see you’re already awake,” he observed. To Nurse Shedd, he dictated, “Marked progress toward acclimatization.”

  “Thank you,” Latha tried to say, but realized that no sound had left her mouth. She grunted and bore down and tried harder, but couldn’t get the words out.

  “What did you dream about last night?” he asked.

  “A vegetable garden,” she tried to say, which wasn’t true, because she hadn’t had any dreams, having not slept. But she wasn’t able to say that.

  The doctor was prepared, with a tablet of blank paper, and handed it to her with his pen. “I keep forgetting that you are aphasic,” he said. “You may simply write down your answers.”

  Again she tried to speak, but realized it was hopeless. She wrote that she had had no dreams because she hadn’t slept. The doctor read it and said to the nurse, “Tell Nurse Turner to put her on laudanum.” Then he asked Latha, “Do you feel any pain?” She shook her head. “Did you finish your supper?” she nodded her head. “Did you evacuate?” It was one of those big words, but unlike masturbate, she hadn’t heard it before. She gave him a quizzical look, shrugging her shoulders and spreading her hands, and he said, “Did you have a bowel movement? Have you been to the potty?”

  She took the pad and wrote on it, “Have you seen our potty?”

  He shook his head. “No, in fact, I haven’t.”

  “Go look at it,” she wrote.

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that. It’s a ladies’ room.”

  “It’s nobody’s room,” she wrote. “I wouldn’t turn pigs loose in that place.”

  The doctor showed what Latha had written to Nurse Shedd, and the nurse nodded her head and said, “Yeah, it’s not fit for man nor beast. Nor women neither.”

  The doctor changed the subject. “Weren’t you supposed to make an appointment to see me in my office today?” Latha gave him a blank look. He turned to his nurse. “Nurse Shedd, see to it that she has an appointment pee dee cue.”

  Nurse Shedd said to Latha, “Right after lunch, I’ll come and get you.”

  “Lunch” as they called it consisted of a sandwich made of a thin slice of bologna between two thin slices of light bread, and a glass of water. Latha listened to Flora and Betty Betty Chapman arguing about religion; Flora was a “foot-warshing Babtist” while Betty Betty was a “hardshell Baptist.” They each believed the other was going to hell, and they gave each other lengthy descriptions of the hell that was waiting for them. Betty Betty got so agitated in her description of hell that she lapsed into dirty words. Latha had heard Betty Betty say most of these words before, or she had heard them in school, but some of Betty Betty’s words, as she became more worked up, were new to Latha; she had not heard these before: clit, wong, berries, twat, poontang, member, hand job, head job, beaver, toss off, wad, and sixty-nine. These were so loud that Nurse Shedd came running with a hypo to shut her up. “Shame on you,” she said to Flora, as if it had been Flora’s fault. Latha tried to shut sexual matters out of her mind, because they were hopeless, but Betty Betty’s recital left her aroused and frustrated. Nurse Shedd said to her, “Okay, let’s not keep the doctor waiting.” She took Latha’s arm and led her out of the dining hall up some stairs to a hallway of offices. “You’re lucky,” Nurse Shedd said to her. “Most patients don’t ever get personal handling from the doctor.”

  Latha was required to wait in a waiting room for a long time before the inner door opened and the doctor appeared, saying, “Ah! Miss Bourne. You kept your word. Come in and have a comfy chair. Or would you rather lie on this chaise?” This was a sort of sofa, curved up at one end, but Latha was afraid that if she stretched out on that, she’d fall right to sleep, with what little sleep she’d been getting lately. So she sat in a straight chair beside the doctor’s desk. He looked through her folder. Then he leaned back in his chair with his fingertips making a gable roof, the first rafters against his lips. He just sat like that for a while, looking at her, before he said, “It really is remarkable that someone so pulchritudinous would wind up in a place like this.” She didn’t know that word, but it didn’t sound as bad as the ones Betty Betty had been using. “How long ago did you lose your voice?”

  He seemed to be trying to be nice, even flirty, and she thought she could answer him, but when she pronounced “Just since the baby was born,” no sound came out of her mouth. He shoved a pad of paper and a pencil toward her, and she wrote these words on the paper for him.

  “Was it a difficult delivery?” he asked. She nodded vigorously. “It could be that the trauma of the experience paralyzed your vocal chords.” She didn’t think that was the reason, but she nodded. “So our job is to help you find your voice again. Now I must ask you some questions, and you must try to answer as truthfully as possible.” She nodded, and he gave her the first question, “Do you recall the sexual encounter which resulted in your pregnancy?” She nodded her head. “Could you describe it to me?” he said, his fingers lightly tapping the notepad.

  She wrote, “It was against my will.”

  “Ah ha! See? We’re making progress! Did you know the person?” She nodded. “Had you ever had sex with him previously?” She nodded. “But those were not against your will?” She shook her head. “Then perhaps he was led to believe that because you had been willing before, you would be willing this time, so he did not know it was against your will.”

  She took the pad and wrote on it, “I didn’t want him that time. I wouldn’t even let him kiss me. I tried to tell him it was the wrong time of month for me, but he gagged me so I couldn’t speak.”

  “AH HA!” Dr. Meddler exclaimed so loudly she jumped. “That’s it, don’t you see? That’s the origin of your aphasia, his gagging you.” The doctor wore an expression as if he had just discovered the secret of life, and he began scribbling furiously in his notebook. “Now tell me this. Although it was theoretically an act of rape, did you enjoy it?”

  Latha thought back and recreated in her memory, as she had done several times before, every moment of the experience. She had genuinely desired him. She had wanted to hold him and be held, but she had to resist. His tenderness had turned to anger when she had threatened to holler for her Paw. But even the rape itself was not completely a rape, because after a point she began to move her body in a rhythm to match his thrusting. And from that point on, until the mountain loomed before her, she relished every second of it.

  “I guess so,” she wrote for Dr. Meddler.

  “So even though it was against your will, it was not against your wish.”

  In the act of nodding her head she lowered her head in modesty and in memory.

  “So you really do get considerable pleasure from the act of sex?” he said. It was less a question than a statement.

  She didn’t like having her private life pried into and examined, and she h
ad made up her mind that she was not going to give him any details or even tell him about the mountain and her loss of consciousness. But it was very true, what he had just said, and their talking about the subject had made her very lustful. She didn’t mind nodding her head yet again.

  “Let’s you and I go out for a stroll on the grounds,” he suggested.

  Chapter nineteen

  He forgot to take the pad and pencil with him, so there was no way she could reply to anything he said, but he did all of the talking anyhow, so she didn’t need to do anything other than nodding her head or shaking it, and before the stroll was over she had done plenty of the latter.

  It was so exciting just to get out of the building. The May sunshine was wonderful, and there were flowers all over the place, as if bright colors could cure or at least counteract all the gray and black that existed within the buildings. He gave her a tour all around the campus, which consisted of many buildings of red brick, each five stories in height and some with pointy towers on top. The buildings were all joined together, except for those of the men, which were separate, and those of the Negroes, which were older and smaller and off to themselves. Dr. Meddler pointed out the A Ward, where she saw smiling faces at the open second-story windows, and some of them waved at her, so she waved back. Up at a window of the combined B and C Wards she saw Mary Jane Hines, who yelled, “Just look at you! Sucking up to the big man! Will you kiss his ass?”

  “Don’t pay any attention to her,” Dr. Meddler said. “She’s in one of her manic moods. Cyclothymia is an incurable affective disorder, and you never know when she’ll be elevated or depressed.” He shook his head, then added, “But here, I’m not supposed to discuss other patients with you. I let my guard down because you don’t seem like a patient and I like you and want to get to know you better.”

  All the windows were open to let in the warm May air, and as they passed D Ward, she noticed women at the windows who were ranting and gesticulating wildly. One of them called out,

  Goosey goosey gander,

  Who’s comin yander?

  Little Mabel Tucker,

  Who’s a’-goin to fuck her?

  Little Jimmy Green

  Nowhere to be seen,

  Big Tommy Stout

  Pull his pecker out!

  “I’m not familiar with D Ward,” he said. “But I don’t believe her name is Mabel Tucker.”

  Two of the buildings, in the back corner of the campus, had barred windows, like a jail. Dr. Meddler pointed out that one was E Ward, where, he said, there was some hope, if not for recovery, of being “graduated” to D Ward. The other, F Ward, was for the hopeless incurables. There were few faces in the windows of either building; those visible in the former were not speaking but keening. “The main difference,” explained Dr. Meddler, “is that those in E Ward firmly believe that they have a chance to get well even if they don’t, whereas those in F Ward do not give it a thought, because they have no thoughts to give.” He smiled and laughed lightly, waiting to see if Latha might laugh too, but she did not. “You know,” he said, “many aphasic persons retain the ability to produce sounds, like laughter.” If she’d had that pad and pencil, she could have told him that she didn’t see anything funny about this whole damned place. But she was getting tired, having gone two nights without sleep, and was ready to get back to her dormitory. He studied her and seemed to detect her weariness.

  “We’ve come to the end of the path,” he observed, “so perhaps it’s time to turn back.” He did not escort her back to her dormitory, but left her in a hallway at B-C building, saying, “It’s been a pleasure. We must do this again sometime. You know where my office is. Drop by as often as you like. You could even take a nap on my chaise. Yes. As a matter of fact, I’m not expecting any patients for the rest of the day, so if you’d like to take a nap on my chaise right now, you’d be welcome.” He took her arm and steered her upstairs to his office. The thought of that overstuffed curvy couch of his was very tempting, and she fell upon it and went right to sleep. When she awoke, it was dark out. There were candles lit on his desk. He was sitting with two trays. “You’ve slept right through dinner,” he said, “but I took the liberty of getting yours for you. Come and eat.” He patted the chair beside him. The food he had on plates on the trays was not the ordinary suppertime fare. There were lamb chops with parsleyed new potatoes and asparagus. He had a bottle of wine too, and was filling a glass for her. She knew right then and there that this wasn’t the kind of treatment he’d offer to just about anybody, so he must have something on his mind.

  But she was suddenly aware of a need, and took the pad and wrote on it, “I have to use the bathroom.”

  “Oh, certainly,” he said and pointed to a door and she went through it to find his private lavatory, which was spotless and tidy. She had caught up on her lack of sleep; now she caught up on her lack of evacuation. But there was so much of it that she was embarrassed at the odor. She used a lot of soap to wash her hands, and it wasn’t the ordinary crude chemical soap but something fancy and fragrant like Cashmere Bouquet, and by the time she opened the door the place smelled okay. Her lamb chops were no longer warm, but the doctor had gone ahead and eaten his. She couldn’t recall having lamb before. Although Nail Chism had raised a lot of sheep, no one in Stay More ate lamb. Thinking of Nail Chism, she realized that she now shared with him his incarceration in Little Rock, and from what she’d heard, his penal institution had been much worse than her mental institution.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” the doctor said.

  She wrote, “I was thinking of a friend of mine who spent some years at a place in this town called ‘The Walls.’ Do you know it?”

  “Indeed. They supply most of the patients for the men’s wards here.”

  It was a wonderful supper, and the wine went to her head. When he poured her third glass, she wrote, “You’re going to make me drunk.”

  “All the better if it makes you feel good. It’s not often I have the chance to dine in the company of a reigning beauty.”

  When she’d finished her third glass, she suddenly said, “What’s your name?”

  They were both surprised that she had actually spoken. “Malcolm,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  “Latha.”

  “It didn’t take very much to cure you,” he observed, sounding very proud of himself.

  “So now you’ll let me go?”

  He placed one of his hands on top of hers. “Why should I lose you when I’ve just begun to know you and like you?” She frowned at him and removed her hand out from under his. He said, “Let’s see if you are able to give me a kiss.” He brought his face close to hers and puckered his lips. She noticed for the first time his mustache. She had never yet paid much attention to his appearance. He wasn’t all that bad-looking; somewhat dapper or dandyish. But she abruptly remembered the last time someone had requested a kiss, when Every had practically begged for one just before he raped her.

  She decided that she wasn’t capable of allowing her lips to touch his. “I’m sorry,” she tried to say, but the words would not come out of her mouth. She tried again, harder, but produced no sound. She took the notepad and wrote on it. “I’m sorry, I can’t kiss you. I hardly know you.”

  “And now my request has regressed you,” he said, shaking his head slowly. It sounded like a poem. “Too bad. But if you got in the habit of kissing me, you might find that your aphasia would be permanently cured.” She nodded her head, not because she planned to get in the habit of kissing him but because she hoped her speechlessness could be permanently cured, although she was beginning to understand what caused it, and what the best cure for it was. “Well,” he sighed, “Don’t you suppose you owe me something for this fine dinner and wine and our pleasant evening together? If I walked you home after a date, wouldn’t I get a kiss?”

  She wrote, “So walk me home.”

  He escorted her back downstairs to the dormitory, at the door to which she quickly kissed him
. He looked disappointed, as if he’d expected a longer and harder kiss, but he said, “I shall look forward to getting to know you better. Good night.” He turned on his heel and walked away.