She found herself in front of the mirror in her room, glimpsing at herself as if parts of her were suddenly coming back.
The ward began to captivate Lilly—strangers and safety. The locked doors were protecting her, she thought, and she was all right amid the other captives. As the days progressed, the faces in the lounges felt soft-eyed when they gazed at Lilly as she entered during the afternoons, after lunch. Patient tears and shouting were common on the ward, a part of its language, as frequent as “Hello, how are you?” Each night, a cat-footed nurse on the night shift opened the door and threw Lilly a “Hello,” and Lilly had heard an unnamed patient screaming, “Mama, help!” for three consecutive nights, somewhere down the dark corridor.
Finally, Lilly felt a physical tension overwhelm her when the nurse checked her in bed the third night. Lilly froze, not answering her.
The next day Lilly watched the TV with Lisa and a few other patients until the calm was temporarily broken in the afternoon around 3 p.m. when, with a raw howl and squealing, Spia took down her panties, plopped into the baskets of trash, and defecated, producing steaming rolls of shit and smells that debased the tranquil air.
Spia hollered, “Bingo!” in the middle of the south corridor. “Watch me dance, you motha-fuckas.” The tawny-skinned woman had lifted up her arms over her head. She was strong-willed and loose, like Helen, Lilly thought. Then suddenly Spia was naked, her pubis sparking in the hall light, its hairs a black curly weave. Spia had tightened her already taut buttocks cheeks, and began rotating her hips and belly dancing. “I’m Cleopatra, ain’t I, girl?” she cried out, and rolled her hips until her arms dropped down and then she sunk to her knees and started masturbating. Then her index finger thrust itself into the cave beyond her vaginal lips, into her black velvet womb. “Hey, I’m crazy,” she hollered at no one in particular. “Yes, ma’am. I’m crazy, and I’m queen of the Nile!”
The staff sailed a bedsheet out to cover Spia. It took four male aides, two nurses, and Caroline to harness Spia under the sheet and drag her to the quiet room. They cleaned up her mess in the garbage pails.
The next afternoon, Spia again excreted unspeakable piles of waste products from her rearing body all over the hall. And the hall stank ferociously with the sewage of her revenge again.
Spia would explode into vicious rage each time they took her up from her squat and carried her back into the quiet room, an incontinent and enormous child—usually four nurses, one on each arm, one on each kicking leg, Spia swinging between them. Each time Spia was let out in the late evening after dinner, she stayed in the lounge watching TV with the others, messy and groggy, but compliant. Then by the next afternoon she was suddenly thundering again, galloping like a bucking horse, throwing all its riders off down the corridor.
As Lilly watched her frantic shadows on the corridor walls—the ward became terrifying those times—she started watching herself, too. In one of her night dreams, Lilly was with her mother in a bath of warm water. They were in the baptistery, and someone was screaming for her mother like the unnamed patient down the corridor. But then Lilly and her mother were in the same bathtub as the night of her father’s accident. Together they started swimming out into a sea, and Lilly felt comforted before the terror of being helplessly submerged awakened her.
Some of the other patients seemed to disappear after they threw public fits and seizures. But there was no suggestion that Spia would be sent away. Spia continued on the ward with hardly a sign that the staff had altered her scheduled defiance against them.
In the center lounge one afternoon toward the end of Lilly’s first week in the hospital, the patient named Cecilia, a hairdresser from Queens, was speaking in rapid Spanish and English, gesticulating wildly with her hands as she began describing the beating her husband had given her one night in her kitchen in Queens.
“He came at me, and my heart is beating. He hits me with his hands like I am a bag. I am hurt very bad, you see?” She lifted up her blouse to expose the marks on the small of her back. “Ay, yi yi,” she said, “look here, and here, see?” Her bruised flesh was like a brown peach. “No escapes del Hombre de la Motosierra,” she said. “You cannot escape the Chainsaw Man, did you see this movie? The killer looks just like my Jorges in this pelicula.”
“Oh, Cecilia,” Wendy exclaimed. “Poor Cecilia.” Wendy’s eyes were reddening, as if drugged.
Lilly, watching them, began to feel dizzy, imagining this story of Cecilia’s beating in her mind—the husband, Jorges, cornering Cecilia in her kitchen against a steaming pot of dinner casserole. Pounding her flesh into submission, tearing off her clothes—Cecilia defenseless, and he possessing a divine strength because now Cecilia was crying out, “Mi Dios! Mi Dios!” groaning and gasping, but transfixed.
Lilly, pitched inside the center of this brutality, felt flushed, as if drowning in the images rushing through her head. A building excitement inside Lilly turned into a burn, and then, as Cecilia kept talking, Lilly felt a relentless desire to pee—a reflex that might relieve the indiscriminating throbbing in her lower abdomen.
“Please stop, it will be all right.” Wendy was trying to calm Cecilia’s passionate display of body and sounds.
“If I fall asleep he’ll get me in my dreams,” Cecilia was saying.
“He can’t get in the ward,” Wendy urgently told Cecilia.
At last, unable to contain herself, Lilly fled from the lounge and its voices. She escaped down the corridor, into her private room. She closed its door and lay still on her bed until the excitement and tumult slowly left her body.
It was still afternoon when Lilly began composing her sign-out letter on hospital stationery, which stated simply, “Please discharge me after seventy-two hours. I have read the patient manual, and I am fully aware this will mean I am released against medical advice.”
In the evening, Lilly handed in her sign-out letter, walking through the hall in her heavy Frye boots to make herself look and feel tough when she slipped the letter into the hands of the nurse in charge of the south station.
Later, alone in her room at the small desk, she spread out a notebook she bought from the mobile canteen that rolled through the corridors every Wednesday, but she couldn’t write. She still felt flooded by her feelings, as if a huge wave had taken her under it.
When the night fell, she undressed into her nightgown. She tried to think about packing her things in seventy-two hours; of when to call Jane to ask her to leave money downstairs for a taxi home; of how much she dreaded more outbursts from Cecilia, or maybe another patient.
But, unable to sleep, Lilly imagined herself on the train to Mount Kisco, going back to Helen and her father. And then she felt Helen enclosing her. They didn’t need her father’s brain damage to curl up inside one another, she remembered. They were doing it all along, weren’t they? Long before David’s accident. If Lilly left the hospital, Helen would get into her again and take over. How horrifying her mother was when she took over with her tyrannizing power. As if flames were leaping in her head, Lilly was seized by her mother’s tyrannical power gripping her body, a huge roiling torrent. “Stay with me, Lilly, I am afraid of my life.” Helen would tell her again.
It would destroy the bulb if she went back to Helen and her father. The bulb would be obliterated, and then she would have to kill herself. Going home scared her more than staying in the hospital.
Lilly retracted her sign-out letter early the next morning.
Dr. Burkert entered her room after breakfast that same morning. His face was boyish, but his voice—low, steady—was mature, and reassuring in the same way the neo-Gothic locked doors gave off a subliminal signal of safety.
“Are you feeling calmer?” he asked her. His accent reminded her of the British-Palestinian intonation of her mother’s voice. But nothing else was like her mother, she told herself, except this British intonation. He was not a man who had outbursts, she reassured herself, but he was powerful in his dominating remoteness, and it scared her. He
was so thin. She made herself imagine his ribs under his shirt, and then his lack of bulk calmed her.
“I see you put in a sign-out letter,” he said.
“I took it back,” she said very quickly. She did not want to tell him about her dread of Helen taking over and how that kept her here. “There was a fight on the ward, not really a fight, and it frightened me. It was a mistake for me to write the sign-out letters and hand them in. I feel okay now.”
By lunchtime, Lilly finally closeted her Frye boots— too heavy to wear on the ward—and she settled for the pair of hippie Tibetan slippers the patient, Louise, lent her. Louise kept feather boas, sun hats, assorted shawls, and costume jewelry—all in her private collection inside the closet in her room where Louise also set up a makeshift beauty salon. Patients could come and sit in Louise’s room during the day and get their hair curled. In her bureau drawers, she harbored curling irons, combs, and other salon equipment that Louise received special permission to keep because her hairstyling and makeshift beauty shop were part of her therapy. Louise could do anything but cut hair because scissors were barred from patients’ grasp. She was close to being discharged.
In the following days, Lilly gradually felt herself as part of the corridors—the winding green canvas carpet connecting the south side and north side, the clean bricks of the large hospital building, and the lounges where circles of smoke were illuminated by the sunbeams from the windows. And Lilly was able to keep herself from the way things were before her admission. She found refuge when she felt she was more in control, eating her suppers (lamb chops or cube steak or Hawaiian chicken supreme), glad to be there among the secure promise of solid meals, of a full milk carton on the trolley offered by the kitchen staff with yellow cake and chocolate frosting, the hum of the April air conditioning.
Weekday mornings, the patients went up to a gym on the top floor. The ward was almost empty.
Lilly returned to her usual spot on the green couch in the lounge. The feel of a warmer breeze reminded Lilly of the encroaching summer, of time crawling closer toward her.
She was still excused from recreational and occupational therapy on the eighth floor where most of the patients were. On the green couch, she could kneel and see the FDR Drive out the lounge window and watch the new cable car taking passengers to Roosevelt Island. She rested here every morning after an early breakfast, and later, after lunch—her notebook resting under her arm in the hope she would be able to write again, watching the workmen do more work on the cable car.
The cable car to Roosevelt Island was on a long wire strewn far into the sky over the river. It looked like a ski lift and brought the people from the Manhattan side to the brand-new glistening buildings on Roosevelt Island. They arrived in the morning with tin lunch boxes and helmets. Soon their boots were crusted with muck. She watched them examining the cars, inspecting them, ensuring that the cars did not fall but passed smoothly over the dirty water with its fierce currents. They must be reliable people, Lilly thought to herself, building the cars for travelers to reach such a new place.
Did they ever see her? She had wondered, there on her knees, hands outstretched on the sill, watching them.
As more days passed, Lilly’s bulb continued to appear intermittently, unexpectedly, sometimes feeling like an intrusion, but there were hours when Lilly didn’t feel its presence at all. If she had to think about it, she told herself, she could understand the bulb as a metaphor that was Lilly—her whole confusing existence, body, and soul. It enabled her to purchase a moratorium from life, college, other people, and the awful slavery of bodily magnetisms that made her blow and swell and respond helplessly, a leaf in a hurricane.
One night, Lilly was shivering cold, unblanketed in her bed as she tried to fall asleep. It was an unseasonably cold and nasty night. The air conditioners were left on all over the ward, and maintenance had not turned off their power.
Lilly twitched and shifted under her bedsheet. But by midnight, she had to get up. She had to ask the night nurse to get her a blanket.
The hall was lit only with table lamps that night. The nurse on call came out of the nurses’ station carrying her clipboard and notes under her arm.
“Yes, it’s freezing,” the night nurse said to Lilly. “Let me go to the custodian’s closet and get you a blanket.”
The patient in the next room called out in agitation, “Can you please come!”
“I’ll be a moment,” the nurse said to Lilly, laying down her clipboard on a side table. A few minutes later, the nurse hurried out of the upset patient’s room, and rubbing at her arms to warm her own body, she trotted off down the corridor to the custodian’s closet.
The nursing notes on her clipboard were still on the hall table.
“April 17,” Lilly read from her own file, stealing the clipboard and notes off the table. She needed to read very quickly before the nurse returned and caught her:
Patient was still somewhat agitated this evening, though less so than when she was released from the quiet room, two days ago, on the day of her admission (April 16).
April 19. Patient appeared calmer today, but does appear distracted at times. At these times, seems to become anxious, and withdrawn, possibly with body delusions. She spends much of her time writing in a notebook and reading. Some socializing in center lounge.
April 20. Patient was agitated this morning. Last night, patient turned in a sign-out letter but withdrew it within an hour. She wrote another sign-out letter this morning but again withdrew it. Patient became more agitated when morning nurse asked for her to report her feelings.
April 22. Admission symptoms of discomfort in pelvic area addressed by Dr. Burkert in staff meeting. Patient has a fear of intimacy, which causes her to become agitated and withdrawn. These fears seem related to her bodily symptoms, possibly with delusional content. No further physical examination seems necessary at this time as no abnormalities were found on her initial physical examination. However, the initial pelvic exam elicited extreme agitated response which lasted for some hours.
Anxiously, Lilly looked up now and peered down the corridor. The night nurse must have been detained, she thought. She continued to read faster, flipping through pages.
Patient presents as a young attractive twenty-year-old woman who appears anxious and distracted. Can be avoidant of contact and intimacy which seem to precipitate her agitation.
Lilly saw the nurse, a gray blanket in her arms, coming down the corridor. Lilly’s eyes scanned the last page quickly before the nurse could see her reading.
PRIMARY THERAPIST’S REPORT. DR. HOWARD BURKERT, MD. CHIEF COMPLAINT: Overdose with 35x 5 mg, Librium tablet and half a bottle of scotch.
PRESENT ILLNESS: Patient was admitted through the emergency room on April 16 for an overdose. She became uncooperative during the pelvic examination by a staff nurse….
When the nurse finally arrived back, a blanket for Lilly under her arm, she hadn’t noticed the clipboard was moved. She whisked the notes back, pushing the clipboard against her bosom, telling Lilly she was sorry about the use of the air conditioner during such a cold night.
One afternoon, Lisa sat down on the couch next to Lilly, and together they watched The Little Rascals and then reruns like Flipper, My Three Sons, and Gilligan’s Island. They went into a trance—the cool, close air inside the lounge on their skin, cold sweetness in their mouths from their soda and bananas. Then Lisa became strident suddenly, red with discomfort for no reason Lilly could understand. This girl with freckled lips was too volatile, Lilly thought, and looked childish in her corduroy jumper and ponytail, which reminded Lilly of awkward girls in summer camp when Lilly was twelve.
“Did you see all the ovens up there in O.T.?” Lisa was demanding. “I don’t mean the kilns for those stupid ashtrays we have to make, but ovens to bake cakes from package mixes in that horrible new kitchen they built up there. We’re treated—” She drove herself into a frenzy, her lips wetted by the words she spat out. “It’s all so h
umiliating,” she said, and then repeated, “The forces of humiliation are all around us.”
Lisa suddenly fell quiet, and Lilly saw that Leonard had entered the lounge. He seemed calm and remote as he took a seat near them with his reading materials. Lilly felt his eyes gaze at her with unblinking attention. But she wasn’t sure if he meant his look as inviting, or he was just trying to critically appraise her as the new face on the ward.
He seemed to completely take up the space that Lisa had occupied. She had heard from Lisa a few days before that he was getting his doctorate in physics, which had been interrupted by a sudden violent act he committed in the middle of Grand Central Station a few months prior. It was the hall’s common knowledge that Leonard had a gun that afternoon, and that several innocent people had been lacerated by an explosion he created, shattering an enormous glass and vinyl Kodak advertisement on the wall with two bullets. The reasons for his actions were mysterious, hidden behind his calm remoteness. Leonard never grew impatient with the questions he was asked, but he wouldn’t talk about himself or what happened in Grand Central Station. There was a darkness about him.
His face was pale, as though unused to sunlight, Lilly thought. Not exactly quiet as much as unavailable. His hardcover texts on physics, anatomy, and philosophy were meticulously earmarked with different-colored strips of tape. There was a slight rip in his brown corduroy trousers, and one of his lean legs could be seen, through another tear over his kneecap. He sometimes had a suit on for his court appearances, his tie loosened, its knot rebellious to the task, and he wore a pair of shiny brown oxford shoes. He seemed like a brooding hero out of a Shakespearean tragedy. Like Hamlet, Lilly thought, beginning to feel the bumpy pressure of his attractiveness, of his handsome, sharp shoulders and profile. He was careless in his hygiene, exuding the sweet but unwashed odors that drew her to him.
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