Sarah Canary

by Karen Joy Fowler

  B.J. could not really go to his room and lie down. The doctor might actually not know this and B.J. would not have wanted to be the one who distressed him with the truth, but the penalty for not finishing assigned chores was one he had paid only once and was never going to pay again. He decided not to return to his room at all, but made his way to the kitchen to see if wood or water was needed for breakfast. A new Chinaman had just been hired. He wore a filthy padded coat and fiddled with his braid while William Ross, cook by trade and inmate by circumstance, instructed him in the preparation of graham mush and boxty.

  ‘Staples here at the asylum,’ Ross was telling him. ‘Scarcely a day goes by when boxty isn’t served in one form or another. You could say the asylum runs on boxty.’ He laughed. ‘A joke,’ he explained. ‘It goes right through the patients like grain through a goose.’ He waited for the Chinaman to express amusement, but there was no response. When Ross spoke again, his voice was less familiar. ‘B.J., here’ – he gestured toward B.J. with the point of a large kitchen knife – ‘is an example of the fine, strapping health boxty can provide. If you ever need wood fetched or water, you can ask B.J. But remember, he’s not to go out alone. None of them are. He needs to get the key and a warden. If he’s not quick about it, then you get the warden yourself and tell him so.’

  Ross acted more like a warden than an inmate himself, and on special occasions, like the birthday of one of Greene’s many daughters, Ross was called to the contractor’s own home to cook. B.J. knew that Dr Carr had recommended Ross’s release weeks ago. Dr Carr thought, and B.J. agreed with him, that Ross had never really been insane. B.J. was afraid of Ross.

  He looked at the Chinaman to see if he was afraid of him as well. The last Chinaman had once thrown his cleaver at B.J. There was still a slice in the wall over the water bucket where the blade had lodged, the handle trembling in the wood like the shaft of an arrow. B.J. sometimes stroked the scar for reassurance when he set the bucket down. The bucket would soon be empty again. He would fill it and then it would be empty. The world seemed to conspire to erase his efforts, to erase him. There were times at night when B.J. tried to touch himself and could feel nothing but the blankets and the empty bed. He would reach for himself and miss, clutching air in both fists. There was no other terror like the one that came over him when he had ceased to exist. But there on the wall was something permanent. ‘B.J. was here,’ the gash said to him. November 23, 1872. B.J. dropped the water bucket and the water puddled on the kitchen floor and seeped between the floorboards and the Chinaman threw his cleaver into the wall by B.J.’s head. ‘B.J. was here.’

  The new Chinaman wore the same thick braid, the same dark, baggy pants, and the same oversized boots as the old one. He stood there looking blankly down at the pulpy mass in the pot. B.J. thought he seemed very tired. He had a large lump on his forehead from which rays of black and purple and green extended. It made B.J. wonder if he could be an inmate. They had inmates from France and Scotland and Holland and Germany. But no Indians and surely no Chinese. How would you know if a Chinaman was insane? All Chinamen were insane. He watched the Chinaman give the mush a tentative stir. It took both his arms to pass the spoon through.

  Ross’s knife caught the light at the edge of B.J.’s vision and he turned toward it. Suddenly it was the largest knife B.J. had ever seen. Sunlight spread on the flat blade whenever Ross’s hand was still. When it moved, the blade of the knife sliced the sunlight into small, flashing pieces.

  There was a code to the flashing light. The knife wanted many things. The knife wanted the winter turnips and the last of last year’s potatoes and the side of beef hanging in the pantry. The knife wanted the Chinaman’s braid. Lay it across the table and cut it off. Three blind mice. Three blind mice. The knife sang insinuatingly. B.J. shut his eyes so as not to listen. The knife whispered directly into his ear. Say nothing about the woman in black, it told B.J. You better not. B.J. pressed his lips tightly together so that he wouldn’t. Ross went into the pantry and took his knife with him, leaving B.J. without guidance.

  The Chinaman was looking at him. B.J. panicked. ‘There is a new woman in the ward today,’ he confessed all in a rush. The words flooded from him. ‘All in black. A tiny little woman. I saw her.’ He moved closer to the Chinaman, lowering his voice. ‘She was outside the ward.’

  ‘Is she all right?’ the Chinaman asked. He was much easier to understand than the last Chinaman. He spoke more slowly and his words were less accented.

  B.J. shook his head, wondering at this naiveté. ‘She’s crazy,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone I asked,’ the Chinaman whispered. They heard Ross’s footsteps returning and moved apart again. B.J. thought it best not to face Ross’s knife after his betrayal. He turned and fled back into the asylum dining room for breakfast.

  4

  Dr Carr’s Theories on Animal Magnetism

  Had we our senses

  But perhaps ’tis well they’re not at Home

  So intimate with Madness

  He’s liable with them

  Emily Dickinson, 1873

  In a well-run asylum, the female and male wards would each have their own dining room. Contractor Greene was in the middle of building repairs; the Steilacoom facility originally had been a fort during that part of the Territory’s history when the Indian threat was the greatest, and certain changes were required to make it function optimally as a sanctuary for the insane. He had been given a budget of three hundred dollars for the renovation and repair of existing buildings. When he submitted his bill for a little more than four thousand dollars to the Territorial legislature, they asked if daily association with lunatics had rendered the contractor stark mad. Work on the facility halted. The men and women of Steilacoom ate together in a single dining room. They sat on benches at four wide-planked tables. They had tin spoons and tin bowls. They bowed their heads and spoke the grace.

  ‘Truly grateful,’ B.J. said, resting his forehead on his locked thumbs. ‘Amen.’

  There were twenty-three inmates in all at the asylum – sixteen men and seven women. They represented the following forms of insanity in the following proportions: Idiophrenic insanity, 6; Sympathetic insanity, 14; Toxic insanity, 1; Anaemic insanity, 1; Insanity resulting from arrested or impaired development of the brain, 1.

  Ada, the woman from Germany, entered. She was late; she was dragging the new woman behind her. Ada pushed the new woman onto the bench first, then sat next to her, leaning sideways with her body until the other woman had moved farther down the bench and Ada was directly opposite B.J. She gave him a fluttery, conspiratorial look. Her gray hair was combed up from her forehead and away from her face. But when she turned to see that the new woman had a spoon and a bowl of mush, B.J. noticed Ada had forgotten to comb the back of her hair at all. It ruffled up from her neck like the feathers of an angry chicken.

  ‘What’s her name?’ B.J. asked.

  ‘Sarah,’ said Ada. ‘Sarah Canary, because she sings like an angel. She’s been put in my room. I’m in charge of her. I’m to help her settle in.’ Ada made many of the sounds of her speech deep in her throat and spit often when she talked. B.J. had never been around many Germans and did not know if they all talked this way or if this was a symptom of Ada’s illness or if this happened because Ada was missing one of her front teeth. He had discussed her case on several occasions with Dr Carr.

  ‘The woman from Germany is in love with me,’ he told Dr Carr as a way of introducing the topic.

  ‘Men and woman have profound physiological differences,’ Dr Carr answered. ‘Some more obvious than others. The capacity of the skull is greater in the male and, what is really remarkable, is that this masculine advantage increases as the race becomes more civilized. Thus the skulls of the Negroes in Africa show less sexual differentiation than those of the Europeans.’ He blinked his eyes rapidly and leapt from his chair, unfastening the glass door of the bookcase and removing a large black book. He opened it roughly in
the middle, flicked through a few pages with his thumbnail. ‘The average cranial capacity of the male German, for example,’ he said, his index finger floating over the text, ‘is 1538.76 cubic centimeters, but the German female capacity is only 1265.23. This is a difference of 273.53 cubic centimeters.’

  ‘She stares at me when we eat,’ B.J. said.

  ‘The gray substance and white substance in the male brain are also heavier than in the female. It is not necessary to ascribe superiority to any of this, of course. Merely difference. Men are better at manly things. Women are better at being women. This current trend to provide them with similar educations is very wrong-headed.’ Dr Carr shut his book with a sound like a clap.

  ‘She’s always trying to get me to come to her room.’

  ‘Well, that’s not allowed,’ said Dr Carr. ‘Surely male patients aren’t allowed in the rooms of female patients. What are we running here, a hospital or a bordello?’

  ‘A hospital,’ B.J. said. He’d been in both.

  ‘Women feel the tyranny of their bodies so much more than men do. Love affairs are seldom a good sign.’ Dr Carr shook his head. ‘One of the saddest cases I ever encountered was a woman, happily married, aged forty-six, in whom there were no discoverable hereditary influences toward insanity. Just at the time her catamenia were becoming irregular, she was seized with uncontrollable libidinous desires. Prior to this she had never exhibited any sexual proclivity, and intercourse rarely afforded her any pleasure at all. Now she could scarcely be taken out into public without making indecent propositions to the men she met. Sometimes in the presence of her husband. She remained in this condition for about two years, until her menses ceased altogether and she recovered her health.’

  ‘Is this the case with Ada?’

  ‘Very likely. And very much to be pitied. Don’t encourage her, B.J., but don’t despise her. Somewhere, trapped inside her body, is probably a very high-minded woman who would be ashamed if she knew how she was behaving.’

  Ada appeared quite satisfied with herself now. She was ignoring B.J. in favor of the new woman, making clucking, consoling sounds and feeding Sarah Canary from her own spoon as if she were a little child. ‘Here’s a big bite,’ she said. Sarah Canary reached for the mush with her fingers, but Ada slapped her hand quickly with the bowl of her spoon and Sarah withdrew.

  ‘Does she talk?’ B.J. asked.

  ‘Not yet. I’m teaching her. Here’s another big bite,’ said Ada. ‘You eat nicely now.’ She looked over at B.J. with a dreamy smile. Her attention was elsewhere; her eyes no longer penetrated. ‘I’m going to make some clothes for Sarah Canary,’ she said. ‘Some lovely party dresses.’

  While Ada’s face was averted, Sarah Canary slipped her fingers into the mush. She was licking them when Ada turned back to her. ‘No, no!’ said Ada sharply. Her voice was extremely loud. ‘You eat nicely or you don’t eat at all.’ She rose in a fury, picking up the bowl of mush and overturning it onto the table. The warden was there instantly. A silence fell over the entire room. It was Houston. B.J. had been right about today’s assignments. The air thickened so that he could hardly breathe.

  ‘Now, that’s a mess,’ Houston said quietly. ‘And a mess is something I will not have.’

  ‘It’s her mess,’ said Ada, pointing to Sarah Canary. ‘I didn’t—’

  Houston put his hands around Ada’s neck and pulled her upright. ‘Some time in the wash house for you,’ he told her. The ideal hospital would have, as a matter of course, a cell for the punishment of recalcitrant lunatics. Fort Steilacoom had no shortage of cells; this was one of the aspects that recommended it for its current purposes. But females were always sent to the wash house in deference to the delicacy of their sex and to permit them to pass their sentence in some useful manner. The wash house was not a cell, but it was not dry and it was not heated. There were no windows. At Steilacoom everyone was used to making do.

  Houston took hold of Ada’s hair with one hand and struck her across the face with the other. ‘Papa,’ said Ada, pleadingly. ‘No, Papa.’ Houston fastened his hand about her throat again, shutting off the words. He began to pull her by the neck from the room. Ada’s shift rode up her legs, which were limp, whether by design or out of fear B.J. could not tell. Her heels bounced off the floor with each of Houston’s steps. Her face when B.J. last saw it was puffy and changing color.

  B.J. felt suddenly that someone was looking at him and not at the more compelling scene Houston and Ada were making. He scanned the room to see who it was. Sarah Canary had her fingers in the mush on the tabletop. She put three of her fingers in her mouth and began to hum around them. These were the first sounds B.J. had heard her make. A cold spot on the back of his neck grew colder and he knew the person staring at it must be behind him. He turned around. The Chinaman stood in the doorway and his eyes were fixed intently on B.J. He made a small gesture. Come here, it said. And then he disappeared back into the kitchen.

  B.J. got to his feet. The guttural sounds of Ada choking grew fainter and fainter. The corridor into the kitchen tipped upward. B.J. could climb it, but it made him pant. The Chinaman was alone, standing at the large basin, scraping the pots prior to washing them. ‘Did you need water?’ B.J. asked. He looked to the bucket. It was still full. A moth floated on top, its wings extended. He hoped the Chinaman wasn’t going to expect him to fetch a new bucket every time a bug drowned.

  ‘Do things like that happen often?’ the Chinaman asked. ‘Is this a bad place to be?’

  It took B.J. a moment to understand that the Chinaman was talking about Ada and not the moth. And another moment to wonder how to respond. B.J. didn’t like questions unless he knew what answer was wanted. He had no idea what the Chinaman hoped to hear. Perhaps the Chinaman wanted to hear about Louis Bergevain, an inmate who’d been beaten to death three months ago when he’d become too ill to do his chores. Houston had told B.J. people might come around asking questions. B.J. was not to even say the word Bergevain. Not to Dr Carr or to anyone else who asked. The people with questions, Houston told B.J., might be very cunning, but he would not accept this as an excuse if he was disobeyed.

  He had not told B.J. the people with questions might be Chinese. This was very cunning, but B.J. would not be tricked. He said nothing at all.

  He watched the Chinaman cross the kitchen to the black stove and pick up the mush pot. The mush had coated the inside with a grainy film. The Chinaman scraped at it with his spoon, but it adhered to the pot’s sides. He scratched a tiny line clean with his fingernail. He stood staring into the pot.

  ‘Soak it first,’ B.J. suggested. It was a generous offer since it would use a great deal of water and the bucket would have to be filled that much sooner.

  ‘Perhaps that woman is just very difficult,’ the Chinaman suggested, setting the pot into the sink and ladling water into it. ‘Perhaps things like that happen only to her.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said B.J. carefully. ‘And perhaps not.’

  ‘Which?’ asked the Chinaman.

  ‘One or the other,’ said B.J.

  ‘Shouldn’t a woman be in charge of the women?’ the Chinaman asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said B.J. ‘One is.’

  ‘Was she there at breakfast?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Chinaman stood staring at B.J. He was considerably shorter; B.J. could see every detail of the top of his head, his scalp where the hair divided, the way it flowed into the rope of the braid. There was a red spot on the bare skin between the hair that flowed to the right and that which flowed to the left. A flea bite, B.J. thought. Not that this was the season for fleas. ‘If I wanted a woman’s help in the kitchen, could I request a particular woman? The way I can request you when I want water fetched?’ The Chinaman was speaking very carefully, just the way B.J. himself was speaking. B.J. understood suddenly that he was not happy asking questions. B.J. was not happy answering them. He looked for a way to rectify the situation. He changed all his answers into questions.

&
nbsp; ‘Fetching water is my job, isn’t it?’ B.J. said. ‘And not anybody else’s, is it? You say what job you have and the warden sends the person who does it, doesn’t he?’ Now all the Chinaman had to do was answer. Instead he asked another question and looked unhappy about it.

  ‘Are the new patients assigned jobs quickly?’

  ‘Sometimes. Aren’t they?’ B.J. stressed his last two words. The Chinaman still had not caught on.

  ‘Has the new woman been assigned a job?’

  ‘Has Sarah Canary been assigned a job?’ B.J. asked. His voice was getting louder. ‘Sarah Canary sings like an angel, doesn’t she? But she doesn’t talk. Does she? So I don’t think she does jobs. Do you?’

  The Chinaman waved his hands in a quick unhappy gesture to tell B.J. to be quiet or to go away, B.J. was not sure which. B.J. was sorry about this. He had only been trying to help. He returned to the dining room and his mush bowl. It was gone. Sarah Canary had two now. One was empty and clean as if she had licked it. The other was B.J.’s, He reached for it and she turned her eyes on him steadily. She made a low, threatening noise in her throat. It was a growl. B.J. dropped his hand and stared at her. ‘That’s my breakfast,’ he said. ‘You had your breakfast.’ Sarah Canary growled again. Houston had returned and was pacing between the tables.

  ‘Is there a problem here?’ he asked at each. ‘Any problem here?’ The man from France had no problems. The syphilitic farmer had no problems. The man who spoke only in rhymes had no problems. The woman who did things only in threes had no problems. Sarah Canary certainly had no problems. She smiled and hummed and licked her fingers. B.J. had no problems. And he had no breakfast.

  He stared coldly at Sarah Canary. ‘Dr Carr hasn’t finished his diagnosis of the new woman,’ he told Houston, ‘I’m supposed to take her to him after breakfast.’

  ‘The hell you are,’ said Houston. ‘I’d like to see the day when inmates escort inmates around the asylum. When male inmates are asked to escort female inmates.’