Sarah Vaughan is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness

by Thomson, MaryJane

  “Will it zonk me out?”

  “No, neither of these pills are sedating, but we are going to give you a Zopiclone at night to help you sleep and give you a break from the voices.”

  I look slightly alarmed. “But I don’t hear voices. I am a person of faith: when I’m talking I pray to God.” This is another of my standard responses.

  “Do you hear a voice?”

  “I don’t hear a voice. It’s more like someone is speaking through me.”

  “Hmm. Oh well.”

  “So when do you think I might get unaccompanied leave?”

  “When you are stabilised on the new medication, so please talk to your mother when she comes today. She is worried about you.”

  Dr Aso starts to get up out of his chair. I stand up and say, “Thank you.”

  Waris follows me out. “Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Make sure you have some lunch, sweetie. Your hands are shaking.”

  “Yeah, just have a cigarette first.”

  I go and sit under the tree in the sun. Nola comes over and starts speaking. “How did that go?” she says, wiping her glasses on her T-shirt.

  I’m quite exasperated and tired from the talk. “They reckon I’m schizoaffective, don’t like the way I dress.”

  She looks at me, surprised. “What do you mean they don’t like the way you dress? You look great. You just don’t dress like everyone else.”

  I pick a blade of grass and ponder what she’s said. “Yeah, maybe,” I say, taking the cigarette smoke right into my lungs and holding it down, wishing it would make me high. It certainly relaxes me. I can feel the sun heating me up; my goose bumps from being in a cool, air-conditioned room are starting to go away.

  Nola sits down beside me. “Might have my third cigarette of the day,” she jokes.

  “Yeah, well you don’t want to have seven all at once. You never know when someone might fuck you right off,” I joke back.

  “I would like to get out of here pronto but they’re not letting me,” she says. “I haven’t been here a week yet. What’s for lunch today?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I never remember from one day from the next; they all seem to run together in here.”

  “Tell me about it—it only gets worse. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six,” I say. “Been in and out of here since I was twenty.”

  “You don’t want it to become a pattern for your life and be like me, fifty and still coming in,” Nola says.

  I move away a bit, feeling uncomfortable with her being so close. “Well, that’s what they say happens,” she says. “You see heaps of people just become regulars, in and out, in and out.”

  I’m keen to talk to my voice so I excuse myself. “Got to go to the bathroom.” I leave Nola under the tree and walk back through the smokers’ room. Lester’s there. I say, “Hello.”

  “Hey, babe, how are you today?”

  “I’m all good, bit drained, just had meeting with doctors.”

  Lester yells into his earphones, “Get back! Get back!” He starts rambling about something.

  I leave, go to my room, lie on the bed and notice a little sunlight shining into my room. It eases the pain I feel. I am exhausted from all the talking and feel a little bewildered and alone. I fall into a deep sleep and am awoken by someone saying, “Lunch.”

  “I think I’ll pass today. I don’t much feel like it.”

  “Okay, we’ll save it.”

  Waris comes in. For the first time today I notice her bright orange top. She’s also wearing a red necklace. It looks as if it must weigh a tonne. She sits on my bed and says, “Are you okay?”

  I sit up and put the pillow behind my back against the wall. “Yeah, I’m sweet, just a bit tired.”

  Waris looks excited. ”We are starting you on new meds tonight.”

  “Great,” I say sarcastically, “can’t wait. I just want to get out of here, Waris.”

  She puts her hand on my leg. “You will, darling, you just need to stabilise on these meds and let them work, and then you will need a period of recovery once you’re out of here.”

  I look away, frustrated. “How long will that take?”

  “It’s different for everyone. Now, you know your mother is coming today.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I don’t want her to—she’ll just get upset.”

  “It would be really good if you could talk to her. She loves you, MaryJane.”

  I start to get out of bed. “I need a coffee.”

  Waris stands up and says, “What about lunch?”

  I screw up my face. “Nah, don’t feel like it.”

  “Well, maybe I take you down to the bakery later, when it’s not so busy. I have a lot of paperwork to do.”

  “Okay, that would be nice. I can get some more cigarettes and tomatoes.”

  Waris leaves the room. I feel better for having spoken to her.

  4

  The time of being sick seems to have extended forever. I have lost all semblance of an ordinary life. When I am low I sometimes get a great sense of loss, and I obsess over it to the point where it really screws me up. I start fantasising about death because that’s the only thing that brings a little hope.

  As I go to make another coffee the voice starts talking to me. “She’s not your real mother. You don’t need to speak to her.”

  “Yeah, but I look like her, and I’m deaf and so is she.”

  “You weren’t born deaf. They pulled out your eardrums when you were a child.” I start getting visual imagery of my eardrums being taken out, then aural delusions of my screaming with pain.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to come and see you. I want you to text me.”

  “But I don’t want to text you or ring you.”

  “Well, you can’t go back to your mother’s. She abuses you, and so does your father. She beats you up every day and your father used to rape you with a knife. That’s why you bleed—it’s not a period. You have never healed properly and you get bleeds from your AIDS. They hate you.”

  “I had a nice childhood.”

  “People with nice lives don’t end up in here.”

  I crouch in the corner of my room and cry, then I pick up my guitar and write a song, “My father, my real father”. I imagine I don’t know who my father is, so I sing to my first father, God: “He listens to me.” I write what I think a man who loved me might write. I have a feeling of real loneliness and inability to escape. The only way I can leave is to go home, and if what my voice is saying is true that’s not an option.

  I get off my bed feeling better for having written a song and decide it’s time for a coffee and a cigarette. I go into the dining room, which is packed. All the tables are full of people crouching over their bowls, protecting their food. I squeeze through to get some coffee. Mark is eyeing me, making sure I’m not taking the Milo.

  I fill up my cup by the nurses’ station and make my way outside. I see the P30 sign in the car park and take it to mean I should smoke three cigarettes. No one is around. I sit on the grass in the sun.

  The voice starts speaking to me, telling me to get my lunch.

  “I don’t feel like it.” I can quite happily exist on coffee and cigarettes, I think to myself.

  “But you have to eat.”

  “I’ll eat a tomato. That’s all I want.”

  I continue smoking. I can see Jo and Nga in the smokers’ room and don’t feel like talking to them. The voice says, “Go and have your tomato.” I walk the long way around to my room, out the end of the yard, through the sliding door, and past the kitchen and lounge. I get the tomato out of my room and go into the TV room. Nora is there, sniffing glue and watching a chat show. “Hey bro,” she says.

  “Hey.”

  I sit and stare out at the sun. The voice says, “I’m your real mother. You were born in Africa and your real name is Ea because you are the first child of creation. The moon is your mother and the sun is your father. I am in your stomach.” I look at my stomach. Nora i
s so out of it she wouldn’t notice. My stomach tells me to finish my tomato and then go look at a map.

  I go outside through the side door, sit on the green three-seater chair and have a quick smoke, then I make my way to the occupational therapy room. I stand right in front of the map that’s facing out into the corridor. My head gets led to Mauritania on the west coast of Africa. I walk past the table in the middle of the room to the door at the back that leads to a garden. Liz is leaning against the door. I ask her if I can use the internet. “Sure you can.” She connects me and I look up Mauritania. It turns out it’s the founding place of hip hop and one of the wealthiest African nations. Just as I’m starting to read about it a nurse, Stephanie, pokes her head around the door and says, “Your mother’s here.”

  I stand up straight away, filled with rage. I walk up to my mother and say, “What are you doing here? Leave me alone.”

  “I just want to talk to you and I’ve brought you some fruit.”

  I say aggressively, “Leave me alone.”

  She keeps talking at me. I lean forward and scream, “You’re a rapist.” I say it so loudly and forcefully she swoons back and heads quickly for the door. Stephanie is standing there. She has clearly dealt with these situations in the past. I’m shaking with rage. She says, “Come with me. We’ll have a cigarette and I’ll give you something.” She disappears into the back of the nurses’ station, brings out a couple of pills and I swallow them.

  “I never want to see my parents again,” I say.

  “Yes, but we need to establish why you keep going back to them.”

  “I don’t want to. Sometimes it’s my only choice.” I’m so angry I am unable to articulate what I’m thinking. Stephanie gives me one of her cigarettes, a tailor-made.

  “I don’t like her turning up. I’m twenty-six, old enough to look after myself.”

  “But you still need support.”

  The pills slowly start to work and I feel my rage dissipating. I think to myself, that’s the first time I’ve ever verbally attacked anyone like that. I was so angry I wanted to hit her. I felt like some savage beast. It was lucky I didn’t have any dangerous weapons.

  I finish smoking and head back to my room feeling a bit drowsy. I lie on my bed and drift in and out of consciousness. I can feel myself wanting to cry, wanting to ring somebody, but there is no one to ring. I don’t even feel like picking up my guitar. I drift off to sleep.

  I am woken two hours later by Waris. “MaryJane, MaryJane, you’ve been asleep all afternoon. Your mother is very upset. What happened?”

  I’m very sleepy. I say, “Cigarette.” I get off the bed. “Talk to me in ten minutes, cigarette first.”

  “Okay.”

  We go outside. I make a coffee on the way as I can barely keep one eye open, then we sit at a table at the end of the yard by the only tree and we chat.

  “Waris, can I get some hair dye?”

  “Oh, I think that’s a good idea, nicer than purple.”

  “Yeah, shall we go?”

  “Oh, wait—what about what happened today?”

  “We walk then talk,” I say.

  “We won’t be able to go for another hour, until just before dinner,” Waris says.

  “Okay, I wait.”

  “Your mother is very upset. She is your mother, MaryJane, and you can’t change that.”

  I stay silent. I’m still bewildered as to the matter of who my parents are.

  Lester comes over and sits down at the table. “Hey,” I say. Waris gets up and gives me a disappointed look. “I’m off to do rounds.”

  Lester waits for her to leave and then says, “Babe, where you been?”

  “Oh, I crashed out: they gave me something to calm me down. Must have got aggro earlier, don’t really remember.”

  “They like to have us calm and sedate, babe, that way we don’t cause so much mayhem and disturb the peace.”

  “Yeah, they like us bedridden, back to the mattress, if you can call it one.”

  “Babe, thanks for helping us out the other day. I still owe you cash but haven’t gotten out yet.”

  “No worries. I’m going out to get hair dye later.”

  Virginia starts walking towards us. Lester turns and says, “Mother fucken Mary.” Virginia gives us both a disgusted look and turns the other way.

  “Put it on my EFTPOS card. Get Fiona to do it—she’s really good at things like that. Plus it might cheer her up to have something to do.” Fiona is a new patient and is on suicide watch. Lester has obviously got to know her in no time.

  “Do you trust me to go out with your EFTPOS card?”

  “I trust you so much, babe, I would even sign a contract between us to say I totally trust you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, you’re a really easy person to trust. I’ll just go get it out of the safe.”

  Lester trusting me makes me feel good, especially now I know he’s a legit person because he’s keeping his word and paying me back. While I wait I look around at the hundreds of cigarette butts on the grass. I feel sorry for the grass and decide to start picking up the butts. After about fifty I decide I’ve had enough. I go and wash my hands in the day hospital toilets by the staff lockers; they are much cleaner and nicer.

  I walk back past the room where the computer is and see the big art tables littered with felt pens. I see through to the garden and wish I could get out there for a smoke. At least you can see the street from there.

  I go back to the map on the window and am led to Mauritania again. “Guess that’s where I’m from,” I say to myself. I’m led to a river called Rosso; the voice says that’s where I was born. I stand and look for about five minutes.

  Stephanie comes past and says, “Looking at anything in particular?” It pisses me off being spoken to in this tone. It’s as though she thinks I’m just zoning out and staring, when in fact I am actually looking at my place of birth. I know better than to say anything though, because she’s the kind of nurse who would demand I have an injection if I show any sign of not being as you’re expected to be, namely calm.

  “Just checking out the African continent.”

  I go back outside. Lester’s sitting at the table with Fiona. He has his EFTPOS card in his hand. Fiona says, “Lester told me you want to dye your hair. I’m good. I dye my daughter’s hair—when I’m not in this place, that is.”

  Lester lights a smoke. I light another smoke and don’t say much. Lester kicks my boot under the table. “Babe, what’s up?”

  “I’m just pissed off at that fucking nurse Stephanie assuming that because we’re in here we’re half-witted fucking idiots. It’s a miracle we still function, given all the drugs they give us.”

  “Yeah, they want to put me on Risperidone,” Fiona says.

  “Oh really? When I was on that I used to wake up every morning and cry. That drug’s horrible,” I say.

  Being in and out of the system as much as I have, I have got to know the drugs pretty well. There are some core drugs that people get given on admittance, mainly Olanzapine, but sometimes others such as Risperidone and Seroquel. Every one of them has made me depressed.

  I don’t usually like comparing meds with other people because we all react to them differently, but I do suspect why certain drugs are prescribed so freely. Risperidone and Olanzapine, for example, get churned out like jelly beans. Sometimes if you are unhappy it’s really hard to get people to take you seriously and listen to you. Just as there are good doctors and nurses who make the time and effort, there are also inattentive ones. When I am being given pills that are made easily and cheaply and don’t make me feel a whole lot better, it makes me think my life is not seen as precious.

  Waris comes back past. “We go in thirty minutes, MaryJane.”

  “Well, I’m on Olanzapine,” Lester says.

  “Me too, but they’re changing my meds tonight,” I say.

  “What to?” Fiona says.

  “Lamotrigine and Haloperidol.”
/>   “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Me neither.”

  I ask Fiona when she got in. She says two days ago. The crisis management team picked her up. She had to leave her four kids and her husband. “I really need to be there helping him out but I can’t because I’m stuck in here, God knows for how long.”

  “Well, I’ve been in here three months because they said my mental illness, which I might add I don’t have, is really hard to diagnose,” I say, lighting another cigarette and putting my old butt in the ashtray against the wall.

  “What did they diagnose you with?”

  “Schizoaffective disorder. I’ve never heard of it.” At this point I haven’t even thought to look it up on the internet because I have been more interested in knowing where I come from.

  I decide it’s getting a bit cold and I want to be warmer when I go out. “I’ll go get changed and come back by,” I say.

  “I’ll give you my EFTPOS card in case I’m not here when you get back,” Lester says. “The PIN’s 2118.”

  I decide to write down the number. I go into the occupational therapy room where there are lots of felt pens under the sink. I write the number on a piece of coloured paper, fold it and put it in my pocket. I go back to the table and say, “You guys want anything?”

  Lester asks for a lollipop.

  I walk back into my room. I don’t look at the nurses’ station as I walk past, but out of the corner of my eye I see there are about five nurses sitting at the table, all writing notes.

  I’m not in the mood to go out but I want to get the hair dye. I sit on my bed and look at the pictures. I pick up one of my new ones, put some Blu-Tack on the back, and stick it on the wall. I now have sixteen A4 pictures in total and I am creating a rectangle.

  I open my drawer and get out my skull-printed pants and put my white shorts back in. The voice starts talking to me, telling me to shower when I get back because if I look clean it may heighten my chances of getting out of here.

  I sit on the ground and talk to the orange. The orange tells me to eat a banana and buy some more tomatoes. I pour myself a Coke and have a banana. I lie on my bed staring at the door opposite. The shutter on the window in the door is opened by Bob. He’s doing rounds. He stares at me and I stare back. I start remembering the incident I had with him the previous day. He walks away. I sip my Coke and look at my guitar but I don’t feel like playing. Usually I play obsessively because I don’t want to lose my train of thought from the previous song, but I’m not so concerned with that at the minute.