Sarah Vaughan is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness

by Thomson, MaryJane

  Despite being paranoid that I may have had too high a dose at Jared’s and could slip out of consciousness, I finally drift off to sleep. Waris comes in and tells me it’s dinner. I say, “Thank you,” put on my hat and go for a smoke. There is no one outside. I walk around the yard and think about how I won’t have to do this for too much longer because I’ll be getting out.

  Waris comes and asks me why I’m not going to dinner. I say, “I had a big lunch, don’t feel like it.”

  “Well, I will put some aside for you when you do.”

  Just as I’m walking through the smokers’ room Fiona comes out and says, “Hi, I came to look for you. You weren’t at dinner so I figured you’d be here.”

  We sit down at the table and I start to roll a smoke, but then realise I don’t want it because I feel sick.

  “Well, how did it go today with Jared?” Fiona says.

  In my mind I am thinking about what to say. I don’t want to tell her I got on because I feel it might disappoint her, so I say, “I went up to his place and he was telling his usual stories. I smoked a bit of weed and it’s left me feeling tired. I kind of wish I hadn’t gone up there, but it’s just that my meds make me feel stiff.”

  “Oh honey, maybe you should tell them that.”

  Just then Rachel walks past and I tell her I’m feeling stiff. “I can see that,” she says. “I’ve noticed the way you have been walking last couple of days. I’ll get Waris to give you something.”

  I know I’m not being totally truthful to Fiona but I figure half the truth is all right.

  “So, did he say anything about you and him?” she says.

  “Just the usual, how much he still loved me, but I didn’t believe him. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be with someone like him. He’s a full-on junkie and has been for years. It’s hard being in a relationship with someone like that. I’ve done it before. It’s quite an isolating way to live your life, living just for drugs; so much effort goes into maintaining it.”

  Fiona lights another smoke. “Well, you are speaking a lot of sense.”

  I get an urge to smoke, which must mean I am feeling better. “Yes. It makes sense because I’ve thought about it often.”

  I roll myself a cigarette and look around the yard. “Is Lester at dinner?”

  “Yeah, he’ll probably come out soon. Do you think you’re going to try and see Jared again?”

  “I don’t know. Not for a while. I tend to go through phases of seeing him and then he gets too needy and emotional, wanting things from me, like a relationship, something I’m not willing to give him. I have a habit of going to see him when I feel sad or something. I like hanging with my other friends but Jared always listens to my problems. I worry that if this habit continues I won’t be able to break it and move on for good.”

  “Oh, sounds intense.”

  “I feel I’m stuck in a place with him and I don’t know how to get out. It’s like I’m pulled towards him. It’s beyond my control.”

  “Well, I think you are strong and you can do it. You just need to make your decision and stick with it. It doesn’t sound like you need him in your life.”

  I think about this. Jared has been a mainstay in my life since I was twenty-two and went out with him for a few months. He was the first person who gave me a shot of heroin. I kept returning for the drugs. I was often depressed, which made me want to get high and feel better.

  12

  The sun is going down. Fiona says she’s cold and goes inside. Waris comes out. “Darling, aren’t you cold? You feel stiff. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was just putting up with it.”

  “Well, come with me and I will give you something.”

  I slowly follow Waris back inside. “You are tired,” she says. “Did you take any drugs today? Someone commented that you look a bit slowed down. They will drug-test you tomorrow and you have a meeting with the doctors.”

  “What do they want to talk about?”

  “They want to discuss where you go from here.”

  “Really! Am I getting out?”

  “Looks like it, maybe to another hospital.”

  “Another hospital? I thought you thought I was getting better.”

  “Dr Aso has talked to your parents about it and he thinks it’s the best option.”

  “Why doesn’t he talk to me about it? I’m twenty-six and they treat me like I’m five.”

  While Waris goes and gets the pills, I stew over the news. It will mean leaving the friends I have made in here and being away from my drug contacts.

  Waris comes back with a Congentin. “You need to take it every four hours.” She looks at me, puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “Everything will be all right. You’re going to get fully well.” I start getting angry at the voice for not telling me but I don’t say anything to Waris.

  I am frustrated that other people are making the decisions for me. Having the doctor consult my parents and not me makes me feel as though I don’t count. It’s as if my choice is irrelevant. I may be unwell but I am not stupid.

  Waris takes me to my room, sits on my bed and talks to me. “It’s not a bad place. It’s a hospital in Dunedin.”

  “What!” I scream. “You’re sending me to Ashburn! How the fuck is that going to help?” I yell at Waris about how I have been there before and they put me in the anorexic wing because I was thin. I didn’t have anorexia when I went in, but I nearly did by the time I ran away. I thought they were never going to let me out. Bless the other patient who used her credit card to book my flight.

  “I’ll be stuck there forever,” I yell. “They never let you go from that place.”

  I stand up and pace the room. Waris tells me to calm down. I sit on the chair and say, “Last time I went there it was bad. I can’t get well in that place. I’ll get worse.”

  Waris turns to me and says, “Well, you’re meeting the doctors tomorrow morning and you can tell them. I have to go and get your meds.”

  I start rolling a cigarette and then another and decide to keep the marijuana until the morning. I go outside and can’t see Fiona or Lester. I sit at the table anyway, and I start smoking furiously. I see Nola walking around the grass. I don’t say anything to her. I smoke three cigarettes and ponder the years of my life until now. It feels like I’m born to lose: three months in here and they plan to send me back to that hellhole. I start thinking of my parents and how happy they must be to see me locked up. Throw some money at the problem and hope it will go away. Ashburn is only a dressed-up version of the current stark facility I’m in. People just wear cleaner, slightly fancier attire. You wouldn’t feel comfortable there wearing pyjamas in the daytime.

  I start pacing the grass, trying to come up with a way out of it, but I fail to see how. Waris runs over to me with the meds. “I know you are upset but it’s really not that bad a place.”

  I take the meds and walk off to my room. I look around and remember my last visit to Ashburn, when I painted a lot. I left paint all over the walls. The voice starts speaking. “They just want to use you down there—use you for your art.” I decide then and there that I won’t do my art and I won’t take my guitar. I look through my drawers. I don’t have many clothes. I decide I want to buy more before I go as it’s colder down there. I pick up the sheet off the ground and put the fruit on the shelf. I decide God is certainly not helping me. I decide that all the people here are phony and there is no one I can trust. I lie on my bed and start to cry.

  I go through all the negative memories I have of my last time at Ashburn. I pretty much had lost my mind and couldn’t think, listen or concentrate. All I could do was follow what other people did. I continue to cry and start saying, “Don’t want to be like that.” I sob and sob into my pillow as I recall the events that got me to Ashburn in the first place, taking drugs, not sleeping, panicking and boarding a ship to the South Island, hallucinating and taking my clothes off, passing out and being met by police in Picton.

 
I stomp out for my last smoke in what may be the last night I spend here. I think of the nurses here and some of the nurses down there and I decide it’s all a game. They are just out to make me crumble. I look around for sharp instruments that might aid my suicide but my voice is telling me not to do it yet. I decide I have nothing to live for, no family, no friends. I see the moon and turn away. I stare at the blackness of the ground. The voice speaks to me and says, “You won’t be there that long and there are no barbed-wire fences there to stop you running away.” My meds start kicking in. I slowly head to my room, hit the pillow and fall asleep.

  When I wake up it’s morning. Waris tells me to eat breakfast as I’m meeting the doctors. I don’t feel like the crowd at breakfast so I go and sit on the seat in the middle of the grass and try to see a positive way through what’s happening. One of the hardest things about being Sectioned is that everybody has a say on your care except you. It’s as though you are not even human.

  I suck all the life out my cigarette and head into the dining room. I take the fruit off my tray and give the rest back. I can see Lester and Fiona out of the corner of my eye. I pretend I don’t see them and walk out. Just as I get to the smokers’ room Fiona catches up. “What’s up?” I look up and say, “They’re moving me to another institution.” I feel tears welling up in my eyes and I try to brush them with my sleeve. She says, “Oh hun, we better sit down.”

  We sit in our usual spot.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Fucken Dunedin. I get no say in anything. Wish they would let me look after myself.”

  When I went to Ashburn at twenty-one it was my first proper experience of a psychiatric institution. I pretty much hated every minute of it. I was in a heightened state of anxiety and paranoia. I felt that everyone, staff and patients, were set up to torture me. I became anorexic and dropped to forty-two kilos. Being there was like my rock bottom. I couldn’t make decisions over simple things, most importantly what to eat. I could barely boil a kettle for a cup of coffee.

  Fiona lights up her smoke and I light mine. She says, “I will miss you and I’ll give you my number. I can’t believe they are sending you all the way to Dunedin.”

  “Well, they’ve done it before, they can do it again,” I say. I tell Fiona how I stayed at Ashburn for five months and then ran away. I’d lost heaps of weight and had to disguise this so I wore a big jacket. It was winter and freezing. I could sense myself getting worse and worse and felt I needed to get out. I got a taxi to the airport and after I arrived in Wellington I stayed with the family of a friend I had made at Ashburn.

  “You must be a master at escaping institutions,” Fiona says. “How long do you have to be there this time?”

  “I’m not sure but it’s always longer than the doctors say.”

  I feel calmer for having talked to Fiona. Waris comes over and says, “Darling, don’t hate me.” I smile and say, “Don’t send me and you’ll be forgiven.”

  Waris says, “It won’t be as bad as you think. Now, have a shower and come find me.”

  I shower and put on my jeans and a hoodie. I go out and see Lester. He says, “Oh babe, you’re leaving. What am I going to do without you?”

  We give each other a hug and I say, “I haven’t left yet.”

  Waris comes. “It’s time. They’re there.” We go into the same room in the day hospital as last time. Dr Aso is there with a junior doctor.

  Waris and I sit on the couch. Dr Aso says, “Well, Waris has probably told you that we have decided on Ashburn for you. You are still very unwell and not ready to receive care in the community. However, I can see a change in you and that you’re improving. You have appropriate shoes on and you’re not dressed in your pyjamas.”

  I stay calm. “How long would you expect me to be there?”

  “We are thinking up to three months or more, depending on your progress. You will be leaving on a plane tomorrow morning, so we expect you to pack up your room today.”

  I look at him and start tracing his face with my eye, trying to figure out why this is happening to me.

  Waris says, “I will take you all the way there and get you checked in.”

  Dr Aso says, “I know this is against your wishes but we can’t do anything more for you here.”

  “Okay, thank you,” I say, hiding my anger.

  The doctors leave the room and Waris says, “It’s going to be for the better.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Also, they are drug-testing you this afternoon so you won’t be able to go out.”

  “Oh really? I haven’t got many clothes to wear down there. I need some thermals. It gets cold.”

  “Of course. Maybe Robyn could take you to The Warehouse tonight.”

  “I was hoping to go myself today but I guess that would be all right.”

  “Things are going to get better, I promise.”

  It feels as though my life is a living nightmare. I am sure that hopping in and out of institutions is not a life for me. I think of the people I know who have a better life.

  Waris says, “I’ll give you a hand with your room later.”

  I go into my room and look through my clothes drawers. All I have are pyjamas and men’s shorts and singlets. I decide not to wear these again because they will remind me of being here. I don’t even have a bag to put them in.

  Waris comes in and I say, “I don’t want to wear these. Maybe I can leave them here.”

  “Okay, darling, leave them with me and get yourself something tonight. Take your toothbrush and shampoo.”

  “Should I mop the floor?”

  “No,” she says, “the cleaners can take care of that. Remember to take your pictures.”

  I take down my pictures, and I sit on the bed and look at how bare the room is without them, and how naked it looks without the Coke cans and fruit. I walk out to make a coffee and I see Fiona. “Oh wow,” she says, looking into my room, “it looks bare. Are you excited to be going on an adventure?”

  “That’s one way to see it,” I say. We walk through the double doors that I usually kick open when I’m on my own. “It feels like what I want doesn’t matter. The doctor reckons I’m too unwell to stay here.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. You seem fine to me, certainly one of the most well here.”

  We go outside and talk. Although I don’t want to go away, I feel that maybe it’s a step forward.

  Fiona looks around and says, “Wonder where Lester is. I know he would want to say goodbye.”

  “I’m here all day. Have to do a drug test.”

  “Oh no, you smoked weed yesterday.”

  “I’m not too worried. I’ll be gone by the time they get the results.”

  Fiona laughs. “You really don’t care, do you.”

  “No, not really. So what to them. What’s wrong with a bit of cannabis?”

  Fiona and I continue to laugh. Waris comes over and says “Oh, you’re happy again That’s good to see. Robyn will take you to The Warehouse at seven.”

  “Okay, cool.”

  “And I just want you to know we are all going to miss you.”

  I smile at Waris. “Thanks. I hope for the best for you and everyone too.”

  Waris walks away and Fiona says, “Shall we check out lunch?”

  I think to myself that the last thing I feel like is lunch, after being so sick the day before.

  We get our trays and I grab the soup and ignore the rest. We go outside. Fiona eats her macaroni and cheese and I have a coffee. I don’t have much to say because I’m thinking a lot about the fact it’s my last day in the ward. I’ve been here for so long I’ve watched the seasons change.

  “I’m pretty worried about what the people will be like in Dunedin,” I say.

  “I’d be worried too, but at least you seem to be feeling better about it,” Fiona says.

  “I’m a bit worried I will lose touch with the people I know up here.”

  When I say I’m worried about the people I’m lea
ving behind, I’m really worried about being stranded in Dunedin with no drug contacts.

  Lester comes over. “When are they chucking you on the plane out of here?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning. So soon.”

  “The doctors say they can’t do anything more for me. They think I’m still really unwell.”

  “Well fuck them! I hope you’re going to be all right.”

  I look over and see Waris coming towards me. “Time for your drug test, MaryJane.”

  I follow her back to the nurses’ station, where a nurse called Claire gives me a scoop and a plastic tube. “I’ll work it out,” I say. I go into the bathroom and fill the plastic tube with water. I figure if they ask me for another one it won’t be until tomorrow and by then the opiates will be out of my system.

  I give the pottle back to Claire, who’s wearing a blue V-neck top. I identify her instantly as being part of a bad nationalist group.

  She says, “It’s all water.”

  “Sorry, that’s all I can give you today. Test it and find out.”

  I walk away and snigger to myself. I’m starting to get bored waiting to go. I decide to smoke the weed, which will hopefully make me tired. I roll it in my room and then pace back and forth in the yard, hoping the smell won’t linger. I see Jeremiah at the end of the grass. He’s not playing guitar the way he normally is. He says, “Got some for me?” I give him the rest of the joint and go back to my room. The smoke kicks in the opiates of the day before and I lie down in my bed in a state of ecstasy. I pop in some eye drops, relax and sing one of my songs. The voice talks to me quite forcefully, saying that I am black and not white. My mother’s voice comes in and says she will tell me what to buy tonight and to rest on my bed until then. I shut my eyes because I’ve no pictures to look at, just a bare wall, and a barren ground with nothing inspiring to find, except maybe some dust.

  I start planning what I’ll do when I leave Ashburn. I decide to hold on to my passport so I can go overseas straight from Dunedin.