The house itself posed another danger. Mack was forever in the middle of a remodeling project. He never finished any of them. Our house was about as childproof as a steel mill. Tack strips lined the floors where he pulled up but did not replace the carpet. The “walls” were nothing but exposed insulation; Sheetrock leaned against the yellow fuzz but was never hung. Power saws, power sanders, nail guns, and paint cans were strewn about the floor. We had mice infestations so severe that the Bird frequently found nests. After she stepped on a mouse corpse and screamed, Mack told her to “quit being a baby.” She laid poison throughout the house and launched a mouse genocide. After Granny told her not to leave poison out on the floor with toddlers running around, she subbed in mousetraps. So many mouse necks were snapped in that house that some days it sounded like the rodents honored their dead with twenty-one-gun salutes.
This was not how life was supposed to start for Cin-Cin.
Her parents, despite growing up dirt poor and shoeless in rural Oklahoma during the Great Depression, both graduated from Oklahoma A&M. Granny majored in being a secretary. Pa majored in business. My mom seemed a lock to keep the tradition going. Reading and writing had been her refuge from the liquored-up grizzly, straight A’s through high school her offering to the gods to make it all stop. But it wasn’t all just an escape—she genuinely loved literature and poetry. She dreamed of becoming an English teacher like Mrs. Ducroux, her favorite, who pulled books specifically for the Bird and who, when she caught the Bird reading a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird hidden in her third-grade textbook, told her she might want to secretly read something a little more age appropriate and led her to Little House on the Prairie. Every fall, when the college course catalogs were released—a reminder that she was missing yet another semester—the Bird’s heart nearly exploded. In the end, she became the best-read grocery store doughnut fryer in Wichita.
Three kids and a man-child made reenrolling seem impossible. But even though Mack mocked her when she read and occasionally told her, “For someone who’s supposed to be so book smart, you sure are stupid sometimes,” he agreed to “babysit” if she wanted to take night classes. This lasted one semester. She had to pull out of half her courses because most nights he was late or high or both when his babysitting shift was supposed to start. She dropped out again.
She’d been all set to file for divorce in 1985. But then, broken rubber—third kid on the way. She was devastated. At the time, it was illegal in Kansas to get divorced while pregnant. Mack was happy. He was in one of his Jesus phases, taking the family to the Church of Christ—his dad’s holy-rolling, dance-prohibiting, taking-the-Word-literallying, buffet-economy-stimulating Baptist church.
The Bird didn’t go for the Baptists. Growing up, she’d spent her Sundays at Saint Margaret Mary. Even Pa rolled off the rack and made it to Mass on Sundays. Cin-Cin sat between her parents, a human buffer between Granny’s stewing and Pa’s boozy stench. She missed the weekly tradition, but Mack called Catholicism hocus-pocus. While she resented the elders at the Church of Christ imploring her to “be a more dutiful wife and take care of your husband’s needs,” Mack was nicer in his religious phases and a better father. It didn’t curb his drug use at all, but it did make him think he wanted to save the family, and he solicited my five-year-old sister’s help: When the Bird came home to find them playing horsey one evening, Alexa said, “Don’t make my daddy leave. It’s better when Daddy is here.”
He had early warning of the Bird’s intentions—he’d tapped the phone and recorded her calls for the better part of their final year together. The Bird figured it out after my dad forgot that one shouldn’t use knowledge gained surreptitiously if one doesn’t wish to be outed as a spy. He gave himself up with something like “And why are you so convinced I’m sleeping with Courtney?”
Finally, in 1988, she filed. Mack was ahead of her every step of the way—he still had the tape recorder hooked up in the basement. On his way out the door, my dad took $2,000 of the $2,037 in the checking account—money they’d set aside to buy new windows.
She and Mack had been married for ten years and together for half their lives. Even though she’d been thinking about leaving him on and off since before they were married, my mom wanted to kill herself. She wrote in her journal: I felt like I had ruined Mack’s life, taken my kids’ daddy away, and cost my parents thousands of dollars. I was not only broke but in debt. My house was in shambles. I wanted to die. I didn’t want to be a mother. But I didn’t want Alexa to find my body. I didn’t want to break my mom’s heart. I thought and thought about suicide. I wondered who would raise my kids. I looked for Valium but didn’t know if that was strong enough. I felt like the pain was never going to end and that I’d accomplished nothing. I couldn’t find the pills.
She was twenty-eight years old, with a two-year-old, a five-year-old, an eight-year-old, and $37.
Chapter 5
Regaining sanity in a mental hospital is like treating a migraine at a rave. People screamed all day and night. The dad from Everybody Loves Raymond and I could barely lift our heads—he too sported a toddler’s bib of drool on his shirt. A large African American woman—even the 4XL tops could not contain her—was always hysterical. For minutes at a time, she would wail at the top of her lungs, screaming, crying, spitting nonsense: “They’re coming! They’re coming for all of you! They gonna cut us open!” Even in Times Square, she would have attracted an audience. But in a psych ward, these types of hysterics are completely disorienting. Twenty souls lumped in together, dosed and ignored, all taking cues from one another. Each nonsensical tirade could alter the plot.
And it did. As we tried to piece together our own version of reality from a set of psychotic premises, paranoia came out of the woodwork. We speculated as to whether our food was being poisoned or whether the pills we were given were actually truth serums. Half of us did think we were pawns in some government plot, one step away from having our brains cut open.
My initial certainty that I was being videotaped was buoyed by the fact that the place looked exactly like the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: white walls, inmates wandering around drooling, belligerent patients tackled and injected. The only change since the 1950s seemed to be the smoking ban. There was one TV in the common room and arguments would break out—often escalating to the point of violence—over whether we should watch Wendy Williams or Family Feud. A black woman with an accent, possibly Haitian, once threatened to kill everyone in the room if Wendy Williams was changed one more time. She appeared capable. “I will lay hands on you motherfuckers!”
To avoid the mob, I continued swimming with the sharks—the group of patients whose daily activity consisted solely of pacing the corridor, end to end, for hours. A young African American patient—“Bone Crusher” he called himself—swung his fists back and forth and stomped down the hall, yelling “Bone Crusher! Bone Crusher! Bone Crusher!” Occasionally he’d take a break from the bone crushing to rap “Jesus Walks.” Sometimes I stomped the halls and rapped along with Bone Crusher. Every time the N-word came around in the song, he tilted his head at me and I skipped a bar. In more sedated moments, I’d feel the top of my scrubs get wet and realize that a river of spit was coursing down my chin. Matching wet spots painted the crotch of my pants—the result of being too drugged to properly shake off.
At chow time, several five-foot-by-three-foot metal boxes were wheeled into the cafeteria, and chaos ensued. “Where the fuck is my food?!” about half the room would scream before the first tray was unloaded. The other half appeared completely unaware of our agenda in the cafeteria, oblivious to the fact that this would be our last opportunity to eat for hours.
In theory, each of us was to be fed according to our own specific dietary needs and restrictions. But there was no stopping the black market. Brazen hand-to-hands took place right out in the open.
“You gonna eat your roll? Hey, new motherfucker, I said you gonna eat your roll!”
“Yeah, I’m gon
na eat my roll,” I growled. I figured prison rules applied: cave once, bitch for life. But I wasn’t opposed to a little horse-trading. “Can’t do anything for you on the roll, but I will give you my cookie for your milk.” A deal was struck, but it turned out I’d lowballed myself. Cookies were precious, and it was possible with a little begging to get an extra milk off one of the staff.
On my fourth day I learned there was something called Roof Group. You mean to tell me we can go outside? Technically, yes, but I learned that I personally could not go outside because I had to earn that privilege. Admittance to Roof Group—i.e., access to fresh air—required two weeks of good behavior and attendance at poorly advertised group therapy sessions.
And make no mistake about it: the air inside a psych ward is among the stalest and foulest on earth; 90 percent of our prescribed medications came with rancid and constant dog farts as a side effect. I needed that Roof Group, but goddamn—two weeks? Here?
So how to get out of this shit hole? Escape seemed impossible. The windows were strong, and we were at least twenty floors up. I knew I could slide out the first door where the visitors came in, but the two vestibule doors were never unlocked at the same time. Or I could get arrested.
I could get arrested. That’s genius.
If they arrested me, they would have to take me to the precinct to process me. They would mark my commit card MEDICAL ATTENTION, meaning I wouldn’t even have to wait in a cell for twenty-four hours. They’d bring me to arraignments, and I’d call Jonas Jacobson, my friend at work and probably the best trial lawyer in our office. He’d negotiate a favorable disposition and I’d be in and out before the night was over.
Okay, so what crime to commit? Assault in the Third Degree § 120.00(1) seemed easiest. Just hit someone. But who? Raymond’s dad? Too old. Double Nightgown? Too crazy. Nurse? Too likely to cooperate with the prosecution. Can’t do anything violent; that’s stupid. Can’t steal either; there’s nothing to take.
Criminal Mischief in the Fourth Degree § 145.00. A person is guilty of criminal mischief in the fourth degree when, having no right to do so nor any reasonable ground to believe that he or she has such right, he or she: (1) intentionally damages property of another person. That should do it. Don’t even need to go beyond sub (1). But what to damage? Everything is bolted down. The only pieces of furniture are plastic chairs. The TV is locked up and the pay phone is indestructible; plus, I’d probably be killed by the others if I fucked with either of those amenities. If I broke the window to the nurses’ station, that would probably cause more than $1,500 in damage. That’s a D felony. Shit, that’s one to seven.
Six days in, I was still struggling to find a foothold in my new reality; I still hadn’t quite found the game. Maybe the Bird was right: maybe this was psych ward qua psych ward. Maybe the reason she was a terrible actor was that neither she nor I was actually an actor. Maybe those security cams were closed-circuit. All I knew was I needed to get the fuck up out of there.
“How do I get the fuck up out of here?” I asked my favorite Haitian orderly.
“You have to ask to leave, and don’t be nasty, man. You better than that.”
Oh. Right. Of course I had to ask. I was being held involuntarily. A hospital doesn’t have the right to kidnap you. No crime necessary.
“Give me a piece of paper.”
I, Zachary McDermott, am demanding my release from this facility, Bellevue Hospital, on the 30th day of October, 2009. I affirm that I am not a danger to myself or others and that I am being held here against my will in violation of New York State law.
I felt pretty smug after ripping off that little missive. Don’t fuck with me. I’m a lawyer. I also felt stupid because I’d relayed that standard many times to mentally unfit clients who’d been sent to jail from the psych ward: The hospital can place you on a seventy-two-hour hold if they believe you are a danger to yourself or others. They don’t have to prove that you are at that point; they just have to say it. After that, you can request your release and you are entitled to a hearing, but the seventy-two-hour clock doesn’t start until you make the request.
“You know I’m a lawyer?” I told the orderly, hoping he might pass that on to whoever mattered.
“I hear you saying that, but I don’t know. You in here, man.”
My demand for release was added to my file and, I imagined, docketed for discussion at the next staff meeting. But bureaucracy is slow, and no one was in any particular rush to get me out the door. There was still time to kill.
On day seven I walked by the activity room and noticed a fellow patient, a young Mexican guy, holding a pair of electric clippers and apparently giving out haircuts. He caught me staring.
“You want a haircut, man?”
“I guess?”
He sat me down and, without consulting me on what style I’d like, buzzed everything down to a two guard. No more Mohawk.
“You want me to hit your moustache too?”
“Sure.”
He clipped the corners of my handlebar. The result left me looking less sinister, something approximating “normal,” but I was still grasping for meaning. Is this The Producer’s plan? Does he want me to look more normal so we can further the plot and move the setting out of the psych ward? If so, it would make sense to have another patient give me the cut—they could keep rolling and it would make for a funny, if head-scratching, scene. Why else would a patient in a psych ward be allowed to cut another person’s hair?
On the other hand, maybe a Mexican guy cutting the hair of a fellow patient in a psych ward was just a Mexican guy cutting the hair of a fellow patient in a psych ward. Either way, I figured, it was good to hedge my bets. If there was a show and if the show wanted me out of this place, I was taking direction. But if I was really committed to a psych ward, I had to start working my way out. And if this is all a game, why would the Bird be in New York this long? Why does she always look so upset, and why is she so insistent that this is real?
I looked forward to the Bird’s visits, but there were only two hours per day during which she was allowed. Every minute of every visiting opportunity, she was there. Ten minutes early, lined up at the door, ready to go through security—she was there. She didn’t panic. Not in front of me. “What’d you have for lunch? Can you read anything? What are they making you do?” I couldn’t really tell her; I was in a drug-induced fog, unable to distinguish one interaction from the next.
She wanted the staff to know I was not the man they saw. “This is not my son,” she’d say. “This is my son,” and she’d flash photos she’d brought with her of me looking “normal.” To humanize me—to let them know not to discard this one. He is loved. He’s coming back. Help him.
Just before my seventy-two hours ran out, I was called into a tiny office adjacent to the DANGER OF PATIENT ELOPEMENT doors. The Bird sat in on my discharge meeting. Her face said, Don’t screw this up. Don’t be a smart-ass. A young pretty doctor and an older nurse sat opposite us.
“Zachary, we understand you want to be released.”
“I do.”
“We aren’t sure you’re ready.”
“I am. This place is hell.”
“Your mom has agreed to take responsibility for you.”
“Great.”
“We need to discuss your diagnosis.”
“I’m listening.”
“You are bipolar and you had a psychotic break. You are currently on Depakote and Risperdal. Both will help you remain stable and avoid psychosis. It’s imperative that you stay on these drugs. Do you understand that?”
“Question.”
“Go ahead.” Pretty Doctor was mildly annoyed.
“I can’t feel my penis. I tried to masturbate the other day and I was completely numb. I can’t feel anything, and I can’t get hard.”
“Do you want me to leave, Zack?” The Bird didn’t really need to hear all this.
“No, cat’s out of the bag.”
“That’s the Risperdal.” Pre
tty Doctor could not have been more blasé. She wasn’t the least bit concerned about the collateral damage to my penis.
“Okay, but…that doesn’t really work for me.”
“You might not need to take it forever.”
“Okay, but…I might? So that doesn’t work for me.”
“Zack, you had a psychotic break. Honestly, if your mother wasn’t willing to take full responsibility for you, there’s no chance we’d be considering releasing you at this point. You don’t seem to think this is a big deal, and we don’t think you understand what’s happened to you.”
The Bird jumped in. “I am going to take him to Wichita as soon as he is released. He will be under my care, and he will be closely supervised. I have already lined up psychiatric care in Wichita, and I know that he will fully comply with his drug regimen. I will make him.”
Reluctantly, Pretty Doctor handed over some paperwork. “You need to read and sign these forms. Again, I wouldn’t even consider this if not for your mom and the after-care plan she’s set up.”
For the Bird, there was relief in the diagnosis. I wasn’t schizophrenic like Uncle Eddie. There was hope that, if properly medicated, this could be an isolated incident. I furiously signed the stack of documents anywhere I could find a “signature___________ date____________.”
“Okay, done.”
“You didn’t read anything.” Pretty Doctor was now definitely annoyed.
“I can speed-read. Do you want to test me for comprehension?” Warning sign: delusions of grandeur still present.
Gorilla and the Bird Page 5