The chief psychiatrist of the unit, Dr. Albanese, felt quite strongly about these daily community meetings. Everyone was supposed to attend. Staff and patients alike were encouraged to speak up and to get to know one another. The nurses, doctors, therapists, even lowly psychiatric technicians like myself, were to participate and discuss our observations of the unit at the meeting.
I have no real recollection of what I said in those community meetings that first week. But I do know that the white uniform and spongy white shoes actually convinced me that I knew something about mental hospitals and the patients hospitalized in them. I’d always felt, and actually still do, that dressing the part is half the battle. When I took up tennis, I got a fabulous new tennis skirt; when I started to ride horses, nothing but proper English boots would do. In truth, I knew next to nothing about mental illness. I’d studied the classifications at school and I supposed I recognized that the schizophrenics might hear or see hallucinations or that the manic-depressives would have mood alterations, but I knew precious little about how such people might best be approached.
On Friday of that first week, I helped gather the twenty-five residents for the usual community meeting. I found an empty chair next to a very quiet middle-aged woman who had been admitted a few days earlier. So far, Mrs. Gideon rarely responded to any of the staff and usually sat by herself at meals, keeping her head down and eating little. Her complexion was pale and her short brown hair unwashed and combed straight back. Mrs. Gideon didn’t care to get dressed in the mornings, and I knew that another psychiatric technician had the job of getting her out of her robe and into street clothes. This task took upward of an hour.
I decided that I would try to draw her out at the meeting. Soon after the group started, I spoke up. “Mrs. Gideon, is there something you’d like to share with the group today?”
She ignored me, staring down into her coffee cup.
“Mrs. Gideon, we’re interested in getting to know you. Please, tell us something about yourself. Anything at all.” I smiled encouragingly at her.
Again, Mrs. Gideon did not respond.
I decided to let her know how much I was interested in getting to know her, so I got up from my seat and kneeled down right in front of her in the circle.
“Mrs. Gideon”—I touched her arm gently—“we haven’t had a chance to learn anything at all about you. Can you share something about what brings you here?” I thought I asked this in a kind, therapeutic voice.
Mrs. Gideon raised her eyes and stared down into my face. I probably looked like a pesky child to her. She lifted her cup, the coffee still steaming from the percolator always brewing in the dayroom, and flung its contents at me, soaking through the front of my crisp white dress. I jumped up and gasped, the hot coffee running down the uniform I was so proud of, burning my skin underneath.
While I ran off to the staff bathroom to clean up, I saw two male psychiatric technicians take Mrs. Gideon by each arm and walk her toward her room. She clung to the empty cup by its handle, but walked cooperatively along with them.
What was I to make of that hot coffee flung at me? Other staff members tried to console me in the nurses’ bathroom as they helped sponge off my uniform, but I heard little. I was furious and humiliated at the same time.
“Don’t you think she should pay for my uniform if it’s ruined?” I later asked another technician as we were leaving the ward at the end of our shift and riding down together in the elevator. “I mean, don’t you think there should be consequences?”
The other technician, an older black man who had worked at the hospital for many years, shrugged his shoulders and looked bored. “What are you going to do? Send her a bill?”
I stared at him and then down at my coffee-stained dress, so fresh and clean at the beginning of the day. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t think she should get away with this. It sends the wrong message.”
“Try some baking soda when you wash it. It’ll come out. And if it doesn’t, so what? Wear it anyway. Who cares?” He went out the door and I watched him turn and walk toward the subway station on Rush.
The next morning, Saturday, you rang the bell to my parents’ apartment promptly at ten. I was waiting, humming with excitement, the coffee cup incident tamped far down in my brain. I hurried down the stairs to meet you, so that you wouldn’t come up and get involved in one of my mother’s long-winded inquisitions: “What are you studying, Elliot? Tell me about your roommates. Are there many Jewish people at Brown?”
It had been six months since our aborted lovemaking at winter vacation. We hadn’t seen each other since then, but I’d thought of you almost constantly and was full of regrets. You’d jumped right into college life at Brown, changing and growing, absorbing it all, obviously trying the drugs, sex, and rock and roll of the time. I had taken it more slowly at Ann Arbor, where there was less wildness to be had. I was interested and drawn to what little I saw of the developing protest movement there, and by the time I left Michigan, four years later, I was sitting in and demonstrating—but these activities took a little longer to find on the big midwestern campus.
When I opened the door to my apartment building that morning and stepped out into the already bright day, I saw that you were more beautiful than ever. You wore a too-short, raggedy T-shirt, and I could see the muscles of your abdomen and the beginning of the thin line of hair that began at your navel and descended into your well-washed jeans. That dark, thin line fascinated me. I was unable to look away, imagining your nakedness under the jeans, wanting to touch you. Does that shock you, Elliot? Or did you feel the heat coming from me? I forced myself to look up, then stared at your profile as you drove us toward the beach. You looked far more exotic now than you had in high school with your long, dark hair and straight nose and full lips. You looked Italian or Greek, perhaps, and more man than boy. You drove east toward Morse Avenue, the beach we’d gone to every summer of our lives.
The beaches of Lake Michigan would certainly be packed after the sweltering temperatures of the week before, but salvation would be found in the cool water. Thousands might be crowded together on the sand up and down Chicago’s lakeshore, but any time we got too sunbaked, we could run into the refreshing lake, which was always deliciously cold, no matter the temperature of the air. The day promised both relief and pleasure. You and I would have hours and hours together. I desperately wanted you to see that I was no longer the naïve college girl of the previous December. You asked about Michigan. More cautious than you, I had still been meeting people and having my own adventures at Ann Arbor. I told you some of that.
We found a good parking spot, always a good omen. I’d brought cold drinks in a cooler, and we unpacked that and a blanket from the trunk of your father’s latest Oldsmobile. I’d also methodically dripped a few drops of iodine into a bottle of baby oil and shaken it vigorously before putting it into my beach bag. Baby oil and iodine: the recipe we all used back then to toast our skin into flattering tans.
“How was your first week?” I asked as we walked from the grass toward the sand, each holding one handle of the cooler.
“Every bit as horrible as I expected. The smell of raw meat is so disgusting. You have no idea. I’m thinking of becoming a vegetarian. But I don’t want to talk about it. I have a present for you. A wonderful surprise for the day.”
“I hate surprises,” I said. “You know I hate surprises. Just tell me.”
“Something special that I brought back from Providence. I’ll show it to you on the beach. You’ll like it, though, Judith, I promise. Now tell me about your job. About the hospital. It’s great that you’re doing something meaningful this summer.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s as if we’re supposed to know the right things to say, but they keep secret what those things might be. I hate how my voice sounds when I try to talk to the patients. Fake cheerful. I hate how I hover.”
You smiled at me. “Just talk to them normally,” you said. “L
ike you would to anyone. You’ll be great, I know you will.”
I wasn’t ready to tell you about Mrs. Gideon and the coffee yet. Maybe later, when we were lying side by side in the sun. I did want to tell someone.
We threaded our way through the people, blankets already dotting the sand. Then we found a spot just the right distance from the breaking waves and put down the cooler. We faced one another, shaking out our own blanket, watching the turquoise plaid make a parachute as it drifted slowly to the ground. There was no breeze that morning. I took off my shorts and shirt and stood shyly in front of you wearing my red bikini that was on its first outing into the world. Your eyes widened as you looked at me.
“Wow,” you said appreciatively. “This semester has certainly agreed with you.”
Even I, the grand inquisitor and chief torturer when it came to my own body, had to agree that it was looking its best. I’d lost weight that spring and my skin was smooth and firm. I was bursting with energy as we stood together on that beach and I drank in the look in your eyes. Finally, my breasts had come into their own and their fullness now provided balance for my hips. I was healthy and young and unblemished. I would never have used the word beautiful to describe myself, but that June, I was ripe as only a nineteen-year-old girl can be and I reveled in this man’s appreciation.
You reached into the cooler and took out two grape sodas. The soda, always our favorite, was bottled right in Chicago, in a factory that was visible from the expressway near our houses. We both said we missed it while we’d been away. The day was so familiar: the crowded beach, the feel of the thick Chicago summer air, the sweating, cold bottles we held in our hands while we looked out at the huge expanse of water.
“Remember what Leonard used to say when we were at camp?” you asked.
“Don’t remind me of Leonard,” I said. “That man was nuts.”
“No, really, sometimes he said some good things. He said that young people like to look at the lake because its endlessness makes them feel less guilty. The bigness and the constant waves makes you put things in perspective.” Then you reached into your jeans’ pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Carefully, you peeled a small square of cellophane off the paper and handed it to me.
“Put it on your tongue and let it dissolve.”
“What’ll happen?” I asked.
“It’s an experience I can’t really describe. Lots of old crap in your brain disappears and you see things in a different light. When I tried it, that’s what happened. I thought about my parents and how it was in my house growing up. But I saw them in a new way, as real people. I saw how they had suffered and I forgave them. Honestly, I wouldn’t give you anything that wasn’t good stuff.” You put your other hand on my shoulder and smiled, then continued. “At school, when I first tried it, I thought about how I wanted to share this with you. At the lake. At our beach. We’ve shared so much. Last summer and before that. You saw me at my lowest back then and you were always there. I wanted to do this with you, Rocket. More than anyone I could think of.”
I stared down at what you had put in my palm. It was invisible, not even a pill to swallow. Ingesting something invisible seemed harmless. We were both kneeling on the scratchy turquoise blanket, surrounded by people everywhere. I took the tab of cellophane and placed it on my tongue and we locked eyes while I waited for it to dissolve. You smiled at me, a sweet and loving smile. Did I want to show you that I trusted you? Sure, that was part of it. But more than that, I wanted you to see that I was not the same girl of the previous December. You needed to know that I now took risks, no longer someone who held back.
We sat together on the sand, your arm protectively around me, watching the water, and the people jumping over and then diving into the slow, languorous waves of Lake Michigan. I listened to fragments of conversation around us—mothers warning their children to be careful, couples who exchanged tender words, others arguing. At the beach, no one bothers to whisper or even to lower their voices; the conversations swirled around us in all directions. I reached into my bag for the sticky baby oil, tinged reddish brown with iodine. You took the bottle from my hands and unscrewed the top. Without saying a word, you began to rub the oil into my skin, first the shoulders and then into the shoulder blades, reaching under the tie of my bathing suit with your fingers. You rubbed the oil in tenderly and thoroughly. I’d never felt so close to you or so in love with you. My back felt as if it had no bones at all in it, and I arched underneath your fingers and allowed myself to sway gently with your hands as they rubbed oil into my skin. I inhaled deeply, smelling the baby oil and iodine. Even today, I can close my eyes and still smell that sweet, clean smell.
I felt your fingers as they went lower, slowly caressing the small of my back. But then, through my lovesick haze, I slowly became aware that something was strangely different. The sounds all around us, the conversations of families and couples, the gentle droning of the waves lapping up and down the beach, the music from the transistor radios—all were drowned out by an insistent buzzing. At first, this buzzing was merely annoying, something you wanted to swat away like a fly, then it became louder.
I looked up. Above me was a propeller airplane. Shockingly, it was dropping lower and lower to the ground, the roar overhead getting alarmingly close. As I cupped my hands over my eyes to shield them from the sun, I stared at the plane and then gasped. Things were being dropped from the plane. Red and purple and orange bits rained down on us. As they dropped, they looked like streaks of fire, maybe even bombs.
You remember the times we were in. Beneath all of our calm in the early sixties, the daily going about our business, there was also awareness of the war going on across the world in Southeast Asia. The boys of our neighborhood, the boys you and I knew, were all safely ensconced in school. But no one on a college campus anywhere in America could ignore Viet Nam. On the evening news, sanitized as it was, dreadful scenes of horror and bombing were aired. Buddhist monks were immolating themselves. I hadn’t yet joined any organized peace movement, but I know it was there for me, under the surface, the sorrow and fear of the war was going on across the world and the knowledge that death was occurring that very moment, for both the unlucky soldiers and villagers.
And, in the drug-induced emotions that were beginning to attack the synapses of my brain, the plane overhead was dropping something terrible. Something frightening. Soon screams erupted on the beach. People began to run, seemingly all in one direction, away from the water, and as they ran, there was wild shrieking and shouting. I hunkered down onto the blanket and put my hands over my head. The people running across the beach tried to go around me, but some stepped very close to my head, running across our turquoise blanket. As I huddled closer and closer to the ground, flattening myself on the scratchy wool, all I could see were dozens of feet—large, small—all running through the sand.
Finally, the drone of the airplane got fainter. It began to climb from its perilously low altitude, and disappeared into the cloudless blue sky. I cautiously lifted my head and, as I looked around, saw that the beach was littered with the red, orange, pink, fiery things.
I was crying uncontrollably. “Elliot, stop, stop them.” I was sobbing. “Make it stop!” My nose was running, the mascara running into my eyes, blinding and burning me.
“Judith, it’s okay,” you said. “You’re okay, Rocket. Talk to me.”
I could not speak; I could not stop shaking.
You sat next to me and held me tenderly, whispering comforting words. But I could not be comforted. We had been bombed. I shut my eyes and didn’t want to look around, afraid that I’d see the bodies and body parts that were undoubtedly strewn on the beach.
How many were dead? I wondered. How had we been spared?
Eventually, as I realized that the beach was resuming its normal sounds, I stopped weeping. People around us were talking again, music was coming from transistor radios, and I could even hear the lapping of waves once more.
“What was it?” I
asked, when I finally lifted my head and looked into your face.
“Look,” you said gently. “They were dropping these on the beach.” You held a pair of bright orange underpants up to my face. I touched them. Tiny underpants. They were made of paper, each with a thin strip of elastic around the legs and waist. The paper looked like the stuff doctor’s masks were made of, sturdy paper, but disposable.
“You’re very high,” you said. “It was the acid making you see crazy stuff.” Then you reached behind me and picked up two more pairs of underpants, one yellow, a bit bigger than the first, and one shocking pink, a larger size still.
“See,” you said. “Underpants. Ladies underpants. They were dropping them from an airplane as a promotion. Look over there.” You pointed to our left. “They’re still filming. I think it’s a commercial for television.”
“Why were people running? Why were they screaming?” I asked.
“They were running to get the paper pants. You know how people are when there’s free stuff. They go nuts. The camera was filming them as they ran to get the paper underpants.”
And there, where you pointed, were two men behind huge movie cameras. They aimed their cameras at people who were doing silly things with the underpants: pulling them on over their bathing suits, wriggling their hips, one man even tugging a pair down over his head like a hat.
I stared at the paper pants you held in your hands, touching them wondrously. “I thought we were being attacked. I thought the planes were dropping bombs.”
“Yeah, I know. You were having a really bad trip. I’m so sorry. You’re going to be all right, though. Drink some pop,” you said. “Or some water. You need liquid.”
“No,” I said. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.” I took the paper underpants away from Elliot, but as quickly as I’d begun to cry, I started to laugh. I couldn’t stop laughing. I rolled around the sand and gasped and shrieked for what seemed like hours. My stomach hurt from laughing. I clutched the bare skin of my abdomen and my jaw felt as if it was going to slip out of joint. But I could not stop laughing.
Love Is a Rebellious Bird Page 8