Against the Ruins

by Linda Lightsey Rice

  William was resting quietly when the police car arrived, followed by the white van from the state hospital. I stand on the sidewalk while Dr. Dumaine speaks to the hospital attendants—I know I’m cold in the December air but I can’t feel such things anymore, I’ve lost any sense of being in the world. I keep picturing you as I left you in that schoolyard. How can this be what my life has become—I am forcing my husband to go to a place where it’s said that people inside, locked up like animals, pray to die. I wish I could go instead. I wish I could die today.

  The attendants and Dr. Dumaine head into the house. I’m trailing like I’m not sure where I am—I hear myself talking to the doctor but it’s not my voice anymore. He’s telling me what will happen after William gets to Bull Street, about some place called “intake.” I should not come there today, I should wait for his call.

  He holds out a document. “You do have to sign it.”

  I stare at the form, sign it. But that can’t be my signature.

  Then we’re in the bedroom. William sees the men in white and screams, “No, no, no—I won’t I know I’m not going—”

  He tries to get up. “You bastards—she can’t do this—she’s stupid—”

  The attendants head toward him with the stretcher. I scream, “Please don’t hurt him—”

  William is still yelling. The doctor is holding him, saying, “We’re just going to get you a little help, you won’t be there long, do you understand me?”

  William puts up a hand to shield himself.

  “He’s a veteran,” the doctor says to the policeman. “Maybe the uniform is scaring him. Can you wait outside?”

  “I’ll stay in the other room,” the officer says. “But I have to make sure no one gets hurt.”

  Oh, Lyra—I know you came home early, how much did you see?

  William breaks free of the doctor’s grasp, rears up and scrambles out of bed, heading for your bedroom. Dr. Dumaine jerks him back by his shirt and it rips; the two men in white grab William and while he wriggles and screams, hurling profanity at me, the men trap him in a straightjacket and tie it in the back.

  William begins to cry, I’m leaning over him crying too, murmuring, “Darling, I love you, this is only for a little while so you can get better, and I’ll be there as soon as I can and it’ll be all right, you’ll see, you’ll get some rest and the doctors will make you well, and I’ll be there to see you every morning and every evening and—”

  William begs, “Please, please, please.”

  I turn to the doctor and scream—“I can’t do this!”

  William cries harder as they carry him toward the living-room door. I’m following the doctor and imploring the orderlies to be careful. When we get outside, William is suddenly quiet. He stares at the sky as though frozen. Across the street neighbors have gathered to stare; I see Rosa drag Johnny inside their house. Dr. Dumaine and I stand on either side as the stretcher goes into the rear of the van. The van driver speaks to the policeman, the officer gets in his gray car, and the white station wagon pulls away.

  The people across the street begin to go home. I stagger to our front steps. Uta, watching from her porch, rushes to our house.

  Chapter Eleven

  Our lives are over, I think as Uta walks me onto our screen porch.

  I make Uta go home and stumble through our hallway and back to the bedroom. I collapse in tears onto sheets stained with dried blood, lay my cheek on the pillow still indented by William’s head. I try to breathe back into being the husband I loved those warm nights in Summerville. But I can’t make him reappear. He’s gone.

  I want a mother to tell me what to do. To tell me I did the right thing. To say it will be all right.

  Suddenly I hear you—you’re on the back steps, crying. Please let her not have seen much.

  I pull myself up, brush my tears away, rush through the back door and take you in my arms. You feel unnaturally small and fragile, a child with a bluebird’s bones. I rock you and pray that neither of us will break.

  The South Carolina State Hospital ambulances did not pass through the wrought-iron gates of the front entrance, did not meander down the magnolia-studded main drive. They didn’t pass the stately redbrick Mills Building, home of the original South Carolina Lunatic Asylum. Your father didn’t see its lovely curved staircases and white columns that day, although later he did tell me the building’s semicircular design was to allow the sun to move across patient rooms from east to west—even in the early 1800s, William explained, light was considered restorative to the mentally ill. The Mills Building was innovative: fireproof ceilings, central heating, one of America’s first roof gardens. Its Doric temple portico and Palladian windows still exude graciousness.

  Ambulances entered the hospital through the twelve-foot-high back gate topped with barbed wire, which sat beside the dilapidated brick morgue.

  The state hospital’s past was as turbulent as Elmwood Park’s—disturbing history shadowed us at every turn. When its doors opened in 1828, few patients turned up: people associated a “home” for the mad with poorhouses and prisons. Insanity was dishonorable, so sending a relative to a public madhouse was an admission of family shame. During the Moral Treatment era, the asylum’s image improved. Tourists were encouraged to visit, to admire the elegant building, to see that the mad were not “beasts.” But visitors often taunted the patients or threw tobacco to provoke them into fighting each other for it. The hospital did not fill up until the Civil War, just as the Confederacy commandeered its grounds to imprison Union officers. During the burning of Columbia, when locals thronged through its gates, the asylum really was a refuge. Most old Columbia families have one or two ancestors who spent a night in the madhouse, although you rarely hear anyone bragging about it.

  The asylum survived the Civil War, deteriorating severely during Reconstruction, when South Carolina became one of the poorest states in America. It took thirty years—hospital administrators called in Dorothy Dix to appeal to a stingy legislature—to improve overcrowding by completing the Babcock Building. But hundreds of freed slaves and newly impoverished whites, with nowhere else to go, inundated the new building, whose bricks were made by convicts to save money. Every year thirty percent of the patients died, usually from tuberculosis or poor sanitation. Local authorities sent their epileptics, alcoholics, mentally handicapped, and indigent to the asylum, and overcrowding led to more mechanical restraints. Sometimes the treatment itself killed: draining someone of forty ounces of blood to “calm” him, for example. There was barely enough food. A troublesome patient might be left in pitch-black solitary confinement for months.

  This background I got—many months later—from your father.

  New buildings in the early twentieth century helped alleviate the hospital’s problems. But not for long. When William arrived there, its 6,000 patients lived in facilities intended for 4,500. Faith in curing the insane had been replaced by custodial warehousing. The wards were filled with old people no one wanted, with “hysterical” women committed by husbands seeking control of joint property, with criminals the jails didn’t have room for. The hospital complex was a small town made into an island by locked gates and brick walls and barbed wire, a city-state of two hundred acres and fifty buildings constructed over a hundred years.

  Many patients regularly tried to scale the ten-foot-high walls. Getting caught got you stripped and locked in solitary, herded to the bathroom—branded by your nakedness—past the jeering of other patients. It got no lower than this, being ridiculed by those ridiculed by the world.

  When the stoplight turned green, instead of going left or right as everyone did at Bull and Elmwood streets, I drove across the intersection. A uniformed man stepped out of the guardhouse and asked my business.

  “I’m to see a social worker—at the Williams Building—let me see, I have her name somewhere. I can’t se
em to find anything today—” I flipped through papers on the seat beside me. “I know I have her name—”

  “Ma’am, are you a relative of a patient?”

  I stared at him as though I wasn’t sure. But of course, I was. I had a loved one in the mental hospital, didn’t I?

  I gave him William’s name. William’s good name. Was that pity in the guard’s eyes? He stepped away to check a big book—were there that many names? The Book of the Damned?

  Stop that.

  He gave me directions, and as I drove down the tree-lined boulevard I thought of Max Wells—dear Max, he knew something was wrong with William. I passed the Babcock Building, a massive brick Renaissance structure with long four-story arms extending from a center section. I braked. Hundreds upon hundreds of large windows with small glass panes, many broken or chipped, each covered by rusted iron bars. Bars over dirty windows, more bars, peeling paint, an unkempt building reeking of despair.

  I’ve put my husband in prison.

  It took me a few moments to start off again. In the modern admissions building, a social worker introduced herself as Mrs. Ravenel. She was thin and angular, black hair in a French twist, green eyes—maybe in her late forties. She led me into a small office.

  “Please sit down, Mrs. Copeland. I’ll be your primary contact at the hospital during your husband’s stay. It’s best not to contact the doctors—we have a huge number of patients and if relatives try to speak with the doctors, it keeps them from their work of caring for the sick.”

  “How will I know how my husband is doing?”

  “You call me. Anytime.” She leaned across the metal desk, her voice gentle. “I’m sorry, but you can’t see your husband yet. It’s hospital policy that the patient not see any relatives for the first ten days. During that time we’re trying to determine the best course of treatment. It takes thirty days to completely evaluate a patient’s illness.”

  “He has to stay for thirty days?” I sat back, felt around for the wooden spindles of my chair. Lately I couldn’t feel anything well—chairs, steering wheels, children.

  She handed me a pamphlet. “This will explain everything. What he can have in his room. And you’ll want to deposit money on account for him. He’s not allowed to have cash but he can draw on whatever you provide to buy things at the canteen, cigarettes or soda pop or a magazine. You can also bring him writing paper, a few books—no knives, matches, or any sharp objects. No razor. No ties or belts.” She pointed at the pamphlet. “This also lists visiting hours. We discourage phone calls to a patient, it’s not practical.”

  “What’s happening to William now? I feel terrible that I can’t see him.” Won’t he think I’ve abandoned him?

  “He’s on the top floor of Babcock—the ventilation from the dome is best there. That’s a—serious ward. As he improves, he’ll be moved to a lower floor. He’s closely observed every day, given a shot if he’s agitated. Or water immersion.”

  William in that terrible building. What did he think when he looked out his window and saw iron bars? “Is he still tied down?”

  “Restraints are usually not needed on a regular basis. There are new drugs called phenothiazines—I can barely spell it. Miracle drugs, really, at calming patients down. I wanted to ask you about William’s background. Has he been under a strain lately? Do you know anything that might have precipitated his psychosis?”

  Undoubtedly I looked confused; psychosis wasn’t a word often bandied about in those days, at least not in my world.

  “I’m speaking of when a patient loses touch with reality. Some hear voices, imagine they see things that aren’t there. It’s common in schizophrenia.”

  “William doesn’t have schizophrenia,” I said. “He’s a very smart man.”

  Alicia Ravenel nodded. “I’m sure he is. But I have to be honest—without drugs, he’s very agitated. That’s often initially true in an involuntarily committed patient. If you can think of anything that’s been disturbing him lately, it could help us help him.”

  “He has seemed a little—well, not himself for the past few months. He’s been doing eccentric things, sometimes it’s like he’s become a different person.”

  “That’s not uncommon. Often a mentally ill person can be completely different when the illness worsens. And that confuses those around him—there’s nothing you can see as in most physical illnesses. Don’t blame yourself for not realizing what was happening.”

  She stood up. “If there’s anything I can do for you, please call me.”

  I thanked her. But she’d be no help with what I feared most—after this, will my husband still love me?

  I always prided myself on my knowledge of language. I marked agreement errors in newspapers, corrected television news anchors out loud. Words made sense of life: literature converted the universe into pictures that made it mean something. Language helped us master our fears, celebrate our joys. But suddenly I was assaulted by enemy words: Psychosis. Catatonia. Schizophrenia. Phenothiazines. Mental illness. I hated them—they meant nothing I wanted to picture.

  I drive out of the hospital grounds and park in front of Laidlaw. This last school day before Christmas break had ended at noon. I stare at the empty schoolyard, remaining fall leaves scattered here and there, everything still and silent. In my room I find the chaos left behind by a substitute. I put the dictionaries in the bookcase, pick up the scraps of paper the new janitor never sees. Midday light filters through the blinds, leaves thin stripes across the dusty blackboard. How happy I’ve been in this room. On the blackboard I write, in a stiff forced hand: “Welcome to a New Year.” It will be the first thing students see in January.

  I grab a dirty eraser and obliterate the words, chalk dust flying. After a moment I print the same words again and stand back and stare at them.

  He will get well. Just have faith.

  I climb the stone stairs to the second floor, walk past silent lockers and the closed library door. Footsteps in a vacant school building echo like gunshots. Swatting at the chalk dust on my dress, I let myself into the main office and walk over to the closed door labeled “Principal” and knock.

  Ed Hindeman greets me warmly. “Do sit down, Louise. I’m so sorry to hear your husband is ill.”

  I remain standing. “Mr. Hindeman—Ed—I want to apologize for missing these last days before Christmas. I wouldn’t have done it if there’d been any other way.”

  “I know you wouldn’t. How’s your husband?”

  I tell Ed that William is in “the hospital,” and he says, “I’m sorry to hear that. Where is he? Baptist is a very good hospital, but so is Presbyterian.”

  What do I say? What will he think of William? I take a deep breath. “He’s in—the state hospital.”

  Did he flinch?

  He comes over to me. “Tell me what I can do.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d say something to the other teachers—so they won’t ask me. I just can’t talk about it.”

  He walks me to the door. “They do some very good things over there—don’t listen to what people say. I know who should be told and who shouldn’t. I’ll take care of it.”

  I gaze at Ed. How stupid of me—of course it wouldn’t be wise to tell everyone. I wish him a good holiday, say that I’m lucky to be working for such a fine principal. He looks embarrassed. He accompanies me to the outside door and stands watching as I head for the staircase.

  I made sure to get home before you. When I heard the porch door open, I walked through the dining room to find you hesitating in the front doorway. I picked you up, spilling your Christmas drawings onto the floor, and planted a ferocious kiss on your right cheek.

  “How’s my perfect little girl?”

  You gazed over my shoulder. “Is my daddy here?”

  I asked about the school Christmas program, said I was s
orry I couldn’t come but I went to see about Daddy, he was doing just fine, he would have to stay in the hospital a little while to get well and then he’d be home and we’d all be together again. You said I’d forgotten to put on my lipstick. I ignored this and blathered on, fooling no one, certainly not you, about getting a Christmas tree and how we’d decorate it and make some nice things to take to Daddy.

  “Does my daddy still have on the shirt with no arms?”

  “Your daddy’s fine, Lyra. I need to run an errand and you’ll have to stay in the car, but afterward we’ll go to Krispy Kreme, how about that?”

  Soon we’re driving toward the east side of Columbia. We pass Doug’s Drive-In, where women in white boots bring hamburgers to the cars, and I ask if you remember going there one Saturday. You say you don’t.

  The Columbia Seminary, a branch of a Virginia divinity school, sits on a slight rise at the edge of the city. As I get out of the car, I recall the day William first registered, when he walked me around the campus of stone buildings and old trees—magnolias here too—and I took his arm and imagined sitting in some nice church listening to my husband at the pulpit.

  That seems like a hundred years ago.

  I head toward the administration office located in a Gothic stone palace with an arched carriage ramp, white cupola, and notched roofline. It feels like pictures of ancient European fortresses. In the registrar’s office I ask to see William’s advisor. A sixtyish silver-headed man in a dark gray suit appears and ushers me into his office. Professor Charles Estes, a specialist in the Old Testament, is so tall he seems awkward—he must have to duck through most doorways. He invites me to sit down as he settles into a black leather armchair behind a mahogany desk; on the wall facing me are oil portraits of somber seminary presidents in church vestments.