The Bird's Nest

by Shirley Jackson

  I had never found Bess so trying as on that afternoon; I attempted again and again to drive her away, and she only stayed on like an unwelcome guest, greeting my questions with blank stares or foolish answers, and relating every subject brought forward to her tiresome money. Again and again I tried to bring her to an understanding of the true state of her affairs, again and again I tried to explain to her that she was no more than one-quarter of an individual, that there were three others who shared her life and her person, and must be granted a share in the consciousness of Miss R., but each time I reached a point of final definition, where it seemed that surely this time she must comprehend, she turned aside from me and went back to her unending talk of money; it veritably seemed that she would willingly sacrifice three-quarters of her conscious life, if she might only be allowed to hold onto four-quarters of her money. I had put a pencil close by her hand, but sulky Betsy refused to write, and at last I said in disgust, “Miss R., this cannot continue. I am unable to go on today; we shall take up this conversation at another time, after I have spoken to your aunt.”

  “What are you going to speak to my aunt about?” Bess demanded with suspicion.

  “I must give her a report on your present condition,” I said thoughtlessly.

  “What will you tell her?” Bess spoke imperatively, and I thought with anxiety; she leaned forward and asked again, “What will you tell her?”

  “Merely my own opinions with regard to your mental health,” I said; now, indeed, her hand was writing, and I thought more of that than of Bess; this time she caught my glance and looked also down at her hand; “I have done this before,” she whispered, gazing in horror at her writing hand, “my hand is moving by itself.” She seemed horrified and filled with loathing for her own hand, and yet fascinated, for she made no attempt to lift her hand from the page, but leaned forward to see what was written. A ghostly kind of conversation then commenced, with Bess, speaking in a kind of muted sick voice, communicating with her own right hand. The hand had written: fool fool fool do not let him go he does not love you

  Bess: (speaking) Who? Who does not love me?

  Hand: (it was clearly Betsy, and so I shall call it) robin does not love you or coffee or tea or girls love me

  Bess: What do you want? Why are you writing? (to me) I can’t even feel it; it goes right on moving and I can’t make it stop.

  Doctor Wright: (to Betsy) Indeed, there has been wickedness done.

  Betsy: fiddle-dee-dee.

  Bess: This is how my hand cut me with the knife, then.

  Betsy: cut your head off next time ha ha dear bumblebess

  Doctor Wright: Betsy, I think I shall forgive you for your impertinence to me, but will you fare so easily with your aunt?

  Betsy: aunties mad and im glad

  Bess: Her aunt? Does she mean Aunt Morgen?

  Betsy: Go marry the mouse you filthy bess

  Doctor Wright: (at something of a loss) Here is an honor I had not expected. Bess, this is Betsy; I thought you two had already met.

  Bess: This is some kind of a joke, I suppose. Or else you are trying to frighten me, Doctor, and I promise you that I am not going to think better of you for these cruel tricks. You seem to think that all you have to do is say “Betsy” and I’ll come running to you for help; I wish I could make you understand that this is not at all the way to deal with me. I am willing to be reasonable and helpful, but I won’t have you thinking I’m a fool.

  Betsy: foul dirty thing

  Bess: I hope, Doctor, that you won’t think I am as vulgar as this writing; I assure you that—

  Doctor Wright: I have known Betsy for a long time.

  Betsy: old man knows well i am not tame bess will know someday bess darling go away leave go away live somewhere else never come back find someone richer

  Bess: I thought that sooner or later we would come around to talking of money. Just because I will be very rich, everyone thinks they can play tricks on me to get money.

  Betsy: poor bess no more money do not let him go

  Bess: Who?

  Betsy: old doctor money-taker tell aunt m

  Doctor Wright: Betsy, I will not endure any more mischief from you, remember.

  Betsy: better hide nestegg went together to find

  Bess: (lifting her hand violently from the page, and speaking to me) This is more than I can stand, my own fingers holding a pencil and speaking to me so rudely and then you play tricks and try to take away my money and Aunt Morgen is angry, and all I want is to be left alone and not bothered and I would be so happy!

  Doctor Wright: I am not able, seemingly, to persuade you of my good intentions; there is nothing more I can do.

  Bess: (writing again) My hand won’t stay still—Doctor, can you make it stop?

  Betsy: all went together to find a nestegg elizabeth beth betsy and bess

  Doctor Wright: Betsy, if you will not come yourself, will you send Elizabeth?

  Betsy: fiddle-dee-dee

  “I think I have overstayed my time, Doctor Wright,” Elizabeth said, rising and pulling on her glove. “My aunt will wonder why I am late.”

  “Will she worry?” I asked, rising.

  “No, no,” said Elizabeth, “she knows where I am, of course. But she doesn’t like waiting dinner.”

  “Goodbye, then, until day after tomorrow,” I said.

  She stopped in the doorway and looked at me over her shoulder. “Fiddle-dee-dee,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

  • • •

  I have in my notes the record of the preceding conversation between Betsy and Bess; I naturally preserved Betsy’s scrawl, and noted down Bess’ remarks in my book. This odd performance was repeated only once, to my knowledge, and at Bess’ insistence, on the occasion of Miss R.’s next visit to my office. Betsy had again refused to put in an appearance, and had showed no sign of her presence; I had spoken briefly to Elizabeth and even more briefly to Beth, who was still downcast, and who had broken off in the middle of a sentence to turn abruptly into Bess, who was seemingly so anxious to talk to me that she could not observe even fundamental good manners, but must interrupt her sister to catch my attention. She had been thinking, she informed me earnestly, and had concluded that it was unjust to suspect me of trickery. (She had been very nervous since her mother died three weeks before.) She had, however, been vastly entertained by my cleverness in causing her hand to write of itself, and hoped that I would show it to her again. Could I, did I think? Would I be so kind?

  Betsy’s writing seemed to have a kind of horrid fascination for her, the kind of delight so many of us experience when told of our babblings when asleep, or the half-wary excitement of having one’s fortune told; I suppose there is a kind of stimulation in a stranger’s catching one off guard, as it were; I have felt it myself. At any rate, Miss Bess was charmed with the conversation of her own right hand, and eager to test it again. From the nervousness which possessed her I think that she half-hoped, too, to catch Betsy and Doctor Wright in some kind of a conspiracy against her, so that she might triumphantly reveal a plot against herself and her fortune and emerge victorious from our insidious conniving; in this last, I fear, she was sadly disappointed.

  We sat ourselves down, then, Bess with the pencil in her right hand (grasped now, I noted, in the clumsy fashion of one who habitually uses her left, and not at all in the easy manner in which Betsy wrote) and a larger pad of paper provided for the purpose; I with my notebook on the shelf below my desk, quite out of Bess’ view, since I did not put it past her to suspect me of a kind of written ventriloquism. Then, after waiting for some few minutes, and Bess watching her hand avidly, and I wondering to myself at her eagerness, and Betsy perhaps off chasing butterflies, for all the writing that was being done, finally Bess leaned a little forward and spoke tensely to her hand.

  “Now,” she said, “you wouldn’t do it
at home because you were afraid. And I wasn’t afraid, so I came here and I’m sitting here waiting, and if you’re anything at all, show yourself, or I’ll laugh myself sick thinking how silly you are.”

  It seemed to me that this was no way to summon Betsy, who was not, in my experience, intimidated by strong words, so I said quietly, “Perhaps if you spoke more civilly, and called her by name, she might come.”

  “She isn’t worth it,” Bess said with contempt. “All I want is to prove she doesn’t exist, and I don’t need to worry anymore. It’s nothing—” she turned the hand holding the pencil over in a gesture of mockery, “nothing but my imagination. And now are you convinced, Doctor?”

  “Betsy,” I said, half-humorously, “now you must defend me.”

  Immediately her hand turned, and wrote on the page, and I felt an unworthy satisfaction in the thought that Betsy had resisted all challenges until I asked her support. All the hand wrote at first, however, was “Doctor, doctor”

  Bess: (ironically) She seems to prefer you, Doctor Wright; perhaps you would rather hold the pencil?

  Betsy: doctor open my eyes

  Bess: Betsy darling—if you will not be offended at my speaking familiarly to you?

  Betsy: hateful

  Bess: Now, that is rude, and I am being so polite. I don’t even believe that you exist, and yet I am far too polite to say so; I am even calling you Betsy to please you and your dear doctor.

  Betsy: bumblebess

  Bess: I don’t think that’s very polite, either, and I think you and Doctor Wright should know that it’s much better to be polite to me.

  Betsy: polite to a pig

  Bess: That’s much better; at least you show that you can understand what I’m saying. Now listen to this: I am so displeased at your manners that I am quite seriously planning to get rid of you for good, You and (to me) your doctor.

  Doctor Wright: (without anger) You have tried before, I think.

  Bess: But this time little Betsy knows I will manage. Poor Betsy is going to be badly hurt if she troubles me again.

  Betsy: cut your head off

  Bess: But you can’t, can you? You tried again with the knife and I was too quick for you, wasn’t I? I was watching for you, wasn’t I?

  Betsy: sleep

  Bess: No, indeed; you aren’t strong enough now. I think you are hardly able to keep writing from weakness.

  Betsy: fiddle-dee-dee

  Bess: I think I hurt you, when I caught you in the hotel, and I think you’ve been afraid of me ever since because I was stronger and I brought you back from your little escapade; Betsy darling, shall I tell Doctor Wright where you were going and what you were looking for?

  Betsy: (suddenly stilled; then) no one knows

  Bess: I know, darling; you’ve forgotten that pleasant doctor who treated you to lunch—shall I tell you what he told me?

  Betsy: no

  Bess: (mocking) You must have told him all sorts of things, Betsy darling.

  Betsy: if you tell i will tell too

  Bess: And you know how they are all going to laugh at you, when I tell them, Doctor Wright and Aunt Morgen and that nice doctor in New York, that you went wandering and whining all over the city looking for your—

  Betsy: now i will tell what you and aunt morgen did and when she came in the door you went to her and said is this true what aunt morgen said and when she looked at you and smiled a little because she was drunk you took your hands—

  At this point Bess raised her left hand and dashed the pencil from her right hand, in a gesture of such violence that I was shocked, and half-rose to expostulate.

  “This is frightful,” she said, her voice still shaking with anger. “That I should have to sit here and read the ravings of a maniac . . .”

  “Then you concede that it is Betsy?” I asked her dryly.

  “Indeed not. It is . . .” She thought deeply. “Hypnotism,” she said at last.

  “Remarkable,” I said. “You make me out an amazing performer.”

  She reached down slowly and picked up the pencil and put it again into her right hand. Then she said slowly and with venom, “Goodbye, Betsy darling. Say goodbye like a nice girl and I won’t hurt you any more.”

  The pencil wrote, laboriously, “doctor open eyes”

  “Betsy,” I said sharply, “you may open your eyes.”

  She took a deep breath and said with relief, “I feel sometimes like I would like to start eating at her from the inside and eat away at her until she was nothing but a shell and then I would crack her in half and throw her away. And then I would take the little pieces and—”

  “She is not an attractive girl,” I conceded with a sigh. “What were you going to write, when she struck you?”

  “Nothing.” Betsy spoke more quietly than usual, and when I looked at her I could see that she was suffering from this unending battle; more than either Elizabeth or Beth she was dejected, and weaker. She saw my glance, and perhaps read a kind of sympathy into it, for she said, “It’s harder now for me to come out, almost as hard as it was at first with Lizzie.”

  I wondered if Betsy was not perhaps ready to give up, and I said, “Elizabeth and Beth cannot fight her.”

  Betsy grinned wanly. “I used to want you on my side,” she said. “I always told you she would be worse than I was.”

  “Actually,” I said frankly, “she is infinitely worse.”

  “I used to know everything,” Betsy said wistfully. “All that Lizzie did and thought and said and dreamed and everything. Now I come out sometimes when she lets go for a minute, and it’s harder every time, and harder to stay out, with her pushing at me. Funny,” she went on, “if I went back under now, after all I’ve tried.”

  “You are none of you going to be ‘under,’ as you call it. When Elizabeth R. is herself again, you will all be part of her.”

  “Like raisins in a pudding,” Betsy said.

  “You might just tell me,” I suggested, “why you are trying to keep me from your aunt.”

  “I’m not sure,” Betsy said, and I think she was telling the truth. “I think it’s because I know something’s going to happen and I’m afraid of Aunt Morgen.”

  “What could be going to happen?” I asked cautiously, but Betsy only stretched and made a face at me.

  “Fiddle-dee-dee,” she said. “Let her walk home; I’m too lazy.”

  Bess, sitting in the chair, apparently perceived that she was putting on her gloves, for she rose to go. “I think,” she said, as though nothing at all had happened since she bade goodbye to Betsy, “that I shall not care, Doctor, to try your game again. I am satisfied that it is no more than hypnotism, or a trick like spiritualism.”

  Nothing could be more calculated to infuriate me, but I said with restraint, “I am no more anxious to continue than you are, Miss R.”

  “Good afternoon, then,” she said.

  It was clear to me from her voice and actions that she knew nothing of Betsy’s brief visit, and I was greatly relieved to think that, even now, Betsy could still come without Bess’ knowledge. I bade her goodbye with some cheerfulness, and took up the telephone to call Miss Jones. I knew that her niece could not reach home, walking, for a good twenty minutes, and I felt that it was no longer possible for me to attempt dealing with my four Miss R.’s without Miss Jones’ active and knowledgeable help. If it meant some sacrifice of dignity on my part, that was, I told myself sternly, a minor hazard of my profession, and I kept my voice extremely businesslike, asking Miss Jones only for the privilege of an appointment with her, in order to “discuss the illness of her niece,” and adding that, if possible, I should like our conversation to be unattended by Miss R., and, in fact, kept secret from her, since I had medical details to communicate which were best kept, at present, from Miss R.’s hearing. Miss Jones, as icy and formal as I myself, readily
agreed to grant me an audience on the following evening, but preferred not to come to my office; would I consent to attend her at home, since her niece would be hearing a concert with friends.

  I should point out, I think, that Miss R. was at this time so much quieter than she had been at various previous times—Bess and Betsy having apparently established a kind of equilibrium in their warfare, and both believing that any overt hostile act might endanger the perpetrator more than the victim—that it was felt by Miss Jones, and approved by me when consulted by Elizabeth, that Miss R. might with safety be allowed into public under supervision. As I have pointed out before, no one, without using actual restraint, had much control over her actions generally, and she came and went largely as she pleased when alone. To public functions such as concerts, where she would certainly be seen by people who had known her since childhood, and her slightest abnormality remarked, she went only when accompanied by her aunt, or by trusted old friends. She did not leave her home often, except for visits to my office, and when she went out alone it was always by day, and for never longer than an hour or so; I was confident that, operating under the dangerously poised balance of power between Betsy and Bess, so delicate that neither dared jolt the other unduly, she had heretofore kept her actions under strict control, but I made a point of discovering from Betsy where Miss R.’s journeying had taken her. There was, I thought, no longer any need to fear Betsy’s eloping again, with the powerful opposition she must meet from Bess in any such attempt, and when it began to be apparent that Betsy was going to need all her strength to cope with Bess, and so must give up her unkind practical jokes upon Elizabeth and Beth, there was not even any danger of her repeating her favorite prank—taking them too far away to get home, and abandoning them. She spent much time walking, and even more time, when Bess was dominant, in going from one bank to another, where she stood outside and examined the architecture of the institution, presumably trying to decide upon the one least vulnerable to bandits; she sometimes went alone to soda shops—this usually Betsy’s doing—where she indulged herself in quantities of chemically sweet concoctions; once she went to the museum and entered as a visitor, going from exhibit to exhibit, and showing the greatest interest, quite as though she had never come near the place before. She never visited any place of amusement, such as a theatre—which I believe she knew instinctively might overexcite her and shake her stability—but spent her time, largely, in mere wandering. She once rode a bus as far as the bay, and spent an afternoon looking out over the water, and, of course, mainly, there were Bess’ famous shopping trips, where she went earnestly from store to store, fingering cloth and sniffing perfume, and lavishing upon herself numerous small rich indulgences.