Secrets of the Asylum

by Linda Hughes

  Abby got up and ushered Nola to the door. “You are most welcome, my child. Now go in love.” She opened the door and Nola stepped over the threshold, only to turn back.

  “All-Seeing Abby, did the spirits by any chance tell you when I’ll meet this man?”

  “Um, soon. Very soon. That’s all I know for now. Goodbye, my dear.”

  “Oh, okay. Goodbye.” Nola offered a small wave and finally walked down the stone pathway to the black Ford Model-T Touring Car with a driver waiting for her on the dirt road that led through the woods to this cabin. Abby watched the motorcar turn around on the dirt patch out front and chug away down the road, its two front lights that looked like fish eyes shooting muted streams of illumination into the trees, as if spooky spirits frolicked in the foliage. Even though it was a short distance to the main road that connected town to the lighthouse on the peninsula, Abby knew her primitive, bumpy trail aptly added to the mystique for her guests. She loved it.

  She watched as the lights turned when the motorcar came to the main road and disappeared. This was a ritual for Abby, especially at night like this, to make certain no one lingered on her property. And, she’d long ago admitted to herself, she liked to witness those fascinating sleek motorcars carry people to and fro. She’d been raised during the horse and buggy era, so being transported without the help of a big beast of an animal seemed amazing. Always trying to catch the names of the vehicles, she saw more Fords than anything, being in Michigan, after all. There were also Cadillacs, Dodges, and Chevrolets from this state, too. Once in a great while a Packard or Rolls Royce showed itself, traitors in the state where the automobile assembly line began with Henry Ford. Never had Abby had the pleasure of so much as touching, let alone riding in, one of the motorized carriages but she held out hope that day would come.

  After removing the wood sign that said “All-Seeing Abby” from its nail on the outside of the door and placing it on the floor inside, she closed the heavy wood portal enough to leave it ajar and turned back to her room. Adeptly, she lit two kerosene lamps for more light, placing one on the table and taking the other outside with her, where she walked around the side of the cabin and into the woods to her outhouse. She knew it was popular to have indoor water closets but she’d never seen one and found the premise to be disgusting. That kind of business needed to be left to nature.

  Gathering up her long skirt, she bid nature’s call, ripping off a page of the Farmer’s Almanac that hung from a nail on the wall to swipe herself clean. The owner of the garage where she did clairvoyant readings two days a week always gave her last year’s almanac. Using it for this was so popular the publisher even provided a hole in the corner of the booklet for hanging on a nail. Abby found it wasteful that some people today spent money on prissy white “toilet paper” when all they had to do was use an outdated Sears Catalog or Farmer’s Almanac. Even though she herself was half white, there were some things white people did that she would never understand.

  On her way back to the house, she dipped her hands into her rain barrel and wiped them off on the rag nailed to the side, as was her habit. She paused for a moment to enjoy the smell of the lilacs along the side of the cabin. Once in the house, she closed the door with a satisfying thud, lowered the latch to lock it, and felt grateful to be left alone for the night.

  Going to the wood shelf above the metal kitchen sink with its water pump, she took down a pottery dish, reached into a glass jar to extract a dried leaf of sage, and placed the leaf onto the dish. At the fireplace, she held the leaf to the flame just long enough to let the tip begin to smolder and dropped it back onto the dish. A tail of pleasant, pungent smoke wagged and wound its way towards the heavy wood beams of the ceiling. She plucked an eagle feather from the bouquet of feathers stuck in an old beer stein on the mantle, and carried the smoking dish around her cabin, using the feather to fan the smoke to clear the room of any lingering spirits that may have trailed in with her last visitor.

  She did this with every visitor but this time it seemed especially important considering the prominent message her ancestor spirit guides sent this night. She wanted no interference. Ojibwas, more popularly known as Chippewas, always cleared a room or lodge or house — wherever it might be needed — to make certain evil spirits did not hunker down in the dark corners of the dwelling.

  “Gichi-manidoo, aanikoobijigan manidoo, daga zhawenim wa’aw agaasate,” she chanted as she circled the room, fanning the smoke. “Gichi-manidoo, aanikoobijigan manidoo, daga zhawenim wa’aw agaasate,” she repeated two more times, three being the sacred number.

  Then, just to be sure and out of respect for the other language she’d grown up with and the God of her mother’s Methodist church, she repeated her chant three more times in English. “God almighty, please bless this small house.”

  Abby had no doubt her prayers were answered.

  The room now fragrant with the scent of sage, she blew on the leaf to stifle its simmer and then placed the dish back on the shelf. She stuck the feather into the stein with its fellows on the mantle. Bowing in front of the fire, the giver of life, she said, “Miigwechiwi giinawaa. Thank you, dear spirits.”

  Abby sat down in her beloved rocking chair in front of the fire. This was where she could best communicate with her ancestor spirit guides.

  First, however, as so often happened after performing a clearing in her father’s native tongue, her mind wondered to thoughts of her parents, long dead. Her father, a proud Ojibwa medicine man whose freedom to fulfill his life’s purpose had been strangled by white man’s strange rules and laws, had died, she believed, of simple heartbreak over the oppression of his people even though they called it a heart attack. Her mother, on the other hand, a white farm girl who fell madly in love with a forbidden Indian and eloped with him when she became pregnant, had died of her own hand shortly after her husband died, her heart broken beyond repair. Abby’s mother couldn’t face the shame of her chosen “pagan” life without the subject of her ardor sheltering her from the fire of damnation hurled at her by her own kind.

  Abby, Abequa, which meant “one who stays at home” in Ojibwa, had been fourteen years old when her parents died. Her mother’s employer, Mr. Herbert Ambrose Sullivan, Sr., who hired Abby’s mother to wash dishes and scrub floors in his opulent mansion on the hill, had visited the orphaned teenager to tell her he had long ago given the cottage and surrounding plot of land to her parents, so it was now hers. Legally, the plot sat on the edge of the many acres he’d purchased but seeing that her family had settled in these woods generations ago, he said, it seemed right that it remain theirs. She hadn’t corrected him to say that her ancestors had dwelt in the area in spring, summer, and fall, but not winter.

  The Ojibwa, proud of being one of many tribes of the large Algonquin family, had not been as ignorant as the white man. By the time brutal snow storms blew in from the northwest, they had built camps deep in the woods with stores of food to last through the winter. They knew better than to roam about in blizzards and get lost, like white men seemed to insist upon doing. After the thaw of the Moon of Snowblindness, what white men called the month of March, with the promise of spring, they moved their families to the maple groves and built a longhouse for everyone to share, so they could tap the trees and collect the precious maple syrup that provided a mainstay for the their diets throughout the year. Then they would move back to their rounded wigwams in small settlements like the one that had stood on this very property. There for the rest of spring and all of summer and fall they would plant and harvest, and hunt.

  Some white men didn’t seem to plan ahead so well, needing to spend money on food rather than planting and hunting it themselves. Most Ojibwa supposed white men couldn’t help it that they were so weak. At least, these were the stories Abby’s father had passed down to her when she was a child.

  Ojibwa, Ojibway, Ojibwe: Abby had seen it spelled many ways and did not know which was most accurate. The people themselves used the word Anishinabe to descr
ibe themselves, but only with each other. That word, the meaning of which held stories of a history of the tribe beginning with the ancestors who came from the sky, was sacred. She mused at how her father had insisted upon being called Ojibwa rather than the term Chippewa that white people thrust upon them, mispronouncing Ojibwa. Ojibwa was the name given to their tribe by its enemies, so that was considered to be the more honorable word, seeing it indicated that the enemy, like the fierce Huron, recognized and thus feared them. But, frankly, the more fragile word Chippewa had become how Abby thought of herself because she used it to attract paying visitors.

  She was, after all, a practical woman. Having to make a living with her clairvoyant gift and support herself since age fourteen made that necessary. She had indeed lived up to her name as the one who stays at home by often carrying on her business from her humble cabin.

  Enough reminiscing! She decided. On to the task at hand.

  Reaching back to drape her long, black braid over her shoulder, as was her habit, she gathered her skirt about her knees and wiggled her fanny back into her rocking chair to settle herself. Propping her moccasin-covered feet up on the hearth for warmth, she brought her palms together to rest on her belly, fingers pointed to the heavens. Eyes closed, she cherished the creak of her chair as she gently rocked back and forth.

  “Dear ones,” she said softly, “I heard you clearly tonight. I know she is coming. What else do I need to know?”

  The ancestor spirit guides gifted her with much of what she wanted to know but left her in a quandary about what this would do to Lizzie. Elizabeth, Meg’s mother, took heed of her own enigmatic guides and Abby dared not venture a guess as to what those epistles might entail.

  All-Seeing Abby looked into the fire, with glints like starlight reflected in her earth brown eyes. Then she lifted her gaze to the beautiful painting sitting on her mantle, a peaceful springtime scene of the white birch trees in her forest and a spotted fawn peeking out from behind a fat trunk. She may not know everything, she realized, but did know without a doubt that whatever happened next she would need to stay close at hand to pick up the pieces.

  4

  Elizabeth stood back and studied her canvas. The lilacs might be too purple. She looked out the open window of her second-story studio at the blossoms gloriously gracing the view below and sending that wonderful lilac scent her way. No, she had them just right, she decided.

  However, looking outside at the spring colors of lilac bushes, morning glories, and lush green grass, all awash in warm sunshine filtering through whimsical frail clouds, only served to call to her from out-of-doors. She had to be out there!

  Sticking her paintbrushes into a jar of turpentine, she put her supplies aside and took off her orange apron. Glancing at herself in the full-length mirror, she appraised the gaily patterned silk lounging robe she wore, which she adored, but it wasn’t appropriate for leaving her rooms. Undoing the gold buttons at her chest, she let the garment slip to the floor. It was decadent to demand such things of Herbert because it cost a pretty penny, but he had lots of pretty pennies so she didn’t care. He’d certainly bellied up to get her two adjoining rooms in Cottage 23, a women’s cottage, at the Northern Michigan Asylum, one room for living and one for painting. He’d sprung for draperies, Persian rugs, colorful pillows and blankets, a small chaise lounge, and a wardrobe for her collection of clothes. They were comfortable rooms, as she had no qualms whatsoever about asking that man for anything and everything she wanted. After what she’d gone through with him, she deserved it.

  He still came to see her once a month, after all these years. His visits had become shorter over time, eventually dispensing of any pretense at idle chatter and being reduced to seeing if she needed anything. She spent all month in-between visits conjuring up items she “needed,” like new clothes, which she liked now that styles were so much more relaxed than before, and new paint supplies. Her artistic endeavor had become so prolific she truly did need supplies on a regular basis. She even liked the housekeeper Herbert sent with the items, an attractive woman in her forties named Hannah.

  Elizabeth wondered if Hannah and Herbert were lovers. She didn’t mind. She thought everyone should have a lover, like she did, although she couldn’t imagine any woman being sexually satisfied riding that horse.

  Standing in front of the mirror, naked as a jay bird, she ran her hands over her luscious body. Thirty-eight years old, having given birth twice, her figure was still the stuff of men’s dreams. Ha! Let them dream. There was only one lover who could truly satisfy her. Being in an asylum got her away from her husband and gave her the freedom she craved to pursue that love.

  And to paint.

  It was a good life.

  Going through the door that joined her studio with her living quarters, she went to her wardrobe and threw on a plain cotton skirt and shirtwaist blouse like the ones worn by the other mad women here at the asylum. She grabbed her wide-brimmed straw hat and plopped it atop her black curls before going out and shutting the door behind her.

  No one would question what she was doing. Being insane had its advantages, as everyone naturally always assumed she was nuts. That thought amused her, although she actually had “ground parole,” meaning she was trusted to roam the grounds and work in the gardens as she pleased. She cherished her freedom and would insist on being released from this place if she didn’t have it. Thank God, she’d often thought, she wasn’t sequestered in one of the buildings with bars on the windows like the genuinely crazy people; that truly would drive her mad. Instead, she lived in a pretty “cottage,” actually a huge house, which chambered about fifty women like her who were trusted to come and go during the day.

  She started for the stairs at the end of the wide hallway but on impulse paused to knock on her neighbor’s door. Jenny Pennington opened up and offered a weak smile. “Hello, Lizzie. How are you today?”

  “I’m good, Jenny. In fact, I’m going for a walk. The weather is so nice. Would you like to join me?”

  “Oh, my dear, that’s so kind of you.” The tall, angular woman sighed as she spoke. Lizzie liked Jenny. The mother, about her age, never bothered anyone and only once had complained to Lizzie that she wasn’t crazy and shouldn’t be in here. She wanted to get a divorce, and move to Grand Rapids where her sister had invited her and her four children to live with her. The trouble was that her husband was a brute who beat her repeatedly. When she finally went to the sheriff he’d sided with her husband to have her committed.

  Elizabeth thought the way to settle that situation would have been for Jenny to shoot that son-of-a-bitch of a husband while he slept, bury his body in the vegetable garden for fertilizer, and live her life with her children as she pleased. Instead, the battered woman had sought justice, only to be jailed up because she was a woman. Had a man complained, no doubt he would have received privileged treatment. Men! Jenny wasn’t the only woman in here who complained she’d been committed to get out of a husband’s way so he could live as he pleased, control the children, have a mistress, or get away with all the family money. Or all of those things.

  “No, dear, I’ll stay in my room today. But thank you for the invitation.” Jenny nodded and closed the door.

  Elizabeth pitied Jenny her deep depression and promised herself she’d never let herself get depressed. She bounded down the decorative wooden staircase of Cottage 23 of the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane and out the front door. She knew, of course, that the place was now called the Traverse City State Hospital in deference to offending residents and their families. Nobody here was fooled, however; they weren’t that crazy. They knew they were in a looney bin.

  Once outside, she glanced briefly at Cottage 25 to the left. Twenty-five was becoming full of consumption patients and it was rumored that Dr. James Decker Munson, the superintendent of the asylum, wanted to reserve that cottage just for people afflicted with that disease, as he and other doctors believed it was contagious. They even called the disease tuberculosis
these days. They wanted other residents to be protected from contamination. It had been common practice until now to put them wherever there was space among the other patients and there were still some scattered around the place.

  She knew Herbert told people she resided in a ward for patients with the disease, in order to try to avoid embarrassment and gossip. Well, it was close, anyway, although she doubted that with the staff of this place being from town and the surrounding areas that there could be anybody left who didn’t know she’d been declared to be bonkers. It made her laugh.

  She knew her husband would have preferred to put her away someplace where no one would know her, and certainly not him. He’d brought her here in a panic but within a couple of months tried to convince her that the more private St. Joseph’s Retreat in Dearborn, run by nuns, would better suit her needs. She’d thrown a vase of flowers at him. He never mentioned it again.

  “Lizzie, my love, taking a little walk?”

  She twirled to see Dr. Charles Whitmore behind her. He regularly met with residents to use the latest “Freudian techniques,” as he called them, to try to talk them into being “well.” With his wiry physique yet manly swagger, from the first moment she’d stepped into his office three years ago she’d known it would be easy to convince him to relinquish his psychoanalytical babble with her. It turned out that Dr. Whitmore’s devotion to Freud’s sexual theories got lost in translation as he readily succumbed to her conniving machinations.

  “Yes, Charlie, I have to get some air! Want to join me?”

  The look he threw her way telegraphed his desire. “Sorry, I have appointments with patients all afternoon. You’re scheduled for tomorrow, correct?”

  “Uh huh. See you then.” She blew him a kiss and trotted away.