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After that, I tried to disappear. I buttoned my sweaters to my throat and wore no makeup at all. I talked to no one, made no new friends, and lost the few I’d had.
My life went like that for months. My dad got drunker and angrier and meaner, and I got quieter and more depressed and more hopeless, but I thought I was okay. You know, handling it, until one day in class when a boy pointed at me and laughed and everyone joined in. Or I thought they did. It felt like that scene in Suddenly, Last Summer where the boys turn on Liz Taylor and the guy she’s with. Ravenous and hungry and pushing. I started screaming and crying and pulling at my hair. The classroom went silent. I heard the quiet and looked up, horrified at what I’d done. The teacher asked what was wrong with me and I just stared up at her until she snorted in disapproval and sent me to the principal’s office.
Appearances. That’s what mattered to my parents. They didn’t care why I’d cried in class, or pulled out my own hair, just that I’d done it in public.
Twenty-one
They said the hospital was for my own good.
You’re a bad girl, Dorothy. Everyone has problems, why are you so selfish? Of course your father loves you. Why would you say such terrible things?
You think there aren’t parallel universes, but there are. They can exist inside of you. You can be an ordinary girl one minute, and an empty shell the next. You can turn a corner—or open your eyes in your own dark bedroom—and step into a world that looks like yours but isn’t.
The hospital—they called it a sanatorium—was in another city. Even now I couldn’t tell you where. It could have been Mars.
They put me in a straitjacket. Wouldn’t want me hurting myself, or so said the men in white who came for me.
So there I was. A sixteen-year-old girl with bald spots, trussed up like a goose and screaming. My mom cried every time she looked at me but not because I was in pain. Because I was so loud. My dad wouldn’t even come with us.
Take care of it, Ma, he said.
It.
When we got to the place, it looked like a prison on a hill.
Will you be good? We’ll take off the straitjacket if you’ll be good.
I promised to be good, which I knew meant quiet. In the fifties, good girls were quiet girls. They unwrapped me and let me walk up these wide stone steps. Mom walked beside me, but not close enough to touch me, as if I’d contracted some disease she thought might be communicable. I walked in this fog where I was both awake and asleep. I learned later that they’d drugged me. I don’t remember it, though. I just remember going up those steps; it was like being underwater. I knew where I was and what I was seeing, but it was all hazy and the proportions were wrong.
I wanted so much for my mom to hold my hand. I’m pretty sure I kept whimpering at her, which only made her walk faster. Click, click, click. That’s the sound her heels made on the stone steps. She was holding on to the patent leather strap of her handbag so tightly I thought the leather would rip.
Inside, everyone wore white and looked grim. I think that’s when I noticed the bars on the windows. I remember thinking I was so insubstantial I could float away, through the bars, if I really wanted to.
The doctor’s name was Corduroy. Or Velvet. Some fabric. He had a pinched mouth and an alcoholic’s nose. When I saw him I started to laugh. I thought his nose looked like a red parachute opening up and I laughed so hard I started to cry, and my mother hissed at me to behave, for God’s sake, and her fingers clenched around the strap again.
Sit down, Miss Hart.
I did as I was told, and as I did it, I stopped laughing. I became aware of the hushed silence in the office, and then of the weird light. There were no windows. I guessed too many people had looked at Mr. Cotton’s parachute nose and jumped.
Do you know why you’re here? Dr. Silk asked me.
I’m fine now.
No, Dorothy. “Fine” girls don’t pull their own hair and scream and make wild accusations about people who love them.
That’s right, my mother said crisply. Poor Winston is beside himself. What’s wrong with her?
I looked helplessly at Dr. Wool. He said, We can help you feel better if you’re a good girl.
I didn’t believe him. I turned to my mom and begged to be taken home, where I swore I’d be better.
I ended up on my knees beside her, yelling. I told her I didn’t mean to do it and that I was sorry. You see? she said to Dr. Silk. You see?
I couldn’t make her understand how sorry I was, and how scared, and I started screaming and crying. I knew it was wrong—bad, too loud. I fell forward, hit my head on the hard wooden arm of my mother’s chair.
I heard my mother scream, MAKE HER STOP DOING THAT.
I felt someone—people—come up behind me, grabbing me, holding me.
