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When I woke up, however much later it was, I was in a bed, with my wrists and ankles strapped down so tightly I couldn’t move.
People in white began appearing around me, springing into place like those targets on a wheel in a carnival. I remember wanting to scream, trying to, but no sound came out. They were working on me and around me without even really seeing me.
I heard a rolling sound and realized I could still turn my head, although it took effort. A nurse—I later learned her name was Helen—wheeled a machine into the room, up to the bed.
Someone touched my head, smeared a cold goo into my temples. I turned my head away and heard a voice say, Shit, and felt fingers tangle in my hair.
Helen leaned over me, so close I could see the tiny black hairs in her nostrils. Don’t be afraid. It’ll be over in no time.
I felt the sting of tears. Pathetic, that such a small kindness could make me cry.
Dr. Seersucker came in next, his face pursed up, his nose preceding him. He leaned over me without a word and fit cold, flat metal plates to either side of my head. It felt like rounds of ice, both freezing and burning, and I started to sing.
Sing.
What the hell was I thinking? No wonder they thought I was crazy. I lay there, tears leaking out of my eyes, singing “Rock Around the Clock” at the top of my lungs.
The doctor clamped a strap around my head. I tried to tell him he was hurting me, scaring me, but I couldn’t seem to stop singing. He jammed something in my mouth and I gagged.
Everyone stepped back from me and I remembered thinking, Bomb! They’ve strapped a bomb to my head and I’m going to blow up. I tried to spit out the thing in my mouth and then …
The jolt is impossible to describe. I know now it was a bolt of electricity burning through me. I shook like a rag doll and peed my pants. The noise was a high, piercing whirrrrrr. I thought my bones would snap. When it finally let me go, I sagged onto the bed lifelessly, feeling as close to dead as I could imagine. I heard a tiny drip-drip-drip of my urine falling onto the linoleum floor.
There, Helen said, that wasn’t so bad, now, was it?
I closed my eyes and prayed to Jesus to take me. I had no idea what I’d done that was terrible enough to warrant this punishment, and I wanted a mom, but not my mom, and I certainly didn’t want my dad. I guess I wanted someone to hold me and love me and tell me it would be okay.
But … well, if wishes were horses, all beggars would ride, right?
You might think I am stupid because you’ve seen me high so much of the time, but I’m smart. It took no time for me to learn where I’d screwed up. Oh, I knew what had been expected of me before I arrived at the hospital, but I hadn’t known the cost of changing lanes. I learned. Boy, did I learn.
Be good. Be quiet. Do as you’re told. Answer direct questions with answers, never say you don’t know, never say your father hurts you. Don’t tell them that your mother knows what’s happening to you and doesn’t care. Oh, no. And never say you’re sorry. He hates that most of all.
I’d gone into the hospital broken. But I learned how to gather up the pieces and hold them tightly to my chest. I nodded and smiled and took whatever pills they gave me and asked when my mother was coming. I didn’t make friends because the other girls were “bad” and damaged. My mother would never approve. How could I be friends with a girl who’d slit her wrists or set her family dog on fire?
I kept to myself. Kept quiet. Smiled.
Time passed oddly in there. I remember seeing the leaves turn color and fall to the ground, but that’s my only way to judge the passing of the days. One day, after another shock treatment, I was in the “game room”—they called it that because there were checkerboards on the tables, I guess. I was in a wheelchair, facing the window. My hands had started shaking and I was trying to hide it from everyone.
Dorothy Jean?
Never had my mother’s voice sounded so sweet. I turned slowly and lifted my chin so I could see her.
She looked thinner than I remembered, with her hair so precisely styled that it looked shellacked. She had on a full plaid skirt and a prim sweater with a Peter Pan collar and black horn-rimmed glasses. She was holding her purse strap in both hands, and this time she was wearing gloves.
Mommy, I said, doing my best not to cry.
How are you?
Better. I swear. Can I come home now? I’ll be good.
The doctors say you can. I hope they’re right. I can’t believe you belong with … these people. She looked around, frowning.
That’s why she was wearing the gloves. She didn’t want to catch crazy. I guess I should have been happy that she felt okay to touch me, to breathe the air that I exhaled between us. And I tried to be happy after that, I really did. I was polite when I said goodbye to Dr. Gabardine and I shook Helen’s hand and tried to smile when she told my mother what a joy I’d been to have around. I followed my mother out to her big blue Chrysler and slid into the leather bench seat. She immediately lit up a cigarette, and as she moved the car into gear, ash sprayed down onto the seat. That’s how I knew she was upset. My mother didn’t believe in mess.
When I got home, I saw the place. Really saw it. The one-story house, decorated to look like it was a part of a ranch, complete with a horsey weather vane and barnlike garage doors and western fretwork around the windows. Out in front, a black-faced metal jockey held out a welcome sign.
It was all such a lie, and a lie pokes through that parallel universe. Once you glimpse it, you’re changed. You can’t not see it.
