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I sat in a stinky dirty cell in the jail for hours. Long enough for Rafe to be fingerprinted and booked for assault (I was a white girl, remember). Some sour-faced woman from social services took you away from me, clucking at how dirty you were. I should have been screaming for you, reaching out my empty arms, demanding my child’s return. But I sat there, weighed down by a despair so bleak I couldn’t breathe, by a sorrow that seemed impossible to dispel. I was crazy. I knew that now.
How long was I there? I still don’t know. In the morning I tried to tell the police I’d lied about Rafe hitting me, but they didn’t care. They kept me locked up “for my own safety” until my father came for me.
* * *
The hospital they sent me to the second time was much worse than the first. I should have screamed and fought and clawed to get away. I don’t know why I didn’t. I just stood by my mother as she led me up the stone steps and into a building that smelled like death and rubbing alcohol and old urine.
Dorothy ran away and had a baby and beat up her boyfriend. Now she won’t speak.
That was when I started to lose big chunks of time, somewhere in that white, smelly building with the barred-and-chicken-wired windows.
I have memories of that place, but I can’t talk about them. Still. After all this time. The gist of it is this: medications. Elavil for depression, chloral hydrate for sleep, something I can’t remember for anxiety. And electroshock and ice baths … and … anyway, they said it was for my own good. I knew better at first, but Thorazine turned me into a zombie; light began to hurt my eyes and my skin dried up and started to wrinkle, and my face swelled. When I found the energy to get up and look in the mirror, I knew they were right. I was sick and needed help. They only wanted to make me better. All I had to do to get better was be a good girl again. Stop swearing and fighting and lying about my father and demanding my child.
I was there for two years.
* * *
I left the hospital a different person. Drained. That’s the best way I can put it. I thought I had known fear before those doors banged shut behind me, before I’d learned to see the sky through metal bars and chicken wire, but I was wrong in that. When I came out, my memory was shaky—time leapt away from me sometimes and there were chunks of my life I couldn’t remember.
What I remembered was love. It was the slimmest of strands, my memory of it, but it kept me alive in there. I clung to my memories in the dark, fingering them like a rosary. He loves me. I told myself this over and over. I’m not alone.
And there was you.
I kept an image of you in my mind through all of it—your pink cheeks and chocolate brown eyes—Rafe’s eyes—and the way you launched forward when you were trying to crawl.
When they let me out—finally—I shuffled out of the hospital ward in clothes that I didn’t recognize as my own.
My mother stood waiting for me, her gloved hands holding the strap of her purse. She wore a staid brown short-sleeve dress with a tiny white belt at her waist. Her hair looked like a swim cap. She pursed her lips and peered at me through her cat’s-eye glasses.
Are you better now?
The question exhausted me, but I held that tiredness in. I am. How’s Tallulah?
My mother gave a little sigh of displeasure and I knew I wasn’t supposed to ask. We’ve told everyone she’s our niece. They know we went to court to get custody, so don’t say anything.
You took her away from me?
Look at you. Your father was right. You have no business raising a child.
My father, was all I said, but it was enough. My mother’s hackles rose up.
Don’t start that again. She took me by the arm and led me out of the hospital and down the steps and into a new sky-blue Chevrolet Impala. All I could think about was saving you from that terrible house where he lived, but I knew I would have to be smart. If I screwed up again, they might find a way to make sure I never gave them trouble again. I’d seen how they did it, in those places back then. The bald heads and scars of surgery; the blank eyes and shuffling feet of patients who drooled and peed where they stood.
The drive home took more than two hours. I remember watching the freeway pass beside me and realizing that I didn’t know this city at all. My parents lived in the shadow of this weird new thing called a Space Needle that looked like an alien ship stuck on top of a tower. I don’t remember a single word passing between us until we pulled into the garage.
It helped you, didn’t it? my mom said, and I saw a glimmer of worry in her eyes. They told us you needed help.
I knew I could never tell her the truth—if I could even find it anymore. I’m better, I said dully.
But when I walked into their new house, full of the furniture of my youth, and smelling of my dad’s Old Spice aftershave and Camel cigarettes, I felt so sick I ran to the kitchen sink and threw up.
* * *
When I first saw you again, I started to cry.
Dorothy, don’t upset her, my mother said sharply. She doesn’t know you.
She wouldn’t let me touch you. My mother was sure my poison would infect you somehow, and how could I disagree?
