We Are Taking Only What We Need

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  “A good day. Really good day,” Leslie says. “How did you like your first visit to the territory? Different, huh?”

  I nod.

  “You seem preoccupied. Are you thinking about a certain young man?” Leslie starts the engine, grins at my shock that she takes for proof of her suspicion. My body shudders at the thought. I would see Bobby at the Kingdom Hall when Leslie drops me off. I’ll see him the next morning at the Sunday service and the day after that on the bus. But the thought of his thick fingers anyplace on my body, his short-sleeved dress shirts with the sweaty armpits stains that never seemed to come completely out, the idea of spending one day of life forever with him made me angry. Though I loved him in God’s way, I wanted to stomp a mud hole in him. I would say none of it to Leslie. I didn’t even want to.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “I knew it,” Leslie wags her finger at me. “Don’t wait,” she said, “don’t wait.”

  All the Sad Etc.

  Christmas day 1998 and somebody decorated the lobby at Broughton Mental Hospital with a couple of wreaths smashed and bent from living at the bottom of storage boxes, a fake pine garland with ancient red bows pinned in the nettles, and a gilded candle flaking into the hard plastic holly centerpiece on the reception table.

  “They went all out with the decorations, didn’t they,” Kim’s mother, Paula, whispered. It was tacky, but an attempt at least. It had been years, over twenty, since Kim had celebrated Christmas, and though she was no longer an active Jehovah’s Witness, she stayed pretty much clear of the holiday traditions. But the memory hurts, and specifics like splinters slivered their way under her skin: a tree for sure, never an expensive one, but a straggly stick fir, sad ’70s elves with pinched faces and glued-on felt clothes, the year the angel-hair-fiberglass tinsel got in the laundry basket and made everyone desperate, scratch me please on the lips of every family member, forever allying Christmas with inappropriate itching. But the ornaments and decorations were only part of the Christmas-merriment equation anyway. If Kim could get away with a few errant thoughts about poverty-laced Christmases, she’d be fine, more than fine. Unfortunately, the gooey nostalgia of the holiday wore her down, wiggled its way into the cracks of her resistance. Not since she was eleven years old had Kim had a tree or stocking, or glowing plastic reindeer in the yard, but the spirit, the mood of the thing, was a killer. Muzak carols. Slick magazines with scenes of fire-roaring togetherness, dinner tables decked out and glittering like whores. Smiling multigenerational families. In recent years, Kim’d found herself wondering what it would hurt to have a wreath, a few twinkle lights, some of the glow that obviously pulled in love like a gravitational force. Why not give a few gifts? Take a few? Sign up to be a Secret Santa at work? Stop standing outside the window looking in?

  The problem was Kim was post–Jehovah’s Witness but post-post-Christmas and the tug of celebrating was just as strong as the yank of guilt for coveting that well-appointed pagan tree. Kim didn’t pretend that Christmas meant the same to her as to a lot of other people, but it wasn’t fair that her brother was in a mental hospital on the happiest day of the year. It wasn’t fair that she had to be there, too. That the world doesn’t owe her anything, Kim was well aware, but you still keep the hope, beyond the clear evidence of reality that some fine morning, things will level out just like the good book says and you will see the unmistakable Maker’s mark of design and intention on what you normally just called suffering.

  The hospital-lobby room didn’t need much decoration to look grand. Paintings of what had to be benefactors, maybe doctors, surrounded by heavy upholstered furniture, castle or mafia big. All to try to fool you that you were in some other place. Only the gated booth, like a bank-teller’s window in a western, suggested the room was anything but a fancy reception area at the admissions office of State U.

  “Merry Christmas,” the man in the booth said, grinning in greeting.

  “Thank you,” Kim said. Paula said nothing.

  “I’m Frank. Did you have a big Christmas?”

  “Big as usual,” Paula said and winked at Kim at their old inside joke. No Christmas multiplied by 1000 is still zero Christmas.

  “We’re here to see Douglas Perkins please,” Kim said.

  The man reached to his computer, the monitor taking up most of the open space on the narrow desk. “Just one second,” he said. “Okay, not in there, but just one minute,” he smiled at the women and started to riffle through a large stack of papers held together with large black clips. Maybe he won’t be here at all. Maybe this is all a mistake, Kim thought.

  “Okay, here we go, ladies. Sorry about that. Here he is right here. Ward D. What you do is go upstairs,” Frank pointed to a door Kim hadn’t noticed on the side of the room. “Wait I’ll just show you; it’s tricky.” Frank pulled out a single key on a shoestring and locked the door of the tiny office behind him. Kim and her mother followed. Outside the hospital reception area was the vision of the place Kim had expected: a courtyard area with nothing but concrete the color of dull gray, pigeon color, surrounded by white buildings that evoked less the idea of cleanliness than of denial. The man gave Paula and Kim instructions to the ward and left them at the door to the building.

  “We’d have never found this place without him,” Kim said, more to hear herself talk than anything, though she was sure her mother was thinking exactly the same thing.

  “Okay,” Paula sighed and led Kim to the elevator. Neither of them expected the gigantic service elevator, and though there was plenty of room, they stood side by side, their arms touching. In the coming days, Kim would realize that elevator was made big enough for a stretcher. It was a hospital, after all, though that idea didn’t occur to her then.

  The elevator trip was a short one, just to the fourth floor, but the door took its time opening. Kim stepped forward to pull the doors apart. “Give it a minute, Kim,” Paula said.

  Kim stood back with her mother, embarrassed at her panic. She straightened her posture, steeled her face, tried to impersonate a calm she didn’t feel. The hospital was the family joke. Keep that up and they’ll take you to Broughton. Keep thinking like that, they’ve got room at Broughton. And a few of them were unlucky and crazy enough for the prophecy to come true. Calvin who remembered everything he was ever told: dates, names, the number of times you said a certain word in a conversation. Dead now, or he’d still be there. Arthur who wrote Bible verses in spray paint on his tiny trailer. The same Arthur who would come to your basement and remove the black snakes that took up residence there. Kim remembered waiting in the living room, the velvet furniture pushed against the wall, playing on the floor because her mother was afraid to let her play outside. They all waited to see Arthur through the picture window, the giant black snake coiled like a question mark from his brown hand, his face a picture of triumph.

  Those men weren’t Douglas, Kim thought. They had nothing to do with her brother. Paula led the way out of the elevator, and the two of them walked through double doors as directed, to a hallway swollen on one end to accommodate a Ping-Pong table, four folding chairs, and a spindly Christmas tree with a few wrapped gifts that Kim didn’t need to shake to know were empty, several brown and white stuffed bears, the biggest one in a Santa’s hat. At the other end of the hall, a large white woman sat behind a high desk like at a motel. “I’m going to ask for him,” Paula said. Kim waited in front of the tree and raised her head to the high windows that let in nothing of the outside but light. Without her permission, she started to cry.

  “Don’t let him see you,” her mother hissed. “Stop or go outside.”

  Kim was annoyed and wanted to lash out at her mother, but she was right. This is not about you. This was treatment. Medicine. This is not about you. Kim couldn’t deny this situation was far better than Douglas’ room in the abandoned family home, the walls polka-dotted with holes he’d smashed into the drywall, sad dirty words penciled and crayoned in all the negative spaces, the stench of piss slapping you
to attention, sheets and a thin blanket stiff with it on the floor. Kim had cleaned the room wearing a mask and gloves, working in clothes she would have no choice but to throw away. She bought him space heaters he sold or threw away. Kim had wanted to ask him what he did with them but feared what he might say. Once, he’d told her about the voices that spoke to him. Voices that never encouraged or said something positive: you look good in that turtleneck, learn a trade, but only hissed harsh, destructive, ridiculous talk. They told Douglas he had to find a special sword. They said, drop your pants, there’s a woman. They said nothing mattered. Douglas had told Kim he was four hundred years old. “No, you’re not,” she’d pleaded. “Douglas, listen to me, I remember when you were born.” Douglas had patted her hand, like it hurt him that Kim couldn’t understand even the simplest truth. All of that and Kim did not cry. Now at the moment of treatment, she cannot stop.

  BY THE TIME KIM RETURNS to the hallway room, Paula and Douglas have already set up the backgammon board. Besides the lady at the counter, they are the only ones in the lobby. On Christmas Day, Kim had thought they’d be bumping shoulders with dozens of family and friends, so many that they’d huddle to each other trying to hear their own private conversations. She imagined people on their way somewhere else, happy for the holiday and the weather that permitted just a thin little jacket for warmth, but still stopping for a minute.

  Douglas was wearing a sweat suit like the one that the hospital had given all the patients. Kim had wanted him to look good. It was selfish, she knew that was selfish, but if he looked okay, good hair and clothes, teeth brushed, not drunk looking or unfocused from the medicine, then people wouldn’t think he was so far gone.

  “Hey,” Kim said and Douglas raised his hand up in greeting, his movements slowed from the medicine so he looked like he was reaching for something just in front of him. But his eyes were glad, and his curly hair was spiked in different directions, uncombed but clean. Kim remembered when Douglas had tried to get his hair to hang in dreadlocks, but the texture was too fine, and short worms of it twisted off everywhere.

  “What’s up?” Kim hugged Douglas awkwardly from her standing position.

  Douglas shrugged and turned his attention back to the backgammon board. Kim thought that she would give anything, anything at all to be out of Ward D, in the open December air. She wondered if Douglas felt the same.

  “Are you doing okay?” Kim said.

  “Yes,” Douglas nodded.

  “Okay, great,” Kim said, trying to think of something to add.

  “You know it’s Christmas?”

  Kim saw her mother glare in her direction. What did their family care about Christmas?

  “Douglas, have you had lunch?” Paula said, trying to move the conversation in another direction.

  Douglas nodded, “They have good food here. The best in the world.”

  Kim started to laugh until she recognized Douglas wasn’t making a joke. Under the billows of the sweat pants, she saw he’d gained weight. In the less than a month he’d been there, he looked to have gained twenty pounds. Kim knew it wasn’t all about eating—the medicine contributed to the weight—but she couldn’t get over the fact that even Douglas’ body was conspiring to turn him into another person, a man Kim wasn’t sure she’d recognize on the street.

  “You want to play Ping-Pong?”

  “Okay,” Douglas said.

  Kim found the paddles and a slightly dented ball under the Christmas tree. “Ready?” she said. Douglas stood on the other side of the Ping-Pong table standing dead center, limber as a rock. Kim hit the first ball over the net. The dent made the ball bounce in unexpected directions, but it didn’t matter. Douglas, with slow reactions, swung his paddle long after the ball pinged onto the polished linoleum floor, one time, four times, every time. Kim will feel this moment again, she will be in line at the Empire State Building alone, in the middle of a crowd of tourists, their padded winter coats on all sides, their excited conversations peppering the air, when she will remember this very day and wail like a dog, tourists receding from her like shedding skin, like her heartache was contagious.

  “You just need another ball,” Paula said. “Next time we’ll bring one.”

  Douglas sat down back in front of the backgammon board.

  “We could go for a ride?” Kim said. Douglas brightened at the idea and looked up from the backgammon board.

  “Don’t be thoughtless,” Paula said. “We can’t do any such thing,” she said and glared in Kim’s direction.

  A middle-aged white man strolled toward the Ping-Pong table but stopped in front of them. “Hello and merry Christmas,” he said. He walked with purpose, no shuffling, his eyes were bright and not glassed over. He could pass.

  “Yeah, it’s cold,” the man dug his hands into his pocket as if to prove it. “But the sun is out, that’s what matters. Nice to meet you,” he said and walked back to where he came from.

  “Do you know him?” Kim said to Douglas. Douglas said nothing but shook his head no. Douglas moved the backgammon pieces as Paula kept up her cheerful chatter. Kim had dreaded witnessing Paula’s breakdown, had thought it a promise. But not that day. Kim wished she’d told her mother she couldn’t go or wouldn’t go and had stayed in her apartment, maybe seen her boyfriend until he was summoned by his own family or even just stayed in bed with the television and a book and enjoyed the imagined Christmas of the family she created. Her imaginary Perkins family bulged out of a modest home, two boys and a girl. Their living room was full of their backpacks and coats, shoes in careless piles, magazines scattered like confetti on the carpeted floor. Make yourself a sandwich was scribbled on a coffee-stained edge of a note as they wait for the turkey to cook. The mayo was left out again, crumbs fallen from plates and from the mouths of people thick in conversations. But the best part of the dream: all the family rushing in different directions, “Be back for dinner,” they said. And they all were.

  The middle-aged man returned to their group with a decorated paper plate in his hand. “Here you are,” he said, handing Kim the card. The man had glued a remnant from a store-bought card to a cheap, fluted paper plate and stapled a glittered silver snowflake to the other side. A mother of a small child would accept this card with an exaggerated face of delight.

  “Thank you,” Kim said, avoiding the man’s eyes. He waited just out of arm’s reach but did not leave. “I really like it,” she said. “Thank you.” Kim felt a hesitation in the man that felt like disappointment surrounded him. “Did you make this?” she said.

  “I like you,” the man said, though his face looked like he’d just heard bad news.

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay,” the man nodded.

  “Okay,” Kim said. She thought he would walk back to his room the way he had before, but instead he kneeled just in front of the little Christmas tree and arranged the stuffed bears from smallest to largest, sat each one of them up and alert, stood back to survey his work, and finally fluffed the bears’ cheap fur like they were pillows. Kim thought that she had never seen anything so ridiculous and so funny and for a second she struggled to keep the giggle building in her belly quiet. Kim glanced at her mother who watched the man just as intently and flashed a quick conspiratorial grin in her daughter’s direction. But only for a second. The sharp vision of Douglas’ face screwed into concentration on one then the other bouncing Ping-Pong ball, his arm swinging at what he must have believed was lighting speed, his face a mask of indecipherable, heavily medicated emotion. How hilarious that would be to somebody who didn’t give a damn about him. How those young or lucky or both would watch and laugh and laugh, wipe away delirious tears from their innocent faces.

  The man slapped his hands together, finished, and chose the largest bear with the sewed-on Santa hat, picked him up gently like you might a child, held his stubby fingerless hand, and without a glance or comment in Kim’s direction went back down the hall.

  Paula checked, just to be sure they would not be
permitted to go for a drive. Douglas will be leaving the hospital in two weeks, with medicine, with plans for counseling and would come out the other end, right as rain. That’s what Kim told him and she had no choice but to believe it. ’Tis the season. Didn’t the songs say that everything could spin into place, home was just over the river, a shining star, just look up and witness for yourself the unlikely settling into the obvious. Why not the life-changing event? Why not the miraculous materializing like magic, like an answered prayer before your very eyes?

  “Well, baby, we should probably get going,” Paula said, packing the backgammon board and pieces. “We’ve got a haul back home from here.”

  “Okay,” Douglas said and stood up to leave. “Bye,” he said.

  “Wait,” Kim said, not sure what to else to do. Everything was moving too fast. “Are you leaving?”

  Douglas looked at Kim and shrugged his shoulders.

  The gesture was so right it made Kim laugh loud, her echoing gasps taking up all the space in the room.

  “Stop it,” Paula said to Kim, her hands balled into fists, “just stop.”

  Welcome to the City of Dreams

  In the morning early my mother had reached her hand to mine across the vinyl of the car seat. I’d pretended I didn’t see. I didn’t want her to know I was interested. Mama could always sell her enthusiasm with a gesture or touch. I didn’t want to be that easy.

  “Tash, in the city you can be anything you want,” Mama said.

  I didn’t know it, but I believed that Mama did. We could be anything.

  Mama slowed the red Nova at the sign: Forest Acres: Raleigh, North Carolina. As we drove in, I saw what looked like hundreds, but turned out to be dozens of apartments, single story, painted gray and white on razed clay. This is the way city people lived. Sophisticated people. Not dirt-roaders like us, not spread out in hick, nothing towns, but all together and connected, sharing walls in identical houses. My mother guided the car to our spot in front of unit 116.