Quiet-Crazy

by Joyce Durham Barrett

  Oh, I know deep down that I love Mama, as children, you know, love their parents, which means sometimes just taking for granted that they’ll always be there. But at my age, I think there should be a little more of the respect kind of love between Mama and me, and not until now did I see a chance of that happening, in spite of what all has happened in the past. Mama may always feel disappointed in me, I don’t know. But that’s okay. That will be her problem that she’ll have to deal with along the way, not Elizabeth’s problem. I’ll settle for disappointment any time, in exchange for getting to be Elizabeth. That’s better than trying to be Angela for the rest of my life.

  Anyway, I have my church service there at the flower garden, thanking God, or whatever the great force is in the universe, for life itself, and life includes people, people at the church worshiping in their own way, and people in Littleton who choose not to go to church, but who are still okay in their own right because they are human beings that God made, and would He ever make anything that was totally bad, I don’t think so.

  And at last I get around to thanking him for me, for Elizabeth, and for Angela, too. I know it says in the Bible that a house divided cannot help but fall, but my house of Elizabeth is going to have to divide, and I think God understands that it will have to fall, that I will have to let Angela go, if I am going to live a normal life.

  Normal. That seems so, what was that other word I learned just last week, “elusive,” that’s it. Normal always seems so elusive to me. I’ve never thought I would be acting in any such way. But maybe I will. Maybe I will. And the news Mama brings home from church about Mary Jane Payne, that makes me more determined than ever to get as normal as possible. What news? Well, Mary Jane Payne had walked down the aisle, took hold of Preacher Edwards’s hand and “got saved.” Mary Jane Payne—saved. Born again. Free from sin. Just like that. In the twinkling of an eye. I had to go see Mary Jane. See her for myself. So, after lunch I walked over the hill and down to the Frostee-Burg, the Sunday afternoon hanging-out place.

  I halfway wonder if Mary Jane would be hanging out as usual, too—her breasts pushing out of her blouse, her rear pushing out of her too-short shorts. But, no, that’s mean of me, I decide. Mary Jane would be changed. At least for a while. And, well, she has changed outwardly. She still has on her Sunday church dress instead of shorts. Instead of smoking cigarettes, she is chewing around real hard on a wad of gum. She isn’t talking and laughing loud, like usual. In fact, when I get to the picnic table where she’s sitting, in spite of her surprise on seeing me, she seems to me right downcast and glum underneath the glad hellos.

  “Elizabeth!” she says, as pleasant as possible. “I didn’t know you were back home. Your mama didn’t say nothing about it at church. Why, how in the world are you doing? Come on, sit down,” she says, patting the side of the table across from her.

  “Let me get some lemonade, first,” I say. “Lord, I’ve missed that stuff. Nathan’s not known for its lemonade, you know. Lemons, maybe,” I try joking, but it falls down and goes nowhere, whereas the old Mary Jane would’ve guffawed at hearing something like that. I walk on over to the window of the Frostee-Burg to place my order, all the while fussing at myself inside my head for even trying to joke about Nathan. Why, that’s what everybody else around here does; and here I am, acting just like them.

  Mr. Snipes, who’s never won any awards for friendliness, doesn’t even say “hello” nor anything. He just looks at me, except his looking is a little more puzzling than usual; he looks as if he is looking at something in a zoo. But, I say to myself, that little window has two sides, and Mr. Snipes is the one inside the cage, not me. “I’ve missed your lemonades,” I say, trying to break his staring, but he just nods and keeps on staring. I look back out at Mary Jane, and she is staring at me, I look around at the teenagers at the other tables, and they’re staring. Everybody, everywhere they all just look at me, like they are holding their breath to see what will happen next. “I’ll have a lemonade, please,” I say, as politely as possible, while counting out my change. Mr. Snipes just stands. Still staring. I look around, stalling for time, stalling to figure out what to do, what to say.

  “Well,” I say finally, “are you going to get me a DAMN lemonade, or will I have to go somewhere else?”

  At that Mr. Snipes snaps alive and springs into action. “Sure, sure,” he says, “what size? Small, medium, or large?”

  “Ah, heck, just mix ’em,” I said, “small, medium, and large. Mix ’em up altogether real good.” Although I can’t believe I’m joking around like this, still it feels good in a way. Until I look out at Mary Jane. She still isn’t laughing. Only looking at me. Changed, she is. Everybody is changed. Change yourself, and . . . presto! Everybody else changes, too. Even Mary Jane Payne. Even Mary Jane. I still can’t believe it, and for a moment I want to go back. Back to being Angela, or whoever and whatever it was I’ve been being. All this . . . everybody staring at you . . . everybody changed . . . looking like strangers. Suddenly, I want to be back at Nathan. Now it seems Nathan is the real world, and here are the “crazy people.” Scary. Out-of-this-world scary, like I’m standing outside of my body, standing back, standing aside, looking out and down on everything and everyone. I am not a part of it all. But separate. I am not them. They are not me.

  Mr. Snipes now at the window plunks down three cups I can choose from—small, medium, large, all full of lemonade, and an empty cup, some size I’d never seen before, a no-size, non-regular cup. And he, Mr. Snipes, pours lemonade from all three sizes, small, medium, large into the strange, new container. If he weren’t looking so serious I would be laughing. Imagine what he must think. He thinks I am serious. And . . . yes, (pardon me, Dr. Adams) I’ll have to admit, he probably thinks I am crazy.

  “That’ll be five more cents,” he says, “including tax.”

  I add more change to my counted-out money, hand it over, pick up the lemonade, and walk back to the picnic table and Mary Jane.

  Sitting down, I raise the lemonade in a toast to her, just like she always toasted her beer. “Here’s to new containers,” I say.

  16

  . . . . . .

  I have no trouble at all throwing my arms around Aunt Lona, but then I never did flinch when it came to hugging her, and it’s probably because she has always hugged me and always will, until the day I die . . . or she dies, whoever goes first. It makes Mama uneasy, us hugging, like she’s somehow jealous, or something, and it makes me shiver to think she doesn’t want another woman hugging me.

  “Beth, hon, you look so good!”

  “Shoot, I haven’t even thought about looks, Aunt Lona, well . . . not much, anyway. Can’t you tell by this?” I grab my hair. It is down below my ears and almost straight, except for a few strawlike frizzes on the ends.

  “It’s going to look great, Beth, just like I promised it would, if you’d let it grow out. But we’ll get to ’hair’ later. Come on in here,” she says, leading me on into the kitchen, “and let’s talk about you.”

  “There’s so much to tell. Aunt Lona, so much. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “We’ll begin with this,” she says, setting out a plate of apple strudel and pouring us both a cup of tea. And although it’s Aunt Lona I’ve always talked to, when I want to talk about deep things, I wish, oh how I wish it was Mama sitting here with me now. And that’s not taking anything away from Aunt Lona; I just plain out wish I could have a real heart-to-heart talk with Mama. Just for once in my life.

  “Well, they must be doing something right, Beth,” says Aunt Lona. “I declare if you don’t look like you feel one hundred percent better!”

  “Really?” I say, mighty surprised. “I promise I haven’t thought all that much about the outside of me, I’ve been so much into what’s going on inside.”

  “I think it’s your eyes,” Aunt Lona says, looking close at them. “Yes, your eyes. They have a bit of sparkle about them.”

  “Really?” I say, again, feeling even
better about myself than I’ve felt out in Daddy’s flower garden. “So does that mean feeling better inside makes you look better outside?”

  “I think the two are related,” Aunt Lona says. “Sometimes looking good can make you feel good inside, too. But, you’re right, of course, the insides have to be taken care of first.”

  “Well, my insides are getting a thorough scrubbing,” I say.

  Aunt Lona stops her talking, as if to say, “I’m not going to be nosey and ask questions, I’m going to let you tell me whatever you want.” And although she doesn’t say those words exactly, that’s just the kind of feeling I always have with Aunt Lona, that I can tell her anything, you know, well . . . except for the one thing that I can’t tell anybody about.

  So I start in, and I don’t stop, and the strange thing is, I’m talking more about the other folks at Nathan than about me, because even though I can tell Aunt Lona most anything, for some reason I can’t tell her about the way I’m changing and the different things I have been learning about me and about Mama. It’s kind of like trying to tell somebody what a word means, when you know inside what it means, and you can use that word, but you can’t give them an exact definition, so you end up just kind of talking around the meaning and using it in a sentence to show what it means. I guess that’s what I’m doing. Since I can’t give an exact definition of myself, I’m “talking around my meaning” by talking about the other people at Nathan.

  And the best thing about seeing Aunt Lona is that I feel, no I am sure, that she understands all of this. Although I sit there telling her about all the other people at Nathan, and what I am doing with them, I can see that she is reading between the lines and learning more about my definition of myself, my meaning, than I am able to tell her. Because when I am finally winding down, she just sighs a real long sigh. And she smiles, like she is ever so pleased with me.

  “Beth, I am so glad I insisted on you going to the doctor. Although Vera may never speak to me again, I knew I had to do something to get you out of that bed.”

  I wonder, then, if I ever will be able to get my own self out of that other bed. And like all the other times I have thought about it, I know that, no, that bed will always be there. But what I can do, what I have done, is decide that I don’t have to lie in it. That is one bed I didn’t make, and since I, myself, didn’t make it, I don’t have to lie in it.

  “Do you think Mama really won’t speak to you?”

  “She hasn’t. I’ve called her several times since you’ve been away. I even went over there once. She won’t even acknowledge me.”

  “Well, Mama told me this morning that she was done with me. Through. Finished. And I think she means exactly that. But you know what, Aunt Lona? It was sad in a way to hear her talking like that, yet in another stronger way, it felt good, I mean good to know she’s through with me. Is that crazy or not?”

  “That’s not crazy, Beth. That, I think, is the most healthy way you could possibly feel at this time. I think it’s an indication of how far you’ve come, how much you’ve changed. And your mother, she will have to change in some way. When we make changes in ourselves, those around us change in some way, it’s like a ripple effect.”

  “Yes!” I said. “Yes! Aunt Lona, it seems like Mama and Daddy both have changed in some way. But right now I’m not sure how they have changed, or if they’ve changed for the better. And, too, although it seems like they’ve changed, in some strange way it’s like they have also stayed just the same. It’s weird, Aunt Lona, weird!”

  Aunt Lona laughs. “There’s an old saying,” she says, “that goes something like this: ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’”

  Although I laugh along with her, this thought slows me down. “I don’t want to stay the same, Aunt Lona. I can’t anymore, I just can’t.”

  “Well, of course not, dear. You will be changing a lot. I can see that now. And I am so happy for you.”

  “And I’m happy that you’re going to be driving me back today. If there’s one thing worse than putting up with Mama, it’s going and coming to Nathan with Sheriff Tate and Preacher Edwards. And I don’t know which is worse, cooped up with someone that helps enforce man’s laws or God’s laws. Either way, it’s downright creepy.”

  But it is just right, riding down to Nathan with Aunt Lona, because she gets me to thinking about what I’m going to do when I come back home, and she tells me I can come and live with her, if I want to, and that, no, I don’t have to work at the pants factory for the rest of my life, and that, yes, I should think of going on to college, and that, of course, she will help me in any way and every way that she possibly can, and even though I’ve known all along in my heart she would help me in college, still hearing all this makes me feel not too bad about coming back to Littleton, even though everything will be really changed.

  But the way things have changed in Littleton isn’t nothing compared to the way things have changed when I get back to Nathan. It’s Hemp. Hemp, the most joyful person around Nathan, always making a joke out of something, always clowning around, looking like he doesn’t have a problem in the world . . . Hemp is dead. Alive on Friday, dead on Monday. It happened just that quick, like some magic trick—now you see him, now you don’t. But the way he died. Whoever being around Hemp for even one moment, who would have thought Hemp would go and kill himself. And the way he did it, my Lord. With a sock?

  Thinking back, I figure out how it must have happened. Some of us went shopping on Thursday before I left to go home for the weekend. That was the first time I had been outside the doors since I came here; in fact, I didn’t even know you could go outside the doors until you were dismissed. But then Hemp said the “less dangerous” of us could go shopping, as long as Mr. Martin went with us. I didn’t know of any of us who were dangerous unless it was Lenny, and I don’t know why I thought he might be, except he might wander off somewhere, who knows, and not being able to talk to anyone, nobody would know where he belonged. But now I know that dangerous could mean not only dangerous to other people, but more likely dangerous to yourself. And that’s sure what Hemp had been, dangerous to himself.

  I didn’t think anything about it, though, when Hemp bought some new razor blades that Thursday down at Lounder’s Drug. I thought he either really needed them and would go back and give them to the nurses, or yet that he was doing it just for spite, just because he wasn’t supposed to have them. That’s the way he was, he’d do any little old thing for spite. He’d light up in the no-smoking room, tie a knot in the badminton net, or hide the sports section from the daily paper. Of course, as soon as he bought the razor blades, he had to turn them over to Mr. Martin. And since Hemp didn’t make any big deal over it, I didn’t think any more about it. But, apparently, since he couldn’t use the razor blades, he used a sock instead. Just took a sock and stuffed it down his throat. Who, but Hemp, would’ve even thought of such a thing. But, that’s Hemp for you. Even in killing himself, he’s gonna make a joke of it, and sock his own self in the mouth.

  But Hemp dead. I can’t believe it. First Caldwell, the only other man I could really talk with was dead, then Hemp, the man for talking things over with at Nathan, Hemp was dead, too. Although I could talk with Dr. Adams most anytime, and although he has to be the best person ever to really talk things out with, it’s not the same as having a real person and not a doctor to talk with.

  Miss Cannon is so disturbed over the whole matter of Hemp that she decides she must go home, so she is packing up her things on Monday when I am unpacking mine to stay a while longer, how much longer I don’t know.

  “It’s just too hainty around here,” Miss Cannon says, folding her gowns, pink and yellow and blue and green—she sleeps in a different color every night to make her dream in color, she says. “Just to think, such a fine young man right over there down the hall choking hisself with a dirty old sock!” She folds her rubbery, wrinkled arms, and shivers into herself. “I can’t sleep nights now, for seeing him rared bac
k there in his chair, his eyes blaring, his mouth open, and poked full of sock!”

  “Did you see him?” I ask.

  “No, no, only in my dreams. But I heard about it, the warden told me all about it, how they found him there, and I’m ready to get out of this crazy place. It sure ain’t no place for old ladies.”

  So here Miss Cannon is leaving, and I don’t know why she came here in the first place, there doesn’t seem to be nothing wrong with her, except she doesn’t seem to put up with nothing nor with nobody.

  I’m glad I wasn’t here. That’s all I can think. Glad I was home trying to give birth to Elizabeth. Like it says in the Bible, I guess, when one dies, another is born in its place. But Hemp, why Hemp, of all people?

  Miss Cannon is almost finished with packing up her things, when in comes this nurse I haven’t seen before, and man is she ever a slick one. I mean they don’t come around Nathan any nicer acting or more polished up than her. MISS HANSOM I see on that little name bar on her uniform, and that name it suits her fine. She is a real nurse, too, wearing white, not green, like the nurse’s aid.

  “Miss Cannon?” she says as smooth as Daddy’s rose petals. “Are you about ready to go?”

  “I’m more than ready to go,” says Miss Cannon. “Ain’t you?”

  Miss Hansom smiles, courteous. “No,” she says, “I think I’ll stay around awhile.” Then she walks over to me, where I am sitting on my bed watching it all, and she offers her hand and says, “I’m Genevieve Hansom. You must be Elizabeth.”

  Her hand is so beautiful with the rose pink fingernail polish on her long fingernails, the whiteness, pure whiteness of her skin, so I finally reach out to put my hand in hers. It’s like shaking hands with a pink rose in full bloom, warm and silky and soft. “I’m Elizabeth,” I say. And for the first time the name “Elizabeth” has some meaning, like it really is me, or I really am her, one or the other.