Hillbilly Gothic

by Adrienne Martini

  I take a shower, which is uneventful but for the realization that the showerhead is handheld so that no one can strangle himself by looping a wound-up bedsheet or something over it. Yet, we are still given potentially lethal motorized beds. The world is inconsistent, even here.

  Morning group goes as one would expect. One aging southern belle is wrapped in a blanket in her chair, moaning and sobbing so hard that snot runs down her upper lip. Jeff points out to the social worker in charge that she’s getting worse, that yesterday she was coherent. The social worker tells Jeff, essentially, to worry about his own health. I set one goal, which is to write in my journal. I’m pulled out of group by my shrink, who takes me to the cheap hotel room where the prim lady tried to lead me to Jesus.

  “How’s it going?” Dr. G asks, peering over the edge of his reading glasses.

  “Fine, except for the woman who tried to get me to pray with her.” I tell him the whole story. I have no idea if he believed me or if he just thought I was also delusional and looking for excuses to be angry about this place.

  “Did you tell her to just stick it?” He’s very direct, that Dr. G.

  “Um, no. I didn’t know I could.” And I didn’t. I keep forgetting that I’m an adult.

  “You can. How are you otherwise?”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “And I want to go home.” I don’t, really, but I do want to be someplace where people don’t vomit at breakfast.

  “You’re not ready to go home.” And, with that, I burst into tears again, at which point, some small part of my brain notices that it has been almost twelve hours since I last cried. It’s a minor miracle.

  “But I don’t belong here,” I say. I don’t. I’ve been to college. I am a professional; I write. I’ve read Infinite Jest. Twice. And understood it, which ought to count for something. I am too smart for this place. I’m not like them, those sad, crazy people out there.

  “You do belong here,” he says, then goes on to explain in great detail that he won’t keep me here one minute longer than absolutely necessary, that psych-floor beds are in great demand, and that he wouldn’t waste one on someone who didn’t need to be there. He continues, but I’ve already started insisting that I’m just fine, thanks, now let me out of here. And he again says no.

  Then I’m dismissed. The whole meeting took about five minutes. I feel like I’m just being warehoused, here, that no one really wants to talk to me about how I’m adjusting to any of this. I’m just here because no one knows what to do with me because I am brain broke. Dr. G and I would repeat this little exercise every morning of my confinement save the last, when I finally admitted that I might have a bit of a problem re: the whole mood stability issue and probably do belong on Tower 4. That day, I am released.

  But I am getting ahead of myself.

  When the door opens, I go to my room to hide. I write for a while, then read a few chapters from David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day, which Shelley had also tossed in my bag. I suspect it would not be on the approved reading list for the mentally ill.

  From my journal, July 13 (later):

  “Deep down, I think this whole thing was triggered by the dark fear that I’ll be a crappy mom. I honestly don’t know how I can escape that. I am a product of crappy mothering myself. Scott seems to have absolute faith in me. I wish I shared it.

  “I just want to do the whole parenting thing right—and I know there is no such thing, really. But I feel I should at least give it the best shot. I got a little lost in it, though.

  “Part of the problem is that I’m not really sure if I love you yet. I mean, I love the idea of you and the you you will become, but right now you’re just a crying, pooping ball of need that threw my life out of control. The irregularity of you—you have your own arcane inner schedule that neither of us has been able to decode—can be a little tricky to accept on a daily basis. You seem alien at times, speaking a language and living in a world we can’t see or comprehend. And at 4 a.m., you feel that much more foreign to me and I wonder how I could understand so little about something that used to be a part of me. I feel inferior and inept at something I should be a natural at. The whole pregnancy and birth thing is by far the hardest thing I’ve done. Usually hard projects bring great rewards. But right now, there hasn’t been a great payoff, which makes it hard sometimes to soldier on.”

  The rest of the days were oddly similar to my first so I can’t tease one out from the next. Sandra, Myra, Jeff, and I chummed around, mostly because we seemed to have the same psychiatric issues. Sandra and I would have comfortable chats in our room, frequently before drifting off to sleep, like two girls at a slumber party. We’d gossip about the nurses, about our fellow patients, about the meds we were on. While we’d mention family—she had a daughter who was pregnant—our outside lives really didn’t exist. She never really wanted to talk about the specifics of why she slashed her wrists, which was fine. I can imagine quite well without needing a full description. Sandra never pried too deeply into what brought me in, either. I suspect that she understood on a visceral level, in a way that most people couldn’t.

  Myra was hard to get a read on. She seemed like your average suburban young adult in her early twenties. Her parents would drop off copies of Teen People and Elle. She could name all of the members of the current hot boy bands. But the circles under her eyes were so dark, you’d swear she’d been punched. And she’d giggle a lot, and never when something actually amusing would happen. It’s like she wasn’t completely present, that some part of her was always floating just above her head in a helium balloon.

  The amount of medication in Myra’s morning and evening Dixie cups was truly astounding. While we did have to swallow our drugs in front of the nurse’s window, the more trustworthy among us were allowed to collect our cups and loiter outside of the staff’s fishtank. I made some offhanded comment about how the color of my drugs clashed with the energy of the room and that it was offensive to the building’s feng shui. Myra giggles hysterically. “How do mine fit?” she asked.

  “You have a rainbow, which is a positive sign,” I say.

  “You are so funny! That’s what I’ve always liked about you.”

  Even crazy, I still got it.

  Jeff seemed like the sanest of all of us, frankly, yet he’d been there long before I’d arrived and would remain long after I left. He reminded me of a singer/songwriter friend of mine. They have the same build, and the same vocal timbre and accent. It was weird to talk to Jeff, simply because if I closed my eyes, I could easily forget where I was. His voice could instantly transport me to my favorite bar, where I could have a beer or two and listen to great music, just like normal folk.

  Jeff and I did a lot of jigsaw puzzles, simply because they don’t require that much concentration and give you a sense of accomplishment. Of course, we couldn’t finish any of them. Over the course of many, many patients, most of whom were not exactly paragons of responsible behavior, a lot of the pieces had disappeared. It was maddening to run out of bits and still have a big white hole in the middle of your pastoral mountain lake or pristine New England fishing village. Still, it was something to do.

  One afternoon, over an autumn country road and a basket of kittens, Jeff asked if I wanted to know why he was here.

  “Sure,” I said, “but only if you want to tell me.”

  “I threatened to kill my ex-girlfriend and her new husband. Jesus told me to do it.”

  “Good to know,” I said. And left it at that.

  Apart from jigsaw puzzles, reading and writing are the best ways to fill the free time that floats around the Psych Ward like a mugger looking for a victim. Free time can lead to too much thinking; not that thinking is bad, per se, but too much of it is a lousy thing when you’re already clinically blue. I get through all of Sedaris and most of a book of science fiction short stories. When I finish the Sedaris, I hide it on a bookshelf in the day room, wedged between two nondescript self-help paperbacks. As far as I know, it’s still th
ere.

  I also take my meds, which comes with a matching set of mental baggage. I hate them. Over the years, various licensed professionals have tried to soften the ego blow of antidepressants. I don’t care. Despite all of our warm and fuzzy talk about how depression is a physical disease caused by a chemical imbalance, it still has a big stinking stigma attached to it. If I could just mass my will behind it and decide to be happy, I wouldn’t have to lean on a chemical crutch. Because I can’t, I take my drugs like a good little girl. They help, damn it. While they aren’t happy pills that make your heart sing, they do make everything just a little bit easier.

  Most doctors want to see that your meds have kicked in before you are released. I can’t exactly put my finger on when I started to feel better. My second night on the floor, I sleep soundly without any medical intervention. Twenty-four hours into my stay I can get through complete sentences without sobbing. A couple of days in, other patients stop asking me if I am okay. No one moment marks the turning point. It takes weeks before I can actually take naps again, however.

  Different members of the staff would interview me every couple of hours. Questions range from those about my family history to my future plans. Some of the interviewers are fun. A nurse and I drift off onto a tangent about what it was like in the old days, when ECT and seriously unsubtle pharmaceuticals were the cutting edge of psychiatric therapies. One social worker, who I could easily imagine burning her bra in the seventies, told me that she liked me and that I would be just fine. I chose to believe her.

  I also spend some time coloring, just like I used to do in first grade. “Piglet and Pooh in an Umbrella” is one of my favorite creations. It is a delicate work done in crayon and marker. Some day, I will give it to my child and say “This is what I did during your first month of life.”

  We watch rented movies some nights. Nothing too violent, of course, since the staff has to clear the film before it can be shown. I suspect One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would be verboten, as would Nuts.

  Scott and the baby come by every day. We are allowed to lock ourselves in the same room where I meet with my shrink. The visits are both too brief and too long—and still painful to talk about. Seeing my husband is wonderful. Seeing my daughter is not. Here is this crying, cranky thing who has ruined my carefully constructed life. I don’t feel much connection to her at all and I know that I am truly defective. At the same time, I have never seen anything more beautiful, which makes it seem impossible that she has come from me. All I can say is that, now, I love her so much it is impossible to quantify.

  I start to get really tired of fluorescent lighting, air conditioning, my green pajamas, and country music.

  My dad flies in. He and my mother-in-law divide up the duties. Char takes care of the baby while he takes care of the cleaning. Each plays to his or her strengths. One night, Dad, Scott, and the baby come up bearing a piece of homemade lasagna, salad, and garlic bread. The staff, jokingly, threatens to confiscate it. I, jokingly, threaten to stab anyone who tries. And, thankfully, they take it for the light humor it is and don’t immediately put me in restraints. It was the best lasagna ever. A week of hospital food makes you appreciate the wonders of the home oven.

  My dad looks deeply uncomfortable the entire time, like he’s hovering between crying and running. I’m sure it brought back memories of visiting his mother. It doesn’t help that during his whole visit, the sunburned woman circles the table, muttering, and Angola is singing hymns as loudly as she can. I don’t really notice them anymore, but my father must have wondered how his daughter ended up surrounded by the obviously mad. It’s one thing when it happens to a parent; it’s completely different when it happens to your child.

  His reaction sums up the reasons I don’t want anyone else to visit me. My writer friends would simply sit silently and take notes, while they were secretly creeped out by the more flamboyant patients. Everyone else would look at me with pity. I’d have to get a new set of friends, if they came here. From that moment on, I would be associated only with Angola, Vivian, and the sunburned woman.

  Life on the ward continues. There are staff-designed distractions. The recreational therapist leads us on walks around the floor, with the more able-bodied continually lapping those who are more easily distracted. Angola makes it one lap, then starts to strip off her clothes. It feels just like home.

  Later that day, a group of nurses leads the assembled lunatics in what is, quite possibly, the most surreal activity I’ve ever taken part in. We are handed a list of seventeen scrambled words and given fifteen minutes to figure them out. The scrambled words are all names of medications we might be on. See if you can play along:

  OOLIKNNP =

  ITIUMLH =

  DKAOEPTE =

  As we’re beavering away, the disorder-of-thought folks are wandering about the room, some flapping their papers like wings.

  I also spend the days attending group. If nothing else, group provides a benchmark for what crazy truly is. But group offers more than that. No one can better understand where your head’s at than someone who has been there. No matter how down you may be, your words can still offer succor to someone further down than you. Listening to other people, no matter how nuts they appear, is worthwhile. The group-therapy experience should be made into a feel-good movie with Robin Williams, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The advantage to my group experience is that Knoxville is a large enough city to have segregated Psych Wards for different sorts of conditions. The truly violent are kept elsewhere, as are recovering addicts of all stripes. Speaking only in terms of loconess, Tower 4 contains a fairly homogenous group. There are no father-stabbers and mother-rapers, to quote Arlo. We’re all just fruits and nuts on this Group W bench.

  Sandra is the first to leave the nest. On the morning of her release, she is sitting on the edge of the bed staring at her wrists. “I just don’t think I can do it,” she says, quietly. “I just don’t know that I’m ready to go back out there. I’m so scared that it’ll get worse.”

  I have no panacea. All I can say is that I’m terrified, too. Staying here forever would be worse, though, so we have to make a choice. We wander down to the TV room, where group is about to begin. When it’s Sandra’s turn to speak, she spills out her fear. We all make commiserating noises. The recreational therapist then leads us in a round of Pictionary and gives us words like golf and sewing. For a group of people who have to be told what day it is, I think we kicked some Pictionary ass.

  At lunch, Sandra’s daughter picks her up. I hope Sandra is still okay.

  10

  The morning of the day of my return to polite society begins like any other. Breakfast with Angola is invigorating, to say the least, but there is no puke during this repast. One of the new guys—he’d been on the floor for two days—is complaining that the kitchen staff is out to get him. “I keep ordering two eggs and three pieces of bacon,” he yells. “What I get is oatmeal!” No matter how many times an aide explains to him that he is on a doctor-ordered low-cholesterol diet, he still blames a vast kitchen conspiracy, dreamed up just to torture him.

  Myra and Jeff want to know every last detail about my new roommate, who was delivered last night just after dinner. I don’t have much to tell them. She has been sound asleep every time I wander into the room. I know she must be conscious occasionally; I saw some chicken bones, all that remained of her dinner, left on a tray in the room right before I went to bed. She reeks of cigarette smoke, is a good-sized woman, and prefers to sleep without underwear, which I had bracingly discovered that morning after she’d kicked off all of her sheets. Some things you just don’t want to know about strangers.

  After a bowl of Cheerios and some coffee—we are all convinced there is a vast kitchen conspiracy to pass decaf off as the real thing—I wander to the nurse’s fishbowl to collect my meds and some hair conditioner. I return to my room. My new roommate is still asleep, but more modestly covered. I take a shower. After so many days on my body, whi
ch is still leaking sweat and blood with abandon, my cheerful green jammies are begging to be washed. I ponder bagging up some dirty clothes for Scott to take home the next time I see him.

  My fellow mental patients, those who can set goals, and I gather for morning group. Vivian still takes great pleasure in reminding the assembled that she isn’t brain broke, no matter what everyone says. I make a mental note to warn my new roomie about Vivian, whom I’ve caught twice rolling into our rooms on little cat wheels to steal things. I happened to be there reading and once I found her with her hand in my luggage. In truth, there’s not much of value for her to take, but it’s still irritating. And, for the record, she, indeed, is not brain broke, but likes everyone to think that she is more disabled than she is.

  My goals for the day are fairly straightforward. I need to finish up my discharge paperwork, which includes a “Crisis Intervention Plan” for which I have to list the names and phone numbers of people I can call in case of emergency as well as my five “early warning signs” of an impending breakdown. It’s not a project that requires a great deal of effort on my part. I actually know five people I could call in an emergency. It’s not as easy for others, however. It’s hard to say if the mental illness has destroyed their social networks or if really bad social networks fostered the mental illness. Some patients never have visitors. I can imagine few things more lonely.

  My real, if unstated, goal, is to finish reading a book of science fiction short stories that I’d just started. Even before the baby, my life didn’t contain much unstructured time for reading. Three days ago, I didn’t understand how much of a blessing this was. Now that I can stop crying and actually focus on something, I’m hoarding the minutes that I can spend with my nose in a book.