Sarah Vaughan is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness

by Thomson, MaryJane

  “That’s very sweet of you, MaryJane, but you need to keep your money for yourself; you’re always giving everything away.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t need all that money, particularly when I’m in this place.”

  As we walk up Riddiford Street towards the supermarket I ponder my savings. “Waris, will I be in here forever?”

  Waris smiles. “Of course not, darling. We just have to monitor you closely and get you on the right meds. I don’t think the ones you are on are quite right for you. You have a meeting with the doctors tomorrow. I’m sure they will have something to say about all this and your diagnosis.”

  I brighten at the prospect of new medication.

  “Your mum’s coming tomorrow to see you. She’s been really upset, you know, about your dying your hair.”

  I repeat my mantra. “Well, maybe she should be more worried with how I am doing on the inside. I like my hair purple. I’m probably going to go black soon. I think appearance should be fun—don’t know why everyone takes it so seriously.”

  We go to cross the street. “I think black would be beautiful, MaryJane,” Waris says. “I just think your mother is upset because you have the most beautiful hair.”

  I start to whine. “Yeah, but I think she and the doctors and everyone else are a bit consumed with my appearance. I’m in the ward with flashers: I don’t really feel comfortable in skintight clothes, don’t think they are that appropriate.”

  Waris interjects. “Yeah, but couldn’t you at least wear jeans like everyone else?”

  I never feel comfortable wearing jeans in the hospital. I don’t want to wear anything that may remotely resemble my figure or shape. Also, I have gained weight and the jeans I was wearing when I came in no longer fit. They are my favourite jeans and no other pair will do.

  We make our way past Jimmy’s Fruit Market and on to New World Supermarket. My voice tells me to walk on the outside of Waris so I do. In New World I get led to the oranges, tomatoes and bananas. I also buy some apples. Waris gets herself an orange and leads me down to the farthest section of the supermarket. I can get anything I want but I just stick with what I came for.

  Waris gets a berry smoothie. “Oh, these are so good.” I think they look nice but I don’t want to overspend, and I also don’t want to piss off my voice. Sometimes my voice appears angry if I don’t do what it wants. Sometimes it leads me around in rapid circles, or takes me up to people or items on a shelf really quickly and forces me to lean in aggressively and speak to the person or thing. It can make everything appear really nasty and I feel scared.

  We get to the counter. I ask for some cigarettes and the checkout operator IDs me. Waris flashes her Capital Coast Health card. I guess I am dressed rather young for my age.

  I am still a bit pissed off with what Waris said about my clothes. I don’t think you should completely judge someone by how they dress. A person may dress impressively, drive the right car, have the right job, and not end up being a very good person.

  We leave the supermarket and walk past the chemist. I nip in and look at the hair dye. “Not tonight,” Waris says. “We’ve got to get back and have dinner.”

  I drift out of the shop with her. “I don’t much feel like dinner.”

  “You have to eat something.”

  “I’ll have a tomato.”

  We make our way back down Riddiford Street and hang a right to the bakery. I don’t buy a cookie, despite the voice, which says, “I buy you cookie.” I don’t want to eat something so huge: I get a pain in my gut just looking at it. “I’ll just get a coffee,” I say.

  Waris buys herself a mince pie. We leave, walk up Constable Street and take a left down Daniel Street, past my old flat, where I lived when I went to jazz school. Those days are a bit of a haze. We come out at the pohutukawa again and walk up the back of the hospital into the ward.

  “Hey Waris, thank you.”

  “That’s all right, darling. You know I love you.”

  I don’t know how to respond so I just say, “Cool.”

  “I will wash your fruit for you and get you a plate and bring it in later.”

  I take my tobacco and disappear into my room. I lie down on the bed with my arms resting underneath my head.

  “So, are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  I’m feeling a little confused so I say, “Who am I talking to?”

  The voice responds, “You’re talking to me, Rose. I’m very worried about you. You have AIDS stage three and you need to eat more.”

  “Yeah but I’m constipated. I have plenty of food in me,” I say.

  The voice is speaking to me quite mightily. “The disease you have eats up the food, and the reason you have fits of anger is because it’s a disease of the blood, a virus, and it rages around your body and uses up all your energy.”

  In the past I have done research on AIDS on the internet. Stage three is quite advanced so I can’t quite believe it. I start thinking of what Jesus Christ said about testing the spirits, so I say, “Oh well, I don’t think I believe you. If I have this so-called disease where are my lesions?”

  “We will get to those later. Right now I want you to have some Coke and a cigarette.”

  “I’m not eating stew for dinner.”

  I get myself a cup for the Coke and my new red cigarettes. I’m feeling a bit flat: perhaps the red ones will bring me up. I go straight through the smokers’ room with my head down and walk to the end of the yard where no one is. I’m thinking that the voice isn’t really Rose and that I don’t really have AIDS because I have heard it all a thousand times before. AIDS never shows up in my blood tests, and Rose told me point-blank to never contact her again after the time I told her I was Jesus.

  I had a friendship with Rose for about two weeks. At the time I was starting to get unwell and I got quite dependent on her. She introduced me to the Bible and baptised me so I felt I had found a true friend, someone who really cared about me. I was coming out of the stupor of heavy use of heroin when I met her at Narcotics Anonymous and she offered a sympathetic ear. I had just left my boyfriend, a heroin addict. I spent my days being with Rose and writing letters to Jesus Christ. Narcotics Anonymous encourages the use of a higher power but it was a concept far beyond my addled brain. I do wonder what my psychosis would have been like if I had never read a Bible. I don’t think it’s a bad book, but I do believe it can be somewhat misinterpreted if you read it when psychotic or using heavy drugs.

  I go through to the dining room. I’m twenty minutes late and it’s only a quarter full. I look at dinner, beef stew and trifle, and don’t fancy either, so I make myself a coffee and grab some brown bread. My fruit has been washed and is sitting in my room. I am thankful to God for Waris washing the fruit. It’s not something everyone does. I grab a tomato, remember I don’t have a knife to cut it with, and go to the dining room and ask Molly for one.

  “Here you are, angel. You know I love your singing, I think you sing from your heart,” Molly says.

  I feel flattered. I’m not used to people commenting on my singing because normally I do it in my room with the door shut. I more or less just sing to make up words and live out the fantasy in my head.

  The knife is plastic, so I can’t do a lot of damage with it. I cut the tomato in my room and make a tomato sandwich. I take it into the lounge. Nora is there; she’s brought in her bed and pushed it up against the corner of the room

  “Hey bro,” she says. She’s sniffing glue out of a plastic bag.

  “You all good?” I say.

  “Yeah, I’m all good. Just waiting for Shortland Street. How long you been in here?”

  “About three months,” I say. “I think they’re observing me. They keep mentioning diagnosis, but I’m fine. I don’t need the pills they keep filling me up with. How long have you been in here?”

  “About a week. I’m only being observed, should be out soon.” She speaks very softly; her voice sounds slightly mutated. She seems very dreamy and sl
eepy. I don’t ask for any glue, not my type of thing. I see it as just killing brain cells and it doesn’t seem to be making her overly happy.

  I stare out the window at the clouds. I scope the window but it has a bar that prevents it being opened fully. No point in running away anyway: I’m under Section, which means if I escape I just get brought back in.

  As I stare out at the cloudy evening I start pondering my lost dreams. It frustrates the hell out of me that I can’t escape. It seems that every time I am planning on getting anywhere in my life I get chucked in here. I could be in America on a beach strumming my guitar right now if it weren’t for being picked up by the cops all the time—never mind needing a visa and money.

  At one stage I had it all planned. I was going to get a holiday visa and live on the beach and busk for money, or strip. I’d done a brief stint of stripping in my early twenties and it was pretty easy money. For years and years I have been planning my next move, but then I get unwell, make impulsive decisions and go off on a tangent.

  I start talking to my voice. Rose says, “You don’t need to escape: I’m coming in to get you. But you need to text me and let me know you’re in here.”

  “But if I’m speaking to you don’t you know?”

  “Yeah, but we need to do it properly, person to person.”

  I’m starting to get angry. “Well, I don’t want to ring, not after the last conversation, and besides I don’t need to be rescued. I can get out of here myself.”

  The voice won’t let up. It’s relentless. “But you are sick. I need to take you to hospital. You need to get a blood test.”

  I look down at my arms at the mention of a blood test, then I look back at the clouds and say, “Yeah, but they control the blood tests. They never actually tell me I have AIDS, and they never told me my tumour was malignant.”

  Several years ago, when I was with my boyfriend, I had several lumps removed from my hip. They were tested and came back non-malignant. When I get unwell I cling on to this memory, as if the lumps actually meant I had cancer.

  “They never tell the truth,” I say. “They just want a sign of God, want me to have all these diseases and for me to heal from them naturally so they know he exists. I’m just an experiment. I take all these pills and they are just testing me.”

  The voice keeps trying to lie to me. “Those pills you take are for your AIDS. I want you to go and ask Waris for your cell phone.”

  I’m resistant to being asked this. “I’m not going to.”

  The voice starts speaking in a weird tone. “I didn’t want to yell at you that time. I was being threatened. Your life was in danger but it’s okay now. I’m going to come in and see you. I just want you to text me.”

  I’m trying to delay the task so I say, “I will have a cigarette and think about it.” I turn to Nora. “See you later.”

  She’s started falling asleep. “Yeah, see you, bro.”

  I grab my coffee cup. Must be about supper time. I go in and make a Milo with hot water. Nga and Hemi are sitting eating biscuits. Nga is sixteen and she’s from out of town. “I’m pregnant,” she says and puts another biscuit in her mouth.

  “You going to be all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m just going to go live with my mother.” She puts another biscuit in her mouth.

  That reminds me that my mother is coming in tomorrow, and that I don’t want to see her. Her visit could take me away from my world and what I’m doing and planning. I need to talk to the social worker about finding a council flat for when I get out of here, not that the other one really worked out; it lasted only a week.

  That was about eighteen months ago though—maybe things are different now, I think. At the time I was on really strong injections of Pipotiazine, an antipsychotic that targets schizophrenia. It was administered to me every two weeks. I was living in a council flat and wasn’t talking to my mother.

  One day I went to visit my Gran in her rest home and my mother arrived. She said, “Why don’t you come home.” She must have caught me at a weak moment because I started to reflect on how hard life was, battling the world under psych drugs that were so strong I could barely walk a block down the street. When I went to lie down it would bring a strange kind of tension, so I couldn’t relax. Just to buy cups and food for my place was a real half-day effort. I had been determined to live independently because I felt that’s what I should do, but boy, I needed a break from fighting. So I surrendered the resentments I harboured against my mother and went home.

  I make my Milo and go outside for a cigarette. I sit on a chair next to Lester at the top of the yard. Nora comes out for a cigarette. I don’t say hello. I just sit on the chair staring at the ground, planning, plotting in my head. I can vaguely hear a guitar being played outside. It’s Jeremiah singing “Faith”. The song has a nice rhythm and makes me want to sway gently.

  “You’re quiet, babe,” Lester says.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking. Tomorrow’s going to be stressful. Have to see the doctors and my mother’s coming in.” I drag deeply on my cigarette.

  “Oh, you not get on with your folks? Me neither, fucken cunts. They love it when I’m in here.”

  “Yeah, my family loves me being in here too.”

  “You know the nurses and the doctors should try taking these drugs and see how it makes them feel.”

  I nod my head in agreement.

  “Hmmm,” I say, rolling another cigarette, “my meds just make me want to eat and lie down.”

  Lester stands up, runs his hands through his hair, lets out a sigh, turns to me and says, “But isn’t that just how they want us, sedate, so we become stupid and can’t do anything and can’t talk? Hate talking to doctors.”

  Being in the ward creates a real them-and-us scenario. I don’t think that’s the intent, but when you are locked up and given meds that make you feel as though you have to fight just to get out of bed and function it’s hard not to think that way.

  Different people need different drugs for different reasons. A lot of psych drugs make me function very slowly, and make simple tasks such as strumming a guitar hard. They slow down my thinking and tense up my body, so I develop a resentment towards the mental health system, feel it’s not good enough, I’m being chucked out into the waste end of society, and other government-funded areas seem to get much better treatment. I am offended by the level of treatment I get. A high proportion of the staff, doctors and nurses, make me feel I don’t count and don’t matter.

  Waris comes outside with the pill cup and says it’s time for meds. I decide I don’t feel like taking them. I am about to spit them out when Waris says, “MaryJane, have you been taking your meds?”

  “Sure I have. Why?”

  She sits on the chair next to me. “I’m just checking. You have been known to try and avoid taking them.” I decide I don’t want to get caught out so I swallow them back down.

  “Night, MaryJane, see you tomorrow.”

  “Night, Waris. Thanks for doing my fruit.”

  As she walks away I remember I was meant to ask for the phone. I don’t really want to text Rose and I don’t really believe what she’s telling me about AIDS is the truth.

  I turn into my room for the night. I sit on my bed and eat my apple. I can hear the voice talking to me through the chews, saying, “I can read your mind. I know you don’t think I’m coming but I am. You have AIDS. I’m coming to take you to a doctor.”

  “I have no lesions.”

  “Pull your top up, I’ll show you.” I pull up my top. My eyes get led to my right breast and I see a mark.

  “That’s a lesion,” the voice says.

  “It doesn’t look like a lesion.”

  The voice speaks forcefully. I feel my head being compressed. “That’s because your skin’s been bleached so the lesions don’t come up the way they should. You’re really sick physically. That’s why you’re here. Those drugs are for your AIDS.”

  I stop chewing, cut a piece off the edge of the apple, and
leave it on the sheet as an offering. I pick up my guitar and start singing, “How long will they kill our prophets…” The voice tells me I’m a prophet and that I can foresee the future, and that I have a deep and profound understanding of history through my ability to talk directly to God. I start singing about how the prophets get killed because they threaten establishments. Although this may be true, I don’t think that makes me a prophet.

  A nurse knocks on my door and says it’s getting late and I should stop singing. “No worries.” After she leaves I reluctantly put down my guitar. “We need to get you out of here. They interrupt your singing. Your singing is very important.”

  When I am in this state, it’s as if I’m occupying two worlds. I go between my intimate moments with the voice, where I sing and talk to it, and my relations with the real world. Indulging in my psychotic world can make me feel really good, as though I’m on drugs. Everything I see and hear has purpose and meaning. It’s no wonder I think I am a genius: thoughts come into my mind with such intensity that I believe everything I think is profound.

  I decide to put the sun and moon back together, and I chuck the rest of my apple out the window. I see some red roses lying under the window and assume someone has dropped them there for me. I decide to have one more cigarette; it’s not yet ten o’clock so I figure I have time. I check the clock and go into the smokers’ room. Louis is there but the stereo isn’t. Louis just sits and looks down at his green Jandals and doesn’t say much.

  This doesn’t worry me—I’m on another plane altogether. I go outside and sit on one of the seats at the top of the yard, where there is cover from the rain. I look for the moon. I say a prayer for the moon, and say thank you to God for how it lights up the night and how lost we would be without it. I pray for him to get me out of here and send someone who might be able to make it happen. I pray for the next day, that everything will go all right. I sing to myself, “Somewhere over the rainbow.”