Sarah Vaughan is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness

by Thomson, MaryJane

  I am always hoping for a brighter day to come my way. If only I wasn’t locked into a system, maybe that would happen, I think to myself. Just seems like this psych ward, which is controlled by the government, is strong: there are no holes you can work your way through. People say, “It’s there to protect you,” and I guess it can save you from yourself and the harm you may do to yourself. Had I not been picked up a few times by the cops when I was on suicide missions I might not be alive today.

  I watch the light of the moon through the clouds, then I walk to my room and say, “May peace rest here tonight.” I kiss one of my pictures as a way of kissing God, and I get into bed.

  Morning comes. I wake up at six and go out to the smokers’ room. Lester, Mark, Nga and Virginia are lining up by the coffee trolley. I make myself a coffee and have a cigarette. I sit on a seat by Lester, facing out to the yard. We watch Virginia walking around outside praying to Jesus Christ and reciting passages from the Bible; I think she’s saying the Ten Commandments.

  Lester pulls his headphones out of his pocket and starts speaking into the earpiece. “Come on, come on, come and get me, you wouldn’t last one second in here.” I smoke another cigarette and make a second coffee, except I don’t put in the water. After I’ve finished my smoke I use the hot water in the Zip water heater outside the nurses’ station, go back to my room, and start reading the Koran. I can’t follow anything. My eyes scroll over the words and then I fall asleep.

  When I wake up Waris is telling me it’s time for morning meds. I take them.

  “How did you sleep, darling?”

  I get up. “Oh good,” I say, refreshing myself with movement.

  Waris speaks to me like my mother. “Now, make sure you shower today before you see the doctors and your mother.”

  I feel like I’ve heard this ten thousand times. “Yeah, yeah.” I roll my eyes. “I will.”

  Waris smiles. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  I go back to my room, pick up my harmonica, and play it out the window to get the birds to sing. I’m certainly no blues virtuoso. I just blow long notes, breathing out from my diaphragm. The birds on the wire start tweeting. I keep going. I do this for half an hour until Megan, a nurse, comes in and tells me that breakfast started a quarter of an hour ago.

  I figure there will be no queue so I make my way to the dining room. I get my tray and put it on a spare table near the window. I see Anton sitting outside feeding the birds. It makes me think he is strange, trying to look like the nice guy feeding the pigeons, when all they do is demand food and shit all over the place. Even through the window, I can feel their eyes penetrating me.

  I look away and go back to my room to get my sunglasses. I speak to the voice. “I hate those birds. Fuck Anton. Why do people think they’re nice because they feed the fucken birds? All the birds do is stare, stare. Ever seen a bird blink?”

  I rummage around my room in a heightened state. I find my rubber-rimmed pink-lensed sunglasses, return to the dining room, and ask Vi if I can come back in ten minutes. “Course you can.”

  I’m shaking and need a cigarette. Pigeons send me into a state of deep panic, particularly when they are en masse like that. I feel penetrated by the mere knowledge of the blood running through them. I roll a cigarette and stand in the smokers’ room with my back to the window, facing the white wall, which has a badly hand-drawn picture of Michael Jackson. Anton is round the corner but I don’t want to risk seeing a single pigeon. When I turn around Lester is outside, scaring the birds away. This makes me smile for a second: maybe he doesn’t like them either, understands they are just flying rats. Hate it how they sit on the top of the fences and stare down at you.

  Seagulls and pigeons can seem quite ominous when there are so many in a fenced, confined space. When I was in ICU they would sit on top of the high wire fence in a line, as though they were the watchmen, and leave me paralysed in a corner on the concrete. I’d pull my hood over my head and try to block them out but they’d come down to the ground and walk around, just to let me know they could occupy my space.

  Lester has made a lot of them fly away, so I figure I can go and get breakfast. I have porridge, which is cold, and cold toast. I make myself a black coffee and pour it over the porridge and eat it. I have a thousand and one obsessions going on in my head, one of which is the birds. I need to let it go but they really make me panic.

  I decide to go and lie down on my bed and calm down. I take my toast, put some coffee in a cup and fill the cup with hot water by the nurses’ station. I go into my room, pick up my orange and banana, and replace my blanket with a white sheet. I place the toast in the middle, and a bit of jam. I eat the banana and put a new banana down. I dip my fingers into my coffee and flick the coffee on to the white sheet. I’m trying to cleanse the room of bad spirits. The spirits of the birds could cling to me.

  I decide to have a shower and get changed. I wear my shorts and blue top, seeing as it is summer—not that you see much of it trapped in here. I decide I can’t face going out to the smokers’ room so I have a cigarette in my room, puffing the smoke out the window. Normally I don’t do this unless it’s really late at night.

  I lie on my bed and say a prayer to God to cleanse my room. The voice interrupts me. “Why don’t you pray for yourself and your sickness?”

  “I’m not sick. I just hate those fucken birds. I need strength to block out their energies.”

  I think I can feel the energy that emanates from people and animals, and have the power to conquer it through my movements and words.

  I sit on my bed facing my pictures and write a song called “Free us from the bird of prey”. I play it with one finger on the G note as I’m not so concerned with harmony. I sing the song over and over again. Images of pigeons and seagulls float across my mind. The voice says, “That’s a genius song, everybody is listening, the whole world can hear you. There’s a camera in your room. The whole world stops and listens when you sing.”

  This is hard to believe but I just go with it. God stops talking and then the voice of Rose comes in. “I’m coming to get you and we are just going to leave, we are going to leave everything. I’m just going to get you and grab your pictures. I have a guitar for you.”

  “Yeah, you never come. This is what you always say. The world can’t hear me sing.”

  I go and get a piece of paper and start putting little squiggles all over it, then I draw some big ones all over the little ones, and then I go over them and redefine them. “You’re the most amazing artist that will ever walk the Earth,” the voice says. I don’t say anything, just keep concentrating on what I’m doing.

  Knock, knock. It’s Waris. “How are you?”

  I look up. “I’m fine.”

  She comes over and stands above the coffee marks.

  “What’s on your sheet?”

  I look over and say casually, “I just speckled some coffee on it to make a picture.” I don’t want to tell her I was performing a ritual to cleanse the spirits.

  “Oh well, I think we should put a clean one down if you’re going to be doing art on the ground.”

  She walks out and returns with a clean sheet. I don’t want to argue so I help her put it on the floor. She motions for me to sit down on my bed and says, “Now, you have a meeting with the doctors at 10.30.”

  “Is my mother going to be there?”

  “Do you want her there?”

  “No, I don’t. She doesn’t let me be this way; she likes me different.” I fold one leg over the other and start tensing up.

  Waris pushes the sheet further out so there are no creases. “Well, you can talk to the doctors about this later.” She adopts an authoritative tone. “Have you had a shower?”

  “Yes, I had one earlier. I have just been writing songs and doing a picture.”

  Waris gets animated. “Oh, I would like to see your writing sometime, MaryJane.”

  I unfold my leg. “Hmm.” I start thinking. �
�I just write what comes out of my head. I don’t really plan it. Maybe it’s some kind of song. I don’t know,” I say, doubting my ability and the worthiness of my writing.

  Waris stands up to leave. “Okay. Well, I will come find you at 10.30 for the meeting.”

  “Ah–”

  Waris turns back around.

  “I’m a bit nervous,” I say.

  Waris smiles. “Oh, darling,” she says in a high-pitched tone, “you don’t need to be. They just going to talk about your diagnosis.” She gets up and walks out.

  I pick up my guitar and continue writing another verse to my song, and then I sing it. I can feel the resonance of the words pushing out of my mouth: it’s how I know what I’m doing as I’m not wearing a hearing aid and can’t hear very efficiently.

  After singing the song I feel calm and go outside for a cigarette. Jo is there with Nga. Nga is on the couch; Jo is crouching against the wall in the corner, over a mess of ash and cigarette butts and spilled drink.

  Nga is on her cellphone, texting, and smoking. They say, “Hello.” I say, “Hi.” I’m not interested in talking to them but I’m polite. I feel the need to explain my actions so I say, “Just going to sit in the sun.” I decide to brave the birds. I sit on the doorstep outside the other smokers’ room. The door is shut so I soak up the heat reflecting off the window. I take off my boots, lean back against the door, and feel the warm concrete under my feet.

  Virginia is walking around the lawn preaching to the grass. She approaches me and says that in order to be free from sin I must dye my hair blonde because God wants us in our natural state. Then she says, “I don’t like the smell of cigarettes” and moves away.

  I am thinking of dyeing my hair from its current purple to black, definitely not blonde. I see a pigeon and tilt my hat forward to block it out of sight. Nola is in the yard, stomping on a raised bit of concrete about a metre high. She starts jumping down to the ground to scare the pigeons away. Don’t think she likes the pigeons either.

  I notice she seems quite disturbed. I seem to be very good at observing other people’s behaviour but not so good at reading my own. I start burning my wrist. Nola looks at me and I stop doing it. She says, “How many cigarettes you smoke a day?” I’m not interested in talking to her so I say curtly, “I don’t count.” I probably smoke roughly forty to fifty but they’re all thin, which is how I justify being able to smoke so many. Not that I’m worried about my lungs in this state.

  Nola talks as though I’m interested. “I let myself have seven a day when I’m in here.” She pulls out a Pall Mall. For some reason I tell her I have a doctor’s appointment. She reckons I should take someone with me. “Do you have any friends or an older respected person of the community who can vouch for you and say you are of sound health—anyone, even an old teacher?” Ringing any of those people is not, I think, a possibility. “Nah, can’t get in touch.”

  It seems that Nola had a part in creating the code of ethics you see on the wall when you walk into the ward. She worked it out after one of her stays years earlier. I don’t think she’s doing so well now: she lines her doorway with toilet paper and screams a lot.

  When I feel it’s polite to leave I go in through the sliding door, past the kitchen, to where there is a couch and a vending machine. It’s an alternative place to hang out but I don’t sit there much. I look at the clock. It’s 10.17. I go into my room and pour a Coke. The voice says, “You don’t need a friend with you. I will be with you. I want you to get your phone later.”

  I take a sip of Coke and say, “Okay, I will think about it.” I suppose I should have organised for someone to come with me but I have cut myself off from my friends and family. I write another verse to my song and sing it. The voice says, “That’s amazing. Everyone in the world heard it. You are the greatest artist of all time; you’re a prophet.”

  I sit and listen. I guess I’m slowly starting to believe it.

  I decide I want to squeeze in a smoke. I walk past Waris in the hall. She says, “You ready?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready. Can we go the outside way? I’ll smoke on the way.”

  We go outside and walk across the yard. I suck in the smoke deep and hard: five drags and it’s finished. We go through the sliding doors, then through double doors into the day hospital. On the right there’s a little room. Waris opens the door with a key and I follow her in. The room is painted lemon-yellow and has a still-life painting of flowers on the wall. There is also a big couch, the cleanest couch in the hospital, and four chairs. It’s clear they preserve this room for visitors, maybe to promote a healthy clean face to the hospital.

  Waris and I sit down and then Dr Aso and Dr Morrison come in. I sit facing them. Waris sits on the other chair, in front of the window.

  Dr Aso looks at my boots and then at me and says, “Do you think they are appropriate shoes for summer? You need some more shoes.”

  I look at my feet, then over his shoulder. “I came in here with no shoes: I left all my old shoes at my flat.” I look back in his direction; I still can’t meet his eyes. “How much longer am I going to be in here? It’s been a while.”

  “At least a little while yet,” he says. “We are waiting for your psychotic symptoms to subside.”

  I start to get agitated. “But I’m not psychotic. I know the day, the month and the year.”

  He starts to laugh. Usually I try and make jokes with him, lighten everything up a bit. “I like your shirt,” I say. He is wearing a yellow shirt and bright brown leather shoes that look clean. Yellow is one of my favourite colours.

  He starts to look serious. “We have been observing you for some months now and we have managed to diagnose you with schizoaffective disorder, and your sub-type is bipolar.”

  I have never heard of schizoaffective disorder but it sounds slightly schizophrenic. “What is it?” I say.

  He continues on. “It falls across the schizophrenia and bipolar spectrum and can take quite some time to diagnose. That’s why we have been keeping you here so long. Your mother is coming in later today. Do you think you might speak to her?”

  I feel confused at so much information all at once. “I’ll see her but I don’t want to go back and live with her.”

  “Well, I’ll be informing her of your diagnosis.”

  “You know your mother loves you, MaryJane,” Waris says. “She comes and visits you every day.”

  The other doctor leans forward. “We find people always recover better with family support.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t need their support. I can look after myself. I just wish you would all let me feed myself, clothe myself, and live the way I want. She is not as nice as she looks and neither is my father,” I say, looking at Dr Aso. “You think wearing those clothes makes you better people? I don’t dress for you or society. Society can get fucked.”

  “Yes, but if you live in society you have to cohabitate in a harmonious fashion and some of your habits run counter to that,” Dr Aso says. He looks as if he’s about to lose patience with me.

  “Yeah, well, you’re believing every word they say and not listening to me. Can’t they see I’ve changed from how I was when I was younger? I’m not a baby any more.”

  Dr Aso leans forward in his chair. “You’re a very intelligent young woman,” he says. “You have to do something to help yourself.”

  Waris says, “We can’t let you out alone, MaryJane. You just go out and find drugs. It is a symptom of your illness that you self-medicate. If you don’t stop taking drugs, you will just fall into a pattern of getting in and getting out.”

  Getting into a pattern of getting in and out of institutions is something to be taken seriously. I know I haven’t listened to the doctors, just gone on believing I don’t have a problem. Being unwell has become a familiar state. I struggle with my mental health but never do anything to greatly address it. I don’t like the medication they make me take in hospital, so when I get out I stop taking it. I don’t build a trusting relationship w
ith my psychiatrist. I tell lies about what I’ve been doing, put up a front and say I take the meds.

  A lot of people go back to taking drugs when they get out of here. You can end up in some pretty vulnerable states, and these ultimately lead you back in. I know how hard it is to stay out and break the pattern. I give in because it seems too hard, and a pattern only special people break.

  Being institutionalised knocks my confidence and makes me lose hope for the future. I feel I haven’t got what it takes to handle the world, and have forgotten what it is like to live normally. If only I could remember. When was the last time I felt positive about myself? When was the last time I thought I had done something well? It’s easy to lose faith in yourself and slip back to the bottom. At least down here there’s nothing hard. I can just stay here if I want.

  Dr Aso starts looking at my file, which is growing larger by the minute. He says, “If you take the drugs we give you and not the ones you get out there, you might not have to keep coming in here.”

  I start to feel uptight. “Yeah, but I don’t like the side effects of the Olanzapine. I hate my body being altered.”

  He smiles. “We have different drugs to give you, Lamotrigine and Haloperidol.”

  New drugs, I think to myself. “What are the side effects?”

  “Well, there is no weight gain.”

  “Will my breasts lactate?” A lot of psych drugs have this side effect.

  “No, your breasts won’t lactate.”

  “But I find all these drugs so constipating.”

  “We can give you a laxative.”

  “So what’s Haloperidol?”

  “It’s an antipsychotic. It will help your disordered thinking. It does make you slightly stiff so we will give you some Cogentin for that. Lamotrigine is a mood stabiliser. It will help keep you level but you will still be within the normal range of emotions.”

  As much as I hate taking psych drugs I welcome the idea of a new drug, because over the years I’ve had some that put you in a pretty vegetative state. Anything has to be better than those.