by Bonnie Grove
Inches from Heather, I felt the guard forcing me back, using the pressure of his baton on my throat as leverage. I pushed the baton with both hands, furious at being treated like a wild animal. I gasped for breath. The room blurred.
Suddenly the baton was gone. I dragged in air, as if surfacing from a great depth. Heather and Mom huddled together on the couch, wide-eyed. I stepped toward them, to join them in their fear and wonder, but the guard held my upper arms from behind. “Settle down now,” he commanded.
“I’m fine,” I croaked. But was I? I wanted to call him names, scratch his eyes with my fingers. If he loosened his grip, I would. The indignity stung my eyes, my throat burned.
An orderly ran over to Mom and Heather and reached out with soothing arms. “Best you go now. She’ll calm down. Maybe next time will be better.”
They stood in unison, like compliant children. Mom stretched out a hand, but the orderly pushed it back to her side. “Time to go.” He herded them to the door.
Heather looked back, mouth quivering. “We love you, Kate.”
Love? There was no such thing as love. It was a word used to justify hurtful actions. Was it love for me that drove her to befriend the woman who tore my life apart? Love that had caused Kevin to betray me? Love that caused The Reverend to bruise me? What use was that kind of love? I tried to pull free from the guard’s grip. “Shut up,” I bellowed at her. I pried at the guards fingers. “Let me go.”
He pulled me back against his chest and held firm. “You’re going to spend some time in confinement.”
“You’re going to lock me up?” I shook my body, trying to loosen it from his grip. “For what? Having a cow for a sister?”
The door Mom and Heather had just gone through clicked shut. I twisted my lower body and tried to kick the guard.
“Let go,” I said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” In this place all you had to do was stand up when everyone else was sitting down—raise your voice when others say shush, show any emotion, and it was enough to get you hauled off.
The guard circled my waist with his arm and heaved me up. My feet flailed. I drew one foot back and connected with the guard’s knee. He barely flinched.
Instead he called, “You, come here.” Within seconds the orderly who had tenderly showed my family the door grasped my ankle with an iron grip. Together they half carried, half dragged me toward a second door that led to the patient rooms.
“Stop,” I yelled. “Put me down.” I kicked my free foot.
The orderly swore violently as my shoe connected with the side of his head. The other guard opened the door and the three of us lurched into the hall.
In the confinement room they tossed me on the bed and hurried from the room, slamming and locking the door behind them. I scampered to the door and pounded my palms against the heavy glass window.
“Call Dr. Alexander,” I screamed through the door. “You can’t do this to me. Call him!” But they were already out of sight.
37
I shivered on the narrow bed, although the room was warm. Humiliation streamed through my veins, and my body throbbed with pain. It hurt to swallow. I turned on my side and faced the wall. I’d been hauled away, thrown into a locked room like a naughty child. Dignity stripped.
I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the room, the hum of the warm air pushing through vents, the scurry of pipes behind the wall that sounded like footsteps. Feet pacing a wooden floor. Kevin’s feet.
Kevin paces the living room while I watch the snow fall out the picture window. Everything looks clean, new, fresh. And cold.
“You’ve decided my fate with this pregnancy. That’s what you think, isn’t it?” He slaps his fist in his hand, punctuating the upbeats of his rant. “You know what this feels like to me? A trap. No matter how many times I’ve asked you to support me, your answer is this—” He gestures to my still-flat abdomen. “I have choices. I can choose any path I want to take. I walk down whichever road I want to walk down.” He says this like a mantra, a manifesto.
He suddenly stops his pacing and leans in close. “You think you can chain me here out of a sense of duty?” He teeters, and for a moment I think he’s going to fall on top of me. I cover my abdomen with my hand, but he catches himself in time.
He notices my protective gesture and raises an eyebrow at me. “Duty, eh, Kate? That’s your choice? You think you can keep me here in this go-nowhere town, in this tract-housing neighborhood because of that?” He points at my belly again. “Is that how you want it?”
My voice comes from a deep well, distant, like an echo. “No.” I avoid his eyes. I can’t look into the face of this man I love, this man who has become someone I don’t know, a stranger.
He looks at me with exaggerated patience. “No? Oh, really? Then kindly explain to me what it is you think this plan of yours is going to accomplish.”
“I love you, Kevin. You’re all I want.”
He laughs and resumes his pacing. “I’m all you want, yet there you are, pregnant. At the worst possible time, you get pregnant. Do you know what you’re doing to me? Do you know how insanely complicated my life is right now?”
“I know—”
“You don’t know! If you did, you’d be supporting me instead of doing everything you can to hold me down.” He throws me an accusing look, his eyes burning with his thoughts. “You’re selfish, Kate.”
I reel back in my chair, shocked. Selfish? All I ever think about is him. I grasp for answers in my mind until the idea comes. In a moment I know what to do.
I get up and skirt past Kevin, into the kitchen. He doesn’t follow. I pull out the town phone book and flip through the pages. I find what I’m looking for and dial. Kevin comes into the kitchen, but I turn my back to him and scribble down the information I hear on a piece of paper. I answer a few questions—surprisingly few. Then I hang up.
I face Kevin and hold out the piece of paper I’ve written on. He eyes it, like it could be some kind of a trick, but he takes it, reads it, then looks up with questioning eyes.
I point at the paper. “I’m not trying to trap you. I love you, Kevin. I always have and I always will. I want you here with me because you love me—and for no other reason. And I will prove it.”
Kevin passes the paper back to me, but I fold my hands behind my back. “Keep it.” I’m strangely calm. “A memento of how much I love you.”
He looks down at it again. “Are you sure?”
I look him in the eye. “I’m sure.”
“You’re off to a bad start, Kate.” Dr. Alexander tapped his pen in time to a rhythm only he could hear. We were in the center’s therapy room.
I glared at him, unblinking. I’d spent the night and most of the morning in confinement, waiting for him to arrive. Everything I’d tried to communicate since I’d landed in this forsaken place had gotten garbled. Nothing I said made sense; I’d lost my ability to communicate. No matter what words I used, none of them worked anymore—none meant what they had when I lived on the other side of these walls.
“Can you tell me what happened? Why a guard and an orderly were forced to physically remove you from the lounge?” he’d asked.
“I don’t want to have this conversation.” I was perched on the very edge of the couch.
He scratched his toupee. “We aren’t having a conversation,” he said calmly. “You haven’t said more than two words since I arrived twenty minutes ago.”
I glared at my fingernails. “I’ve been having it in my head.” And I fell into silence. This was a game I wasn’t proud of, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I tried to provoke Dr. Alexander into asking me to explain myself. To be clear, say what I mean. He never did. And I always gave in to his waiting game and started talking. As much as I wanted this time to be different, it wasn’t.
I blurted out my fear. “
I’m crazy, aren’t I? I never really believed it before now, but locked up here …” I held my hands open, words once again failing me. “I must be. Or else why would I be here?” I was breaking the rules. I wasn’t supposed to ask him questions, I was supposed to answer them. At one of my first sessions with Dr. Alexander, he had told me, “The only thing that matters, Kate, is what you think. You live your life by what you think.”
But, to my great surprise, Dr. Alexander responded. “The mind is a powerful thing. It’s capable of a great deal more than we recognize.”
Not exactly a clear yes or no, but I knew him well enough, after nearly three months of weekly therapy, to know he was saying more than it seemed. “So I’m not crazy, I just have a powerful mind?” It struck me as funny, but I didn’t laugh. Nothing about my life so far suggested my brain, or any other part of me, was powerful.
He didn’t laugh either. “Consider your memory loss.” He leaned forward, his eyes bright with knowledge. “Memory is automatic. We collect and file information about our lives every moment of every day.” He licked his lips, warming to the subject. “Recall—the process of remembering—is complex, that’s true, but for the most part, it happens smoothly, without much effort.” He sat back, regarding me with a wry look. “But you don’t want to talk today.”
I glared at him. “No, I do. Keep talking.”
He tapped his forehead. “Sometimes information gets stuck and we have to work at retrieving it, but for the most part, we recall things easily. But you”—he pointed at me as if needing to clarify who he meant—“you’ve forgotten large chunks of your recent information—the bits and pieces that make up your life. And recalling it is no easy task.”
“Amnesia,” I said. But he flicked a wrist, dismissing the idea.
“Forgetting on purpose is more like it. Your memory is coming to you in fits and bursts, yes?”
I nodded. Did he think I’d purposely erased my memories? Impossible.
“Which is exactly how you experienced Kevin’s voice. In a seemingly unpredictable pattern. He would speak to you at random times, about everyday things.”
A nerve twitched near my left eye. “Except that one time …”
Dr. Alexander nodded. “Yes, except then.” He sat back and was silent for a long while, tapping his fingertips together and looking at the far wall. “The first time you heard Kevin’s voice was—”
I interrupted. “The day after his funeral.”
He gave a quick nod. “Yes, and when did you first realize your memories were gone?”
“The same day. I was talking to Blair and I realized—”
This time Dr. Alexander interrupted, “Both symptoms happened simultaneously, on the same day.”
“I guess so. Yes.”
He looked thoughtful. “Would you be willing to try something new, Kate?”
I had been doing things my way for months, and it had landed me in a psychiatric assessment center facing possible assault charges. Yeah, I was willing to try something new.
He dropped the pad of paper and pen and scooted his chair over to the side of the couch. “Lie down and close your eyes.”
I did.
“I’m going to count backward from ten.”
I popped one eye open. “Is this hypnosis?”
He gave his head a crisp shake. “Not exactly. I’m going to assist you into a relaxed state, and together we will try to pull out your missing memories.” He said this with a smile.
“How is that not hypnosis?” I said.
His raised eyebrow held me in place. “Are you comfortable?”
I closed my eye. “Yes.”
“Relax your body.” He cleared his throat, as if warming up for an aria. “Your brain remembers everything. It’s a remarkable thing. It captures information of all kinds, organizes the data, and then stores it in different places in your brain.” I kept quiet, breathing in and out. His voice came from above me. “It’s the retrieval aspect of your brain function that you’re having trouble with. Normally your brain can remember details by collecting them from various sources throughout your mind. For some reason you aren’t able to gain access to your memories. Something is blocking them.”
I thought of Eliza Campbell telling me that my spiritual pipes were stopped up—blocked.
Dr. Alexander went on, “Along with your lost memories, you began to hear Kevin’s voice—auditory hallucination. We’ve always understood them as two separate symptoms, but it occurs to me that they are actually related.”
“Related how?” I mumbled. My body was loose, relaxed, the sound of his smooth voice like water over stones. I hadn’t slept well since the incident at the bank. His calm voice and technical talk made me sleepy.
“That is what I hope to discover. Let’s try this and see what answers it holds. Then we can discuss more when we’re finished. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
He counted down from ten. After he reached one, he said, “Picture your memory as a giant cookie jar. Can you see the cookie jar?”
A cookie jar appeared. “Yes.” It was the ceramic one my mother had kept in the kitchen all the years I was growing up. It was shaped like a chubby chef in a white apron and floppy chef’s hat. His cheeks full and round, his oversized Betty Boop eyes crinkled in a perpetual smile. It floated in darkness, alone, unconnected.
“I want you to reach into the cookie jar with your right hand. Inside are all of your memories. Are you reaching inside the cookie jar, Kate?”
My hand reached deep into the jar. “It’s empty.”
“Your memories are folded pieces of paper at the bottom of the jar. Can you feel them?”
I wiggled my fingers and felt the smooth bottom of the ceramic jar. I touched something. Paper. Then another one. And another. “Yes. Little pieces of paper.”
“Very good. Now pick up one of the pieces of paper, and pull it out of the jar.”
I felt around inside my cookie jar, stirring the papers, then I pulled one out.
“Read the piece of paper, Kate.”
I swallowed hard. “I can’t.”
He waited a moment, then asked, “Is there writing on the paper?”
I started crying.
“Kate, truth can’t hurt you. The truth sets you free. Read the piece of paper.”
“I can’t.” Tears ran down the sides of my head onto my hair.
“You can see the words clearly, Kate. They are neatly typed, easy to read.”
A long keening sound filled the room, like a wolf. It hurt my ears. I wanted it to stop, but it kept going. Louder. I clamped my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the sound. Then I realized the sound was coming from me.
38
Maggie slapped her cards on the recreation room card table. “Gin!”
I tossed my hand down. “You win again.”
She gathered the cards and shuffled, her purple fingernails flashing, her lips frozen in a kind but wary smile. Her eyes flitted around the lounge, not stopping on any one thing for any length of time.
After two weeks incarcerated in the assessment center, I’d grown accustomed to the bars on the windows, the utilitarian furniture, the constant blare from the TV that no one watched. Well, maybe more resigned than accustomed. There was nothing to like about being here, but I was in no position to pack up and go. The more cooperation I showed toward the assessment process, the better my chances of avoiding charges.
Maggie and I had been playing cards for almost an hour, pretending to be normal. She acted as if she regularly visited places like this, and I acted as if being locked up wasn’t the worst thing I could think of. Every few minutes she glanced at the security guard stationed by the door, his arms crossed, a baton tucked into a belt loop, watching the smattering of patients scattered around the room. I, conversely, a
voided looking at him.
Maggie set the playing cards to one side of the small table and sat back in her chair. “I’d like to say you look well, Kate, but you don’t.” She softened the words with a wink. “In fact you look much the same as you did when I visited you in your home after the funeral.”
I tucked a heavy strand of hair behind my ear. The noise from the TV across the room—a talk show discussing hairstyles for dogs—fought for my attention.
Since I had come to the center, I had shared a washroom with my suicidal anorexic roommate, who spent most of her day locked inside, counting ribs in the mirror and pinching bits of skin. Whenever I knocked, she turned the shower on and hummed. But it was better than her other habit of going through everyone’s belongings looking for something fatal to swallow.
Maggie was right; I was unwashed, unkempt. I acknowledged this fact with a sweeping wave of my hand.
Maggie leaned in and spoke with a soft voice. “It’s a matter of choices, dear girl.”
I gestured to the room, taking in the entire situation. “I’m fresh out of choices at the moment.”
Her face lit up. “That’s a choice too. Deciding you’re out of choices.”
A shard of defensiveness stabbed at my back. Who was she to tell me my reality? No matter how good of a friend she’d been, I didn’t need someone yipping cryptic, Yoda-like sayings at me.
Maggie blew a raspberry. “All this,” Maggie continued, waving a hand above her head, “can be changed at a moment’s notice. Don’t pay any attention to it. You need to decide to get well, dear.”
More of the same advice she’d given me the first time she visited me. “I decided that months ago.”
She just looked at me.
I closed my eyes, exhausted by the possibility that I’d walked a thousand miles only to find myself in the same place I thought I’d left. So much had happened to me since Kevin died, but inside I was the same kind of confused. Dr. Alexander had pushed me to the brink, the very edge of where I was willing to go. The border of my sanity, howling like a wounded animal.
