The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  “Doctor tied your tubes. Caint have no more babies.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “I told him to.” Smug, self-proud.

  “Now that’s not strictly true, Mrs. Twichell,” said the nurse, stepping forward. She carried a bundle in her arms. “The doctor simply asked for your permission. He himself considered it a wise thing to do, as future pregnancies might endanger her life.”

  “Well,” said Mandy, “after you take a gander at this little monstrosity you produced, you’ll be glad you caint have any more.”

  “It’s a beautiful baby,” the nurse protested, and brought the bundle forward and placed it in Latha’s arms. It was not a beautiful baby. It was hideous. It had a horribly misshapen head as if it had been hit with a sledgehammer in several places. It bore no resemblance to either its mother or its father. Thus she could not understand why she suddenly felt such deep, overwhelming love for it.

  “Is he…is he…all right?” she asked the nurse.

  “She,” she corrected her. “It’s a girl. And she’s just fine. Weighs eight pounds, eleven ounces. Not a thing wrong with her. She’ll be a beautiful girl.”

  “But all these bumps and creases in her skull…” Latha said.

  “Those’ll clear up. Always do. Give her time, and she’ll have a lovely head on her.”

  Later Mandy and Vaughn came together, with the old white-haired man.

  “How you feel?” the white-haired man said. “You had us pretty worried for a while there, but everything turned out just fine. That’s a near-perfect baby. Have you been thinking any about names? I’d like to get these papers filled out.”

  “Yes I have,” she said.

  “Fannie Mae Twichell!” Mandy said. “After Momma.”

  “That’s a right pretty name,” Vaughn said, and tried it out: “Fannie Mae.”

  Latha had been listening to the baby crying, and there was such a sweet quality about her cries, like songs, little songs. “Sonora,” she said to the doctor. Little song. “Sonora Bourne is her name.”

  “The hell with that crap!” Mandy said.

  The doctor said to Latha, “I understand the infant has no father. Legally, that is. You don’t plan to keep it, do you?”

  “Why not?” she said.

  “Well, don’t you understand, there would be difficulties—”

  “We’ll keep it, Doc!” said Mandy. “Just put down Fannie Mae Twichell and we’ll keep it.”

  “The child’s name is Sonora Bourne,” Latha said.

  “Well, look,” said the doctor, “this is just for the birth certificate, and you can change it later if you like. Why don’t I just put it down as Sonora Twichell?”

  “Oh no you don’t!” said Mandy. “It’s our baby and we got the right to name it, and its name is Fannie Mae Twichell, and if you don’t like it you know what you can do about it!”

  “Madam,” the doctor said, “I’m trying to compromise. She is the mother, after all, and as such she ought to have the right to name the infant, at least for the mere purpose of this certificate.”

  “Doc,” said Vaughn angrily, “you heard what my wife said. Now you put down Fannie Mae Twichell on that thing, goddammit, or I’m walkin out of here and washin my hands of any responsibility. I won’t pay a cent.”

  “Sir,” said the old man. “I personally don’t give a shit for your cents…or your sense.”

  “Come on, Mandy,” said Vaughn. “The hell with it.”

  “Bye bye, sister dear,” said Mandy. “Hope you have fun getting yourself out of this fix.”

  They left.

  “Shall we make it Sonora Twichell?” the doctor asked her.

  “Sonora Bourne,” she said.

  “Very well,” said the doctor, and took out his pen.

  But two days later Mandy came back, just as the nurse was bringing the baby in for feeding. Mandy hovered over the bed. When Latha gave her breast to Sonora, Mandy said, “Hey, don’t do that!” and clutched at the baby and tried to pull her away from Latha. She slapped viciously at Mandy’s hand. Mandy retreated, slightly, protesting, “That’s so…so backward! And it’s also unhealthy! And it will ruin your figure, and also it’s just not nice. You’re way behind the times, kid. I’ve been studying up on it, and all the latest modern scientific—”

  “Shut up!” Latha said.

  After she had finished feeding Sonora, Mandy came and took a good look at her, and exclaimed disgustedly, “Holy cow, isn’t she gosh-awful ugly, though! I’d have to be blindfolded before I’d let that creature suck on my tits. I just don’t know if I can bear to keep her…”

  But when the time came for Latha’s release from the hospital, there Mandy was, and Vaughn with her. “Vaughn paid the bill, after all!” Mandy declared with a laugh. “I bet those jerks thought he couldn’t do it. But just wait till you see all the things we’ve bought for the baby!”

  Among all the things she had bought for the baby, Latha discovered when she was returned to the house on West Nineteenth, were a dozen glass bottles with rubber nipples.

  Latha ignored them.

  One day after finishing her bath she returned to her room and found Mandy holding the baby in her lap and trying to force a bottle on her. “Come on, Fannie Mae, sweetums, open your nasty little mouth.”

  Latha slapped her.

  Mandy dumped the baby on the bed, and slapped Latha back. Then Mandy slapped her once more, harder. “Damn you!” she shouted. “We paid hard money for them bottles, by God, and I mean to use them!”

  “You leave my baby alone, you,” Latha said.

  “She’s not your baby!” Mandy shrieked.

  Latha said nothing more. She said nothing more at all, not at all, for the days and weeks following. She said not a word to either of them. She did not even talk to her baby.

  Nearly two weeks went by before it dawned on Mandy and Vaughn that Latha had not been saying anything.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Mandy asked one day.

  Latha did not reply.

  “She’s just being high and mighty,” Vaughn explained. “Just stuck up.”

  “Say something, sister,” Mandy urged her.

  Latha did not.

  “See if I care, then,” Mandy said. “Button your lip for the rest of your life, for all I care. Who’d want to listen to you anyhow?”

  But Latha’s continued silence began to fray their nerves.

  “Want a nice piece of custard pie?” Mandy would ask, and wait for Latha to respond. She did not.

  Vaughn would sneak up on her and yell “BOO!” at the top of his lungs but she would not even flinch.

  “Would you like to go for a ride today, honey?” Mandy would ask, and wait, and wait.

  Once when Latha was in the bathtub (and the lock had never been replaced on the door) Vaughn came in and sat on the edge of the tub and gazed at her. “Caint tell me to get out, can you?” he taunted her. “Caint even open your damn mouth long enough to say ‘Get out,’ can you?” She just glared at him. “All righty,” he said, “I’ll just sit right here and feast my eyes until you’re finished.”

  It was not that Latha was deliberately holding herself incommunicado. She was not consciously refusing to speak to them. It was simply (maybe not so simply) that she was unable to speak to them. Occasionally, there were times she wanted something, like a particular medicine for some distress, but she was unable to open her mouth and ask them for it.

  They ceased trying to get her to speak. They began to pretend she was not there, and to talk about her in her presence.

  “She don’t really want that baby.”

  “Of course she don’t. She’s ashamed of it, I bet.”

  “She won’t even talk to her own baby. What kind of mother is that? Pore little Fannie Mae, she needs somebody to sweet-talk her and baby-talk her.”

  “She’s so stubborn and standoffish she won’t even talk to her own baby.”

  “What kind of mother is that?”

  “She
don’t really want it.”

  “’Course she don’t.”

  “She’d be a lot happier without it.”

  “Sure she would.”

  “Maybe it would be happier too, if she weren’t around.”

  “More’n likely.”

  But still they would occasionally stare at Latha and study her face and bite their lips or chew their thumbnails.

  One day they took her and put her in the car and said they were going for a ride.

  They drove her out to a park, and through the park to a group of large red-brick buildings on a hill. They took her into one of these buildings. In a room was a desk with a man in a white jacket sitting behind it and they tried to get Latha to sit down at the desk. Wordlessly, she broke and ran. Mandy and Vaughn took her arms and brought her back. She shook her head and shook her head and shook her head.

  “Please sit down,” the man said, and came around from behind his desk and pushed down on Latha’s shoulder to make her sit. Then he returned to his seat behind the desk and looked at the papers in front of him. “You can talk to me,” he said. “Will you tell me your name?”

  She would not.

  “I told you her name,” Mandy said. “It’s Latha Bourne.”

  The man frowned at her. “Will you two leave the room, please?”

  When they were gone, he said, “Now, I already know your name. You can talk to me, I know. Will you tell me your age?”

  Latha spoke. “Almost twenty-one.”

  “Good,” he said and wrote something on the paper. “Now, do you know why your sister and brother-in-law have brought you here?”

  She shook your head.

  “Now, now,” he chided. “I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet you think it’s because they’re trying to get rid of you. Am I right?”

  “Are they?” she asked, puzzled. “I don’t know. Are they?”

  “No,” he said. “They are not. Why do you think they have brought you here?”

  “I really don’t know,” she said.

  “Oh come now, Miss Bourne. Really. Do you know what place this is?”

  “A hospital?” she said.

  “Do you know what kind of hospital?”

  She shook her head.

  “Really now,” he said. “If you don’t know what kind of hospital it is, why did you break loose and try to run away when you were brought in?”

  “I…I was frightened,” she said.

  “Of what, Miss Bourne? Of what were you frightened?”

  “I…I don’t…really know….”

  “Was it perhaps you were frightened that we might keep you?”

  She lowered her head and nodded it.

  “Very good. So I’m sure you can tell me what place this is, can’t you? Try to tell me, Miss Bourne.”

  “Is it…is it an…an insane asylum?”

  “There!” he exclaimed, beaming broadly. “I knew you could tell me. Now, I’ll bet you think that there’s no reason why you should be here. Am I right?”

  “You are right.”

  “But I am told that you have not spoken a word to anybody for nearly two months. Why is that, Miss Bourne? Are you perhaps feeling angry at the world?”

  “Not the world. Just them.”

  “Why are you mad at them, Miss Bourne?”

  “They’re trying to take my baby away from me.”

  “Why would they want to do that?”

  “They want her.”

  “Don’t you think that it might be because they are concerned for the baby? Don’t you think that they might feel you are not in the best mental condition for taking care of the child?”

  “That’s not true!”

  “I understand that you don’t even communicate with your child, Miss Bourne. Do you think that’s good for the child?”

  “I try to talk to her! I just can’t talk to her when they’re around. Often at night when they’re asleep I talk to her.”

  “I understand that the child is illegitimate, Miss Bourne. Perhaps you feel some guilt for your error, and this guilt is being reflected in your conduct toward the child.”

  “I love her! I take very good care of her!”

  “A child needs a father, Miss Bourne.”

  “I’ll marry somebody!” she said.

  The man’s voice became cold. “I understand further, Miss Bourne, that when the child was still in your womb you pounded your fists upon your abdomen repeatedly, as if you were trying to kill the child.”

  “I didn’t want it then. But I want her now. Oh, I want her so!”

  The man signed his name at the bottom of a sheet of paper and said, “I am recommending, Miss Bourne, that you remain with us for observation.”

  “You can’t do this to me!” she protested. “You have no right to do this to me! I’m as sane as you are!”

  Chapter seventeen

  Two men in blue jackets took her by the arms and led her out of the main building and up a walkway to another building just like it. They took her down a hall to a stairway and up the stairs to a large room. Distantly she could hear women’s voices crying, babbling, and screaming. Only when they handed her over to a third man, a very large man, did she realize that the two men were not men but women, heavyset muscular women with short hair. For that matter, the third man, who would be in charge of Latha for the next several hours, or months for that matter, was also a woman but appeared even more masculine than the first two, with broad shoulders, meaty hands, and just the faintest suggestion of bulges in her bosom. She had a wattle which reminded Latha of a turkey’s, so Latha would come to think of her as Miss Turnkey (she never introduced herself by name). She was much taller than Latha and about twice as heavy. The very sight of her discouraged any thought of escape or rebellion.

  “Aint you a purty one?” the woman said, putting her fingers under Latha’s chin and lifting her face. Miss Turnkey was not exactly ugly, but much too masculine for a female. “Most of your sisters is mud fences.” This was apparently meant to be funny, because Miss Turnkey laughed extravagantly, and drool ran down her chin. “Give me that,” she said, taking Latha’s purse and holding it upside down over a table, spilling out all the contents, which she sorted through. She counted up the money, $8.32, and put it in an envelope. “Any you don’t spend on candy you’ll get back when you leave. But I doubt you’ll ever leave.” She took Latha’s lipstick, rouge and compact and put them in a bag. “You can’t keep those. We don’t wear make-up around here.” Latha was permitted to keep her comb, but not the purse itself. “Now,” said Miss Turnkey, “strip down.” Latha had found herself once again unable to speak, so she couldn’t ask for an elaboration of this command. She removed all her clothes except for her undies and stood there clutching her comb. “All of it,” Miss Turnkey said. Latha handed her the comb, then removed her bra and panties. “My, but don’t you have the figure to match the face!” Miss Turnkey said. “Now, through that door there.” She took Latha into another room, where there was a row of eight cast iron bathtubs with white enamel interiors that had aged to various shades of rust, yellow, brown, and green. Miss Turnkey turned on the hot water and left it on, until the tub filled with scalding water. “Hop in,” she said. Latha was desperate to protest that the water was much too hot, but found that she could not speak. She could only whine and moan, which had no effect on Miss Turnkey.

  She could also scream when she felt the water touch the skin of her legs, and it seemed her very skin would be scalded away. She was reminded of the hot bath she’d taken in an effort to destroy Every’s sperm inside her. “Hot enough for you?” said Miss Turnkey. “This’ll kill all of whatever germs you’ve got.” She handed Latha a bar of soap, which had a chemical smell to it. “No wash rags,” Miss Turnkey explained. “See that coat hook up there? Last time we had wash rags, some ole gal wrapped one around her neck and hung herself from that coat hook.” Like the icy cold water in Latha’s waterfall-shower, the longer you’re in it the less terrible it feels, and Latha gradually bega
n to tolerate the intolerably hot water. “Now’s a good time for you to start memorizing the rules,” Miss Turnkey said. “Number One. Repeat after me: Always eat whatever’s on your plate.” Miss Turnkey waited, and when Latha did not repeat it, because she could not, Miss Turnkey said, “You caint talk, huh? Well, you’ve already violated Rule number Two, which is: Always do whatever you’re told. Stick out your tongue.” Latha stuck out her tongue, and Miss Turnkey took a close look at it, then poked her fingers inside Latha’s mouth and probed around. “Well, you aint gonna have no problems with Rule number Three, which is: Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.” Miss Turnkey must have considered this hilarious, because she had a fit of laughter which turned into a ghastly hacking and wheezing.

  By the time Miss Turnkey let her out of the bath, her skin was all red and shriveled and puckery. Miss Turnkey gave her a small towel to dry off, and demanded it back before Latha was fully dry. Then she told her to sit in a wooden chair. Miss Turnkey took a key from a ring on her belt and unlocked a cabinet and brought forth a huge pair of scissors. “Them raven locks of yours has got to go,” she said, and began cutting Latha’s long hair. Latha jumped up, trying to make her voice work, but her voice refused to work. Miss Turnkey shoved her back into a sitting position, held her down with one hand, and clipped away at her hair with the scissors in her other hand. Soon most of Latha’s hair was in a pile around her feet, which Miss Turnkey swept into a burlap sack. “Get good money for this stuff,” she remarked. “You’ve violated the eighth rule: Always sit unless given permission to rise.”

  Rule Thirteen was interesting: Just because you’re a lunatic is no excuse for being contrary, but Latha was losing track of the rules. She lost track of the time. She lost track of herself. She was given a gray cotton gown to wear and then taken into a large room with many tables and many girls and women. “Suppertime,” Miss Turnkey said. “You line up over there. Whenever there’s something to wait for, you line up for it, which is the sixteenth rule.” If only Latha had the power of speech, she could have asked her, If I lined up to get out of here, would it work? It was some consolation to realize that even if she could speak, she had not asked any questions since she was a child.