The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  Standing in line, Latha noticed one of the major characteristics of all the inmates of this institution, apart from the fact that all of them had their hair cut short: they were completely self-absorbed. And it wasn’t just because those seated at the tables were concentrating on spooning their supper into their mouths. No one seemed to be aware that she was not alone. I guess I’m the same way, Latha realized. I’m too busy thinking about my own problems to give a fig for anyone else’s. Which, she sensed at once, was somewhat contradictory, because here she was, paying close attention to all the other inmates, if that is what they were called (“patients” would have implied they were being cared for), so she certainly wasn’t self-absorbed.

  The population was of all ages, from girls just past puberty to very old women, all dressed in gray gowns identical to Latha’s, and all with their hair cut short like hers, by amateur beauticians. There were no Negroes. Many of the inmates were making a variety of sounds despite the rule of silence: Latha could distinctly hear the slurping of the soup underneath a general racket of moaning, whining, sighing, squealing, hissing, and squawking. After ten minutes in line, Latha was given a bowl of soup and a spoon.

  The woman in line behind Latha said, “Don’t lose that spoon. You have to hand it in to get out of here.” After Latha had found a place at a table, the same woman brought her bowl and sat beside Latha. She introduced herself, saying, “I’m Mary Jane Hines, formerly a schoolteacher here in Little Rock, and of course I’m not insane at all, which all of us claim not to be, although I’ve been diagnosed as cyclothymic. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds, it just means that like everybody else sometimes I’m happy and sometimes I’m sad.” There was a friendliness and warmth about the woman that gave Latha confidence that she might be able to talk.

  “I’ve lost my voice,” Latha said.

  “No, you haven’t. Listen to you. You don’t even have laryngitis. Why are you here?”

  Latha laughed, the first time she’d done so in several months. “I had a baby,” she said. “It was illegitimate, and my sister, whose husband paid the hospital bill, wanted the baby for her own, since she’s childless, but the only way she could get it away from me was to have me locked up in this bughouse.”

  “Now that is awful. Did you tell the doctors?”

  “I haven’t seen any doctors. Just the guy who admitted me, and he took my sister’s word for it that I wasn’t a fit mother.”

  The two of them ate their soup. It wasn’t inedible, just rather watery, but Latha was not able to identify any of the ingredients except possibly carrot.

  “You’ll probably see a doctor in the morning,” Mary Jane said. “And you can tell him your story.”

  “Do you think he might let me out?”

  Mary Jane’s happy face lost its smile. “Nobody ever gets out of this place.” Thereafter, until their soup was finished, Mary Jane was in one of her sad moods. Latha wanted to ask her several questions, until she remembered two things: She wasn’t supposed to be able to speak at all, and in her childhood she had taken a solemn vow never to ask anybody any questions. She wanted to know if there would be any dessert. She looked around, to see if anybody was getting any, but there wasn’t even a piece of flan.

  Miss Turnkey came and took Latha’s spoon and said, “I suppose I’ll just have to ask you yes or no questions, and you can nod your head or shake it. Okay? Do you need to go pot-pot before bedtime?”

  Latha considered the question, and nodded. She needed to look in the lavatory’s mirror to see how badly her hair had been cut.

  But there were no mirrors in the lavatory. There were no mirrors anywhere, except in Latha’s compact, which had been taken from her. “I’ll just wait out here,” Miss Turnkey said at the door to the toilets. “Don’t be too long.”

  Latha immediately saw why Miss Turnkey did not want to go into the toilet-room with her. The place was vile, incredibly filthy and it stunk worse than any place Latha had ever smelled. Latha began coughing and couldn’t stop. The washstand not only had no mirror over it, it had no towel, no soap, nothing. The stools either did not flush or were not meant to and were filled with brown water. There was no toilet paper. Latha realized she needed to pee, but then she realized she needed even more to throw up. So she vomited her supper, all of the soup, into one of the stools. When she had quit heaving, she ran some water in the lavatory to rinse her mouth, but the water was brown too, so she let it go.

  She did desperately need a drink of water, so she pantomimed drinking to Miss Turnkey. “Yeah, I heard you puking in there,” Miss Turnkey misinterpreted her gesture. “Caint say I blame you, although it violates Rule Twenty-Six: Keep the contents of your stomach to yourself.”

  Miss Turnkey led her down a hallway to a very large room, bigger than the dining hall, which was filled with cots. Most of the cots already had women or girls lying in them or sitting on them. Miss Turnkey consulted her clipboard. “You’re in forty-seven,” she said. “That would be over there by that window.” She led Latha to the cot and concluded, “That’s all. Nurse Shedd will take over in the morning. See you again tomorrow evening. Sweet dreams.”

  Latha sat on her cot and took stock of the place. It was much too early for bed, although a number of the inmates were already asleep. Others were holding hands in a circle and singing songs. Others were dancing with each other to imaginary music, or to tunes they hummed. Others were just sitting on the edge of their cots, talking to themselves or making various meaningless sounds. Latha saw two women together in a cot, both with their gray gowns removed, one woman on top mimicking the motions of a man making love. Latha continued observing them until they had both gone over the mountain. Latha felt envious. She noticed a young girl watching them also and getting over the mountain with her hand.

  The dormitory was well-lit, and as Latha was to discover, the lights were never turned off. For Latha, who had grown up without electricity and had had some problems adjusting to the lights in Mandy’s house, it was going to be extremely difficult to sleep with all of that illumination. It was going to be extremely difficult to sleep with thoughts of baby Sonora in her head. It was going to be extremely difficult to sleep on an empty stomach. It was going to be extremely difficult to sleep without a drink of water. It was going to be extremely difficult to sleep with all of the noise, which never ceased throughout the night, of madwomen babbling, chittering, moaning, crying, sobbing, and shouting whenever they got over their mountains by whatever means they could.

  So Latha did not sleep. Not because she didn’t want to, but because it was impossible. At some point (there were no clocks anywhere in the institution) she realized she simply had to urinate, and she could not even countenance the thought of returning to that hideous toilet, so she got up and wandered around the room, looking for a private place to pee. She encountered sleepwalkers and walkers who were not asleep. A woman asked her, “Have you seen my Bible?” and Latha was obliged to shake her head. Another woman said, “How can I sleep without my Teddy?” Latha did not know if Teddy was her lover or her bear. A young girl tugged at Latha’s gown and asked her if she was her mommy.

  It was very difficult to find any secluded place that was not well-lit, and Latha was getting desperate with her urge. After making a circuit of the whole room, in sheer frustration she simply squatted in an aisle and let it flow out of her. As she finished, a woman in the nearest cot said “That’s against Rule Thirty-Five.”

  Back in her own cot, she faced the ceiling with her hands behind her head. She was exhausted, and kept her eyes closed, but sleep would not come. If only she had a drink of water. She thought for a while of the woods and meadows of Stay More. She smiled at the image of Swains Creek riffling over rocks, but that made her thirstier. She counted and recounted the money in the cash drawer at her teller’s window at the Swains Creek Bank and Trust Company. She wandered up into the second level of Ingledew’s General Store and shopped for a pair of shoes, trying on several. She walked down the
main street of the village, hand in hand with…with…with Every! He smiled at her, real big, and she smiled back and said, “Please, dear Every, let me go to sleep!” but he would not. He walked her all around the town and they waved or spoke to all the citizens.

  Two women were fighting, pulling each other’s hair, and Latha realized it wasn’t Stay More but right here in the Arkansas State Lunatic Asylum. The fight woke several sleepers. Soon two attendants stormed into the dormitory. Both were women, but well-built and masculine, and mighty enough to separate the two fighting women and to inject them with hypodermic needles. Once the two fighters were returned to their cots, one of the attendants called out, “Back to Dreamland, ladies,” and left. Latha tried to return to Stay More but could not.

  Eventually she watched the first light of dawn creep up the window near her bed. Somehow it reminded her of the dawn the time she slept with Every and waked from her swooning to see him asleep beside her and the lovely light coming up over Ledbetter Mountain. This image was so dreamy that it finally put her to sleep. It seemed she slept for only a minute before a heavy hand shook her shoulder and she opened her eyes to see a woman dressed like Miss Turnkey but somewhat more feminine, and standing behind her a man in a white smock who was clearly a doctor. The doctor said, “Time to wake up, Miss Bourne. It’s after five. This is Nurse Shedd, and I’m Doctor Meddler.”

  Latha sat up in the cot, and the doctor grabbed her wrist and took her pulse while Nurse Shedd stuck a thermometer in her mouth. The nurse was holding a thick bundle of folders and handed one to the doctor. He opened it and skimmed it and said, “I see you have aphasia and are thus unable to articulate. Is that correct? You may simply nod or shake your head in response to my questions.”

  Latha was tempted to attempt speech and ask him what the dickens he was talking about, but she just gave her head a nod, wondering if it was customary for the doctors to visit at five o’clock in the morning. She was impatient to put her head back down and return to sleep.

  “You are convinced that there is no reason why you should be here. Correct?”

  She nodded.

  “You were committed by your sister, Mrs. Vaughn Twichell, in whose home you had been dwelling. Correct?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you feel any pain?”

  She shook her head, although actually she was pained by his presence.

  “You are twenty years old, unmarried, but I must say simply gorgeous.” She didn’t nod her head because he hadn’t said “Correct?” He turned to his nurse, “Don’t you think so, Nurse Shedd?”

  “Yes sir, she’s the best-looking one we’ve caught so far.”

  “You haven’t married because you haven’t found a man worthy of you. Correct?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re not a lesbian?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re not a virgin?”

  She shook her head.

  “How often do you masturbate?”

  That was one of those big words that Latha knew very well what it meant. But it wasn’t a yes-or-no question, so she could only shrug her shoulders.

  “Weekly, shall we say?”

  She nodded, and the doctor wrote something in her folder, and then he asked, “What did you dream about last night?” She’d had so few minutes of sleep there wasn’t any dreaming that she could recall, and besides, she couldn’t speak. “I’ll just suggest a few possible dreams, and you nod your head if you dreamed that one, okay?” He began to recite some possible topics—murdering her father, being murdered by her father, marrying her mother, giving birth to a dog, etc., etc., and she did not nod her head to any of these, or have any memory of having ever dreamt them. The doctor said to the nurse, “She’s okay for B.” Then he asked Latha, “Do you have any questions?”

  Latha had so many questions she didn’t know what to do with them but she had long ago decided that asking questions wouldn’t get her anywhere. She shook her head.

  The doctor looked at her oddly and then asked the nurse for her clipboard and turned a sheet to its blank reverse side and handed it to her. “Write on this your answer. Is there anything we can do for you?”

  In block letters, she printed, “YES. LET ME GO.”

  The doctor laughed when she showed it to him. “That’s what they all say,” he said. “But where would you go if we let you out?”

  She wrote, “STAY MORE.”

  “I can’t, really,” he said. “I’ve got a hundred other patients to examine. But perhaps you could make an appointment with Nurse Shedd to see me in my office tomorrow?”

  At breakfast, which consisted of toast with jelly, Latha sat again with Mary Jane Hines and was careful not to say anything that might bring on her sadness. Mary Jane asked her what she thought of Doctor Meddler, and Latha said, “I’d hate to be alone with him.”

  Mary Jane giggled and said, “Me too! And my advice is, don’t ever go into his office.” Mary Jane explained that she’d heard some of the doctors in D Ward were much worse, but Dr. Meddler was the only doctor they had for this ward, which was B Ward, combined with C Ward. “Those letters are like grades in school,” Mary Jane said. “I really ought to be in A Ward because there they let you go out and walk on the grounds and have special privileges. The only privilege we get in B Ward is library, which is all that keeps me from going really crazy and being transferred to C Ward or worse.”

  “Is there no F Ward?” Latha asked.

  “Yes, the hopeless cases are in F Ward, which is way over on the corner of the campus, almost near the men’s quadrangle.”

  “Oh, are there men here too?”

  Mary Jane giggled again. “Of course! Insanity is not the exclusive prerogative of the fairer sex, although Dr. Meddler seems to think it is. As it happens, there are more women than men in the hospital. I’ve seen some of the men from their A Ward walking the grounds, and they could pass for doctors.” Mary Jane finished her coffee and plucked from her short hair a cigarette. “If I can get this thing lit, you can share it with me.” Latha vaguely remembered Rule Eleven. Or was it Twelve? No tobacco in any form, and no alcohol in any form, are permitted at this institution. Latha repeated this to her, wondering if it might throw her into a depression. But Mary Jane simply shrugged and asked, “Do you have any play-like matches?” Latha handed her an imaginary match, which she struck on the underside of the table, lit her cigarette, inhaled largely, and offered Latha a drag on the cigarette, but Latha shook her head. Mary Jane proceeded to give her a lecture on the benefits of tobacco, how it calms you and helps your nerves and also makes you feel more sociable. Latha said she would have to think about it, but she didn’t want to acquire any habits that were hard to break.

  “Like sex?” Mary Jane giggled.

  “That never got to be a habit with me,” Latha said.

  “It wasn’t exactly a habit with me either, but I sure miss it,” Mary Jane said, and got a wistful expression on her face that soon turned into a look of great sorrow. And that was the end of the conversation.

  Chapter eighteen

  Since Mary Jane was more mute than Latha whenever she got into one of her down moods, Latha decided she should have more than one friend. There was an exercise period after breakfast, when everyone stood in rows and tried to imitate Nurse Shedd while she bent down to touch her toes. The problem was that lowering your head like that right after a meal made you nauseated, and Latha wasn’t the only one who disgorged her toast and jelly. An attendant with a mop, broom and bucket was busy cleaning up. For the first time, Latha was aware that she, like all the other girls, was barefoot. She had spent so much of her life going barefoot that she hadn’t even thought about it. The woman next to Latha put her hand on the back of Latha’s neck, and that made her feel better. “What you need is some ginger tea,” the woman said. “But ’course we aint got ary.” They introduced themselves, and it turned out the woman was from Madison County, just one county over from Newton County. Her name was Flora Boh
annon. “What are you in for?” she asked. It was a common question among inmates, which made the place seem even more like a penitentiary. Flora, like Mary Jane, was so friendly that Latha knew she might be able to speak to her.

  “I haven’t been diagnosed yet,” Latha said. “When they get around to it, they’ll find there’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “That’s what everbody says,” Flora said. Nurse Shedd had wandered off, and the exercise period was over. “Are you doing Occtherp?”

  It sounded like a mental condition, but Latha hadn’t heard of it before. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Occupational therapy,” Flora said. “They put us in this room for the rest of the morning and give us things to play with. Come on.”

  Flora escorted her to the occupational therapy room. Flora explained that she would much prefer to do knitting, but knitting needles were not allowed, so she had to try to knit with her fingernails, and it was a slow, tedious job, but she showed Latha the small square that she had managed to knit, full of dropped stitches but a piece of fabric nevertheless. It was also more or less durable, unlike the other items in the room, which were strictly temporary: stacking blocks of wood into a castle, or working a jigsaw puzzle.

  Latha accepted Flora’s offer to teach her how to knit with her fingernails. An attendant gave Latha a ball of violet yarn. Latha had never learned how to knit back home, although her Grandma Bourne had tried to show her how, so she was at a disadvantage to Flora, who claimed to have knitted all manner of sweaters, socks, mittens, and comforters “on the outside.” Latha asked her what she was in for, and she declared that she had dipsomania. “I just never learnt when to stop,” she said. “And it got me in a lot of trouble.” Her brother, Ralph, was also an inmate of the asylum, over in one of the men’s wards, and he had the same affliction, only worse. She could tell Latha many stories about some of the outrageous things that she and Ralph had done whenever their daddy brewed up a fresh batch of moonshine. Flora visited Ralph in the visitation room, under strict supervision, not more than once a month, and Ralph told her about all the crazies in the men’s ward and about the horrible conditions over there. “If you think we got it bad, sister,” Flora said, “just be glad you aint a man.” The men were mostly treated like animals or slaves or both or worse.