Jane.

by Riya Anne Polcastro

  She should have given the child up the day it was born, but she refused. Instead, she left it to rot in the nursery while she swallowed all of the pain pills she could get her greedy little hands on. She had no business trying to raise a child. Thanks be to God the hospital staff was wise enough to see this and call in Children’s Services. The social worker who evaluated Rose at the hospital diagnosed her paranoid schizophrenic and recommended her daughter be handed over to the state. The judge saw the cut marks on her arms, her juvenile record, the diagnosis; his decision was pretty much made for him. And I do not blame him. Not for one second. He made the right decision. How could someone like Rose possibly care for a newborn? She couldn’t even remember to feed or bathe herself.

  And she never even bothered to bond with that poor child. But then after the ruling, she was up all night racked with grief. The next morning, I found her with mascara run down her face and fresh cuts on her arms. I knew better. She was not mourning the loss of her child. It was all an act. She was only mourning the loss of herself.

  The little girl ended up moving to Maine with her new parents, Ron and Tammy. She must have been around two or so. That was when Satan really took hold of Rose. She would throw herself down on the ground and rock back and forth shouting, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" over and over, at all hours. She rhymed never ending rhymes that became new rhymes and new rhymes and even more new rhymes. I do believe she could go on for days at a time. Not only was she exhausting to be around, but I was scared for her and scared for myself and scared for Darla as well.

  She stopped sleeping. She was up for almost a week like that in her room, with her wails and her laments and yada yada yada, when she decided that God had sent her. She started telling people she was a prophet and went on and on about a burning bush. I didn’t take her to the doctor right away. That was my fault. But doctors can’t do anything about the Devil inside. So I prayed for her and rebuked the demon that lived in her soul. It growled back at me through her lips, but it would not leave. Then she got a nasty infection on her legs. Puss and blood oozed through her pants. There was even a pattern to it, like a web. That was how she ended up in the hospital.

  I knew it from early on. I knew she would end up in the nuthouse. I tried, but no matter what I did, I could not bring her to God. The Devil’s hold on her was just too strong. One time I even gathered my prayer group to lay hands on her, but she ripped her clothes off and gyrated in front of them like something straight out of the Old Testament. After they left, I said to her—I really did—I said, "I won’t be surprised when they lock you up in the mental institution and throw away the key." I will never forget the look on her face for that first instant afterwards. Shock, devastation, and utter hurt played out in her eyes, in her quivering bottom lip. I felt really bad. I did. For about two and a half seconds. And then she just went blank. Emotionless. Absolutely emotionless. She did not say anything, either, just walked away like none of it meant anything to her anyway.

  15

  (Rose, twenty-four years ago) They put me in the backseat of that white Crown Vic, between those two goons, for a ride around the block. Why didn’t we just walk? Then I see the sign in the window: Psychiatric Crisis Center. Crisis? I’m not in crisis! What the fuck’s wrong with these people? The driver gets out and opens the door behind him, and the first musclehead in white gets out. I try to slide out behind him and run, but he has me by the arm before I can take a second step. They take me inside, one goon on each elbow, and sign me in at the reception desk. Then they show me to a small room with a table and a wall-to-wall mirror, and a nurse takes away my belt and shoelaces. She tells me to sit, and—not having anything better to do—I do what she says. Then she tells me that the doctor will be in to see me soon. The goons wait outside the door just in case I try to escape again.

  Dr. Manbrin and my medical doctor have both signed for a seventy-two-hour hold, so I’m stuck in the psych unit for three fucking days. I’m scared but more pissed than anything. What if they keep me forever? What if they send me to the state hospital? I’m not crazy! OK, I admit there’ve been moments, a few slips of sanity, but right now, RIGHT NOW, I’m perfectly fine. I’m not delusional. There are no burning bushes. The verbal diarrhea has stopped and so has the word salad I choke out sometimes. I am doing damned well!

  For the next three days, I’m on my best behavior. I’ll show them I don’t belong here!

  They do see it my way, eventually, but as I pass back through those doors, a sick feeling settles onto me, and I know, clichéd as it sounds, that this is just the beginning.

  16

  As far as vivid childhood memories go, this one is particularly traumatic. A late summer’s eve on the dock of a man-made lake in the heart of the artificial, Southern California, and I am too distracted to care about the catfish for which my hook is baited. My mother is terribly mad at me. No, wait, it is worse than that. She is disappointed in me. An hour or so earlier, my cousins all lined up at the dock, eager to try their hands at water skiing. Ever the bashful child, I stood at the back, where I stared at my feet and prayed someone would take me by the hand and coax me through the process of finding the right size life jacket and putting it on. I had never worn one before nor had I ever been out in such deep water. At ten, I still could not swim, and I was afraid to make such a huge leap of faith with nothing but a piece of orange foam to hold my head above water. But no one took my hand, no one encouraged me, no one bothered to convince me that I could do it. There were five or six other kids who were not scared; that is all that mattered.

  And so I stayed behind in silence, a stone-front face to hide my own regret. My mother, however, makes no attempt to hide the fact that I failed a simple task. I stare at my line in the water and do not say a thing. Maybe if I am quiet, she will forget that I am here.

  No such luck. "You know," she says, her serious tone breaking through the peaceful air, "if you don’t get your act together, you’re going to end up just like your aunt." I turn to look at her, eyes wide with shock, and she looks away. Staring at the water, she continues, "You’re going to end up in a mental hospital someday."

  It is like being sucker punched in the gut when your own mother says something like that. Tears well up in my eyes, but I blink them away. Determined not to give her the satisfaction she seeks, I look away and continue trying not to catch a stupid fish.

  17

  Every autumn, fog falls on the Willamette Valley like a blanket to soften the coming winter. One morning when I was five, the air was so wet and heavy with this fleece, this humidity suspended in cold, that I could scarcely see just a few feet ahead. It was that morning that Aunt Rose introduced me to her world. My mother had left for work, and the sun had just started to rise. It cast an eerie pink glow across the fog. The air was crisp and clean, with just a few notes from fallen apples and grapes ripe on the vine. My aunt bundled me up in my raincoat and galoshes and led me to the backyard. We trudged over the grass and through the dew to the very back corner where a stand of evergreens made a half circle around a picnic table. Inside, we could not see out of our little cove for the fog. And on the picnic table, my tea set was spread out, along with plates of store-bought cookies and bowls of fruit cocktail. It was all so magical and even more so for the wild possibilities of youth, like we were royalty dining all alone in our very own secret forest.

  Except we were not at all alone. Three larger than life characters were with us at that table, Rose’s best friends. The first, Angelique, was something between a sister and an alter ego to my aunt. She had waves of blond hair and big blue eyes. She was tall and svelte and on top of every trend no matter what the weather. "Freezing my muff off," she would say, "is a small sacrifice for beauty." She split her time between my aunt’s fantasies and Paris, where, naturally, she worked as a model.

  Like Angelique, Rainbow also hovered around the five feet ten mark. Rainbow was a shape-shifter. On this particular day, he had appeared in shiny blues and greens and reds, with
gills and scales and fins. His perfectly round eyes did not blink. He wore a double-breasted tweed jacket with a bowler hat and puffed on a wooden pipe. Every so often, little gray clouds of smoke escaped through his gills.

  Bravo was quite a bit smaller at four feet even. He also wore only a jacket, no pants, just like animals in the cartoons. Bravo was covered in thick purple fur, so he probably did not need clothes anyway. He had soft pink eyes, a round black nose, and the biggest, floppiest ears I had ever seen. Teeny tiny reading spectacles rested on the tip of his nose. He carried a briefcase on one shoulder and a laptop bag on the other, so that his fluffy white tail wiggled and he waddled as he walked.

  After Aunt Rose introduced me to all of her friends, we sat around the picnic table, and she served each of us tea. "Milk?" she offered. "Sugar?" Angelique preferred hers black, and Bravo drank a glass of milk with just a splash of tea. Rainbow and I took two lumps of sugar and a splash of milk. I still do. I wonder if the same is true about him.

  Our tea party lasted all morning. I remember it as one of the best days of my childhood. So carefree, open to all of the possibilities that the universe had to offer, able to imagine the seemingly impossible. I reveled in Rose’s friends. Surely these had to be the most awesome friends anyone had ever had! They were as real and as lovable to me as they were to her. I could feel Bravo’s fur, smell Rainbow’s pipe, and taste Angelique’s sweet breath when she whispered a joke in my ear.

  When Mother came home that evening, I bragged to her with great animation all about my wonderful morning: Rose’s friends, their jokes, the tea, and snacks. But Mother did not share in my joy or appreciate what Aunt Rose had created for me; she did not take pride in my uninhibited imagination. Instead, her lips pursed as she listened, arms crossed; her face turned red with anger. The weight of ill consequence grew with each word. I finished my story prematurely and retreated to the living room after Mother patted me on the head and told me that she would be back in a few minutes.

  Then she stormed down the hallway to my Aunt’s room all the way on the other side of the house, but I could still hear her rage from where I sat on the couch. She went on and on for so long it seemed like forever. Her anger was not all intelligible, but words like "idiot" and "shit" and "you’re going to turn her into a mental case just like you" rang through clear as a bell. I grabbed the throw pillows from the corners of the couch and covered my ears. When she was finally finished, Mother stomped out of the house and peeled out of the drive way. Once she was gone, I tiptoed back to my aunt’s bedroom. She was curled up on her bed; her face and the hair around it were wet from her tears. She had not heard me walk up, and she could not see me from where I stood in the doorway looking in on her. Pity welled up in my stomach followed by anger, base emotions for such an archaic way to treat another human being.

  What the world said was wrong with my aunt, it was never contagious; it was never an infection. Mother’s fears were irrational. It was only make-believe not schizophrenia. And it was only the first time.

  The next time mother freaked out, it was Aunt Rose who left. And it as all over Bravo, the over sized, walking, talking, purple bunny rabbit. He had been working at the mill, doing something or other with the victims of clear cuts as he put it. But there were layoffs, and Bravo was one of the first to go. How would he feed his wife and eight youngsters? My aunt had a plan. She had just gotten her government check, so the three of us hopped on our bikes and rode down to the bank where she withdrew all of the money in her account. Aunt Rose was somber as she handed him the stack of bills. "Go feed your family," she said.

  Rose was proud of herself, but Mother was furious. When she got home and there was no rent to give the landlord, her face turned beet red and her eyeballs bulged out of their sockets; she screamed and cussed and threw a right hook.

  She missed but I was still scared. "Stop it, Mommy! Leave her alone!" I begged and tugged on her skirt as tears rolled down my cheeks. She turned to me, her eyes still afire, and glared at me with the same hate she usually saved for her sister. Rose took that opportunity to escape. Where she went is anyone’s guess. All I know is that she was gone for days that felt like an eternity, and when she came back, it was with a black eye, a gash in her forehead, and torn, wet clothes. While she was gone, Mother took me to a daycare center. When she dropped me off, she kissed me on the forehead and told me to make some real friends. I did not know what she meant by that. Was my aunt not real? Bravo? Angelique? And Rainbow? Weren’t they real as well? She told me that my aunt did not want to take care of me anymore, and that she had run away. Even at that tender age, I knew her words were not true. My mother had driven her own sister away. Of course, I could never accuse her of such a thing; I could never utter those words aloud. Instead, I shed a solitary tear and traipsed out to the swings to enjoy the fog by myself.

  By my third day at the daycare, I was convinced my aunt was never coming back. I had given up all hope. And then there she was, wet and cold and waiting on our porch when we got home that evening. My dreary face lit up like fireworks, and I jumped out of the car while it was still moving.

  "Auntie! Auntie! You came back, Auntie!" I stopped short. "Auntie, what happened to you?"

  "Your Auntie isn’t too good at living on the streets," she explained. She bent down on one knee, and I ran into her wide open arms. Suddenly the tears burst through, the pain that had been held in each morning as I swung alone in the fog; it all exploded through the paper-thin barrier of my youthful pride. I wept into her raven hair. Snot ran down my nose and dribbled onto her shirt. It did not matter to her. She held me tight and stroked the back of my head. My mother would have told me to buck up and wipe my nose had I shown such emotion, so I had stuffed it down as far away and out of sight as possible until my aunt came to rescue me.

  18

  As a child, I did not find my aunt’s eccentricities all that strange. She had a vivid imagination, and she put no limits on the universe of possibilities. Compared to other grownups, she was pretty cool. But sadly, as I grew up, we grew apart. To begin with, it was my mother’s fault, of course. Once I was old enough to stay home alone after school, she soon found an excuse to boot Aunt Rose out. We did our best to stay close at first, but our visits dropped off when I discovered boys and new best friends and started to forget about my aunt. Then it was off to college. Not far. Eugene is only about seventy miles or so south, a straight shot down the freeway. But at that point, we had already drifted too far apart.

  Over the years, there were plenty of times when I wanted nothing more than to pick up the phone and call my aunt, but the guilt stopped me—the guilt that I had waited so long. And of course, the longer I put it off, the more the guilt built up and the more impossible it got to dial her number.

  Now . . . now it all appears much more complex than when I was a child. The platinum-haired model, the shape-shifter, and the oversized purple bunny rabbit were all very real when I was little, as real as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. They were figments of youth’s all-powerful imagination and faith in the impossible. As I grew older, they all faded away. But Aunt Rose still saw them, probably still sees them. They were much more than just imaginary friends to her. There is so much more to it, so much more below the surface, than I know. I have only glimpsed the tip of the iceberg as they say. There is more, a whole lot more, underneath. My aunt’s mental emotional state has taken many sharp twists and turns over the course of her life, and she has experienced a smorgasbord of symptoms. When I was a child, her illness manifested itself primarily in eccentric behaviors that were pretty darn entertaining. Until I was ten, I had no idea that most of her friends were, in fact, not real. Until then, I saw them and heard them just as clearly as Aunt Rose did. My mother, on the other hand, was always annoyed with her sister’s ways. In her eyes, Rose could do nothing right. She chastised her constantly, made a mountain out of a molehill, blew the mundane up to catastrophic proportions. There was always something hiding in the c
loset of their relationship. Behind the cobwebs, under the dust, something still lurks. Rose and my mother’s mother, my grandmother, was never particularly nice to Rose either. To hear her tell it, Nana treated her worse than a stray mutt covered in muck and mange. Meanwhile, she worshiped Darla. In spite of this, Rose was heartbroken when their mother passed. Darla was left to pick up the petals, er . . . pieces, and she has always resented having to metaphorically wipe her sister’s ass.

  Now Mother has passed me the baton, and I will experience the mood swings firsthand, the exasperation of manic adventure, the delusions, and, soon enough, psychotic episodes—and eventually catatonia as well. I am here to clean up the mess and talk my aunt off of the ledge. How could my mother have dumped this on me? What did I do to deserve this? Was this payback for having a closer relationship with my aunt than with my own mother? Surely she did not think that was my fault! Mother was not just mean to her sister, she was mean to everyone. And she was extra mean to me. It is only natural that I would grow closer to the caretaker who laughed and played and imagined with me as opposed to the one who called me names and smacked me around when she was drunk.

  Over the years, Rose’s relatively benign schizoid beliefs and daringly odd behavior have been slowly replaced, bit by bit, with increasingly paranoid and sometimes violent psychotic episodes. Now that I have inherited her care, she is a roller coaster of mischief-seeking mania and fits of hallucinatory depression. And I know that just when I think it cannot get worse, it will. The time will come when my aunt will sit silent and still, staring out the window. She will not move, not even if I beg and plead; she will not even blink. I will offer her hot cocoa, and she will not respond. I will fixate on her chest, the one sign of life she cannot hide no matter how shallow her inhalations and exhalations. When her face is warm against my hand, the situation will feel a little better, and I will once again resolve not to panic anymore. The doctors will not have any real answers. They will say she is catatonic but not why or how to break her free. They will offer more drugs and shock therapy, and she will just stare at the frosty, foggy morning. Could it be that her friends are out there at that moment? Having a tea party on the small square of lawn in front of the hospital? Or are they gone? Long gone like the surreal youthful enjoyment that marked our first decade, replaced instead by years of fear and paranoia and characters both sinister and unrelenting?