“How do I know you’re not lying?” I asked, my entire body now feeling numb.
“I guess you’ll just have to trust me,” he replied. “We need to establish a foundation of trust if we are going to move forward with your treatment. I advised your stepfather not to make trouble when they went to collect you. They may have scared her off a bit, but I am telling you that she is fine and you need not concern yourself any further. Just get some rest and I will see you in the morning.”
With that he walked away, followed by the fat nurse, and I was left alone in the dimly-lit room. It wasn't long before the blackness returned and I fell into a deep, bottomless sleep.
I was inside a darkened room. As I began to feel my way around this room, I got the impression that it was a room that had never seen light before. Out of the blue, there was a sound like that of a deadbolt being pushed back from a door. I tried to turn toward the sound, but it was no use - it echoed and reverberated around me, like a cloak of resonance that made it completely impossible to pinpoint a location.
After a moment, the sound was joined by a pinprick of light, one that was much easier to identify. The light started as a single shaft that gradually began to grow and multiply, finally taking the form of an illuminated doorway.
As the light increased so did the sound associated with it, reverberating throughout my skull. I felt an uncontrollable urge to open the door. Before I could even think to resist it, I was walking forward, reaching out to probe around for the handle of the door, which remained completely dark except for the outline of light that defined it.
“Rosario,” I whispered, and my breath left my mouth in a cloud of cold air, turning to frost in front of me. “Don’t leave me here to die,” I whispered again. I pounded against the door but it wouldn’t open. I wasn’t able to cross over into the light, nor could I break free of that icy blackness all around me, a deep planetary chill seeping through every pore of my body.
Suddenly the floor of the room gave way and I was falling, falling into a bottomless pit – out of this planet, out of this reality, shrouded in complete and utter blackness. I was a being with no eyes, no gravity; the only sensation I could feel was that of a descent so abrupt, so fast, it took my breath away. I was falling backwards through a fast tunnel, down a subterranean well into the bowels of the earth, out of the earth, pulled lower and lower into the frightening abyss that lay below.
And just as quickly it was all over, and I found myself in a dark open field, my bare feet encased in deep snow. Only a sheer white nightgown covered my body. Never had such cold reverberated through me. No stars or moon punctuated the darkness above my head. There was only a black, ominous sky that loomed over my half-naked shoulders.
I took a step forward in the thick snow, roses of frost forming from my breath. This was death. This was what death felt like – a moonless night in a field of thick snow as desolate as a Siberian plain.
“Don’t leave me here to die, don’t go without me,” I breathed. “Take me with you.”
I shuddered awake, drenched in a clammy sweat that only served to make me shiver uncontrollably. I hugged the thin sheet to my chest and tried to shake the horrific image from my head. I prayed that Rosario was indeed all right, as Dr. Kefir had promised, although I had no illusions that it would be another week before I could get out of this damned place.
It was just before dawn, the time that comes before daybreak and always gives me an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. I shook off the nausea and touched my head gingerly. A swelling the size of a robin’s egg protruded through my skull. I winced and decided it was best to stop touching it.
Later in the morning Dr. Kefir returned, accompanied by my mother. As much as I had expected to see her, scanning her face made me shudder inwardly. She looked too satisfied with herself, too smug. I stared at the wall as Kefir formally explained that I was to be held for observation for the duration of the week. I may have seen it coming, but hearing those words spoken aloud felt like I’d just been read my rights before being thrown into the slammer.
“I’m not mentally ill,” I said to Kefir, refusing to look at my mother. “Nor am I a danger to myself. On what grounds can you justify holding me here?”
He sighed and shook his head as though he was talking to a dumb little child. “Homosexuality is an illness diagnosed in the DSM-I, the de facto manual of psychiatry. When we are dealing with someone as young as yourself, who is obviously at risk, with parental consent we can definitely hold you for observation.”
“So I don’t hurt myself,” I said sarcastically.
“Right you are,” he said, oblivious to the disdain in my voice. He cleared his throat and resumed. “Your mother has also requested a complete physical examination. I do hope you will choose to cooperate.”
She wanted me to have a physical? Have my tonsils and weight checked? What on earth for? Dr. Kefir sensed my confusion. “Part of this physical is an examination of your genital area.”
Swallowing back my shock, I directed my attention to her. “What the hell for?” I shouted, my eyes flashing with anger. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Your mother wants to verify if you have engaged in sexual activity,” Dr. Kefir continued, calm as a cucumber.
“So she can ask me,” I snapped back. “Nobody is laying a finger on me – not anymore,” I said, the last word thrown in her face like a rock. She flinched and looked down at her pumps. Good. She should be uncomfortable for what she was doing to me.
“Well, we will speak of this further,” Dr. Kefir replied, checking something on his chart.
“I get it,” I said, trying to maintain my composure. The last thing I wanted to be accused of was being hysterical – that diagnosis belonged solely to my mother. “You’re going to hold me here for a week ‘for assessment’, but when you see that I haven’t hung myself with the bed sheets, you’ll have to let me go.”
“That’s a rough way of putting it,” Dr. Kefir said dryly. “But I’m glad you comprehend what is going to happen. And twice this week you will meet with me for evaluation.”
“Great.” I rolled my eyes and looked back to my mother, fixing her with an unwavering look. “I hope you’re happy, because I will never speak with you again. Never.”
“You see how she speaks to me, Doctor?” she whined to Dr. Kefir, who nodded in consolation.
I shook my head and sat back in bed, crossing my arms over my chest. How could they talk about me as if I wasn’t even there? They were out of their flipping minds. I refused to look at them again until they shuffled out of the room. Might as well play that game; I could pretend I was invisible and stare at the wall all day long.
Chewing on a cuticle, I tried to ignore the feeling of discomfort I had from wearing only the thin hospital gown that the head nurse had forced me to change into earlier this morning. I felt exposed and trapped here, more vulnerable than I’d ever been in my life.
Lunch was indescript, a watery paste of what was supposed to be mashed potatoes, flanked by limpid green beans that leaked onto a rubbery slice of hamburger. I picked at it only because my stomach growled inconsolably, like a wolf was trapped inside and would gnaw its way out if I didn’t feed it something. The tranquilizer had made my insides burn and I had no choice but to ingest a few bites until the heartburn diminished.
At five o’clock in the afternoon a young blonde nurse came to fetch me for what she called a consultation with the doctor. I followed her blankly, shuffling behind her in the hospital-issue slippers I’d been given. We walked the entire length of the corridor and turned to the right, whereupon we entered a large consultation room where Dr. Kefir and two more nurses were waiting for me. “Ah, Diana, you’re looking better,” he said breezily.
I wasn’t sure what to expect until I saw the gurney with the stirrups. Then I knew. I fought them off like a wildcat, furiously tearing at their skin with my nails, and then biting them as they threw me onto the examination table and strapped my arms down
with wide leather belts. Even the introduction of a needle into my veins did not abate my struggle. The nurses had to dig their thumbs deep into the flesh of my knees and thighs to move them apart, red streaks appearing on my skin. I kicked at them until my feet were tied with the same belts, and by then the drugs had worked their magic and I slipped blissfully into unconsciousness.
After that episode I spent the next six days in the mental ward, labeled a troublemaker. Several times I spied the head nurse walking by, angrily rubbing her forearm. I knew that my nails, as short they were from my compulsive nibbling, had managed to leave indelible marks upon her skin, and for that I was filled with a giddy sense of elation.
I counted the days until they had to release me. The trauma of the forced physical sat with me for the entire week. As I tried to ignore the deep purple bruises that bloomed along my inner thighs in the places where they had been pried open, I could still feel the weight of the heavy hands that had held me down. Several nights I woke in cold sweats, feeling elbows pressing down all over my body and Dr. Kefir’s cold Latexed hand reaching between my legs.
Still, I was determined not to let them know how broken up I was about this violation. I was resolute in my outward demonstrations of indifference, pretending to be nonchalant because I knew it got under their skin. It was the only power I had left, the only thing still under my control. They would rather I cried and begged to be released, and I refused to give them the satisfaction. I held myself together, trying to sleep most of the afternoons to kill time, and in the evenings I watched television in the common area with all the crazies – the men who mumbled to themselves, the women with the glassy eyes who drooled into the frilly collars of their housecoats.
I met with Dr. Kefir twice, as he had promised. The first meeting he had to cut in half since he had an emergency department meeting to attend. We didn’t get far past all of my childhood illnesses and traumas and that was fine with me. For whatever odd reason he wanted to rule out that I didn’t have TB or meningitis, and I speculated that perhaps he was of the impression that the poor souls who’d been afflicted with those illnesses may have had a greater chance of catching that dreadful bug I had – falling for someone of the same sex.
“It’s contagious?” I asked, my eyes wide with innocence.
“Oh, thankfully not,” he replied, pretending to wipe his brow in jest. Then he grew serious. “But there are impressionable young people who can be influenced…”
The look on his face told me as clear as day that he thought I was one of those poor, naïve youngsters who were lured into homosexuality by an evil henchman wearing naught but a trenchcoat, who shushed us from behind the street corner with a bag of colored candy.
‘Hey you, yeah you there, wanna see something funny? Wanna pet my puppy?’ he’d say as he held out a paper bag of skittles. And as I reached into it, lifting on my tiptoes and tilting my pigtailed head, I was lost forever – a new convert to the seditious, immoral, underground world of queerness.
During my second assessment, Dr. Kefir took a strategically-different approach. Donning on his spectacles, he peered down at me from his plush leather chair, a distinctively paternal inflection in his voice.
“It is clear to me, Diana, that your…ahem, troubles, let’s just call them, have started since your parents’ divorce. Have you ever considered that you turned to your…friend because of the lack of suitable male role models in your life?”
His eyes looked so bright with excitement at this breakthrough that I felt a twinge of guilt at having to shatter his diagnosis.
“My father had nothing to do with it. Rosario is nothing like him. In fact, I don’t think he’d approve of her either,” I said.
“So you want to date someone your father wouldn’t approve of?” he asked, leaning forward.
“No, that’s not it. Dr. Kefir, I love Rosario. What does it matter whether she is a girl or a boy? What does a person’s gender have to do with falling in love with their heart, their mind, their soul?”
He sat back and sighed, clearly disappointed with me.
It dawned on me that however friendly he made himself in order to win my confidence, I would never be able to convince him of the genuine nature of my feelings. To him, it was just wrong. His conviction that I was ill was as pure and indisputable as my love for Rosario, and he held an unshakeable conviction in his heart that he was doing me good by tearing me away from her, by trying to ‘fix’ me so I could go on with my life.
He tried the father bit again. “Look, I’m speaking as a dad here. I’m not saying anything to you that I wouldn’t say to my own daughter. There’s nothing that would please me more than to see you in a healthy relationship, dating a nice boy. A pretty girl like you, it’s a pity to waste your youth involved with sick people. You should go on to college, get married and have a fulfilling family. Be part of the society you were born into.”
You mean the society I was born and bred for? Exhaustion settled over me. There was nothing more I could say, so I closed my eyes. I continued to sit buried in my chair until the hour was over. I couldn’t tell if he thought we had made progress, but as he walked me to the door Dr. Kefir patted my back.
“I’m glad to see you’re going to think about what I said.”
He had mistaken my reluctance to keep arguing with him as some sort of breaking down of my resistance, and for that he looked jovial.
That evening I decided against watching television. Instead, I curled up against the window, watching strips of sunset cast reddish shadows over my fingertips as I pressed my palm against the window. My breath smeared opaque clouds against the glass as I stood there, unmoving, just listening to the sound of air coming in and out of my chest in a rapid succession.
Soon, I would be out. All I wanted to do was touch Rosario, caress her face, press myself against the comforting warmth of her body. I imagined her standing on the threshold of the little house in Pacoima, cerulean blue walls behind her, holding out her arms to me, ready to gather me to her chest.
My eyes stung and I blinked fast. Where could she be right now? Was she all right? Was she thinking of me also? Where are you, Rosario, my love? Come to me in a dream, in some way, but please come.
I could find refuge from the madness of the loony bin only at night, if I was fortunate enough to not be sedated into a turbulent, dreamless sleep. I waited to hear my roommate’s heavy snoring, a result of a cocktail of drugs she swallowed nightly without batting an eye, before I whispered my prayers. Only my prayers had nothing to do with a god that had forsaken me. I prayed only for Rosario – that she was well, wherever she may be, and that I would soon reach for her. My fingers clenched the cold sheets desperately, trying to hang onto the fading vision of our bodies pressed together once more, our mouths sealed in a fervent kiss that lasted forever.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On the eighth day, an orderly came to fetch me. “Dr. Kefir wants to see you,” he said. Of course, I had been expecting him. Today they were legally obliged to let me go. There had been no tantrums, no suicide attempts, no signs that I was harming myself or anyone else. They had no reason to prevent me from simply walking out.
When I entered the room, I was confronted by mother’s red face, a handkerchief pressed to her nose as though to block out a rancid stench. Albert stood gruffly behind her, his shirt buttoned so tightly that a band of angry scarlet flesh protruded out the sides of his collar. He looked like a trussed-up turkey.
Dr. Kefir nodded to me as I was ushered by an orderly into the seat directly across from him and next to my mother, his massive cherry wood desk separating us. A lovely large window was behind him, and I eagerly took in the sunshine that flowed across the sill.
“Aren’t you going to say hello to your mother and stepfather, Diana?” Dr. Kefir asked.
My answer was a shrug. I threw a sideways glance at my mother, who gasped and shook her head. “Look how she treats me,” she mumbled into her handkerchief.
“Just so you kn
ow,” Dr. Kefir continued, “I had to share the results of your physical with your family.”
Panic coursed through me in a flash. “What do you mean? What gives you the right? And why does he have to be in the room? He’s not my family,” I exploded, pointing at Albert.
Dr. Kefir cleared his throat. “Please calm down, Diana. It won’t help getting yourself all worked up.”
Translation – if you push us, we will have to medicate you. I grew quiet.
“As you can imagine, they were none too happy,” he continued.
My mother turned toward me reproachfully and grabbed my arm, her fingernails digging sharply into my flesh. “How could you do that? That’s not normal. Having sexual relations with a girl….To think, you allowed a bulldyke to deflower you…” her voice tapered off. She dabbed at her eyes with the hankie.
I was horrified. Their burning eyes were boring into me, unclothing me, inspecting me as though I was some filthy thing under a microscope lens. Just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, they threatened me. if I didn’t sign the commitment papers, they would have Rosario arrested.
“You think that we can’t put that dirty Mexican behind bars for interference with a minor?” Albert slammed his hand down hard on the table. “You think I won’t hesitate to teach that queer bitch a thing or two about messing with my stepdaughter?”
“Leave her alone!” I cried. In response, my mother shook me by the shoulders. “I told you about not getting involved with that sort, I told you but you didn’t listen. Now look at what you’re making me do!”
I started sobbing. “Please leave her alone. She didn’t do anything wrong – I pushed her, it was all me.”
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