You think there aren’t parallel universes, but there are. They can exist inside of
you. You can be an ordinary girl one minute, and an empty shell the next. You can
turn a corner—or open your eyes in your own dark bedroom—and step into a world that
looks like yours but isn’t.
The hospital—they called it a sanatorium—was in another city. Even now I couldn’t
tell you where. It could have been Mars.
They put me in a straitjacket. Wouldn’t want me hurting myself, or so said the men
in white who came for me.
So there I was. A sixteen-year-old girl with bald spots, trussed up like a goose and
screaming. My mom cried every time she looked at me but not because I was in pain.
Because I was so loud. My dad wouldn’t even come with us.
Take care of it, Ma,
he said.
It.
When we got to the place, it looked like a prison on a hill.
Will you be good? We’ll take off the straitjacket if you’ll be good.
I promised to be good, which I knew meant quiet. In the fifties, good girls were quiet
girls. They unwrapped me and let me walk up these wide stone steps. Mom walked beside
me, but not close enough to touch me, as if I’d contracted some disease she thought
might be communicable. I walked in this fog where I was both awake and asleep. I learned
later that they’d drugged me. I don’t remember it, though. I just remember going up
those steps; it was like being underwater. I knew where I was and what I was seeing,
but it was all hazy and the proportions were wrong.
I wanted so much for my mom to hold my hand. I’m pretty sure I kept whimpering at
her, which only made her walk faster. Click, click, click. That’s the sound her heels
made on the stone steps. She was holding on to the patent leather strap of her handbag
so tightly I thought the leather would rip.
Inside, everyone wore white and looked grim. I think that’s when I noticed the bars
on the windows. I remember thinking I was so insubstantial I could float away, through
the bars, if I really wanted to.
The doctor’s name was Corduroy. Or Velvet. Some fabric. He had a pinched mouth and
an alcoholic’s nose. When I saw him I started to laugh. I thought his nose looked
like a red parachute opening up and I laughed so hard I started to cry, and my mother
hissed at me to
behave, for God’s sake,
and her fingers clenched around the strap again.
Sit down, Miss Hart.
I did as I was told, and as I did it, I stopped laughing. I became aware of the hushed
silence in the office, and then of the weird light. There were no windows. I guessed
too many people had looked at Mr. Cotton’s parachute nose and jumped.
Do you know why you’re here?
Dr. Silk asked me.
I’m fine now.
No, Dorothy. “Fine” girls don’t pull their own hair and scream and make wild accusations
about people who love them.
That’s right,
my mother said crisply.
Poor Winston is beside himself. What’s wrong with her?
I looked helplessly at Dr. Wool. He said,
We can help you feel better if you’re a good girl.
I didn’t believe him. I turned to my mom and begged to be taken home, where I swore
I’d be better.
I ended up on my knees beside her, yelling. I told her I didn’t mean to do it and
that I was sorry.
You see?
she said to Dr. Silk.
You see?
I couldn’t make her understand how sorry I was, and how scared, and I started screaming
and crying. I knew it was wrong—bad, too loud. I fell forward, hit my head on the
hard wooden arm of my mother’s chair.
I heard my mother scream, MAKE HER STOP DOING THAT.
I felt someone—people—come up behind me, grabbing me, holding me.
When I woke up, however much later it was, I was in a bed, with my wrists and ankles
strapped down so tightly I couldn’t move.
People in white began appearing around me, springing into place like those targets
on a wheel in a carnival. I remember wanting to scream, trying to, but no sound came
out. They were working on me and around me without even really seeing me.
I heard a rolling sound and realized I could still turn my head, although it took
effort. A nurse—I later learned her name was Helen—wheeled a machine into the room,
up to the bed.
Someone touched my head, smeared a cold goo into my temples. I turned my head away
and heard a voice say,
Shit,
and felt fingers tangle in my hair.
Helen leaned over me, so close I could see the tiny black hairs in her nostrils.
Don’t be afraid. It’ll be over in no time.
I felt the sting of tears. Pathetic, that such a small kindness could make me cry.
Dr. Seersucker came in next, his face pursed up, his nose preceding him. He leaned
over me without a word and fit cold, flat metal plates to either side of my head.
It felt like rounds of ice, both freezing and burning, and I started to sing.
Sing.
What the hell was I thinking? No wonder they thought I was crazy. I lay there, tears
leaking out of my eyes, singing “Rock Around the Clock” at the top of my lungs.
The doctor clamped a strap around my head. I tried to tell him he was hurting me,
scaring me, but I couldn’t seem to stop singing. He jammed something in my mouth and
I gagged.
Everyone stepped back from me and I remembered thinking,
Bomb! They’ve strapped a bomb to my head and I’m going to blow up.
I tried to spit out the thing in my mouth and then …
The jolt is impossible to describe. I know now it was a bolt of electricity burning
through me. I shook like a rag doll and peed my pants. The noise was a high, piercing
whirrrrrr
. I thought my bones would snap. When it finally let me go, I sagged onto the bed
lifelessly, feeling as close to dead as I could imagine. I heard a tiny
drip-drip-drip
of my urine falling onto the linoleum floor.
There,
Helen said,
that wasn’t so bad, now, was it?
I closed my eyes and prayed to Jesus to take me. I had no idea what I’d done that
was terrible enough to warrant this punishment, and I wanted a mom, but not
my
mom, and I certainly didn’t want my dad. I guess I wanted someone to hold me and
love me and tell me it would be okay.
But … well, if wishes were horses, all beggars would ride, right?
You might think I am stupid because you’ve seen me high so much of the time, but I’m
smart. It took no time for me to learn where I’d screwed up. Oh, I knew what had been
expected of me before I arrived at the hospital, but I hadn’t known the cost of changing
lanes. I learned. Boy, did I learn.
Be good. Be quiet. Do as you’re told. Answer direct questions with answers, never
say you don’t know, never say your father hurts you. Don’t tell them that your mother
knows what’s happening to you and doesn’t care. Oh, no. And never say you’re sorry.
He hates that most of all.
I’d gone into the hospital broken. But I learned how to gather up the pieces and hold
them tightly to my chest. I nodded and smiled and took whatever pills they gave me
and asked when my mother was coming. I didn’t make friends because the other girls
were “bad” and damaged. My mother would never approve. How could I be friends with
a girl who’d slit her wrists or set her family dog on fire?
I kept to myself. Kept quiet. Smiled.
Time passed oddly in there. I remember seeing the leaves turn color and fall to the
ground, but that’s my only way to judge the passing of the days. One day, after another
shock treatment, I was in the “game room”—they called it that because there were checkerboards
on the tables, I guess. I was in a wheelchair, facing the window. My hands had started
shaking and I was trying to hide it from everyone.
Dorothy Jean?
Never had my mother’s voice sounded so sweet. I turned slowly and lifted my chin so
I could see her.
She looked thinner than I remembered, with her hair so precisely styled that it looked
shellacked. She had on a full plaid skirt and a prim sweater with a Peter Pan collar
and black horn-rimmed glasses. She was holding her purse strap in both hands, and
this time she was wearing gloves.
Mommy,
I said, doing my best not to cry.
How are you?
Better. I swear. Can I come home now? I’ll be good.
The doctors say you can. I hope they’re right. I can’t believe you belong with … these
people
. She looked around, frowning.
That’s why she was wearing the gloves. She didn’t want to catch crazy. I guess I should
have been happy that she felt okay to touch me, to breathe the air that I exhaled
between us. And I tried to be happy after that, I really did. I was polite when I
said goodbye to Dr. Gabardine and I shook Helen’s hand and tried to smile when she
told my mother what a joy I’d been to have around. I followed my mother out to her
big blue Chrysler and slid into the leather bench seat. She immediately lit up a cigarette,
and as she moved the car into gear, ash sprayed down onto the seat. That’s how I knew
she was upset. My mother didn’t believe in mess.
When I got home, I saw the place. Really saw it. The one-story house, decorated to
look like it was a part of a ranch, complete with a horsey weather vane and barnlike
garage doors and western fretwork around the windows. Out in front, a black-faced
metal jockey held out a welcome sign.
It was all such a lie, and a lie pokes through that parallel universe. Once you glimpse
it, you’re changed. You can’t not see it.
My mom wouldn’t let me get out of the car in the driveway. Not out in the open where
the neighbors could see.
Stay there,
she hissed, slamming the car door and opening the garage. Once we were in the garage,
I got out. I walked through the darkness and stepped into the brightness of our space-age
living room with its aerodynamic, futuristic look. The ceiling slanted sharply upward
and had been decorated with tiny colored rocks. Huge glass windows looked out on the
Polynesian-themed backyard pool. The fireplace was set into a wall of giant rough
white rocks. The furniture was sleek and silver.
My father stood by the fireplace, still dressed in his Frank Sinatra suit, holding
a martini in one hand and a lit Camel cigarette in the other. The kind of cigarette
John Wayne smoked—a good American smoke. He looked at me through his wire-and-tortoiseshell-framed
glasses.
So you’re back.
The doctors say she’s fine, Winston,
my mother said.
Is she?
I should have told the old prick to go screw himself, but I just stood there, wilting
like a flower beneath the punishment of his gaze. I knew now the price of making a
spectacle. I was clear on who had the power in this world, and it wasn’t me.
She’s crying, for God’s sake.
I hadn’t even known it, not until he said it. But still I kept quiet.
I knew now what was expected of me.
* * *
When I came home from the loony bin, I was an untouchable. I had done the unthinkable
in Rancho Flamingo—made a messy scene, embarrassed my parents—and after that, I was
like some dangerous animal only allowed to live in your neighborhood at the end of
a sturdy chain.
Nowadays, shows like yours and Dr. Phil’s tell people that you need to talk about
the wounds you bear and the loads you carry. In my time, it was the opposite. Some
things were never spoken of and my breakdown fell in that category. On the rare occasion
when my mother did accidentally refer to my time away—which she tried never to do—it
was called my vacation. The only time she ever looked me in the eye and said the word
hospital
was on the very first day I came home.
I remember setting the table for dinner that night, trying to grasp what I was supposed
to be. I turned slowly to look at my mother, who was in the kitchen, stirring something.
Chicken à la king, I think. Her hair, still brown then—dyed, I think—was a cap of
carefully controlled curls that wouldn’t have looked good on anyone. Her face was
what you’d call handsome today; sharp and just a little masculine, with a broad forehead
and high cheekbones. She wore cat’s-eye black horned-rimmed glasses and a charcoal-gray
sweater set. There was not an ounce of softness in her.
Mom?
I said quietly, coming up beside her.
She cocked her head just enough to look at me.
When life gives you lemons, Dorothy Jean, you make lemonade.
But he—
Enough,
she snapped.
I won’t hear about it. You have to forget. Forget all of it and you’ll learn to smile
again in no time. As I have
. Her eyes widened behind the lenses, pleaded with me.
Please, Dorothy. Your father won’t put up with this
.
I couldn’t tell if she wanted to help me and didn’t know how or if she didn’t care.
What I did know was that if I told the truth again, or showed my pain in any way,
my father would send me away and she would let him do it.
And there were worse places than where I’d been. I knew that now. There had been talk
in the hospital from kids with eyes as blank as chalkboards and shaking hands, talk
of ice-water baths and much worse. Lobotomies.
I understood.
* * *
That night, without even changing clothes, I climbed into my little-girl bed and fell
into a deep and troubled sleep.
He woke me up, of course. He must have been waiting all that time. While I was away,
his anger had spread out tentacles and wound around everything, growing until I could
see how it was strangling him. I had humiliated him with my “lies.”
He would teach me a lesson.
I told him I was sorry—a terrible mistake. He burned me with a cigarette and told
me to keep my mouth shut. I just stared at him. It made him even angrier, my silence.
But it was all I had. I’d learned my lesson, remember. I couldn’t stop him from hurting
me, but when he looked at me that night, he saw something new, too. I might tell on
him again.
Girls have babies, you know,
I whispered softly.
Proof.