Authors: Kim van Alkemade
Dry and powdered, I went into my room, pulled clean pajamas from a drawer in my dresser. I noticed a layer of dust had settled on the collection of jade carvings arranged there. How had I gotten
behind on housework, with nothing else to occupy my days off? I got a duster from under the kitchen sink and came back, flicking feathers at the stone animals until they shone. As long as I had the duster in my hand I wandered around the room, stroking the spines of my old medical texts, shooing away the particles that had settled into the clasps and hinges of the steamer trunk I kept at the foot of my bed. I dusted the framed pictures, too, a skimpy collection that substituted for missing images of family. Two girls at the beach, their legs dissolving in surf. A kindly old doctor with wire-rimmed glasses, stethoscope slung around his neck. The portrait of a young soldier, proud of his new uniform. Retying the black ribbon that slanted across the frame, I thought, as always, he’d been too young for war. Hadn’t they all, though? The whole world had been too young for what the war unleashed.
Satisfied with my efforts, I went back to the kitchen. There wasn’t much to eat in the apartment—I was so used to her doing all of the shopping, I kept forgetting to stop at the store—but I found a can of tuna and made a quick salad that I ate with crackers and ginger ale out on the balcony. The lights along the boardwalk began to flicker on as sunset drained the last light from the sky. I’d meant to call her as soon as I got in, never mind the long-distance charges to Miami. I’d wanted to tell her about Mildred Solomon, but it was getting late and I was too tired now. Better to talk tomorrow, after the library, when I actually had something to say.
I shouldn’t have bothered cleaning. Dust rose up and churned in the air as soon as I turned on the fan. Sneezing, I got into bed, pulling up the thin sheet. Her room might have been cooler—she had a north-facing window—but it felt strange to sleep in her bed while she was gone. With the window wide and the fan blowing
on me, I hoped I’d be comfortable enough to get a good night’s sleep.
The dream began as it always did, its familiarity my first sensation, even though it had been a long time, maybe years, since I had had it last. I am a little girl, and Papa has brought me to the park to ride the carousel. Somehow I know it is a Sunday. I pick out the horse I like the best, one with fiery eyes and a black mane, and Papa lifts me into the saddle. Oh, that weightless feeling! He stands behind me, his hands on my waist to hold me steady. His thumbs meet in the small of my back, his fingertips touch across my belly. As the carousel starts to move, the horse bobs up and down, its cadence steady and reassuring.
It’s not just a dream. It’s a visitation. Here is Papa, strong and alive and mine all over again. I want to ride that carousel forever, stay a little girl and have him near me. But as I turn my head to show him my smile, he slides into the shadows.
The horse rises and falls more quickly now, like it’s really galloping, leaping forward faster and faster, the pull of the carousel threatening to yank me from the saddle. The horse looks back at me, its eyes huge and wild, as if its pace is beyond its control. I wrap my hands tight around the bar, tighter, but I can feel it slipping through my fingers. I call out for Papa to make it stop. But somehow Papa is gone and Doctor Solomon is there.
In past dreams, I’d believed it was Mama who replaced him, but now I knew it had never been her, it had always been Mildred Solomon. She is young and healthy as she was back at the Infant Home. She is riding the horse with me, her arms reaching around for the bar. I feel her chest against my back, her chin against my ear as she tells me to be a brave, good girl. In her hands there is a
huge needle threaded with yarn.
This is the only way to be sure you won’t fly off
, she says. She begins to sew my hands together, stitching them around the pole. I feel nothing, but the sight of needle and yarn passing through my skin sickens me.
Then the carousel is gone, and the horse is a real horse, running free on the beach, and I am not a little girl anymore, but me as I am now. I am alone. No Mildred Solomon. No Papa. There is a shining moment of relief as I laugh and feel the ocean spray on my face. I urge the horse to gallop faster. In my dream I ride with confidence and abandon, though in reality I’ve only ever awkwardly balanced on a rented mare on the bridal path in Central Park. Looking down, I see my hands are tightly grasping the mane of the horse. I look more closely. Not grasping, no. They are held in place with horsehair, the mane threaded through the skin of my hands. Horrified, I try to pull my hands away, but the horse misinterprets my gesture and veers toward the sea. It gallops into the waves until the water is up to my waist, its flaring nostrils straining for air. The surf roars in my ears as the water covers the horse’s head and rises to my chin.
I woke with a strangled scream, bolting up in bed, my heart thudding against my ribs. I rubbed my hands together, fingers sliding over the smooth, unbroken skin. With no one to distract or comfort me, I obsessed over the dream, unable to make sense of its horrible images. I glanced at the clock—it was nearly five. I knew I’d never be able to fall back to sleep, so I got out of bed, put up a pot of coffee, took a quick shower while it was perking.
Out on the balcony, the coffee uncomfortably hot in my hands, I watched the bright glow of the sun rising up over the ocean. I wished I was on the beach, my bare feet on the freshly raked sand,
my view of the horizon unobstructed by apartment buildings and roller coaster tracks. As its rays lit up my skin, I felt the sun’s heat. It was amazing to think of its energy traveling millions of miles to finally touch me. It made me think about that Japanese fisherman, the one who died from the radioactive fallout of the hydrogen bomb even though his boat was eighty miles from the test site. It had been upsetting to read about such a terrible weapon that could kill from so far away. The newspapers said not to worry, that Eisenhower would never let things escalate to the point of using the H-bomb, but I hadn’t been able to shake the idea of a detonation powerful enough to wipe out all of Manhattan.
I supposed it was the bad dream that had turned my thoughts so morbid. Anyway, I was starting to sweat, so I retreated inside. Even after I’d gotten dressed and tended to my hair, I still had an hour to kill before I could leave for the Medical Academy. I didn’t want to sit like an old lady watching the clock, so I gathered up my stale clothes from the hamper and headed to the laundry room. At least the basement would be cool.
I had just started the washing machine when Molly Lippman came in, lugging a wicker basket in her fleshy arms. “Oh, Rachel! I wondered who else was up at this hour.” She was in her housedress, its garish flowers clashing with the pink curlers in her dyed hair. “I suppose once you’re in the habit of waking up early for work, it’s no good sleeping in.” She loaded the other machine and got it started. I hoped she would leave—most us of went back to our apartments during the long wash cycles—but no, she settled down on a folding chair and fanned herself with a magazine someone left lying around. “It
is
your day off, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but how do you—”
“I saw you coming in last night. I was too slow to catch the elevator, though.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sorry about—”
“So, what are you doing today? Going to the beach with the rest of New York?”
“No, I have something to do in Manhattan. In fact, I should pop upstairs to—”
“Let me tell you, Rachel dear, I wouldn’t have minded sleeping in myself this morning, but who can catch a wink in this heat? It gives me interesting dreams, though, or maybe sleeping badly just helps me remember them.”
“That’s funny, the same thing happened to me.” As soon as I saw the eager expression on her face, I wished I could take back my words.
“Oh, why don’t you tell me about it, dear? We can do a dream analysis. It’ll be an interesting way to pass the time.”
I hesitated but couldn’t see how to back out of it. I wasn’t in the habit of revealing much about myself, but I didn’t see how anything in my dream could tip her off. Besides, it had been bothering me all morning. Maybe it would help to talk about it. So I told her, leaving Mildred Solomon out of it—that would have been too much to explain. It was the only time I can remember Molly not interrupting me.
“Fascinating, Rachel. Simply fascinating.”
“So, Molly, what does it mean?”
“Oh, that’s not for me to say. Dreams are the vehicle through which our subconscious mind speaks to us. That’s why the analysis can only come from a deep exploration of our experiences and feelings, our fears and desires.”
Did she imagine I was about to share my deepest feelings with her, here, in the laundry room? Perhaps she sensed my hesitation because she said, her tone softening, “I can offer some observations, if you like.”
“Sure, go ahead.” I suspected anything she said would be as meaningless as the fortunes you get for a nickel from that mechanical Gypsy on the boardwalk.
“Well, the part about your father taking you to ride the carousel, that could be simple wish fulfillment. You grew up in an orphanage, didn’t you?” Surprised, I nodded; I didn’t realize Molly knew about the Home. “So, in your dream, you live out your wish. That’s one way to think about it.”
That made some sense, actually. “But what about my hands? I certainly don’t want anyone to sew my hands together.”
“Of course not. Like I said, a dream is the subconscious speaking to us. Sometimes dreams use wordplay or images that seem strange but are fairly obvious if you think about it.” She paused, eyebrows raised, but I couldn’t guess what she wanted me to say. “Well, your hands are literally tied. Maybe you feel helpless about something, unable to do something, constrained by some outside force. You have to figure out what that could be for you, what your subconscious is telling you.”
“I’ll have to think about that, Molly.” The washing machine had stopped agitating and gone into the spin cycle. If I skipped the dryer, I could be out of there in a few more minutes.
“Professor Freud teaches us that dreams about horseback riding typically indicate a desire for the phallus.” She raised an eyebrow at me, but I just shrugged. “The rising water, though, that’s very interesting. More Jungian than Freudian perhaps. At the meetings
of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society, we often discuss dream analysis. One of the young men—he’s a homosexual, poor boy—he has a similar image in his dreams. His interpretation is that rising water represents repressed emotions because it’s not a solid thing you can get a grip on, the way it slips through your fingers, yet it’s capable of overwhelming you, of swallowing you up.”
The machine shuddered to a stop. I flipped up the lid and pulled out my wet clothes. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Molly, thanks, but I have to get going now.”
“Aren’t you going to dry your things?”
“Oh, I’ll just hang them on the balcony. Seems silly to pay a dime to dry something on such a hot day.”
In the elevator I exhaled, relieved at having escaped. I did puzzle over her comment about the boy in their group. They knew he was gay, but he was still in their Society. Maybe Freud’s obsession with sex had made them more accepting than I thought. Accepting, but pitying.
It had been a mistake to humor her. After hanging out the laundry, I put on my sandals, picked up my pocketbook, and headed out to the Medical Academy. If I got there a few minutes before they opened, so be it; I could always sit in the park across the street. Never mind about cryptic symbols and the subconscious. I was going to get real answers.
F
ROM HER CRIB IN THE
P
ERTUSSIS
W
ARD
, R
ACHEL STARED
at the cart of picture books parked near the door. She had already looked at every illustration and every letter of every word in the book in her crib a hundred times. “One hundred and one,” she whispered. What she wanted was a different book, and she could see them, there on the cart, but Rachel knew better, now, than to ask the nurse to get her one. She’d had a fit, once, when the book she was given turned out to be the same one she’d had the week before. “You’ll have no book at all until you control yourself,” the ward nurse had said, exasperated. Without anything in her crib to look at, Rachel had nothing to do but watch the shadows on the ceiling shift with the passing hours of the day. At last the nurse had relented and brought her the book about the animals getting on a boat, warning, “You must be a good girl from now on or I’ll take it away again.” Rachel had promised, and she had been, for weeks and weeks now, but today, more than anything, she wanted a new book.
The nurse, Helen Berman, was sorting through the paperwork covering her desk. Every now and again she scanned the ward
through the window in the wall that separated the nurses’ station from the children. A cramped room built into a corner of the ward, the station served as office, break room, and, when the cot stored under the desk was set up for the night, bedroom. Helen had taken the job at the Hebrew Infant Home last summer when she was just nineteen, fresh out of nursing school and glad to get the position. A year later, though, she felt the walls of the Pertussis Ward closing in. She reminded herself that whooping cough was better than diphtheria or measles—only rickets would have been easier, and the Scurvy Ward was too disturbing—but still the paperwork was overwhelming. Every child’s chart had to be meticulously noted: each meal, every cough, daily temperature, changes in disposition, weekly measurements of height and weight. Nursing school hadn’t prepared her for the precise record keeping required of medical research.
Glancing up, she noticed one of the girls climbing out of her crib. Probably needing to use the toilet, Helen thought. The bathroom was connected to the ward, so there was no danger of a child wandering off. She used to yell at them to stay in their cribs until she realized this put her at their beck and call at all hours of the day and night. It strained her back, lifting their heavy bodies half a dozen times a day—or, worse, changing their sheets when they wet the bed, which they managed to do anyway, the boys in particular. The little ones she kept in diapers, but the bigger ones, well, it was best to let them take care of themselves.