Even though I don’t like Sheriff Tate . . . no, that’s too mild. But what can I say? “Hate”? Hate? Hate has never been in my vocabulary when it comes to people. At least I don’t think it has. But that’s what keeps coming to mind, yes, hate, yes, yes, yes, and yes, again, hate. Even though I hate, I repeat hate Sheriff Tate with a passion, for some reason I thought that when we got to Nathan he would walk into that hospital with me. If not because it was a law that he had to go with me, then at least he’d go out of some small bit of kindness in him. But no, he just stops in front of the sky-high building that has Alexander T. Syms Memorial Hospital carved across the front, climbs out of the car, and stretches himself up, poking his shirt in his pants and trying to look real important. Now, what am I supposed to do? If I make a move to get out of the car myself, will he think I am trying to escape? Will he, then, come running around and handcuff me and walk me into the hospital like I’m some kind of uncommon-law criminal?
I lean, bend, and twist every which way in the backseat, holding tight on to my red and white mum, my Snow White flower, trying to keep a watch on him strutting around the car and up and down the sidewalk so I can maybe in some way figure out from looking at his face what he would have me do. Finally, he comes to my door, leans over, and glares at me, his old rusty, weathered face looking ten times magnified through the window.
“What you waiting on?” he says. “You gonna get out, or ain’t you?”
I nod, grabbing fast to Daddy’s bag and swinging open the door at once, lest he turn impatient and start trying to drag me out. So, here I am feeling six ways at once, those feelings all packaged and tied up with a jet black bow of fear. After finally getting here, I decide I don’t want to be here. Yet I can’t go back home, can I? Plus, I don’t want Sheriff Tate to go inside with me, yet I can’t walk into that cold, strange concrete building alone. And I sure as heck don’t want to be so much in a hurry to please him, yet here I am jumping at his beck and call, just like on Sunday mornings at the piano.
Once out of that law enforcement car, I feel the eyes of every single person walking down the street staring at this package of fear, eyes that grow bigger and bigger and come crowding all around me staring me down, and it seems for all the world I am caving in on myself, drawing up into a little nutshell. All I can do is stand here praying for someone to do something and do it quick. My prayer is answered, and quick. Sheriff Tate sides up to me, rubs his hand around on my bottom, and says, “Now you have yourself a good ole’ time here, honey. And when you do it with some of them crazy people in there, you think ’bout me, you hear?”
Maybe I can’t act out of fear, but anger makes me move real fast. Why I get so mad at myself, I don’t know, because all I’m doing is standing here. It’s not like I’m asking for anything like this to happen, still that debt is asking to be paid. And all I can offer in payment is madness—madness at myself first of all. Only second am I mad at Sheriff Tate. But Mama, she is a close second, and I know it’s crazy for me to be so mad at her when she’s not even here for me to be mad at. But with the madness from three people raging inside me, I push through the crowd and get to the door of the hospital in a hurry.
Even the door is crazy. It doesn’t open just straight into the building, like normal doors. It’s divided into four sections, like pie wedges, and it just keeps turning ’round and ’round so that you have to hurry and get in one of those little sections and let it kind of push you on through. So, out of my madness, I drop my flower, and it circles around in that crazy door twice, me following it, before I can finally step out into the lobby of that big old hospital. If anyone would like to take a picture of “ridiculous” just snap me. Me standing scared straight up and down, squeezing the handle of Daddy’s old army satchel, holding my wilted mum, and staring into a roomful of strangers, crazy or not, staring back at me. I ask, no I beg, God to just please let me sprout some angel wings and rise up to meet Him in the clouds right here and now, no matter that the ceiling is in my way, no matter how many floors are between me and the clouds. “Just do it, God, please? Just do it!”
But some things you have to do for yourself. So, in order to get in and around and through the mass of people staring at me, I just sprout some dream wings of my own and see myself not going through that crowd, but kind of floating and bobbing above it, looking down on the people. In that way I get myself over to the door with the sign that reads Admitting Office. Standing there looking at that sign for the longest time, I decide that this is the place I have to go first, admitting, I guess, that I am crazy.
At least I don’t have to admit much. “Just give me your papers, please,” says the admitting woman, when I tell her my name. “We’ve been expecting you. From Dr. Hardy, right?”
How nice to know they’re expecting me, I think, handing over the papers from Dr. Hardy. Or is it nice? Does that mean they’ve been expecting me all this time to go slap-dab crazy, but, no, they couldn’t even know me. But could they, someone here, know me? Know. Knew. When Abraham knew his wife, Sarah, she conceived. If I let them know me, I might conceive. Do I want to conceive? I don’t know, and I won’t ‘knew’ neither. So, I won’t conceive. There. It is finished.
Or started. For here arrives Charles, so says the admitting woman, to see me up to my floor. Charles looks like a penguin. In his black pants, black button-up sweater, and white shirt, all with his black slick-backed hair, Charles looks like a penguin. So I expect him to waddle. But he doesn’t waddle. He just takes Daddy’s army satchel and whisks out of the office to the elevator, while I’m doing this little half-walk, half-run, hurry-up gallop to keep up with him, and probably waddling myself. Take a picture of ridiculous, anyone? Snap.
“Smell the flowers.” Snap. “Now, look up at the sky, see the little angels floating around.” Snap. “Put your arms around your daddy, now.” Snap. “Put your hands at your sides, now, like this, see, and turn this way.” Snap. “Pre-e-ty pictures, Elizabeth. Pre-e-e-ty pictures. Uh-huh.”
All is quiet on the elevator. That kind of loud quiet that makes you want to scream, or shout or blow a whistle, or do something to make the quiet not quite so loud. But I do not scream, nor shout, nor blow a whistle. Rather, I stand prim and proper, just like Aunt Lona would stand. I do not pose for anyone anymore. If I have to be put away, then I can at least be prim and proper about it. So, I hold my head up high, even though my chin keeps on drawing down towards the floor, so to keep my chin from drawing down, I look at the elevator numbers lighting up, waiting for the number 8, the number that Charles the penguin has punched—4, 5, 6, 7, until finally 8 lights up and the door opens with a little “ding-a-ling.”
You’d think Charles would say “Follow me,” or some little old dinky thing, just one word, even. But I guess he’s used to people following him, so there’s no need to say it, and since I’m well accustomed to following people, there’s no need for me to hear it, so everything works out just fine between Charles and me.
Out of the elevator we turn right to face a green door that has on it, “Psychiatric Ward.” What a word, “psychiatric,” that most times can bring a thousand different words to mind. Crazy, insane, lunatic, neurotic, abnormal, weird—you name it. But the main word that comes to my mind on facing that door is “help.” That’s all. “Help.” Someone help me, please, help me to not break down and start crying all over the place like that little girl who got lost in the five-and-dime and went into screaming fits because she got separated from her mama. Better yet, help me, someone—God?—to help myself. But God says that he helps those who help themselves, and since I can’t right now help myself, who is it that’s supposed to help me?
Charles? Charles is doing all he can, I reckon. Charles punches the doorbell, yes, doorbell, just like it’s somebody’s home behind that green door, that shiny, apple-polished green door. Did that rock ’n’ roll guy who sings about green doors once come to a place like this?
There’s an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door.
Don’t know what they’re doing, but they laugh a lot behind the green door.
Wish they’d let me in so I could find out what’s behind the green door.
The funny thing is, every time I hear that song, such a powerful curiosity wraps around me, and I want dreadfully bad to know, too, just like that singer, what’s behind the green door, because it seems like it’s something wonderful whatever is behind there, and it makes me think there may be a green door somewhere just waiting for me to open up and find out all the secrets behind it, and if there is one, and if I could just find it, then maybe I will laugh a lot, too. But is this the green door I’ve been waiting for all my life? I’m not so much wishing they’d let me in here, yet what can I do? Trapped. That’s what I am. Can’t go forward; can’t go backward. Here, I’ve finally arrived at my green door and I can’t go in because, crazy as it seems, the door is in my way. Jesus says He is a door. You can go through Him, that’s what He says, right straight through Him to life eternal. Not around, nor over, nor under, but straight through. Will this door lead to some kind of life eternal, this green door the color of forest fir trees? But, then, it’s such a wide door. Wide is the gate to destruction and many there be that enter therein. Is Alexander T. Syms Memorial Hospital a place of destruction, a den of thieves, a temple of money changers?
Finally, after a thousand moments, the wide, green door unlocks from the other side with a chlunk, and a nurse with orangish hair and mint green uniform greets us. I have instant dislike for this nurse, this Orange Nurse. Instant dislike is something new for me, and I do not know what to do with it.
“Miss Miller?” Orange Nurse says, eyeing the wilted mum in my hand, her face too dry and tight to smile.
“Elizabeth Miller,” barks the penguin, handing to Orange Nurse the admitting papers.
I reach for Daddy’s bag, but the nurse arm swoops out and whisks it up. “I’ll take that, Miss,” she says, as if it now belongs to her, and she turns, assuming, like Charles, that I’ll follow. So, I follow. Wherever anyone leads, I’ll follow, anywhere they tell me to. We walk briskly, assuredly, me prim and proper as possible, down the hall of Ward Eight, where everything is green. Dark green floor tiles, dark green walls on the lower half, light green walls on the upper. It seems I’m looking at a mountain in the springtime and seeing the new growth of all different shades of the trees greening up the mountainside.
Orange Nurse squeaks as we walk down the hallway, and I hate that kind of squeaking, her girdle or stockings or some kind of underthing swish-swishing as we go along. She looks straight ahead since she knows where she’s going, and I look every which way. It’s like an old folks’ home, except for two main things: first, no one’s lying in the beds, the beds are all made up, just like a regular home, and second, there’re people of all ages up walking around. They’re not walking with much conviction, but they’re walking. The best thing, though, is that no one is paying attention to what’s going on, so nobody even notices I’m here. Good. Good for that, because having no one looking at me, that frees me up a little bit. I do not want to be looked at. Snap. I do not want to be seen. Snap.
We arrive at the nurses’ station, which is all glassed in just like the glass divider in the law enforcement car. I am so tired of all the quiet that I finally have to speak and so I say the first thing that pops in my mind. “Is it bullet-proof?” I ask Orange Nurse, who jerks her head around to finally look at me for the first time.
“Bullet-proof?” she gasps, her hand flying to her chest, her arm flinging the satchel as far away from her squeaking body as possible and holding straight out beside her in midair what she must be certain is a stored-away gun.
I have alarmed Orange Nurse. She could not be more alarmed if I had yelled “Fire!” It is good. Orange Nurse needs to be alarmed, something to break up her dry, tight face. I am pleased to see Orange Nurse alarmed. I am pleased to see that even way down in the depths of my depression, I can keep a corner, be it ever so small, wherein I can make a joke, no matter that it’s a joke only to myself.
“Oh, well, uh, bullet-proof, uh, sure . . . yes, yes, of course,” she says, her eyes pleading with the nurses inside the glass for some kind of reassurance, her head and shoulders wriggling and bouncing around like she is Howdy-Doody, that ridiculous TV puppet, and I, Buffalo Bob. Does that mean, then, that I can pull her strings, that all I need do is speak and she will jump? I hold steadfast to that thought in my mind all the time she’s handing over the admitting papers, and the thought gives me immense pleasure, overwhelming pleasure. For I, Sarah Elizabeth Miller, have helped myself for the first time here at Alexander T. Syms Memorial Hospital. I have spoken and someone has jumped. I pulled someone’s strings. Only a thousand moments behind the Great Green Door, and already I have been blessed. Thank you, Green Door, thank you most sincerely from the bottom of my heart, wherever that bottom goes to.
“Room 807,” the nurse inside the bullet-proof glass finally pronounces, as if a death sentence. No way might she know that I couldn’t be any more dead, and that if anything at all happens to me here, that thing would have to be more lifelike than what I am now. My Lord, the crazy house, if that ain’t life for you, what is? And Orange Nurse, with her orange-gold hair and mint green uniform, adds living color. What more could anybody ask? A guided tour? Oh sure, yes, thank you kindly, Orange Nurse.
“That way, men’s ward,” she says, pointing left, as we turn right onto the women’s ward. “Women not allowed on men’s ward between eight P.M. and eight A.M. Men not allowed on women’s ward between eight P.M. and eight A.M.”
So there, Sheriff Tate. Now how do you suppose anybody could do it here, even if they wanted to? And I don’t know why anyone would ever want to do it anyway. All that looking. Like a magnifying glass all over your body. Seeing everything.
We stop at a door that is almost solid except for a small square glass, a glass solely for the purpose of peeping in, I suppose, for looking. “Lock-up ward,” she recites, “for people who get out of control.”
I peep into the lock-up ward to see a woman with the prettiest dark blond wavy hair sitting on a cot, rocking back and forth, her arms folded, clutching her sides. She’s crying. I think. Anyway, I see tears, but I don’t hear anything. I feel like an intruder, an invader. She’s private. I shouldn’t be looking. I turn away. Is this what happens if you cry? You get put into the lock-up ward? If you cry, does that mean you’re “out of control?”
“Why is she in there?” I ask Orange Nurse, but we’re already at Room 807 and Orange Nurse says, “I’ll help you put your things away.” She drops Daddy’s satchel down on a bed. There’re four beds, one in each corner.
And bars. On the window. Six of them. Bars. I, Sarah Elizabeth Miller, am behind bars. Locked up and behind bars. Although the bars make me numb, number, numbest, whatever, still there comes this small voice saying something about me being locked up anyway at home with Mama, and that being locked up is being locked up and what difference does it make where I’m locked up?
Orange Nurse startles me out of my numbness. She’s dumping the things from my satchel onto my bed. Not unpacking. Dumping.
“I don’t want to trouble you,” I say, “I can put my things in order.”
Actually, I don’t want someone else going through my personal belongings, going through me, but what I want doesn’t seem to matter. Orange Nurse pays no attention to what I say. Instead, she opens the drawers of the tan metal dresser that sits between the two tan metal beds, and begins filling them up with my clothes. I have the three drawers down the left side, the side next to my bed. One bed and three dresser drawers to my name, my sole possessions, what more do I need?
Apparently, I don’t need anything glass. “I’ll have to take these,” she says, setting aside my cold cream, my shampoo, my hand lotion, everything that is in glass jars.
“I need to check your handbag, too,” she says, reaching for it. I hold on tightly to my bag, my last personal possession. I will not give her my bag, but she wrangles it from my hands anyway, rambles through it, and pulls out fingernail clips, a nail file, and my hand mirror.
“But . . .” I don’t even get to ask why, because Orange Nurse is Godlike. She already knows of my needs before I even ask.
“We wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself, now would we?”
With nail clips and a hand mirror? I wouldn’t want to hurt myself, either. Lord knows I’ve been hurting enough, all these years since Angela, even since my own self started, I’ve been hurting. Why would I want to hurt myself more?
“We’ll keep these in the little closet down by the nurses’ station and you can check them out when you need them, okay, dear?”
“My name’s Elizabeth,” I say. I hate it when people who don’t know me call me dear. It’s like they’re standing way up taller than me, looking down. Now when Aunt Lona does it, that’s okay, because I know I really am dear to her. But complete strangers don’t know if I’m dear or not. And Orange Nurse does not know me.
“Now, I need you to go in the bathroom there, dear, and pull off all your clothes for me.”
For her? Pull off all my clothes for her? Unmoving, I glare at her for some word of explanation, some reason for this drastic thing she asks of me.
“Don’t worry, dear, it’s just routine.”
Routine. Every day. Same time, it seemed. After lunch. Lying on the bed. Don’t even think about it.
Pulling off all my clothes for a stark stranger is not what I’d call routine, Orange Nurse. I stand still as a statue, fingering the thirsty petals on my mum, when an odd, raspy singing voice comes from the ladderback rocker facing the barred window. All I see of the little old woman is a wine-colored sweatered elbow resting on the arm of the rocker.
“Now, if I had the wee-e-engs of an ain-jul,” she whines more than sings, “over the-e-se prison walls I would fly-y-y.”
“Miss Cannon,” says Orange Nurse, “I’ve got you a new roommate. Elizabeth Miller. Sarah Elizabeth Miller.”
“My name is Dear,” I say, holding out my hand to Miss Cannon, who peeks around the back of the rocker to look first up at me, then at my hand. Her head looks much like a walnut with a face painted on it and a black bun on top. She says “Howdy-do” and turns back to renew her singing. “I would fly-y-y to the arms of my darlin’, and there I’d be willin’ to die.”
“Your other roommate, Mavis,” says Orange Nurse, nodding to the bed opposite mine, “is a little jewel. She’s around here someplace, probably off playing her guitar.”
If she’s a jewel, what’s she doing in a place like this? But maybe she’s a fake jewel and not the real thing. Could be. Anyway, I hadn’t counted on having a roommate, least of all two of them. Lying in bed in the same room with an old dried-up woman and a young jewel. I do not know what to do with old women and jewels. Can’t Orange Nurse see that? Can’t she see I don’t fit in this room?
Just about the time I start to ask if I can’t have another room, one by myself maybe, one where I can have some privacy, she’s guiding me to the bathroom.
“This won’t take but a minute, dear, uh, Elizabeth. Just slip your clothes off so I can look you over, then you can put them right back on. Okay?”
“But—” No need to ask why.
“We just have to make sure you don’t have anything on you that would hurt you. That’s all.”
Why might I be so much into hurting myself? Isn’t that why I came here, to stop hurting? Why would anybody in their right mind want to hurt themselves more?
“Look, it’s just routine, no big deal,” Orange Nurse promises.
I want to keep asking why, but if it’s so routine, maybe I’m supposed to know why, and I decide the less said the better. So, I pull off all my clothes, thanking God for my nylon panties and my dry, wilted Snow White flower. Holding tight onto my mum for dear life, I decide I’m not completely naked. And I look straight ahead into the shower stall, feeling the eyes of Orange Nurse peeling the layers of skin off me as she walks all around me looking up and down, down and up.
“Fine,” she says, finishing her inspection. “See? Nothing to it. After you get your clothes on, you might want to have some lunch. I think they’re still serving. Miss Cannon,” she says, “did you have your lunch already?”
“Nome,” drawls Miss Cannon. “Can’t go ’til the warden comes ta get me.”
Warden? No wonder Miss Cannon is singing about prison walls. Is that what this place really is? A prison?
“If the warden doesn’t hurry, you’re going to miss lunch again, you hear?” says Orange Nurse. “Looks to me like the warden’s not too reliable.”
“Yas-em,” says Miss Cannon, “not too reliable. Done forgot me again.”
“Look,” Orange Nurse persists. “Why don’t you show Elizabeth how to get to the dining room, okay?”
“Yas-em, I can show her,” she says, pressing down on both arms of the rocker and easing up. “Come on, ’Liza-beth.” She reaches out to take my hand.
I don’t want to take the hand of this old woman. But I have to be nice, don’t I? But I can’t hardly keep from wondering, is it I who needs to be led, or is it Miss Cannon who needs the hand-holding? Her pale white skin slides slippery over her bones as her wrinkled hand clutches mine. Ambling beside Miss Cannon down the hallway, our hands locked in mutual support, I feel them swell all out of proportion, so that all anyone can see when they look at us, I’m absolutely positive, are a couple of gigantic hands floating along grasping each other for dear life.
Mama, I wonder, as I’m walking along with this strange pilgrim in this even stranger land . . . Mama? Where in the world are you? Mama?