Aunt Lona had been telling me she wanted to come down and see me, after I was settled in good, and I had been so much looking forward to her coming. But in her usual polite way, she had called Mama and asked her if she’d like to come down with her. And Mama, instead of feeling thankful to Aunt Lona for the invitation, got fighting mad at her instead.
She told me I had no business going to see you, that I should stay away from you, and that I was the reason you were down there in the first place. And, Elizabeth, I felt so bad, just to think that she is still harboring thoughts such as that.
Anyway, I just wanted you to know why I haven’t been down. I don’t want to do anything that will upset your mother more. And I certainly don’t want to do anything that will interfere with your therapy. I am so sorry that I won’t be coming down. But do you have access to a telephone, so that I may call you sometime? Or, if you want, you may, of course, call me collect. And please do call, dear, anytime.
After I finish the letter, I get fighting mad, too. At Mama. But before long I wonder if when I get fighting mad at Mama, then wasn’t I being just like her, and I decide that I can do a little better than that. So I turn my madness down a notch or two and I can see things a little more clearly then, and I think the best thing to do is talk with Dr. Adams and see if it isn’t all right for Aunt Lona to come down and see me, no matter what Mama thinks.
Since I just saw Dr. Adams yesterday, I knew I wouldn’t see him again until tomorrow, as he comes around every other day. So, I do the next best thing. I go to see Lenny, who, more than anyone else besides Dr. Adams, makes me glad I came to Nathan.
Lenny doesn’t talk. I don’t mean like Delores, who could talk but only in a whisper. I mean Lenny doesn’t talk at all. Never a word. And there is something in that little fellow’s face—Lenny is only fifteen—that tugs at my heart the way nothing else in this world ever has.
How can I say what that something is when I don’t know. All I know it is a look of pain, never-ending pain. Not the body kind, but the mind kind where it shows up like puzzlement, confusion, fear, and hurt, all rolled into one. All this on a little-boy face that looks five more than it looks fifteen.
Before I came to Nathan, one of the nurses or Mr. Martin had to walk Lenny from his room to the dining room. That’s the only place he ever goes, to eat and back to his room. He doesn’t even sit in the recreation room and watch TV all day. Watching TV—that’s what those people who seem most hopeless do all day, they sit around and watch every program. Even though Mr. Martin comes through and turns it off from time to time to try to encourage them to get up and do something, they just turn it back on when he leaves.
TV watching all the time, I’ve learned, is the second most sure thing at Nathan to mean you are the sickest. The first is not talking, so Lenny is pure sick. And, of course, Hemp knows why.
“His mama and daddy got blowed up in a plane crash,” Hemp says one day while we’re playing some gin rummy. (Lord, I am getting decadent. Dancing on Saturday nights, honking out rock ’n’ roll on the piano Sunday mornings while other people go to chapel, and playing cards through the week. It sure feels good.) “Yeah, his folks got blowed up in a plane crash, and when the little boy found out, it just pure-tee blowed the breath right out of him. So,” he says, tilting his chin and puffing out a stream of smoke, “so, if you don’t have any breath left in you, you can’t talk, now, can you?”
“Hemp,” I say kind of aggravated, “how do you know so much about people around here?” You see, in Littleton you know everything about everybody, you know the way they are now, the way they were in the past, and you can even, based on the Bible, predict their future. And here living with a bunch of people I know nothing about, only what Hemp says, it kind of gets next to me sometimes.
“I know,” he says, “believe me.” He takes a drag off his Camel and watches the smoke stream out of both nostrils like he is the most important thing in the world. “I know because of the nurses.”
“You mean they tell you?” I say, anxious that he might know about me too, although I am starting to see that compared with most folks here there isn’t all that much to know about me, except I hate my mama for what she did to me when I couldn’t even help it, plus it feels like there were at least two people inside me trying to get out, and then, of course, I’ve been trying to be someone I’m not, Angela, and I don’t know about other people in the world only Littleton folks, but that’s a common illness around there, only mine had gone a little too far, I think, thanks to help from Mama.
“The nurses they tell each other,” Hemp says, “I just . . .” and he looks across both his shoulders to make sure no one is hearing, and he smiles big as a hyena when he says it, “I just ax-uh-din-uh-ly hear it too.”
“Hemp,” I say, trying to be quiet, but at the same time I am getting more aggravated at him, “Hemp, are you telling me the truth?”
Hemp just throws back his head and laughs like it is the funniest thing in the world, and he won’t say yea or nay, he just keeps on laughing and looking straight at me like I am some kind of fool. So what’s wrong with Lenny, I don’t know, I only know he looks so fragile and innocent and helpless, and all I want to do is protect him from whatever is hurting him so.
It is that feeling—wanting to take care of him—that makes me go into his room a few days later, even though women are not supposed to go into the men’s rooms. No one is in there except Lenny, and he isn’t a man nor I a real woman in the woman sense. He is standing, dressed as spiffy as ever in gray dress pants, blue plaid shirt, and yellow vest, looking out his window at the rows of gray buildings, one just like the other.
I slow down my walking and ease up to Lenny so as not to frighten him.
I stand there beside him for the longest time, just being there. Something about the silence around him makes words seem inappropriate, like speaking would break the part of him that’s become so delicate and defenseless. The nurses and Mr. Martin, when they go to Lenny, start in to talking and it’s like non-stop, so he probably couldn’t get a word in edgewise, even if he wanted to. They remind me of Mama, needing to talk all the time, afraid of the silences, and I wonder if Lenny might not like someone to just be with him, not asking him all sorts of questions and trying to make him talk, but just being there and listening to the quiet.
So that’s what I do with Lenny every time I visit with him. I just stand and listen to his quietness. I look directly at him sometimes, into his face even though I don’t feel comfortable doing that, and when he looks back at me he looks sometimes like he wants so bad to talk, like he is dying to say something to me only he can’t get up the nerve to say it.
One day, I see a flicker of a smile when he looks at me. I want to shout “Hallelujah” or something, throw my arms around him, and do the polka that Mr. Fleet is showing us. But somehow I know I shouldn’t make too big a deal over it, although that little bit of a smile is as good as a thousand words spoken. All I do, then, is kind of smile back and nod in acknowledgment, you know, like you might do to a passing stranger on the street.
Even though Lenny isn’t talking, he feels less and less a stranger. Three times a day he takes my hand and we go to the dining room. Now he even walks with me to the rec room and stands at the piano while I play all the heart and soul songs Dr. Adams has taught me. But he looks around at the TV watchers so much, I know he is uncomfortable, even though they aren’t paying him no mind.
After he’d started smiling at me, I thought that surely some words would follow. But day after day passes, and no words. Until one afternoon after lunch I walk Lenny back to his room and I turn and start to go, and he reaches out to me and mumbles something that sounds like “Don’t,” but I can’t really be sure what he says it is so soft.
This time I can’t contain my excitement. I mean, who in their right mind could? “What, Lenny?” I say. “What did you say?”
Lenny just turns his head and starts his usual helpless frowning.
“What did you say, Lenny?” I beg, feeling powerfully sure that if he can say the word once, he can say it again. “Look, Lenny,” I say, “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t hear what you said. Was it ’don’t’? Do you want me to stay?”
Lenny looks at me and gives the slightest little nod of his head, as slight as it could be and still be seen.
“Sure,” I say, casual as a cat. “I’ll stick around for a while.” So Lenny sits down on his bed and I take the rocker beside his bed, settling in for a period of more silence.
After a while, Lenny reaches out for my hand and he tugs on it, pulling me to sit beside him on the bed. I sit and he looks up at me, lifts his hand and runs it over my frizzy hair. No sooner have I gotten over the shock from that, than he lays his head down on my shoulder, and Lord, I don’t know what to do.
First of all, I’m not supposed to be in his room. Second of all, I’m sure not supposed to be sitting here on the bed with his head on my shoulder. I mean we’re not, you know, doing anything, but what if a nurse comes in, or Mr. Martin? Would they know that? I guess the main thing that bothers me, though, is that I don’t know what Lenny is feeling. Is he just needing to get close to someone? Does he see me as a mother of sorts? Look here, baby, right here, see, come on, now, be sweet baby. Or is he going to want to do something more than put his head on my shoulder, despite he is only fifteen?
I haven’t long to wonder, for within seconds he is putting his hand up to my breast. So very lightly it lays on me, perched there like a butterfly—not like Sheriff Tate’s old hands that felt like snakes trying to wrap around me—and I sit motionless for fear it might fly away and never return, after this small miracle in communication.
“Look, Elizabeth, honey. See? Wanna touch? Here . . .” That’s all. Just me and her. And broad daylight. On the bed. No more than that. But it plays over and over again, like a record player needle hung up in a scratch on a record. “Look. See? Look.”
For what seems like forever I sit there with Lenny, me just looking down at the smooth, white hand, and wondering, “Lord, Lord, what havest Thou me do?”
And, finally, the Lord sends Mr. Martin, who havest me leave Lenny’s room. I am first relieved, then sad, thinking that Lenny would return to his drawn-up shell and never come out again. But he goes with me to the library, although his head hangs down as we walk down the hall like he’s been caught doing something criminal and he has to be mightily ashamed. I want to tell him I know about feeling ashamed, and that it doesn’t ever go away, that you carry it around with you like a piece of heavy luggage for the rest of your life. But I just can’t bring myself to talk about that stuff. Not even to wonderful Dr. Adams. Whatever would he think about me, if I told him what really happened?
Once Lenny and I get to the library I go straight and take down the Heart of Emerson’s Journal book that I have grown so to love, and we sit down on the green plastic sofa, Lenny and me. I read for a while to myself, but soon I can’t keep inside me what I am reading.
“Listen to this, Lenny,” I say. “Just listen to this!” And I read:
“At sea, Sunday, Sept. 8. A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befall him must be from himself. . . . The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself.”
It is just like Dr. Adams has been asking me. “Who are you?” time after time, “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?”
“Lenny,” I say, feeling that at last my eyes are opening, that like Alice I had been blind, but now I am beginning to see, and it is the sweetest, not sweetest, ah, what’s that word Aunt Lona says . . . exquisite, that’s it, the most exquisite feeling I have ever known. “Lenny, this is what Dr. Adams is getting at. Don’t you see? Who are you, Lenny?” I say, turning around to him and since he won’t look at me, I reach up to turn his face toward me. “Lenny, look, Lenny, this has to be why we’re here, don’t you see? This is it! It’s all in here,” I say, jabbing at the book, “This is what we have to figure out. Lenny, do you know who you are? Well, do you?” And of course, Lenny just frowns at me. “Well, maybe not, no, of course you don’t. But Lenny, we’ve got to find out. That’s what we’re here for, don’t you see? We’ve got to acquaint ourselves with ourselves. You hear that, Lenny?”
Lenny looks at me, neither frowning nor smiling, neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, just like I have felt most all my days on this earth, lukewarm. And just as quickly as I feel all elated and wonderful, I again feel absolutely awful, knowing that God would spew them out of his mouth, those who are neither hot nor cold but just lukewarm. What is even worse, I feel ridiculous, sitting here thinking I can help Lenny, when I haven’t even helped myself. But, I think, if I can only do what this Emerson says, if I can acquaint myself with Elizabeth, maybe I can become something besides lukewarm. And, yes, hot, I’d rather become hot than cold. But even cold might be better than lukewarm. But, no, hot . . . hot is the thing to become.
The next day, when I go in to visit with Dr. Adams, I tell him about Aunt Lona’s letter and how crazy Mama is acting. “So, I’m going to call Aunt Lona,” I say, “and tell her just to come on down here, with or without Mama. Mama’s been offered an invitation to come, and if she doesn’t want to, that’s her problem, not Aunt Lona’s.”
“Is this Elizabeth I hear?” Dr. Adams says in a pleased way.
“This is Elizabeth you hear, I think.” And we both laugh. “Really,” I say, “I think it’s Elizabeth, but I don’t, you know, really know if it is, but I think this is how the real and true Elizabeth would sound. Don’t you think?”
“Well, hello, Elizabeth,” Dr. Adams says. “I’ve always wanted to meet you, and now that I have, I’ll be looking forward to getting to know you. Meanwhile,” he says, pulling out a slip of paper from the silver-backed notebook, “I’ll get this permission request filled out and give it to the nurses so you may call your aunt.”
“You mean I have to get permission to call home?” I ask. “I’m not a child, you know. And I’m no angel. I’m real, see? I’ve got hands . . . with fingers on them. They can feel. They can touch. I can dial the number, don’t you think?”
Dr. Adams looks up in surprise from his writing. “You keep talking like that, and you’re not going to need me anymore.”
Maybe I am beginning to talk more like the real and true Elizabeth, I don’t know about that, I’ll just have to wait and see what is me and what isn’t. But Dr. Adams is very wrong on one thing. I do still need him for a while longer, but I don’t realize exactly how much I need him until I make that telephone call, and learn that Aunt Lona still refuses to come down.
Even when I ask her directly to come down, she still says she can’t. Even when I tell her it doesn’t matter to me what Mama thinks, she still says she can’t. Or won’t.
“Beth, dear,” she says, “I’m so glad to hear you’re thinking more for yourself and speaking up for yourself. And I would never do anything to hinder that. If I come down without your mother, she’s going to think . . . well, I didn’t want to get into this, but I may as well be frank, since I’m sure that’s what you’re encouraged to do there.”
There is a long, quiet time before Aunt Lona speaks again, and I can feel the telephone cord stretching out between us so far it might have been across the whole country.
“You see, dear, your mother feels that I have always been trying to, well, I hate these words, but they’re hers . . . she’s told me more times than once, ‘Lona, you’re trying to steal Elizabeth away from me.’ That’s what she thinks, Beth. I know it’s crazy. It sounds like, well, I don’t hardly know how to put it, but it sounds like a lover, or something: ‘trying to steal you away’? But it’s what she’s thought forever. I’ve just always tried to ignore it, because I know and you know that your mother has problems. But I was determined I wouldn’t allow her problems to interfere with my relationship with you. I’ve cherished you too much to let that happen.”
Aunt Lona pauses, I guess to give me a chance to say something. But I can’t say anything, because for the first time ever I feel terribly awkward with Aunt Lona, like I don’t know what to say, when I have always and forever talked free as a bird with her, and I just want to hang up that black, plastic receiver, go to my room, and bawl my eyes out.
“Elizabeth?” she says. “Are you all right, dear?”
“If I were all right, I wouldn’t be here,” I say rather smartly, and maybe it isn’t right of me to say it that way, but that’s the way it comes out.
“I’ve hurt you,” she says. “And, you know, my heart aches for you. For your mother too . . . and if I come down, I can’t imagine what she might do . . .”
She keeps on talking, but I can’t listen, I just feel the telephone cord stretching longer and longer, my lifeline, winding away from me, all the time my heart crying out, “Aunt Lona, Aunt Lona, why are you forsaking me?”