The Bright Unknown Read online

  “Brighton.”

  Nurse Joann Derry’s voice vibrated through the chilled, bleak corners. She came into the small dayroom. “Brighton Friedrich, young lady, where are you?”

  “She’s here.” Edna pushed me past the patients who were filing in after breakfast.

  The closer I got to the dayroom door and to the hall that led to the dormitory, the more I could hear Mother in an upswing of a fit. The wails beat my eardrums, and my heart conformed to the rhythm. She needed me. Rain and Mother’s fits were like peas and pods that multiplied on my birthday.

  Mother’s groaning always began around three o’clock in the morning every year. Then, for the next few hours, she would go through the pains of labor and childbirth as if it were happening for the first time. But when she found no baby at the end of it all, she’d mourn this phantom loss. She’d scratch at the concrete walls so severely her fingernails would bleed, and if we didn’t restrain her fast enough, she’d lose one or two. After years of pulling out her hair, her roots remained fruitless. If we didn’t watch her closely she’d pick at the softest places on her skin—the insides of her elbows, her wrists, her breasts—till they bled. The white coats called it psychosis. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, cope. They said they didn’t know why, but I wasn’t sure I believed them anymore. They’d hurt so many of my friends that I knew not to trust them.

  As for my mother, I’d never known her any other way. Besides restraints, my presence was the only thing that helped her. Sterilizing her had not released her from this madness. Her hormones were not responsible.

  The doctors depended on a few things to calm her. My presence and touch, even as a baby, was one prescribed method. But if I failed, Nursey had no choice but to camisole or restrain her to her bed or a chair or give her a dose of chloral hydrate. Insulin was the new Holy Grail for fits and mania, putting patients into a coma-like sleep for many hours to days at a time. But the injections agitated her and caused a dangerous irregular heartbeat. There had never been good answers for Mother.

  Next door was the Pine View children’s ward. The nearby buildings were connected through a basement hall. At Pine View the patients were treated like animals—not so different from my ward. But here, I was safe. Or at least as safe as one could be in an asylum. Joann took care of me like a daughter. After my birth I’d been transferred to the children’s ward, but Joann fought for me to be returned to Mother’s room, promising to care for me. Nursey had only been eighteen years old then and not in a position to demand much, but the ward doctor, Sidney Woburn, was keen on Nursey and was known to give in to her requests. I would learn more about that when I was older—the wiles of a desperate woman and the web of deceptions.

  But today, when I got to Mother’s room, I saw several wrapped gifts on the rag rug that Mickey had taught me to make years ago to help my room feel less sterile. How I’d missed Mickey since her unexpected death a few years earlier. Her silvery hair always brushed against her eyelids, and her pink skin looked happier than her reality. On my bed, beyond a small stack of gifts and memories of Mickey, sat a cross-stitched orange cat pillow. Nursey had taught me how to cross-stitch on one of her many off-duty evenings. Those were the hours she would read stories like Peter Pan to Angel and me. I would cross-stitch, and Angel would just sit and listen. I named the orange cat Nana and secretly wished it was a dog instead—and that it was real. And that Neverland was real too. A tattered teddy bear Mickey had made from an old brown towel lay limply next to Nana. It was the last gift I got from Mickey.

  Today there was also a small cake the kitchen staff must have baked. There was always a shortage of flour and sugar; someone had sacrificed for this cake. It sat on the non-hospital-issued nightstand. That nightstand got stuffed into a medicine closet whenever any official visits were made to see how well things were run. I would get stuffed into a closet, office, or somewhere too—I even had to crawl under a bed once with Nana. I wasn’t allowed to be seen. I was used to the lie by now. However, since it was rare we had ward visitors, the farce game of hide-and-seek had not been played for years.

  Angel, my best friend, who lived in the children’s ward, was sitting on the floor by my bed. His gown looked extra dingy in comparison to his pale skin. His wavy, white-blond hair was mussed and stuck to his forehead. He looked up as we walked in. His smile, even with yellowed teeth, gleamed, and his blue-red eyes looked toward me through what I knew to be blurry vision. I waved at him, and he waved back until my mother’s animalistic moan jarred away my attention. Away from Angel and from all the small touches in my room meant to make me feel like a regular girl on her birthday. A regular girl. All I knew of regular girls came from books. But my fictional friends Heidi, Pollyanna, Betsy, Anne, Sarah—none of them had regular lives either. So perhaps there were no regular girls anywhere.

  “Helen.” Nursey rushed in and patted my mother’s shoulder gently and gestured frantically for me to get closer. She pulled me toward Mother when I was reachable. “Helen, Brighton is here.”

  “Liebling.” Her gravelly voice spoke this German word that I’d heard my whole life, though it had become seldom in these later years. My eyes wandered to the old stack of books under my bed where I used to have a German translation dictionary, hoping for some message from her besides these broken words. But the book had been stolen by a patient and ruined.

  Mother’s stringy hair, the color of rain clouds and sand, hung like dull curtains around her colorless face. She was not nearly blind like Angel, but still she did not see me. She always stared out into nothing. When I was a child I would sit so that our eyes were level, desperate for her to look at me. Once, her blue gaze lighted on me—though only for a brief moment. In my childishness I thought she might be waking up from this catatonic daze. A soft smile had crept over her stretched, dried lips, but her softness turned into terror and she screamed in my face. I never tried that again.

  Today her eyes traveled around but never landed on anything. Mumbled whispers in a fragmented language clouded my thoughts, making it impossible to reason through this annual nightmare. I could only submit to it. Her arms reached out, and when no one handed her a baby, she pulled at her clothing and looked for an infant—me—beneath the single thin blanket. She was wearing no underclothes, which was typical for most patients, and she lifted her gown, searching, before she grabbed at her belly and groaned. Wilted and scarred skin draped on her like poorly fitted clothing. The shell my mother lived in had withered years earlier.

  I hated my reality, but hated hers even more. Surely she deserved better than living a life of lunacy. Surely she’d not been the sort of woman who had been so terrible in her right mind that losing it seemed a just punishment. And why had I reaped the consequence of her infirm mind?

  As she went through another round of what she believed was labor, I thought of the tiny and beautiful woman she must have been when she was admitted—already pregnant and uncontrollable and entirely lost. She was just a pebble in the ocean. A raindrop in a storm. I used to ask after my history, but my curiosities were met with short, unembellished answers. Nothing that ever hinted at why my father hadn’t returned for me. I knew nothing about this Lost Boy from Neverland, as I had come to think of him.

  Joann was up and down the hall, leaving me to deal with my mother. I’d even started helping with baths and cleaning for the last two years—Angel had too. The staff in the children’s ward pretended not to notice that Angel was absent most days, since it meant one less patient for them to care for—another allowance Nursey gave me so I could have a friend my own age.

  She tried to give me some sort of life, though we had to hide it all from Dr. Wolff. Patients were never supposed to be out of their wards like Angel was, but I also knew that little girls weren’t supposed to be born and raised in a madhouse, though it was the only world I’d ever known. So allowances were made—as long as it didn’t interfere with Nursey’s duties, naturally.

  A little later I let Angel open my gifts. Aunt Eddie
gave me a new pair of underclothes—two pairs. Angel didn’t flinch at the intimacy and handed them to me without shame. We’d shared so much together—too much, according to Nursey—but underclothes weren’t much to us, except that we were glad to have them.

  The next gift was a chocolate bar from one of the cooks. The smell alone took me out of these walls for a twinkling moment. “Here, take a bite.”

  “Mmm.” Angel took the tiniest of bites and smiled. He always had a shy grin tucked into his mouth. I let my piece melt on my tongue until it wasn’t there anymore; the taste filled my senses.

  “You have one more gift,” Angel’s smooth voice reminded me. He held up a yellowed envelope with my mother’s name on the front. Helen Friedrich. It was from Nursey. “Ready?”

  Angel’s hands carefully untucked the flap and pulled out a small paper. “What is it?” he asked and held it close in an effort to see the details. He used to have a magnifying glass, but it had been broken to bits when he’d snuck it and a book into his ward. His nurses were ruthless—worse than Miss Minchin. At least Sarah Crewe had never been beaten senseless. Nurse Harmony Mulligan, on the other hand, had no problem administering a beating now and again. That had been months ago now and he had healed up, but he was sad not to be able to read well anymore. He could see well enough in the light, but darkness was nearly impossible for him.

  He raised the thick paper to his eyes, but he had turned it the wrong way. The other side revealed eyes that stared back at me. My mother’s eyes. I grabbed the old photograph from Angel’s hands.

  “Mother? It’s a picture of my mother.” A warm tingle swarmed and buzzed in my belly, but it was chased away by the chill that was always pocketed deep inside. I looked from the image on the paper to the skeletal woman lying flat on the bed. Though she hardly resembled the rounder and healthy-looking woman in the picture, this surprising gift took my breath away. I thought I might even resemble her a little—her high cheekbones and jawline and maybe the soft almost-smile her lips formed.

  “Up, up. Time for your birthday picture.” Nursey walked in with her camera. She’d done this for years.

  “Where did you get this?” I held the photo of my mother as I stood.

  “Her file.” She held the camera up to her eye.

  I looked at the photo again. “I kind of look like her, don’t I?”

  Exasperated, she lowered the camera. “I have two floors to deal with today, Brighton. Let’s go. We can talk about that later.” She raised the camera again.

  “Can Angel be in this one?” I asked her. She usually said no, but maybe not this time.

  “Just you, Bright.” She waved Angel away. He continued to smile as he obediently stepped aside.

  I stood there, and the feel of the old photograph in my hand made me smile. After I heard the click I pulled Angel over. “Please?” I pleaded. My life wasn’t much without Angel.

  Nursey exhaled and waved him in.

  Angel and I stood shoulder to shoulder. I looked up at my friend who was wearing a smile like a warm breeze—and the click sounded. Nursey threw me a look of frustration, then stuffed the camera back into her apron pocket and left the room in a flash. What did she do with the photographs? I had never seen any of them.

  “Tell me about the photograph.” Angel slouched on the bed with me.

  I paused, contemplating, trying to take in every detail.

  “It’s so strange to see her like this. It’s almost as if this is a storybook picture and not even real.” I paused and shallowed out my gaze to tell him the basics. “She’s wearing an ugly, long black dress and she’s sitting on a chair. And—”

  I pulled the photograph close to my eyes.

  “And what?”

  “There’s a hand on her shoulder, but the photograph has been cut. I can’t see who’s there.”

  “Cut? I wonder why.”

  I ran my finger over the cut edge—it was clean, smooth.

  In silence I took in the rest. The older woman in the chair next to her had dull eyes. The serious-looking man gripping the older woman’s shoulders like he was trying to keep her still.

  I looked so long I memorized it. I traced the length of it with my thumb. The fingernail I’d chewed off earlier mocked me. Nursey would threaten to put rubbing alcohol on it again if she caught a glimpse of it. I tucked it away.

  My eyes returned to the hand on my mother’s shoulder. The hem of the long sleeve at the wrist was similar to my mother’s, and the fingers draped gently over her shoulders were thin and elegant. The hand belonged to a woman—a young woman. Who was she?

  1928

  An Angel to Watch Over

  I looked back at Mickey as I began to run. She was smiling and waving at me. She’d just told me that I shouldn’t be gone long. Her soft, warm hug had sent me on my way, out to the graveyard. I liked it back there—it was quiet, except for the birds. The building I lived in was never quiet.

  My five-year-old legs were fast. Not long after I first started running out there, Nursey gave up trying to catch me since she and her helpers had so many others to watch. They couldn’t catch me anyway.

  The friends I lived with didn’t even notice me. Mother never noticed either.

  And Nursey knew I would come back. I told her not to worry. I did wish Mickey could come with me so she could tell me more stories. But if she or Mother or any of the others tried to run off, Joann would camisole them. I hated that. Nursey said I was different from them. They were a lot older, I supposed, and some of them talked to themselves. But I did that too, some of the time. Sometimes they screamed. But so did I. Some of them told me about visions they had, and they sounded a lot like the dreams I had at night.

  Some of them were just like storybook mothers and grannies, though, especially Mickey. Since I didn’t have any other children to play with, Nursey picked a few of the women for me to spend time with in my room. She said she’d chosen the best ones. Mostly Mickey and Lorna came. They’d tell me funny stories and read books to me and play games with me. Nursey always made sure that one of them was in my room with me for a few hours every day since I wasn’t allowed anywhere else in the building. But outside I could be alone.

  I looked back at the patients. Some of them were holding on to the rope that led them to the courtyard and our huge garden where we worked on nice days. Some of them walked on ahead without the rope. No one cared that I wasn’t there. I was lucky.

  Then I started running again. I liked the way the dry grass brushed my bare feet. The graveyard was the farthest away I’d ever been from the building. After Claudia from room 205 died, I wanted to know what would happen to her body, so Nursey let me watch the gravedigger. Ever since then I liked imagining the people who were buried there. Nursey said it was strange and used the word morbid. She wouldn’t explain what it meant even after I begged her. But Mickey told me that it meant I was interested in learning about death and dying. It wasn’t that I was interested so much as I needed to know where the body went, since Nursey always said they were in heaven and I wanted to know where heaven was. It was the ground.

  When I was more than halfway to the graveyard I put my arms out like an airplane and sang the special song my friend Rosina had given me.

  “All things bright and beautiful.” I sang it as loud as I could, and because I only knew the first four lines, I just repeated them over and over. When I got to the last line I stopped and yelled it as loud as I could in the sky. “The Lord God made them all.”

  The Lord God was someone Rosina talked to a lot. Nursey did too, just not as nicely.

  I ran again and was going so fast that I could feel my heartbeat speeding up. I liked the way that felt. Nursey told me that my heart pumped my blood, and the faster I ran, the faster it pumped. Now when I ran I imagined that every time my heart pumped in and out it was telling me to run like the wind. So I did.

  But today someone was near a gravestone in the corner of the yard. I stopped running. It wasn’t the big, old gravedigger.
It was a small person, like me. But different. Like a pure white person.

  An angel?

  The word came into my mind as quietly as Nursey’s hush when I was frightened. But I had to take a minute to remember what the word angel meant. I remembered that Joyful, the kitchen lady, had used the word angel a while back when she brought up some food. She was a nice lady and always pinched my cheeks, and she gave me a red ball for my birthday a few months ago.

  “Better hope a bright and shining angel is watching over her, Miz Joann,” she’d said one day. “You keep her close, you hear. If she got to be here, she deserves some protection from all this mess.” I remembered how her eyes rolled to the sides and looked extra white against her brown skin.

  Later I asked Nursey what an angel was. She told me that children had guardian angels who watched over them and kept them safe. She said that they were beautiful and so bright they would light up the sky. This person standing there was so white—I was sure it was my very own angel.

  I walked toward the angel, and when I was close I waved. I could see that the angel was a boy because he was wearing a shirt and pants.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said to the angel.

  He was.

  He tilted his head like he didn’t understand.

  The closer I got, the more I could see how bright the angel was. Maybe I was supposed to have been an angel, because my name is Brighton. But I wasn’t bright. My skin was peach, and my hair was the same color as the gravy that Joyful served sometimes.

  The angel looked at me, but there was something wrong with his eyes. He squinted them like he couldn’t see well. I stepped closer. His eyes almost looked purple, but then they looked red and blue too.