The Bright Unknown Read online

I tried to settle my mind on my surroundings. The voices of the patients moving toward breakfast. The shining morning sun outside. Mother having kept her gown on—uncommon and good.

  She was still. And dressed. And so quiet. My breathing improved by a degree.

  Nursey rushed in. I turned my back toward her to make my bed. I didn’t know what to do or what to say to her. I focused on my breathing as I smoothed and tucked the thin sheet.

  “You’re not ready for breakfast yet. And you haven’t taken your mother to the toilet. If she doesn’t go soon, she’s going to soil the bed. What’s going on with you? You know we depend on you,” Nursey scolded but didn’t wait for an answer. “Also, there’s lice on the ward. Nitpick your mother right after breakfast or we’ll have to shave her head again.”

  A nearly annual occurrence.

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t even look at her, afraid of what my face would say.

  “Bright?” Nursey asked again with more than a sliver of annoyance in her voice. “Brighton.”

  “What?” I spun to look at her.

  Nursey’s hands were on her hips. Her bright-red lips were pulled into a straight line. Behind her blue eyes hid secrets about me. I turned away and folded up my threadbare green blanket and put it on the bed.

  “I know how to take care of Mother. Don’t harp.”

  After taking a moment to narrow her eyes, she left. I led Mother to the toilet, washed her face, then set her gown to rights. I tried to ignore the demons egging on my anger, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Angel’s fate. I sat Mother on the bed and pulled a brush through her hair, which was more pieces and patches these days.

  She began to hum. It was an older tune from long ago.

  I turned her to look at me, and she didn’t resist. I often tried to find where she’d gone inside her eyes. Her eyes roamed above to the cracked plaster ceiling and then to the peeling wallpaper. Then her head tilted to look at me—not just toward me. She stopped humming and took a long breath and pursed her lips.

  I squinted my eyes at her as if it would help me decipher her better. My ears and soul knew her every groaning; it was her language. But something was different just now. She was trying to say something. Even as I went from standing to sitting, her gaze followed my movements. Her eyes held mine.

  I didn’t—couldn’t—say a word or even breathe for fear of interrupting whatever was happening. The stirring of her mind? A memory? A real word about to be spoken for me?

  “M-m-ma—” she stuttered, holding the open sound like a long note. Not guttural. Not wild. Not base. She was trying to speak to me. “Mm-ma-mar—”

  “The canary whistles. The mine is safe.” Lorna’s giggly voice roamed from down the hall into my room. Nursey called her schizophrenic, but I called her my friend. The repetition of words made me turn toward the door. She poked her freshly shaven head inside. Her facial features appeared too big for her chiseled, gaunt frame. “The canary whistles. The mine is safe.” Then she ran off, repeating her words.

  She only spoke in riddles now and always with a wide-eyed and clown-like smile.

  The canary whistles. The mine is safe.

  I didn’t know what she meant. Probably nothing. Only then did I realize that Lorna had pulled my attention away from Mother. I snapped my head around and was flooded with disappointment. Mother’s blank and distant expression had been restored, and she’d flown back to her faraway place, humming an off-tune melody.

  I waved my hand in front of her. “Mother? What were you saying?”

  My pleas, silent and spoken, were so numerous over the years they’d become like another organ inside of me. My heart. My stomach. My bowels. My pleas.

  I grabbed her shoulders and shook—and not very gently.

  “What are you doing?” Nursey unleashed my grip.

  “She was trying to talk to me.” I yanked away from Nursey and kept my eyes on Mother. I lunged back and my fingers clasped her bony shoulders, but she remained a rag doll. “Mother, what were you saying? Please.” My eyes electrified with coming tears.

  Nursey pulled me away again.

  “What are you going to do if I don’t stop? Move me to another ward? Like Angel?” I said it with all the venom I could muster, but as soon as I did, I knew simply blurting out what I’d learned was not wise. Her grip remained, and I didn’t pull away.

  There was no injection so poisonous as the revealing of deceptions. Her eyes widened and her cheeks paled and grayed like the walls. Even her made-up lips looked pale. A deep swallow traveled down her throat. She loosened her grip and kept her hand on my arm, as though she couldn’t entirely let go.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her words were spoken with the weight of a feather.

  “I do so. I know about Angel and Cynthia and Dr. Woburn. I heard everything.”

  Her breathing grew labored. Was she going to faint? But now that I’d started I couldn’t stop.

  “Stop the transfer or I’m going to tell everyone everything I know. He killed Mickey,” I said through my teeth. I’d never spoken like this to Nursey, or to anyone.

  Her face went blurry in my vision and a surge of panic rushed from my stomach to my ears. I needed to say these things to her, but my breath and words were all mixed together. My hand went to my chest as if it would help my breathing.

  “You can’t think that I would ever let anyone hurt Angel. And Mickey was an accident.”

  “He covered it up,” I said between gasping breaths. “I’ll tell anyone who will listen.”

  Without warning, she tightened her grip and began dragging me down the hall. I’d observed this, of course, numerous times. How she’d break up fights or deal with someone refusing treatment. But never me. She’d spanked me once and then immediately apologized for doing it and never laid a rough finger on me again.

  “Nursey, stop,” I yelled, and I pulled as hard as I could. “Stop. You’re hurting me.”

  She stopped walking suddenly and my feet fumbled, making an effort to remain upright. “You do not blackmail me or Sid,” she said in a low, faltering voice that sounded like it shook more from anger than worry.

  My strength and breath were returning by measures.

  “He’ll die if he goes to that ward. You said that yourself. If you don’t stop them from taking him, I’ll blab it all. The aides aren’t loyal to you. I’ll tell them to tell the newspapers.” I knew enough about newspapers spilling big stories because we always had old ones on the ward to read but mostly to sop up filth when no one was around to clean.

  I got my feet under me and was within a few inches of her face, though I was a half foot shorter. I tried to keep my voice steady to counter my mounting fear.

  “You don’t make the rules, young lady. I do.” She pulled me into the dayroom and into an empty restraint chair.

  I knew what was coming. I’d witnessed it so many times in my life. Before I could even try to get away, Nursey put my wrists into the restraints. Cracked, scratchy leather straps. Then she told Nurse Wilma to shave off my hair. My hair. My hair was what Nursey always said separated me from the patients. No one else had time to grow theirs long like mine because it was shorn off almost yearly because of lice. Mine wasn’t, though.

  How often had Nursey said that I was her girl. That I was her long-haired, precious little girl. That I wasn’t a patient. But that was no more.

  I tried to shake free from her grip as she buckled my wrists in, but this place—this prison with its weapons and hold over all its patients—I couldn’t get free of it. I always wondered why patients stopped struggling so quickly. Why didn’t they fight harder? But now I knew why. The restraints were so tight it hurt worse to resist. My skin twisted against the clutch of the old leather and metal, but I kept pulling. I growled and tried to bite at Nurse Wilma when she came at me with scissors to first cut off my nearly waist-length hair. My arms wouldn’t budge, but my ankles hadn’t been secured yet. I kicked Nursey in the shins before she pulled my le
gs tightly into the straps.

  “I don’t have lice,” I screamed. “Nursey, don’t do this. Don’t let him kill Angel like he did Mickey.”

  I repeated my words over and over, sounding crazier than Lorna. Maybe I was. Maybe Nursey had been wrong about me and I was no different from them. Right then I didn’t feel any different.

  This was the moment I went from being cared for and protected to being a patient along with my mother and so many others. Silky strands trailed down my arms and my head chilled. My hair was gone so fast—and so was the life I thought Nursey had created for me. Would this be an annual occurrence for me from now on?

  Dirty clouds of hair littered the space around my feet. And none of it was a part of me anymore.

  I didn’t know when I stopped struggling, but at some point I did. I didn’t feel the razor run across my scalp; I only felt the closeness of Nurse Wilma’s hot and soft body that smelled of night-shift sweat. The stench made my stomach jerk and sputter, but there was nothing inside to come up.

  Lorna was still chanting about the yellow canary and that the mine was safe. But I knew she was wrong. The mine wasn’t safe, and we were all going to die here. Panic filled me while the restraints squeezed my arms and legs. The room was full of other patients, but none of them could help me. Then Mother walked into the room and stood near the chair. Even though her eyes didn’t seem to see me, she must have sensed something was happening to me. She rarely came out of the room on her own.

  My breathing heightened and I started to scream. Nurse Joann, that’s who she was to me now, told me to stop, but when I wouldn’t she cupped her hands over my mouth and the back of my neck with such steadfastness I couldn’t even try to bite. All I could do was listen to all the other voices and sounds in the room. But no one could hear me.

  1939

  Deliver Us from Evil

  Nurse Joann pushed me into solitary confinement before my hair had even been swept from the floor. Solitary confinement. I repeated the phrase over and over again in my mind and occasionally whispered it, letting it mingle in the damp air around me. This had never happened before.

  As a little girl I’d danced and twirled and recited poetry for the nurses and patients at Joann’s request, to show off. I wasn’t a patient. I was their doll to dress up and play with. I was everyone’s daughter in one way or another.

  But what Nurse Joann had done changed everything.

  My face had memorized the press of her hand over my mouth. I had been made silent. Would I ever be unmuted? Would anyone ever know that I was living here, in this place? And what about all the others?

  I had been sitting on the cot for hours since a porridge for breakfast had been brought. The cot’s itchy blanket was in a ball behind me. The toilet in the corner was small and filled with weeks-old filth that made the tiny room smell of waste. The brick exterior wall was cold and moist to the touch.

  I’d resisted every inch of Nurse Joann’s pull toward the two solitary rooms. I’d hit, kicked, and scratched. But it made no difference. She even had to release another patient just to stuff me inside.

  Not long after, poor Rosina was put in the other. She was praying now as she had been for hours—quoting the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. She’d taught it to me years ago, telling me that I needed some religion. The words came back to me and I said them with her. Together in our separate rooms. Joann told us to stop. So I yelled louder. Until I got to “Y líbranos del mal.” I didn’t move on from that line but repeated it over and over. Louder and louder.

  “But deliver us from evil,” I began to yell in English to make sure she understood.

  I didn’t know the context of this prayer. But what it had to do with this place, I knew. Maybe Nurse Joann was evil. Dr. Woburn too. If he was willing to put Angel in the men’s ward because of an audit, he was evil. If he had a hand in the death of patients, he was evil. Angel would die in that ward. I had to tell someone what I had learned. I didn’t care if that meant Joann would lose her job too and leave me. All I cared about was Angel.

  “Y líbranos del mal,” I continued to yell. “But deliver us from evil.”

  I yelled those words until my throat hurt.

  “Stop saying that,” Nurse Joann repeated as loudly and as often as I said Rosina’s sacred words.

  Once Rosina was released, the words were only whispers, and the small square window in the door showed only the open and empty room opposite me. I had no companion. I was alone. I hated being alone.

  Joann silently delivered a small lunch on my second day. She placed it on the cot next to me.

  “Are you ready to be rational?” she asked. I answered by flipping over the tray full of food. Refusing to eat was what patients did. And I was a patient now.

  The late-afternoon sun filled the broken glass and barred window. It was set high in the brick wall. It was small but big enough that if I could get up to it I would be able to see across the lawn toward the children’s ward. It had taken all my angry-patient strength to push the iron bed frame under the window. Maybe I could see Angel. Maybe if he knew I was in solitary he could convince Joann to let me out. But how would he know? Maybe I would never see him again. Maybe I would be bald for the rest of my life. And cold. And unloved. And worse—unheard.

  My toes curled around the damp, cool bed rail. Since I wasn’t tall I had to stretch, and when I could finally see out the small window, I nearly let out a hoot and holler. But my feet tired quickly, so I had to take breaks from watching and waiting for any sign of Angel.

  I memorized every part of my view of the children’s ward. There were bars on the windows, but in the glow of the sun they were nearly invisible, making the building look almost approachable. It was a smaller building and had peaks over the windows that reminded me of houses from storybooks. But I knew better. I knew that the inside front door had claw marks from the children who had tried to escape.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall. Someone was coming. Maybe Joann had changed her mind. Maybe she would let me out now. Maybe she would tell me that she’d saved Angel. Maybe I would tell her that I would not reveal her secrets.

  But that was a lie. I would tell anyone if it meant that I could save Angel.

  I hopped off of the bed rail and stepped to the square window in the door. The hole in the thick door was large enough for my arm to fit through—I’d tested it out as I’d seen other women do on many occasions. But now I peered through it and saw Wilma. She told me to go away, and I stuck my tongue out at her like I’d done since I was three.

  But it was the woman behind her that caught my attention. Our eyes met, hers dark brown and mine blue. She was small and sad. Her hair was a disarray of deep chestnut curls. I’d never seen curly hair like that. The palms of my hands went to my scalp. I slapped it, and the sound was so strange I did it a second time. But my eyes never left the new patient.

  We got new patients all the time, and every patient started in a solitary room—usually for two full days, longer if they were aggressive. This was a new girl. Who had sent her here? Had the doctors told her family that she’d get better in here? Had anyone told them that this was a place to die more than live? The soul first and then, many years later, the empty body. I’d seen it too many times. I could feel my own soul fluttering, desperate to leave my shell, to leave me behind and go on to somewhere better.

  Would this new young woman die here? Even though I didn’t know her, I didn’t want her to. I could see that she was close to my age. This was unusual. She looked away from me and cried as Wilma unlocked the solitary door. The hospital gown fit on her body better than on many patients. That wouldn’t last long. She would lose her healthy weight fast.

  After Wilma’s footsteps faded away, the girl began screaming and weeping and calling for her mother. I put my ear in the small opening in the door. This grief was something new to me. Usually the women cried incessantly for days and spoke to the spirit of a baby who had died or pleaded with their husband. Often tears would turn to
anger and anger into more treatments, more pain, more madness, and always more loss.

  But her calling and crying for her mother with such deep sorrow was unexpected.

  “Psst. Hey, hey,” I said in a loud whisper. “It’s all right.”

  She continued to weep with a mournful sound that I’d never heard before. Sad, not mad.

  “Hey, lady. Don’t cry, please.” I tried to say it sweetly. I wanted to help her. I wished I knew her name. “I’m Brighton. Please don’t cry. We can talk—if you want.”

  The weeping slowly quieted, and I thought she may have fallen asleep.

  “We can talk through the little window in the door. Are you there?”

  It was another long minute before there was movement through her square peephole. I could see one of her eyes. We stared at one another without a word for so long it seemed like we’d aged.

  “What’s your name?” I finally asked.

  She didn’t say anything. All I could hear was the constant din of the hall leading to the dayroom. Maybe she didn’t hear me.

  “I’m Brighton. I live in room 201 with my mother.” Maybe just introducing myself would help.

  “Your mother?” I could see part of her face through the doorway cutout now.

  I nodded. “Yes. My mother.”

  “You were brought here together?”

  “Sort of.” I almost had to laugh. “She was pregnant with me when she was brought here.”

  She didn’t respond right away. I could hear Lorna yelling at the top of her lungs about not letting the bedbugs bite. Was it that late already? I turned to look out the window. It was black. I rushed over and stepped up on the bed rail to look out. All I could see was the glow from a few children’s ward windows. I would watch again tomorrow.

  I returned to the door.

  “So you were born here?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You grew up here?” Her voice rose up at the end. “How old are you?”

  “I’ve always lived here. I’m sixteen.”

  “You don’t sound—” She paused, and I knew why.