Quiet-Crazy Read online

  “Now, you’re getting somewhere. Finally!” Aunt Lona said, laughing and raising her hands like she was winning some kind of victory.

  So is this, now, the result of the victory? Standing in my bedroom listening to Sheriff Tate honking his horn? Mama’s not the only one who needs the magnesia this morning. My insides are rustling, even cramping, so bad that I start just to go back to bed and stay there forever, because I know the minute I step into that law enforcement car, I’ll be admitting guilt not only to Mama, but to everybody else here in Littleton of going wild-crazy. So, I ask myself which is worse, being this wildflower woman, this half-woman, half-child, and trying to please Mama and be like Angela for the rest of my life, or having everybody think I’ve cracked up. I decide it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.

  If it had been any other sheriff in the country besides Sheriff Tate come to get me, maybe I wouldn’t dread so that ride. I never have liked him, although Mama thinks he’s God’s gift to the world, and he thinks he’s God’s gift to the women. Daddy says the only reason he’s in office is because the women in the county voted him in. If they knew, he said, what Sheriff Tate was really like, they would have no part of him. But then, again, he says, maybe the women really do know what he’s like and that’s why they voted him in.

  Mama likes him because he gets up in church on Sunday morning and leads the singing. And that’s exactly why I don’t like him. One reason anyway, because he always looks real hard at me on Sunday mornings, just looks at me sitting there in the front row and then with a slight nod, as if it’s just me and him in the whole church and nobody else is around to see it, he commands me to go play the piano, as if I am at his beck and call. I also don’t like the way he sings—slow as cream rising on buttermilk. Me, I like to pick the songs up a little, like we have some spirit about us, but he keeps on walling his eyes around at me after nearly every stanza and saying, “Now, let’s slow this down a bit this time.” So we end up singing “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” like God was dipping his blessings out teaspoon by teaspoon instead of letting them flow out like the song says.

  I tried a little while back not going when Sheriff Tate called me, no matter if he did look at me for eternity, while I just sat there thinking he could get Mr. Palmer to play, and he did. I thought Mr. Palmer did quite well, considering how old he was and how long it had been since he had played. Anyway, Mr. Palmer plays more in the creep-along style that Sheriff Tate likes. But Mama had one of her fits once we got home.

  “What do you mean, child, sitting there like a bump on a log?” she raged. “Don’t you never act that way again, you hear? Never! No telling what Sheriff Tate thought of you!”

  I wonder now, as I climb into the backseat of the law enforcement car, what Mama would think of Sheriff Tate, if she knew what he had tried to do to me out at the graveyard one Sunday afternoon. I had gone out for Mama to carry a fistful of violets to put on Angela’s grave, when he drove up all rared back looking real proud in that shiny, brown car that has LITTLETON COUNTY SHERIFF in gold letters on its sides.

  All he had wanted to do, he said, after he saw he wasn’t getting anywhere with me, after I streaked my fingernails down across his old face, after I kicked him in the shins about four times, all he wanted to do, he said, was to show me a few things. I told him that nice girls don’t go around letting old men claw them all over, but he said, “You ain’t no girl, Lizzy-buth. You a woman and it’s time you’s acting like one. Flittin’ ’round here so sweet and childlike, you ain’t foolin’ nobody, you know, at least not me, you ain’t. Why, you’re burning hot inside, you know that. You got the fires of a woman eat up with desire.”

  Well, I know it’s time I was acting like a woman, and I also know I got fires in me, but they’re sure as heck not burning for Sheriff Tate, and right now they’re fires of a different color, for when the sheriff says to Daddy, “Don’t you worry none, I’ll take go-o-od care of Lizzy-buth,” the way he says it makes me shudder, and I wonder what else I could have done rather than let Mama run the whole show. That’s what I’ll be, and I can just see it now, a show that the whole town of Littleton will be talking about. “Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, get your tickets here to see the crazy lady. She talks, but not normal, she sings, although looney, she laughs like a wild woman, she cries. . ..”

  Oh, yes, does she ever cry. I thought I was too mad to cry, too mad at Mama and Sheriff Tate both, but when Daddy tells the sheriff to wait a minute and he goes out to the garden to bring me a mum, a solid white mum with flecks of red splashed over it, I can’t help but cry. Why, Daddy, why can’t you do something about me going off with Sheriff Tate? Doesn’t it even matter to you that I’m going off with this noaccount sheriff that you just can’t stand? Couldn’t you even make a polite offer to ride down with me? Oh, I know you can’t ride that far. But couldn’t you at least appear, just out of care for me, to be concerned just a little bit?

  Poor Daddy. I want so to put my arms around him and hold him to me, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Daddy and me stopped hugging long ago, when I was about ten or eleven. It seemed he got to be too embarrassed, or I did one, I couldn’t ever figure out which one of us it was. So, while I’m longing something awful to reach out the door to hug him, I close the door between us like I’m closing it forever, and I wave at him instead, my feelings all twisted up like long strands of rope reaching from here to eternity, having no beginning and no end.

  “Take it easy, now,” Daddy says, as we start to pull out of the yard, and I can’t tell if he’s talking to me about my crying, or if he’s talking to Sheriff Tate about his driving.

  As we drive off I hate that I ever started in to crying, because when I start, it takes me forever to stop. I hate, too, that Sheriff Tate hasn’t seen fit to take that little fencelike divider down over the back of his seat. Does he think I’m dangerous? That I’m going to come charging over the seat and try to attack him, like he did me in the graveyard?

  The minute we hit the road he starts in. “Where you been for the past few Sundays, Lizzy-buth? What you going off to Nathan for, a ni-i-ce girl like you? Huh?” And he laughs, evil-sounding. “I didn’t know ni-i-ce girls went to Nathan, Lizzy-buth. I thought Nathan was just for crazy folks. Wild people. You not done and gone crazy now are you? Huh?”

  Now I pretend the divider is solid concrete, so I can neither hear nor see him. Then I turn and look out the window at Littleton passing away. Since there’s not much to it, it goes quickly, over and down a hill street, lined with white shoe-box houses, into the valley where lies the primary school, post office, the Frostee-Burg and the pants factory, and up another house-lined hill street, climaxed at the top with the white-steepled church.

  “Why don’t you put that there flower in your hair, Lizzy-buth?” says Sheriff Tate. “It’d look mighty pretty, don’t you think? Flowers look pretty on ni-i-ce girls. Especially ones like you.”

  When he sees I’m not striking up any conversation with him, he flips on the radio to WHEN, the station that plays that old whiny country music that I can’t stand. Some country music man is moaning that he’s drowning in his beer ’cause he’s thinking about his dear who said good-bye, and all he does is sit and cry. It’s enough to make me stop crying, to think I might be sounding anything like him. Lord, if I have to listen to that stuff for three hours, I sure will be crazy by the time we get to Nathan.

  3

  . . . . . .

  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 stop
s 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.