Call Me Crazy (3 page)

“What was the good doctor’s response to your inquiry?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “Who knows? I was already closing the door behind me when she started talking.”

As I swallow down the last of my orange juice I see the familiar glint in Candy’s eyes. That glint was the one that usually meant there was mischief brewing in her wacked out mind.

“So what’s on the agenda for today?” She asks me as she rubs her hands together.

“Well, unlike some people, I have to go to group therapy and then I have a session with Dr. Stacey.”

Candy groans. “Ahh, come on, ditch group today.”

I shake my head at her. “Can’t. I only have one month until school starts and I need to get my walking papers by then.”

“But it’s sooooo boring when you aren’t around,” she whines.

I can’t help but laugh at her. Candy, a sixty year old woman, whining like a ten year old. Shouldn’t be funny, but it was.

“So let me get this straight,” I give her my best
are you freaking serious
face. “You want me to skip group therapy and risk having my sentence extended because you get bored without me?”

“Just when I think you might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, you go and surprise me with your shocking astuteness.”

“Glad to know that I can still shock you, you crazy old bat,” I tell her as I roll my eyes.

Candy lets out a loud cackle. “What’s it going to be Pinky?”

I wish I could tell you that her nickname for me annoyed me, but truthfully, I found it endearing. She had started calling me Pinky the minute she met me because of the pink highlights in my hair. Candy was known for her nicknames, she said it was the only way for her to remember people. I think she just likes to annoy them.

I groan. “Fine, I’ll play hooky with you, but this is the last time.” I’m such a sucker for a crazy old lady with the inability to entertain herself.

Two hours later I find myself hiding out with Candy in one of the quiet rooms. Really, it’s an isolation room for the patients who get a little violent, or a lot violent. The “administration” seems to think that if they call it the quiet room then it won’t seem so sinister. It amazes me how often the staff mistake
crazy
for
stupid
. I can tell you for a fact that some of the most intelligent people I have ever met are off their rocker, bat mess crazy.

Candy had swiped some racquets and a racqu
et ball from the exercise room. We are playing, and I use the term playing very loosely, considering Candy has planted her butt on the floor and is sitting cross legged. Really I’m running around hitting the ball while she simply reaches out every now and then, when the ball is in her reach, and gives it a good whack.

“Did you hear we’re getting a new inmate?” She asks me.

“Oh yeah? What are they in for?”

“Schizo.”

“Nice.”

“Apparently she tried to off herself and her son found her.”

“Damn,” I mutter. “That had to be tough. How old is the kid?”

“Well I wouldn’t call him a kid. He’s eighteen.” Candy grunts as she reaches for the bounding ball. She smacks it hard and I have to dive out of the way to keep from getting hit in the head. Of course she finds this funny as all get out.

I give up chasing the stupid ball and take a seat on the floor across from her.

“Candy, how do you find out so much about other patients?”

“The walls have ears,” she tells me in the creepy voice she likes to use on the more paranoid patients.

“That’s just freaky; don’t say crap like that.”

She chuckles at me as she shakes her head. “You scare too easy.”

“That or you just do demented, possessed old lady a little too well,” I counter.

”Hello Clarice…,” she growls in response, grinning all the while.

I lie back on the ground and look up at the stark white ceiling. The clinical florescent lights cause me to squint my eyes and the white walls and white floor don’t help. I don’t understand how they could expect a person to be calmed in a room so uninviting, where you felt more likely to be probed and dissected rather than be soothed. But then I’m just an inmate, as Candy likes to call us, what do I know?

“So when does said Schizo arrive?” I ask her.

Candy looks at her wrist. She doesn’t wear a watch, yet she has an uncanny knack for knowing what time of day it is.

“Any minute now, want to go be nosy?” The familiar gleam is back again, dancing in her pale blue eyes, which are surrounded by aged skin and drooping eye lids.

“Nosy is your middle name, not mine,” I remind her.

Candy clucks her tongue at me. “You’re middle name is smartass, seems to me you have me beat.”

I stand and hold my hand out to help pull her to her feet.

“That may be, my old friend, but your maiden name is Bush. I don’t think it gets much worse than Candy Bush.” I laugh just as hard as I did the first time she had told me her name.

She swats my backside as she walks past me and mutters. “Ungrateful brat.”

“Oh, make no mistake, Ms. Bush, I am
very
grateful my name is not Ca…,”

“Not another word, Pinky,” she cuts me off with a snap of her fingers.

I laugh again as I follow her out the door and down the hall towards the new–patient exam rooms.

“Hold on to what is good, even if it’s but a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe, even if it’s but a simple tree that stands alone. Hold on to what you must do, even if it’s a long way from where you are. Hold on to your life, even if it’s easier to let go. Hold on to my hand, even if someday I’ll be gone away from you.”

~Native American Prayer

~~~Trey~~~

I am White Mountain Apache, son of the former Tribe Chief. I did not ask for this role, but I play it willingly. Spirits have attacked my family and it falls to me to drive them away. I wish I had the wisdom of my grandmother, or the patience of my grandfather. Lately, all I feel is restlessness.

“Trey, where is your mind?” My grandmother asks me. I blink twice to clear my head as I stand in front of the kitchen sink. I’ve turned the faucet on to wash my hands and didn’t realized that I was simply standing there, lost in thought with my hands held under the warm rush of water.

I turn the water off and grab the hand towel hanging on the front of the dishwasher and turn to face her as I dry my hands. My grandmother is a small woman, especially compared to my six foot three frame. She barely reaches my chest, but she is as hard as bedrock, made from the earth itself.   She smells of soil and leather.  Her deeply lined face tells countless stories of our Native American heritage. Grandmother’s name is traditional Apache, Bly Swift, meaning
Tall Child.
Her hair is dark, sprinkled with strands of gray falling in a single long braid down her back. Her high cheek bones and straight nose speak of the pride of our ancient people. Though more than a century has passed since the time of our ancestors, she still practices the old ways and lives according to tribe law.

“Sorry Shichu, I’m just thinking about her. She will have been transferred already and I know I need to go see her.” I have been doing my best to keep it together. I know that I need to be strong for my grandmother, but each day seems to weigh on me a little more than the last.

Her eyes soften as she looks at me and I can see the worry hiding behind them.

“You bear so much on your shoulders for one so young.”

I smile at her as she reaches up and tucks my long black hair behind my ear. While I usually keep it in the same traditional single braid down my back, I haven’t bothered with it this morning.

“I guess it’s a good thing I was given such broad shoulders then,” I tease.

“Even the strongest tree must learn to bend with the wind, for if they do not, eventually even their great trunks will crack and come crashing down. The branches, which had relied on the tree’s great strength, come crashing down with it.” My Shichu often speaks in metaphors and riddles as a way to impart wisdom. Most of the time I wish she would just speak plainly and tell me the direction that I should go. But I know how she would respond that,
just as a mother bird cannot fly for her babies, neither could she walk my path for me
. She would say that
as the baby birds must learn to use their wings for their own journey, so I would learn to use my mind to lead me on mine
.

“I hear you Grandmother,” I tell her. “I’m going to go and check on her now. Do you want to come?”

She shakes her head. “I will go later. You need to spend some time with her and remember she loves you. She is just not able to get her mouth to tell you what is hidden in her mind.”

I give her a quick hug and then head out to my beat up old truck. Ugly it may be, but it gets me where I need to go and it beats walking any day.

As I pull into the parking spot, I look up at the foreboding building in front of me. The sign on the dry, dead grass of the front lawn declares it to be Mercy Psychiatric Facility. I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of mercy they were hoping to impart with such a depressing first impression. Staring at it was actually making me depressed and I imagine that they might have had a few, if not more, patients who had admitted themselves just  from driving by and feeling the despair of the place crash over them.

I try to shake off the gloom as I climb out of my truck and remind myself that things aren’t always what they seem. For all I know the inside might be warm and inviting, not likely, but I was trying to be positive.

I walk into the entrance of the building and try not to cuss my own stupidity at wanting to believe that the inside would actually be better than the outside. Not surprisingly, the foyer was as drab as I had imagined it would be. The stale air holds a hint of disinfectant and the lingering aroma of what must have been a terribly greasy breakfast.  As I look up I see the word
Information
above a desk directly across from the front doors. I move towards the chubby woman who occupies the seat beneath it.  Her name badge unceremoniously declares her to be Mildred, Front Desk Staff. Her white hair is twisted in a tight bun and she wears thick glasses with pointed ends, vintage 1950, I’m betting. The bright pink lipstick painted across her narrow mouth is slightly smudged and the blush on her cheeks makes the rest of her aged face appear pale with a greyish hue. She looks up at me and smiles. It’s a sweet smile, even if the teeth she reveals are crooked and yellow with age. There is a gentleness in her eyes that reveals the kind spirit encased inside.

“Hello,” she says in a sweet, grandmotherly tone. “How can I help you, son?”

I catch a whiff of her perfume as she shifts in her chair and try not to cough as the musky scent assails my nose and burns my eyes.

“I’m here to see my mother,” I croak. “She should have been transferred here earlier today.”

“What is her name dear?” Mildred asks as she begins poking the keyboard in front of her with one hand. Her eyes stay on the computer screen as she waits for my answer.

“Lolotea Swift.”

Her fingers move with surprising speed across the keys and the clicking of them seems to echo in the quiet, stark area.

“Mm hmm, yes, yes, I see.” She mutters to herself. Finally, after several closing taps,
she looks up at me with the same sweet smile.

“She did arrive and has been all settled in her room. According to her schedule, right now she should be in the recreation hall. Just sign in here,” she points to a clip board. I sign my name and hand her back her pen. Mildred swivels in her seat and points down a hallway to the right. “If you will follow that hallway and then take the first right you will run straight into the rec hall.”

I give her my thanks and head off in the direction that she had indicated. I begin to hear the soft hum of murmuring as I draw closer to the end of the hallway. Just before I turn to go down the next corridor, I take a steadying breath and steel myself for what I might see.

The last time I had seen my mother had been two days ago. She had been so thin that her bones protruded from her face. Her eyes were sunk
en in their sockets and her hair was dull and limp. She was slowly wasting away as the disease that plagued her mind began to eat away at her body as well. She had been diagnosed with schizophrenia three years previously, after my grandmother and I had begun to realize that she was seeing things and talking to people that weren’t really there. At first she had refused to see a doctor. But after the first suicide attempt, she finally relented. Since then it had been an ongoing battle for her to keep her mind clear and rational. There were good days and bad. She had been on many different medications but the doctor she had been seeing couldn’t find a combination that seemed to work well for her.

I had asked him why the meds weren’t working and he had told me that the disease affected each person differently, just as any other disease might. Though there were similarities, each mind was as unique as the body that held it.  So after three years of unsuccessful treatment, he had finally told us
to put her in a psychiatric hospital where they could monitor her behavior and, hopefully, in the controlled environment, find a combination of drugs that would work. That is how I found myself driving across state lines from Arizona to Oklahoma, final destination―Broken Arrow.