Enduring (25 page)

There was a problem in keeping the kitten hidden. Dr. Meddlesome and Nurse Shedd came around at daybreak (the summer was winding down and the days were getting shorter again), but since they never approached Latha’s cot any more, there was no fear of their detecting her pet. Yet when they were gone, and the rest of the women were awake, Cutie-Pie Face started meowing for his breakfast, and his sounds alerted other women to his presence, and all of them were delighted, and begged for permission to pet him or hold him. All of them began what became a daily custom of bringing bits and pieces of their food from the dining hall to give him, and one woman of B Ward who still had her mail privileges and got the
Arkansas Democrat
by subscription furnished several sheets of newspaper each day for the kitten to do his business on. But although Latha told everyone that she had named the kitten Cutie-Pie Face after a kitten of her childhood, Flora wanted to call him Sugardip after a kitten of
her
childhood, and each of the other women decided that they would name him after various kittens of their childhood, so he also went by (but never responded to, as felines never respond to their names) Tabby, Cuddles, Sandy, Leo, Tiger, Nate, Useless, Louie, Matty, Calvin Coolidge, Apollinaris, Whiskers, Rhubarb, Noname, and Krazy.

In time, Latha couldn’t help but notice the curious effect of Cutie-Pie Face on the population of the Ward, both B and C. As long as all of them were permitted to fondle the kitten each day and call him by the name they wanted him known by, everyone was happy and there was a marked decrease in aberrant, erratic, and obsessed behaviors. All of them, herself included, were no longer possessed by whatever inner demons that bedeviled them but were exceptionally clear-headed, optimistic, and happy. In late August there was a heat wave so severe that the weakest among them would have succumbed to it, but the ladies took turns fanning their little pussy and making sure he had enough water to keep from dehydrating. Although Latha was no longer inspected by the doctor and nurse at daybreak, she couldn’t help observing their inspection of other inmates, and their surprise at finding so much of an atmosphere of calm and pleasantness.

As all good things must, however, this era of good feeling came to an end. Latha had suggested to her sisterhood that they could make the hot nights more bearable if they sat around in a circle telling their favorite ghost stories, in order to send chills up their spines. She had always loved ghost stories herself, and knew enough of them to keep on talking after everyone else ran out. During these ghost story circles, they would pass the kitten around and take turns holding him and fondling him, and sometimes Latha could have sworn he was listening to the ghost stories.

One night they were discovered by Nurse Turnkey, who objected not so much to their telling ghost stories as to their possession of an animal, which was so much against the rules that there wasn’t even a rule against it. Before anyone could protest, she snatched up the kitten and made off with him. When she returned, some time later, and told them all to get to bed, they mobbed her and demanded to know what she had done with their kitten. Latha was among those who pounded their fists on the nurse, who was required to blow the whistle she wore on a chain around her neck and summon a bunch of orderlies to rescue her.

As punishment, there was no breakfast, lunch or supper for three days following. Because she had no dishes to wash, Latha had no business in the kitchen, but she went in there anyway and asked the idle cooks if any of them knew what had happened to the kitten. Latha wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that they had put him into a stew, but there was no stew being cooked, nothing being cooked. One older woman, frail to begin with, died of starvation, although they carted her off to the infirmary and tried to force feed her. Latha believed that the woman had died not so much of starvation but because Apollinaris, as she had called the kitten, was taken away. All of the inmates of B-C Ward, and some from A Ward, were permitted, under strict supervision, to go out and walk over to the hospital’s cemetery in order to attend the woman’s funeral. It was a sizeable cemetery with hundreds of headstones, some of them quite old, and Latha’s mood, already sinking over the loss of Cutie-Pie Face, plummeted at the thought that this cemetery might be her own final destination.

The whole population was depressed by the visit to the cemetery as well as by the loss of the kitten. Some residents of the B or C Ward were transferred to D or even E. There was in general a rebound effect of the loss of Cutie-Pie Face: if his presence had been therapeutic, his absence was devastating.

Latha found the strength and courage to begin a letter to Dr.

Meddler, attempting to point out to him the grievous mistake, to convince him how beneficial the kitten had been for everyone, and now how detrimental the kitten’s absence had become. It was a perfectly sane letter, but she was never able to finish it. Sometime in September, she withdrew from the letter, she withdrew from her friends, she withdrew from herself. She was so withdrawn that when her friend Flora committed suicide and was taken to the cemetery, Latha had no interest in attending the funeral. She had no awareness of friendship or of the absence of it. Betty Betty, who remained unwithdrawn enough to keep on cussing, screamed a long string of obscenities over the absence of Flora, but Latha did not notice. They were required to remove her from her kitchen duties because she no longer had any interest in washing dishes. For a while, they attempted to have her work in the hospital’s laundry, washing sheets and gowns, but she was unable to operate the machines.

She decided that she would have to ask Flora what was the best way to commit suicide. But she couldn’t find Flora. Betty Betty was transferred to D Ward and Latha really had no one to talk to, which was just as well, because she was not only unable to talk to people who were unkind to her but had lost the ability to talk even to kind people.

The autumn passed. Some inmates were able to stand at the windows and watch the trees change color and then lose their leaves, but Latha couldn’t find any windows.

Christmas came. No one seemed to be thrilled or even interested. The day after Christmas, Nurse Shedd, if that was her name, came to Latha and told her that she had visitors, and led her down to the first floor where there was a visiting room. A man and a woman were there to see her, and to give her a bouquet of pretty flowers and a box of candy. Latha thought about them, about the man and the woman. It was the first time she had thought any thoughts for months. She thought so hard that she realized who they were. The woman was her very own older sister, Amanda Bourne, and the man was her husband, Vaughn Twichell. Latha remembered that they had a baby, but the baby was not with them.

Latha had never been religious, or even the praying type, but she remembered the gesture for prayer: you put your palms and fingers together and hold them before you. Latha fell down on her knees before the couple and put her hands in the praying position. “Please,” she begged. “Please get me out of here!
Please!
I’ll do anything for you! I’ll cook for you! I’ll sweep for you! I’ll do everything for you! Please get me out of here!”

“See!” Mandy said to Vaughn. “I told you she was just playing possum. I told you she could really talk, if she put her mind to it.”

“Please, please, please, oh
please…
” she pled.

“No,” Mandy said. “You’d be a bad influence on the baby.”

That evening Nurse Turnkey and two orderlies transferred Latha to D Ward.

It was a separate building, near the B and C Ward but not connected to it. The main difference, perceived at once, was that many of the women in D Ward were wearing straitjackets. Although the camisole, as it was politely called, prevented any movement of the hands and arms, if you wanted to fight you could still use your feet and legs, and there were two women who were kicking the heck out of each other. Latha was moved to applaud their contest, but when she attempted to clap her hands, she saw that she was also restrained in a camisole. The red-haired nurse who led her to her cot was not ferocious-looking like Shedd or Turnkey. She had a sweet face and even smiled! Latha was able to speak to her. “Why am I wearing this thing?” she asked, squirming inside her camisole.

“You were raving when they brought you in,” the nurse said.

“I was?”

“Yes, just about as bad as those,” the nurse said, indicating a group of women who were howling, screeching, foaming at the mouth. “But you aren’t doing that now, are you? Because you know it doesn’t accomplish anything. Am I right?” Latha thought it over, and assumed the nurse knew what she was talking about, unlike the nurses of C Ward. Latha nodded. “It doesn’t become you,” the nurse said. “Lovely as you are. I do declare, you are
something
. People have told me I’m pretty, but I’m nothing compared with you. I’d better not stand close to you. It makes me look like a dog. Now here’s your cot. Anything you need, just come and get me. My name is Alice Richter. I think we will get along. Now I am going to take off that camisole, but if you start raving again, it goes right back on, and you have to sleep in it.”

Nurse Richter stood behind Latha and unfastened the straps of her straitjacket and removed it. Latha howled. The nurse jumped a foot, then started to put Latha’s arms back into the sleeves of the camisole. “Gotcha!” Latha said, laughing.

The nurse laughed too, but said, “Don’t scare me like that.”

When the nurse was gone, a woman rose up from a nearby cot and approached. She was huge, over six feet tall and much more muscular than Nurse Turnkey, and thus Latha was surprised that her voice was so dainty when she said, “Welcome to D, which is for Demented. You don’t look demented to me, but you probably drowned your kid brother, didn’t you?” Latha shook her head. “Then you must’ve peed in the punchbowl at the prom? No? Then you must’ve tried to jack off the minister of your church during a baptism. No, wait, that’s what
I
did. So it wasn’t you. But just what did you do to get yourself declared demented, darling?”

“I lost my voice in the presence of unkind people,” Latha said.

“Wow!” the woman said. “Folks like you ought to be locked away in E Ward.” For a moment Latha did not realize she was kidding, and then they both laughed. It was the second time this evening that there was laughter, which scarcely ever happened in the B and C Wards. Maybe laughter is a symptom of genuine insanity. The woman said, “Rachel Rafferty’s my handle. I like alliteration, you may have noticed.” Latha wasn’t too sure what that word meant. She told Rachel her name, and they exchanged basic facts about each other. Rachel was from Pine Bluff, and had been a star basketball player who had been recruited to join a professional team, but in her senior year, after being constantly pestered to get herself baptized, which she thought was a useless ceremony, she had gone into the baptismal pool with the preacher, a little man, and underneath the water she had fondled his crotch until she had a good grip on his ding-dong, which instantly began to expand and was stiff enough to be pumped several strokes before he could collect himself and tell her to get out of the pool. There was a scandal that drove Rachel’s family out of the church, and her parents began to use the word “shame” in every sentence for so long that she volunteered to have herself committed to the State Lunatic Asylum, where she spent enough months in B and C Ward to drive her batty. The problem was that they didn’t have a strait-jacket large enough to fit her, so whenever she was in the mood for ranting they had to either inject her with sedatives or tie her down to her cot with ropes.

Latha and Rachel became good friends. Rachel was a better friend than Mary Jane or Flora, and as for Betty Betty, who had also been transferred to D Ward, she spent all her time reciting salacious limericks, indifferent to her audience, and seemed to have totally forgotten who Latha was. Rachel had met her but was unable to talk with her. Rachel’s favorite of Betty Betty’s limericks was:

“There was a young man from White Hall,

Whose pecker was uncommonly small.

He diddled a goose,

And spent all his juice,

But the goose didn’t feel it at all.”

Latha laughed and said, “When she was still in C Ward, she could recite three hundred different words for penis.”

“Too bad I can’t get her to tell them to me,” Rachel said. “Her name, Betty Betty, sounds like what they used to call me: Baddy Baddy.”

Soon enough, Latha discovered that Rachel was the only woman in D Ward (other than possibly herself) who was anywhere near “normal,” even though grabbing a preacher’s dinger was rather abnormal. D Ward, which supposedly consisted of women who were not yet incurably insane but still had some hope, was much noisier than B-C Ward, and contained a large number of women whom one could instantly identify as lunatics simply by the way they looked. Rachel wasn’t pretty, but she didn’t have a face that announced all the loose screws in her head.

D Ward had women who had committed murder and been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. It also had imbeciles and other mental defectives, for whom some hope remained. The hopeless were in E Ward. D Ward also had women who were recuperating from syphilis, and quite a number of nymphomaniacs, which, Rachel explained to Latha, is “a woman who can’t ever get enough.” One thing all the D Warders had in common was that their nails had been trimmed to the quick so they couldn’t fight with them when their camisoles were off. The nurses had cut one of Latha’s fingertips badly when they were trimming her nails.

Strangely, there were two ways that D Ward was better than B-C Ward. It had a toilet-room that was not uninhabitable. According to Rachel, there was a group of residents who, being imbeciles on the edge of idiocy, didn’t mind scrubbing it clean. And the “doctor” was a vast improvement on Dr. Meddler. His name was Silverstein, and he had studied in Europe with some big-name psychotherapists. Rachel was in love with him. He didn’t come around at daybreak like Meddler, but mingled among the patients at all times of the day and night, and even sat at the dining table with those who weren’t in straitjackets. Nurse Richter was also in love with him, but had the advantage over Rachel of actually being permitted to be alone with Dr. Silverstein in certain locations, and Rachel narrated in detail for Latha the various romantic episodes that she imagined were taking place between the two of them. “I saw lipstick on the edge of his mouth just the other day,” Rachel declared. “And who amongst us is allowed to wear lipstick other than the nurses?”