Quiet-Crazy (19 page)

But the way things have changed in Littleton isn't nothing compared to the way things have changed when I get back to Nathan. It's Hemp. Hemp, the most joyful person around Nathan, always making a joke out of something, always clowning around, looking like he doesn't have a problem in the world . . . Hemp is dead. Alive on Friday, dead on Monday. It happened just that quick, like some magic trick—now you see him, now you don't. But the way he died. Whoever being around Hemp for even one moment, who would have thought Hemp would go and kill himself. And the way he did it, my Lord. With a sock?

Thinking back, I figure out how it must have happened. Some of us went shopping on Thursday before I left to go home for the weekend. That was the first time I had been outside the doors since I came here; in fact, I didn't even know you could go outside the doors until you were dismissed. But then Hemp said the “less dangerous” of us could go shopping, as long as Mr. Martin went with us. I didn't know of any of us who were dangerous unless it was Lenny, and
I don't know why I thought he might be, except he might wander off somewhere, who knows, and not being able to talk to anyone, nobody would know where he belonged. But now I know that dangerous could mean not only dangerous to other people, but more likely dangerous to yourself. And that's sure what Hemp had been, dangerous to himself.

I didn't think anything about it, though, when Hemp bought some new razor blades that Thursday down at Lounder's Drug. I thought he either really needed them and would go back and give them to the nurses, or yet that he was doing it just for spite, just because he wasn't supposed to have them. That's the way he was, he'd do any little old thing for spite. He'd light up in the no-smoking room, tie a knot in the badminton net, or hide the sports section from the daily paper. Of course, as soon as he bought the razor blades, he had to turn them over to Mr. Martin. And since Hemp didn't make any big deal over it, I didn't think any more about it. But, apparently, since he couldn't use the razor blades, he used a sock instead. Just took a sock and stuffed it down his throat. Who, but Hemp, would've even thought of such a thing. But, that's Hemp for you. Even in killing himself, he's gonna make a joke of it, and sock his own self in the mouth.

But Hemp dead. I can't believe it. First Caldwell, the only other man I could really talk with was dead, then Hemp, the man for talking things over with at Nathan, Hemp was dead, too. Although I could talk with Dr. Adams most anytime,
and although he has to be the best person ever to really talk things out with, it's not the same as having a real person and not a doctor to talk with.

Miss Cannon is so disturbed over the whole matter of Hemp that she decides she must go home, so she is packing up her things on Monday when I am unpacking mine to stay a while longer, how much longer I don't know.

“It's just too hainty around here,” Miss Cannon says, folding her gowns, pink and yellow and blue and green—she sleeps in a different color every night to make her dream in color, she says. “Just to think, such a fine young man right over there down the hall choking hisself with a dirty old sock!” She folds her rubbery, wrinkled arms, and shivers into herself. “I can't sleep nights now, for seeing him rared back there in his chair, his eyes blaring, his mouth open, and poked full of sock!”

“Did you see him?” I ask.

“No, no, only in my dreams. But I heard about it, the warden told me all about it, how they found him there, and I'm ready to get out of this crazy place. It sure ain't no place for old ladies.”

So here Miss Cannon is leaving, and I don't know why she came here in the first place, there doesn't seem to be nothing wrong with her, except she doesn't seem to put up with nothing nor with nobody.

I'm glad I wasn't here. That's all I can think. Glad I was
home trying to give birth to Elizabeth. Like it says in the Bible, I guess, when one dies, another is born in its place. But Hemp, why Hemp, of all people?

Miss Cannon is almost finished with packing up her things, when in comes this nurse I haven't seen before, and man is she ever a slick one. I mean they don't come around Nathan any nicer acting or more polished up than her.
MISS HANSOM
I see on that little name bar on her uniform, and that name it suits her fine. She is a real nurse, too, wearing white, not green, like the nurse's aid.

“Miss Cannon?” she says as smooth as Daddy's rose petals. “Are you about ready to go?”

“I'm more than ready to go,” says Miss Cannon. “Ain't you?”

Miss Hansom smiles, courteous. “No,” she says, “I think I'll stay around awhile.” Then she walks over to me, where I am sitting on my bed watching it all, and she offers her hand and says, “I'm Genevieve Hansom. You must be Elizabeth.”

Her hand is so beautiful with the rose pink fingernail polish on her long fingernails, the whiteness, pure whiteness of her skin, so I finally reach out to put my hand in hers. It's like shaking hands with a pink rose in full bloom, warm and silky and soft. “I'm Elizabeth,” I say. And for the first time the name “Elizabeth” has some meaning, like it really is me, or I really am her, one or the other.

Miss Hansom turns back to give some prescriptions to
Miss Cannon, and I am still releving? not releving, reveling. I think that's what I am doing, reveling in the way she had greeted me. I'm not used to such as that. Especially from a person made up with makeup as nice and pretty and smooth as Miss Hansom. Most nurses around here sort of grunt and make you feel you're holing up with a bunch of swine, but here is a real pearl cast into the mess of swine, and I wonder how she can keep her worth in a place like this, considering the Bible says do not cast such treasure in the pigpen.

Instead of calling a nurse's aid to help Miss Cannon with her bags, Miss Hansom lifts one under one arm, and picks up another one, and out they go. If only for a moment, she had gotten my mind off Hemp, and as soon as they leave, he comes back again and I can see him plain as day, sitting down in the rec room, his Camel hanging on the tip edge of his lips like it is going to fall off any minute. Then he might get up and go drape a piece of newspaper over one of the green plants—just for spite—or he might go over and bang on the piano too loud—just for spite—or he might throw his cigarette butt down on the floor—just for spite. At least he always said he was doing all such things as that just for spite, but now I wonder, did he, and if he did, did he kill himself, too, just for spite?

And then the most awful thought comes into my head—what if I can kill the Angela in me? Just the Angela? What if I
can get a razor and slash a vein somewhere, one of Angela's veins, and the Angela in me would die and be dead forever. So simple. But how would I know which vein was Angela's? Besides, I wouldn't, I couldn't kill off Angela like that. Not my little sister. And then a bigger thought pops into my head: why Angela is dead already. Why don't I allow her to be dead? That's all I have to do, and it's much easier, no blood, no mess, no shaking anybody up. Just let Angela be dead.

The more I see Miss Hansom, the more I am willing to allow Angela to be dead, and the more I want to be Elizabeth and Elizabeth only, and maybe a little bit like Miss Hansom at the same time. For one thing, besides being almost beautiful to look at, Miss Hansom is plain old down-to-earth with the patients. She doesn't consider herself above us. For another, she talks right and proper and she acts right and proper, with manners. And every little single thing she does, it seems she knows exactly the right way to do it. She reminds me of a very young Aunt Lona, except her hair is black, whereas Aunt Lona's is red.

Miss Hansom even plays games with us when she has the time. She especially likes bridge. I have never before played cards in my life, lest hell descend upon me, but I learn real fast to play bridge with Mr. Martin, the rec leader, and anybody else we can round up for a fourth hand. So knowing that Miss Hansom likes bridge, makes me like it even better.

I guess the best thing about Miss Hansom is I can tell she likes me. How someone so polished and perfect could like me, almost for a friend, I don't know. But it makes me prouder of myself, prouder to be me, because if Miss Hansom likes me, and if Dr. Adams likes me, then there must be something to me after all.

The first time I see Dr. Adams after I get back, he is all anxious to know about how Elizabeth fared at home. And when I get through telling him about every little thing, he seems real pleased with me, and that makes me even prouder of myself.

Then Dr. Adams pulls a surprise on me. “I think you're ready for some group therapy,” he says, writing in his silver-backed chart. “I'm going to recommend that to Dr. Johnstone.” And the next thing I know, I'm going to group therapy twice a week. We all sit around in a half-circle—me and the warden and Lenny and Harold and Mrs. Krieger and Tommy and Delores and Alice.

Aha, now's the time to find out something about all these people: why they're here, what's their secret. But then it dawns on me that I might have to tell something about myself, too, and what in the world will I tell? That I want to be me? That I want to be Elizabeth and not Angela? Folks sure will think I'm crazy if I say something like that. And I sure won't tell about the thing I can't tell anybody.

I've never seen the leader before—a Mr. Gray, who always
wears a gray suit with these tiny little whitish stripes down it, or a plain gray suit, or a gray suit with blue flecks in it. Most of his hair, which had once been dark, is gray, too, so I guess he thinks since he's named Mr. Gray, he has to act the part, because he is dry and droll at the same time.

The way group therapy works is this: someone says something, just any little old thing, and we take it from there. The first day I go in, everybody's thinking is on Hemp, and Mrs. Krieger is the first to speak and say what a shame, and that it is so hard on the family for a person to kill himself and how she hopes none of us will never give a thought to it. Mr. Gray asks how her arm is doing, and she says, “Better some days, and other days not so good. It's so depressing, to think it will never get well.”

All that does is make me wonder all the more what had happened to her arm, and why, and if that is the only reason she is here because something is wrong with her arm.

Harold, as usual, sits sneering at everything anybody says. He looks like he hasn't combed his blond straw hair in weeks, and he doesn't say anything, just like Lenny. They merely sit, both of them. I don't say too much other than that I will miss Hemp so because he was so easy to talk with.

“And what did you talk about?” Mr. Gray asks.

“Oh, I don't know,” I say. “What does anyone talk about?” And that comes out a little more snappy than I had meant, but this is Nathan, and you can say anything any way
you want to say it, so I guess that is okay. “We mostly chatted, about any little old thing,” I say. “But sometimes we talked about what we would do when we got out of Nathan.”

“And what was that?” Mr. Gray says. He seems to want to keep me talking about Hemp, maybe so he can learn something about him, I don't know.

“We talked sometimes about not going back home but going someplace else,” I say.

“Where would you go?” he asks.

“Hemp?”

“You, Elizabeth. Where would you go?”

So, it's me he's wanting to know about, not Hemp after all.

I am almost embarrassed to say it, because I, myself, think it a wild idea, but here you can be wild, so I say, “To college. I think it would be nice to go to college.”

“Why don't you?”

I look at everyone looking at me, all except Alice who is blind again today, but even she is turned in my direction, though she can't see me.
What if Mama had been blind all this time and couldn't have seen me all these years?
I look at Lenny, who wouldn't talk if a big bull moose came rushing through the door, and I think about how Delores would give a pretty nickel if she could talk above a whisper, and I look at Tommy whose head is still jerking after all this time. And
I think here I can talk okay, and so many can't, or won't, talk at all, so why don't I?

So I answer Mr. Gray. I say, “I can't go to college now, because I'm too old. I should have gone back when I finished high school, but I didn't. Now, it's too late.”

Then Delores, who is twenty-five, says she was in college before she came here. And Mrs. Krieger shakes her head “No, no,” she says, “you're never too old to go to school. Never. If that's what you want to do, then do it.”

Well, I've only thought about it, you see, with the urging from Aunt Lona, of course. It isn't like I have this burning desire to go off to college, but now with all these people saying “Go, go, go,” I wonder if I shouldn't think more seriously about it. It would be a way not to go back home. It would be a way to get out from Mama. But what Hemp and I were talking about was going off to California, or Florida, or New York, someplace where all the exciting things happen that you never get in on, We weren't exactly talking about going to college.

Hemp said, for instance, he'd like to go to Las Vegas and win a pot of money in all those gambling machines out there. That didn't appeal to me at all, but there were days I would have gone most anyplace to try to leave myself behind and find maybe a new person inhabiting this old shell of mine.

Group therapy. I have heard people talk about it, and I've
always wanted to go, but now that I've been a couple of times, I see it is not all that hot. No great mysteries are solved. But I think maybe it's because Mr. Gray just doesn't care too much about what we think, and what's on our minds, and what's the best way to get us to talking about what's deep inside. If it were me leading group therapy, I'd be finding out more about these people. So, I decide one day, why I'll just go and ask them. Ever since Hemp killed himself, I've had this weight on me, this great heavy feeling that I need to start talking with people about their problems. If I had talked with Hemp about his, instead of all the time joking around with him, would he still be here today? Maybe. But who ever knows about anything like that. Still, I have to start talking with people, have to start now, no waiting. So I start with Mrs. Krieger, who I think will be the easiest person of all to get to talking about what all is inside her.