Sweet Tea: A Novel (7 page)

Sweat poured off CeCe’s forehead. Pain gripped my gut like a squirrel on an acorn. The thought of Mama held in the place once known as “Georgia’s Lunatic Asylum” scared me sick. We’d both heard stories about the place as kids. I closed my eyes and prayed they were just that: made-up tales. My mind pictured something else.

R
ain splattered onto the windshield. CeCe turned on the wipers. The rubber on the passenger side wiper had torn from the metal and followed slowly behind. It made a wretched scraping sound with each stroke as it attempted to clear the rain.

Luke continued to sleep soundly.

CeCe swiped the windshield with the palm of her hand, breaking up the fog. The rain poured down harder. She sat so close to the windshield, I feared she’d go right through it if we stopped short for a possum or herd of cattle.

“Can you see?” I said.

“I can see fine, I just need to think. Stop worrying, will ya!”

“What are you worrying about?” Luke said, stretching his arms as he woke up.

CeCe glanced at me. I could tell she didn’t want to be the one to share the news. So I did.

“We have to go to another hospital. They transferred Mama.”

“Is it far?”

CeCe shrugged. “I don’t think it’s much more than an hour away.”

Luke’s eyes darted back and forth, and I could see he was biting the inside of his cheek. “Is she gonna be all right?”

“Sure,” CeCe answered. “She’ll be fine. It might take a little time, but she’ll be okay.”

He put on a brave face. I could tell. I could also tell he depended on us to take care of things because we were all
he
had. Boys didn’t express their feelings the way girls did, Mama always said. But I knew how Luke felt. I knew, because she was his mama as much as ours, and that would never change. You only get one mama, and I wished more than ever that I could have mine back.

I dug deep into my pocket and pulled out some Jujubes. “Here, Luke.” I handed him the small box. “They probably moved Mama there so she’ll get better faster. This hospital specializes in helping people like her. It’s for the best. I bet she’s already doing better. We might even get to take her home—”

“We need to get gas,” CeCe said.

No longer consoling Luke, I switched back to my paranoid self. “There’s no gas stations out here!” I said, fearing we’d break down near a chicken farm and be lost for days while Mama became a ward of the state.

“There has to be!” CeCe said, raising her voice.

The car bucked. “Are we running out of gas? We can’t run out of gas here. What are we gonna do? My heartbeat quickened once more.

“Shut up, Olivia. Think positive.”

The car bucked again. I began to pray. Oh, please Lord, don’t let us run out of gas. “Pray, CeCe, pray!”

“I am, Olivia.” 

CeCe turned the high beams on, slowed down, and moved closer to the windshield as if by doing so her body’s energy would magically push the car ahead.

Just as I envisioned our whole lives falling apart, we saw a gas station off to the right. CeCe pulled in and turned off the engine. She got out, pumped the gas, and handed the attendant six dollars in change.

“That’s not enough money to get us there and back.” I dug inside my purse and pulled out the twenty-dollar bill Jonzie had given me for my birthday. I was saving it for a new outfit for Christmas. “Here, use this.”

CeCe looked surprised. “Where did you get that?”

              “Don’t worry about it, just take it.”

              CeCe accepted the bill. “Thanks.”

After a few more miles on the road, she yelled, “I see a sign. Five more miles and we’ll be there.”

She turned off the highway and drove what seemed more like fifty miles before we saw civilization again.

We drove past an old Civil War building on a hill overlooking several acres of pecan trees. Deteriorated red brick structures with rusted bars covering broken windowpanes smothered with Kudzu surrounded the place. The iron gates were open, but not welcoming. Once we passed the gate, we drove by unmarked graves, lined in rows on the grassy grounds. I didn’t even want to think why the graves might be there.

A vision of Mama, dirty-faced and dressed in a white hospital gown popped into my head. Each sickening thought dug up every ugly memory I’d ever had. I
hated
to imagine Mama in this place. I
hated
that no one in our family came to help us. I couldn't understand how God could take Daddy away and leave our mama without her mind.

And I hated not knowing what would come next.

I peered down as I felt my tears fall onto the skin of my knee. Without realizing it, I’d picked at the small hole in my jeans. Now, it was the size of an apple.
Better than picking more
eyelashes,
I thought
.

* * *

The second we entered the admissions area, my eyes connected with an old woman. With matted hair and dark circles under her eyes, she reminded me of a character straight from an old horror film.  Any moment I feared she would turn into a monster and grab me by the throat.

She turned away quickly and stared out the window as if she were contemplating smashing her frail body through it, or maybe mine. I sneezed, and she whirled back around. By then I had fixed my eyes on the television hanging in the corner.

“Have you seen my daughter?” she said.

Taken aback by the agony revealed in her pale blue eyes, I glanced at her and said, “No Ma’am, I’m sorry.”

She sunk her chin down into her neck and continued down the hallway. A man dressed in a white buttoned-up jacket wearing a hospital nametag approached us and took her gently by the arm. “Let’s go back to recreation, Minta.” She joined the group of patients he was leading, and they faded into the distance as they shuffled away.

“Can I help you?” 

I swiveled around and faced a glass window where the heavyset black woman behind it asked the question.

CeCe pulled Mama’s medical card out of her purse and presented it. “We’re here about our mother. She was transferred from Henry Medical Center last night.”

“What’s her name?”

“Cassandra Travis.” CeCe swallowed and gazed directly into the woman’s eyes.

“You’ll have to take a seat. I’ll call her caseworker. He’ll be down shortly.”

CeCe nodded. “Thank you.”

Like ducks, Luke and I followed her to the small waiting area and sat in the plastic chairs.

Time crept as we waited.

“I’m hungry,” Luke said.

I turned to him and noticed that his face seemed thinner than usual. Tall and lanky, he needed a constant flow of food to keep his body ticking. Even though I couldn’t muster up an appetite, it was a good thing that Luke could.

CeCe reached inside her pocket and put some change down on the table. I guess she saved some extra since I had given her the twenty. “Here, go get something from the vending machine.” She pointed to the far corner of the room.

Luke gathered the change and took off, passing a bald man wearing a white shirt and tie and carrying a clipboard. The man spoke to the desk clerk and then approached us.

He extended his arm. “Hello, my name is Walter Shimmering. I’m the caseworker for your mother.”

“Caseworker? What’s a caseworker?” I asked him. “Where’s my mama’s doctor? We want to talk to her doctor.”

He relaxed from his rigid stance. I stared at the small leaf-shaped wine stain on top of his bald head. “I’m sorry, I forgot you’re new to this. You
will
see her doctor. I’m the person who oversees the patient’s paperwork and goes between Dr. Foster and the patient’s family—”

CeCe jumped up. “What can you tell us?”

“Come to my office and we’ll talk.” As he said that, he pointed toward the corridor.

CeCe and I followed and waved Luke on as we passed the vending machine.

Mr. Shimmering led us into an office with a medium-sized desk that was scattered with papers. CeCe sat directly across from him. Luke and I sat down in the chairs on each side of her. A bowl filled with candy sat on the corner of his desk. Luke quickly snatched a handful and stuffed his pocket.

“First, I need some information on your mother,” Mr. Shimmering said. “Does she have any allergies?”

“No,” CeCe replied.

“Is she on any medication at this time?”

“No.”

“Has she ever been hospitalized before?”

CeCe straightened in her seat. “Only when she gave birth to us, as far as I know.”

Mr. Shimmering laid his pen down on the desk, removed his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Your mother is in a state of psychosis. She’s heavily medicated with a medication called Haldol. She’s sleeping comfortably now. But when she’s awake, she becomes combative.” He glanced away, then back to us, and said, “We had to restrain her.”

“Restrain her?” CeCe yelped, clenching her hands together. “But my mama wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

“What’s
restrain
mean?” Luke whispered behind CeCe’s back.

“Tell you later,” I said to him.

“You have to remember, she’s not in her regular state of mind,” Mr. Shimmering continued. “She’s not acting like ‘your mama’ right now.”

“So what
exactly
is wrong with her?” I said as soon as he stopped for a breath.

A long pause later, he said, “At this point in time, the doctor has diagnosed her with schizophrenia. But he’s still doing tests.”

I knew it,
I thought, remembering the talk show. Now, I didn’t want to believe it.

The phone rang, and Mr. Shimmering held up his finger. “One minute.”

I stared at CeCe. Her eyes looked hard at work trying not to cry. I thought I’d be glad when a doctor confirmed my beliefs. But I decided not to believe him, at least for a while.
It could be something else
, I thought.
Maybe a brain aneurism, even.

We all sat staring at Mr. Shimmering, urging him with our eyes to hang up the phone. Finally, he did.

“Where was I? Oh, yes, the doctor has diagnosed your mother with paranoid schizophrenia.”

Paranoid. He didn’t say that the first time, only schizophrenia.

“I know, you said that already,” CeCe reminded him. “What are you going to do to fix it?”

Mr. Shimmering’s face turned pale. “I’m sorry, but this is not like a broken arm. It can’t be fixed.” He scratched his red leaf. “It can be controlled—with the right medication, of course.”

“What is the right medication?” CeCe asked.

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “Each person responds differently to medication. Where one works for one patient, it might not for another. We need to keep her here awhile so we can monitor her.”

CeCe turned around and looked toward Luke and me. What could we say? What could we do? We were at the mercy of the hospital and this mannequin of a man as our information advisor. CeCe, Luke, and I couldn’t take care of Mama anymore; we had to leave her so the doctors could. And although I worried about Mama, thoughts of my own future still ran through my head; and I hated myself for it.

A
t that moment, I realized more decisions and chores lay ahead of us. We had to tell Mama’s manager at the nursing home she was sick. We had to make sure all the bills were paid or we’d lose the stinking trailer. We had to get some food for Luke before he ended up in the hospital too.

“Can we see her?” CeCe asked.

Mr. Shimmering turned a page in his day planner and said, “Visiting hours begin at 2:00.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s only 1:00. Why don’t you go to the cafeteria and grab some lunch.”

Luke perked up. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten. I doubted CeCe could either, or cared.

“What did you say her doctor’s name was?” CeCe asked Mr. Shimmering.

“Dr. Foster. You’ll meet him when he checks in on your mother.” He backed his chair away from his desk and stood, extended his arm again to CeCe and handed her his business card. “If you have any questions, call me at this number.”

CeCe nodded and the three of us left the office. We roamed the hallways following signs for the cafeteria. Every so often we would see a group of people following a nurse. Sometimes we’d see someone wandering alone.

Luke scanned the wide selection of food in the cafeteria. I caught him filling his pockets with cookies and candy, but I didn’t say anything. CeCe and I took a container of yogurt and a Coke. She reached inside her pocket and came out with a few coins. Then she looked at me. I held my palms up and shrugged. CeCe put the Coke back and used the last bit of change for the yogurt and handed it to me. We sat down at a table and waited quietly until 2:00.

Finally, we walked back to the front desk. A woman told us Mama’s room number. We wandered down the long hallway, peeking inside rooms with opened doors. We saw old people, black people, young people, and people like Mama. Though they were all different, they all had the same vacant look in their eyes.

I stopped at the doorway and glanced inside Mama’s room. She was lying in the bed with her back facing the door. The other side of the room held an empty bed. On her bedside table a tray of food lay, untouched.

CeCe shoved me inside and Luke followed.

“Hi, Mama,” CeCe said softly. “How ya feelin’?”

She rolled over and propped herself up. Still dirty, but not as dirty as before. No restraints held her down like Mr. Shimmering had told us there would be. She brushed her knotted hair behind her ears. As she did, I noticed the pink fingernail manicure CeCe had given her last week was chipped and jagged. My heart ached seeing her this way. It reminded me of the day she dug the Thanksgiving turkey out of the garden.

“How did I get here?” she asked hard and fast.

“You got lost, Mama,” CeCe said. We tried to find you, but the police found you first.”

“The police found you and brought you to Henry Hospital,” I added. “Then they took you here without telling us.”

She hit the mattress with her fists. “Why! Why . . . why, here?” she yelled in a high-pitched voice. “I’ve gotta get outta here.” She began squirming. “Olivia, give me your compact.” The tone of her voice deepened. “Do you know where I am? Do you!”

CeCe began to cry. “I know, Mama, I know. I never wanted you to come here. I wanted you to come home. But when I brought your medical card back to the hospital, they’d already taken you.”

“Get me a brush, Olivia. I need to fix my hair, and you need to take me home.”

CeCe handed her the brush from her purse, but then closed her eyes, as if she was afraid to meet Mama’s harsh stare. “We can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t? I said take me home. Now, dammit!”

Out of nowhere, the brush, her hand clasped around it, whipped across CeCe’s face. She placed her hand over her cheek and ran out of the room sobbing. My heart sunk. Mama had never hit any of us before.
Combative . . . restrain
. . . I understood now, and knew it was time for me to take my place on the proverbial seesaw. For CeCe’s sake.

“Luke, go tend to CeCe,” I ordered.

He was glad to go. He nearly ran out of the room.

“You only have to stay here for a little while, Mama,” I said. “Just until the doctor finds the right medicine for you. To help you remember things again.”

Mama slouched down in the bed and lifted the blankets to her neck. “You’re all ganging up on me. What did I do to deserve this? You want to hurt me. Why do you want to hurt me?” She asked like a child - wide-eyed and confused.

“Nobody wants to hurt you, Mama. We want to help you,” I told her.

Footsteps came up behind me and I turned to see a doctor enter the room.

“How are we doing, Cassandra?” he said to Mama. “I’m Dr. Foster. I’m here to help you.”

She rolled over and faced the wall. The doctor pulled a seat up to her bed and faced her. Luke walked back into the room with CeCe shuffling hesitantly behind him. A red streak from the brush slap ran down her left cheek.

“These must be your children,” he said, and smiled.

Mama continued to face the wall. “Yes. They’ve come to take me home.”

Dr. Foster wrote on his notepad. “Well, that’s nice you have a loving family. And they’ll be able to take you home real soon. We just need to find the right medication for you first.”

Mama sat up and pushed the tray of food away from the bed. The silver plate cover fell to the floor. I flinched.

“I don’t need medicine,” she shouted. “I need to go home.”

The doctor reached over to console her. She jerked forward and bit his hand. He yanked it away. Red-faced, he yelled, “Nurse!”

“I’ll hurt you before I let you hurt me!” Mama said. “CeCe, Livia . . . ”

The nurse rushed into the room with an orderly at her side. The orderly pushed Mama’s shoulders down and restrained her while the nurse gave her a shot. By this time, each of us could hear each other stifling our cries.

Mama’s eyes rolled back in her head, and within a minute she was asleep. Dr. Foster told us to follow him to his office while he wrapped his hand with a gauze bandage the nurse gave him.

We sat down again and listened to a bunch of long words that ran into one another. Instead of listening and trying to understand the doctor, I started spelling the words in my mind. After he finished, he stared at us and there was an awkward silence. I don’t know what CeCe was thinking, but I wished the doctor from the TV show was there. He had made things much easier to understand.

I figured he must have realized we were lost in his medical montage and began speaking again, slower and more direct this time. “Mental illness is a very complex disease. I’m not certain of my diagnosis. It’s difficult to determine whether your mother is manic-depressive, schizoaffective, or a paranoid schizophrenic. She’s not cooperating. I’ll need your help to learn about the time and frequency of her episodes.”

CeCe and I stared at one another. Although I’d heard these terms before, I never expected the doctor to ask us to help him figure out how to help Mama. He was the doctor. Why was he asking us?

CeCe recovered faster than I did. She stood up and pointed her finger at him.

“Sir, could you please explain to us in
our
language what you’re doing to help our mother?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The bottom line is our first priority is to bring your mother out of the psychotic state she’s in.”

“What exactly is
psychotic
?” CeCe asked.

Although I knew the answer after watching the TV show, I stayed quiet. CeCe needed to hear it from the doctor. I guess I did, too. Then there would be no way of denying it.

“It’s when a patient loses touch with reality. Your mother doesn’t process things the way you and I do. She may seem as if she does from time to time, but it’ll be short-lived. And it will be only a matter of time before she does something that may cause herself or someone else harm.”

CeCe took a deep breath and regained her composure. “I’m sorry for losing my temper. It’s just . . . this is new for us, and we’re all a bit scared. We just want to know when our mother will be well again.”

“It will take some time. Most patients stay up to thirty days. When we find a medication that works for your mother, we’ll continue with it until we believe she’s fit to go home. We also combine medication with psychotherapy.” He smiled. “Another big word. Psychotherapy is working with her individually and in groups so she can express her feelings to help us understand what’s going on in her mind.”

I knew what psychotherapy was, but I didn’t want Dr. Foster to think I had an attitude, so I acted as if everything he said was new to me. He looked from CeCe to Luke, then to me, then back to CeCe. “The best thing you can all do is go home and let us do our job. We’ll let you know of your Mama’s progress. You can see her during visiting hours.”

The doctor showed compassion in his voice, but I could tell he made that same speech hundreds of times.

He stood and extended his hand. CeCe shook it like it was contaminated, and we left. We traveled the long ride home quietly, but my mind was filled with noise. Like a hundred people talking at once with one of those people yelling above them all. And it was me.
CeCe, you can’t go away. Ever. Mama will always be sick and I can’t take care of her without you.