The Ruining (19 page)

I HEARd A CLICk after she left the room, but it was ten minutes before I could bring myself to check the door. She’d locked it from the outside, using the “mistake” lock that had accidentally been installed backward. I pounded on the door with my fist. It had to be a mistake. She couldn’t—she wouldn’t—keep me locked up here like a prisoner. It wasn’t right. It was evil.

I pounded on the door until my fist ached. When that didn’t work, I shouted her name over and over. I could no longer tell how much time had passed. She never came. Eventually I sank down to the floor with my back resting against the heavy wooden slab. The room was quiet; I could feel its walls closing in on me. I could hear the sound of my own breathing. I could feel a presence there with me, just outside the door.

“Zoe?” I whispered, shifting around to press my ear against the door. “Zoe, sweetie, are you there?” I heard a shuffling sound in response, and heaved a sigh of relief. My little girl had come to save me. “Zoe, honey? Can you open the door?” I waited five beats. Nothing. “Zo?” I tried again. “Sweetheart, don’t be scared.” I heard her moving again. I leaned my forehead against the doorframe and began to cry. “Please, sweetie. Please let Nanny out.” I heard the doorknob turn. Looking up, I saw it trying to move and hitting something solid. “Zoe,” I said. “It’s the lock. Can you reach it? If you can reach it, Nanny will turn the knob.” My question was met with silence again. I felt my blood course harder and my hands grow sweaty. I was beginning to panic. All she had to do was unlatch the lock. It was so simple.

Then I heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor—the confident, quick footsteps of an adult.
“Zoe!” Libby’s voice rang out high and horrified, as though she were appalled by Zoe’s behavior. “What are you doing by Nanny’s door? Get over here.” Zoe’s little footsteps pattered away as Libby hustled her downstairs. Then I heard her voice again.
“Don’t try to get out, Nanny. I won’t allow it. You’ll stay in your room for as long as it takes for you to calm down.”
“I am calm,” I insisted, tears streaming down my face.
“You don’t sound calm,” Libby replied. “You sound rather upset. Almost like you’re crying.”
“I’m calm,” I said again. “Please, Libby. Please let me out of here.”
“Not until I feel you’re no longer a danger to the children.”
I burst into tears. “I would never hurt them,” I insisted through my sobs. “Never.”
“I know you would never hurt them on purpose, Nanny,” Libby said softly. “But I can’t trust you alone with them anymore. And I can’t be everywhere at once. You’ll stay there until we find someone who can help you.”
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I said. It was a thought that had been simmering in the back of my mind for a long time, a thought I’d assumed was paranoid. Something I’d never allowed myself to acknowledge. But now I was giving it a voice.
“Keeping my family safe?” she said. “Of course I am.”
“Trying to turn me crazy,” I said. “But why, Libby? Why would you do that? What could you possibly gain?”
“You’re being irrational,” said Libby. “Just lie back down and go to sleep.”
“Why would you paper my walls yellow? Because you saw my book,” I said, answering my own question. “You knew it got into my head. You wanted to drive me insane.”
“I’m not going to indulge this kind of talk,” she said. I heard her footsteps recede down the hallway, and then I lost it.
I screamed, kicking the door with all my strength. I sobbed openly. I screamed harder, hoping it would get her attention. When it didn’t, I pulled my hair so hard that it hurt. I liked the pain, because it was different from my heartbreak pain. I pulled hard and heard a ripping sound from my scalp. I looked down and saw a chunk of hair resting in my palm. I put my hand to my scalp and blood worked its way onto my fingertips, and the skin under my hair burned.
I wanted Owen so badly that I didn’t know what to do. I wanted him back and I refused to believe that there wasn’t a solution. I banged my fists against the door, and then I banged my head. I wanted him. I needed him back. The animal fury I felt made me want to press myself on his body one more time. It filled me with lust and rage and made me feel frenzied.
“Let me out!” I screamed. “Let me out of here!” I kicked and kicked and screamed until my throat was raw. Then I curled up on my bed, drawing my knees to my chest, and sucked on my thumb. The old nervous habit brought me comfort. I felt my eyelids drooping from the exhaustion of my emotional energy. Maybe Libby was right. Maybe I needed to fall asleep.

A vOICE wOkE ME up; it was babbling nonsensically. It took me a minute to realize it was mine, and when I did I laughed aloud. The room was encased in yellow. I thought about the woman in my story, the story I had to read for Fem Lit, and I laughed some more. Libby had made me into that woman! She’d imprisoned me in the room of yellow. But in the story, the woman imprisons herself. She locks herself in. Had I actually done this to myself? No. I needed to get out. Libby couldn’t get away with her lock and her yellow wallpaper and her calm voice that may as well have been made of knives, it was so lethal. I picked up my cell phone. I was surprised Libby had left it in here. I racked my brain for people who could help me.

Owen. Morgan. That was it. I had strained relations with both of them, but they were my only options. My cell phone showed no missed calls; Owen still hadn’t called me back. But I didn’t have a choice. I had no one. I was more alone now than I had been in Detroit.

Ring, ring , I thought, dialing his number with my right hand. I traced patterns on the wallpaper with my left. Please ring. Once again I had the eerie feeling that I’d been saying the words aloud without issuing the command to my brain. It was like there were two Nannies. Nanny and Annie? Or Nanny and Nanny? I’d started calling myself Nanny, I realized. How wonderful. Libby would be thrilled that I’d come around. There was no Annie, not really. She’d disappeared the day she agreed to be Nanny. Now Nanny was all she was. All I was. Now I was the Nanny who thought things and the Nanny who said things out loud. The Nanny who did things and the Nanny who forgot all about it the next day. The Nanny Libby loved and the one she loathed and locked up like a pet that had misbehaved.

I looked down at the phone in my hand. I had been listening to it ring for two minutes and fifty-five seconds. How many rings was that? Was it a ring every three seconds? Lots and lots of rings. It made me laugh. Owen wasn’t going to pick up the phone. I tried Morgan. She didn’t pick up either. I pictured them sitting in his backyard, sipping Coronas by the pool, laughing together at how desperate I seemed. They didn’t know I was locked in a yellow room. They wouldn’t understand even if they knew. They were my only hope, and they weren’t picking up.

I tried Walker. I prayed his phone still worked in Shanghai. It rang once, twice . . .
“Annie?” His voice sounded distant, harried.
“Walker! Walker, thank god.” The words tumbled out of my

“Nanny, what is it? What’s happened?” I was comforted by the surge of panic that decorated his otherwise groggy-sounding voice. “Is it the kids? Is someone hurt?”

“No, no!” I laughed. His concern was so comforting. Finally, someone who cared. “You need to come home and let me out of this room, Walk. Libby locked me in and—”

“She what?” His voice had gone flat.
“She locked me in the yellow wallpaper room. She won’t let me out until I calm down. But I am calm. I need to get out! I need to get out of the yellow room right away! Come back, come let me out,” I pleaded, my voice bordering on hysteria.
“The yellow room? Do you mean your bedroom?”
“Yes, she won’t let me out.” Now I was sobbing into the phone.
“But no one’s hurt.”
“No! But she’s trying to make me crazy. Libby, she—”
“Annie,” Walker started, his voice cold, “do you have any idea how much it costs for me to answer a phone call from America in China? Any idea at all?”
“No, I—”
“And do you have a clue how busy I am over here? And how early it is here? It’s four A.M.!”
“I’m sorry, Walk, I was just desperate.”
“Fuck,” he mumbled to himself. I heard him take two deep breaths. “Desperate isn’t all you are. And don’t call me ‘Walk.’ You need to start respecting boundaries. God, Annie, why do you think I came out here for so long? I jumped at the chance to get away from the constant drama at home. There’s so much tension between you and Libby. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I don’t want this for myself. I want my family. A normal family.”
“Boundaries? What do you mean?”
“Stop,” he ordered. “Just stop acting so innocent. You know exactly what you’re doing. Look,” he started, “whatever is going on between you and Libby is between the two of you. It’s between the two of you. Do you understand me? Leave me out of it.” His voice had risen to a yell. He was furious. He didn’t understand. He wasn’t going to come back to save me.
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good.”
And then the line went dead.
I knelt on the floor, tears streaming down my face. Outside my window, the sun was shining brightly as if nothing at all was wrong. But here, things were black. How could the sun go on shining when Nanny was falling apart? How could the rest of the world keep moving when everything in the yellow room was black and still? There was literally no one left to ask for help. It was a bad feeling, knowing no one cared about Nanny.
I picked up the phone and dialed the only other number I knew by heart.
“Mom?” I said when a smoke-congested voice picked up. “Mom, it’s Nanny.”
“Who is this?” the voice snarled back. It sounded like a bunch of gravel scraping together. “Mom? It’s Nanny. Your daughter.”
“I don’t know no Nanny,” the voice said. Then the phone went muffled and I heard a voice in the background asking who it was. “Some girl named Nanny,” the gravel-voice said. “Must be a wrong number. Sorry,” the voice said. “No one by the name of ‘Mom’ here. Better check that number you callin’.” Then the line went dead.
It was my mother’s voice. I was sure of it. It was Dean’s voice in the background. I was sure of it. But I was sure of so many things that had turned out wrong. Why would they pretend they didn’t know me? Why would my own mother do that to me? I wrapped up in my comforter, shivering violently. The only thing to do in times like these was sleep.

“NANNy, dARLINg,” said the voice. It was soothing and warm and disembodied. It felt like the way hot chocolate smells, foggy and sugary and warm. “Nanny, wake up. I brought you your dinner.”

I opened my eyes to a dimly lit room. It look me a minute to be sure my eyes were even open because the light was so dim. I startled when I saw to whom the voice belonged. She held a tray filled with a bowl of soup and a sliced-up pear. There was a glass of orange juice on the tray, and a pill.

“I just brought you some things, darling. To make you feel better.” I stared at her warily, uncertain whether to trust her kindness.

“Does this mean I’m allowed out?”
“Oh, Nanny,” she said as if I were a child being particularly silly. “Come on, darling. We can’t let one little fight spoil things. We’re sisters, after all. You’re family now. Families go through hard times, but we always stick together.” I nodded. I so much wanted to be part of the family.

“Zoe?” Libby called behind her. “Zoe, come give Nanny a kiss.” Zoe peeked out from behind the door and eased into the room. She looked a little bit shy, which wasn’t normal for her.

“Hi, Zoes,” I said. “Thanks for coming to see me.” “Zoe, give Nanny a kiss,” said Libby. Zoe shook her head vehemently. I couldn’t help it; I let one tear slide down my cheek. “Look, Zoe, look how sad Nanny is. If you give her a kiss, she’ll be all better.” Zoe moved forward and climbed onto my bed, crawling toward me slowly. She was humming, as always, humming Rockabye Baby over and over. The closer she got to me, the louder she hummed it, until Libby began to wince.
“Just give her a kiss,” she said through gritted teeth. “Quit that humming, you’re giving Mommy a headache.” But Zoe kept humming until she came right up next to my cheek. Then she did something unexpected. She sang the words to the song.
Wockabye baby on the twee top, when the wind blows, the cwadle will wock. Then she kissed me on the cheek.
“Thank you, Zo-zo,” I told her. “Thank you very much.” She stared at me and, her eyes unwavering, climbed back down and wandered out of the room, still humming.
“I’m sorry,” Libby said with a pained look. “I think she was a little frightened by your . . . outburst.” I nodded, my eyelids already feeling heavy again. There was a ringing in my ears, and Nanny was saying be wary of the soup, but my stomach was growling and so I tuned out her voice.
“Nanny,” Libby said gently, “I’m sorry I lost control earlier. I’m the grownup here, and I shouldn’t have let my temper get the best of me. I want you to know that I’ve thought it over, and I know the best way to get you the help you need.”
“What?” I asked. “What do I need?”
“Remember how I asked you to trust me, way back when you first started?” I nodded in response. She’d asked me always to trust her—said she would never lie to me no matter who else did. “Well, now is one of those times you’ll need to put your faith in me, Nanny. Can you do that?” She reached out with one hand and stroked my hair, pushing the matted pieces back from my forehead. Her touch felt so cool and comforting on my hot, feverish face.
“Yes,” I said. And I really believed it. “Take care of me. I just want someone to care for me.”
“That’s why I’ve made a decision,” she said in that maplebutter voice. “You need more help than I can give you here, Nanny. You need to go to a place where there are loads of people who can help you. You will be safe, I promise. And we will all visit you until you’re well again.”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked. But inside, I had already said yes. It didn’t matter where I went, so long as I wouldn’t have to fight anymore.
“A very nice hospital called Richmond-Fost. You will have the best care there. We’ll pay for it, Walker and I. And it doesn’t even need to come out of your wages. You’re lucky you have us, Nanny. We have enough money to get you the proper care.”
“Will I come back to work someday?”
“Of course, darling. Someday when you’re well.” If there was a lie behind her words, I couldn’t find it. She kept stroking my hair soothingly.
“I’m not sick,” I protested feebly.
“You are, Nanny. But it’s not your fault. All the things that happened to you in your life . . . they would make anyone fragile.” She lingered on that last word, fragile, like she wanted me to really feel its implications.
“I don’t think I’m fragile,” I whispered weakly.
“But, darling, you are,” she said sweetly. “You’ve been having such a hard time, haven’t you?” Something in her voice made me want to agree with everything she said. I nodded in the direction of her voice, though I’d already leaned back against my pillows and closed my eyes again. Maybe she was right. Maybe I just needed someone to take care of me for a while.
“Eat this soup,” Libby told me, “and take that Valium. It’ll relax you. Tomorrow, we’ll take care of everything.” She rested the tray on the table next to my bedside and left the room. The door clicked behind her. I was too tired to check whether it was locked, and it didn’t matter anymore anyway. Even if I left, I had nowhere to go. It would be much easier, I thought, for Nanny to take the Valium.