I took the thread from my pocket. I pressed her hand against mine and bound them, loosely. But what was our pact? I wound and wound, and finally I put my mouth close to her ear. “Let’s never separate again,” I whispered. “Promise me that.”
She smiled. “Mháthair,” she said, speaking in Gaelic, mistaking me for her mother. “Mhamai.” She closed her eyes and they flitted under her lids.
I slipped the string from our hands and went back to the porch. I taped the string and wrote on the tape, just as I had after my marriage to Eppitt. I wrote “H. W. and M. W. Never separate. October 1918.”
After that I could do nothing but wait for my father to walk downstairs one morning and tell me she had passed.
Finally he did.
I asked him where she’d passed to, willfully, but he didn’t say another word.
And then I couldn’t control the swell of blood in my nose, the outpouring. I couldn’t stop screaming at the sight of so much blood. I swung my body around the room. A high-pitched scream, a caterwaul from my mouth. My father grabbed me by the arms and shook me. He struck me and blood sprayed on the white porch walls, on my corkboards of butterflies, boxes, and jars. When he let go, I sank to the ground but kept screeching, rocking, and bleeding, until my father bundled me again and took me away.
SHEPPARD AND ENOCH PRATT HOSPITAL
In some ways, he took me home. I’d been raised in an institution. I was returned to one as an adult, like Ota Benga.
I was a blood-drenched young woman. My voice too raw to shriek, I could only mutter, “Ota Benga, Ota Benga…”
My father jogged to the main building. It was a cool night. My breath on the automobile’s window. I watched him go. He was bloody too, like a madman himself, shirt untucked, jacket flapping.
I lay on the seat of the car. Ota Benga, Ota Benga…Time frittered. Time was nothing. Time was a bridegroom who had abandoned me, a lake to swallow me whole; all around me I could feel pulsing gills like seconds ticking away. I had my mother’s pact in my skirt pocket. It was already broken. What good was it? I wanted the wound string of my marriage pact with Eppitt to keep me safe, but it was gone. Eppitt had it.
Did he ever think of me?
Through the window, I saw a nurse with a serene face. What did I look like to her? I’d stopped bleeding but my face was smeared with blood, now taut as dried mud. When my father opened the door, I sat there, unmoving.
“Harriet,” he said, “behave now. Don’t be a savage.”
A savage. Ota Benga.
He pulled me from the car. I hated him. He was the assassin. My mother and I—we were the archduke and his wife.
I dropped to the ground and kicked his shins. I’d lost my shoes. He grabbed my thin wrists and tried to yank me to my feet. The nurse took over. She had a hold—tough and sure. She used her weight as power, locked my arms, pulled me to my feet. Oxlike and meaty, she held me to her ribs in a way that was both paralyzing and comforting. I wanted to be overtaken.
The nurse spoke gently. “Cribbage,” she told me. “There will be cribbage.”
The entranceway terrified me—its wide expanse. Its carpet and cane chairs.
She led me away from my father, down the hall. A doctor’s office. She was saying “anthropometric measurements.” And “The doctor on duty is very good.” Were there evil ones? I was shown a room, a small bed. I put my fists to my eyes and pounded my face.
Straps—like those used on seizing children at the Maryland School. I was stretched flat, a wild, bloody animal strapped down. My skirt with the pact was taken. I stared at the ceiling, high and white, at its crown molding, and started to cry again, tears running into my hair.
Somewhere else they were questioning my father, learning that I was a moron, I suffered hysterical bleeding, outbursts, mutism.
My mother was dead. Eppitt was lost. I was alone, a Wolf Woman.
A nurse monitored my blood pressure. Her lips pursed as she counted my pulse. I tried to claw her, but the straps held me back.
There was hydrotherapy. Stripped down, they set me in front of four nozzles and opened them up. I fought the water but it beat me down. There was one high square window—dark. The white-tiled room echoed. I became small and wet and clean.
There was a lumbar puncture. The nurse said, “This is for your own well-being. There can be too much fluid, too much pressure.” Another nurse assisted a doctor, giving me salvarsan. “Steady…Steady…” she said, lifting the tube.
Next, a wet sheet pack. “For relief,” the nurse said, and she wrapped me like an Egyptian.
I wasn’t a curiosity. I was a mummy. Ota Benga. Wolf Woman. I was dead.
Chapter Thirteen
Vitals
Eleanor
From my hospital bed, I see distant parking lot lights through the window on the far side of my room. Out there, people are living their lives. Tomorrow morning, I will be among them again, going home.
I sigh. It’s a gusty sigh. A sigh meant to be overheard. The kind meant to elicit “What’s wrong?” There was a time when I could sigh in such a way to get George’s attention. But looking back, I can admit that it was a tiny blip.
After George left with Marie Cultry, he wanted to stay, as he put it, “in the mix.” I wasn’t good at mixes. I didn’t want a life that was a mix. I wouldn’t have known what to do with Marie Cultry, other girlfriends, wives, or George with new children, babies in bundles. If George wanted out, that was final.
After our divorce was settled and I had full custody, he got a new lawyer. I prepared for battle. But then, for reasons I’ll never know, he gave up. He sent his monthly checks, folded in a plain white sheet of paper stuffed into an envelope, without comment. When Tilton turned eighteen, the checks stopped. That was that.
Except I did see George once. I swear. It was winter. He was coatless, wearing only a jogging suit and wrestling a For Sale sign from someone’s frozen front yard. This was a few neighborhoods away, so at first I didn’t believe that it could be George. Even though we’d never officially drawn up boundary lines, his presence constituted an infiltration. This happened a year after Tilton turned eighteen, back when I still had the Impala. I stopped at a stop sign and watched him in the rearview mirror, my blinker clicking. He had a belly and a closely shorn head of dark hair. Was this George? Surely he had dyed his hair, a fussy vanity that I refused myself. Hair should age to match the face; otherwise it’s disconcerting. People know, deep down, when a forgery’s going on. And his jogging suit in contrast with his rotund belly seemed to expose deeper lies. He was agitated in a way that was undeniably George. If I’d had any doubts about his identity, that impatience cinched it. He’d been impatient in bed too. Idling at the stop sign, I found myself imagining—ever so briefly—the two of us in bed, the arrhythmic squeaking of bedsprings, the awkward tugging, so like George with his stubborn For Sale sign.
I was struck by the instinct to park, walk up to him, and tell him it was all an accident—that lightning hitting the plane—and a fluke that we were out on the roads that night. If not for it, we could have survived. I wouldn’t suggest giving it another try. No, no, no. At my age? With my own utter lack of patience? Heaven knows that would have been a disaster. I simply wanted him to confirm or deny.
I imagined myself standing there in my wool coat, arms crossed, saying, “Confirm or deny, George. Confirm or deny.” He would know what it meant. If not for the accident, if not for Marie Cultry’s husband being on that plane, our marriage would have survived. Confirm or deny, George!
When he looked up, breathless, the sign finally dislodged from the frosty ground and secured under his arm, he seemed to notice the idling car. He squinted, his breath chugging into the cold air—again, the idea of sex, his breathlessness. I took the turn and drove away.
His presence palsied me for days. I wanted him to try to claim me. I wanted the opportunity, once and for all, to tell him it was over. But of course it was long over.
For the next few months, I kept an eye
out for him, as if he had the ability to appear anywhere. Months passed, then years, and I stopped. In fact, I began to doubt that I’d ever seen him with that For Sale sign. The world was full of men like George, liars with dyed hair and fat bellies stuffed into jogging suits.
A nurse walks in, here to check my vitals again. She flips on the light and pulls the curtain, the same sound as George pulling his shirts across the bar in the closet, a loud scritch and then each shirt at a time—scritch, scritch, scritch—until he picked one. I remember, too, the sound of a curtain in a confessional. My mother took me to confession once—scritch. She disappeared into it and came out changed.
Why must one thing lead to another and another? My weakened constitution allows my mind to go reeling. Heart or mind? I’d like to ask my own body. Heart or mind? Pick one.
Confirm or deny. Just like that. Confirm or deny.
Chapter Fourteen
Pacts
Tilton
Ruthie sleeps in her old room. I am in my own bed. My stomach feels warm, and my head wants to bob. I can’t sleep so I try writing a poem for Mrs. Devlin’s daughter’s wedding. Patty Devlin who maybe was a pothead and who’s getting married again even though Mrs. Gottleib never heard the news. I’ve never been to a wedding. Ruthie invited us to both of hers. My mother and I hadn’t known where Ruthie lived much less that she was dating someone seriously enough to marry him.
My mother RSVP’d, Sorry we cannot attend. Congratulations. Sincerely, Eleanor & Tilton.
When I asked my mother if I should write Ruthie a wedding poem, she said no. And that was that.
Wee-ette loved poems. She had entire poems in her head and sometimes she would just say them—straight out of her mouth. Weddings are about hearts, bells, rice, and doves. I think of my two hearts—the one in my chest and the one I ate: the heart of a mongrel king. Sometimes, I swear, I can feel it beating inside me.
Two hearts. I write that down. Twin hearts. I write a few things about nest-building, which I always do. When people get married, they nest. Swallow nests are particularly foul—made of regurgitation. I don’t mention swallows. I write the poem and fold it up.
I stand in the middle of my room. I feel Wee-ette’s presence. I ask her if she thinks Ruthie is good.
Wee-ette believes in good. Sometimes it’s just forgotten.
I ask her if I should go get George.
She doesn’t like George, but she agrees with Ruthie. It’s my life.
I walk down the hall to Wee-ette’s room. I love the click the doorknob makes. The door swings slowly wide. Wee-ette’s room at night has more of her in it, as if the part of her more wholly her was more alive at night, so she’s more here then. She’s here-er.
I get the screwdriver from under her typewriter, and I unscrew the heating vent grate. It pops off. I pull out the egg carton and open it. All of our pacts—labeled with initials, dates, and keywords—are there. I touch the one most important to Wee-ette. The first one. E. C. and H. W. 1913. Marriage. The string is dark with dirt, thin in places where it’s nearly worn out, and fully broken once and tied back together with a small hard knot. Then there is the pact between Eleanor, Ruthie, and me, after Wee-ette died—never to talk about the seventh book being burned. Its label reads E. T., R. T., and T. T. 1984. Silence. And then there are the pacts between Ruthie and me before she left. I touch the one labeled R. T. and T. T. 1986. Return & Save.
I feel dizzy and sad and happy. I am whirling inside because all of this is finally happening. Ruthie, at last, here. The new ending is coming! But how will we get our father? We’ve gone a long time not understanding fathers.
I hold on to the pact with Ruthie, put the carton back, and replace the vent, screwing it tight. I stand in Wee-ette’s fullest presence. Wee-ette, I say, thank you for being a good example in life. And for all of your hiding places.
I close the door, listen for the click, and walk down the hall, into Ruthie’s room. Her breathing is purred, her back curved. The dogs are curled up, one on either side of her. They both lift their heads and stare at me. Shhh. I set the wound string with its small label on her bedside table, right near Ruthie’s sunglasses.
I go back to my room. I lie in my bed and stare at the canopy’s gauze. I tell myself the bedtime story—the potluck, the cigar, the lightning, the steaming engine, the dead, the farmhouse, Marie Cultry weeping, George cupping her elbow. But before the ending, I stop. I say, To be continued.
I’m still whirly inside so I sing. Wee-ette used to sing a song for sleeping. It didn’t have words. It was very oompah, oompah. She said it was a song she heard when she was young, an endless loop playing on an organ. She told me that the song made her dizzy, like she’d been driving around in circles. I sing the dizzy sleeping song, and think of the wind in Mrs. Gottleib’s station wagon. What would the wind be like in Ruthie’s convertible? I think of buying two fedoras—one for me and one for the Eldermans’ son. I imagine getting a dog, full of dander.
I think of the loop of string on Ruthie’s bedside table. It sits there like a little bird’s nest.
Chapter Fifteen
Harriet Wolf: Murderess
Harriet
Despite my greatest fears, this institution would prove the opposite of the Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children. Having shed the word “asylum” from its name, it was the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital. There was light Swedish massage, billiards, bowling, a nine-hole golf course, tennis, concerts. The staff, it was rumored, hired semiprofessional baseball players so they could beat the other local teams—the YMCA, police, firemen.
The problem was that I was guilt-stricken. If I hadn’t been returned to my mother, would she have ever gone out? Do shut-ins die of contagion? No, they don’t. But because of me, my mother was out in the world again and died. The Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children had been right about me all along. I was “a disturbing element,” “vicious and immoral.” I was unable to be saved from “crime or a life of degradation.” I was certain that I was a murderess, that I had killed my mother.
I told no one.
When I think of myself at eighteen at Sheppard Pratt, as it was known, I think of us. I was raised as an us, after all, a they—the feeble-minded, mere refuse, a societal problem to be dealt with. Ours were lives of domesticated sheep. We were herded into rows. We sang in unison if we sang at all. We were so unaccustomed to being singled out and addressed that we had to be reminded to speak when spoken to. We kept our eyes on the shirt in front of us. When guards said “you,” we thought they meant “all of you.” The individual you was so rare that there was no time for an I to take hold. I didn’t have a self. Eppitt confirmed my existence, and I confirmed his, and we touched each other—lustful proof.
Likewise, for four years my mother and I existed because we both existed. When she was gone, I was stripped to something elemental and foreign to myself. I looked in mirrors and didn’t recognize my own face—pale and slack, with a bloat to my eyes, which wanted to drift.
At Sheppard Pratt, we were all psychiatric patients, each of us suffering, but doing so together allowed us to shift our burdens a little, each taking some weight on our backs. Beautiful and deranged ghosts—we haunted not the place but our own bodies. I was mourning, of course. And for a while I allowed myself to shuffle along with the others, their current buoying me. I was part of them. The nurses, in long white gowns with white bibs and white nurse’s hats, floated. The male attendants wore all white too. Down a long dark corridor they glowed.
I was put in Norris Cottage. Cottages, cottages, like my childhood returned. But Norris held only four patients and our attendants. Dr. Brush said that small numbers were good for us. My father, I assume, was paying a pretty penny for this—blood money. I didn’t care. There was one woman whose family built her a house on the grounds, Poe Cottage; it was tidy, with a duckboard walkway that led to the front steps. I never saw her. I heard later that she lived there until her death—a full forty years. Norris Cottage
was large, stone, ivied. The three other patients were quiet. One was a teacher, one a wife and mother of two who’d tried to kill herself with pills meant to treat gout, and one was just a few years older than I was. This last one didn’t have a husband or work. I feared her most of all.
When my skirt was returned, the pact with my mother was still there in its pocket. I thought of hiding it in my bedside table, but it wasn’t safe enough there. Instead, I fitted it between my mattress and the web of wiring under my bed.
We were observed each morning from seven to seven thirty. Then there was bathing, dressing, eating until eight thirty. Food arrived on beautiful china with a silver teapot, linen napkin, and tray covering, a bowl of sugar cubes, a pepper shaker, a tiny bowl of salt with a miniature spoon. I loved the miniature spoon and lightly salted all of my food, but ate little and only sipped the tea.
Then we were to write letters. I had no one, and so I wrote to Eppitt. I wrote the way the others wrote. Niceties. But I folded the letters like origami cranes, the way my mother had taught me, and, because Eppitt would have outgrown the Maryland School, I had no address for him, so I hid the origami cranes up my sleeves and tucked them into the underside of my mattress, along with the pact.
From ten o’clock to one, we played games on the lawns, and did calisthenics while holding poles. I skirted the edges of badminton, volleyball, putting. On rainy days, in the casino, I watched people bowl on the two-lane alley and shoot billiards. We were set to work, but not stitching Duck Porch awnings. Here we made ornaments, stools, taborets. I sat before a loom. I didn’t actually do any of these things, but I didn’t have to. I was part of a group and, together, we managed. I see the patients now—golf clubs tucked under their arms and bowling balls cradled to their chests, whispering to themselves, singing marching songs, tapping their own faces as if trying to remember something that will never return to them. Many of them prayed, a soft motion of the mouth. They picked at themselves. Some had scabs that wouldn’t heal. They cried openly and then would laugh with a sharp staccato.