Chapter One

Chapter 1

When I was young, my life was like a river, straight and true, like water running over stones, each one touching the other, each one big or small, smooth or rough, each one worn down by time. But now the river is dry. The stones are covered in dust. They’ve lost their luster. My memory fades.

On any other day, the memories are lurking on the edge of my mind. I have to push them away. Like an insect, they’re too quick to kill but too irritating to ignore. So I brush them to the fringe where they can’t touch me.

Yet now, as I search for them, they escape. They are hidden under years and years of earth nudged over by my own hand, a shallow but unmarked grave where I scramble to find them, bleeding from my fingertips, desperate to close this chapter of my life, learning to forgive.

Here at my table in my home at night, I grope my hands around in the black, hoping to find one - just one. And it evades me.

I lean forward to hold my head in my hands, wondering how I will be able to move on after such a loss.

And there it is.

The elusive stone uncovered.

I close my eyes and nod my head allowing the cold air of the memory to push me under, immersing me in the darkness of its folds.

Night had fallen when we drove the long road from the train station to the asylum. A night so black I might have been travelling through the underside of the earth. Papa was next to me on the seat but his head was turned, looking out his window trying to see outside.

The driver, Billy, whistled a song out of tune, repeating verses, stopping and starting until I wanted to smack his head to improve his performance. It was called “My Melancholy Baby.” Years later, while chaperoning a dance for youth in a church basement, I heard it again. It played over the radio. And I felt like I was being led to the pit of the brute once more. I had to leave the basement and go outside.

Of course the other chaperones followed me, trying to comfort me, offering me water. They reached out their arms, concerned but I pushed them away. Too many people, too many hands, too many good intentions pulling me under until I felt like I would drown. I had to walk by myself for some time before my breath slowed, before I believed I would not be taken to the end place. The place where people go when they have nothing left. The last stop.

“Sit still.” said Papa slapping his hand on the seat of the motor-car.

I stared through the cracked windshield trying to see the world outside. But it was difficult. My breath froze in a layer on the surface of the glass. There were only shadows on the other side.e

They engine whined as we came to a crest and there it was. Easily the largest building I had ever seen. All around was a glow of light. Rows upon rows of windows, beside one another, on top of one another, lining up stretching out to each side seemingly forever. This was the place, the coral where inconvenient people were housed. The final stopping ground for the insane. The home of the forgotten.

Billy brought the motor-car to a full stop at the bottom of the stairs. I tugged my wool hat down over my ears and stepped out into the night.

Shivering, I pulled my shawl tightly over my shoulders. My head was tipped back, brisk air burned in my nostrils as I looked up at the endless windows above me. Were there people inside looking back? Could anyone see me from the windows?

At the bottom of those stairs, my mind began wandering through all the possibilities, dreading what I might find inside.

Papa got my case out of the back and closed the door. The sound of metal striking metal was crisp on the night air. I couldn’t help but think that if the door had stayed open, that if he hadn’t slammed it shut none of this would be real. The sound of the door closing made it real.

He placed my case on the ground and I caught his eye for a moment. Only for a moment. Then he turned away. I think it was the last time he ever looked at me.

My unruly hair blew around my face. I tucked loose tangles back under my wool hat feeling cold fingers against my cheek. I blew air into my hands but there was little left to warm them.

The wind smelled of pine, there in the land of the forgotten. Trees stood all around, an entire circle of them holding us in, trapping the living creatures at the center. They stretched up towards the coldness of the stars, rubbing on one another, creaking in the dark, so tall I could have disappeared under their wings, so scornful I could have cried.

“You know Papa, It wasn’t on purpose,” My teeth were chattering.

Somehow I still thought this wasn’t real. Maybe there would be a twist of conscience, Papa’s mind would change and I would escape. Or I would awaken in Idaho as if from a dream.

I had been taught to trust in God all my life but he deserted me on that night. I stood there in my misery and wondered if he was laughing as he turned the dice over in his favor. I was in a cold place with no love but still I turned my eyes to the heavens to find counsel in the stars.

“Lovetta, you have to stay. It’s been decided.” I only saw the side of his face. He dug his hands deep into his pockets and stepped away. Just one step. Just one. And in the space of that one step, was a rift great enough to separate us forever. That one small step was large enough to contain the memories of all I had lost.

Billy put his hand on my back pushing me up all seventeen stairs to the large wooden doors at the top. Papa stayed by the motor-car, his back turned. Already I was invisible to him.

There were two doors. Each one had a glass window that was covered in a spider web of lacy frost. Light glowed from the inside like a lantern. On one of the doors was a brass sign that said “St. Isadora’s Asylum for the Deficient and Insane, State of Washington, Est. 1882.”

That meant the hospital was only thirty five years old but it looked much older. I could see cracked windows, gutters separated from the walls, paint peeling from the window sashing, nail heads working their way outward from the wood. Even from where I was standing, I could see the walls eaten away by insects or rot. The building was weakening. If left alone for a few years, it might disintegrate, melting into the forest, becoming part of the earth.

Here I was, far away from everything I knew. There might be bears or cougars at every turn. The trees, the houses were nothing like Gideon, nothing like back home where the roads were dry and you could see wheat for miles in every direction. Idaho trees were small, not large as a house for animals to hide behind.

Knock. Knock.

Billy rapped on the door with the brass knocker. “It’ll be all right miss.”

There was movement in the window. A figure was stirring in the dim light behind the glass. Trying to see into the window was like leaning over the edge of a boat to see fish swimming below in the murky depths, their shadows creeping along in the muddy bottoms trying to avoid the hook.

The door snapped open and I jumped. Billy removed his hat and held it to his chest.

“Matron, Ma’am, this is Lovetta Waukwell. Just picked her up.” Thin strands of his blonde hair floated around his head on the wind. He had a patch on his scalp where the hair was completely gone. His head nodded over and over.

She turned to me. Her nurse’s headdress had two blue stripes of ribbon just over her forehead. Her eyebrows were lifted up until they were hidden under her cap, lips pursed together like the rectum of a horse.

Wire rimmed spectacles slid down the bridge of her nose. She pushed them up and looked right into my eyes but I couldn’t meet the flame of her gaze. I looked down and away.

Her pinafore was white over a blue dress. She stood with her feet parallel, her shoe laces ending in symmetrical bows. Hands folded in front of her. She could have been any age from thirty to sixty.

Her head nodded. “Thank you Billy.”

 He smiled at the Matron. Pieces of chewing tobacco were sticking out from between his teeth like spiders legs.

She turned to me again. I didn’t want to see her face. I studied the crack in the leather across my shoes and the dry leaves blowing around my feet. No matter where I looked, I felt her eyes inspecting me.

She sighed. “Well, we’ve committed to taking her. Can you speak?”

I nodded in answer.

“I suppose that will have to do. It’s best you just go now Mr. Waukwel.” Here, she leaned to one side, addressing Papa. Then back to us. “Billy, please see Mr. Waukwel back to the train station.” Her voice spread like ice on a pond until my fingers turned blue under the blanket of her stare.

I turned to look at Papa. He gave me his back. His head was hung down, his hand lifted to flip up his collar against the wind.

“I’m sorry Papa,” I stepped towards him but the Matron put her iron grip on my arm. “I didn’t meant it.” I pulled against her.

“She’ll adjust soon enough,” said the Matron. “You may go Billy.” He walked back down the stairs.

Papa didn’t turn. He didn’t look at me. The last I saw of him on that October night in my fourteenth year was his posture, the odd way he leaned forward, looking at the ground as if there was something stuck on the toe of his shoe. Head cocked to one side, holding his collar closed, face turned way into the dark. And this was the man who held me on the saddle in front of him, giving me the reins. This was the man who slid the fat of his bacon onto my plate because he only ate the lean. His back was turned to me. His face hidden.

I watched him for a moment and then dropped my eyes.

The Matron pulled me inside, closing the door. Four nurses came over, arms outstretched, hands grasping, pulling me to a chair near the long desk at the front. Over the top was a sign carved into wood that ordered “Do and Be Silent.”

They all looked alike, the nurses. I would not come to differentiate them for some time. On this night, they were all the same, an imposing wall of white, an entire troupe of identical caretakers.

Under the large crucifix, two nurses were going through my things. Shirts, stockings, underwear, books all held up for anyone to see, then placed in piles on the counter. The nurses at my side began removing my outer clothing, releasing the smell of my soiled skin.

“Oooh. That’s bad,” said one of the young ones, dropping my wool hat onto the floor with my shawl and shirtwaist.

They took off my wool outer skirt leaving me in only my slip and undershirt. I didn’t know what to cover. I tried to hide the snarls of my hair with one hand and conceal my chest with the other.

The Matron walked over to where I was sitting. Something was in her hand.

“Hold her still,” she said.

All four nurses clamped their hands on my shoulders and upper arms. They tipped me back in the chair while the Matron lifted a cup to my lips. The cold metal of the cup chattered against my teeth.

“Now take your medicine like a good girl Lavinna.”

“I think it’s Lovetta.” Said one of the identical nurses.

I tried to twist my head away but they held me fast. She pushed the cup to my lips, pouring the liquid down my throat until the bitterness of it made me gag. It ran down my chin onto the thin fabric of my bodice. I coughed sprays of it into the air and the nurses had to wipe their faces clean.

My stomach pitched.

I leaned forward, vomiting up my medicine and the remains of my last meal.

“Oh no,” said a nurse. “She got it all over me.”

“And on my shoes,” said another. She said this in the voice of a child who has dropped her candy in the dirt, a high pitched whiny voice, the voice of someone who has never known a day of hunger or a moment of pain.

“Not to worry girls,” said the Matron with the horse rectum mouth. “She didn’t get any on me.”

“Matron, does she maybe need the needle?” Said the nurse who was wiping my vomit off her arms with a handkerchief.

“As it happens, I think she does. It will only take a minute,” said the Matron. “Just wait here, we’ll calm her soon enough.”

“Will she be going to the children’s cottage?” said the nurse with the handkerchief.

“No, we don’t have room there and look at the size of her. He’s not been honest about her age. She must be at least twenty years old.” She disappeared into the room behind the nursing desk.

The nurses looked at each other.

“I thought they said she was fourteen,” said the nurse to my right. Her red curls peaked out from under her cap, her skin pale as milk from the first skimming. She was a sweet girl offering kindness in the palm of her hand, patting my shoulder. I don’t think she knew she was doing it, being kind only because she knew no other way.

“Are you going to argue with the Matron?”

All heads wagged no in reply.

The Matron came back with a syringe glinting in her hand. The nurses held me down and lifted my skirt.

“What kind of underwear is this? I never seen anything like it in my life.”

“Country folk make their own clothes.”

“I don’t care what she’s got on, it needs to be out of the way.” Said the Matron.

They opened the back of my underwear. I felt a bite in my left buttock. Then a spreading dullness through my body.

“Get her to the shower room and clean her up. She’s filthy.” Said the Matron. She lifted a lock of my hair. “If you can’t get a comb through this then cut it off. If you see any nits, shave her.”

A woman was watching me from down the hall. A woman wearing a leather helmet, her skirt ragged, leaning against a mop, an unknown spill on the floor at her feet. Sad, limp hair stuck out from her helmet on either side. She shook her head, dropped her eyes, and started mopping again.

I felt my body growing limp, the voices of the nurses sounded distant. They must have brought me to the shower room, I don’t really remember. Voices sped up and slowed down, the world swung towards me and away. I was stripped naked and scrubbed clean with soap that stung my skin.

Snip. Snip.

They cut my hair until it was too short even to cover my ears. Down below the curves of my breasts, below my navel pooled with soap suds, below the shimmering triangle of stringy black hair brushing the tops of my thighs, below the length of my wet, naked body covered with water drops falling like pearls, sat a mass of tangled snakes that used to be my hair.

I pushed them around with my toes.

A boy was standing in the corner of the room. I knew he wasn’t really there but I could see him all the same. He was wearing well tailored clothing, made with thousands of tiny stitches like Auntie-Ruth’s sewing. He stood peacefully, a toy bear in his arms, his face smooth like a china doll. So young, so trusting. A small boy, unable to see any danger in the world.

They slipped an itchy gown over my head and lowered me to a cot. Rows of cots pregnant with patients stretched out on either side of me. But the boy was gone. Watching for him, eyes wide, I felt my mind wander away to nothingness.

My world turned grey. It stayed that way for a long time.