Quiet-Crazy (10 page)

“Hemp,” I say, trying to be quiet, but at the same time I am getting more aggravated at him, “Hemp, are you telling me the truth?”

Hemp just throws back his head and laughs like it is the funniest thing in the world, and he won't say yea or nay, he just keeps on laughing and looking straight at me like I am some kind of fool. So what's wrong with Lenny, I don't know, I only know he looks so fragile and innocent and helpless, and all I want to do is protect him from whatever is hurting him so.

It is that feeling—wanting to take care of him—that makes me go into his room a few days later, even though women are not supposed to go into the men's rooms. No one is in there except Lenny, and he isn't a man nor I a real woman in the woman sense. He is standing, dressed as spiffy as ever in gray dress pants, blue plaid shirt, and yellow vest, looking out his window at the rows of gray buildings, one just like the other.

I slow down my walking and ease up to Lenny so as not to frighten him.

I stand there beside him for the longest time, just being there. Something about the silence around him makes words seem inappropriate, like speaking would break the part of him that's become so delicate and defenseless. The nurses
and Mr. Martin, when they go to Lenny, start in to talking and it's like non-stop, so he probably couldn't get a word in edgewise, even if he wanted to. They remind me of Mama, needing to talk all the time, afraid of the silences, and I wonder if Lenny might not like someone to just be with him, not asking him all sorts of questions and trying to make him talk, but just being there and listening to the quiet.

So that's what I do with Lenny every time I visit with him. I just stand and listen to his quietness. I look directly at him sometimes, into his face even though I don't feel comfortable doing that, and when he looks back at me he looks sometimes like he wants so bad to talk, like he is dying to say something to me only he can't get up the nerve to say it.

One day, I see a flicker of a smile when he looks at me. I want to shout “Hallelujah” or something, throw my arms around him, and do the polka that Mr. Fleet is showing us. But somehow I know I shouldn't make too big a deal over it, although that little bit of a smile is as good as a thousand words spoken. All I do, then, is kind of smile back and nod in acknowledgment, you know, like you might do to a passing stranger on the street.

Even though Lenny isn't talking, he feels less and less a stranger. Three times a day he takes my hand and we go to the dining room. Now he even walks with me to the rec room and stands at the piano while I play all the heart and soul songs Dr. Adams has taught me. But he looks around at
the TV watchers so much, I know he is uncomfortable, even though they aren't paying him no mind.

After he'd started smiling at me, I thought that surely some words would follow. But day after day passes, and no words. Until one afternoon after lunch I walk Lenny back to his room and I turn and start to go, and he reaches out to me and mumbles something that sounds like “Don't,” but I can't really be sure what he says it is so soft.

This time I can't contain my excitement. I mean, who in their right mind could? “What, Lenny?” I say. “What did you say?”

Lenny just turns his head and starts his usual helpless frowning.

“What did you
say,
Lenny?” I beg, feeling powerfully sure that if he can say the word once, he can say it again. “Look, Lenny,” I say, “I'm sorry, I just couldn't hear what you said. Was it 'don't'? Do you want me to stay?”

Lenny looks at me and gives the slightest little nod of his head, as slight as it could be and still be seen.

“Sure,” I say, casual as a cat. “I'll stick around for a while.” So Lenny sits down on his bed and I take the rocker beside his bed, settling in for a period of more silence.

After a while, Lenny reaches out for my hand and he tugs on it, pulling me to sit beside him on the bed. I sit and he looks up at me, lifts his hand and runs it over my frizzy hair. No sooner have I gotten over the shock from that, than he
lays his head down on my shoulder, and Lord, I don't know what to do.

First of all, I'm not supposed to be in his room. Second of all, I'm sure not supposed to be sitting here on the bed with his head on my shoulder. I mean we're not, you know, doing anything, but what if a nurse comes in, or Mr. Martin? Would they know that? I guess the main thing that bothers me, though, is that I don't know what Lenny is feeling. Is he just needing to get close to someone? Does he see me as a mother of sorts?
Look here, baby, right here, see, come on, now, be sweet baby.
Or is he going to want to do something more than put his head on my shoulder, despite he is only fifteen?

I haven't long to wonder, for within seconds he is putting his hand up to my breast. So very lightly it lays on me, perched there like a butterfly—not like Sheriff Tate's old hands that felt like snakes trying to wrap around me—and I sit motionless for fear it might fly away and never return, after this small miracle in communication.

“Look, Elizabeth, honey. See? Wanna touch? Here . . .” That's all. Just me and her. And broad daylight. On the bed. No more than that. But it plays over and over again, like a record player needle hung up in a scratch on a record. “Look. See? Look.”

For what seems like forever I sit there with Lenny, me just looking down at the smooth, white hand, and wondering,
“Lord, Lord, what havest Thou me do?”

And, finally, the Lord sends Mr. Martin, who havest me leave Lenny's room. I am first relieved, then sad, thinking that Lenny would return to his drawn-up shell and never come out again. But he goes with me to the library, although his head hangs down as we walk down the hall like he's been caught doing something criminal and he has to be mightily ashamed. I want to tell him I know about feeling ashamed, and that it doesn't ever go away, that you carry it around with you like a piece of heavy luggage for the rest of your life. But I just can't bring myself to talk about that stuff. Not even to wonderful Dr. Adams. Whatever would he think about me, if I told him what really happened?

Once Lenny and I get to the library I go straight and take down the
Heart of Emerson's Journal
book that I have grown so to love, and we sit down on the green plastic sofa, Lenny and me. I read for a while to myself, but soon I can't keep inside me what I am reading.

“Listen to this, Lenny,” I say. “Just listen to this!” And I read:

“At sea, Sunday, Sept. 8. A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befall him must be from himself. . . . The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself.”

It is just like Dr. Adams has been asking me. “Who are
you?” time after time, “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?”

“Lenny,” I say, feeling that at last my eyes are opening, that like Alice I had been blind, but now I am beginning to see, and it is the sweetest, not sweetest, ah, what's that word Aunt Lona says . . . exquisite, that's it, the most exquisite feeling I have ever known. “Lenny, this is what Dr. Adams is getting at. Don't you see? Who are you, Lenny?” I say, turning around to him and since he won't look at me, I reach up to turn his face toward me. “Lenny, look, Lenny, this has to be why we're here, don't you see? This is
it!
It's all in here,” I say, jabbing at the book, “This is what we have to figure out. Lenny, do you know who you are? Well, do you?” And of course, Lenny just frowns at me. “Well, maybe not, no, of course you don't. But Lenny, we've got to find out. That's what we're here for, don't you see? We've got to acquaint ourselves with ourselves. You hear that, Lenny?”

Lenny looks at me, neither frowning nor smiling, neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, just like I have felt most all my days on this earth, lukewarm. And just as quickly as I feel all elated and wonderful, I again feel absolutely awful, knowing that God would spew them out of his mouth, those who are neither hot nor cold but just lukewarm. What is even worse, I feel ridiculous, sitting here thinking I can help Lenny, when I haven't even helped myself. But, I think, if I can only do what this Emerson says, if I can acquaint myself with Elizabeth,
maybe I can become something besides lukewarm. And, yes, hot, I'd rather become hot than cold. But even cold might be better than lukewarm. But, no, hot . . . hot is the thing to become.

The next day, when I go in to visit with Dr. Adams, I tell him about Aunt Lona's letter and how crazy Mama is acting. “So, I'm going to call Aunt Lona,” I say, “and tell her just to come on down here, with or without Mama. Mama's been offered an invitation to come, and if she doesn't want to, that's her problem, not Aunt Lona's.”

“Is this Elizabeth I hear?” Dr. Adams says in a pleased way.

“This is Elizabeth you hear, I think.” And we both laugh. “Really,” I say, “I think it's Elizabeth, but I don't, you know, really know if it is, but I think this is how the real and true Elizabeth would sound. Don't you think?”

“Well, hello, Elizabeth,” Dr. Adams says. “I've always wanted to meet you, and now that I have, I'll be looking forward to getting to know you. Meanwhile,” he says, pulling out a slip of paper from the silver-backed notebook, “I'll get this permission request filled out and give it to the nurses so you may call your aunt.”

“You mean I have to get permission to call home?” I ask. “I'm not a child, you know. And I'm no angel. I'm real, see? I've got hands . . . with fingers on them. They can feel. They can touch. I can dial the number, don't you think?”

Dr. Adams looks up in surprise from his writing. “You keep talking like that, and you're not going to need me anymore.”

Maybe I am beginning to talk more like the real and true Elizabeth, I don't know about that, I'll just have to wait and see what is me and what isn't. But Dr. Adams is very wrong on one thing. I do still need him for a while longer, but I don't realize exactly how much I need him until I make that telephone call, and learn that Aunt Lona still refuses to come down.

Even when I ask her directly to come down, she still says she can't. Even when I tell her it doesn't matter to me what Mama thinks, she still says she can't. Or won't.

“Beth, dear,” she says, “I'm so glad to hear you're thinking more for yourself and speaking up for yourself. And I would never do anything to hinder that. If I come down without your mother, she's going to think . . . well, I didn't want to get into this, but I may as well be frank, since I'm sure that's what you're encouraged to do there.”

There is a long, quiet time before Aunt Lona speaks again, and I can feel the telephone cord stretching out between us so far it might have been across the whole country.

“You see, dear, your mother feels that I have always been trying to, well, I hate these words, but they're hers . . . she's told me more times than once, ‘Lona, you're trying to steal Elizabeth away from me.' That's what she thinks, Beth. I
know it's crazy. It sounds like, well, I don't hardly know how to put it, but it sounds like a lover, or something: ‘trying to steal you away'? But it's what she's thought forever. I've just always tried to ignore it, because I know and you know that your mother has problems. But I was determined I wouldn't allow her problems to interfere with my relationship with you. I've cherished you too much to let that happen.”

Aunt Lona pauses, I guess to give me a chance to say something. But I can't say anything, because for the first time ever I feel terribly awkward with Aunt Lona, like I don't know what to say, when I have always and forever talked free as a bird with her, and I just want to hang up that black, plastic receiver, go to my room, and bawl my eyes out.

“Elizabeth?” she says. “Are you all right, dear?”

“If I were all right, I wouldn't be here,” I say rather smartly, and maybe it isn't right of me to say it that way, but that's the way it comes out.

“I've hurt you,” she says. “And, you know, my heart aches for you. For your mother too . . . and if I come down, I can't imagine what she might do . . .”

She keeps on talking, but I can't listen, I just feel the telephone cord stretching longer and longer, my lifeline, winding away from me, all the time my heart crying out, “Aunt Lona, Aunt Lona, why are you forsaking me?”

I
n the beginning was Mama and the word was with Mama and the word was Mama. All things were done through her and without her there was not anything done that was done.

And Aunt Lona came and said let there be light. And there was light.

And Elizabeth saw the light that it was good. She separated the light from the darkness. And the light she called “Aunt Lona” and the darkness she called “Mama.” And the light shined in the darkness, although the darkness knew it not.

And the evening and the morning were the first twenty-eight years of her life.

O
f course Aunt Lona has not forsaken me, but it sure did seem that way for the longest time. And even though I get a letter from her every few days, I just can't get my mind in the right notion to writing her back, since I'm not yet over the shock of her not coming to see me. The strangest thing about that shock is that it seems to divide my mind into two halves. One part of it understands what Aunt Lona was saying, because, well, I wasn't born yesterday, and I've been hearing Mama put Aunt Lona down forever for no reason, except for Mama's own troubles with herself.

The part of my mind that doesn't understand is the trusting part. And that part just won't turn loose of me. It keeps on and on with things like, “If Aunt Lona really cherished our relationship, like she said, she would come on down to see me, no matter what Mama thinks.” And “Maybe Aunt Lona
just really doesn't want to come down here; maybe she, too, like Mama, is ashamed that I'm down at the crazy house.” But then the worst thing of all that keeps coming at me is, “If you can't trust Aunt Lona, then who can you trust?”