Quiet-Crazy (12 page)

My God, does she think I don't remember all those times? That I just forgot all about it? That it never happened?
I hate it when she acts like she doesn't know what's wrong. I hate it when she starts talking like that—“for your mother.” Most of the time she's plain old Mama, but when she wants me to do something, all of a sudden she becomes Mother, as if she's some kind of Mother Superior. “Elizabeth, would you run to the store and pick up some milk for your mother?” Or, “Elizabeth, your mother needs some thread to finish up Mrs. Ivey's dress. Could you run up to the five-and-dime and get some, could you do that for your mother?”

As much sewing as Mama's taken in from the people around in Littleton, I bet I've been to the five-and-dime a million times getting stuff that she's run out of or else plain out forgot to get in the first place, whether it's thread or a scrap of material or buttons and zippers, any little old thing that's just a bother to have to go and get. Personally, I don't see why people keep coming back to get Mama to do their
sewing since she frets and fumes so much in trying to get the things to fit. At least she doesn't pat them all around on their bottoms, and feel around all over their breasts in the name of “fitting them” with their clothes. All they know is after it's all finished, the dresses she sews up do look good. They don't have to go through all that looking and feeling you out all over, like I do.

I hate, too, those same old closing words she uses every time in her letters, so that I'm sick to death of hearing them. “Remember, now, Elizabeth, the all-seeing eye of God is upon you.” Lord, I wish it would get off me, even if only for a moment. That would help, just one moment when I didn't feel like that big old eye was following me around everywhere.

Even into the occupational therapy room it goes. You'd think that while you're doing something like making pottery or painting or weaving baskets, the eye would leave you alone, but no. One day when I am dabbing in some oils, I think for a change I will draw something real, you know, something like an object, rather than just smear paint around on the canvas like I usually do. So the real object that comes out of me was an eye. That is it, just a big old eye that covers the whole canvas.

The eye is long, skinny and oval-shaped, with a green iris and yellow streaks going through the white. All around the eye I paint black, as black as I can get it. I paint over and
over the black, building up layer on top of layer. And when people ask me what it is, I tell them. It is an eye, of course, the eye of a black cat.

The best thing about that big old eye, though, is that I can look back at it looking at me, and that feels awfully good. So I carry it to my room and put it on the dresser where it stays for a day or two, until I get tired of looking back at it, then I take it, bend it all up, and put it in the trash can. Then I go down to the rec room, and I play my favorite Elvis song over and over, just like he sings it,

There's no joy in my heart, only sorrow,

And I'm sad as a man can-han be;

I wont ah be free, free, free, e-e-e;

I wont ah be free like uh bird in thuh tree.

And while I play it, I know in my heart, I will never have that free like a bird feeling, that I'll be carrying around that Mama stuff with me forever, if not right up front in my mind, then it'll still be in the back of my mind, weighing me down. Always. No getting rid of it.

Still, I play that wanting to be free song until Hemp comes in with his Camel cigarette sticking right on the edge of his lips, like it is going to fall off any minute.

“Hemp,” I order,
order,
just like I have that authority. “Get around here and sing out this Elvis song, why don't you?”

“Unh-unh,” he grants. “Not me.”

“Why not?” I say. “Nobody's in here, and I won't laugh.”

“Don't like 'im,” he says.

“Elvis? I thought everybody liked Elvis.”

“Fats Domino's the one,” Hemp says, holding his Camel lightly in his hand, stretching out on the sofa, and looking something like Frank Sinatra. “I found my thr-eel . . . on Blueberry He-eel.” Then stopping short, he leans over to me and says real low, “You know Blueberry Hill is a girl, don't you?”

“Hemp,” I say, swinging my feet around to the outside of the piano bench, “I'll sware, if you ain't a picture.” I startle myself, at first, saying exactly the same words Mary Jane Payne at the pants factory says all the time and saying them in just the same way. But when I see Hemp doesn't notice they are Mary Jane's words, well, I don't feel so startled anymore.

Mary Jane is the one person at the pants factory who I like and I don't like, if you know what I mean. That's Mary Jane Payne, the head pants presser, the steaming hot job that, Lord, I don't see how anybody can stand. But it suits Mary Jane Payne just fine. “Lord, honey, it ain't no hotter'n me!” she shrieks with a wave of her rear. “Hot suits me up one side and down the other, didn't you know that?”

Of course I know that. Everybody in Littleton County
knows that. And if people sometimes slip and forget, why Mary Jane Payne just up and does something to remind them. Like showing up down at the Frostee-Burg with a whole carload of men of all ages and her the drunkest one of them all. Why she has to get so drunk, I haven't figured out. I thought people got drunk so they could act more like they really deep down want to act all along, but they just need a little courage, and a drink or two gives them what they need. But Mary Jane Payne always seems to be acting like she wants to anyway, so what she needs to get drunk for, I don't know. So whereas drunk on most people in Littleton looks ridiculous, on Mary Jane Payne drunk looks sad.

And that's why I like Mary Jane Payne. Because sometimes I think deep down inside she's real sad, no matter how hot she is, and I can have a feeling for people sad, because sad is truer than happy any day. And that's also why, I have learned, I don't like Mary Jane Payne. Because I think she's using hot to cover up sad. I used to think it was plain old jealousy that made me not like Mary Jane, and, well, maybe I have been a little bit. Not jealousy because I want to get drunk and hang out with a bunch of men, but jealousy because Mary Jane Payne acts like she wants to act and to the devil with what everybody else thinks.

I surprise myself to be talking like Mary Jane Payne to Hemp, and then again with Dr. Adams. But she keeps on
popping up, and when he has a pretty good idea of what she's like, he says, “Hm-m-m, that's a keen observation, Elizabeth. Mary Jane Payne uses ‘hot' to cover up ‘sad.'” And he uncrosses his legs to cross them again, thinking real hard on what I said. “What, then, I wonder, does Sarah Elizabeth Miller cover up? Anything?”

And I think by now he surely knows it's Angela, that I use Angela to cover up Elizabeth. But not until night when I am in bed playing around with cover-ups do I begin to see what Dr. Adams was saying. He must know I have something else on my mind. It's like he can tell, even though you're not saying it, he can tell. But I know I sure didn't use hot to cover up sad, because God knows I won't never be hot, not with what I've been through. So the question for me is can I tell Dr. Adams what I am covering up with my sadness. Hot? The thought tickles me at first. Sarah Elizabeth Miller hot up one side and down the other. But then it gets scary, too, for a camel can as soon go through the eye of a needle than a sinner enter into the Kingdom of God. But can I tell him what I hadn't ever told anybody? No. Without a doubt. No.

And I can't draw a picture of myself, either. That is one of those things I absolutely and positively have to do. Not with Dr. Adams, but with Dr. Charles, the psychologist, when he gives me one of those weird tests. I like the tests a lot, especially the pictures drawn in ink. I look at a whole bunch of them and tell what I see in them, and I see things like
butterflies and flowers and little shriveled-up maidenheads and snakes and wouldn't you know it, even a man's organ in one of them. Nathan is real hung up on getting private parts out in the open. So, there I am tracing around a man's organ for Dr. Charles, so he can see where in the picture I see it. And I don't even cringe. Well, not much. And not half as much as with Dr. Johnstone.

What makes me cringe, though, is the drawing, when Dr. Charles gives me a solid white pad and a pencil and asks me to draw a picture of myself.

“I can't draw pictures of people,” I say.

“Why can't you?” he asks.

“I just can't. Never could.”

“Try,” he says.

I sit, looking at the paper, not knowing where or how to start. I could draw a round circle for my head, but after that, what? Oh, I know, eyes, nose, mouth, ears and some frizzles for hair. But it wouldn't look right. It'd look like something in first grade, not like a real person.

Dr. Charles sits. And I sit. Until I figure out this is one of those times when we'll be sitting forever until I come up with something. So I draw a stick figure and let it go at that. Then I have to draw Mama and Daddy. So I draw two more stick figures, a big Mama stick figure with big breasts, huge breasts, just so he'll know she was the mama, you know, and then I draw a not-so-big Daddy stick figure, and I am
the smallest one on the page, so I figure that looks about right. And I hate myself because all I can draw is first-grade stuff, because I can't draw myself anywhere close to the way I actually look, nothing like a real person picture. Just a stick figure. That's all I ever was, I guess, and all I'll ever be.

The next time I go to occupational therapy I practice drawing people. But I am too embarrassed to let anybody see how miserable I am at drawing. So I keep on drawing colors, mainly light and dark and dark and light, because I like looking at the opposites side by side: dark green, light green; dark blue, light blue; dark yellow, light yellow.

But mostly I watch Delores do her drawing. Delores is almost like a real artist she draws so fine. And one of her pictures I like so, and keep on admiring so, until she says, “Here, you can have it.”

It is a picture of a young woman sitting back in a rocker out on a porch covered half with shadows and half with sunshine. She is all leaned back in the rocker, with her right arm raised so that the back of her hand and forearm rests across her eyes, blocking the sunlight. It's all kind of misty shadowy, except for the sun streaming down right in her face, and I think it is so beautiful and so sad at the same time. Beautiful that she feels the warm light and has it pouring down all over her; but sad that for some reason she has to block it out.

I carry that picture back to my room and prop it up on my
dresser. Then I sit down on my bed and I look and I look at it. When I feel myself about to set in to crying I lie back on my bed instead, even though I know I'm not supposed to be on my bed. But I don't care if I am breaking a rule, 'cause I just notice that the sun is streaming in through my window, and even though it is streaming through the bars, still it is streaming, and I just want to feel it. Feel the light pouring down all over me. So I just lie there feeling the warmness radiating all around about me. And I see the light. I, for the first time ever in my life, I do believe, I see the light. And it is good.

D
r. Adams always tells me that we'll talk about Angela whenever I am ready. And after seeing the light and feeling it running all through me, I feel good and ready.

“She was a good playmate, Angela was, always happy, never fussing about anything, but then we got along real well.”

“What did you play?” Dr. Adams wants to know.

“Oh, I guess the usual. Hide-and-seek, dolls, parties. I used to make cakes for her, out in the sand, cover them with rose petals from Daddy's flowers. Roses were her favorite. The pink ones.”

“Did you talk with her?”

“Oh, sure. Talked about everything under the sun. And above it, too. See, sometimes we played down here, sometimes up there. Now, that was a treat, when she'd take me around up there.”

“What was it like?”

“Just like it says in the Bible. Streets paved with gold, green valleys, blue and purple mountains all over the place, winding streams running here and there, angels floating around on clouds everywhere blowing their horns, lions laying down with the lambs, wolves and snakes and foxes, all peaceable together. And God, you could go see Him anytime, sitting there on His throne in His long white robe and brown beard and people at His feet just waiting to hear some words of love. It was . . . well, kind of nice. Though I don't think I'd want to live there. That's why I kept on calling Angela to come back down here and play with me. It just wasn't a good place for kids. Not enough excitement or something, I don't know exactly what was missing, but something was. That's why we played down here most of the time.”

“Do you still play with Angela?”

“Of course not! I may be crazy, but I'm not that crazy!”

Dr. Adams grows stern as I've ever seen him. “What happened to our agreement, Elizabeth?” he asks, looking at me straight on.

“What agreement?” I say. “Oh, that. Well, I wasn't using crazy to mean you know, like mad crazy, insane crazy. I was just using it like, ah, you know. Okay. I know I'm not crazy. Okay?”

“Thank you,” he says, as if he's just won some kind of
award. Then after he writes in the metal chart, he turns back again to Angela. “You don't play with her anymore. When did you stop?”

“Oh, I don't know, really. Maybe at nine or ten, I don't know. But no longer than ten years old, I'm sure.”

“What happened when you stopped playing with her, when she stopped coming down here?”

“I guess mainly I just switched to thinking about her instead of playing with her. I guess that's what happened.”