Quiet-Crazy (25 page)

That is, until I go back into my room and find Belinda in there sitting on her bed, crying her little heart out. I sit down beside her, and before I know it, I've put my arm around her to try to comfort her. “You're going to be okay, Belinda,” I
say, but it doesn't sound nearly as true coming from me, as it does from Miss Hansom, probably because I am so busy trying to get myself straight, that I really haven't taken the time to get to know and understand Belinda better. But I have to know and understand myself, first, don't I, before I can go around understanding other people and trying to get them to talk. Is that why I didn't get into really, truly talking with Hemp? Because I was trying too much to figure me out and help myself? That, plus I needed at least one person around there who seemed normal, and I just didn't let myself think he had any problems?

“I got this letter from Daddy today,” Belinda is saying, “and he says he needs me at home. But I can't do it all. Cooking and cleaning and washing and getting the kids off to school and me, too. I can't do it all.”

I offer Belinda the box of tissues, just like Dr. Adams used to do for me, and she uses half a dozen before she stops crying.

“Look, Belinda,” I say, “your father will have to get used to the idea that you won't be with him always. I mean you have your own life to live, and you can't live it for him. He's being, well, I don't know, he's being selfish, wanting you to do what
he
wants you to do. Can't he get a maid or someone to come and help out?” Now, I know I'm not supposed to offer advice or solutions, if I ever get to being a real counselor. I'm only supposed to ask questions. Mainly. But with
Belinda, I'm just talking, like with a friend, you know. That kind of talk.

“He can't afford a maid. Everyone's supposed to be helping. But they don't. I get tired of having to make them do it. Then he gets mad at me if everything's not done just like Mother always did it.”

Mad at her. I wonder what her father is truly feeling? Is he scared? Is he still grieving for his wife? Does he feel insecure? There are probably a thousand different ways he's been feeling, and like Miss Hansom said, he was using mad to cover it all up.

I want so to help Belinda in some way, but what can I do? I'd wanted, and had tried for days to help Lenny, too, but nothing came of it. Nothing but a flutter of his hands on my breasts. I reckon no matter how disturbed boys and men are they'll still reach out for the breasts. Just boys and men, who am I kidding? Women, too. But at least Belinda will talk. And at least I can listen, when she needs someone to listen.

The next day we go to the occupational therapy room, and I decide to make something for Belinda. Not that it will be any great deal toward helping her, but maybe it'll show her that someone cares. So I go over to the painting table, and I get a canvas board and I draw a big, oak tree full of long branches entwining this way and that. And on one of the branches I draw a bird's nest with a bunch of baby birds in it. But one bird is bigger than the rest, and it is perched out on
the limb. And another bird about the same size has left the limb to try its wings and is up in the air, its wings flapping to keep itself up.

Belinda is drawing, too, but she is drawing a house full of children and a kitchen overflowing with dirty pots and pans and a washing machine full of dirty clothes, and she draws Belinda, herself, in a big way over the top of it all, with her Daddy about as small as the little kids running around the house.

I finish with some clouds, bright, white clouds in the sky of my painting, and put the usual grass around the trees. I throw in a couple of sunflowers for good luck. So I draw a couple of bright yellow sunflowers with their faces big as pie-pans looking toward the sky. Then I dash off several more clouds at the top and I give the painting to Belinda.

“Some glad morning you'll fly away,” I tell her. “You'll fly away, and your brothers and sisters will be all right, and your daddy, too, and everything will work out just fine. Because, Belinda . . .” and I have to stop, for I'm at a loss for words, overwhelmed with her problems, “Belinda,” I finally say, “nothing lasts forever. Not nothing.”

A
t my visit I tell Dr. Shaver that, too. “Nothing lasts forever, so I think it's time I should be leaving Nathan.”

“Of course it's good to hear you feel that way,” he says, “but I do wish I had gotten to know you a little better.”

Dr. Shaver is just being polite, I know that. Still, he doesn't seem to understand that he knows more about me than anybody else ever will on this earth. Probably.

“And, of course, you'll need to talk with Dr. Johnstone. He's been away for a couple of weeks, but I believe he's back now, so I'll set up an appointment for you.”

“Do I have to talk with him?”

Dr. Shaver stops writing in my chart and looks up. “Don't you want to?” he asks.

“No,” I say, flatly.

He shrugs. “Why not?”

“I just don't care to. Don't see a need to.”

“But he has to be the one to dismiss you. I can't do it.”

“Why do I have to talk with him? Why can't you just tell him I'm ready to go?”

“I don't have that authority. I wish I did. Why don't you want to talk with him, Elizabeth?” he says, like he is trying to get at something.

Can I tell this man yet another bizarre sex thing that's happened to me? Will he believe me, or will he think I'm just going around making up all these sex stories, and that I am, after all, somehow crazy? Do doctors have their limits of what they can and cannot believe? And, besides, it all goes back to me. In the end, that's where it goes. Will he think there's something about me that makes people do sex things to me that I don't want them to do? Well, I truly don't think I do. I know I don't. So I'll just drop it, just leave it behind, because I'm ready to leave this place, and what might Dr. Johnstone do, if he finds out I've told what he wanted me to do with him?

So, even though I have to talk with him again, at least I don't have to talk much, do I? I just plain won't cooperate, and if he wants to dismiss me on that count, then that's okay by me.

The first thing he wants to know is how I'm feeling about Mama doing what she did to me, and when he finds out I am okay on that count, he then wants to know how Angela and
Elizabeth are getting along, and I tell him Elizabeth is doing better than ever, and that Angela isn't going to be around to tell her what to do anymore, at least that's what I've planned, although I may still have to call her down sometimes.

“But from here on,” I say, “it's going to be I, Elizabeth, and everything that happens will happen to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is the one who has to decide what to do, not Angela.” I want him to see that I am in control, and that he needn't come trying to take advantage of me never again.

“Good,” says Dr. Johnstone, nodding his head and smiling like he was the one to put Angela in her place. “Good,” he repeats, looking at me, puzzling over me to see if I am telling the real truth. Then he wants to know if I'm going back to work at the pants factory.

“Nope,” I say. I want to get through this as quick as possible, so I make sure to give him the cold shoulder, because if he needs a shoulder, to my way of thinking, that's all he deserves, a cold one.

“Then, what are you going to do?”

“Go to college. Probably.”

Then he starts talking about ordering catalogs and applying as soon as possible and getting accepted and taking entrance tests, all such stuff as Miss Hansom has already told me about. Me, I'm mostly thinking about what and how I'll be studying in order to learn to get people to talking about their real selves. Will I learn that in books, or will I practice
on people? But what if it's something that just comes along with you when you're born, and grows up all the time you're growing up, what if it's something I can't learn in books, then what?

Dr. Johnstone doesn't write in my chart this time. He's read what everybody else has written in it, I know, so he knows all this already. I wish I could carry the silver-backed chart home to Mama and let her see it and explain myself to her. Tell her what I've learned, so she can take care of herself when I go off to college.

In some ways I have always thought Mama real strong, I guess because of the hold she's had over me. But if she allows herself to be sick forever, that's about like me allowing her to hold on to Angela through me. All this time I've been hating Mama because I thought she was being mean, not realizing that it was really because she was not being strong. Maybe hating myself, too. Yes, I know hating myself, too. And I don't know who I feel the worse for. But I think now it is Mama. If only I could do something to make her know she doesn't have to keep on being sick, that everything will be okay. No matter what she did in the past, we can't change it, we can't wipe it away and just pretend it didn't happen by getting sick all the time, not her, and not me. If she could just see that Angela was Angela, and I, Elizabeth.

I, Elizabeth, is who Dr. Johnstone is talking to. “So,
you're not to tell anyone about it, okay?” he says, and I know I have missed out on something he has said, because my mind is spinning and turning on Mama and me.

“About what?” I say, making myself come again to him.

“Elizabeth, did you really not hear, or did you not understand what I said?”

“I must not have heard, because I don't know what in the devil you're talking about.”

Dr. Johnstone sighs. “What I said was, don't ever mention to anyone that we talked about having sexual relations. You understand?”

I must look quite astonished, because he goes on trying to explain why I should not mention it to anyone, ever. “You see, it's just all a part of therapy. I was merely testing you to see what your reaction would be to the idea of having sexual intercourse. And in asking you to do it here with me in the office, I could understand more your thinking about sexual relationships. Do you see?”

Since he is so concerned that I understand, I have to be honest with him, don't I? So, “No,” I tell him, “I don't understand.”

He takes a deep breath. “What don't you understand about it?” he asks.

I take a deep breath, just like him. Deep breaths sure come in handy sometimes. “If it's all just part of therapy, why am I not supposed to talk about it with anyone else?”

Dr. Johnstone grows a mite tense. “Elizabeth, all therapy is private and to be held in strictest confidence. You know that. I don't tell anyone what you say and do in therapy, and you don't tell anyone what I say and do. And don't you ever forget that.”

Well, maybe Dr. Johnstone doesn't know it, but I wasn't born yesterday. So I know that a bit dog hollers. And Dr. Johnstone, he sounds awfully bitten to me. So, I just merely say what the real Elizabeth might say to yet another old man wanting to put his hands all over her, without her invitation. “Dr. Johnstone,” I say, “I promise that I, Elizabeth, will keep my therapy in strictest confidence. But,” I say, getting up to leave, “you see, I can't ever predict what that little imp Angela might do. I'm sorry.”

What was once the hardest part about being at Nathan—talking with Dr. Johnstone—has at last become the easiest. The hardest part now about being at Nathan is thinking about leaving Nathan. Leaving people the likes of Dr. Adams and Miss Hansom. Besides getting a little makeup and a straight, new hairdo from Miss Hansom, both she and Dr. Adams have given me something that I'll always have, something no one can take away from me, and that's something like a little more belief in myself that I can do things the way I want to do them, and even more that I have a right to do things the way I want to do them. And even Dr. Shaver, I'll have to admit, has given me maybe even the most important thing—
by being a window for me to start looking out into the world, since I can't keep hanging on to mirrors.

And besides leaving Dr. Adams and Miss Hansom, I will miss the Saturday night Mr. Fleet specials, dancing 'round and 'round and feeling free as a bird in the tree, and playing Ping-Pong with Lenny, who'll give a trace of a smile every now and then when he gives a grand slam that I can't return.

The only thing that worries me about leaving Nathan is Belinda, not knowing what will happen to her, although she isn't crying as much now, probably because of the medicine, but maybe it will help her stop crying long enough so she can see some way to make the best of her daddy and brothers and sisters back home.

Delores is with me, talking words of encouragement as I pack up my things to go home.

“Delores,” I say, “I have this feeling like I'm going somewhere I've never been before. You know what I mean?”

She nods, her smile warming me up like the sunshine coming out. “It'll seem odd, you'll feel awkward, out of place, but, Elizabeth, you'll be fine,” she whispers.

“But I feel like Mama and Daddy, well, I don't know, I feel like they're going to be strangers to me, and I, Elizabeth, will be a stranger to them. A stranger in my own house.”

Delores laughs. Well, she laughs as much as possible with such a hoarse voice.

“Going and coming from here,” she says, “it's kind of like a twilight zone. Eerie, isn't it?”

“Yes!” I say, so glad she has said exactly what I am feeling. “Yes! And do you feel like you're standing back watching yourself? Like right now, it seems like I'm another person standing here watching my hands fold these gowns and put them in my bag. It's weird, Delores! Am I crazy, or what?”

We both laugh. “If you were crazy, you wouldn't be talking like this,” she says. “You're going to be fine, Elizabeth. I'm so happy for you.”

“But, Delores, how long are you going to be here?” All of a sudden I can really talk with Delores, now that I'm leaving, I can talk. “Will you ever get to talking again? What are you going to do? What happened?”