The Last Warner Woman (21 page)

And that was the end of his fetish. In an instant he was suddenly screaming, hollering, doubled over on the floor, while Julie, her mouth full of blood, was running away, a piece of foreskin between her teeth.

Julie leans over to tell me how, in a school, some stories never die, and this was one of them. Julie Astwood taking a proper munch off of Marcus Ramsay’s dick. Long after students had graduated, after they had forgotten the name “Julie Astwood,” they would still remember the incident and the other names by which they called her. Knob-biter. Cock-Muncher. Circumciser. Miss Meany Guillotiney.

At first Julie was distraught, but then she discovered something she might not have otherwise. Without the distraction of boys—they naturally avoided her now—or of being popular, she wasn’t a bad student after all. It was as if, having learnt one lesson, others cued up at the side of her head trying to enter this one willing mind that could make room for them.

It was a pity, Julie tells me, that she hadn’t discovered this latent potential sooner. If she had had even another year of school she might have gotten into Cambridge or Oxford. Still, she managed to leave school with better grades than anyone had expected, certainly better than any of her sisters. She went on to nursing school and from there she went to St. Osmund’s, where she met my mother, Adamine.

She comes around to hold my hand when she says, smiling, “I will always remember your mother, because of how she came to St. Osmund’s.”

M
ILTON LOWERS HIS EYES AND SAYS HE IS ABOUT TO
tell me something personal, and that I must promise not to repeat it, because it is not the kind of thing a man likes to say. So I lie to him. I say no, I will not repeat it. And it is true, I will not say it to anyone. But I will write it. So this is how I find out the most curious thing about the marriage of Milton and Adamine.

They did everything a husband and wife do together. They ate together. They argued with each other. They slept in the same bed. But they never had sex.

Three years of living in the same tiny space—the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom—and still the marriage was never consummated. Some nights she was the one tugging at his shorts, trying to find life there, but he was never interested and would turn over in the bed. It was this that Adamine threw at Milton one Saturday.

Saturdays were Milton’s letter-writing day. He had his special paper and his ballpoint pens and he would sit down and compose letters to his mama, his cousin Tunki, and any number of people back home. He was proud of these letters and even harbored the thought that one day they would make him famous. For this reason he diligently wrote each letter twice and kept a copy. He shows me some of them, because I am a writer, and waits for my approval. I smile and say “lovely,” but of course they aren’t very good.

On this particular Saturday, Adamine was in a singing mood. She sang this song and then that song and every song scattered Milton’s thoughts. After an hour he found himself still looking at a blank piece of paper.

“Please, Ada, for godsake. I trying to do mi letter writing.”

“How a little praise song to stop you from writing your letter? How you so fenkeh-fenkeh so?”

“Just cool it, Adamine. Just give me a little peace here.”

She wasn’t in a mood to give in.

“The Apostle Paul write the most beautiful letters to the Church in Corinthians when him was in jail and him must have had plenty distractions round him.”

“I am not the fucking Apostle Paul!” Milton shouted.

“You damn right bout that.”

He shook his head and turned back to his paper. Soon Adamine was singing again. He stood up. “Adamine, I really don’t want to do it, but if you provoke me in here today, God help you!”

She did then what he had never seen her do before. She stood up tall and put her face against his raised fist.

“Come do it. Do it, Son of Man. For that is the only part of you that have strength for a woman. Your man-parts soft and can’t do a goddamn thing. So may as well you hit me.”

He fell back into his chair, realizing for the first time that her God had not died after all; He had simply been hiding in a corner of her mind, waiting to ambush him.

J
ULIE ASTWOOD IS LAUGHING WHEN SHE TELLS ME
there probably should have been a whole course in nursing school devoted to the business of keys. This was her main assignment at St. Osmund’s: not monitoring the treatment of patients, not assessing new residents, not intervening in the many crises that happened each day. Rather, she was the person put in charge of keys. She always needed to remember which ones went into which doors. She carried around a large bunch, a jangly metal pom-pom of bit keys, barrel keys, skeleton keys, and more. Almost every door within St. Osmund’s was kept locked and walking the short distance of a hundred yards could potentially involve the unlocking and relocking of half a dozen.

Julie considered it something of a marathon whenever she had to walk from her ward to the front door to collect a new patient. On these occasions she had to pass through a total of fourteen doors. On these journeys, she always tried to guess what kind of patient the asylum would be getting and the unlocking of the final front door became, for her, something like the unwrapping of a gift.

Julie remembers every patient she opened the door to, but she recalls none so clearly as my mother—a bundle of red and white cloth collapsed on her head and falling like rags over her face.

Julie smiled encouragingly.

“Why hello there. Welcome to St. Osmund’s.”

Adamine didn’t respond, but Julie remembers her eyes. She tells me she had eyes that could make you feel as if you were falling.

Julie led her to the ward, a long corridor that smelt faintly of piss. A line of twenty-two cots ran down the length of it and the cot assigned to my mother was at the very end. Julie began to make introductions to the frazzle-haired women in their nightgowns as she walked down the line. She had always found this to be good practice.

“Pearline, this is Maud. Maud, this is Pearline.”

But my mother stopped her after this first introduction.

“I know all of these women already. Them is lepers. I finally come back to my own people. And another thing, my name is not Pearline. It is Adamine Bustamante. Please learn that.”

S
YLVIA LIGHTBOURNE HAS STOPPED TALKING. INSTEAD, SHE
is observing a woman across the room who is sitting in a chair and looking out at nothing in particular. she whispers to me without turning away her eyes, “two days. three at most.”

And then she looks up and says in a lazy way, “It’s a skill you learn in a place like this; you look into people’s eyes and you can tell how much time they have left. That’s why we don’t look in mirrors at my age. None of us do. We’re too afraid we’ll see our own time, and we know it won’t be long.”

She tells me she was able to do a similar kind of thing at St. Osmund’s, make a quick diagnosis of a patient just by looking into his or her eyes.

“There was nothing official about these evaluations. You didn’t share them with anyone, mind you, but everyone who works in a mental hospital does it, and the longer you’ve worked there, the more on the money your guesses are likely to be. So listen to me when I tell you, Pearline Portious-Dehaney was one of the most serious cases that ever walked through those doors.”

Why? I ask. Why was her craziness so special?

Sylvia Lightbourne shrugs. “It wasn’t just that Pearline lived in her own world, young man—she was the kind who could take you into that world with her. I wouldn’t say her madness was contagious. I wouldn’t put it like that. But maybe … it was evangelical.”

She tells me then of their first meeting. A young nurse, Julie Astwood, had brought Pearline up to her office on the first day. This was standard practice.

“Well, who do we have here?” Sylvia had said, smiling as she opened a file. “Mrs. Pearline Portious-Dehaney, eh?”

“My name is Adamine Bustamante,” my mother snapped.

Sylvia shook her head slowly, carefully. She eased herself up from behind her little desk, went around it, and sat beside my mother. She took her black hands into her own and said, “Now, now, Pearline. You’re here to get better, and we’re here to help you get better. So this won’t do at all. You’ll meet all kinds of people here at St. Osmund’s who will tell you they are anyone and everyone—from Jesus Christ, to the Pope, to Elvis Presley, to King George. Well now, all that nonsense doesn’t do anyone any good, does it? Best you just be yourself, eh, Pearline? Do we have a deal? In no time at all you will be back with your husband. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Sylvia Lightbourne tries to describe my mother’s eyes to me, and how she had the distinct impression that she was suddenly the one being evaluated. Adamine sucked her teeth.

“My name is Adamine Bustamante,” she said again, and her tone was final.

Sylvia, deliberately and carefully, frowned. She returned to her position behind the desk.

“You will find, Mrs. Portious-Dehaney, that the days and weeks here have a very strict order. This is to help you. You will try not to fall out of line. You will be happy to know that Wednesday nights are film nights, if you are well behaved of course. And Sunday is for church. I trust you are fully continent, Mrs. Portious-Dehaney? That we won’t be having to put you on the wet and dirty ward? Good, good. Now off with you.”

M
ILTON DEHANEY CONTINUES.

“After that I don’t lay a hand on her again, cause I realize she don’t take disciplining. I just make her have her own way in things, for I understand too that she was one dangerous bitch. So she start to wrap up her head again. I never say nothing. She start to walk out into the city. I never say kemps. She start to go out into the heart of Birmingham, and Lord have mercy on all of we, that mad woman say she gone there to give warning. The whole time I just keep my own counsel. I make the cards fall where they may.”

But on the night my mother did not return, Milton tells me he was surprised by how worried he was. He imagined the worst, that maybe she had been held; maybe she had been raped; killed; left for dead in a back alley; or maybe she had fallen sick in the street and was now in the hospital; or maybe a lorry had run over her. But as surprised as he was by this first reaction, he was equally ashamed of the second.

For Milton felt a sense of relief. And then it became something more than relief. Soon it bordered on a wish. He hoped that something truly tragic had befallen Adamine. He wondered what to do, and finally decided to do nothing. Still, he went to bed smiling. Milton decided he was going to call the police in the morning, but for just one night, one blessed night, he would enjoy being alone.

He slept more peacefully than he had in three years, but before the sun had come up there was a loud rapping at the front door. He dragged himself out of bed and opened the door to two grave-looking police officers.

They clasped their hats to their chests and Milton tried to frown and look worried.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Dehaney, but we have bad news for you.”

Milton wondered then whether he could find it in his heart to bawl and carry on when they told him that his wife was dead. He hadn’t even done as much for Doris, whom he truly missed. When Doris died he understood what widows and widowers meant when they said they had lost a part of themselves. But still, he had not been able to weep. He was so wrapped up in thinking about how to react appropriately to Adamine’s death that he barely heard the police officers.

“We are sorry, Mr. Dehaney, but your wife isn’t well. We’ve been holding her for examination.”

When the words registered, Milton’s heart sank. She was alive after all.

“Oh no. Oh Lord,” he said, genuinely heartbroken.

The officers patted his shoulders and explained where Adamine was. Milton told them thanks.

He was later called to testify on his wife’s behalf. He was glad she wasn’t in the room. He knew that he would not have been able to look her in the eyes as he told the doctor and the lawyers that his wife had been sick for a long, long time. Deranged. Crazy. He told them he was at his wits’ end. He told them he would be much obliged if they took her away to a hospital where she could get proper treatment. He was willing to sign any paper to that effect.

And so Milton signed the papers and for him it was as if he were signing for a divorce.

B
Y ANY STANDARD THE GARDEN AT ST. OSMUND’S WAS A
thing of wonder. Julie tells me she had never before, and has never since, smelled anything so intoxicating or seen anything laid out so beautifully. Such intricate patterns. Such a perfect coordination of colors. It was a perfect place to escape from the choking asylum smell, that combination of piss, paraldehyde, carbolic soap, floor polish, and boiled cabbage.

She knew who was responsible for this oasis. It was one of the male attendants, although she thought of him only as the gardener. When she speaks of him, this is what she calls him. The Gardener. He was a tall, lanky, gap-toothed man and she often saw him out there, either by himself or coordinating a group of patients. His voice was an incoherent mumble, and he had to resort to a kind of sign language.
Clip this leaf. Turn up that bit of soil. Water here.
Soon enough the patients would pick up on what exactly he was saying. In fact, they seemed to relish their time out in the sun.

But Julie had an instant dislike to the man. At first, she felt guilty about this. Surely anyone capable of creating something as breathtaking as the garden couldn’t be a bad person? But she trusted her instincts. There was something cold about Bruce Young, and she found herself trying to look into his eyes. She was never able to do this because she always found that he was staring straight back at her and she would feel a coldness spreading inside. Still, she thought, if only she could look at him once when he was relaxed, look at him in the way she had learned to look at her patients, she might be able to determine just how crazy the man really was.