Chapter Twenty-Six
That place didn’t have a soul, but it had eyes. Everywhere you went, someone was watching. Sometimes it was a nurse, but more often it was a fellow inmate. We all watched one another, seeing if we were like them.
Judging and comparing, hoping against all odds that we weren’t as bad as the others. That we were the exception, the one who didn’t belong.
And I didn’t. I still knew that to be true, even if I doubted so much else.
That first morning, I felt feverish, dizzy, out of sorts—but who wouldn’t in a place like that? The nurse who woke me informed me that I needed to shower before I did anything. I thought that would be a good thing. I didn’t know she was going to watch me. She stood in the threshold of the shower room and watched as the faucet spit ice water onto my body. I kept my arms close to me and turned my back to her as much as I could, but she still saw more of my nakedness than my husband had over the last two months.
I hurried to clean myself, rinsing out the shampoo before it had a chance to fully lather. I ran the bar of soap over my ribs, my sunken stomach, my deflated breasts. They no longer dripped with milk, having already given up, having known before my mind caught on that they weren’t necessary. In that moment, I wanted to slip beneath the waters of a tub, but I would settle for washing down the drain with the shampoo bubbles.
After she watched me get dressed, the nurse took me to the cafeteria. We walked past a woman who sat at the entry, rocking, mumbling, drooling, whispering. She spoke quickly, but to herself, as if she were the only one who
would listen.
The nurse grabbed me a tray of food and then told me, “I’ll be back to get you for your appointment with the doctor.” Then she left me alone in a room full of eyes.
I tried to choke down a few bites of what I thought was oatmeal, but my stomach refused to accept more. The combination of food less palatable than those damn TV dinners and smells more noxious than a manure-filled barn in the heat of the summer took any bit of appetite I had. So I sipped on coffee, hoping it could help with my headache, since the buzzing lights in that place seemed to make it throb even more.
I looked around at the others. Worse than the food were the sounds, moans, and the sights of those who no longer looked human, especially the woman by the door. She looked at every person who walked in, but her eyes were blank, her stare beyond us, her body nothing more than a shell pretending at being human though it seemed her soul had left it years ago.
I wanted to plug my ears, close my eyes, wish myself to another time and place, but then I would be just like her, sitting, rocking, moaning to no one other than herself. I needed to get out of there. I needed to get home. I wondered where Wesley was right then. And then I feared that he might know where his mother was and what she had become.
What would he think of me? How would he look at me? Would he see me in the same way I saw the woman by the door?
You’re not her, I told myself. And you’re not Bitsy either.
Had she been in a place like this? Maybe when I got back to Greenwood, we could swap stories over spades of the sights we saw. I could tell her about the woman who stripped off her top every time she got hot. Or the man who pounded his head into the metal food tray when he saw his own reflection. Or the woman about my age who cowered in the dark corner of the cafeteria, hoping the shadows would hide her shiner of a black eye.
I knew they were watching me, too. I saw some of their heads turn when the nurse came back for me.
“Are we ready?” she asked when she returned with a smile. Her eyes seemed too kind for that place. I couldn’t help but wonder why she said we, but then I thought maybe she knew. Maybe she had heard. Maybe she thought Esther was still with me.
As we walked out of the cafeteria, she paused in front of the woman at the door. I looked her over and quickly realized she wasn’t as old as I had first believed. Her pale skin looked smooth—flawless, nearly—with no signs of wrinkles. Had we been sitting around playing cards together, we might have asked her what cold cream she used.
“Don’t tell the doctor,” the nurse said with a wink as she handed the woman a lollipop. The woman scrambled to unwrap it and pop it into her mouth as quickly as possible. Her rocking slowed as she savored her treat.
I couldn’t help myself. As we walked away, I had to ask. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Oh, she’s better now,” the nurse said.
“Better?”
“You should’ve seen her before the lobotomy.”
My knees felt weak and my legs nearly gave out when she said that word. I muttered, “I didn’t see a scar.”
“They don’t all have scars, not when we go through the eye socket.” The words zinged through me, and the hallway began to spin. She said it so matter-of-factly. “I tell you, when it works, you could be right next to someone and have no idea they had one.”
Perhaps you could even live alongside someone, share a game of cards or even a meal, and not know what had happened to them. At least that was when it worked. I was too afraid to ask what happened when it didn’t.
