{"id":74,"date":"2021-06-15T13:47:49","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T17:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/thebelljar\/?post_type=chapter&p=74"},"modified":"2022-01-28T11:10:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T16:10:27","slug":"14","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/chapter\/14\/","title":{"raw":"Chapter 14","rendered":"Chapter 14"},"content":{"raw":"It was completely dark.\r\n\r\nI felt the darkness, but nothing else, and my head rose, feeling it, like the head of a worm. Someone was moaning. Then a great, hard weight smashed against my cheek like a stone wall and the moaning stopped.\r\n\r\nThe silence surged back, smoothing itself as black water smooths to its old surface calm over a dropped stone.\r\n\r\nA cool wind rushed by. I was being transported at enormous speed down a tunnel into the earth. Then the wind stopped. There was a rumbling, as of many voices, protesting and disagreeing in the distance. Then the voices stopped.\r\n\r\nA chisel cracked down on my eye, and a slit of light opened, like a mouth or a wound, till the darkness clamped shut on it again. I tried to roll away from the direction of the light, but hands wrapped round my limbs like mummy bands, and I couldn't move.\r\n\r\nI began to think I must be in an underground chamber, lit by blinding lights, and that the chamber was full of people who for some reason were holding me down.\r\n\r\nThen the chisel struck again, and the light leapt into my head, and through the thick, warm, furry dark, a voice cried,\r\n\r\n\u201cMother!\u201d\r\n\r\nAir breathed and played over my face.\r\n\r\nI felt the shape of a room around me, a big room with open windows. A pillow moulded itself under my head, and my body floated, without pressure, between thin sheets.\r\n\r\nThen I felt warmth, like a hand on my face. I must be lying in the sun. If I opened my eyes, I would see colours and shapes bending in upon me like nurses.\r\n\r\nI opened my eyes.\r\n\r\nIt was completely dark.\r\n\r\nSomebody was breathing beside me.\r\n\r\n\u201cI can't see,\u201d I said.\r\n\r\nA cheery voice spoke out of the dark. \u201cThere are lots of blind people in the world. You'll marry a nice blind man some day.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man with the chisel had come back.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy do you bother?\u201d I said. \u201cIt's no use.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou mustn't talk like that.\u201d His fingers probed at the great, aching boss over my left eye. Then he loosened something, and a ragged gap of light appeared, like the hole in a wall. A man's head peered round the edge of it.\r\n\r\n\u201cCan you see me?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCan you see anything else?\u201d\r\n\r\nThen I remembered. \u201cI can't see anything.\u201d The gap narrowed and went dark. \u201cI'm blind.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNonsense! Who told you that?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe nurse.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man snorted. He finished taping the bandage back over my eye. \u201cYou are a very lucky girl. Your sight is perfectly intact.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSomebody to see you.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe nurse beamed and disappeared.\r\n\r\nMy mother came smiling round the foot of the bed. She was wearing a dress with purple cartwheels on it and she looked awful.\r\n\r\nA big tall boy followed her. At first I couldn't make out who it was, because my eye only opened a short way, but then I saw it was my brother.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey said you wanted to see me.\u201d\r\n\r\nMy mother perched on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on my leg. She looked loving and reproachful, and I wanted her to go away.\r\n\r\n\u201cI didn't think I said anything.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThey said you called for me.\u201d She seemed ready to cry. Her face puckered up and quivered like a pale jelly.\r\n\r\n\u201cHow are you?\u201d my brother said.\r\n\r\nI looked my mother in the eye.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe same,\u201d I said.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou have a visitor.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI don't want a visitor.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe nurse bustled out and whispered to somebody in the hall. Then she came back. \u201cHe'd very much like to see you.\u201d\r\n\r\nI looked down at the yellow legs sticking out of the unfamiliar white silk pyjamas they had dressed me in. The skin shook flabbily when I moved, as if there wasn't a muscle in it, and it was covered with a short, thick stubble of black hair.\r\n\r\n\u201cWho is it?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSomebody you know.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat's his name?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGeorge Bakewell.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI don't know any George Bakewell.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe says he knows you.\u201d\r\n\r\nThen the nurse went out, and a very familiar boy came in and said, \u201cMind if I sit on the edge of your bed?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe was wearing a white coat, and I could see a stethoscope poking out of his pocket. I thought it must be somebody I knew dressed up as a doctor.\r\n\r\nI had meant to cover my legs if anybody came in, but now I saw it was too late, so I let them stick out, just as they were, disgusting and ugly.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat's me,\u201d I thought. \u201cThat's what I am.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou remember me, don't you, Esther?\u201d\r\n\r\nI squinted at the boy's face through the crack of my good eye. The other eye hadn't opened yet, but the eye doctor said it would be all right in a few days.\r\n\r\nThe boy looked at me as if I were some exciting new zoo animal and he was about to burst out laughing.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou remember me, don't you, Esther?\u201d He spoke slowly, the way one speaks to a dull child. \u201cI'm George Bakewell. I go to your church. You dated my room-mate once at Amherst.\u201d\r\n\r\nI thought I placed the boy's face then. It hovered dimly at the rim of memory\u2014the sort of face to which I would never bother to attach a name.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI'm houseman at this hospital.\u201d\r\n\r\nHow could this George Bakewell have become a doctor so suddenly? I wondered. He didn't really know me, either. He just wanted to see what a girl who was crazy enough to kill herself looked like.\r\n\r\nI turned my face to the wall.\r\n\r\n\u201cGet out,\u201d I said. \u201cGet the hell out and don't come back.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI want to see a mirror.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe nurse hummed busily as she opened one drawer after another, stuffing the new underclothes and blouses and skirts and pyjamas my mother had bought me into the black patent leather overnight case.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy can't I see a mirror?\u201d\r\n\r\nI had been dressed in a sheath, striped grey and white, like mattress ticking, with a wide, shiny red belt, and they had propped me up in an armchair.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy can't I?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBecause you better not.\u201d The nurse shut the lid of the overnight case with a little snap.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBecause you don't look very pretty.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOh, just let me see.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe nurse sighed and opened the top bureau drawer. She took out a large mirror in a wooden frame that matched the wood of the bureau and handed it to me.\r\n\r\nAt first I didn't see what the trouble was. It wasn't a mirror at all, but a picture.\r\n\r\nYou couldn't tell whether the person in the picture was a man or a woman, because their hair was shaved off and sprouted in bristly chicken-feather tufts all over their head. One side of the person's face was purple, and bulged out in a shapeless way, shading to green along the edges, and then to a sallow yellow. The person's mouth was pale brown, with a rose-coloured sore at either corner.\r\n\r\nThe most startling thing about the face was its supernatural conglomeration of bright colours.\r\n\r\nI smiled.\r\n\r\nThe mouth in the mirror cracked into a grin.\r\n\r\nA minute after the crash another nurse ran in. She took one look at the broken mirror, and at me, standing over the blind, white pieces, and hustled the young nurse out of the room.\r\n\r\n\u201cDidn't I\u00a0tell<\/em>\u00a0you,\u201d I could hear her say.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut I only...\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDidn't I\u00a0tell<\/em>\u00a0you!\u201d\r\n\r\nI listened with mild interest. Anybody could drop a mirror. I didn't see why they should get so stirred up.\r\n\r\nThe other, older nurse came back into the room. She stood there, arms folded, staring hard at me.\r\n\r\n\u201cSeven years\u2019 bad luck.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI said,\u201d the nurse raised her voice, as if speaking to a deaf person, \u201cseven years' bad luck<\/em>.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe young nurse returned with a dustpan and brush and began to sweep up the glittery splinters.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat's only a superstition,\u201d I said then.\r\n\r\n\u201cHuh!\u201d The second nurse addressed herself to the nurse on her hands and knees as if I wasn't there. \u201cAt you-know-where they'll take care of\u00a0her<\/em>!\u201d\r\n\r\nFrom the back window of the ambulance I could see street after familiar street funnelling off into a summery green distance. My mother sat on one side of me, and my brother on the other.\r\n\r\nI had pretended I didn't know why they were moving me from the hospital in my home town to a city hospital, to see what they would say.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey want you to be in a special ward,\u201d my mother said. \u201cThey don't have that sort of ward at our hospital.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI liked it where I was.\u201d\r\n\r\nMy mother's mouth tightened. \u201cYou should have behaved better, then.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou shouldn't have broken that mirror. Then maybe they'd have let you stay.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut of course I knew the mirror had nothing to do with it.\r\n\r\nI sat in bed with the covers up to my neck.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy can't I get up? I'm not sick.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWard rounds,\u201d the nurse said. \u201cYou can get up after ward rounds.\u201d She shoved the bed-curtains back and revealed a fat young Italian woman in the next bed.\r\n\r\nThe Italian woman had a mass of tight black curls, starting at her forehead, that rose in a mountainous pompadour and cascaded down her back. Whenever she moved, the huge arrangement of hair moved with her, as if made of stiff black paper.\r\n\r\nThe woman looked at me and giggled. \u201cWhy are you here?\u201d She didn't wait for an answer. \u201cI'm here on account of my French-Canadian mother-in-law.\u201d She giggled again. \u201cMy husband knows I can't stand her, and still he said she could come and visit us, and when she came, my tongue stuck out of my head, I couldn't stop it. They ran me into Emergency and then they put me up here,\u201d she lowered her voice, \u201calong with the nuts.\u201d Then she said, \u201cWhat's the matter with you?\u201d\r\n\r\nI turned her my full face, with the bulging purple and green eye. \u201cI tried to kill myself.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe woman stared at me. Then, hastily, she snatched up a movie magazine from her bed-table and pretended to be reading.\r\n\r\nThe swinging door opposite my bed flew open, and a whole troop of young boys and girls in white coats came in, with an older, grey-haired man. They were all smiling with bright, artificial smiles. They grouped themselves at the foot of my bed.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd how are you feeling this morning, Miss Greenwood?\u201d\r\n\r\nI tried to decide which one of them had spoken. I hate saying anything to a group of people. When I talk to a group of people I always have to single out one and talk to him, and all the while I am talking I feel the others are peering at me and taking unfair advantage. I also hate people to ask cheerfully how you are when they know you're feeling like hell and expect you to say \u201cFine.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI feel lousy.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cLousy. Hmm,\u201d somebody said, and a boy ducked his head with a little smile. Somebody else scribbled something on a clipboard. Then somebody pulled a straight, solemn face and said, \u201cAnd why do you feel lousy?\u201d\r\n\r\nI thought some of the boys and girls in that bright group might well be friends of Buddy Willard. They would know I knew him, and they would be curious to see me, and afterwards they would gossip about me among themselves. I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.\r\n\r\n\u201cI can't sleep...\u201d\r\n\r\nThey interrupted me. \u201cBut the nurse says you slept last night.\u201d I looked round the crescent of fresh, strange faces.\r\n\r\n\u201cI can't read.\u201d I raised my voice. \u201cI can't eat.\u201d It occurred to me I'd been eating ravenously ever since I came to.\r\n\r\nThe people in the group had turned from me and were murmuring in low voices to each other. Finally, the grey-haired man stepped out.\r\n\r\n\u201cThank you, Miss Greenwood. You will be seen by one of the staff doctors presently.\u201d\r\n\r\nThen the group moved on to the bed of the Italian woman.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd how are you feeling today, Mrs...\u201d somebody said, and the name sounded long and full of l's, like Mrs Tomolillo.\r\n\r\nMrs Tomolillo giggled. \u201cOh, I'm fine, doctor. I'm just fine.\u201d Then she lowered her voice and whispered something I couldn't hear. One or two people in the group glanced in my direction. Then somebody said, \u201cAll right, Mrs Tomolillo,\u201d and somebody stepped out and pulled the bed-curtain between us like a white wall.\r\n\r\nI sat on one end of a wooden bench in the grassy square between the four brick walls of the hospital. My mother, in her purple cartwheel dress, sat at the other end. She had her head propped in her hand, index finger on her cheek, and thumb under her chin.\r\n\r\nMrs Tomolillo was sitting with some dark-haired, laughing Italians on the next bench down. Every time my mother moved, Mrs Tomolillo imitated her. Now Mrs Tomolillo was sitting with her index finger on her cheek and her thumb under her chin, and her head tilted wistfully to one side.\r\n\r\n\u201cDon't move,\u201d I told my mother in a low voice. \u201cThat woman's imitating you.\u201d\r\n\r\nMy mother turned to glance round, but quick as a wink, Mrs Tomolillo dropped her fat white hands in her lap and started talking vigorously to her friends.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy no, she's not,\u201d my mother said. \u201cShe's not even paying any attention to us.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut the minute my mother turned round to me again, Mrs Tomolillo matched the tips of her fingers together the way my mother had just done and cast a black, mocking look at me.\r\n\r\nThe lawn was white with doctors.\r\n\r\nAll the time my mother and I had been sitting there, in the narrow cone of sun that shone down between the tall brick walls, doctors had been coming up to me and introducing themselves. \u201cI'm Doctor Soandso, I'm Doctor Soandso.\u201d\r\n\r\nSome of them looked so young I knew they couldn't be proper doctors, and one of them had a queer name that sounded just like Doctor Syphilis, so I began to look out for suspicious, fake names, and sure enough, a dark-haired fellow who looked very like Doctor Gordon, except that he had black skin where Doctor Gordon's skin was white, came up and said, \u201cI'm Doctor Pancreas,\u201d and shook my hand.\r\n\r\nAfter introducing themselves, the doctors all stood within listening distance, only I couldn't tell my mother that they were taking down every word we said without their hearing me, so I leaned over and whispered into her ear.\r\n\r\nMy mother drew back sharply.\r\n\r\n\u201cOh, Esther, I wish you would co-operate. They say you don't co-operate. They say you won't talk to any of the doctors or make anything in Occupational Therapy...\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI've got to get out of here,\u201d I told her meaningly. \u201cThen I'd be all right. You got me in here,\u201d I said. \u201cYou get me out.\u201d\r\n\r\nI thought if only I could persuade my mother to get me out of the hospital I could work on her sympathies, like that boy with brain disease in the play, and convince her what was the best thing to do.\r\n\r\nTo my surprise, my mother said, \u201cAll right, I'll try to get you out\u2014even if only to a better place. If I try to get you out,\u201d she laid a hand on my knee, \u201cpromise you'll be good?\u201d\r\n\r\nI spun round and glared straight at Doctor Syphilis, who stood at my elbow taking notes on a tiny, almost invisible pad. \u201cI promise,\u201d I said in a loud, conspicuous voice.\r\n\r\nThe negro wheeled the food cart into the patients' dining-room. The Psychiatric Ward at the hospital was very small\u2014just two corridors in an L-shape, lined with rooms, and an alcove of beds behind the OT shop, where I was, and a little area with a table and a few seats by a window in the corner of the L, which was our lounge and dining-room.\r\n\r\nUsually it was a shrunken old white man that brought our food, but today it was a negro. The negro was with a woman in blue stiletto heels, and she was telling him what to do. The negro kept grinning and chuckling in a silly way.\r\n\r\nThen he carried a tray over to our table with three lidded tin tureens on it, and started banging the tureens down. The woman left the room, locking the door behind her. All the time the negro was banging down the tureens and then the dinted silver and the thick, white china plates, he gawped at us with big, rolling eyes.\r\n\r\nI could tell we were his first crazy people.\r\n\r\nNobody at the table made a move to take the lids off the tin tureens, and the nurse stood back to see if any of us would take the lids off before she came to do it. Usually Mrs Tomolillo had taken the lids off and dished out everybody's food like a little mother, but then they sent her home, and nobody seemed to want to take her place.\r\n\r\nI was starving, so I lifted the lid off the first bowl.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat's very nice of you, Esther,\u201d the nurse said pleasantly. \u201cWould you like to take some beans and pass them round to the others?\u201d\r\n\r\nI dished myself out a helping of green string beans and turned to pass the tureen to the enormous red-headed woman at my right. This was the first time the red-headed woman had been allowed up to the table. I had seen her once, at the very end of the L-shaped corridor, standing in front of an open door with bars on the square, inset window.\r\n\r\nShe had been yelling and laughing in a rude way and slapping her thighs at the passing doctors, and the white-jacketed attendant who took care of the people in that end of the ward was leaning against the hall radiator, laughing himself sick.\r\n\r\nThe red-headed woman snatched the tureen from me and upended it on her plate. Beans mountained up in front of her and scattered over on to her lap and on to the floor like stiff, green straws.\r\n\r\n\u201cOh, Mrs Mole!\u201d the nurse said in a sad voice. \u201cI think you better eat in your room today.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd she returned most of the beans to the tureen and gave it to the person next to Mrs Mole and led Mrs Mole off. All the way down the hall to her room, Mrs Mole kept turning round and making leering faces at us, and ugly, oinking noises.\r\n\r\nThe negro had come back and was starting to collect the empty plates of people who hadn't dished out any beans yet.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe're not done,\u201d I told him. \u201cYou can just wait.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMah, mah!\u201d The negro widened his eyes in mock wonder. He glanced round. The nurse had not yet returned from locking up Mrs Mole. The negro made me an insolent bow. \u201cMiss Mucky-Muck,\u201d he said under his breath.\r\n\r\nI lifted the lid off the second tureen and uncovered a wodge of macaroni, stone-cold and stuck together in a gluey paste. The third and last tureen was chock-full of baked beans.\r\n\r\nNow I knew perfectly well you didn't serve two kinds of beans together at a meal. Beans and carrots, or beans and peas, maybe, but never beans and beans. The negro was just trying to see how much we would take.\r\n\r\nThe nurse came back, and the negro edged off at a distance. I ate as much as I could of the baked beans. Then I rose from the table, passing round to the side where the nurse couldn't see me below the waist, and behind the negro, who was clearing the dirty plates. I drew my foot back and gave him a sharp, hard kick on the calf of the leg.\r\n\r\nThe negro leapt away with a yelp and rolled his eyes at me. \u201cOh Miz, oh Miz,\u201d he moaned, rubbing his leg. \u201cYou shouldn't of done that, you shouldn't, you reely shouldn't.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat's what\u00a0you<\/em>\u00a0get,\u201d I said, and stared him in the eye.\r\n\r\n\u201cDon't you want to get up today?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo.\u201d I huddled down more deeply in the bed and pulled the sheet up over my head. Then I lifted a corner of the sheet and peered out. The nurse was shaking down the thermometer she had just removed from my mouth.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou see, it's normal.\u201d I had looked at the thermometer before she came to collect it, the way I always did. \u201cYou see, it's normal, what do you keep taking it for?\u201d\r\n\r\nI wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn't say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed.\r\n\r\nThen, through the sheet, I felt a slight, annoying pressure on my leg. I peeped out. The nurse had set her tray of thermometers on my bed while she turned her back and took the pulse of the person who lay next to me, in Mrs Tomolillo's place.\r\n\r\nA heavy naughtiness pricked through my veins, irritating and attractive as the hurt of a loose tooth. I yawned and stirred, as if about to turn over, and edged my foot under the box.\r\n\r\n\u201cOh!\u201d The nurse's cry sounded like a cry for help, and another nurse came running. \u201cLook what you've done!\u201d\r\n\r\nI poked my head out of the covers and stared over the edge of the bed. Around the overturned enamel tray, a star of thermometer shards glittered, and balls of mercury trembled like celestial dew.\r\n\r\n\u201cI'm sorry,\u201d I said. \u201cIt was an accident.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe second nurse fixed me with a baleful eye. \u201cYou did it on purpose. I\u00a0saw<\/em>\u00a0you.\u201d\r\n\r\nThen she hurried off, and almost immediately two attendants came and wheeled me, bed and all, down to Mrs Mole's old room, but not before I had scooped up a ball of mercury. Soon after they had locked the door, I could see the negro's face, a molasses-coloured moon, risen at the window grating, but I pretended not to notice.\r\n\r\nI opened my fingers a crack, like a child with a secret, and smiled at the silver globe cupped in my palm. If I dropped it, it would break into a million little replicas of itself, and if I pushed them near each other, they would fuse, without a crack, into one whole again.\r\n\r\nI smiled and smiled at the small silver ball.\r\n\r\nI couldn't imagine what they had done with Mrs Mole.","rendered":"

It was completely dark.<\/p>\n

I felt the darkness, but nothing else, and my head rose, feeling it, like the head of a worm. Someone was moaning. Then a great, hard weight smashed against my cheek like a stone wall and the moaning stopped.<\/p>\n

The silence surged back, smoothing itself as black water smooths to its old surface calm over a dropped stone.<\/p>\n

A cool wind rushed by. I was being transported at enormous speed down a tunnel into the earth. Then the wind stopped. There was a rumbling, as of many voices, protesting and disagreeing in the distance. Then the voices stopped.<\/p>\n

A chisel cracked down on my eye, and a slit of light opened, like a mouth or a wound, till the darkness clamped shut on it again. I tried to roll away from the direction of the light, but hands wrapped round my limbs like mummy bands, and I couldn’t move.<\/p>\n

I began to think I must be in an underground chamber, lit by blinding lights, and that the chamber was full of people who for some reason were holding me down.<\/p>\n

Then the chisel struck again, and the light leapt into my head, and through the thick, warm, furry dark, a voice cried,<\/p>\n

\u201cMother!\u201d<\/p>\n

Air breathed and played over my face.<\/p>\n

I felt the shape of a room around me, a big room with open windows. A pillow moulded itself under my head, and my body floated, without pressure, between thin sheets.<\/p>\n

Then I felt warmth, like a hand on my face. I must be lying in the sun. If I opened my eyes, I would see colours and shapes bending in upon me like nurses.<\/p>\n

I opened my eyes.<\/p>\n

It was completely dark.<\/p>\n

Somebody was breathing beside me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can’t see,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

A cheery voice spoke out of the dark. \u201cThere are lots of blind people in the world. You’ll marry a nice blind man some day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man with the chisel had come back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you bother?\u201d I said. \u201cIt’s no use.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mustn’t talk like that.\u201d His fingers probed at the great, aching boss over my left eye. Then he loosened something, and a ragged gap of light appeared, like the hole in a wall. A man’s head peered round the edge of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you see me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you see anything else?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I remembered. \u201cI can’t see anything.\u201d The gap narrowed and went dark. \u201cI’m blind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNonsense! Who told you that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nurse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man snorted. He finished taping the bandage back over my eye. \u201cYou are a very lucky girl. Your sight is perfectly intact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nurse beamed and disappeared.<\/p>\n

My mother came smiling round the foot of the bed. She was wearing a dress with purple cartwheels on it and she looked awful.<\/p>\n

A big tall boy followed her. At first I couldn’t make out who it was, because my eye only opened a short way, but then I saw it was my brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said you wanted to see me.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother perched on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on my leg. She looked loving and reproachful, and I wanted her to go away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t think I said anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said you called for me.\u201d She seemed ready to cry. Her face puckered up and quivered like a pale jelly.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are you?\u201d my brother said.<\/p>\n

I looked my mother in the eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a visitor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t want a visitor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nurse bustled out and whispered to somebody in the hall. Then she came back. \u201cHe’d very much like to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked down at the yellow legs sticking out of the unfamiliar white silk pyjamas they had dressed me in. The skin shook flabbily when I moved, as if there wasn’t a muscle in it, and it was covered with a short, thick stubble of black hair.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat’s his name?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge Bakewell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know any George Bakewell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says he knows you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the nurse went out, and a very familiar boy came in and said, \u201cMind if I sit on the edge of your bed?\u201d<\/p>\n

He was wearing a white coat, and I could see a stethoscope poking out of his pocket. I thought it must be somebody I knew dressed up as a doctor.<\/p>\n

I had meant to cover my legs if anybody came in, but now I saw it was too late, so I let them stick out, just as they were, disgusting and ugly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s me,\u201d I thought. \u201cThat’s what I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou remember me, don’t you, Esther?\u201d<\/p>\n

I squinted at the boy’s face through the crack of my good eye. The other eye hadn’t opened yet, but the eye doctor said it would be all right in a few days.<\/p>\n

The boy looked at me as if I were some exciting new zoo animal and he was about to burst out laughing.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou remember me, don’t you, Esther?\u201d He spoke slowly, the way one speaks to a dull child. \u201cI’m George Bakewell. I go to your church. You dated my room-mate once at Amherst.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought I placed the boy’s face then. It hovered dimly at the rim of memory\u2014the sort of face to which I would never bother to attach a name.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m houseman at this hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

How could this George Bakewell have become a doctor so suddenly? I wondered. He didn’t really know me, either. He just wanted to see what a girl who was crazy enough to kill herself looked like.<\/p>\n

I turned my face to the wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet out,\u201d I said. \u201cGet the hell out and don’t come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to see a mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nurse hummed busily as she opened one drawer after another, stuffing the new underclothes and blouses and skirts and pyjamas my mother had bought me into the black patent leather overnight case.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy can’t I see a mirror?\u201d<\/p>\n

I had been dressed in a sheath, striped grey and white, like mattress ticking, with a wide, shiny red belt, and they had propped me up in an armchair.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy can’t I?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you better not.\u201d The nurse shut the lid of the overnight case with a little snap.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you don’t look very pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, just let me see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nurse sighed and opened the top bureau drawer. She took out a large mirror in a wooden frame that matched the wood of the bureau and handed it to me.<\/p>\n

At first I didn’t see what the trouble was. It wasn’t a mirror at all, but a picture.<\/p>\n

You couldn’t tell whether the person in the picture was a man or a woman, because their hair was shaved off and sprouted in bristly chicken-feather tufts all over their head. One side of the person’s face was purple, and bulged out in a shapeless way, shading to green along the edges, and then to a sallow yellow. The person’s mouth was pale brown, with a rose-coloured sore at either corner.<\/p>\n

The most startling thing about the face was its supernatural conglomeration of bright colours.<\/p>\n

I smiled.<\/p>\n

The mouth in the mirror cracked into a grin.<\/p>\n

A minute after the crash another nurse ran in. She took one look at the broken mirror, and at me, standing over the blind, white pieces, and hustled the young nurse out of the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn’t I\u00a0tell<\/em>\u00a0you,\u201d I could hear her say.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I only…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn’t I\u00a0tell<\/em>\u00a0you!\u201d<\/p>\n

I listened with mild interest. Anybody could drop a mirror. I didn’t see why they should get so stirred up.<\/p>\n

The other, older nurse came back into the room. She stood there, arms folded, staring hard at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeven years\u2019 bad luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI said,\u201d the nurse raised her voice, as if speaking to a deaf person, \u201cseven years’ bad luck<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The young nurse returned with a dustpan and brush and began to sweep up the glittery splinters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s only a superstition,\u201d I said then.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh!\u201d The second nurse addressed herself to the nurse on her hands and knees as if I wasn’t there. \u201cAt you-know-where they’ll take care of\u00a0her<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n

From the back window of the ambulance I could see street after familiar street funnelling off into a summery green distance. My mother sat on one side of me, and my brother on the other.<\/p>\n

I had pretended I didn’t know why they were moving me from the hospital in my home town to a city hospital, to see what they would say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want you to be in a special ward,\u201d my mother said. \u201cThey don’t have that sort of ward at our hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked it where I was.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother’s mouth tightened. \u201cYou should have behaved better, then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou shouldn’t have broken that mirror. Then maybe they’d have let you stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

But of course I knew the mirror had nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n

I sat in bed with the covers up to my neck.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy can’t I get up? I’m not sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWard rounds,\u201d the nurse said. \u201cYou can get up after ward rounds.\u201d She shoved the bed-curtains back and revealed a fat young Italian woman in the next bed.<\/p>\n

The Italian woman had a mass of tight black curls, starting at her forehead, that rose in a mountainous pompadour and cascaded down her back. Whenever she moved, the huge arrangement of hair moved with her, as if made of stiff black paper.<\/p>\n

The woman looked at me and giggled. \u201cWhy are you here?\u201d She didn’t wait for an answer. \u201cI’m here on account of my French-Canadian mother-in-law.\u201d She giggled again. \u201cMy husband knows I can’t stand her, and still he said she could come and visit us, and when she came, my tongue stuck out of my head, I couldn’t stop it. They ran me into Emergency and then they put me up here,\u201d she lowered her voice, \u201calong with the nuts.\u201d Then she said, \u201cWhat’s the matter with you?\u201d<\/p>\n

I turned her my full face, with the bulging purple and green eye. \u201cI tried to kill myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The woman stared at me. Then, hastily, she snatched up a movie magazine from her bed-table and pretended to be reading.<\/p>\n

The swinging door opposite my bed flew open, and a whole troop of young boys and girls in white coats came in, with an older, grey-haired man. They were all smiling with bright, artificial smiles. They grouped themselves at the foot of my bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd how are you feeling this morning, Miss Greenwood?\u201d<\/p>\n

I tried to decide which one of them had spoken. I hate saying anything to a group of people. When I talk to a group of people I always have to single out one and talk to him, and all the while I am talking I feel the others are peering at me and taking unfair advantage. I also hate people to ask cheerfully how you are when they know you’re feeling like hell and expect you to say \u201cFine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel lousy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLousy. Hmm,\u201d somebody said, and a boy ducked his head with a little smile. Somebody else scribbled something on a clipboard. Then somebody pulled a straight, solemn face and said, \u201cAnd why do you feel lousy?\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought some of the boys and girls in that bright group might well be friends of Buddy Willard. They would know I knew him, and they would be curious to see me, and afterwards they would gossip about me among themselves. I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can’t sleep…\u201d<\/p>\n

They interrupted me. \u201cBut the nurse says you slept last night.\u201d I looked round the crescent of fresh, strange faces.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can’t read.\u201d I raised my voice. \u201cI can’t eat.\u201d It occurred to me I’d been eating ravenously ever since I came to.<\/p>\n

The people in the group had turned from me and were murmuring in low voices to each other. Finally, the grey-haired man stepped out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, Miss Greenwood. You will be seen by one of the staff doctors presently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the group moved on to the bed of the Italian woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd how are you feeling today, Mrs…\u201d somebody said, and the name sounded long and full of l’s, like Mrs Tomolillo.<\/p>\n

Mrs Tomolillo giggled. \u201cOh, I’m fine, doctor. I’m just fine.\u201d Then she lowered her voice and whispered something I couldn’t hear. One or two people in the group glanced in my direction. Then somebody said, \u201cAll right, Mrs Tomolillo,\u201d and somebody stepped out and pulled the bed-curtain between us like a white wall.<\/p>\n

I sat on one end of a wooden bench in the grassy square between the four brick walls of the hospital. My mother, in her purple cartwheel dress, sat at the other end. She had her head propped in her hand, index finger on her cheek, and thumb under her chin.<\/p>\n

Mrs Tomolillo was sitting with some dark-haired, laughing Italians on the next bench down. Every time my mother moved, Mrs Tomolillo imitated her. Now Mrs Tomolillo was sitting with her index finger on her cheek and her thumb under her chin, and her head tilted wistfully to one side.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon’t move,\u201d I told my mother in a low voice. \u201cThat woman’s imitating you.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother turned to glance round, but quick as a wink, Mrs Tomolillo dropped her fat white hands in her lap and started talking vigorously to her friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy no, she’s not,\u201d my mother said. \u201cShe’s not even paying any attention to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the minute my mother turned round to me again, Mrs Tomolillo matched the tips of her fingers together the way my mother had just done and cast a black, mocking look at me.<\/p>\n

The lawn was white with doctors.<\/p>\n

All the time my mother and I had been sitting there, in the narrow cone of sun that shone down between the tall brick walls, doctors had been coming up to me and introducing themselves. \u201cI’m Doctor Soandso, I’m Doctor Soandso.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of them looked so young I knew they couldn’t be proper doctors, and one of them had a queer name that sounded just like Doctor Syphilis, so I began to look out for suspicious, fake names, and sure enough, a dark-haired fellow who looked very like Doctor Gordon, except that he had black skin where Doctor Gordon’s skin was white, came up and said, \u201cI’m Doctor Pancreas,\u201d and shook my hand.<\/p>\n

After introducing themselves, the doctors all stood within listening distance, only I couldn’t tell my mother that they were taking down every word we said without their hearing me, so I leaned over and whispered into her ear.<\/p>\n

My mother drew back sharply.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Esther, I wish you would co-operate. They say you don’t co-operate. They say you won’t talk to any of the doctors or make anything in Occupational Therapy…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve got to get out of here,\u201d I told her meaningly. \u201cThen I’d be all right. You got me in here,\u201d I said. \u201cYou get me out.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought if only I could persuade my mother to get me out of the hospital I could work on her sympathies, like that boy with brain disease in the play, and convince her what was the best thing to do.<\/p>\n

To my surprise, my mother said, \u201cAll right, I’ll try to get you out\u2014even if only to a better place. If I try to get you out,\u201d she laid a hand on my knee, \u201cpromise you’ll be good?\u201d<\/p>\n

I spun round and glared straight at Doctor Syphilis, who stood at my elbow taking notes on a tiny, almost invisible pad. \u201cI promise,\u201d I said in a loud, conspicuous voice.<\/p>\n

The negro wheeled the food cart into the patients’ dining-room. The Psychiatric Ward at the hospital was very small\u2014just two corridors in an L-shape, lined with rooms, and an alcove of beds behind the OT shop, where I was, and a little area with a table and a few seats by a window in the corner of the L, which was our lounge and dining-room.<\/p>\n

Usually it was a shrunken old white man that brought our food, but today it was a negro. The negro was with a woman in blue stiletto heels, and she was telling him what to do. The negro kept grinning and chuckling in a silly way.<\/p>\n

Then he carried a tray over to our table with three lidded tin tureens on it, and started banging the tureens down. The woman left the room, locking the door behind her. All the time the negro was banging down the tureens and then the dinted silver and the thick, white china plates, he gawped at us with big, rolling eyes.<\/p>\n

I could tell we were his first crazy people.<\/p>\n

Nobody at the table made a move to take the lids off the tin tureens, and the nurse stood back to see if any of us would take the lids off before she came to do it. Usually Mrs Tomolillo had taken the lids off and dished out everybody’s food like a little mother, but then they sent her home, and nobody seemed to want to take her place.<\/p>\n

I was starving, so I lifted the lid off the first bowl.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s very nice of you, Esther,\u201d the nurse said pleasantly. \u201cWould you like to take some beans and pass them round to the others?\u201d<\/p>\n

I dished myself out a helping of green string beans and turned to pass the tureen to the enormous red-headed woman at my right. This was the first time the red-headed woman had been allowed up to the table. I had seen her once, at the very end of the L-shaped corridor, standing in front of an open door with bars on the square, inset window.<\/p>\n

She had been yelling and laughing in a rude way and slapping her thighs at the passing doctors, and the white-jacketed attendant who took care of the people in that end of the ward was leaning against the hall radiator, laughing himself sick.<\/p>\n

The red-headed woman snatched the tureen from me and upended it on her plate. Beans mountained up in front of her and scattered over on to her lap and on to the floor like stiff, green straws.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Mrs Mole!\u201d the nurse said in a sad voice. \u201cI think you better eat in your room today.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she returned most of the beans to the tureen and gave it to the person next to Mrs Mole and led Mrs Mole off. All the way down the hall to her room, Mrs Mole kept turning round and making leering faces at us, and ugly, oinking noises.<\/p>\n

The negro had come back and was starting to collect the empty plates of people who hadn’t dished out any beans yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re not done,\u201d I told him. \u201cYou can just wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMah, mah!\u201d The negro widened his eyes in mock wonder. He glanced round. The nurse had not yet returned from locking up Mrs Mole. The negro made me an insolent bow. \u201cMiss Mucky-Muck,\u201d he said under his breath.<\/p>\n

I lifted the lid off the second tureen and uncovered a wodge of macaroni, stone-cold and stuck together in a gluey paste. The third and last tureen was chock-full of baked beans.<\/p>\n

Now I knew perfectly well you didn’t serve two kinds of beans together at a meal. Beans and carrots, or beans and peas, maybe, but never beans and beans. The negro was just trying to see how much we would take.<\/p>\n

The nurse came back, and the negro edged off at a distance. I ate as much as I could of the baked beans. Then I rose from the table, passing round to the side where the nurse couldn’t see me below the waist, and behind the negro, who was clearing the dirty plates. I drew my foot back and gave him a sharp, hard kick on the calf of the leg.<\/p>\n

The negro leapt away with a yelp and rolled his eyes at me. \u201cOh Miz, oh Miz,\u201d he moaned, rubbing his leg. \u201cYou shouldn’t of done that, you shouldn’t, you reely shouldn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s what\u00a0you<\/em>\u00a0get,\u201d I said, and stared him in the eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon’t you want to get up today?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d I huddled down more deeply in the bed and pulled the sheet up over my head. Then I lifted a corner of the sheet and peered out. The nurse was shaking down the thermometer she had just removed from my mouth.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see, it’s normal.\u201d I had looked at the thermometer before she came to collect it, the way I always did. \u201cYou see, it’s normal, what do you keep taking it for?\u201d<\/p>\n

I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn’t say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed.<\/p>\n

Then, through the sheet, I felt a slight, annoying pressure on my leg. I peeped out. The nurse had set her tray of thermometers on my bed while she turned her back and took the pulse of the person who lay next to me, in Mrs Tomolillo’s place.<\/p>\n

A heavy naughtiness pricked through my veins, irritating and attractive as the hurt of a loose tooth. I yawned and stirred, as if about to turn over, and edged my foot under the box.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u201d The nurse’s cry sounded like a cry for help, and another nurse came running. \u201cLook what you’ve done!\u201d<\/p>\n

I poked my head out of the covers and stared over the edge of the bed. Around the overturned enamel tray, a star of thermometer shards glittered, and balls of mercury trembled like celestial dew.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m sorry,\u201d I said. \u201cIt was an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second nurse fixed me with a baleful eye. \u201cYou did it on purpose. I\u00a0saw<\/em>\u00a0you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then she hurried off, and almost immediately two attendants came and wheeled me, bed and all, down to Mrs Mole’s old room, but not before I had scooped up a ball of mercury. Soon after they had locked the door, I could see the negro’s face, a molasses-coloured moon, risen at the window grating, but I pretended not to notice.<\/p>\n

I opened my fingers a crack, like a child with a secret, and smiled at the silver globe cupped in my palm. If I dropped it, it would break into a million little replicas of itself, and if I pushed them near each other, they would fuse, without a crack, into one whole again.<\/p>\n

I smiled and smiled at the small silver ball.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t imagine what they had done with Mrs Mole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"menu_order":14,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-74","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/74\/revisions\/149"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/74\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebelljar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}