DAUGHTER IN THE DARK

October 19 1970

 

    The last thing she recalled when she woke up two days later was taking a pill for an afternoon nap, she explained to the nurse hovering bedside.

     How many? she wasn’t sure.

     "Two." Maybe three. Maybe ten.

    There were so many self-medicated episodes her mind couldn't defrost the details. She remembered drawing the drapes herself, not me doing it for her. She remembered crossing the cushioned carpet into her cozy bed, engulfed and blissful and weightless. Laying her head on a pillow that conformed to its contours. Draping blankets over her bare body. Looking around her bedroom, encased by the soothing blue walls where pictures of her family hung, one she was particularly fond of.

     None of these things happened. Mom woke up not in her own room but a sterile white one. No nightstands, lamps, or dressers. No pictures on blue walls.

    White walls. Cold white tile. Bright fluorescents above. A prick of light inspecting her pupils with a voice stabbing up and down. A small white window flooded with light, wires in its glass and bars just beyond it. She didn't remember getting here.

     This was the last thing she remembered: Father Thomas Archibald. She'd been on the brink since he left and for the first time in about a week had quote unquote woken up. Not in her own bed and gown but those of a hospital.

     Her naked bottom was exposed from behind and she looked down her legs to see blood. She pulled up at her gown - she had no Kotex or panties. She went to the door but it was locked.

     "Excuse me," she tried. "Can someone please let me out."

      A coarse vulgar tone shouted back through the door.

     "Get back in bed, Grace."

      With no other options, she did.

 

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​

October 20 1970

 

     It wasn't a hospital, she realized. Dad had tailed the ambulance and intercepted her transfer, explaining to the doctors with his Latin charm that the patient wasn't safe. So she was given a sedative and rerouted elsewhere, a pen placed in her hand, a haze clouding her eyes and judgment as she signed herself in.

     Goddamn Marcos, she thought, the truth filtering in through the harsh white light in pieces.

     No, she realized. It wasn't a hospital.

     She'd been put in a sanitarium.

 

๐  ๐  ๐

 

October 24 1970

 

     Depression was what they called it. Deep depression.  Since she'd signed herself in she could leave at any time, a detail Dad told the nurses not to mention.

   “Do you know what your name is?” the frankly obese doctor asked Mom. He sat behind a large desk drumming a pen against its edge. Two blank-faced men held her arms so she could stand, unable to alone on her medication. The noise of the pen got under her skin and she lunged across the desk to grab it.

       "Hey," one of the orderlies nodded to the other. They slumped Mom down in a hard wooden chair.

     "Do you know what day it is, Grace?" the doctor droned, looking not at her but a pad in his lap, ticking checks and boxes. Her silence made him lift his head.

     Mom quickly looked away, unwilling to meet his eyes. Eyes that might read her for filth or worse and sentence her here forever.

     "What day is it, Grace."

    Instead of an answer she focused on his chin. Folds of fat fractaling to infinity. A crystalline drop birthing between them. Catching the light. Threatening. Mom shuddered and tucked her bony hands in her lap.

   “Saturday, I think," she feigned in her most sympathetic voice, one not unlike her estranged husband's but lacking in sex and arrogance.  

     "October 24, 1970.” She was thirty-eight and no dummy and of course she knew things like dates and times.

     “Do you know why you were admitted?”

    The doctor looked down. Mom was sure the notes he was writing were negative. Reflections of the poor choices that had led her here, to him.

     “No,” she snapped, getting annoyed.

     “You don’t remember. The - pills?”

     “No,” her stomach turned with a nervous feeling. “I know my limitations, doctor. I didn’t overdose."

      But he just kept writing.   

      Give me a break, she thought, you’re a medical doctor you should know what constitutes an overdose.  

     “And how do you feel now?" the pen clicked.

      She looked to the orderlies. To the light beyond the bars. To a life eclipsed by impersonal paleness.

    “I feel a little shaky, doctor," Mom shifted brilliantly. "Do you think you could give me something for my nerves?” 

     She tried to keep the pleading tone out of her voice. To match the purely objective nature of his. She couldn't show weakness but needed a fix and he was the only one now who could give it.

     “What is it you usually take?” he asked with a yellow grin.      

    “My regular doctor prescribes me Placidyl 500,” she answered in her most normal voice, like she'd always done to get what she wanted. To get medically approved for more of the thing that got her here in the first place.

     “Hmph," he sighed. "That’s a little strong."

      He eyed her frail frame and lifted a brow. She shifted uncomfortably watching his pen.

     "I think Valium,” he decided.

      Valium! she laughed to herself. Diazepam was like Flintstone vitamins.

    “That would be fine," she settled, wanting to storm out and scream - to hell with all of you and you too Marcos! - but instead giving a gracious smile.

     "Thank you doctor.”

     Baby steps, she told herself. One day at a time.

 

๐  ๐  ๐

​

October 27 1970

 

     She hated the hundreds of questions the damn psychologist asked.  She hated that no one understood how she felt, what she wanted, or what she needed. When her youngest child Lydia was born Marcos had told her she’d never be lonely again. 

     Bah! she thought. That was the farthest thing from the truth. She was always alone, lost and alone, her peace of mind hiding just around the corner, absconded in happy moments with her mother, fleeting memories from a too-short period of her life. One where she didn’t feel abandoned.

     She hated her mother for dying so young and leaving her alone. Why didn’t any of these people understand that all she wanted was peace of mind. Is that so immoral?

     She lied in her bed thinking of ending it all. She could take all the pills at once. Cut her wrists. Drink Drano. Get it over with and easily.

     But in moments like these she thought of her children, left alone like she was. A nagging feeling of guilt and constant reminder that if she took matters into her own hands, they'd all be left with Marcos. An idea that was worse than death.

 

๐  ๐  ๐

 

     She was allowed to join the general pop during daytime hours. The living quarters were just like her room on a larger scale. Blinding whites and drab decor, from  the  windows  to  the  orderlies  in  their  starched emotion-less uniforms. 

     The whole affair was abstraction. Filled with people but drained of life. Strange smells and unkempt hair and buzzing flies that maybe weren't there. Block toys and therapy and whistles from the perimeter. Group sessions plus one-on-ones three times a day. Appointments with doctors with half a brain and questions from textbooks that sounded like the funnies.

     She tired of the routine, the Spanish Inquisition. So she made up her mind to stop. She stopped reporting. She stopped answering. Offering instead a silent defiance that betrayed her in the end, as they wheeled her in a straitjacket to solitary.

 

๐  ๐  ๐

 

October 29 1970

 

    Silence wasn't golden after all. It was a deafening electric blast. Mom was strapped to a bed and a bar placed over her forehead.

     "Please don't," she cried to deaf ears.

    She would've said more. She'd have pled her case. She'd have taken back all the silence. But here it was again as they put an apparatus in her mouth that prevented her from speaking.

    Silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she gawked at the staff, screaming with her eyes to stop the madness.

     Silence as the first volt caught her by surprise. It was only a test but felt like someone had hit her in the head with a baseball bat.

      Another test to assess her threshold, this one slightly higher. Silence.

      She felt foam in her mouth and choked on it. The pain was excruciating. Her ears were ringing but she could still hear the nurse. They noticed her cognition and decided the voltage insufficient. The nurse twisted the knob and nodded to the doctor.

     “Again, doc." Not again.

     If they do it again I will die, she thought.

     But they did and she didn't. Silence. Blast.

    She bit the mouthpiece and sweat from her ears. She lost her sight, the room no longer white but nonexistent. She wasn't sure if the gauge was still blasting but the aftershock lingered in her throat. She wasn't surprised just stunned - lying there becoming less and less, the half-lives of that final blast resonating until she was nothing. 

 

๐  ๐  ๐

 

October 30 1970

 

     There was no way of measuring time when Mom woke up in her cell. That's what it was, she'd decided, a prison not a room. She was still strapped down but now she was shivering, so cold she couldn’t keep her teeth from chattering. Although two blankets covered her body, she couldn’t get warm.

     She tried to call out for help. But using her voice made her head pound so bad she couldn't emit more than a whisper. A hopeless gasp no one could hear.

    The Bird Man of Alcatraz had more rights than this. All she could do was lie there and wait, until she had enough strength to leave.

 

๐  ๐  ๐

 

     Sleep had paid her a visit and when she woke the second time that day the straps had been removed and she had two more blankets. It was late and she was sure no one would check on her - but she still couldn't get off the bed.

     She closed her eyes again searching for sleep, one that would take her away from this hellhole. But it would-n't come so she lied there awake.

     That's life, her familiar proverb haunted her. One she no longer wanted to be hers. Wishing she had another one or at least a fucking cigarette.

     Again, doc.     

     She flinched and repeated the words.

     Again.

 

๐  ๐  ๐