The William and Mary Girl

By Diana Strelow and Mary Curro

You cant get there from here. Not any more. No road exists today to take you to take anyone anywhere near the place where the awful things happened. The reason no one can go there, though, is that its no longer there -- the ostensibly
happy and naive; the joyfully prosperous world that was America in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Id made a life in that world; living in it was for me, for a long time, incredibly good; But one day everything I loved and believed in and counted on became something more horrible, even, than I remembered happening years before; what happened to my life now would take years to overcome.

When I was thirteen, my father--- in almost every way an intelligent, kind, sensitive man, found himself gratifying my mothers rage: I had talked back angrily to one or both of them. I was not a beautiful child; I knew that and hated it. And later Id know that Mama wanted no ugly duckling in her life-- I loved Mama, but what she couldnt feel for me was clear. Too often a terrible scene would begin to play itself out; insane, angry violence would again overwhelm me, demolishing everything I was; Id feel it for the rest of the day and the night as well.

And as Daddy imparted his rage to me -- to my life itself -- my own anger would rise to meet it; the scenes that took place at our house were terrible. And later, the halting, painful, always slow climb up the stairs to bed was always more of
an ordeal than I could bear to face. And I was sure that with every blow my father administered, as he swung again and again at my head,, that my life had already been ruined, that I could never overcome what had been happening. Although for years I hoped I was wrong about that, and I did my best.... and continued to hope.....

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9781469111087

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Copyright © 2009 by Diana Strelow.

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Contents

Foreword

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

And Now, Again: But now the end… .

DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION

Diana Strelow

They made me leave

The church

Too early again today.

I left at seven,

Already hungry; I wanted to stay a while and pray—

God knows I need to.

Come back at noon for sandwiches, the man said. Baloney.

Baloney and cheese, he said.

They give each of the men

Two sandwiches at midday.

I see so many men shuffling,

Reaching up in helplessness and shame to a tiny open window,

Each for his two baloney sandwiches, no mayonnaise and no lettuce,

All of them studying what’s left of their shoes.

I’ll be too hungry at noon for two slices of bread; too hungry

For baloney

With no mayonnaise.

Oh my God it’s started again.

The fear

That makes my hands and feet hurt,

My mind a set of wheels that’s left its track, flying now,

A hundred and forty miles an hour and more than that,

Threatening me with my own insanity; I try to drive away the thing

Coming at me with rage and fury I can’t control.

My belly an angry, ravenous, ugly cat—

Hissing furiously at me, angrier now than before,

Telling me all day and all night that I need to eat need to eat need to eat.

My corduroy dress

Is dirty now,

Shapeless, worn out,

It had a neat hem; the dress and I were proud; we were

Neat and pretty together

I loved wearing the dress; it’s now a torn blanket I wear to cover me.

Adhesive tape holds—almost holds—my glasses together,

My short hair unkempt,

Loafers worn sideways to oblivion,

No wonder the children are afraid of me.

Oh my God the children are afraid of me.

How can anyone change such a thing as that,

And make it no longer so?

The terror’s now anger; the anger terror; a deep down ugly rage.

The rage and the terror are who I am; they’re all I am.

I can never stop being who I am.

Bound where I am by life; by necessity,

With no money at all; with no decent way to get money,

I can only be where I am,

There’s no way to go where life is good.

"Excuse me, Sir; excuse me, Ma’am,

Does one of you have, perhaps, a couple of dollars to spare

A bit of money you can give me,

So I can keep on living, too?

I’m just absolutely, unbearably hungry this evening."

"But I mean, really, thank you both! The world’s a better place now, and all

Because of you. God bless both of you forever!"

If only I could never get hungry enough, or hurt enough to beg again.

I will get hungry enough again, though; I’ll surely beg again.

I wonder if that lovely church I found will let me

Sleep on their parlor sofa again tonight.

I want a home of my own, though, so bad; so bad.

I was brought up and educated to live in and keep, always,

A home of my own, and a family; my own family.

It can never be, though; that I’ll live in my own home, or sleep in my own bed.

Bound as I am to the woman I am; to the woman I’ve become.

There must be some reason, though, that

My life’s the painful, ugly, lonely thing it is today—

There must be a reason. If only I could know.

Diana Strelow

English 352

image001-edited.tif

Diana Strelow

God’s Love Made Manifest (Again)

Bright-lovely and overwhelming,

Everywhere the amazing, striking, the everywhere brilliant

Color of white—over, above us, everywhere around us,

Pristine, stark, bright-white blossoms,

Make trees and yards beautiful,

Some shout their beauty quietly,

In delicate etched pale pinks and reds…

And all send, as one, a joyous hello,

They proclaim again Plato’s great and timeless,

Still powerful ideal, The Good.

Dark trunks rise,

They twist and bend as they grow,

And support the bright canopies that seek to block the sky—

Nearer the new-green ground; close to the earth,

Glory-laden, lavender-purple Azaleas

Glow from within and are everywhere reborn.

And I wonder: can anyone live with such magnificence,

And doubt God’s own, specific intent

That all mankind live happily and well?

Foreword

A beginning, somewhere near the end—

But really: I can say, now—"Hallelujah!—I mean I can; I’ve got some money now. I can stay alive without being humiliated and afraid every minute that I’m alive. I can live decently; at least I can for a while. I can walk into a good restaurant, sit down, and order dinner, just as if I were a regular person and had always been able to do that. I can smile and pay the check as I leave without being ashamed of myself for having gone in there to begin with. Or for being alive at all. I’ve got some money now.

I’m letting myself go into bars again, too, now that the awful emergency is over and I’m no longer destitute, I’m no longer scared and broke all the time the way I was. I think I can dare by now to order a little wine or maybe a beer when I’m in a restaurant. I feel safer now, too, than before. And I’ve got more than two hundred dollars left. I’m on the bus now; I’m going to Virginia—to quaint, beautiful Williamsburg, the restored colonial city not very far from the Atlantic Ocean. The college I love to remember is at one end of a wide street right out of the Eighteenth Century, with the restored Colonial Capitol of Virginia at the other, with famous Colonial Williamsburg everywhere and all around.

I decide to get off the bus at Lincoln, Nebraska, though—I can’t keep from doing that and that’s what I do. The crazies and the fears I lived with in Denver are still driving me crazy; and as we get closer to Lincoln I know I’ve got to get off the bus as soon as it pulls in. I’m frantic; I can tell I couldn’t connect with anyone even if there were someone with whom to connect. I feel pretty strange, and as the bus pulls into Lincoln I gladly get off the bus.

And I walk into downtown Lincoln; I find a drugstore and a phone book; I find the name of a psychiatrist with an office downtown—and he says, amazed that I’d even ask, that there’s not much I could hope for if I were to look for a job and try to make a life for myself in Lincoln. And I can see the truth in that, I’m on my way to Virginia anyway, and I’m on the next bus going east.

Lincoln’s a beautiful, wonderfully Middle-Western, small-town America sort of town, with big old houses built years ago; most of them on impressive, wonderfully wide streets—Lincoln made me feel wistful. Peace, love, and happy memories live in the houses that line these broad, elegant streets. If only I could have grown up in a big old house like one of these.

I’m going East again; I’m now in Omaha and I’m on a barstool, drinking a draft beer. The bar’s sawdust-strewn, an unbelievably ugly, rough sort of bar, near the Omaha bus station; near the stockyards. I hope the plain-looking man next to me is hoping to talk with me; that he might like to buy me a beer. I am, I think, as lonely and scared as anyone can be and keep on living. The man is sure I intend to hustle him, and since I’m neither beautiful nor young and neither is he; I go back toward the bus station.

I really need to check myself into a hospital now that I’m in Omaha. I need support and a whole lot of real help; I was so sick in Denver and I know I badly need professional help from intelligent people who can really help me this time.

So now I’m inside again. Again, I’m a patient, now in a psychiatric hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. And there are people here who remind me that I’ve got a good education and what a good thing that is to have—they see plenty of hope for me, wherever I choose to go and whatever I decide to do. I say that I’m going on to Virginia and that I was sometimes happy and young there many years ago.

Prior to leaving the hospital, I’m working out arrangements on my bill when the clerk counts out almost $2000 in cash and hands it to me. She says that she’d give me a check, but since I don’t have a bank account, she gives me the cash. And she says, It’s your money, Diana. Medicare made an overpayment on your account and it’s all your money And she says that a larger check, a retroactive payment from Social Security, will come to me later on and I’d better have my own address by then so it can reach me. And that if I can just get myself stable, the bigger check can help me a lot.

From Lincoln, I catch another bus; we’re moving again toward Virginia and Williamsburg. The bus isn’t going nearly fast enough for me. I’m on my way to my Virginia address, the one I don’t know yet. I’ll have to find a place near the College, I think. It’s so beautiful there—the well-landscaped campus of the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

At length I’m in Hampton, a small city with a whole lot of important history; it’s close to the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay. I look around and I am fascinated; water is everywhere, with all manner of boats tied up in lovely marinas. Denver has its renowned Platte River, but it’s barely a rocky creek even when it rains. But here wide rivers flow; there are inlets, sounds, lakes, and the Chesapeake Bay.

I still need a whole lot of help, of course, and I hear there’s a private psychiatric hospital in Hampton. So of course I go there and check myself in, and they admit me right away. I really know, of course, how hopelessly alone I am; that I’m pretty much lost forever; that no hospital anywhere can ever help me join the world again. And the doctor, a middle-aged, paunchy man originally from Turkey, offers me no hope at all.

I sit hopefully in his small, plain office and hear him say, "Miss Warren, you must know, perfectly well that no one can help you by now. You’ve talked with many psychiatrists and you’ve been in a number of mental hospitals. And your records and you have told us a lot about you. So you know that there really isn’t much that anyone can do for someone like you. I really think you’re hopeless. We won’t be able to help you here—you need to check yourself out and just go somewhere, to some other city, perhaps. I’m sorry; that’s just how it is.

But I want to get well somehow, I say. I’m not exactly living up to my potential; anyone would have to say that’s true. I want a real life—maybe even to settle down and get married one day. If no doctor or hospital can help me, how can I ever make something good out of my life?

If I knew, I’d certainly tell you, Miss Warren, the doctor says. But I don’t see much hope. You should have gotten on your feet years ago but you didn’t. You’re obviously a completely useless human being—I certainly can’t see you working anywhere and earning your way.

I look in the Hampton paper; I move into a cheap, very plain room, and I try to make some sort of home for myself and my few belongings.

I find that I love to pretend that I belong in one of the elegant, expensive restaurants in Hampton and go inside; sometimes I’ll show off my college French when I order. I have a good bit of money now and I can pretty much eat wherever I want to. I’ll order a gourmet meal and enjoy, but afterward I’ll usually sit there and drink the good wine I’ve ordered with my dinner. I’ll sit and drink for an hour or even longer; and sometimes I’ll order another bottle. I don’t want to leave the warmth and beauty of the restaurant and I’m not about to leave the wine. Waitresses stare at me now and I know they’re perplexed and angry; they want me to leave and free up the table. Ashamed now that I’ve done it again, I pay the bill and leave, now miserably aware that I’ll do the same stupid thing tomorrow.

And now I have a terrible new fear—I’m alone and I’m drinking too much, in an absurd and shameful way, too. I’m using good restaurants as if they were bars. I make a fool of myself, too; I do the same dumb thing, and over and over again, too.

Again I look in the phone book, this time for an alcoholism treatment center. If I’m an alcoholic, there may be a treatment center that can actually help me. I study the ones in the book and then call one in Portsmouth. Portsmouth is across the stretch of water from Hampton/Newport News or the Peninsula; the surrounding area known as Hampton Roads. A counselor actually drives across the water and picks me up. I’m now a client in an alcoholism treatment program in Portsmouth, Virginia.

One

Don’t do that! Don’t you take my clothes! I chose those things with care—I paid good money for all of it, too. And it’s all mine, too; not yours.

"Just settle down, Warren—Miss Diana Warren—whatever you say your name is. They say you real persnickety about what we call you, too. But you got to settle yourself down, and not give me no more trouble." The dark haired, young, rather hard looking attendant will win out in the long run; they all do. I know that already.

You told me my clothes have to go to your stupid ‘marking room’—but they’ll stamp everything with black ink and ruin everything I brought with me. I’ll have to throw it all away. Or else everyone will know I’ve been in this awful place. But it’s me you’re ruining when you ruin my clothes—you’re already ruining my life. Just don’t do it-PLEASE! I begged.

Got to, Warren—whatever your name is. Got to do it. I got no choice and you don’t neither. It’s hospital policy. Go sit down somewhere like I told you to and don’t bother me no more. I don’t want to hear no more about it. So just go sit down and shut up and let me do my job.

So this is it. This is Western State Hospital, Staunton, Virginia—the funny farm. But it’s not the least bit funny—I’m not amused. The joke is on me. I look around and I know that no one will ever love me—I’ve been thrown out with the trash. We’re too fat or too thin, and every one of us is ugly. There aren’t even enough chairs for us to sit down. And if one of us does find an empty chair, we have to sit in it unbelievably bored.

Ugly green cement brick is everywhere, the gray tile floor cold and hard; the furniture unpleasantly beat up. The furniture must have been cast off from an old prison, with severe metal frames and sagging cushions. This is clearly what I deserve. I can’t get away from the nauseating smell, either—the combination of urine and disinfectant is everywhere.

It’s odd—everyone told me what a great place this was going to be, that they’d help me get well right away. But here I am and I can see what it’s going to be. I’m in Eliot’s own Wasteland, and I’m asking with him, What shall I do now? What shall I do? What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do? And like Prufrock, who regretted that he lacked the courage to live, I have to say with him, I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me

But they ain’t no room for you! They ain’t no room. You got to go somewhere else. The fat woman’s angry with me. The once-bright red faux leather sofa a bunch of us think we can sit on is old, full of ugly rips and tears, as disreputable looking as the ward itself. And now the woman, her hair frizzy and unacceptably orange, has gotten up and walked away—she won’t be gone long.

I sit down where she was; several of us crowd onto the sofa. I stifle some guilt—but she’s back, now—glaring at me. She says, You get up now. You get up now! That Josie’s place. You not belong here. You fancy lady from somewhere else, not from here. You get up! That my seat; belong to me; not to nobody like you. I want to ignore her, to defy her, to pretend I’m comfortable and hold my own place. But she’s right: Josie belongs here—the whole place is hers. She’s totally nuts and hopelessly ugly—it’s her hospital, after all,

Noblesse oblige. I walk over to the window and look out over the empty grounds, at the hopeless road that goes nowhere except back around in a stupid circle that also goes nowhere. Josie is in her place again, grandly triumphant, and proud that she’s defeated me.

Are you a doctor? But are you? Are you by some chance a doctor? the tiny woman asks me, trying to smile. Middle-aged and much too thin, like a small bird that keeps darting here and there, her dark hair pulled back starkly from her face. She dashes everywhere on the ward in frantic desperation, pleading with everyone, saying I really need a doctor. Are you one, by any chance? I need you to be a doctor. And I hope you are one. Are you? she pleads. I tell her sadly, Not at all. I was a teacher once, but I’m a patient now and I can’t help anyone. I wish I could.

We had so much fun singing, Go In and Out the Windows, the fifth graders and I—they were such amazing ten-year olds; such joyful spirits; it was as though they could really fly.

But it’s gone, of course—all of it. I’ll never hear children sing like that again.

And the big love I had for Tom that must have come straight from God, in answer to my prayers—that’s gone, too. I was stupid and so was Tom. We made some bad decisions, partly which led to my being in this horrible dayroom—an empty place with vacant people. The love was real enough, though. But now I’m in this awful place, and it’s going to be my whole life, I can tell it already.

Mama will be all right—I won’t, but Mama will. I’m here so that Mama can be ok. She’ll wring her hands and cry about the way I let her down—she was so proud of me before everything happened.

We were teachers together in the Arlington County school system; she was my inspiration early on to be a good teacher. Life at our house was good, then; it was good for both of us.

I’m deep in an Adirondack chair, on a framed-in porch; the windows have iron bars. They keep us in and the rest of the world out. I come out here to be alone and think. I’m twenty-eight, single for all time, and I’m very probably pregnant. The baby will be a boy, I’m sure of that. It’s good to sit here, to think about having a baby. It may just be true—I may really be pregnant; I’d have what I’ve wanted all of my life. But Mama won’t help me—I just really do hate her.

You could have helped me—it would have mattered then, Mama! You could have! It didn’t have to happen the way it did. We were leaning forward, both of us too angry, there in our living room, in the house on Danville Street—we’d get up and walk around, we’d shout our anger at each other. The house had seemed to be really beautiful to me for years, but it wasn’t now.

I cringe at the things that show up in my mind when I’m alone. If only there were just someone intelligent here, someone to talk with. Mama just says I’ve got to sit it out. I’d stop thinking any more at all if I could—or maybe I’ll just find a way to go crazy. I tried to do that, though—I tried going crazy but there was no way; I had to give it up. I’m stuck with the reality of this unholy, God-forsaken hospital, facing the windows with iron bars.

* * *

My hair is brown—and it’s naturally curly. Grownups say I’m so lucky to have naturally curly hair, and Mama and Daddy say I’m beautiful. I feel like I’m very lucky there, too. I’m five years old, and my life is good. My name is Diana. And long ago when I was little, when I was maybe two or three years old, whenever someone would expect me to answer in baby talk, I’d fool them and say instead, This is my Daddy sitting next to me. And they’d be amazed and surprised, too—every time. I love my Daddy so much. He smiles at me all the time.

Daddy’s a ‘newspaper man’ whatever they mean by that. But I know for sure that Daddy works for a newspaper. He and Mama are always taking me and Margie, my little sister, out to train wrecks whenever they are lucky enough to have one. Her real name is Marjorie. But train wrecks are boring. Everyone stands around and talks and says the same thing, saying gee, too bad; it’s a shame. Daddy asks everyone a lot of questions and then we leave. Sometimes someone in a Model A or a Model T Ford is in a wreck, too, and it’s the same thing.

Mama says the year is 1940, and she has to be right—she’s my mother. And Mama’s just about never wrong about anything. They say the Depression ended for them when Daddy got his job at the Courier here in Waterloo, Iowa. He makes as much as twenty-five dollars a week. It may be even more than that. That’s when I could be born, when he got that job and so the Depression was over for them. Except I’m not really clear as to what they mean by any of that.

I’m glad the Depression is over, though—Mama sounds mad every time she talks about it, and that’s pretty often. Mama really does hate the Depression. Anyone would think the Depression was going on right now, she hates it so much.

I’d make one piece of beef and carrots last a week—a week! she’d say, in her angry voice. But I did it, anyway! You girls will never know. You’ll just never know. You have it so good, both of you!" I tell her, in my mind, that somehow, Mama, I’ll find out and I’ll know. One day I’ll find out how it is and what it’s like—and for you, Mama.

But sometimes I make her really mad. I’ll be outside playing and I’ll get really dirty; I’ll be afraid to go home. Once I was in the fields behind the houses, looking for a little bird’s nest, and my shoes sank way down in the mud. They were Buster Browns—really good shoes. I hear the meadowlarks, but I never ever see one. And my shoes were full of mud. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do, so I took them off and walked home in my socks in the mud. And Mama was madder than I ever saw.

Oh my God, Diana—your shoes! she hollered. And look at your clothes! They’re ruined! How could you be so stupid, Diana? She got to crying and I felt bad . . . really, really bad. I felt a lot of shame and guilt, except I didn’t know then what that was all about. But Mama screams at me pretty often, although Mama really is, I think, the most beautiful woman in the world, anyway.

* * *

One day, Mama got really mad again. We went to Court, in a big conference room in the Arlington County Court House; a mile or two from our house. The commitment hearing lasted all day—although it may not have really been that long. There were two concerned judges in charge of the Court that day who said I didn’t really need to be committed—they just wanted to help Mama and me work things out somehow.

Mama kept screeching at them that I absolutely couldn’t live at home anymore; that I had to go to Staunton. The two judges talked about how I was at a crossroads. And they finally decided they had to commit either Mama or me; so I was the one who went.

And later that evening a station wagon pulled up behind the Courthouse, carrying a matron, and a male deputy. Mama stood next to the car for more than an hour, as the process dragged on, crying over me, until the deputies got there and we prepared to drive away.

I’m sorry, but you’ll need to wear these, Diana; as they lock a set of handcuffs on my wrists. They’re standard with anyone who’s been committed. We can take them off once we’re on the road. Two deputies drive me in their station wagon from the court house to Western State Hospital in Staunton. I don’t stop talking, either, the whole way.

I hoped like crazy that the commitment would turn out to be some kind of good thing after all—but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t. And with handcuffs locked on me, I felt like some kind of worthless criminal, and that I always had been, as if everyone had, I was sure, expected this kind of thing from me from the very beginning.

But the deputies were some kind of all right—they were friendly people, although I knew we were on our way to an awful place I’d been hearing about for years. There was a plastic shield in the car to separate me from the front of the station wagon; I didn’t like that idea and I said so.

That’s just there so no one can lunge at us from the back and hurt us, Diana. We’re not at all afraid of you—anyone can tell what a refined young lady you are. If you were to decide to jump out of the car and end it all, though, you won’t be able to. Try to open a door back there and you’ll see; you’re safe, even from yourself. We know you’re not very happy right now, Diana. It’s all going to get better for you soon, though—so count on it. I think we can take those cuffs off now, don’t you think, Mabel? Ken asks.She’ll be all right.

And that’s when I started talking. I talked to Ken and Mabel freely, and I talked all the way to Staunton. I’ve never done that before, talked without caring whether anyone wants to hear me or not. I really don’t talk about myself to anyone as a rule. But I’m different these days and I keep on talking. And right away I’m feeling better, as though nothing bad has happened to me after all.

But you know, you two, I say, I really was a pretty good teacher. I think maybe I was really good. I may still be, but I can’t tell at all who or what I’ll be from now on. Bad things happened to me. Really bad things… But I did care a lot about the kids, and I think they loved me, too. But I’ve lost so much; there may not be much for me in life any more—I think there’ll be no love for me and no success. But I can always know that I was once a good teacher.

That’s good to know, one of the deputies say, but without conviction. And I’ve got my own car, I tell them. Or more likely, I had a car. It’s at my mother’s, a nice gray 1956 Ford. But she’ll be selling it, now that I’ve gone away for good. I’m a good driver, though—I’ve driven for five years and had only one parking ticket."

That’s nice, Diana. Very nice. But surely you won’t have to be at Western State for long. It really is a very good hospital, Mabel says. You’ll be going to A-1 to begin with, the receiving ward. But you’ll find Western State to be really good. They’ll help you a lot; you don’t need to worry at all.

Well, that certainly sounds hopeful. ‘A-1—the best of the best.’ I hope it is, I say. I hope that everything they’re saying is true.

You just don’t need to be afraid, Diana. You’ll soon be very glad you’ve come to this hospital.

I’d hear the children sing. We’d sing when we’d have a tense moment in the classroom; and that really was pretty often. The truth is that, ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, and that’s especially when ten-year-olds sing it. My life was so beautiful—everything I looked at had God’s beautiful light shining on it. But that’s not so now, of course…

That was Charlottesville we just passed, Ken, Mabel says. We’re getting closer.

That’s right—we’re nearly there, Ken says, to cut off my rumination.

But about a year ago, I say, anyway, I fell in love, just as I’d always wanted. It was a ‘shipboard romance’ and it was wonderful! But I was the girl who knew how to say ‘no’—and finally my Love got mad and it all went and died on me. I can’t talk about that now. I’m getting big around the middle, though; and it will be so terrific if something wonderful comes out of all this. My mother’s angry, but I’ll be very glad if it turns out that I’m pregnant.

Well, Diana, whether you’re pregnant or whether you’re not, we’re coming up on Staunton, Ken interrupts me. We’re on the big mountain now, the one right before Staunton/Waynesboro. You’ll soon be at your Ward A-1, Diana; tomorrow you’ll be able to see the Blue Ridge. You’re in the foothills now, but tomorrow you’ll see the mountains. I’ve enjoyed listening to you, young lady, Ken says, You sure can do some talking for a young lady like you are. But don’t worry; they’re going to help you a lot, here. That’s what they’re here for.

Don’t worry at all, Diana, Mabel says. You’re about to be glad for everything that ever happened to you, good and bad.

That will be so terrific if that happens. I hope it all works out just as you say, I answer. I’m glad to get out of the car—although I won’t be glad of much that happens after that.

* * *

We have a piano at our house—I’m learning to play, too. I’m in the first book, Teaching Little Fingers to Play. Mama can play, too, but she doesn’t like to. I’m going to get really good some day, just like my Uncle Johnny. He plays at a tavern in Waterloo.

Everyone says that if I can develop a touch like his, I’ll be able to make music. And sometimes Mama is wonderful to Margie and me—one Saturday we got to bake a cake, with her guiding us all the while. I made an angel food cake, and Margie baked one called a sunshine cake, or a yellow cake. We used about a dozen eggs—I used the egg whites to make my cake light, and Margie used the yolks; we learned to separate an egg that day. Afterward I wanted to have a cake baking day again, but Mama’s never felt like doing that since. But she does lots of canning, my mother—she cans peaches and pears, green beans, peas and tomatoes—also fruits, even watermelon pickles. Watermelon pickles are wonderful!

She screams at Margie and me sometimes. Oh my God you kids get out of here! she’ll yell if we get near the kitchen door. The water in here is scalding! Can’t you girls stay out when I say ‘stay out?!’ Now get out! Her face is red as she waves us away.

All right, Mama, we say. And we get out. The kitchen is big, but it’s always clean. Mama wears house-dresses—she cleans house just about all the time. And I’m glad she does, and I’m glad she cares so much about us girls.

We had this really beautiful dog, her name was Gypsy, but she got run over. She was a white Spitz, and she was good with us kids. We were all walking home from Olmstead’s, the grocery store on West Third, when all of a sudden we heard Daddy yell, No! Gypsy! Don’t do it! But it was too late.

She’d been running toward us from across the street. It was a Model A Ford which hit her and—she died; right in front of us. Daddy talks about her a lot and I still cry over her. I want her to come back and live with us again, but Mama and Daddy say that can never be.

Mama screams at us kids, but only sometimes. She’s beautiful when she’s happy—and she never gets mad at Daddy.

* * *

The heavy door opens with a jangle of keys, and a plain-looking, middle-aged woman is standing in the doorway, glaring at us. I’ll soon learn that she, like most of the attendants here, is very much of the mountains. A heavy, coarse-looking attendant, she wears a starched white uniform.

She says, Hello, Ken. Hello, Mabel. I see you done it again. You got our patient for us, too. Come on in, Warren. I made up your chart already. We been waiting for you all evening, you know. The police in Arlington called and told us you was coming. So, all right, Warren, I hope you won’t give us any hard time, you being from Northern Virginia where all the swanky people live. And then, Thanks, you two, she says to the deputies. "Don’t worry about her—she’s under control now.

"And as for you, Warren, I don’t want to hear nothin’ from you. You’re to go to your room and get yourself to bed right away. I’ll show you where you sleep and I’ll give you a nightshirt and your plastic slippers—you need to have them on your feet at all times. Tomorrow we’ll give you a kit with your toiletry items.

And we censor all mail you send and any that you receive. There’s no use in arguing about anything we do here; we do what we do and that’s what we’re going to do. I need your purse and your suitcase so I can check them for sharps, and anything else you got that could hurt someone. If you have any rings, any other jewelry, any money, I need to have them so I can put them in the safe. Your cigarettes are to be kept n the nurses’ station at all times. Smoke times are every two hours, with no smoking between—and no arguments allowed. Tomorrow we’ll get your clothes up to the marking room. You’ll get everything back in a few days. And I don’t want to hear a word from you, Warren. It’s bedtime. Let’s go find your room, right now.

But, really—‘hello’ to you, too. And what do we call you, anyway? My name’s Diana. Diana Warren, not ‘Warren.’ It’s ‘Diana.’

Whatever you say, Warren. You don’t need to worry about my name for now. So, let’s get a move on, Warren. Let’s go.

* * *

Margie can entertain Mama all day long, wrapping shawls around her doll this way and that. And Mama tells her each way she fixes up the doll is the most wonderful of all. I’d give anything in the world to be cute—everybody says Margie is cute and I’m smart. But I’d like it better if it were the other way around.

Everyone still raves about the way Margie sang Managua Nicaragua into a microphone and they recorded it, So take a trip, get on a ship, go sailing away, Across the agua to Managua, Nicaragua, Ole!

Even I knew she was adorable. Some say I’m beautiful, but I know that’s not true, anyway—and after all, Margie is really cute. But I went and tried to sing the Habanera from Carmen—I was hoping I’d be really good and I wanted to sing something deep and powerful, something from a famous opera. It was so bad, though—I was pathetic. I’d love to throw that record into the Cedar River—and I would if I dared.

* * *

I think that everyone in this hospital, especially the patients, must have quit school in the second grade. The attendants don’t even know enough to be polite to anyone. But the deputies told me what a good place; this is, and that they really do help people here. This hospital isn’t here to help anyone, though. People want to believe it’s just terrific, so they can feel better about sending people here—they’ve got to believe it’s a good place; that they help people here. But it’s really just somewhere they