A-Splendid-Ruin(62)
Piles of filthy and stinking laundry rested at the far wall. All the clothes were tossed in the same pots, even those horribly soiled with urine and vomit and feces. The very dress I was wearing had been in those pots, my underwear, my stockings. Then they went to rinse, and after that they came to the wringers in wheeled baskets, which is when they came to me.
But here there was no need to watch for malicious madwomen, sudden pinches, a slap for no reason except that one looked slappable. I might have forgotten that these women working alongside me were mad, but for the fact that suddenly one of the women at the wash kettles plunged her bare arm into the boiling water. Her screams of pain and terror stopped us all in our tracks until two nurses hauled her away, and the head laundress shouted, “There’s nothin’ more to see! Back to work!”
It was like a contagion. Soon after, one of the women wringing clothes swooned. Another at the ironing boards began to mutter, and they moved her to folding clothes, away from heat and danger. I began to fear that madness spread through the steam, and if I breathed too deeply, it would gain hold. I tried to laugh at the fancy; it was becoming harder and harder to do, and I found myself taking the shallowest of breaths.
The best part of the job was the monotony of it. As I grew used to the job and the days passed, I allowed my mind to drift, to think of Goldie’s glowing face, her inclusiveness, her confidences. My uncle’s affection. I had wanted so to belong to them that even now I could not decide what had been true and what had only been lies meant to bind me more deeply. I tried to remember each moment, to gauge a sincerity I had no means of measuring. Had Blessington always been my fate, or had there been a moment when I might have said something or done something to change it?
That was the question that bedeviled me. Was there anything I could have done?
My new ward was different from the other in one major respect: here the inmates had learned to be docile. I went to the laundry each day and worked myself into exhaustion, then returned, eyes burning, hands chapped, to the ward. The window there was my salvation. From it I watched the groundskeeper work, and the women walk in the strip of lawn. Sometimes the women were accompanied by nurses and sometimes they were alone. I wondered why they were allowed there, and the rest of us were not.
“Who are they?” I asked my bed neighbor, matronly Elizabeth Kennedy.
“Those’re from the First Ward.” Mrs. Kennedy had been put into Blessington by her two sons after her daughter had been killed by an automobile. Or at least, that was the story. Mrs. Kennedy spent hours every day on her knees, muttering prayers. “They do whatever they like.”
“How do they manage that?”
Mrs. Kennedy shrugged. “They’re good.”
How good did one have to be to gain that freedom? It took some time for the hierarchy of Blessington to make sense to me, but then I understood that—like society—there was something unspoken that put women into the first tier, and behavior was only part of it. First Ward women also got the best in the dining halls. Milk, when there was any. Eggs too—I could smell them from where I sat, and the longing for a shirred egg made my mouth water. Now and again, I spotted a carrot or some vegetable other than stewed cabbage on a plate. Money, perhaps? Was someone paying more for their upkeep?
No one seemed to know the answers, and I knew better than to ask the nurses or the doctors. I was focused on being good, and being good meant not asking questions of those in authority. Being good meant not seeming the least bit discontented.
It was not that easy, however. Boredom was my greatest enemy, and there was no outlet for it. I could not draw. Pencils were not allowed in the event that I might poke out my own or someone else’s eyes. There was nothing else to do but worry and think and pick at the past until it seemed I really might go mad.
I lifted pillowcases and undergarments and shook them out, but I saw my aunt’s face in clouds of steam, and I fantasized about what I would do when I put this place behind me, how I would take my revenge. I dreamed of burning down the house at Nob Hill, of those cupid-and-coat-of-arms-decorated pillars crumbling. I imagined beheading every one of those porcelain angels and sending their headless corpses rolling down the marble stairs and into the crushed white stone of the drive. Some nights I rocked myself to sleep with visions of the Sullivans living on the streets in rags, begging for scraps, while I swept past imperiously and pretended not to know them. Other times, I imagined my uncle behind bars. I said nothing to the doctors of these fantasies, of course.
I stopped keeping track of time. Better not to know how it was passing. Better not to think of them spending more of my inheritance with every hour. Better to abide, to wait. If I was good enough, reasonable enough, they would see I was not insane, and they would have no choice but to let me go. The irony was that the only way to prove that I did not belong here was to do whatever I could to fit in. I set myself to that, and each day, when I saw the approving smiles and heard “That’s a good girl, Miss Kimble,” and realized they trusted me to behave, I knew I was getting closer. Soon, it had to be soon.
The sad Christmas decorations of limp sprigs of mistletoe and shedding pine boughs gave way to Valentine’s Day hearts with crumpled lace and then to Easter chicks and cross-eyed cartoon rabbits before I finally understood the true extent of the Sullivans’ treachery.
Dr. Madison listened to my lungs and heart with his stethoscope during one of the daily exams, then stepped away with a smile. “Very good, Miss Kimble. I must say I am impressed at how well you’re getting along at Blessington. The nurses have all given you excellent reports.”