Quiet-Crazy (21 page)

“Why?”

“I don't know,” I say right quick. Then everything got real quiet. Like he is waiting for me to say more. But what more is there to say.

“Can you tell me more about that feeling?”

“No,” I say, again real quick.

“You feel uncomfortable talking about that?”

“I guess.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, I said.” Actually, maybe I do know. Maybe it's the kind of scary feeling I felt with Mama when she did all that. But no way will I tell Dr. Adams.

When he sees I'm not saying anything more about the women, he says, “Elizabeth, how did you first come to know about sexual intercourse? Who told you?”

“Nobody came right out and told me,” I say. “With Mary Jane Payne's help, I just put two and two together, sort of, you know seeing animals doing it like dogs and cows. But I remember the first time I saw some dogs doing it in our yard, and I asked Mama what they were up to, and she said, 'Hush up, Sarah Elizabeth, now you know what they're up to.' But I didn't. Not then. I was only about six or seven years old, and nobody had told me, but then later on I figured nobody told the dogs and cows how to do it, either, did they, and they sure found out. So, does that mean humans have to be told and animals they automatically know what to do? And
if humans weren't told, would we automatically know, when the time comes, what to do, too?”

Dr. Adams laughs. “You're a lot of fun, Elizabeth, the way you express yourself.”

I'm almost embarrassed, but then I know Dr. Adams isn't laughing at me. He was laughing for me, because he truly likes me, I know he does. People know when someone likes them, I've found that out. You can tell it sure as the sun rising up over the trees in the morning and beaming its warmness over every little thing—that's how it feels when someone likes you, like the sun radiating over and about you, making you feel warm and snug with yourself at the same time.

“But I have to give the Worry Column a lot of credit in helping me figure things out about sex,” I say, “because when I got old enough to read the newspaper, I read a lot of things in there about marriage and sex and all that. Why, if it weren't for the Worry Column, I'd still probably be trying to figure out what 'futch' is, you know?”

Dr. Adams laughs again, and he seems this morning so easy to laugh, that I know something is different. And sure enough something awful is different. Dr. Adams has spent eight weeks on this floor, and it's time for him to rotate on to another floor, pediatrics, he says. That is what he's going to be, he says, a pediatrician, although he has to get some experience on all the different kinds of patients.

Dr. Adams gone? I can't imagine it, especially when he tells me that someone else, another intern, will be coming along now to talk with me. I don't want to talk with anyone else. How can they do this to me, get me to where I'm in love with Dr. Adams, and then go and switch him on me, to a stranger, whom I might not even like at all. But in a way I feel some kind of relief, like he's getting too close to what I can't tell him or nobody. And if he keeps on pressing the issue, it might come out, whether I want it to or not. Because he does have a way, you know, of getting me to say things that need to come out.

The only thing that could even halfway make up for losing Dr. Adams is Miss Hansom. She is almost as wonderful as Dr. Adams, but the only thing is I don't get to go in and talk with her for long periods of time. But even so, she and I have come to be real good friends, you know like the light is shining on us. Now, I like thinking about Miss Hansom. And although she is exciting, she isn't scary exciting. She is just like someone I'd like to be like. That's all.

But before Dr. Adams leaves, he asks me one pointed question. “What are you going to do when you go back home, Elizabeth?”

He might as well ask me what makes the world spin round, for I couldn't answer him any better. What am I going to do, indeed. Go back to the pants factory and fool around
with zippers in men's trousers for the rest of my life? Whoo-wee, what a thrill. When he sees I'm not coming up with any answers, he offers a suggestion.

“I'd like to see you go on with your schooling, Elizabeth.”

“I've been thinking that, too, but, well, I don't think I'm smart enough to do that,” I say right quick. “But Aunt Lona thinks I am.”

“You're smart enough,” he says. “Your I.Q. scores show it. You've been reading a lot, haven't you, over the years in all kinds of subjects? You can do it. You might have some trouble in the beginning getting back into the swing of studying, but you can do it.”

Go to college? But where and how? I mean I know Aunt Lona will help however she can, but it takes money and going away from home, and how can I find the courage to leave Mama and Daddy, and where will I get the money to pay for college in the first place?

“There are several ways to do it,” says Dr. Adams, as if he has been looking into my mind and seeing what I've been thinking. “You could apply for a scholarship. Weren't you in the top of your graduating class in high school?”

Yes, in the very top. I was one of five who got a check for two hundred dollars from the Littleton Citizens Bank, which I just stuck in savings, plus I have the little golden medal with
SCHOLARSHIP
written in small letters around it to prove
I was in the top. If anybody needs any proving, that is. And I have my golden tassel, whereas most others were blue, except for those who had achieved “scholarly distinction.”

But all that seems so far away and in another world almost. It's like Angela has earned all of that, not Elizabeth, and can I switch all that over from Angela to Elizabeth and make something out of Elizabeth? It's all too scary. Just like coming to Nathan has been scary. But as it turns out, coming to Nathan is probably the very best thing that could have ever happened to me, though people in Littleton might never know it.

Go to college? What will Mama and Daddy think of such a thing? And will they take any of their money out of savings to help pay for it? I'd hate to ask Aunt Lona, but she'll help without me even asking her, I know she will. I can help myself out, too, by working, Dr. Adams says. I could get a job at the college and they'd pay me, a job like working in the library. Wouldn't that be wonderful to be around books all the time, feeling them, reading them, books of all kinds and subjects and people. So Mama and Daddy wouldn't have to pay for everything, especially if I got a scholarship and worked, myself.

Go to college? Miss Hansom has been to college. I could be a little bit like Miss Hansom maybe. No, not ever as smooth and polished as Miss Hansom. Some things just come with you when you're born, and smooth and polished
didn't come with me. But go to college and not back to the pants factory? The feeling, though frightful, seems as Miss Hansom says, “ex-QUIZ-ite.” Thinking of doing something ex-QUIZ-ite makes me feel like holding my head up a little prouder. And feeling prouder. And feeling prouder, that I am ready to do. Anyway, since I am now feeling this need to do some kind of work in talking with people to help get their problems out in the open, I will certainly have to go to college to learn how to do that. That—talking with people—is what I want more than anything, more, even, than getting away from Mama and Daddy. Because, in some strange way that I don't understand, talking with people about their problems seems like it might be like always having Hemp around. Somehow, it will be like bringing him back to life.

But the one person who I always can count on to help is Aunt Lona. Aunt Lona, if it can be done, will be the one to help lead me out of my little boxed-up, caged-in world, if there is any leading out to be done. Aunt Lona will be the perfect one to help set me on the track to college, if that is to be. Because right now I don't know anyone else to turn to. Dr. Adams is leaving. And Hemp is gone. And Caldwell. Everybody in my life, it seems, everybody that I can count on is either leaving or dying, here right at the time when I most need someone to hold on to for dear life. Bad as I hate to think about it, it's looking more and more like I am going to have to start holding on to myself, me, Elizabeth.
I sure can't hold on to Angela anymore; she's too slippery. And although Aunt Lona will help any way she can, it won't be fair to her to depend on her for every little thing. Besides, I've got to start doing some things for myself, I, Elizabeth. From now on, for anything good or bad that I dream up for myself, Elizabeth will have to be the one to hold on to. She will have to make do. And what's wrong with Elizabeth?

I
t seems like things have been changing faster and faster around Nathan since Dr. Adams left the eighth floor. After Miss Cannon left, I got a new roommate, and she is as young and fragile as Miss Cannon is old and tough. Belinda is a pretty little girl, only fourteen, with hair so fine and face so fair, she looks like that thin, breakable crystal you see in the glasswares section of the department store. And that's the way she acts, too, like she might break at any moment.

I don't have to ask Belinda what is wrong with her, why she is here, because she's so full up and running over she talks all the time to anyone who'll give her half the chance.

“My mother died,” she tells me the first day, “and I've been having to look after my two little brothers and my sister.” And then she starts into crying. “I can't do it all,”
she'll say, “I can't do it all. It's too much. I can't get everything done.”

Belinda makes me feel worse than ever. Even before she came, it seemed like everybody at Nathan had a problem that was ten times worse than mine. All I have to do is let Angela be dead, let things be the way they are, that's all. And not let what Mama did keep me beholden to her for the rest of my life, even though I can't take it all away. But look at all the other people—Lenny, who might never talk again he's so mixed up, Delores, who can't talk-because she's so hoarse, Tommy, whose affliction is so bad he just keeps on jumping around all the time whether he wants to or not, Alice, who keeps on going blind, Mrs. Krieger, whose arms won't ever hold her son again, Harold, who knows nothing but how to sneer at everything, and then there's them who're so drawn into themselves that they don't even notice it when you talk to them, and it doesn't look like anybody or anything can ever draw them back out again. And Hemp, who was the most natural acting and the most normal, at least I thought, now dead.

Why, why,
why
hadn't I talked with Hemp about what was deep down inside him? Why had I thought that just because he was always clowning around and acting goofy that he was okay, that nothing was wrong? What if I had talked with him? Would he still be here? Just knowing how talking it all out is helping me, would I have helped Hemp by listening to
him talking it all out? But he was supposed to do that with Dr. Adams. Did he talk, really talk, with Dr. Adams? But why hadn't I myself found out why Hemp was here? Why couldn't I see that something was terribly wrong, and wrong enough to make him take his own life? How can I live with myself, knowing I didn't help somebody to talk it all out, no matter what was wrong with them, to just open up and talk.

Me, I've talked so much in the past couple of months, that I feel I don't have much more talk in me, especially about me and Angela. About Mama and all those times, well, yes, I know I haven't talked about that, but I'm sorry, I just can't. No. No, I'm not sorry. I just plain don't want to talk about it, no apologies made. I am what I am, Mama or no Mama. So, it looks like there comes a time when you have to start doing what you know has to be done, and not just talking and thinking about it all the time. Like, all I have to do now is grow up. That's all. Grow up into Elizabeth and quit letting Angela and Mama have their way with me. Preacher Edwards is always pleading with us to let the Lord have his way with us. Shoot. All I need is to let Elizabeth have her way with me. If I can be Elizabeth, the Lord can then take me on from there. Mama too. But that's still even harder, to think about always being Elizabeth around Mama, and it occurs to me for the first time ever that I must have gone through my whole life trying harder to please Mama than to please the Lord. Maybe mamas are harder to please, I
don't know. At least they put up a bigger fuss than the Lord does. Anyway, maybe I should start doing like everyone else in Littleton and saying when I decide something, “It's the Lord's will for me.” That way I can be Elizabeth and no apologies about it if I'm doing what the Lord tells me to do. And who knows, when you get right down to it, who really, honestly and truly, ever knows if it's the Lord telling you or not? You see, maybe it's the Lord telling me to go to college. At least that's what I can tell Mama. “Dear Mama and Daddy,” I can write, “I have decided to go to college. It's the Lord's will. Please pray for me, that I will do what He wants me to do.” But I can't say that. Not ever, I think. Because it's me who's deciding what to do, not the Lord. Even though the Lord may be looking on, well pleased, it's still me who's deciding.

If you go by the Lord's will on everything, then you have the Lord creating the problems for all these people here, and I don't think the Lord goes around making problems. Besides, if the Lord were held accountable for everything, how do you explain people like old Sheriff Tate when he was the one trying to have his way with me out in the graveyard? Or Cigarette Butt Lacky Roach? Or what all Mama did, even? I don't think the Lord planned that for me. I think Sheriff Tate and Lacky Roach planned it in their own dear time in their own un-dear way. Did Mama plan it? Or did it just happen?
Like she just couldn't help it, or something? Sometimes, I like to think that. Like to think that something made her do it, something she had no control over, that she wouldn't in her right mind do anything like that to any child, least of all her own daughter.