Chapter Two

I walked back down the long hallway, dim and cold. Paint had worn off all the surfaces, leaving the wood walls and floor the same neutral color. The rain was blown in a fine spray into the windows. I walked into the Day Room and looked for Elam to introduce myself, and watched the people around me. There were some staring into space, some talking softly to themselves, some people twisting handkerchiefs in their hands, moving constantly. They looked a little disheveled; when they dressed themselves they couldn’t have been paying too much attention. I saw the techs moving among them, carrying little paper cups of medicine in little trays, hardly talking.

The Day Room was a large room with stuffed furniture placed around it in groupings. It reminded me of the heavy old sofas and chairs in my Aunt Margaret’s house in Chicago, only she had pinned hand knitted lace doilies on the armrests of the chairs. The walls of the room were painted a sort of yellow, and there were some pictures and flowers on the tables. Someone had tried to make it seem like home, like a room these residents might have lived in, once upon a time. There was brown rug on the floor, with some worn places near the doors. At the far end of the room was the nurses’ station, medication room and chart rack. The nurses’ station had a high wall of glass around it, not all the way to the ceiling but high enough so no one could reach over and grab anything or anyone. I stood still for a minute and tried to feel the place; it didn’t have the hustle bustle of a hospital floor. It didn’t have a feeling of purposeful movement, people doing errands and getting a job done. It had a sort of timeless, hesitant feeling; people had retreated here to wait for something. It felt good, in a way. It felt almost cozy until you saw someone talking to themselves, or rocking quickly back and forth or holding their head in their hands. I decided that I liked it; I didn’t know quite why, but I knew that it would be good to be here, with them.

And then I saw Elam Jefferson. He was on the couch, no longer playing the flute. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand and was reading and scribbling on them; he smiled at me when I came toward him.

"I'm Jennie, one of the student nurses. We're here doing part of our school work with you."

He stared into my eyes at me for a long minute, saying nothing, peering into my face as if he would discover something there. He took my hand and bowed low, and kissed my fingertips. He looked straight at me and smiled a shy, brilliant smile, and said, "How fortunate we are to have such lovely springtime people in this wet winter of our discontent. You are here, you are here, oh frabjous day, hooray, hooray, caloo, callay!”

He limped and appeared to be lame in his left foot, but he hopped and danced in a little circle around me. He was so full of joy at that moment that I couldn’t help but smile. He sat on the couch, out of breath, and motioned for me to sit next to him.

“I need your sunshine, so sit here and shine on me. What will you do here, how long will you stay?” He was full of questions, and when I told him about our schedule he wrote it carefully down on the back of one of the papers he had in his hand. He put his head up and looked at the ceiling and closed his eyes.

“Twenty days! Such richness, such learning.” Then he looked anxiously at me and said, “Let’s pretend I’m learning too, like you. Twenty days to learn our lines, and the directions that the Script Writer would have us take.” He leaned forward and looked directly into my eyes. “We have to listen very carefully, and the Scriptwriter will tell us.” Elam pointed at the ceiling, and nodded wisely. “He whispers, so you have to listen carefully and not let the noise in your head drown him out. He will give us all the instructions that we need, all the stage directions so we make sure we move correctly as we learn our lines.” He looked around at all the people in the room, all the residents and techs and students and said, “I wonder if they’ll follow the directions?”

“Directions for what?” I was mystified by this guy, wondering what he was talking about. I looked up at the ceiling, and saw only white plaster, no Scriptwriter.

“The play, of course. The play that we’re all a part of.” He smiled another bright smile and showed me his handful of wrinkled scribbled pages. “This is only part of the script; the other part I have to listen for, and write it down as we go along. You’ll learn, you’ll understand.” He nodded wisely and put his face near mine. “Can you begin to learn?” he asked, softly.

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I told him about the requirements of learning while we were here, while we took this course.

"We take tests and keep a journal, but mostly I just need to talk to you, to find out how you feel, what you do all day, why..."

"Why we're here, you mean? What did we do to the outside world that they needed to put us away?" He put his head back, closed his eyes, and put a limp hand against his forehead. "Woe. Woe is me. Woe are we all." And then he grinned and the impish look returned. "Let me tell you the secret." He put his face close to mine and whispered in my ear, "They on the outside are just as crazy as we are, in here. Only we have the advantage. We know that we're crazy! Out there, they aren't sure!" He laughed and laughed, and wiped the tears from his eyes with a red silk handkerchief.

"This sweet and bitter fool will presently appear, the one in motley here,” he pointed to himself, and continued, “the other found out there..." he motioned out the front door, and saw Mr. Wallace peering in the glass. This struck him as hilarious, and he laughed some more. I learned later on that he launched into snippets of rhyme and quoted everyone, mixing them up whenever he wanted. Inside his rhymes and nonsense glittered the truth, like a diamond in mud.

It must have been time for medications, because the residents were lining up at the nurse’s station, quietly waiting. Behind the glass, the nurse, all in white, poured pills into little paper cups and handed each one a paper cup and another cup of water. One by one, they took the medicine and walked slowly back to sit down and put their heads in their hands.

Elam became very still, and watchful, sitting straight on the couch. I think he had forgotten I was there. He murmured something about the Eucharist and the communion, looking at the line of people waiting, and his eyes got very bright. I watched him watch the nurse, a heavy set woman with no expression on her face. They watched each other and when the line was gone, she sat there at the little glass window and held up the paper cup to Elam, with an empty sort of expression.

“Shall I follow the Script, or write new lines?” he whispered. He watched the nurse and she waited, and Elam didn’t move. She stood up slowly and walked out of the little glass enclosure and came towards us, one careful heavy step at a time. Her uniform creaked and rustled as she walked, one slow step at a time. Elam was pale, and held his breath as the nurse came towards him, with narrowed eyes. Her lips were pursed, tight together. She wore no makeup and smelled slightly of rubbing alcohol and sweet perfume.

“Take your medicine, Mr. Jefferson.” She handed him the cups and he hesitated for a minute, watching her face. She didn’t say anything, just waited, and watched, her lips still tight together. Elam put the pills in his mouth and swallowed the water, and handed her the little paper cups. She took them and crushed them slowly in her hands, and looked at me.

“He always does that, makes me get up and come to him.” She murmured, and turned around and creaked and rustled slowly back to the nurse’s station. I sat back and looked at Elam, who sat upright with his eyes closed. He settled back, put his head in his hands, and murmured about the slings and arrows of misfortune. For a moment, he was quiet, eyes closed.

"I can feel it work,” he whispered, “I can feel the little molecules slipping and sliding their way through my system, calming me, making me articulate and sane." He opened his eyes and looked at me brightly. "See how marvelous our medicine is? They do not need their chains and ropes any longer, Bedlam is contained; there is no screaming." He leaned toward me and looked at me with dark clear eyes. "Only the silent scream, here where the medicine cannot reach, for the miserable have only hope for medicine.”

He drew himself up, and sat for a minute with his eyes closed, letting the medicine work. Then he opened his eyes and winked at me.

"I digress. Now that I am myself again, I will tell you the story of Elam Jefferson.” I had a thousand questions about him, and how he got there.

"I come from the Jeffersonian tradition, from the old family from the Virginia hills. You hear the mellifluous tones of the piedmont in my voice, I'm sure. Not the nasal croaking that emanates from this red clay of Georgia." I smiled, and he patted my hand. "I knew you were from parts north of here, my dear, you are from Charleston, the queen city of the South?" I nodded, hating to tell him that I came from much further north than Charleston.

"I am the Prime Minister, the Keeper of the Keys, and the Seal of the King." He looked around, his eyes searching the Day Room for someone.

"I'm looking for the King. My king. And yours, if he commands it. He is the King of Ethiopia, born to greatness but cast into the streets by a wicked minister. I am here to set it right."

He put his finger alongside his nose, and gave me a wise and comical look. Suddenly, a long slim fingered black hand came down on his shoulder and Leo said in a loud voice, "Elam, stop that nonsense about me being a king. I came from a white man who raped my mother. She was half black and half Indian, and he raped her. He ran off away from both of us, but she couldn't run. So it was her and me for a long time, and now it's just me."

He looked off with a wild look in his eyes, and then back at Elam, who was watching him with adoration.

"See," Elam said to me, "see how the King is? He denies his heritage in this place, " Elam looked around at the people, muttering to themselves, one old man was taking his clothes off in the corner. A big fat lady was sitting a chair near us, holding her arms as if to hold a baby, rocking back and forth, back and forth. She looked unseeing all around her, and rocked with nothing in her arms. I looked at Elam, and he put his finger to his lips. I looked around, and saw Mr. Wallace coming towards us. He walked carefully, avoiding contact with Them.

“Time for conference, Miss de Sando. Are you enjoying yourself?” He smiled one of those smiles that curves the lips but dies somewhere before it gets to the eyes. Leo turned on his heel and walked away. Elam smiled back, eyes dancing.

“Does this pretty fool try to teach crabs to walk straight?” he laughed.

Wallace jumped and looked at Elam with a funny look on his face. Elam walked around him, looking him up and down as if measuring him for something. He stood away a bit, and walked around Wallace again, then stood back and pursed his lips and pulled his chin.

“I think it will do, this costume is correct. Anything else would not fit.” He nodded, and pulled out his sheaf of papers and began to write. Mr. Wallace shook his head, annoyed, and motioned for me to follow him. Elam winked at me as we left, and bowed.

I followed Mr. Wallace out the door and to the conference room, where my classmates were sitting in a circle, notebooks out. I had completely forgotten about the eleven o’clock conference, right before lunch. I tend to do that, get involved in what I was doing and forget school.

“I found her.” Mr. Wallace declared complacently. “She just got all involved in a conversation with one of Them and couldn’t tear herself away. Did you practice listening therapeutically, Miss de Sando?” Partly sarcastic, partly trying to be the teacher. I don’t think he liked Yankees.

“Yes sir. Pretty interesting place.” I took my seat next to Eunice and opened my notebook, and looked around. Lucas was sitting down from Eunice, and across from us were Nellie and Sweets. I need to tell you about them, and the other people as we go along here.

If I was skinny and tall, Nellie and Sweets were at the other end of the scale. They were both about five feet two, and weighed probably twice what I do. It didn’t bother me, people are what they are, but it sure bothered them. They were always making fat jokes and nasty comments about thin people, until you wanted to say “Forget it! Lose weight, stay the same, who cares, just shut up.” They were always together; Nellie was the leader, she had reddish dark hair and washed out blue eyes. Sweets was blonder, her eyes were bluer, she had freckles and she frowned a lot and had a habit of chewing the skin off near her right thumbnail. They dressed the same, in loose sweatshirts and long pants, big sweaters and shirts. They were always together, and they were always eating. This morning they sat together, looking uncomfortable in the little classrooms chairs with the right hand desk place to write on, eating chips right under a sign that said “No Eating or Drinking in Classrooms.”

“Let’s move on to Nellie’s patient, I mean resident. Her name is Mrs. Railiford. What did it say in her chart, Nellie?” Mr. Wallace was standing by the chalkboard, writing down the comments from the students.

“Says she had an emotional trauma of some sort some years ago and is now mute and delusional. I don’t know exactly what happened, what brought it on, but she just sits there and rocks as if there was a child or a baby in her arms.” Nellie shook her head and straightened her name tag. Sweets looked down and checked her name tag, too. They looked satisfied that they were still the same people the name tags said they were.

Mr. Wallace wrote “mute and delusional” next to the name and turned to Lucas. “Your patient is....”

“Mr. Lastinger. Jarrod Lastinger.” Lucas waited while Mr. Wallace wrote the name on the board. “He’s supposed to be manic depressive, medications are...” here Lucas rattled off some of the jawbreaker terms in psychiatric medication, and I dutifully wrote them down. “I don’t know if they work yet....” he continued when Mr. Wallace broke in.

“We’re not going to see much change in these people until we’ve been back many times. Just write down your observations from today, do your med cards, and let’s see what happens tomorrow. Lunch, anyone? We meet at three-thirty in the Dayroom, remember....” he glanced at me, the forgetful Yankee. I nodded. Eunice winked.

We filed out, towards the cafeteria, carrying our notebooks. Walking around the cafeteria line, I saw all the usual suspects, fried okra, butter beans, chicken fried steak, broccoli with cheese sauce, rice, biscuits and gravy, sweetened tea, and about twelve desserts. We sat around the table, eating off trays and commenting on our morning.

“Interesting place, isn’t it?” I asked, trying the get enthusiastic about lunch.

Lucas nodded, and smiled at my use of the word. “‘Interesting’ covers a lot of ground, Yank.”

“True. But it is interesting, sort of layered, like there’s more down there than we saw this morning.”

“There’s more down there than we’ll ever see, or hear about.” Eunice had worked as an aide in several mental hospitals in the area, years ago, and knew some of the ropes. Lucas hadn’t worked there but he had spent time in Vietnam, and he claimed that made him experienced in mental health work.

“Place like that, you either get stronger or crazier, one.” He finished his plate and pushed it back, contented. “Good butter beans.”

I looked down at the limas and smiled. Same bean, different name. I was learning. At least they only served grits for breakfast; butter beans I could handle. But not fried okra. No way.

The students met after lunch in the middle of the cafeteria and sat together at a big brown table to discuss our first morning. Mr. Wallace sat with us, so things were a little subdued. No one wanted to come out with too much reality around Mr. Wallace. He talked a lot about what he expected of us, what our assignments and quizzes would be like, how he wanted us to write the medication cards, "the medicine's brand name on the right hand side, and then the generic name underneath. Always put the generic name underneath." He told us that this afternoon we were to attend our first "group" and reminded us not to say anything, nothing at all, just watch.

I raised my hand. “The resident I’m working with said that he doesn’t need to be here, that everyone else is here because they’re crazy but he’s not. Is this common?”

Mr. Wallace laughed, a high mean laugh. “They say the same thing at the state penitentiary at Reidsville, Ms. de Sando. They say they shouldn’t be there and that they’re innocent of the crime they’re supposed to have committed. What do you think?” He smiled one of those smiles of his that didn’t involve his eyes, and I thought comparing a mental hospital to a big state prison was an odd sort of comparison. I didn’t say so, just wrote a little in my journal.

"We all have to stay out of the way, we must leave the true interventions to the professionals who are in charge.” Mr. Wallace repeated himself. “Remember that, you are here to observe only. Anything else could get the school into a great deal of trouble. This group gave us permission to be there, they’re the least nuts of all of them," he laughed. “That way you can ease into dealing with them.”

“Will we ever be exposed to the locked ward?” Lucas asked, quietly. Mr. Wallace jumped and shook his head, muttering something about insurance and wouldn’t look at Lucas. Lucas rolled his eyes and crumpled his napkin and left the table to go have a smoke outside. Mr. Wallace watched him leave, squinting.

"Unconventional, that man. Very unconventional."

It was the worst sin you could commit, with Mr. Wallace. Unconventionality ranked somewhere with being uppity and having venereal disease.

After lunch and instructions we went back into the Dayroom. One of the assignments today was to check the charts like a good little Student Nurseperson, so I left Leo wandering around the Dayroom, restless, watching Elam write. I went to the nurse's station, to find a little quiet and solitude in the lounge, reading the charts.

The same nurse who had given Elam his medicine was there, checking off orders. It seemed familiar, like the other hospitals, a cluttered nurses' station, coffee brewing in the lounge, drawers full of medical forms, pencils, magazines, paper clips, and somebody's jar of peanuts. Along with co-cola, people ate a lot of peanuts around here.

"Excuse me; I need to see two charts, White and Jefferson."

The head nurse turned and looked at me, a speck of bother in her day. She was heavy and solid and dressed all in white, asserting her Nurseness in this land of dangerous unpredictable civilians wearing street clothes. She wore a cap, too, on gray hair done up in a bun mined with hairpins. She had no expression on her face, so I repeated myself, with some softening.

"I need to see the charts of my two assignments, if it's OK. Is anyone else using them?"

Her expression did not change.

"Are you a student?” she asked. The way she said it, the word 'student' sounded nasty. I sighed. I had run into her type before, afraid to help or teach any student because then her knowledge would leave her and go to the student, never to return, as if knowledge were bits and pieces of cake, to be devoured.

"Yes, I am. We are assigned to this wing for four days a month until May."

I watched her eyes register "four days a month until May" and she sighed. A heaving of the ample breast, to allow this speck to intrude upon her realm.

"Here. Careful. Bring ‘em back."

She was as stingy with words as with smiles. She turned, her massive arms resting on other charts, precious eggs hatching beneath her bosom. I took the charts into the lounge, feeling her malevolence follow me. What a waste of time. What was I going to do with her charts? Did she relinquish them even to the doctors, to review and write orders? Later on we students had a name for this lady, and it wasn't polite. Mostly we called her the Guard Dog, which was more polite than the other name.

The charts were standard, they told me pretty much what Elam had told me. He had come from a wealthy family in Virginia, many years before. He had been placed in several "homes" after a head injury, an accident at age 23 jumping a horse in New Mexico where he visited, as a tourist. He had never been right after that, and the family couldn't take care of him. At least not in the true Piedmont tradition. He had been moved from home to home because of "administrative difficulties" and ended up here at the State Hospital, parents long dead, siblings dead or forgotten, no where else to go. We weren't supposed to read between lines, but I couldn't help it.

Leo's chart was much less informative, only that he had been admitted five years ago and never seemed to leave. A few months ago he had been in an evening "group", with some insightful notations from a Doctor Fried. His case had come up for review but then nothing happened, no further plans, no more assessment. No weekend passes home. No visitors. I noted his medication, but the names were unfamiliar, and I had to look them up. That would be homework, but now before we attended the group session I wanted to see more of this hospital where no one turned corners. I put the charts away and wandered around the drafty cold hallways, finding the cafeteria and the library, and the nurse's lounge. It was obvious that the staff were doing as much as they could within a very tight budget.

I poked my head into some activities workshops, where the residents were singing and drawing and doing crafts. Everyone seemed quietly busy, concentrating on their tasks. I wandered into the little workshop where a man was carefully pouring plaster of Paris into a mold that looked like an American eagle. He frowned as he worked, making sure the plaster didn’t drip. He wiped the stained wooden table carefully when he was done. Around the room were paints, boxes of dry powdered plaster, buckets stained with generations of paint. On the walls hung other residents’ molds and designs. There were some smiling Christmas elves, another American eagle, a smiling plaster Bambi and one with flowers and a ribbon that said “Mother.” Over the window were the masks of Comedy and Tragedy, looking down at all of us.

The paint stained table had been cleaned off, ready for the next project to begin. The room was dusty and quiet; thin watery sunshine filtered into the dingy window. Again, I had that funny sense of waiting, of standing on a platform waiting for a train.

We met in the conference room at three-thirty and Wallace looked at his watch.

“It’s about an hour until we have to leave, and these sessions usually last an hour, unless someone has a real emotional meltdown.” He looked around with a smirk, as if meltdowns only happened to weak and unstable people, not upright citizens like him. No one said anything. He cleared his throat, looked at his watch again, and we followed him to the group therapy room.

It was another small room like the conference room; did group therapy happen there, too, I wondered? Were we a ‘group’ of our own, in that conference after the clinical? Instead of little classroom chairs like our group room it had two large dining room tables with chairs around them, and a flip chart next to the chair at the head of this table. We filed around the room and stood against the walls, as the therapist and his group came in and sat down. The therapist looked young, I think he must have been a student himself, doing a residency or a fellowship in psychiatry. He was tall and thin, stooped and round shouldered, looked underfed, and had a long lantern face like a hound dog. He talked quietly and seriously with Wallace for a minute and then looked around, and introduced us to his group.

“These are students, from the nursing school at Mystic. They’re here to observe, and I’ve told them you’re really great so don’t make a liar out of me.” He smiled, and the hound dog looked almost cheerful for a minute. The residents around the table stared at us with no expression. We didn’t recognize anyone, of course, we had only been there one day. I saw some young people, two men around forty, one with a cap with a John Deere logo on it, the other with a bandana around his head. They were drinking Co-cola and smoking. An older man sat across from them with a pad of paper in front of him. And when I looked out the door I thought I saw Elam, limping away.

There were about twenty people in this group, scattered around the two tables, some looking down at their feet, some out the window. It seemed like a lot of people, too many, but what did I know? They all had that dusty, sort of unkempt look, their clothes were wrinkled. Everyone smoked, and the room filled up with a blue haze fast.

“Let me tell you something about us. We’ve been a group for about six months now, and all of us have an addiction problem.” I wondered at the use of the word ‘us’ but he must have been identifying with his group and not separating himself as the therapist away from his patients. Or he may have been using ‘us’ like a nursey-nurse does when she asks ‘how are we feeling today?’ Whichever way he used it, no one reacted.

“How is everyone today?” He looked around at each resident, and some of the people nodded and said, ‘fine’ and kept nodding. The man with the John Deere hat looked at us and then at the therapist.

“Are you going to ask them, those students, how they are?”

The therapist looked startled, and said, “No. They’re not part of group.”

“Maybe they are; maybe they’re not students at all. Remember that guy we read about who pretended to be a doctor and did operations and everything? Maybe they’re like that.” He sat back and looked at us, and drank his Co-Cola. Mr. Wallace cleared his throat.

“I can assure you, we are legitimate, sir. Students, all the way from Mystic. Not an addict among us.”

There was a careful silence. Lucas looked away, out the window. Eunice stirred. How did he know that? And why was he so quick to distance us from them?

The therapist smiled. “Last week we talked about families, and how they contribute to the addict in many ways. They enable him sometimes....”

“Why ‘him’ and not ‘her?’” The older man with the notebook looked up and scratched out something on his pad of paper and looked expectantly at the therapist, who sighed and shook his head.

“Sorry, that’s right. Addicts can be either male or female, but we’ll use the usual ‘he’ because we all understand that. Right?”

The man shook his head and wrote ‘her’ in big letters on the pad and sat back, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders.

“My mama was an addict, that’s why I call them ‘her’ and not ‘him.’ No telling what she would do. Snake mean one minute and all lovey dovey the next. Died in prison.” He took up his pencil and continued to write, his pencil scratching quietly in the silence. “When I was about six, she used to take us thirty miles to the orphanage near Jessup and tell us she was going to leave us there if we didn’t behave. And then go buy us an ice cream.”

The therapist cleared his throat and said, “Right. That’s typical.”

“Prison? Or being snake mean? Or threatening your kids with an orphanage?” John Deere wanted to know.

“Changes in behavior suddenly, for no reason. Typical, of addicts.” He looked down at his notes and John Deere peered at the papers, reading upside down. The therapist moved the papers and John Deere sat back, frowning. He crushed the empty can in his hands and threw it across the room and stood up.

“Can’t sit here any more, gotta go. My addict insides tells me that it’s time for a change in behavior.” He walked out the door and the other one, the man with the bandana around his head, followed him, nodding politely to the therapist as he went by. There was another careful silence. One person raised a hand and the therapist nodded to her.

“I’m not an addict, but a victim of abuse. I tried to take an overdose and that’s why I’m here. Is this the right group for me?” The therapist made a hurried check and it was determined that she belonged in the group that met at five o’clock. She left, murmuring to herself as she walked out the door. As she left, I was certain that I saw Elam turning around and around, looking at the ceiling. As she left, he followed, walking sideways, like a crab.

My back was hurting from standing still for so long, and my foot was going to sleep. Eunice stirred beside me, and gave me a look. The older man must have seen, because he stood up and pulled his chair out.

“Would you like to sit here, ma’am? You’ve been standing for a long time.” Eunice walked over to the chair and thanked the resident, and sat down. The older man stood behind her, and the therapist coughed. Another person stood up and offered me his chair, and I sat down, too. Wallace coughed. There was another little silence.

“What about forgiveness?” The man behind Eunice said suddenly. “Should forgiveness be part of all this, this healing?”

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” A little woman in the corner piped up and spoke for the first time. The therapist nodded.

“You know, understanding is probably the main thing we need to do, forgiveness is God’s job. Just trying to understand our own behavior, and finding ways to change it, is enough.”

I was sitting so I could see out the door, and there was Elam, on his knees with his hands raised in a prayerful gesture to the ceiling. Was he talking to his Scriptwriter, I wondered. If anyone else saw him, they didn’t say. Wallace coughed again, and looked at his watch. The therapist saw him, and looked at his.

“Well, it’s almost time to adjourn, so I’ll see you next week. We’ll delve more into family relationships then, OK?”

The older man who had talked about his mother muttered as he went out the door. I heard him saying “snake mean, she was, snake mean. What relationship? With a snake?”

We walked slowly out to the van, Eunice and Lucas and I, together. No one spoke much.

“I wonder why those two guys left? Are they supposed to do that, just get up and leave?” Lucas asked, idly. “Didn’t seem to be much going on in that group. We get more done in our classroom conference, when Wallace is late.”

Mr. Wallace counted us twice, and said nothing about group. We drove to the motel, in the darkening cold winter afternoon, and the black pines stood watch silently around the hospital as we pulled out.

I put my head back on the seat and closed my eyes, and thought about my aunts and the little group I lived with, and how relationships affected it. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for my grandmother and great aunts to have me dropped in their laps at six months of age, grieving for my mother at the same time they raised me. In a way, I became my mother, because they remembered raising her. That psychiatrist at the hospital would have a great time with my aunts. He’d probably give up and gain twenty pounds eating lasagna, and forget to take notes. Aunt Flo would put ‘zoom- zoom’ in his coffee, like Grandma did. They all loved the whiskey, a shot at a time, in strong black coffee. I remembered the shot glass was shaped like a brown boot. I think I slept in the warm van going home, my head on Eunice’s shoulder, and dreamed about big round tables with plates of lasagna and coffee cups laced with zoom-zoom and an empty high chair hear the head of the table.

I woke with a start when we pulled into the motel parking lot. Eunice nudged me, and whispered,

“You fell asleep like somebody hit you with a rock, girl. You feeling OK?”

“Must be all that fresh air and running up and down hallways.” I shook my head and we all climbed out of the van into the Lamplighter Motel lobby.

August 15, 1977

Cara Innocenza,

Now you begin a new chapter in your life, going to the school for nursing. I always wanted to be a nurse, but we never had enough money in those days, so I quit school to help at home. But always when someone was sick, they called me. You call me, too, I can help. You'll call me old fashioned, but that's OK, I'm used to it.

Remember to get plenty of sleep, and don't pay attention to your Zia Carolina, she doesn't know anything about nurses and besides she married a lawyer, so what does she do except sit and spend his money that he earned and died at an early age from living with her? Working is beneath her, except for the volunteer with no pay. Who respects people who will work for nothing?

We had angello with risotto yesterday, Barney came over from the store to eat my lamb. Carolina came to check the leftovers, and took a plate home, naturally, she only makes American food now from marrying a rich American lawyer and she forgot our ways. You should see the way she looks at Barney, the room gets hotter. Tomorrow I’m going to cook a whitefish in milk, the way Talina used to cook it. Do you remember it?

Be careful and keep good hours and be a good nurse, and when you finish, take care of the old people. We need nurses like you. When you become one.

Love and kisses,

Your Grandma Rosa