Angela Ball
Stay
I was too young—three? to remember
my mother’s six-week relocation
to the Athens State Hospital (the word “mental”
assumed, not said, like the names of the dead
on its cemetery’s blank
stones), but I remember the gigantic
missing of her: not-hereness
that embraced minutes, separate
and cold. Someone—oldest
sister? fed and dressed me, lay me down
for naps. My fingers recall the cover,
ridged chenille, its fringe good
to twist. Waking came from nowhere,
turning the handle of pop-up leering
Jack-in-Box; stacking bright
wooden donuts big to small
on their post. Furnace
grate burned to touch; some part
of supper wouldn’t
go down but hung, stuck, while someone
pounded my back till out it flew. Eating
and sleeping were rules. I knew
my real insides had gone with Mother.
What did a “nervous breakdown” look like? Did
Mother crawl like a baby, clutching the medicinal
whiskey, a twenty-year-old wedding
gift? Start crying, fail to stop? Whose idea was
the mental hospital? An ambulance’s?
Was she pinioned
in a strait jacket? Whose idea, shock
treatments, how often, how long? How
much pain, much fear?
These questions are embedded, the last
fellow-travelers, chums. The oldest, sternest sister
knew something—she was fifteen.
The middle sister, ten. Neither
talked. Gone. From the first, it was not
the sort of thing to insist
on knowing. Smudged sight, sacred scar.