Джоанн Гринберг: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“Well, when I first came to the hospital I was not unhappy. I didn’t care about anything and that had a kind of peace about it. Then you made me care and as soon as I did, Yr punished me and I got desperate with it. When I begged for mercy from Yr, Anterrabae said, …You have eaten down hope from the red to the rind.’ I thought that I would have to live and watch that old rind shrivel up and get hard and be thrown away at last. He used that allusion now and then, and when I realized that I was alive, really alive and of the same substance as the world’s inhabitants, I told him that I would chew that dry rind and keep chewing until it gave me nourishment. This time, when I was back and everybody was so disappointed in me, Anterrabae said, …That hard rind is cracking your teeth—why not spit it out at last?’ ”

“And what do you feel about doing that?”

“I can’t stop chewing now, even if I don’t seem to be getting anything much,” Deborah said. “Since I have the reflexes and instincts of a world one, I guess I’m stuck with it …” and she smiled sheepishly because it was an admission; it counted and someday she might have to hang from it.

If only I could tell her … , Furii thought. How do you tell someone born and raised in the desert what rich and fertile lands there are, just out of sight? Instead she said, “How is it going for you on the ward?”

“Well, of course the patients are mad at me, and the staff is kind of disappointed. I’m down to see Dr. Halle today.”

“Oh, something special?”

“No … I have to tell him to let the social worker know that it’s still on with me, and that if it’s okay with the people down at that place she mentioned, I’ll be ready whenever they are.”

REQUISITION

Date: Sept. 3

Patient: Blau, Deborah

Ward: D

Ward Administrator: Dr. Halle, H.L.

Date: Sept. 5

Time: 8:30 A.M.

ITEMS:

1 dress, suitable for city wear

1 pr. hose

1 pr. shoes

27 “clip-type” curlers

1 coat

1 tube lipstick

$.80 suburban bus fare (for social worker and self)

4 city bus tokens (for social worker and self)

The above to be requisitioned from patient’s rooming house.

Signed:

H. L. Halle

Miraculously, her need had been seen by Earth ones. Deborah found that her exceptional problem was common enough to be covered by a statute. If she could prove to the Board of Regents her conquest of high-school subjects, she could get a certificate of equivalency without having to undergo three years in the big stone school. If she could ride the two hours to and two hours back between the hospital and the city’s Remedial and Tutorial School, there might be a quicker and less perilous bridge between Never and Maybe. She fell into her work dizzily and full of doubt, found her balance, took the books, and dove into them. Buried in pages, she sounded to the bottom like a whale, rose, took breath, and plunged again. Despite the dangerously hypnotic effect of the double two-hour ride each day, pride in the stubborn battle gave her the strength she needed. She struggled to stay up to the demands of the study and travel. In time the teachers were able to open a tiny crack in the wall of her separation. During the month that she went to school from B ward the nurse woke her before full light. Each morning before she was ready to leave for school, she was allowed by doctor’s order (medicinal) one cup of coffee, and after a week of fidelity to the early hour, the night nurse added toast and a glass of juice on her own responsibility. Deborah was proud of the respect that the little extras showed. Except for the extraordinary ones, the hospital workers tended to give the flat requirement and no more, but lately, at the moment when she stood at the door with her morning schoolbooks—symbols of responsible sanity—and waited for it to be unlocked with the large “madhouse” key, the attendant would say, “Good-by, now,” or even, “Have a good day.”

With such extras, Deborah achieved a certain pride and status on the ward. When she moved back to the rooming house, and went to the hospital just for supper and therapy, the shadow that she cast along the walkways was lengthened by more than the coming of evening. She began to understand why Doris Rivera, who had been well enough to work and live with her own keys in her pocket, had spoken so sparingly to the hungry and terror-stricken audience of D ward. She, too, had seen her shadow lengthened by hard-won hairbreadths, and though she was still dwarfed on the flat-faced walls of the world, to the hope-stunted sick from among whom she had gone, she had had an outline larger than life. How it had swayed and faltered with her return.

One day, coming from an exhausting session with Furii, Deborah saw a knot of people in the hall, and coming closer she saw that they were writhing, slow motion, like creatures under water. At the center of the knot, all but hidden by it, was Miss Coral. Because Deborah’s loyalty had not shifted with her commitment to the world, she had to choke back a guffaw. The bed-flinging genius of fulcrum, weight, and thrust was at it again! Deborah wondered how she had gotten off the ward. She was standing almost still in the middle of the melee, taking on five attendants by drawing them into battle with each other. Her rant was a low mutter, like an engine, full of long sibilances and obscenity. Deborah passed by and tossed a “Hello, Miss Coral,” more for the attendants than for the lady herself. Miss Coral removed her concentration from her war and smiled to Deborah.

“Hello, Deborah. You’re not back, are you?”

“Oh, no; just a doctor’s hour.”

“I heard you were home for the Christmas holidays.”

“Yes…. It was easier this time—almost like real fun.”

Miss Coral’s lightning eyes softened; her rigid stance and the whole five-man writhe about her relaxed into a half-comic, yet strangely moving, truce, while Deborah and Miss Coral faced each other, socializing.

“How is Carla? Do you still see her?”

“Oh, yes, she got that job she wanted…. Hey, is it true that Dobshansky got married to a nurse on one of the male wards?”

“Yes, a student. It’s a secret marriage, though, because of her training. No one knows about it,” and they smiled at each other for all the cold-water pipes and all the ears on all the wards.

“How is everybody?” Deborah asked.

“Oh, the same, more or less. Lee Miller is leaving for another hospital. Sylvia looks rather better, but she still doesn’t talk. Helene’s back with us on …D,’ you know.”

“No—I didn’t. Say …Hello’ for me. Throw something at her and be rude so she’ll know it’s me.” Deborah looked hard at Miss Coral. It was difficult to confront the pain she saw so nakedly in the face of her modest and gentle teacher, the bed-thrower and bearer of Catullus. “Are you okay?” she asked, knowing that anything more would be an imposition.

Miss Coral looked apologetically at her retinue as if they were all one great, embarrassing social blunder with which she was not connected.

“Well …” she said, “it comes and goes.”

“Can I bring you anything?”

She knew that Miss Coral could not ask, but she was hoping for something in code. They had shared a thing rare for their sort of illness—a touching of minds, a touching of feelings. Horace, shouted through the two-inch-thick doors of a seclusion room and into the dark wastes of a private world, had been more than Latin, more than beauty.

“Oh, no … no.”

Deborah realized that the bus would be leaving. “I have to go—”