Джоанн Гринберг: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

In back of the vision the tumult mounted. You will create … the Collect roared. Nothing! You will lie down in the fields … nothing! Study and work … nothing!

They screamed her down the road into town and through the streets; she went vacant-eyed, listening into Yr. Past the church, where she sang on Wednesdays and Sundays, the gods mocked her father’s breaking voice. Past all the familiar streets the Collect hooted over Quentin’s smile and the golden people on the ball field. Male and female created He them. She was nearly at the hospital now—she could make out the two lights where the cars turned in. She went as if by habit, blindly. The Pit was waiting. Soon. She was terrified. Sight go soon. Voice … nothing. Up the steps to the door. Now, open it. Someone there, please! Inside: “Hello, Miss Blau.” And then, “Are you all right, Miss Blau?” One thing left: make a sign. Though a god screamed she could still hear the other sound—three buzzes: emergency. The Pit.

She emerged again back at the eternal beginning, with her heart just slowing from the terror. Because she was still alive, still bearing the insolent pumping muscle in her chest, she began to fight and struggle in her bonds, hoping to become exhausted and die. Exhaustion came, but death was adamant against her. After a while Dobshansky came again. This time his face had been carefully strained to remove all but the bland hospital expression. The books had won.

“You feel okay now?”

She was very tired. “I guess so.”

“We had to call your landlady and tell her you weren’t coming back there tonight and that you were here. She got worried about your school and came over with your books and some clothes. She was concerned about you.”

“She’s a good person,” Deborah said, meaning it, yet wishing that she did not have to wear everyone’s virtues as a weight that somehow counted against her own. She congratulated Quentin on his “secret” marriage and watched his face struggle with astonishment.

When he and little Cleary had gotten her free, she put on the ratty hospital robe and went slowly out on the ward. The faces there were empty or hostile, the same as ever; the first shock of a return was always brutal. It was early evening; she had lost all of the previous afternoon and most of the morning. The trays were just being given out. In the corner, Dowben’s Mary was muttering rites over her dinner. Miss Coral was in seclusion again, probably; Helene was hiding from her in bitterness and envy … and friendship. Deborah sat down, heartsick, and looked at the meal.

She heaved a sigh over the lukewarm substance on the plate, and suddenly Dowben’s Mary stood up and flung her coffee cup and saucer, and it hit Deborah a sharp, glancing blow on the head. She turned to face Mary and saw her unchanged, as if she were unaware of what she had done. The attendant came, slightly menacing them both because he didn’t know what had happened even though he had been sitting there and he felt guilty at having missed it all. Deborah felt in her hair for the wetness and remembered, as if it were medieval history, another gesture like that—her gesture years ago after Helene’s attack with the tray.

She looked again at the faces on the ward. Her presence was making them struggle with Maybes. Suddenly she realized that she was a Doris Rivera, a living symbol of hope and failure and the terror they all felt of their own resiliency and hers, reeling punch-drunk from beating after beating, yet, at the secret bell, up again for more. She saw why she could never explain the nature of her failures to these people who so needed to understand it, and why she could never justify scraping together her face and strength to go out again … and again. In some ways reality was as private a kingdom as Yr. The dimension of meaning could never be made plain to people whose survival depended on its abridgment or eradication. Mary’s cup and saucer glancing hard off Deborah’s head, and the unshielded fear and anger that Mary turned at her, made Deborah understand why the anguish had begun to come as her hand had hung up the telephone after delivering a triumphant piece of news. Yr was forcing her to choose at last. With her acceptance as a member in the world, a person with a present and a possible future, a Newtonian, a believer in cause and effect, the final lines of choice were drawn. It had come in agony and violence, in the familiar terror of the Pit, only because she was still very inexperienced in her knowledge of the difference between problems and symptoms, and so the sickness, which was also a source of her only defense and strength, had placed her where it was safe to make a choice. It was time for true allegiance.

When the trays were cleared away, she asked for her schoolbooks. The attendant brought them out and handed them to her with something of a respect for what they symbolized. She opened the first one.

“AN EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IS ONE IN WHICH THE ANGLE OPPOSITE AC IS EQUAL TO THE ANGLE OPPOSITE AB AND IS ALSO EQUAL TO THE ANGLE OPPOSITE BC.”

“You rotten whore! Let me go!” sounded from the dormitory.

You are not of them, Anterrabae said quietly.

I am of them. Furii says that you will be a contribution, but I don’t yet know how, Deborah said to him. I will have to learn how. Then, maybe …

“A LINE BISECTING AN 80-DEGREE ANGLE FORMS TWO ANGLES WHOSE SUM IS 80 DEGREES.”

Mary: “I wonder if insanity is catching. Maybe the hospital could sell us for antibodies.”

Will you not save us as a shield against your hard rind, Bird-one?

I can’t do that anymore. I am going to hang with the world.

But the world is lawless and wild….

Nevertheless.

Remember your own childhood — remember Hitler and the Bomb.

In spite of it.

Remember the blank-wall faces and the “sanity papers —” and hungering after ones that go hand in hand.

No matter. No matter what.

We could wait until you called us….

I will not call. I am going to hang with the world. Full weight.

Good-by, Bird-one.

Good-by then, Anterrabae. Good-by, Yr. “TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES AFFECTED WESTERN

EXPANSION IN MANY SPECIFIC WAYS.”

Constantia: “Can’t you see that I’m suffering, you goddamn pigs!”

“THE INVENTION OF T.N.T. MADE POSSIBLE THE JOINING OF THE COASTS BY RAILROAD.”

“I am the secret first wife of Edward VIII, Abdicated King of England!”

“Jenna’s going again. Call Ellis; we’d better get a pack ready.”

“AND BOTH RAILROAD AND THE MORSE TELEGRAPH MAINTAINED CONTACT INDISPENSABLE TO MODERN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY.”

“Full weight,” Deborah said.