Patricia McCormick: Cut

“I’ve figured out the Sick Minds food philosophy.” She says this to the table at large.

The food-issue people lean in attentively. I twirl my pasta around and around my fork until it slips off.

“There are four basic food groups here: pasta, purees, puddings, and potatoes,” she says. “They only serve things that begin with a p.”

Debbie sighs.

“Seriously,” Sydney says, “have you ever noticed?”

“I’m sick of pasta,” Tara says. “All those carbohydrates are an issue for me.”

“Yeah,” says Tiffany. “This stuff is crap.”

“We had chicken last week,” says Debbie.

“Yes, Debbie, we remember,” says Tiffany. “It was the high point of your life.”

Because we guests can’t be trusted with real silverware, the food usually has to be mushy enough to eat with plastic spoons. Last Thursday, though, we had chicken à la king, and since Debbie’s the only Level Three in our group she got to hand out stubby plastic forks and knives. She also got to collect them at the end of the meal. “It’s sort of like being on a picnic,” she said.

Sydney changes the subject. “Look,” she says, pointing across the room. “It’s the Ghost.”

A woman with a gray braid down to her waist is waltzing around the salad bar. She’s wearing a long white dress and her arms are stretched out like she’s got an imaginary partner.

“She’s from Humdinger,” says Sydney.

“What’s that?” asks Tara.

“The wing where they keep the real psychos.”

“You mean Hammacher,” Debbie says.

“Humdinger,” says Sydney. “You have to be a real humdinger to get in.”

People laugh.

“Once you get in, you never get out.”

No one laughs this time.

Dinner doesn’t take long. That’s because the first person back to the dayroom gets the remote control. Tonight, though, there seems to be a delay; I pick up from the chatter that something special is going on.

“That’s great,” Debbie coos to Becca “You’re doing really great.”

Becca lowers her lashes and picks a crumb off the corner of her brownie. Then she puts the crumb on her plate and cuts it in half with her plastic spoon.

“You’re going to eat the whole brownie, right?” Debbie says this loudly, for everyone’s benefit.

Becca nods demurely. “C’mon,” she says, giving Debbie’s arm a nudge with her thin little elbow. “You know I can’t eat if you’re all watching.”

“OK, OK,” Debbie announces. “No one look at Becca.”

Sydney pinches her thumb and index finger together, giving Becca the A-OK sign. Then everyone makes a big show of looking away. I push my chair back, finger the metal strip around the edge of the table, and stare underneath at people’s feet. The din of plates and cups clattering and people shouting ebbs, then picks up, louder than ever. That’s when I see Becca slide the brownie off her plate into her lap. She wads it up in her napkin, mashes it flat, and stuffs it in her pocket.

After a while Becca says it’s OK for people to look again. There are oohs and ahhs. Three chimes sound, signaling the end of dinner; Debbie says we should let Becca be in charge of the remote control that night.

Later, while the other girls are in the dayroom watching Jeopardy, I hide in a nook near the attendants’ desk, holding a pile of laundry and waiting until the coast is clear. I have to do laundry every couple of days because just about all my mom packed for me is pajamas. Nightgowns, actually Brand-new ones with daisies and bows.

I watch for Rochelle, the bathroom attendant, to leave the desk and take her post on the orange plastic chair between the toilets and the showers. Then I inch up to the desk and wait for Ruby to notice me.

Ruby’s skin is indigo and her hair is the silver of an antique teapot. But the thing about Ruby is her shoes: they’re old-fashioned white nurse’s shoes. Unlike the other attendants, who dress like they’re going to an office or to the mall or something, Ruby wears thick white stockings and real nurse’s shoes. The first night I got here, the only way I was able to fall asleep was listening for the squeak of her footsteps on the slick green linoleum as she made her rounds. I can’t say why exactly, but I trust those shoes.

Ruby’s sitting down, knitting, something pink, maybe a baby blanket. As I watch her knobby hands fly over the yarn in time with the whish and click of the knitting needles, I wonder what Ruby does when she’s not at Sick Minds. If she’s somebody’s grandmother, maybe, or somebody’s next-door neighbor.

She smiles when she sees me. “Need an escort to the laundry room?” she says.

I keep my gaze locked on the pink thing unfurling beneath her knitting needles.

“Yes, indeedy,” she answers herself. “Give me a sec. OK?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. “OK,” she says.

Like Sam, Ruby doesn’t expect me to say anything. She’s happy to do the talking for both of us. I lean against the desk and watch while she sweeps the yarn around her finger and finishes off a few more stitches. Then she puts her knitting on the desk and hoists her short, dense body out of her chair. Her keys jingle and she says, “OK, baby. Let’s go.”

I try to figure out the right amount of space to keep between us as we walk down the hall. At first I stay close to the wall. But that feels wrong, so I move closer and try to match my stride to Ruby’s; I bump into her, then veer away. After that, I stay next to the wall. When we get to the stairs, Ruby holds the door open, then lets it fall shut behind us. We’re in our own small world now, the hushed world of the stairway, where all the noise from the dorm—the constant music and talking and TV voices—doesn’t exist.

She stops a second and holds out her hand. In it is a small butterscotch candy, the kind my Gram used to keep in a dish in her living room.

“Go on, take it,” she says. “It’s all right. You’re not one of those food-disorder girls, right?” She tucks the candy into my hand. “Right.”

“Besides, a little something sweet never hurt anybody,” Ruby says. “I may not have a degree in psychology, but I know some home truths.” She taps the space between her breasts, as if that’s where home truths might be stored.

When we get down to the laundry room, Ruby unlocks the cupboard where the detergent is kept; then she leans against the wall and watches as I put my jeans and shirts in the wash, measuring and remeasuring the soap powder, arranging and rearranging the clothes, and hoping Ruby will say more about her home truths.

But she doesn’t. All I hear is the sound of plastic crinkling as she unwraps a butterscotch candy for herself. “All right, baby,” Ruby says when I close the lid of the washing machine. “Let’s get ourselves back upstairs.”

On the way back up, we pass a fire exit sign with a diagram and a big red arrow next to the words YOU ARE HERE.

And I wonder, if Sick Minds was on fire or something, would I be able to scream?

There’s a lot of crying here at night. Since there are no doors on any of the rooms, the crying—or moaning, or sobbing—floats out into the hallway. Sometimes I lie in bed imagining a river of sobs flowing by, leaving little puddles of misery on each threshold.

When I first got here, I spent a lot of time trying to identify the crier by voice and location. Someone nearby mews like a kitten. That, I think, is Tara. Someone down the hall has a choppy cry that starts out sounding like laughing. That, I’m pretty sure, is Debbie. But after a while I decided that trying to guess which crying went with which girl just made it harder to fall asleep.

So I came up with a game that helps take my mind off the crying.