sad women in her time, but this woman was the saddest. Her sallow skin and rubber blankets and empty eyes were enough to make Wilma forget that she was wearing a straightjacket. Someone always seems to have it worse.
The nurse had apparently forgotten about the straightjacket, also. She told Wilma to strip.
“I’ll need a little help with that,” Wilma said.
“Are you too drunk to undress yourself?” the nurse asked.
“Honey,” Wilma said, “if I could’ve unbuckled myself from this straightjacket, I would’ve gotten out of that car and found a safe place to hide hours ago.”
“Oh.” The nurse considered Wilma for what looked to be the first time. “Right.” She unbuckled the back of the jacket. Wilma shook herself free. Another woman—a secretary, judging from the formless dress and cracked-leather mules and clipboard in her hand—came into the room. She sat on a bench along the wall opposite the tubs. Wilma stripped to her slip. “Down to the bare skin,” the nurse told her.
Wilma took the rest of it off, remembering, oh Christ, her foray the night before with Tom Fillmore. Surely, they’d be able to tell what she’d been up to. Surely, that was one more humiliation waiting to happen.
The nurse led her to the scale and checked Wilma’s weight. “One twenty-eight,” she called to the secretary. Wilma double-checked the weights. Not bad. Say what you will about these benders, they always brought Wilma’s weight down a few pounds. The nurse checked Wilma’s height next. Wilma stood tall, stretching her spine as much as she could. The nurse called out, “Five-four.”
“And a half,” Wilma added. “Don’t forget the half.”
“Five-four,” the nurse called.
“Are you sure you can see all the way up to the top of the ruler, Shorty?” Wilma asked.
The nurse shot her a look. She called out to the secretary, “Five-three and a half.”
“Oh, now you’re just lying.”
The secretary asked Wilma a litany of questions: birthplace, place of residence, father’s name, mother’s name, mother’s maiden name, occupation, religion. Wilma figured that the State should have all this information anyway, and if they were going to rob her of two months of her life and an inch off her real height, she was going to make up all her answers. So she did. Birthplace: Kalamazoo. Place of residence: The Doheny Mansion, Beverly Hills. Father’s name: Culbert Olson. Mother’s name: Joan Olson. Mother’s maiden name: Crawford. Occupation: hand model. Religion: pagan.
At the end of this charade, the nurse pushed Wilma into a tight shower stall. The nurse took a step back and turned on the water. It felt like it was about two hundred degrees, and it pummeled Wilma from three directions. The nurse tossed a bar of soap and a rough washcloth into the mix. Wilma twisted and contorted, trying to pick up the soap and cloth without getting her hair wet. “What the hell are you doing?” the nurse asked.
“You didn’t give me a shower cap,” Wilma said.
“Get your hair all the way under,” the nurse said. “Soap it all down.”
After dipping her head, the hot water felt all right. She scrubbed her skin until it was rosy pink, clearing all the crust and old makeup off her face, scouring away any traces of her previous night’s transgressions, even opening her mouth to the jets and letting the water wash her teeth and rinse out her mouth. She kept turning and running the cloth over her until the nurse had enough and turned the water off.
The secretary tossed Wilma a towel that wasn’t much bigger than the washcloth. It was soaked through before she was done with her hair, much less drying her skin. The nurse pointed to a metal table near the scale. “Hop up,” she said.
“I’m still dripping,” Wilma said.
“Hop up,” the nurse said.
Wilma climbed onto the table. Her dripping skin made it slick. The metal sucked the last traces of warmth from her. The secretary handed the nurse a magnifying glass. The nurse inspected Wilma. She combed through Wilma’s pubic patch, parting the wild red hair, checking the roots, pushing Wilma’s legs open wider, viewing more of Wilma than Wilma could ever see of herself. The inspection was remarkably and painfully thorough. Had any lice or worms or bacteria found refuge between Wilma’s toes or under her arms or within any other crevice, the nurse would have found it. The whole thing seemed to last for weeks. Wilma wondered if maybe this would be her whole two-month stay at the asylum.
Finally, the nurse told Wilma she could stand. Wilma asked, “Are you sure? You may have missed a freckle somewhere on my ass.”
“Enough, Lady Chesley,” the nurse said. She pointed to a shapeless cotton dress that must have been hospital property when the joint opened in the thirties. “Put that on.” Wilma climbed into the dress. It was big enough to fit the fat lady in a sideshow act.
“Am I supposed to wear this or build a tent with it?”
The nurse hadn’t gone for any of Wilma’s jokes and wasn’t going for this one. She just said, “Wear it.”
“Can’t I wear my dress?”
“It has coffee and vomit on it,” the nurse said. “You’ll get it back after it’s been laundered.”
“Can I at least have something that Dumbo didn’t wear in the movie?”
The nurse didn’t respond. She walked out of the hydro room. Wilma followed, her bare feet slapping against the cool concrete of the hospital floor.
The nurse rushed down one hallway and into another. Again and again. Wilma trotted to keep up with the nurse’s long, purposeful strides. She tried to make note of how many turns she’d taken and which way she’d gone. There was no hope. She was irretrievably lost in the madhouse maze. Some rooms she passed had names of doctors or signs saying things like “Surgery” or “Music Room.” Many were dorm rooms. She passed cavernous spaces with thirty or forty beds. Next to them were rooms the size of closets with bunk beds inside. What little daylight snuck into these rooms seemed a cruel mockery. After what felt like a few miles, the nurse stopped at a small room with four beds. “Welcome home,” she said.
No patients were in the room. Each bed housed the exact same style of bland brown satchel. Peeking out of the top of each was a pitiful collection of hairbrushes and photographs and combs and lipstick and paperbacks and knitting needles and yarn. Worn purses and splintered sewing boxes. One bed was empty. Wilma would have to write to Gertie and ask her sister to bring a new collection of sad little lifelines to fill her state-issued satchel. At least one of Wilma’s new roommates had a pencil and a notebook there.
The nurse turned to leave. Wilma quick asked, “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Wait. We’ll call you for supper in a few hours.”
The thought of being alone in this tiny room was too much. “Can I at least have a smoke?”
The nurse took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her scrubs and handed it to Wilma. Wilma shook one cigarette loose, stuck it between her lips, and handed the pack back. “Come on,” the nurse said. “There’s no smoking in the rooms. I’ll take you to the Section and light that for you.”
The
