The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls Read online

  ‘Wait! My hands! How do I get out of this thing?’ I shouted through the bars.

  The shout came back.

  ‘Make friends!’

  I took a step further into the cell. Gradually, my eyes began to adjust, and I could make out several lumpy objects moving about the dirt floor. I heard mutterings . . . groans . . . The air was close, and it was difficult to breathe. I edged my body along the damp wall, hoping to locate an empty patch of ground to claim for myself.

  Outside, the clouds shifted and a small, barred window high up in the wall let in a weak but welcome beam of light that passed along the opposite wall near the ceiling. There, I saw a fleeting glint, like a firefly in the night—extraordinarily present, then suddenly gone. There! There it was again! From high atop what appeared to be a tower of discarded tea crates, I saw two eyes gleaming down at me. My vision adjusting still further, I could now distinguish a creature—something crouched, like a gargoyle.

  ‘Lay yourself down and keep quiet,’ came a harsh whisper. ‘We must be ready for them this time.’

  The whisper was delivered with a slight accent, strangely familiar . . .

  ‘Who’s coming?’

  ‘Go to sleep! I’m keeping watch . . .’

  My hands still bound behind my back, it was all I could do to lower myself. Upon my knees, I looked up once more.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I am your captain.’

  All at once, the moon shone full, and I saw the creature. I saw a white shift . . . I saw striped stockings, black-and-white, black-and-white, black-and-white . . . I saw a mass of silvery hair on top of which was perched a tri-corner hat that looked as though it had been fashioned from torn scraps of paper. I saw the eyes, flashing as they stared forwards, unwavering, at our prison door . . . I saw a stream of daylight bleeding through the bars . . . an alarm was ringing loudly. The girls round me scurried about the cramped cell. I was lying upon a meager pile of dirt. A thin layer of straw had been spread over my body, my collar had been removed, and my hands had been freed.

  hospital entry 14: funhouse mirrors

  I have not showered since the morning I was committed. Having used up all of the moist towelettes (please tell me there is a better name for these) I was able to stash from my days in the Emergency Ward (these were the extent of the toiletries offered), I am left with a supply of rough, brown paper napkins, which I douse with soap and water, and then use to scrub down with whenever I manage to find myself in the bathroom alone.

  There is a shower, of course, but it is filthy and, more importantly, cannot be used unsupervised. After our morning weigh-ins, during which I am repeatedly informed that I am far under my “ideal” weight (ideal to whom? Whose ideal must I conform to now?), all I need is for a nurse to see me naked.

  Shortly after my arrival in Maximum Security, I was occupied in scrubbing my face with the brown paper napkins when I noticed that, whenever I moved, my face would change shape in the mirror. Upon examination, I saw that the mirror is not a mirror at all, but a thin sheet of polished metal. Hell, it probably isn’t even metal; it’s probably plastic painted to look like metal. I tapped upon the surface. Yep. Unbreakable. The flexible sheet was badly warped, and, as I dried my face with yet more brown paper napkins, I considered whether it is really such a fabulous idea to offer lunatics no way to see their own faces save in what is, essentially, a funhouse mirror.

  Now that I think of it though, it’s perfect . . . absolutely perfect. Another joke on us, and I can take it. I can even laugh at it. But there is one thing I wonder: When, or if, we are released back into the real world, will we take this distorted image of ourselves with us?

  But ah, I know what you want . . . you want to know about the letter. Shall I tell you? Shall I say? But I think you know . . . I think you know that it wasn’t the last.

  I have since received over a dozen more.

  What I first thought was some sort of trick being played I now believe . . . I don’t know what I believe.

  But what frightens me is how little I care, for I have come to depend upon the Asylum letters as my only form of communication from the outside—even if it is not the outside from which I have been so uncivilly torn (which, if I’m honest, probably makes it even better).

  I feel I know her . . . I feel she knows things about me . . .

  And, as luck—or madness—would have it, daily have I found a fresh letter from Emily (with a ‘y’) tucked between the pages of my notebook. Sometimes these missives are composed of only a few sentences; sometimes they ramble on for pages; sometimes I am greeted with nothing but a simple sketch of one of the Asylum’s inhabitants. But they are always the reason I open my eyes each morning.

  Of course, I am hardly content with possessing my letters for the day only to give them up at night—certainly not, for these letters are the only things that truly belong to me. I have devised a system by which I retrieve my notebook at dawn, flip through the pages with pounding heart until I find the hoped for dispatch, and then, after reading it through several times, shut myself inside a bathroom stall and stow the day’s Asylum letter in my right stocking before returning my notebook in the evening—

  Stop.

  Just stop.

  Why must I sound so flippant? So hard? So fucking proper?

  There is no one here . . . is there?

  Is there?

  Because I will tell you, you and only you, and only because you already know . . . the spiral wire . . . it is sharper than it looks . . . and I have lusted for it . . . but she sees me begin to unwind the coils and she writes and she writes and she says no . . . no . . . not yet . . . I am coming . . . I am growing up . . . just wait . . .

  I do not know to whom Emily writes (this is not true), why she writes (this is not true), or if she is merely writing to keep herself from going mad just as I am, but, because she writes, I am never alone (this is true).

  I fear for myself should she ever stop.

  I fear for myself should she ever stop.

  I fear for myself should she ever stop.

  Asylum Letter No. XIV

  Chaos and confusion. A door opposite the one I had entered the night before swung open, and my fellow prisoners fell silent. Most kept their heads down as an attendant herded us outside, down a set of stone steps, and into a fairly straight line. Determined to catch on quickly and thus remain unnoticed, I fell in behind a tall girl with open sores up and down her arms.

  We were marched out to what I soon learnt was called the Bathing Court. The forest of leafless trees was a black web lit from behind by the lonely grey of early morning. It was painfully cold, and frost covered the ground, crackling under my bare feet, but it was good to be outside after a night slowly suffocating in Quarantine. I glanced at the girls round me; they varied in age and outwardly visible state of health, yet they shared the blank, hopeless stare of the long-imprisoned, and they all wore the same uniform: A thin white shift and striped stockings in black and white—a costume clearly not designed for protection against the elements, or from anything else for that matter.

  As we walked, I tried to spot my creature of the previous night amongst the girls in line. Just then, a girl marching two places ahead turned round and looked directly at me as if she knew what was in my mind. Gone was the imposing posture and the makeshift hat, yet the glint of the eye was the same, and the tangled mass of pale hair was unmistakable.

  We were not the only ones being marched to the Court; from the wards at either side of the Asylum poured hundreds upon hundreds of girls. Their appearance was staggering; the inmates from one ward were bound in manacles and chains, whilst those from the other walked as freely as I did, though we were all guarded closely by attendants carrying rods and straps. By the contorted frames, bruises, and dejected countenances, it was clear that these tools of correction were employed liberally against any prisoner who stepped out of line.

&nb
sp; But, my God! The sheer mass of us! We were a veritable army, terrifying in our numbers if not in our strength.

  Now in perfect rank-and-file, we were ordered to come forwards, ten at a time, to stand against a stone wall at one side of the Court. I learnt by example that, upon our way to the wall, we were to remove our shifts and stockings and toss them into an enormous laundry bin. For myself, this meant the removal of the remaining shred of what was once a very pretty dressing gown.

  What to do with the key I still held in the pocket of my gown? Lacking a superior solution, I surreptitiously hid the key in my hand, then slipped it into my mouth.

  Naked, we stood before the guard with the watering hose, one end of which was attached to a mechanical pump. Three blasts and we were ordered off the Court, but not before taking a clean shift from the bin at the far end of the wall as we passed, as well as a pair of stockings from the clothesline where they had been pinned, fluttering like striped serpents in the biting wind.

  We were then corralled into the Dining Hall as the next ten girls took their places before the firing squad, and thus the barbaric process continued until all were bathed.

  It was in this way that I came to be just another of the convicts here in the Asylum—dressed alike, treated alike, in class, in disgrace, in uniform.

  hospital entry 15: intervention

  They are counting my caloric intake more strictly than an anorexic at a dinner party. In fact, they have charts that say exactly what one ought to weigh depending upon one’s height, and they are viciously judging us all against these standards. And who came up with these standards anyway? The morbidly obese nurse? The half of America that’s fat? Is there nothing that I am allowed control over? Is there nothing I will not be made ashamed of?

  We are wandering in circles around the rooftop’s perimeter, a lunatic promenade. It is gray and cold, and I wonder when they will decide that enough is enough. I can peek through the barbed-wire fence (because we’d be scaling it and throwing ourselves over willy-nilly if the barbs weren’t there?) and see the busy streets far, far below, but it’s a different world. I could scream and nobody down there would hear me. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been the first to try.

  I complete another lap and a nurse catches up with me, a clipboard in her hand. She asks me if I could do her a “little favor” as soon as I have a minute (I’ve got all the minutes in the world, lady). Handing me a few sheets of paper stapled together, the nurse tells me that it’s just a list of questions that would really help out the staff if I would answer. Although I assume it’s one of those “How Am I Driving?” sort of customer service questionnaires, I feel almost flattered, as though my opinion actually matters.

  “You can go to your room now and fill it out if you like, so you have some privacy.”

  Privacy? Something is most definitely up. The nurse leads me back inside and down the hall; unlocking my communal room, she tells me to bring the form to the glass booth upfront as soon as I’m finished.

  Seating myself on the edge of my bed, I look down at the first question:

  1. How many times per day do you make yourself vomit?

  Note: The question is not do you make yourself vomit, but an assumed how many times. Dear patient, your opinion is irrelevant. It’s your word against ours.

  Three pages of questions, not one of them asking whether I have an eating disorder, all of them just assuming that I do, and ordering me to expound upon it.

  It is unbelievable.

  Nobody sat down with me for a sensitively conducted chat—nobody asked me anything at all; instead, they gave me a fucking form. Not five minutes of anybody’s time was spent in assessing whether or not this form would even be appropriate, whether it would offend me, whether it would freak me out, or whether it would simply be unnecessary. If I answer as they clearly expect me to and tell them how much I hate my body, and how, yes, you’ve caught me you brilliant sleuths, I cannot eat without making myself sick afterwards, will I then be handed another form telling me what to do about it? Are pamphlets the new psychotherapy?

  Un-fucking-believable.

  Of course, I am enjoying my ten minutes of authorized privacy too much to simply go handing this form back now and telling them where to put it. No, if they want answers, then answers they shall receive.

  I reply to every question at prodigious length, filling up the pages until there is no more space to fill. Then, I turn the pages over and write on the backs. I am flip. I am sarcastic. But I am not unkind. I simply want them to comprehend exactly how asinine their questions are.

  17. Why are you continuously dieting when you are already too thin?

  23. How far above your ideal weight do you consider yourself?

  31. Do you believe in magical beings?

  *This last was a very real question.

  I conclude my final answer with the declaration that unicorns are real, and that I quite enjoy my relationship with food under normal circumstances, which my current ones are most certainly not.

  I have no expectation of how this will be received, but I am prepared to defend myself, not against the accusation of having an eating disorder, because, although I don’t happen to have one, it isn’t a crime (not like suicide or anything), but against being called a liar, because I know that I will not be believed.

  Determined to beat the staff to the proverbial punch, I skip down the hall to the office, and, smiling, hand the papers back through the window slot to the nurse who first gave them to me. Without looking at my answers, she tells me that someone will be coming to talk with me in a moment. I can’t wait.

  Along comes yet another corpulent woman who introduces herself as the Hospital Nutritionist, because why the hell not? She invites me, the nurse, and some other staff members into a conference room, and we place ourselves around a large table as she flips through my answers, her face hardening as she does so. I will say nothing. I will simply wait for it . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . .

  “Well, Emilie, it looks like we’ve wasted your time.”

  There it is.

  “Listen,” I say, kindly, trying to lessen the shock just a bit if only because there is still this pathetic part of me that hates to see others uncomfortable no matter how much I’ve been made to feel so, “I’ve got a lot of problems, but an eating disorder just isn’t one of them. Why were you so sure that it was?”

  “Well, you are very thin.”

  “Perhaps, but that can’t be all. What specifically did I do to make you so sure that we needed to have this intervention? I would sincerely like to know.”

  “As I said, Emilie, you are very thin, and we’ve noticed you don’t eat much.”

  I tell the Nutritionist and all of the assemblage that there are many reasons a person could be “very thin.” For example, one may be incarcerated within a mental hospital and living in a state of constant terror, leaving one with no appetite. For another, one could be incredibly depressed. Still another, and I know it’s taboo to say in this current state of western society where overweight females are publicized as “real” women (which offensively implies that those of us who are healthy are “pretend” women), but one could be naturally thin. I happen to be all three of those things.

  “Well . . . we’ll be watching you,” says the Nutritionist.

  And then, the alarm screeches through the yellowing plastic speakers, for it is, oh, you guessed it, dinnertime.

  Asylum Letter No. XV

  It was upon my third day in the Asylum that I saw it: something sparkling from beneath the breakfast table in the Dining Hall. I peered below and recognized the little silver pencil that I had seen hanging from Madam Mournington’s chatelaine upon the night I had first arrived. It must have broken from its chain, and, now, there it was, waiting for me, just begging me to snatch it up and carry it away to my cell.

  The prospect of having something to write with was exhilarating . .
. I felt that I simply must have the pencil, yet I must also act with caution. It was already reckless that I should keep Anne’s key always tied just above my right knee, hidden beneath my stocking as it was; I ought not to risk anything more.

  I decided to wait until breakfast was over. Dear God, thought I, to be able to write . . . to have something, anything to do . . .

  Alas, when the bell rang, a girl at my table fell to the ground in a seizure. An attendant rushed forwards to drag her from the Hall, and the surrounding guards swiftly ordered us up and into line, fearing that the episode would incite hysteria amongst the rest of us. I reached my arm under the table, knowing it was not wise to do so, and was proven right as a leather strap whipped across my neck, drawing blood. Forcibly was I put in my place with the other inmates.

  In my cell that night, I relived the morning’s events over and over in my mind, truly despising myself for having lost a thing I had never owned, but which I was yet convinced that I could not live without.

  And then I heard it—a noise from the corridor—a sort of scurrying, or perhaps a clicking of fingernails, very, very quiet, yet coming closer all the time until I believed that it was inside the cell, then even closer until I was quite certain it was nearing my bed.

  All fell silent.

  Then came the sound of something being dropped upon the ground and rolling a short distance before coming to a halt. Whatever it was that had entered the cell left the same way it had come.

  When I could no longer hear it, I extended my hand into the dark to touch the splintered floor beside my bed. Finally, my fingers found an object smooth and cold, only a few inches in length, and very narrow. I picked it up and rolled it over in my hand, but I already knew exactly what it was.