Sarah Vaughan is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness (8 page)

I get off my bed feeling better for having written a song and decide it's time for a coffee and a cigarette. I go into the dining room, which is packed. All the tables are full of people crouching over their bowls, protecting their food. I squeeze through to get some coffee. Mark is eyeing me, making sure I'm not taking the Milo.

I fill up my cup by the nurses' station and make my way outside. I see the P30 sign in the car park and take it to mean I should smoke three cigarettes. No one is around. I sit on the grass in the sun.

The voice starts speaking to me, telling me to get my lunch.

“I don't feel like it.” I can quite happily exist on coffee and cigarettes, I think to myself.

“But you have to eat.”

“I'll eat a tomato. That's all I want.”

I continue smoking. I can see Jo and Nga in the smokers' room and don't feel like talking to them. The voice says, “Go and have your tomato.” I walk the long way around to my room, out the end of the yard, through the sliding door, and past the kitchen and lounge. I get the tomato out of my room and go into the TV room. Nora is there, sniffing glue and watching a chat show. “Hey bro,” she says.

“Hey.”

I sit and stare out at the sun. The voice says, “I'm your real mother. You were born in Africa and your real name is Ea because you are the first child of creation. The moon is your mother and the sun is your father. I am in your stomach.” I look at my stomach. Nora is so out of it she wouldn't notice. My stomach tells me to finish my tomato and then go look at a map.

I go outside through the side door, sit on the green three-seater chair and have a quick smoke, then I make my way to the occupational therapy room. I stand right in front of the map that's facing out into the corridor. My head gets led to Mauritania on the west coast of Africa. I walk past the table in the middle of the room to the door at the back that leads to a garden. Liz is leaning against the door. I ask her if I can use the internet. “Sure you can.” She connects me and I look up Mauritania. It turns out it's the founding place of hip hop and one of the wealthiest African nations. Just as I'm starting to read about it a nurse, Stephanie, pokes her head around the door and says, “Your mother's here.”

I stand up straight away, filled with rage. I walk up to my mother and say, “What are you doing here? Leave me alone.”

“I just want to talk to you and I've brought you some fruit.”

I say aggressively, “Leave me alone.”

She keeps talking at me. I lean forward and scream, “You're a rapist.” I say it so loudly and forcefully she swoons back and heads quickly for the door. Stephanie is standing there. She has clearly dealt with these situations in the past. I'm shaking with rage. She says, “Come with me. We'll have a cigarette and I'll give you something.” She disappears into the back of the nurses' station, brings out a couple of pills and I swallow them.

“I never want to see my parents again,” I say.

“Yes, but we need to establish why you keep going back to them.”

“I don't want to. Sometimes it's my only choice.” I'm so angry I am unable to articulate what I'm thinking. Stephanie gives me one of her cigarettes, a tailor-made.

“I don't like her turning up. I'm twenty-six, old enough to look after myself.”

“But you still need support.”

The pills slowly start to work and I feel my rage dissipating. I think to myself, that's the first time I've ever verbally attacked anyone like that. I was so angry I wanted to hit her. I felt like some savage beast. It was lucky I didn't have any dangerous weapons.

I finish smoking and head back to my room feeling a bit drowsy. I lie on my bed and drift in and out of consciousness. I can feel myself wanting to cry, wanting to ring somebody, but there is no one to ring. I don't even feel like picking up my guitar. I drift off to sleep.

I am woken two hours later by Waris. “MaryJane, MaryJane, you've been asleep all afternoon. Your mother is very upset. What happened?”

I'm very sleepy. I say, “Cigarette.” I get off the bed. “Talk to me in ten minutes, cigarette first.”

“Okay.”

We go outside. I make a coffee on the way as I can barely keep one eye open, then we sit at a table at the end of the yard by the only tree and we chat.

“Waris, can I get some hair dye?”

“Oh, I think that's a good idea, nicer than purple.”

“Yeah, shall we go?”

“Oh, wait—what about what happened today?”

“We walk then talk,” I say.

“We won't be able to go for another hour, until just before dinner,” Waris says.

“Okay, I wait.”

“Your mother is very upset. She is your mother, MaryJane, and you can't change that.”

I stay silent. I'm still bewildered as to the matter of who my parents are.

Lester comes over and sits down at the table. “Hey,” I say. Waris gets up and gives me a disappointed look. “I'm off to do rounds.”

Lester waits for her to leave and then says, “Babe, where you been?”

“Oh, I crashed out: they gave me something to calm me down. Must have got aggro earlier, don't really remember.”

“They like to have us calm and sedate, babe, that way we don't cause so much mayhem and disturb the peace.”

“Yeah, they like us bedridden, back to the mattress, if you can call it one.”

“Babe, thanks for helping us out the other day. I still owe you cash but haven't gotten out yet.”

“No worries. I'm going out to get hair dye later.”

Virginia starts walking towards us. Lester turns and says, “Mother fucken Mary.” Virginia gives us both a disgusted look and turns the other way.

“Put it on my EFTPOS card. Get Fiona to do it—she's really good at things like that. Plus it might cheer her up to have something to do.” Fiona is a new patient and is on suicide watch. Lester has obviously got to know her in no time.

“Do you trust me to go out with your EFTPOS card?”

“I trust you so much, babe, I would even sign a contract between us to say I totally trust you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you're a really easy person to trust. I'll just go get it out of the safe.”

Lester trusting me makes me feel good, especially now I know he's a legit person because he's keeping his word and paying me back. While I wait I look around at the hundreds of cigarette butts on the grass. I feel sorry for the grass and decide to start picking up the butts. After about fifty I decide I've had enough. I go and wash my hands in the day hospital toilets by the staff lockers; they are much cleaner and nicer.

I walk back past the room where the computer is and see the big art tables littered with felt pens. I see through to the garden and wish I could get out there for a smoke. At least you can see the street from there.

I go back to the map on the window and am led to Mauritania again. “Guess that's where I'm from,” I say to myself. I'm led to a river called Rosso; the voice says that's where I was born. I stand and look for about five minutes.

Stephanie comes past and says, “Looking at anything in particular?” It pisses me off being spoken to in this tone. It's as though she thinks I'm just zoning out and staring, when in fact I am actually looking at my place of birth. I know better than to say anything though, because she's the kind of nurse who would demand I have an injection if I show any sign of not being as you're expected to be, namely calm.

“Just checking out the African continent.”

I go back outside. Lester's sitting at the table with Fiona. He has his EFTPOS card in his hand. Fiona says, “Lester told me you want to dye your hair. I'm good. I dye my daughter's hair—when I'm not in this place, that is.”

Lester lights a smoke. I light another smoke and don't say much. Lester kicks my boot under the table. “Babe, what's up?”

“I'm just pissed off at that fucking nurse Stephanie assuming that because we're in here we're half-witted fucking idiots. It's a miracle we still function, given all the drugs they give us.”

“Yeah, they want to put me on Risperidone,” Fiona says.

“Oh really? When I was on that I used to wake up every morning and cry. That drug's horrible,” I say.

Being in and out of the system as much as I have, I have got to know the drugs pretty well. There are some core drugs that people get given on admittance, mainly Olanzapine, but sometimes others such as Risperidone and Seroquel. Every one of them has made me depressed.

I don't usually like comparing meds with other people because we all react to them differently, but I do suspect why certain drugs are prescribed so freely. Risperidone and Olanzapine, for example, get churned out like jelly beans. Sometimes if you are unhappy it's really hard to get people to take you seriously and listen to you. Just as there are good doctors and nurses who make the time and effort, there are also inattentive ones. When I am being given pills that are made easily and cheaply and don't make me feel a whole lot better, it makes me think my life is not seen as precious.

 

Waris comes back past. “We go in thirty minutes, MaryJane.”

“Well, I'm on Olanzapine,” Lester says.

“Me too, but they're changing my meds tonight,” I say.

“What to?” Fiona says.

“Lamotrigine and Haloperidol.”

“I've never heard of them.”

“Me neither.”

I ask Fiona when she got in. She says two days ago. The crisis management team picked her up. She had to leave her four kids and her husband. “I really need to be there helping him out but I can't because I'm stuck in here, God knows for how long.”

“Well, I've been in here three months because they said my mental illness, which I might add I don't have, is really hard to diagnose,” I say, lighting another cigarette and putting my old butt in the ashtray against the wall.

“What did they diagnose you with?”

“Schizoaffective disorder. I've never heard of it.” At this point I haven't even thought to look it up on the internet because I have been more interested in knowing where I come from.

I decide it's getting a bit cold and I want to be warmer when I go out. “I'll go get changed and come back by,” I say.

“I'll give you my EFTPOS card in case I'm not here when you get back,” Lester says. “The PIN's 2118.”

I decide to write down the number. I go into the occupational therapy room where there are lots of felt pens under the sink. I write the number on a piece of coloured paper, fold it and put it in my pocket. I go back to the table and say, “You guys want anything?”

Lester asks for a lollipop.

I walk back into my room. I don't look at the nurses' station as I walk past, but out of the corner of my eye I see there are about five nurses sitting at the table, all writing notes.

I'm not in the mood to go out but I want to get the hair dye. I sit on my bed and look at the pictures. I pick up one of my new ones, put some Blu-Tack on the back, and stick it on the wall. I now have sixteen A4 pictures in total and I am creating a rectangle.

I open my drawer and get out my skull-printed pants and put my white shorts back in. The voice starts talking to me, telling me to shower when I get back because if I look clean it may heighten my chances of getting out of here.

I sit on the ground and talk to the orange. The orange tells me to eat a banana and buy some more tomatoes. I pour myself a Coke and have a banana. I lie on my bed staring at the door opposite. The shutter on the window in the door is opened by Bob. He's doing rounds. He stares at me and I stare back. I start remembering the incident I had with him the previous day. He walks away. I sip my Coke and look at my guitar but I don't feel like playing. Usually I play obsessively because I don't want to lose my train of thought from the previous song, but I'm not so concerned with that at the minute.

Obsession seems to be a big part of my life. I have thoughts about people or things that won't go away. Another obsession is the voice, which is always talking to me, telling me what to do and where to go. This can be frustrating and annoying. The voice can also become menacing and sinister, which scares me. It's not like an obsessive boyfriend on whom you can slam the door shut. The voice goes to bed with me and wakes up with me and walks around with me, all day and all night. It preys on my vulnerability to try and make me like it.

I start thinking about what the voice said to me about my father and mother not being my real parents and I wonder about orphaned children and how they cope being in the world, away from their true family. I decide I'm as good as dead if I can't find my real parents and family. I have no proof of where I am from, no family and no cultural identity. No wonder I'm a mess. The voice speaks to me and says, “You're not a mess and you don't need to kill yourself. One day you will meet your real parents.” That I can't believe, I think to myself, unsure of my emotions, stuck in a holding bay where you feel nothing.

 

Waris pokes her head in the door. “You ready?”

“I'll be two minutes.”

The voice says, “I'll tell you who your parents are later.”

“Okay.”

I grab my cigarettes and roll one.

I meet Waris outside my room. She says, “You all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, no problem,” I say, sounding cheery. I'm not feeling the best but I'm not keen to talk about it.

We end up on Mein Street, the one my room looks out on to. “I heard you talking to someone when I was waiting. Who was that?” Waris says.

“Oh, I was talking to God.”

“So you have a conversation with him. Can you hear God?”

It feels like some sort of interrogation. “What's up with you and these questions? Why do you have to be so serious?”

Waris looks at me and laughs. “Oh darling, I'm sorry. I was just wondering who it is you talk to, okay? Sorry.”