"My Prison-Cure in America", Chapter 3
Adapted from Annemarie Schwarzenbach, by Cleo Varra
CW: Involuntary hospitalization; restraint & seclusion; suicidality
Read previous: #2. In Semi-Darkness, Stretched Out On A Bed
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Bellevue Hospital, New York City-- 1941
I coughed a lot, and since I must have pulled something in my groin during the fight with the officers, and couldn't bend over in my bonds, it was painful to cough and even to breathe.
I didn’t know how much time had passed since my admission, but I finally thought that I had been forgotten.
At first I didn’t even mind.
***
I thought of the doctor, and after the cold, terrifying sense of hatred and triumph I’d felt in forcing him to get out of my doorway, my nerves remained on edge.
The people I had senselessly fallen into the hands of had exceeded their powers.
They had imposed something on me lightly, without considering if I could bear it.
So that my voice would not reach them, they had tied me up, and put me in a safe place. So they figured the day would pass like any other day, and after a number of days it would be untied, or just forgotten, like a dead person.
But I was alive.
My breathing went on as before.
***
They had humiliated and beaten me, and had even laughed at me in my desperation. But I was still breathing.
And I swore to myself that I would never endure their shame.
***
I flexed my ankles a little in their leather straps, and felt so terrified that I groaned.
I stretched my body, and bent forward, hard, as if to break my own back.
But it was useless.
Exhausted, I fell back on the bed.
***
As though it would calm me down, I whispered, “But I'm innocent, innocent, innocent”; at the same time, while I tried to catch my breath, it seemed as if my voice had swelled, filling the room and corridors with a roar that echoed back from the walls and continued out through the window, rolling across fields and from a great, great distance, dying away in the wilderness.
*******
I listened.
Then I thought I heard footsteps, and began to tremble.— “If they open the door,” I thought,
“If they come too close to me again, if they want to touch me again and taunt me, I will scream as loudly as possible into their faces”……
A Sister entered.
***
She seemed to be in a hurry, and without looking at me bent over my bonds, which first she felt with her hands, then loosened carefully and untied.
"Those must have hurt you," she said, knitting her brows together as if in mild anger.
—"Not really," I said.
—"I just wondered why it was even necessary, to tie me up as if I were a criminal!" --
The Sister smiled a little, and the crease between her brows disappeared.
"And if you were a criminal”, she said, soothingly, “Why should you be hurt unnecessarily?
--You're in a safe place now, anyway. We're here to take care of you, not to punish you. We want what’s best for you."
I was hardly breathing.
"What’s best for me," I repeated. "Indeed, what’s best!"
I straightened up on the bed, and with my untied hand grabbed the pack of cigarettes, still lying on the small table.
The Sister followed my movement with her eyes, and pulled a box of matches out of her large apron pocket.
—“It's not really allowed," she said. — "You have to eat something now."
I breathed the smoke in deeply, and immediately I had to lie back down. I said to myself, “Now I feel like a human being again."
The Sister went out of the room, and came back with a bowl of soup.
*****
