Fall 2007 / Spring 2008

Little Animals

by Mike Hampton

The cafeteria is quiet. The only exception is a television playing cartoons in the corner, but no one is watching it. Since it is lunchtime, I'm waiting with surgical gloves and a bucket full of detergent for the first patient to vomit. One of them always vomits during meal times. I've worked here long enough to know what to expect. The staff members all believe that they do it on purpose. The directors say they can't help themselves.

I look down the first folding table at the plastic trays— red, blue, yellow, the cheery colors of a Lifesavers roll— and waiting for one of the patients to start heaving over their trays. They all eat with plastic spoons that can't be broken. Everyday picnic forks aren't allowed since they have points that are sharp and can be broken off. Grocery store picnic knives are banned too. I survey every spoon at the first table and scan down each dirty hand at the second one. They can't take the spoons with them since they can be melted with over a heater into a handle with a jagged point. If a patient stuck one of us, which they have in the past, there is no one to complain to. We are the only ones left to deal with their kind.

I sit down at the second table and hear lips smacking, teeth meeting mush, moans. Outside, past the steel bars, squirrels are playing tag in the yard. They race up the birdfeeder to steal sunflower seeds, then back through the grass and up into the trees chattering things only they can understand. Buses move outside on the street, moving people back and forth to the city. I smile at the patients next to me but none of them shows any hint of understanding. They never look out the windows.

Behind me a gag turns into a whooping cough then a wave hits the shore of institutional tile below. My eyes close just long enough to forget about blue skies and sunflower seeds before I pull on the gloves and get my bucket. While I start to clean up the mess Patrick, another care-giver, takes the patient into the shower room to get him cleaned up.

Today it was Billy who threw up his lunch. Tomorrow it will be Davey. The day after that it will be Franky, Timmy, or Suzy. They all have little kid names like that. I wouldn't be able to file a report if the keyboard was missing the Y key. I've started noticing things like that lately.

When I clean up the acrid puddle of half-eaten awful from the floor, I put the bucket back in the kitchen and throw away the gloves. Then I walk down the first table collecting trays. Most of the food here comes in squares. I pick up a red tray with a cube of bile green Jell-O shivering in place. I pick up a blue tray with a meat square on it that looks like Spam but I know it's not. I pick up yellow trays and green trays until they are all dumped and stacked up for me to clean later.

The patients line up by the kitchen door waiting for dessert. I hand out pudding packs to each one and watch over the line to make sure they sit down with their spoons. Dessert is never solid. When I first started at Evergreen, dessert was a Popsicle. That ended after a caregiver named Brenda was stabbed through the right breast by a Popsicle stick that had been scratched against a brick wall until it came to a point. Now they get pudding packs and ice cream.

After I hand out the last dessert, I lock the kitchen behind me and wait for Patrick to come back so I can take Jimmy his lunch. Jimmy can't eat with the others. He stays in isolation.

Patrick comes back from the shower room with Billy and we give him a pudding pack. Then I go back to the kitchen and lock the door behind me out of habit. The kitchen is one of the few places at Evergreen we truly control. Patients aren't allowed in it since there are too many nasty things to work with. There are sharp butcher knives on chains that hang from the counter. There is bug spray, carving forks, and an industrial can opener. There are gas burners that could be turned on unlit. The kitchen is our safe room.

I pull Jimmy's boxed lunch out of the refrigerator and open the door that goes back into the main dining room. Patrick is standing with his shoulders arched, his hand pointing out towards the back of the room.

“Kenny's about to go,” he says under his breath. His other hand is reaching down at his hip out of habit, but there's not a gun there anymore. He hasn't been a cop since he killed a kid. At least that's what he says. Here we aren't allowed as much as a stun gun.

“Wait for it,” I say. I sit the box lunch down by the kitchen door and we both start moving slowly towards the back of the dining hall.

Kenny is a huge mangle of muscle and fear. He could be forty, or sixty, or twenty-five. It's impossible to tell how old most of them are. Their bodies run on different clocks. We are a good ten feet away when it happens. He starts making a sound like “CH! CH! CH!” and then starts to bawl and howl while swinging his arms around like bicycle chains directed at what he sees that isn't there.

When he jumps we jump.

Patrick grabs one arm and I grab the other, then we let our feet leave the floor so that we're dead weight on either side. Kenny howls even more and stomps his feet against the floor. I get my footing and pull hard to one side. Patrick feels the shift and follows up with a push on his side. We've done this a hundred times. We all hit the floor hard.

Kenny starts to cry and shudder. We sit behind him and wait for it to end. We aren't allowed to use the plastic handcuffs that look like garbage ties anymore because they leave marks on a struggling patient. We have to just sit until we can move him back to his room. I look up at the clock and bite the inside of my cheek. There's a sore there that's been growing for two weeks.

An hour passes, and Kenny is back in his room as gentle as a lamb. I leave Patrick to change Kenny's diaper and take him to the shower room to clean up. I'm sure that I'm losing my hair. Every time I cough it's cancer. I can't sleep anymore. My nose has been bleeding for no reason. The general practitioner that comes by here said it's all in my head. He says that I just need to relax and take some time off, maybe just go to upstate for awhile, but I don't think that will help.

I put hydrogen peroxide on my arm where Kenny's nails dug in and go back to get Jimmy's lunch. I hate feeding him off-schedule. It makes him worse.

Jimmy's room is on the fourth floor next to storage rooms for toilet paper rolls and bed sheets. When he first came here he was put in general population, but that didn't work out. He was too violent and they could never get his medication right. Eventually they just put him up at the top where he couldn't bite off fingers and claw anyone's eyes out. He sits up there day after day waiting for me.

I count each step as I make my way up the stairs with his lunch. I have an apple in my pocket as a peace offering. He loves apples. It's one of the few words he can say. Most of his speech comes out in growls and hisses. I was told once that his mother was a speed freak who got knocked up by some psycho. We have a lot of patients that were born scrambled eggs thanks to crackhead mothers. We have even more that were pimped out as kids, kicked around like garbage cans. But I never read the patient's files. I only hear rumors. I don't try to explain Jimmy.

When I get to the fourth floor I stop to catch my breath. I want to set myself for feeding time. If I'm holding anything under the surface, he'll know. I want to open the door smiling. He can feel whatever crawls around inside you. He knows nothing else but that. You have to be there for him or he goes off. You have to watch him eat until he's finished. If you don't give yourself fully you're a target. It's a small thing to ask— consideration.

Jimmy likes me. I'm the only one who can get near him except for the psychiatrist, Doctor Pacific. I feed him after the doctor medicates him. We each make our way up the stairs three times a day. Our lives are wearing down to this. I put a fake smile on my face like a stewardess and unlock the door.

When I walk in, he's in the shadows under the window. It's his favorite spot, his back to the outside world that passes him by. For a second I stand still so he can size me up. His smashed mind takes time to put the pieces together, so three times a day I wait I like this. After a minute he starts.

“Abbbul, Appbuhhl.” He walks over to me wide-eyed, taking his time. He needs a shave. He creeps towards me with his hands out. He wears a big fake smile too.

The box is on the floor at his feet. He sits on his mattress and pokes his finger into one square thing or another. Jell-O splatters onto his scraggly beard. He eats the squares in fistfuls without looking up at me. He knows he doesn't get the apple until all the food is gone. That can take almost an hour depending on his mood.

So he sits and digs his fingers into the box lunch and I spin a quarter on its end from where I sit on the other side of the room. The sun is bright and I think about stream-fed lakes and mountains, warm places I've never been. I think about walking away from the walled-in world. But I can hear him slurping and gnashing in the corner. If I wasn't here, who would take care of him?

“You need a shave, Jimmy.” The hair on his face grows funny. It pops up in patches and is real thin so he looks like a middle-school kid trying to flaunt puberty. He must be thirty. Or he could be seventeen.

“They say it took six cops to bring you in the last time Jimmy. They say you killed a bunch of stray cats.” He stabs his fingernail into a gray square that comes in a box marked “pre-portioned gravy.” “The Doctor says he can't pump enough juice into you to get you back to a real hospital.” Jimmy pushes his tray to the side with his foot and slides on his knees to where I sit.

“Aahhhppul..Appprrllhh.” His eyes are blown wide and black with anticipation. I toss the apple to him and he moves back to the mattress where he can tear into it in peace. It's always this way. He's on his side. I'm on mine. No one gets hurt.

The peel is torn away with a hundred little fingernail flips. I look at the way he uses his nails on the apple's skin and worry about the next time I'll have to cut them. Jimmy tore a caregiver's earlobe off before I came here. I've heard he's done worse. When it comes time to groom him again I'll have to do the clipping.

Jimmy wouldn't be here if he was a patient that the state of New Jersey deemed manageable. All the patients at Evergreen are here because they are too violent to be housed in any state-run mental hospital. When the state can't handle a person, they turn them over to our company. It keeps them from worrying about liability lawsuits I guess. They give us the biters, fighters, breakers, rapists, and we store them away.

I start spinning the quarter again and watch Jimmy finish off his apple ritual. When he's chewed his way down to the core he starts picking out the little black seeds one by one and puts them under his pillow. He wants this to be a secret since he only does it when he thinks I'm not watching. When all the seeds are taken out he slides back over to me and hands me the core. He smiles and I smile. That's the dance.

The door locks as I leave. I have ten more hours before I can go home. I forget what day it is anymore. I work in a submarine. Everyday is this day.

By the afternoon, I'm in the office next to the dining room entering incident reports into the computer. One reads, “Patient Alvarez threw feces onto caregiver Joyce and began to seizure.” Another one reads, “Patient Harris was found bleeding from the anus in the third floor hallway and taken to infirmary.” I enter the times and dates, names of staff members and attendants.

I've been adding editorials to the reports. I write that patient Schneider is one mean motherfucker. I haven't held back any details. If a patient calls a caregiver a “cocksucker” that's what I write instead of “obscenity.” No one reads these reports anyway.

When the reports are finished I start writing letters to the patients' families, if they have any. I have to write joyful letters about how well their son or daughter is doing, and go on about their art projects or friends here. Then I put down what each patient needs. Kenny needs four triple-X large sweatshirts and some new sweatpants. Jamey needs a new bra since her old one is too tight. I sign each letter with a different name. I doubt any of the letters will be answered.

The families of the people here only come around on Christmas, if they come around at all. Some of the parents are in prison, some are dead. Most don't care what happens to their kid one way or the other. I write “Jimmy needs new shoes” on the last letter and sign it illegibly. It's going somewhere on the Lower East Side to a woman named Darla. It will probably end up at a dead letter office or a dumpster. I've never gotten a response. These letters make me glad I grew up in an orphanage.

Patrick only comes around once the office work is done. He leaves the typing to me, and I leave the wrestling to him when I can. He's stronger than I am, and I think he likes it anyway.

“What do you think he is?” Patrick asks pointing to the letter addressed to Darla, Jimmy's legal guardian.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You think he's Puerto Rican, Cambodian, Italian?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I never thought of him being anything.”

“He's probably a mongrel,” Patrick says, pointing at the address. “They're all mongrels down there.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Patrick says.

Three purple dents stand out on Patrick's elbow when he rolls up his sleeve. He says if he hadn't had help, Jimmy's teeth would have made it all the way to the bone and left him a cripple. He tells me I don't know what he is capable of since I've only heard the stories. Jimmy has taken off ears, blinded nurses, but I only get to see him after the drugs hit him.

Patrick has another mark on his arm, a tattoo that's spreading out under his skin real bad to the point that you can hardly tell what it says. I can make out the blurry pin-up girl above the writing on it, but the words all smear together until I can only read “And Run.” I don't trust him.

The volume on the television goes up real high all at once and Patrick spins around towards a huddle of four patients shoving each other in front of the set. He sprints like a German Shepherd and grabs the first one he sees by the shoulder, jerking him back and moving on to the next. I don't think he was ever a cop. I think he was a security guard. I don't think anyone would have ever given him a gun.

The volume on the television set goes back down and Patrick puts each of the patients in separate corners to cool down. If they all rushed him at once I wouldn't help him.

Doctor Pacific comes in and gets the letters to send out with the rest of the mail. He looks young, he could be my age, and I wonder why he works here.

“I don't know why you bother sending those,” I offer with my feet up on the desk like I'm real important.

“Company policy,” the doctor says. “There's always hope someone cares more about their child than their check.”

“The families get a check?” I ask. I always assumed the state got the money for the patients and then sent it to our company. I forget about families. My old orphanage and Evergreen are a lot alike. You expect orderlies, not mothers and fathers.

“They get a nice check,” he says. “If your DNA is scrambled and you can keep making flawed little babies, you could have a check big enough to retire in Tahiti.” He says this straight-faced. Every thing he says is that way, to the point and a little sad.

“How come they never visit then?” I ask, already knowing why.

“Because they don't care. If anyone did, I'd send their child home with them rules or no rules. Care is something every patient needs, but few find in an institution.” He looks at the patients in the corners of the room then out the window. I just nod.

“Filed away,” I say.

“Well,” the Doctor says, “it's almost time to give Jimmy his medicine.” I'm the only one he mentions Jimmy to. I'm sure of that. Most of the other caregivers here don't want to know about Jimmy. Most of them quit before they even know there's a fourth floor at all.

“What's he up to on his meds?” I ask. I don't know what's a little or a lot, but it's good to have someone on the inside to talk to.

“More than I should give him but less than he needs. He gets more tolerant every week.” Doctor Pacific sets the letters down again. The thought of going up there is on his face.

“Is what they say true? Did it really take six cops to drag him in the last time?”

“No. Seven or eight. I forget. When he's unmedicated, he's a timebomb. He'd kill anything in sight. But it's not his fault.” Doctor Pacific pulls up a plastic office chair beside me. I look at Patrick playing big man by the television. That's all he can control. Little things.

Doctor Pacific gets real serious and says, “Do you remember your dreams?”

I shake my head.

“Never?” he asks.

I nod. I don't remember anything when I'm not here.

“Well you see the thing about dreams is there is no logic to them. Everything is completely valid without context or reason. Nothing ties into anything else. Every event mutates into another world or time without logic. That's what Jimmy's mind is like with everything except for us. He's found a way to tie us down inside.”

I don't say anything. I feel a frozen eight-ball rolling inside my head from missing too much sleep and eating pre-portioned squares. The practitioner said that I'm trying to tell myself something, that I should listen to my body and take some time off.

“If he connected one other thing from the world outside himself, I'd set him free today.”

“You mean that?” I ask.

“I have to give him his meds.” Doctor Pacific straightens his back and heads towards the door.

Patrick is tired of playing crossing guard to a parking lot so he lets the patients start milling around again. I see him smile a big dumb gorilla smile to himself as he makes his way back to the office. Caregivers like him always stay the longest.

“Hey Doc,” he yells. “How come you ended up here anyway?”

Doctor Pacific feels the same way about Patrick that I do. He picks up the letters and makes his way towards the door.

“I'm a psychiatrist,” he says seriously. “Patients in private practice lie to you. They make up things so they don't sound so bad at the end of the day. Here some can't talk at all and it's for the better.”

He makes his way through the doors to give Jimmy his medicine. I spend the next two hours looking out the window at the bus route and the sun dying against New York City.

Five o'clock I get Jimmy's dinner out of the refrigerator and leave Patrick to deal with the rest of them. In one pocket I have an apple and in the other I have a little pink razor. It's the kind where the blade isn't so sharp. It's made for women to use on their legs. I brought a hand mirror but no nail clippers. One thing at a time.

At the top of the stairs my belly is full of charcoal. I don't care what my last check-up said. I'm sure I have an ulcer.

I unlock Jimmy's door and stand there waiting for him to notice me. He's not waiting for me in his spot. He's on his knees by the window. There's something gray and brown on the other side of the bars. He moves one hand under his pillow then back to the window, mumbling gleefully to himself. I see a tail, then two black eyes. Little claws from the outside world waiting for apple seeds. Then the squirrel is gone.

The whole time Jimmy eats his lunch I look out the window. I wonder if I left it open or if the doctor did. I watch him eat and wonder what food looks like in his world. What made apple seeds and squirrels bond in his mind?

After he finishes his dinner, I move over slow and show him the razor and the mirror. His eyes glass over and he starts to hiss. I check his hands but they're not curling up yet. They hang over his knees and I get the impression he's waiting for me to move. I show Jimmy the apple.

He takes it and slides back on the mattress. As finger-flips of apple peel fly away I start to shave the sides of his face. He doesn't fight. I get as much as I can before he moves from fingers to teeth.

The squirrel understands Jimmy. Jimmy understands the squirrel. I think about how long it must have taken him to train it, how hard it must have been, and wonder what I should do next.

When he hands me the core, I put it with the empty dinner box and show him the mirror. He has no idea what he's looking at. He hasn't tied himself down.

It had been five weeks since my last day off, so Evergreen made me take one whether I wanted to or not. But I'm no good outside anymore. I go to movies and wander around supermarkets. I catch the bus at the stop out front of the institution and ride around the city until I can come back inside. It's hard to talk to people on the outside. All my stories are about rape and diapers, someone getting their nose bitten off. Things no one wants to know.

When I come back to Evergreen it's late in the evening. I'm not due until midnight but I've got nowhere else to go. Patrick is smiling and shows me a shoebox.

“You missed it,” he says. “Darla came.”

“Who's Darla?” I ask. He's laughing. I hate the way he laughs.

“Jimmy's guardian or mom or something,” he says and he shows me the form she signed to check in. “I don't think she's going to live long.”

ldquo;What are you talking about?” This only happened because I left and Patrick was here. Things fall apart without me. What did he say to her?

“Junky shakes. Believe me I've seen them. Her skin was poked through with purple sores, starting to turn green already. Real mess. Made me glad she didn't see him.” He walks to the kitchen. There are no patients in the dining hall. I know he's probably left them locked in their rooms all day.

“She didn't even see him?” I ask.

“Yeah, but that's not the best part. The shoes she brought weren't even the right size. One was a ten and the other was eleven. It's like she didn't even try. You wrote nine down didn't you?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But it doesn't make a difference.” I take the box from Patrick and sit it by the trash on my way to the kitchen. He leaves for the night and I wonder if Jimmy noticed that the shoes didn't fit. I wonder if they fed him while I was gone.

I walk up the stairs. The smoke detectors chirp like song birds every sixty seconds, just one note, then quiet. I make my way to the fourth floor and unlock Jimmy's door. He's awake and waiting by the window with his seeds. I look at his shoes. They're simple running shoes without the laces. He can't run in a place like this.

His hands move slowly over the food I brought him. In the moonlight I can see they tried to cut his nails and it turned into a bloody mess. They cut them too short. He's missing one completely.

“This happens when I'm away,” I say as he plods his tender fingers over the food. “This happens when he's here.”

After a long time he finishes eating and puts his grimy hands up for an apple, but I don't have one. I was thinking about the shoes and forgot about the squirrels. I walk him through the door and towards the stairs. No one else is on. I want to feed the squirrels too.

At the bottom of the stairs I lead him through the hallways towards the dining room. Then I unlock the kitchen door and lead him inside.

“Apppullb,” he coughs and blurts. I sit down with an apple and a knife. Without his fingernails I have to peel it for him. He watches the skin fall away from the fruit and starts to grin.

He palms the bare apple to his teeth and tears into it. I don't watch him. I don't like to. I look at his feet and think that Patrick should have said something about the shoes. He should have led Darla up the stairs. I get the shoebox to check for clues.

The shoebox has a label on it with the same address I send the letters to. It has our address too. I wonder why Darla didn't mail it, why she didn't see Jimmy. Patrick must have lied to her. He hates Jimmy and would say anything to avoid dealing with him. She wanted to see her son. He has a mother out there and she wanted to see her son. She cared.

I give Jimmy a plastic spoon and teach him to pick apple seeds out with it. Then I take him upstairs to get dressed.

Outside the night is cold and quiet. It's the kind of night that makes you feel that you don't deserve to be so alone in the world. I look at the city waiting out in the distance all lit up and warm, and think of Darla. I think of all the happy people who never have to know what I know, about the buses that take them home to people who love them.

We're waiting outside the gate. I'm holding Jimmy's hand. I know this is the right bus line. Jimmy will know when he's close to his mother. He has to have the chance. He looks tired. He is off schedule and the medicine is wearing down. I pull his collar up and straighten his hair.

When the bus comes I move him through the door carefully, holding him by the shoulders. We take baby steps toward the back of the bus. Jimmy mutters to himself, shivers under his shirt, but no one on the bus lifts their heads to notice us. They are alone and reverent to that fact. We are alone too.

Darla will teach him all the things I never got the chance to know.

We sit down in the very last seat. Jimmy slides his hand to the emergency door, but I gently move his arms into his lap as the bus' air breaks release and we pull away from the gates of Evergreen.

The world in his mind must be moving now. The chemicals disintegrating in his bloodstream are losing their hold. I know that soon he will have to make a choice about how he feels about all this motion. I pull him close to me and watch the city lights grow brighter. My arm cradles his shoulder as his shakes grow worse, as his hands ball into fists. My other hand trails out the window, dropping apple seeds onto the concrete beneath us.

We are free.