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My mother had been gone from my life for a year when my father took my sister, Kate, and me to visit her. It was about an hour from our home in the San Fernando Valley, near Los Angeles, to Camarillo State Hospital, where my father had committed her in 1955. But it might as well have been halfway around the world for how seldom we saw each other. A heavy curtain had fallen when Mom left. Sitting on the grass under a magnolia tree waiting to see her again, Kate and I, eight and five years old, were silent, subdued by the unsettling prospect of what condition Mom would be in. What would she look like? How would she act?Reports from the doctors indicated she'd been going through some tough times, especially the first six months, my father said. She cried a lot, and at night, when she called out for Kate and me, the doctors tranquilized her.
Suddenly, walking toward us in the distance, we saw her, or who we thought was her. But this woman seemed old and unsteady on her feet as she shuffled along, holding the arm of a man in a white uniform.
I felt goose bumps springing on my arms.
Yes, it was Mom. But her red hair, once so thick and shiny, was now dry and choppy, all the natural waves gone. Once so attentive and full of life, Mom seemed listless, her eyes sad, searching. Her face frightened me most. Webs of ruptured blood vessels crisscrossed her skin, providing a map of the violence she had endured. It would be years before I understood better what had happened to her: She and many other patients had been subjected, against their will, to paralyzing electroshock treatments.
Sitting down on the blanket, Mom pulled us close, first Kate and then me. I had longed for this moment, figured everything would return to normal once I fell into her embrace. She would bake again and take care of me; she would play the piano as she loved to. We would be a family again.
She tried her best to make small talk. How grown-up we looked! she said. How pretty my hair was. And Queenie, how was the little devil? I began chattering on and on about our beagle's habit of digging holes under the fence, and Mom smiled, seeming genuinely interested.
As the sun slipped behind the mountains and a light breeze blew, we gathered our things to leave. We promised we'd come back soon.
That's when Mom blurted out, "I don't belong here. Really, I don't."
Her words froze in the air. Kate and I looked at each other, trying to deflect the moment's awkwardness. As Mom started to cry, Daddy told her, "Now, now, Dorrie. No more tears."
She wiped them away, knowing that her husband didn't like emotional displays. She brushed her hands over her dress, as if smoothing the wrinkles would straighten out her life. "There, all better," she said. "Good as new."
And then Mom was led off while we turned our backs, walking away to freedom. I was haunted by that. On the way home, the three of us hardly spoke. "When will we go and see her again?" I asked Daddy.
"We'll see, honey," he said. "We'll see."
But we never returned, not for the nine years my mother was kept there. It would be a long time before I ever considered her feelings about it.
Some names have been changed for privacy.
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