"I don't understand this at all, Sal-lee. This is not clear thinking."

"Yeah, well, you can talk to them yourself if you want."

"I leave you alone the first two days, because Valeric says let her adjust."

"I know, Ma. Thank you."

"So what's this? They want to keep me away from my daughter?"

"They think it would be better if I didn't have any outside influences."

"Your mother is not outside. Next Tuesday I'm coming. They told me to come, for family night."

"Family therapy. That's right."

"You want me bring anything?"

"No, Ma, that's okay."

"How about clothes?"

"No, Ma, I'm fine, they have a laundry room here and everything."

"Valeric says there's tennis courts there too."

"Yes, Ma, but it's too cold to play tennis."

"Valeric says it's a very prestigious place." I wanted to laugh. Was Ma going to brag about me being in here? But then she continued: "You know your sister call me from south of France."

"Really?"

"She's having great time. She says maybe go to Africa on safari next. You sure you don't want me bring anything? Those plum candies you like so much?"

"Yes, Ma, I'm sure."

From my place on the window seat, I spotted Valeric right away, lanky in her big black coat, hair tied back in a fuchsia scarf, striding up the walk. There was a flurry in the nurses' station when she asked for me.

And then there she was, in the dayroom doorway, holding the battered brown briefcase full of legal pads she used to take notes. I was never so glad to see anyone in my life.

"Well," she said. "You look better. Your color has come back."

We had our session in my bedroom, she sitting in the visitor's chair while I lay on the bed. She leafed through the file folder that contained my chart. "I see you're still on suicide precautions."

"Yes."

"Is that necessary?"

"No."

"You don't have any more thoughts about killing yourself?"

"Not in the near future."

"Sally, this isn't a game."

"I'm not going to commit suicide."

"I see. So, what I understand, is that you're not contemplating suicide anymore, but you're not exactly jumping up and down at the prospect of living either."

"You got it." I couldn't figure how she'd done that, I'd thought I was fine, but now I couldn't look at her, I couldn't let her see that she'd made me cry.

"I'm going to have them ease up on the Stelazine. So you'll feel something, even if it is pain. Your appetite?"

"Okay."

She frowned, peering at something.

"It says here you've been having trouble sleeping. Nightmares?"

"I wake up a lot. But that's nothing new."

The unit was full of rustlings, and my bedroom door stayed ajar, so I heard all of it. The back and forth to the bathroom, the shivery emergency shrill of the phone in the nurses' station, staff pouring a cup of coffee or getting stuff out of the refrigerator in the kitchenette.

"Are you still seeing ghosts?"

I'd told Valeric about my fathera"what happened when I was eight, how I had learned to forget and not forget, how he'd started reappearing on the streets of Manhattan.

"He's not here," I told her.

"Have you talked about it in group?"

"Him. Not the ghost."

"I see," she said.

"When am I going to get out of here?" I asked.

"When I'm convinced you can act like a responsible human being."

I sighed. On the far wall I noticed faint tape marks where some other patient had once put up a poster. Was it possible that someone desperate enough to be on Status One would care that much about their surroundings?

After our session, I walked Valeric out to the foyer. In the mirror frame over the sign-out book was tucked a note telling Douglas to phone his mother.

"I'll see you next week, sweetie," Valeric said, laying her hand lightly on the side of my face. "Remember, we're cutting down on the meds. Let me know how it goes."

A little while later, when Pajama Man and I were eating our lunches, Douglas meandered into the dayroom, kicking at the door frame with his sneaker. "Sheeet," he muttered, and collapsed into one of the TV armchairs beside Pajama Man. The Young and the Restless was on. One of the older female characters had on a crescent-shaped gold necklace and matching earrings that I found gaudy but I knew Lillith would like.

"Don't forget to call your mother," I said to Douglas.

He turned around and gave me a level look. "You are such a fake, Sally Wang."

"Exactly what do you mean by that?"

He groaned and yawned, stretching his legs out in front of him. "I can see straight through that goody-goody act of yours. You pretend to be so fucking sweet, but actually you're wondering what the hell you're doing in here with all the loonies. You think you're so much better than the rest of us."

"I never saida""

"You don't have to say. It's in your expression."

"That's not fair."

"That's not fair," he mimicked me. "You know what you remind me of? One of those little dogs people have in their cars, the ones that bob their heads up and down. You're made of plaster. You're not real."

He reached over past Pajama Man and twisted the volume knob on the TV set until someone stuck their head out of nurses' station and told him to turn it down.

4.

In the bedroom Marty and I shared on Coram Drive, the wallpaper was white apple blossoms on a blue background. I can feel the texture of the paper nowa"the flower petals were raised and striated. The blue was the oddest shade, not like sky, or anything in nature, but dull and dark, a Prussian blue.

I dream I'm back in that room and there's my mother sitting on the bed. She's a monstera"her skin has become that wallpaper, completely covered with it, like leprosy. She has no features on her face, just indentations. It revolts me in a way I can't describe.

I want to kill her.

I wake up, but whether it's out of sleep or into another dream I'm not sure. Though the room is dark I can make out white lace curtains at the windows. Or are they ghosts? My heart is pounding my ribs apart, cold sweat runs down my sides. I'm lying on my stomach with every inch of my body pressed as close as possible to the sheet. Maybe if I lie very flat like this, staying still as if I were dead, I will be okay.

There is a beating in my head, behind my eyes, and I squeeze them shut, willing the sound to stop. If my blood is so loud, how will I be able to hear anything else? In the darkness I wait a long time, studying the shape in the next bed-a puddle of black hair, the body like a mummy. Is she asleep or dead? Is that the silhouette of a baby rocking chair, tipped or tipping, by the window?

Finally I dare to turn my head and look the other way, toward the door. There is a gold line at the bottom. I can hear people whispering. "There's an ugly one," someone says in a loud voice.

The door snicks open and my eyes close in the same instant. I turn away from the light as if in my sleep.

"She was awake, I heard her crying." I recognize the voice of one of the female MHs on the night shift. A male voice answers: "She just got off suicide watch."

After they leave I look over at the next bed and see that it's only my new roommate, Rachel.

14 March

Fran: You can tell from this letterhead where I ended up. Thanks for listening to me all those times I called you in the middle of the night. You are a friend among friends to put up with me in this wretched state I'm in.

It's actually not so bad in here. The big news of the week is that I'm up to Status Two, which means I can smoke, wear contacts, and attend all the scintillating therapies they have here.

My concentration is still not up to writing long epistles. I hope first-year law is treating you well. Write if you have time.

Love, Sally

17 March

Mar: Happy St. Patrick's Day. I'm sending this to the address you gave me when you left New York, which I hope is still good.

Supposedly I'm here to rest but so far there hasn't been too much of that what with all this therapya"art, music, occupational, dance (they play a tambourine and we do free-form movements to get in touch with our bodies), and something you would get a kick out ofa"psychodrama. One person casts the rest of the group as members of their family in order to reenact some kind of traumatic experience. So far I haven't gotten to direct but I've played a domineering mother, a bullying older brother, and an aunt dying of cancer.

Hope to see you soon.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. I'm sending this to the address you gave me when you left New York, which I hope is still good.

Sa

20 March

Dear Aunty Mabel and Uncle Richard: Thank you for the get-well card. I'm sorry that Niu-niu can't climb up the trellis anymore. You could just set her in the kitchen next to the picture window to watch the starlings from there.

Yes, I'd love to come visit you this spring, if I ever get out of here.

Love, Sally What I remembered about Florida: the flat clarity of light over white sand as I walked barefoot, edging my toe into the mild surf of the Gulf. A fragrant wind. The sun on my back.

The sun.

My stomach contracted with desire.

It was just over a week until Easter Sunday.

The art therapist told us to make a self-portrait.

I couldn't do it. Every terror of the blank canvas I'd ever felt was multiplied a million times as I sat there at the big table with a sheet of newsprint in front of me. For everyone else it was a cinch, just another therapy. They were all working busily, Lillith with her arm coiled to hide what she was doing, Douglas chunking down like he was making polka dots, Mel leaning back with a cigarette in his mouth, and even Rachela"I could see from across the table that she was sketching an enormous face, in choppy lines.

It didn't do any good to remember the first drawing class I took in college, with life poses for one minute each, where you wouldn't even look down at the paper as you drew, fast, without corrections, following the curve of a spine by feel. No time to think, before the instructor's "Next!" and the model would switch poses. Letting the sketches fall to the floor until by the end of the class you had dozens which you could look over later and say to yourselfa""Yes, I caught the arc of that muscle" or "The proportions are wrong here, but the feeling of weight is good."

I picked up my charcoal.

I was stupid now, and couldn't see, but there had once been a time when I'd had the divine fire.

Senior year at boarding school, after the standard program of charcoal, pastel, and watercolor, we graduated to oils. It was a completely new language, the box of miniature paint tubes marked with colors I'd never heard ofa"burnt sienna, titanium white, cadmium red, Indian yellowa"the fat stiff-bristled brushes that felt clunky in my hands after the slender supple-tipped watercolor ones.