Posted by Bobbie Ingersoll
on 12/22/2001, 11:02 am
Around Christmas of 1966, the war in vietnam was still raging. I had recently returned back East from having run away to San Francisco. While waiting for my fiance to return from Viet Nam, I had to stay at my mother's apartment. We'd never gotten along, and up until then, I had always been the quiet, dutiful daughter. I'd been out drinking with an old friend one night. She was coming home with her boyfriend at the same time that I was trying to (tipsily) make my way up the stairs. She began interrogating me as to how I got mud on my shoes (as though I were still 6 years old) and all the years of suppressed rage came out of me. She locked the door as I tried to leave and I began screaming at her that I hated her and for her to give me the key. She gave me the key, shaking, as she'd never seen this side of me. She had the police pick me up at a nearby pub while I was trying to call my English teacher for support. (I guess he had called her and told her where I was). Anyway, to make a long story short, I was picked up by the police and thrown in jail. To this day, I will never understand why I was put in jail. I think she may have said that I tried to assault her or threatened her, etc. The following Monday, I had to appear in court. Now, back then, in a case such as this, one could either press charges of assault or of "stubborn child." (believe it or not). So she pressed charges of stubborn child. It was also noted in court that I had "artistic tendencies" and that I had recently run away to San Francisco. (This was the hippie era; thousands of teenagers had been running away - especially to San Francisco!) The judge sentenced me to 30 days observation in Northampton State Mental Hospital. Actually, I was a bit relieved because then I would not have to find a job until my boyfriend returned from Vietnam. I gathered my Joan Baez and Bob Dylan records and was carted off to NSH.
While there, I mainly made friends with the self-imposed alcoholics. There was one young girl there named June Pilkington who had schizophrenia. Another woman, named Evelyn, had tried to commit suicide and suffered from clinical depression. I remember her talking about a dream she'd had in which a doctor told her, "But Evelyn, you've been dead for 13 years already." This woman later did successfully commit suicide.
There was one time when we all had to line up to go to what they called "OBGYN." We went down to the basement and women, two by two, had to go into a room adjoined only by a curtain which was left half open. There, we had to disrobe and climb onto a table to have vaginal exams. While this was going on, the doctors in attendance told a group of young interns, both male and female, that they could come in and look on. The woman next to me was very low-functioning. She was shaking and could not move when it was her time to get down from the table.
I also remember that they used ink-blot tests (not sure at the moment how to spell Rorschack Tests). I recall that I made up wild stories to go with the blots I saw, mainly as a form of entertainment. I also recall getting together with other women and short-sheeting other people's beds, counting the tiles on the floor as we walked from one end of the hall to another.
When it was my time to be evaluated, I talked about compassion,etc. They decided that I didn't belong in there. Anyway, I'd already contacted my sister who was out West. She was livid that our mother had somehow brought this situation about and was in the process of getting a writ of habeus corpus to get me out of there.
In the decades that followed, I eventually had 5 children and 6 grandchildren. One of my daughters is a dental hygienist; one is getting her master's degree in teaching. I earned a B.A. in Sociology (cum laude) and an M.S. in Special Education (adults).
Perhaps the land that used to contain NSH could be used for something good, something to help ameliorate the decades of pain and humiliation inflicted on that parcel of land.
Sincerely,
B. Ingersoll
Message Thread:
« Back to thread