Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author:Jayne Anne Phillips
- Language: English
- Genre: Medical Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 17.15 MB
- Price: Free
1874
IT IS AMONG THE MOST PAINFUL features of insanity, that in its
treatment, so many are compelled to leave their families; that every
comfort and luxury that wealth or the tenderest affection can give,
are so frequently of little avail…The simple claims of a common
humanity should induce each State to make a liberal provision for all
its insane…especially as regards the poor.
—dr. thomas story kirkbride, 1854
On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane
ConaLee
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A JOURNEY
APRIL 1874
I got up in the wagon and Papa set me beside Mama, all of us on the
buckboard seat.
Hold her hand there, he said to me, like she likes. Sit tight in. Keep her
still.
I saw him lean down and rope her ankle to his. I was warm because he
made me wear my bonnet, to keep my skin fine and my eyes from crinkling
at the corners. In case someday I turned out after all.
Talk to her, he said. Tell her she’ll like it where she’s going. A fine great
place, like a castle with a tower clock. Tell her.
You’ll like it, Mama, I said. A fine place like a castle, built from stone.
Tell her about them palms.
Palm trees in pots, Mama, and velvet sofas, like in a city hotel.
And don’t call her Mama, he said. Don’t you see how she’s dressed?
He’d got the dress from a widow man who was giving away his dead
wife’s carpetbag and clothes, the petticoats, silk underthings, the skirts, the
satin bodice and jacket with bell sleeves, a net for her hair with a pearl
comb fastener. Our neighbor had pulled Mama’s dark locks up in bundle
braids, like the page from Godey’s Lady’s Magazine we kept nailed on the
wall.
You know what to call her, he said. Don’t fail in’t.
You said call her Miss Janet. Though it is not her name.
It is her name now. Her old name won’t do her good. She’s a quality
woman alone in the world. Call her by her name.
I will, just in a minute. Catchin my breath.
But I put my hand on hers. She was clasping her knee so hard I could
feel her shake. I was out of breath from carrying the babbies to the neighbor
women. One of them would take the boy because he was walking and
talking, and the boy twin if she got both boys. The other woman would take
the girl twin, so that was a separate trip, pulling the drag with the bags of
flour and salt. I guessed we were going to be gone some days, driving over
to Weston. Papa had packed a grip and had him a bedroll. I had my leather
bag of fancy dress buttons, folded up under my woolsey jacket. I was
wearing my trousers, as like I was going to feed the chickens.
Papa, who’s going to feed the chickens while we’re gone, and find the
eggs?
That neighbor woman, he said. That took the girl twin.
Mama never named the babbies. We only called them so—the babbies,
and she nursed all three. The twins weren’t but twelve weeks. I had marked
the weeks, a line through every Sunday since February 1.
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