The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy

cigarette. "While you were hiding in bed, I locked myself in the bathroom and slashed my wrists. Robert broke down the door, bandaged me, and took me to a private hospital. I was there for two days before I woke up enough to realize that I couldn't go home. Robert had committed me for my own protection."
    I remembered being wrapped in cold sheets by white-coated interns. Was that the first night I was there? Hard to say. My memories of the year in the sanatorium were confused. I remembered howling at the ceiling of a cold room, hating Robert and wanting revenge. But I did not know whether that was the first night or many nights later. I suppose it didn't matter. The nights on the ward blurred together; it was a controlled environment, changing only as people came and went.
    The spirits I saw there were mad: a pale fat woman with dark smudges for eyes, like chunks of coal in the face of a snowman; a frail old woman who spoke an unknown language, her voice high and small as the chirping of sparrows on the eve of a winter storm; a gaunt woman, thin and dried as a prophet just back from a desert vigil, whose palms and bare feet were marked with bleeding wounds that never seemed to heal.
    "I was put in a ward for the seriously disturbed," I told Diane. "I got along all right there. I made friends with a woman who claimed to be Jesus Christ. A powerful old woman with a face like a hatchet."
    I took a drag on my cigarette and exhaled, watching the smoke drift away. Strange memories: I had spent many of my nights screaming at the ceiling that Robert was trying to kill me, that the doctors were trying to kill me. I had been there for a month before I decided to get out. I considered escape, but the bars at the window were quite strong and the interns were muscular. So I decided to behave, to stop screaming all night, to do as I was told, to end my discussions of theology with Mrs. Jesus Christ. I decided to feign sanity, to stop watching the spirits and calling to the moon through the barred windows.
    "I was on the ward for three months before I could convince them to move me to a better ward, one for less violent patients. It took me a year to convince them I was cured." I remembered the effort of feigning their kind of sanity. Smiling. Refraining from screaming obscenities even when obscenities were called for.
    "Robert came to visit me in the hospital. Every other week. Without fail. I was polite to him. I couldn't get out without his help." My voice was very dry, very matter-of-fact. "I wanted to be free of him. I wanted a divorce." I noticed that my hand was shaking as I lifted the cigarette to my mouth; my other hand was clenched in a fist. I forced it to relax.
    "Finally, he said we could divorce, but only if I would grant him custody of you. I had to agree that I would never try to see you without his permission. I wouldn't try to be your mother. I think that he was seeing someone else at the time and he wanted me out of the way. I had to be free of him, so I promised." I hated the apologetic tone that crept into my voice. I shrugged lightly. "He kept his part of it. He let me out."
    "You came back for Christmas sometimes," Diane said.
    "I came when Robert wanted me to. On his terms. At one point, I think he was lonely and wanted me back. When I told him that I wasn't interested, he cut off my visiting privileges." I shrugged and smiled a small tight smile. "He wasn't cruel about it. He sent me pictures of you."
    "What did you do?" Her voice was controlled and even. Her face was pinched, but she was not crying.
    "I went back to New Mexico. For a while, I worked as a typist, then I enrolled in the state university in archaeology. 1 managed to land a paid position as cook at a field camp that first summer and I was on my way."
    "You hated Dad for saying you were crazy," Diane said.
    "I hated Robert for a number of things back then," I said. I crushed the half-burned cigarette against the stone. "Locking me up was just one offense