Free Hysteria by Eva Gale Page A

real.
    Mother now pierces my scalp with pins and I jump like
I should. If she only knew what a good girl I truly was.
    Twenty minutes more and my skin flushes.
    Maybe cook has spoilt milk I could sneak to keep my
mind from straying but losing my stomach would not be acceptable,
Doctor would send me home. I would find another way. This day I had
my sight set on forty-five minutes.
    Four full minutes longer than last.
    My mind is singularly set on this and I will not
falter. Not even when Doctor tsk tsk’s and threatens to manually
treat me.
    I close my eyes and my breath comes in shallow
pants.
    This will never do.
    Mother pulls my earlobe and yells for me to pay
attention and I obey. Oh, I do, I must, and at this moment she is
the Blessed Madonna come to answer my prayers. She does not let go
and I refrain from kissing her pocked cheek, and she directs me out
the door and to the hall tree where my coat hangs.
    Now I have made her more angry and it is all for good
that I missed my breakfast. My hunger will keep my focus sharp and
dull my need.
    She does not bother to stop and put the coat on, or
hers either, she loads me into the ramshackle coach like a crate of
chickens for market and I dare not complain for fear I may have
pushed her too far and she keep us home.
    The horses clop down the cobblestones and I try my
utmost to not let my thighs touch but they do and the tiniest
quivers begin like a breeze ruffling feathers. I stomp on my
mother’s toes and she screeches and drives her elbow into my side,
taking my breath away.
    I grunt with the sharp pain of trying to take a
breath and feel the carriage sway left around a corner.
    Only a few moments more.
    I know their names, the girls that sit in that
hopeful desolate room. I know them all and I would wager they know
mine. Under my lashes I spy upon them and they me. I see the pursed
mouths of the mothers, sisters or cousins that have been assigned
the task of companion on these trips. Their pursed mouths and
furrowed brows as they sit and lightly chat about if spring will
come, how the hawker shorted them or the butcher turned the spoilt
part down so that they would not see. But behind their eyes I see
the curious shame. They are all mothers, they understand the
mechanics, but not the need as they lie under their heaving
husbands with tears in their hair.
    No, it is more to my shame that I dance around my
room the nights before treatment, I dare not touch myself those
nights though I can hardly breathe without thinking on it. I only
allow myself this persecution two nights after, and then I must
make it hastily as possible. I cannot let anything detract, you
see.
    The carriage jerks to a halt and my voice catches. I
fall against my mother and she buffets my shoulder and I feign to
sit back down but she has grabbed my hand like a manacle and hauls
me out. My feet hardly catch up with my body as she tows me inside
the huge black door. We are timely, but not near soon enough for
Lornea’s appointment is before mine and she has no self
control.
    Mother, as well as I, knows that Lornea is the
quickest of the lot and deemed on her way to recovery. Lornea’s
mind is too weak to withstand, and her sorrow at her lack of
control is plain in her tears and she shuffles out of the room each
week. Despite any sympathy shown she is inconsolable and I want to
laugh at the reserved approval shown her.
    May that I be cursed forevermore with this blessed
disease.
    I no more place my coat upon my arm than does Lornea
open the door, the Doctor on her heels with his arm outstretched.
Lornea’s cousin accepts his enthusiastic handshake and his voice
booms of her cure and his true happiness for her continued mental
health.
    Lornea, poor lemming caught in the net. She should
cry and show it for happiness, for that is all that is left to
her.
    The secretary calls my name and I watch the black and
white tiles pass under me. I smell the iodine and under it the
scent of Lornea’s release. It is