cake baby

“My sister needs me to keep her stable. I could help her get better if we could just be together.”

“I’m sorry miss, but we can’t transfer you. Regulations you know,” said the nurse. She was the type who found joy in regulations. The type who buttoned her blouse to the very top because that’s what the top button was designed for. She found joy in imagining the usefulness of her position, imagining herself to be ‘creating an organized and upright society, because without structure, there is chaos.’

“Could you at least check?”

The nurse’s eyes didn’t break their gaze. She didn’t bother to pretend to check a clipboard or type something in her computer or give some fake phone call to a superior.

“The East Ward was designed for people considered high risk to themselves or others. You both have been properly sorted.” The nurse ended with a tight smile and motioned with her hand to another nurse behind me. “I’m sorry.”

Two large hands clamped down on my arms and guided me to the food line. They handed me a tray. It wasn’t something to fight against. The nurses had no control over anything, just like us. We all followed the same regulations.

Beans, unnamed brown meat, mashed potatoes, cake. Each slopped spoonful of food somehow felt like a metaphor for the people here; everyone’s inner divergent psyche scooped out and exposed. If my mind were to be classified, I hoped it would be cake, but somehow, I think the ‘unnamed brown meat’ seemed like a good summary for life’s current status.

Everyday was a new flavour of cake. Today was muddy chocolate. They always put a white chocolate swirl on top that looked like a lower-case ‘e’ that spiraled out of control. The ‘e’ stared back at you like eyes on plates. They liked their branding. When I say 'they', I don't really know who. A government issued chef or some machine of mass production or some random, happy, enlightened cafetiere person they hired to serve the food.

I sat down next to some girl who was at the same group therapy session as me earlier – Carla and Darla or some other name that might as well rhyme because this place is the Black Death plague of Dr. Seuss with its people with fluffed out eyes, pastel pink walls, and echoed 1950s elevator music. Soon enough they fluffed you pink and zapped your mind into rhythm of the xylophone jitterbug.

"Don't eat the cake.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not the crazy one, right? Your sister is.”

“Something like that.” I looked around. Everyone else was eating the cake. I had eaten their cake before, and nothing happed. I held up a spoonful. It looked and smelt like regular chocolate. Did they drug it or something?

“Don’t eat the cake, baby.” She dragged the words out with a singsong voice.

“What’s wrong with the cake?”

She pointed to a girl made of bones and deep-set eyes. “Jade likes cake. She might do you a favour if she likes you. She’s been here long enough to know how this place works.”

A squeaky cart with a two-layer cake decorated with candles was wheeled out to the middle of the dinning room.

“Besides people who eat the cake turn out funny. Maybe that’s just the paranoia in me,” Carla-Darla whispered.

A chorus of Happy Birthday was sung with some joy and some mumbling through mouths filled with food. The people nearest the cake blew out the candles. Maybe it was someone’s birthday; maybe it was no ones; it didn’t really matter. Their slogan might as well be "everyday is worth celebrating" even if it's manufactured. Fake smile until you actually smile. At least they didn't give us those stupid hats. Stupid hats are only fun when you’re with the people you care about; feeling stupid with strangers feels destructive.

I took my cake, walked across the dinning hall, and sat face to face with Jade. She jittered as she eyed my cake and then looked up at me, open mouthed and wide-eyed. The 1950 music had transitioned into an orchestral ballet that fluttered with flutes and violins.

“Friends?” I slid my slice of cake towards her.

She looked up at me and then at the cake. There was friendship in her eyes – and tears – either for me or the cake. She ate each bite with caution.

After she finished the cake, she said, "You're restless.”

"I’m in the wrong place. That's why – a friend told me to come to you. I need to be transferred to the East Ward."

"You don't want to go there."

"I want to be with my sister."

"Getting in is easy. Getting out - well most people haven't got out yet."

"So, you know how to get in?"

"I was in there."

"How did you get out?"

"Bribery." She said everything in the same, unwavering, rhythmless tone.

"So, I can bribe someone?”

"You need to mentally collapse. Break internally. You seem like you could – convince them. But I saw you talk to them. Now you are on their radar. It will be harder now.”

“What if I just bribe someone?”

“No.” She looked terrified as she raised her hands to her collarbone for comfort. “It would break you.”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

She didn’t answer.

“What did they do to you?”

She came back from the haze of her thoughts. “There are two ways: depression and mania.” She pulled out a pill – not the hospital kind, but from the past days of partying. “Or both. They don’t like wild girls. They’re a bad influence, so they take them away to the East Wing with all the other unstable things.”

Unstable. The soft word for the internally damaged. But that’s based on the assumption that stability isn’t just mind-numbing unawareness. People who are on a crashing plane that don’t know till they hit land. Good intentioned mothers hiding the newspaper from her children. The murders are still out in the woods; they just don’t know it.

“I don’t need a pill to convince anyone.”

She giggled and put it on her tongue, “it’s a candy. A placebo. Well, are you going to do it?”

“Right now? I thought you –“

“Come on.”

“Do what?”

“A performance. A tempest.”

The nurses were at the corners of the room watching us – docile, head down, cattle. Dinner was almost over. Soon the bell would sound over the speakers, and they would divide us into our groups for evening exercise. Two nurses were struggling to get the wheels of the cake cart unstuck.

She whispered, “get on the table and cause havoc.” She pushed her tray off the table with a loud clatter. A few people turned to look at us. She picked up my tray and handed it to me. I tossed in on the ground and stood up on the table where everyone could see. It was quiet – nurses had started closing in.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you.” I walked down the table singing and picked up trays, only to drop them again. A nurse grabbed my leg, but I pulled myself free,

“Happy birthday happy birthday! Happy birthday to you.”

I jumped off the table and ran to the cake cart. People were watching. I knew they were judging me – a stupid, mad, wild girl who likes attention. They were right – and still it made me stronger, wilder. I shoved the chocolate cake in my mouth with my bare hands. I threw some at the nurses when they got close.

The nurses pried me from the cart with my hands and mouth full of cake. They injected me with a tranquilizer. In a haze, they carried me down the hall to an office lined with books. It smelt of burgundy. They put me in a small chair, facing a big chair and desk. As the nurse wound my wrists together with cloth, she looked at me in the eyes again.

"You're getting what you want." She smiled as she tightened the final knot in the cloth, tying my arms to the chair. The restraints were the regulations she rejoiced in. She waited for the doctor to come in, and I could see her lips form the word: "unstable.”

A doctor came in. With his head down, he sat in his chair. Either his chair was too big, or he was too small, or however that nursery rhyme went. A bear, a bear, a little chair. Maniac. I'm a maniac. Just like in high school. They whispered about me. They whispered about everyone. Maniac. The weeds of the mind never go away. They always come back stronger the second time. Maniac. The East Wing.

“Tonight, was eventful – as I’ve been told.” He looked at my smeared chocolate face with sympathy.

“I like cake.” The words were emotionless, and my eyes were dead. I watched him as closely as he was watching me; except he saw me as a child. He seemed sensitive to weakness – maybe he had a daughter and was sensitive to teary-eyed tantrums. If I kept my eyes open, wide, and innocent, I knew I could cry – or at least look vulnerable.

“Me too.” He said gently. He stood up, walked closer, and sat down in front of me, on the edge of his desk. He took out a napkin from his pocket and held it out for me. The cloth restraints dug into my skin as I tried to reach out. Seeing my struggle, he put the cloth to my face, and I let him wipe away what he could.

“It seems you have been improperly sorted into the Central Wing. After you’ve had time to – recover… We’re going to transfer you —"

“—Thank you!”

"—to our North Wing, where we think can provide you with the best treatment.”

“North? – No! No, I don’t belong there. I need to be in the East Wing.” My hands felt numb. I pulled my head away from him.

“I know your sister is in the East Wing. She’s happy there.” He put the napkin on my lap and walked back around his desk to sit in his oversized chair.

“Can I see her?”

"I don't think that would be productive. She's getting the treatment she needs."

"She needs me -

"I don't think she does. She needs stability and you seem to be the opposite of that…”

"I’m unstable? I voluntarily entered this program to be with her. There's nothing wrong with me. Is this about the cake? Are mad I ate your stupid cake? I hate chocolate. I just needed to get your attention. No one listens around here.”

“I’m listening.” For all his sincerity, the only thing I felt was the cloth cutting into my wrists.

“Okay – maybe I am unstable. Maybe my sister is happy and recovering. But maybe I need my sister to help with my – treatment."

He thought about it and sighed as he opened a file cabinet and flipped through names and names of patients. He pulled out a file. Taking his time, he read through one page and then another and another. Every so often, he would look up at me and back down like an artist examining their subject.

“In our records, it shows abuse of drugs and reckless behaviour. The North Wing would be best suited for you; you were improperly sorted before. It’ll help you face your demons – so to speak.”

There it was – the look of compassion. He thought of himself as a kind of gardener, and I was a patch of weeds. We’re all polluted, savage, unweeded gardens. Hell’s empty because all the demons are inside of us.